Marcus Line 3

Theo mentions a harmful line where calling someone trash is used as a way to avoid dealing with grief and pain. This inner critic offers a shortcut by simplifying complex emotions into a negative self-narrative of being defective. There's a particularly insidious line where Theo says, I say you were trash because it hurts faster than grief and pain keeps you obedient to me. That's the mechanism right there. The inner critic offers a kind of terrible shortcut. Instead of processing complex grief and trauma, it reduces everything to a simple, brutal narrative. You are defective.