The Aftermath of Trauma Porn

3 hot takes from a psychiatrist after watching Baby Reindeer.

image via Baby Reindeer IG

If you’re a TV person, you might be following along with the drama surrounding Netflix’s new hit show, Baby Reindeer. A dark psycho-drama following a failing comedian and his stalker, the new series has sparked an interesting conversation about how trauma is portrayed on-screen, and how media attention impacts trauma survivors off-screen.

Content warning: the rest of this article contains a discussion of how this show portrays sexual abuse. If you’re not in the right mental or emotional place to engage with this material right now, please skip this piece.

Baby Reindeer opens by stating that it is a true story based on the life of its creator and lead actor, Richard Gadd. The Netflix show is actually based on a play that Gadd wrote and performed of the same name in the UK (Gadd is Scottish). It details the story of how Gadd, a comedian trying to get his big break, came to be stalked and assaulted by a woman (called Martha) who was a customer at the pub where he bartended. As the show progresses, we come to find out that both Gadd’s character, Donny, and Martha are trauma survivors. Baby Reindeer is a commentary on how trauma impacts survivors and, how hurt people can go on to hurt people.

What follows are my three psychiatrist hot takes after watching all seven episodes (there are spoilers below!).

Trauma rarely has a tidy resolution

Someone who heals from significant abuse, like the type of sexual abuse that Donny endures, will likely be dealing with this trauma, on some level, for their entire lives. Trauma to this degree changes you — I don’t say that to be dramatic, it’s just true.

If you have been through trauma (little t or big T trauma), you probably understand that trauma causes you to question yourself. This happens in part because your abuser is gaslighting you and dictating a version of reality that is false (add to that a society that rarely believes survivors of abuse). Sexual abuse survivors are often asking themselves questions like: Was this my fault? Did I bring this on? Maybe it was me?

To some extent, the healing process is defined by resolution — answering these questions for yourself and, believing those answers. These wounds can take years, even decades, to close and heal, and there will likely always be minor irritants in the form of personalities or places or situations that make your scar tingle.

What I appreciated most about Baby Reindeer is that Donny’s trauma(s) are not tidily resolved at the end of the series. In the last episode, we find Donny still dealing with the same central conflicts that were present early on in the show — haunted by his first abuser, a male TV producer/ bigwig named Darrien, and still processing his feelings about his second abuser, Martha. The closing scene features Donny sitting at a bar, alone, realizing that perhaps him and Martha are more alike than he had realized.

I like this depiction of the how trauma “resolves” because, for so many of my patients, there is never one big Aha moment of healing. Instead, it’s many many small, quiet moments of understanding. These quiet moments add up, and over time, can lead to a resolution. This resolution is something that every survivor must give themselves. It’s never something that can come from the outside.

I suspect that audiences would have loved to see a scene in which Darrien (Donny’s abuser) is held accountable for his violent actions. Yet, Baby Reindeer is about the internal experience of surviving horrific sexual assault, violation and the aftermath, not the external outcomes that may or may not come following such tragedies. Many times, even when justice is served, as we see with Martha doing jail time and Donny still not being able to move on, external resolution does not automatically lead into internal healing. In fact, you could argue that with the level of trauma both Donny and Martha have experienced in their lives, what they are looking for might be closer to peace, as opposed to healing.

We need a new level of content warnings

I wish that this show had a more prominent trigger warning. If I’m remembering correctly, the warning that we get is a standard one about content sexual violence and abuse. There is one episode in Baby Reindeer which is particularly violent, gruesome and dark, in which we are with Donny when he relives his sexual assualt(s) by Darrien. To be fair, that episode does include a specific warning, but, after watching it, I found myself wishing that there was some higher level of content warning possible.¹

I have mixed feelings about people who have a history of sexual assault watching this show. The reactions I have seen in places like Reddit amount to some version of, “I felt so seen by this show, and it completely broke me.”

Watching a shade of your own trauma be portrayed on the screen can be cathartic. It can also be deeply re-triggering. I wish we had some sort of psychological safety check-in pre- and post- a show like this. The standard content warnings kind of fall flat for me.

Baby Reindeer is bound to bring up strong feelings even if you are not a survivor. And, if you are a survivor, those feelings might be confusing, and therefore, destabilizing. If you are survivor, and you are in therapy, this is the type of show to talk about in therapy with a trained mental health professional.

I felt similarly after I watched the first few episodes of I May Destroy You (the 2020 psycho-drama which explores the aftermath of trauma, brilliantly created by Micaela Coel). I asked myself if I felt this way because both shows involved male victims, given how rare it is to see male on male (or woman on male) sexual abuse depicted on screen. On further reflection, I don’t think that is it. What I’m responding to as a psychiatrist is the realistic nature of the abuse scenes and the abuse survivors. In both cases, we have a victim who is not the “perfect victim”: e.g., goes back to their abusers, continues the relationship, or does not openly name it as abuse. The realness is what makes both of these shows so compelling and stirring and disturbing (and thus, brilliant), but it also has the potential to destablize someone who is not in a good place with their trauma.

Fame is a poor substitute for real healing

In online discourse about Baby Reindeer, I’m seeing a reoccurring theme: hope that with this success and validation of the show, Gadd will find a deeper resolution of his trauma.

Art is a powerful method to process trauma. It’s a way to reclaim agency over your experience; you get to tell the story, as opposed to your abuser telling the story.

Fame, on the other hand, is the opposite of all of those things.

Now Gadd is basically living out his art in real time. Since the success of the show (it’s number 1 on Netflix in the US and the UK) he’s being interviewed everywhere. Gadd has said was not expecting the show to take off like it did, and now he is a bit overwhelmed by the response.

I can understand why an audience will want to feel like by getting his story out there in such a massively successful way that Gadd will benefit emotionally. Especially after seeing him lay his insides out so openly on screen, we want that to be the case.

Unfortunately, fame usually doesn’t work like that. Each time Gadd does an interview or makes an appearance, he has to retell the story and thus, has the opportunity to question himself, and pick at the scab, so to speak.

There is also a heightened potential for re-traumatization. For example, because we now live in an armchair private investigator culture, the internet has (maybe?) found the real life Martha. Gadd insists that he never wanted that to be the outcome of his show; and that he changed aspects of the narrative to maintain anonymity (he says the skeleton of the story is accurate to how it all went down). Real Life Martha has since said that she feels Gadd is using Baby Reindeer to stalk her now. She has been quoted as saying, “Richard Gadd has got main character syndrome.”

To his credit, Gadd has discussed the decisions that he made in his re-telling of the story, and seems to have approached them with nuance and thoughtfulness. He said to The Guardian, "It would be unfair to say she was an awful person and I was a victim. That didn't feel true."

In short, there will be more drama because now Gadd is famous. Every 15 minutes of fame has the potential to make the scab itchy and lead to a re-opening of the wound.

That doesn’t mean people should not create art out of their trauma. Every artist knows that this is not the answer. I do think, however, that could stop romanticizing how fame will lead to a sense of closure or peace. As we know, that healing can only come from within.

xo,

Pooja

Have you watched Baby Reindeer? What did you think? I’d love to chat in the comments.

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How to Talk about Your Trauma

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You are reading Real Self-Care, the email newsletter written by psychiatrist and best-selling author Dr. Pooja Lakshmin MD.

1. The show also includes assault and violence towards a trans woman, and a scene where Martha sexually assaults Donny.