Alex Cooper’s TOXIC Workplace, Chloe Malle’s Vogue Flop, & Father's Day Struggles w/ Meg Josephson

(laughing) - Thank you guys.

- Jenna Bush Hager called her father.

President George W. Bush and Hoda copy.

“Her one-time female co-host by two dads.”

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to your Friday edition of The Nerve, I am your host, Moring Kalahan, it is a stacked impact show, much rubble makers.

We are going to begin with a celebrity round up. And this segment is so good and packed that we actually had to kick a new offender out of this segment and all the way into next week so we could build it out properly.

So something to look forward to. We're going to begin with Timotea Shyamalava Ding Dong. So we're taping this the day of the nicks having their parade in the canyon of heroes in downtown New York City and it is a madhouse in New York City.

And Timotea is not helping matters, okay? He is not then we're going to discuss the scathing vanity fair expo's day of call her daddy post Alex Cooper. This feminist podcast, not so feminist.

“Not so feminist and not for the reasons you might think.”

Plus, Chloe Mao is out here defending her indefensible presence and leadership of Vogue, which is dead, but I mean, she's out here defending her insipid, vapid, weak charisma free nature. So perfect for the Nerve, perfect for the Nerve

and then we covered a couple of these incidents involving different actresses about a week, we can have a go on the Nerve. There's this thing happening right now where these actresses who have had serious issues

seem to be relapsing before our faces and the rest of the entertainment media if they're not outright ignoring it, they're talking around it and it's not helpful and it's not healthy.

So we're going to talk about it here on the Nerve. Then we've got trouble maker feedback, trouble maker art and then we've got Meg Josephson, our friend Meg,

psychotherapist and author of the incredible self-help book

are you mad at me? And those are words I very rarely string together, incredible self-help book, Meg is the exception. Meg is joining us once again to discuss how to navigate difficult family dynamics

as we approach Father's Day this Sunday. Okay, this time, are you ready? Are you ready? Let's go. A lot of skincare companies

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We begin, yet again, I'm like an exasperated judge who has, in fact, seen a repeat fender appear in my courtroom, one to many times. And this kid is out of chances. Okay, as I said in the intro,

it is a very joyous day in New York City. It's also insane. The NYX had their victory parade in downtown New York City, this morning. I mean, the every area where you could watch this thing

was full by like eight in the morning. The parade started at 10, a lot of celebrity showed up

You know, like, and Timate is one, I will give him that.

“You know, but the Mariska hargate is the Ben Stillers,”

the Chris Rocks, the Spike Lees, the Lifeers, who have suffered through the NYX losing and losing and losing again. Okay, they're down there partying like normal people. Okay, they are not Timothy, okay.

You would think this kid sank the winning jump shot. He did not, we're looking at him on a bus on top of a bus during the parade. Look at this kid. He's got a microphone, sunglasses.

And he's going, let's go, NYX, let's go NYX. You know, this was a subset of a type of guy back in the '90s.

It's a name that you could never ever get away with now.

But it was a, and I won't say it, you can, you can look it up and AI will tell you. But there was a specific slang word, used to describe white boys of privilege and wealth and who had a sort of kind of delicate aura about them,

but who would pretend like they were hard core wrappers, you know, from like really rough neighborhoods, from like Brownsville in the Bronx. You know what I'm saying? And every time I see Timmy now,

this is all I can think of. And then a friend of mine sent two pictures of Timmy Tay this morning walking through the city. Again, looking like an asshole, I think he's trying to look at this.

Well, you look at this.

“I think this kid is really trying to overcompensate”

because as we are going to discuss

with a nerve favorite on the mini this weekend, he looks like a Victorian era, and some too, who you know, when taken to the doctor, the doctor before examining without the clothes on would say, what's happened to this little girl?

You know what I mean? Please, Timothy, let this be it. Please, we went through an Oscar season with you. Now you're be fouling. The next victory, just please take it inside,

take it indoors, lock yourself away for a bit, enjoy your money, enjoy, you know, just please give us a, may we take a beat, may we take a beat. Now, this is a piece that many, many people have been talking about since it dropped this week.

It went viral, vanity, fares, expose, daddy issues, trouble behind the scenes of Alex Cooper's unwell media empire. This was published on June 12th. The author is Clara Molot, if I'm saying her name correctly.

And here's an image we're looking at. This is the VF layout, the VF art. It's Alex and her husband, Matt Kaplan, who, you know, in this piece is sort of posited as the real problem here. But listen, either unwell is Alex Cooper's company

and call her daddy is Alex Cooper's creation, and she runs that shit, or she doesn't. If you ask me, the buck stops with her,

“and the problem, I think, with this piece,”

this journalist who wrote it, she says in the beginning, she kind of acknowledges a bleakly that she is a young journalist, she's kind of green. You know, she spoke to many, many, many sources, who say this company is really fucked up,

and that the people who go to work there who are largely young women, who are fans of Alex's, and who think that they're in for, you know, really exciting experience working for her, and then they're quickly disabused of that,

because the husband's a nightmare, and we'll get to the ways in which they alleged he is. What the problem with this piece is that, the journalist allows Matt Kaplan to be the villain, an Alex Cooper to be the passive bystander

who allows this to go on. And I am sorry to quote Bethany Franklin, you can't be smart and stupid at the same time. You can't be running an empire that's worth

over $100 million, and not know that your husband

is a problem, and is causing young women to leave your employee in droves, crying, and feeling like they've been beaten down. It doesn't work that way. This journalist should have gone deeper,

and done a little bit more of her own analysis, and asked, what is the issue with Alex? Does she have, is she in a very unhealthy relationship with this guy who, by the way, by the way, you know, when all of this was beginning to foment,

and people were talking about it, and it was buzzing, and people knew this story was coming, and then there were rumors that the marriage was on the rocks. You know, Alex Cooper surprised everybody,

by posting an image to Instagram of her and her husband and announcing her pregnancy.

They are having their first child,

“and Dave Portnoi commented that it was basically a Trump card.”

Dave Portnoi, her former boss at bar stool sports, and he basically said, good for you, because now that your pregnant, nobody can criticize you, and Dave, it does not work that way.

It does not work that way. Being a pregnant woman does not mean that you're immune from criticism, that you get the next nine months off, that you can just be an asshole,

and everybody has to excuse it, because your pregnant doesn't work that way. At least at the nerve, now I'm going to read a little bit from this piece, the extracts are damning.

Now Matt says someone who worked with Unwell

on a freelance project creates the most toxic work environment

that I have ever seen, describing how they witnessed Kaplan repeatedly making young female employees cry, as he berated them for minor mistakes,

“such as putting balloons in the wrong place at an event,”

or underestimating how long it would take to upload video footage, Matt will scream the worst things, and say the nastiest things to you, and Alex will be there next to him, not defending anyone, says a former employee,

whose allegations regarding Kaplan's behavior involve issues ranging, excuse me, from insults about her intelligence, to threats of ruining her career. Alex is not an innocent bystander here.

She is witnessing this stuff, and she's doing fucking nothing about it, if these accounts are true, and trust you, me, this piece went through condeness legal.

You are not a feminist if you are allowing your young female employees, female employees, period, but young female employees, especially, to be abused like this allegedly reportedly, by your husband, while you stand there,

like a deaf mute, and allow it to go on. This is gonna fuck with her brand, and it should. It really should, you know, Alex Cooper catches a lot of shit for like her podcast was just about sex,

and now she does these like dumb, dumb interviews with like famous women, but you know, and this surprised me when I read it, and I asked younger staffers here at the nerve, what they thought of Alex Cooper,

because I've never been a fan,

“and I thought maybe it's just a generational thing, right?”

Like maybe I just don't get it. They are her demo. They are of the generation, and they said no. We don't like her, and they were like, you know, she got famous for like instructing her listeners

back when it was the podcast with Alex Earl, as well, how to properly give a blow job, and like there were two versions of it. And I just don't find that content that, you know, I think is a value add to the culture.

Do you know what I mean? So there's that, and then there's just sort of her general, I find her like, it's an intellectual elastitude. Like I don't understand like why she's a thing. Like I've never really understood it.

But anyway, she markets herself as a sex positive feminist. I've seen producers cry, and by the way, you guys know Marlene, if you know producers, the best producers, nothing will rattle them, nothing. They work in high stress environments,

and they know how to deal with this stuff, I've seen producers cry. This is a woman who worked as a contractor as an unwell production. Unwell seems to be aptly named.

Things are not well over there, Alex. Things are not well. You should get a handle on that shit. Continuing, this contractor says that Matt Kaplan made the technical crew, again, a tech crew.

These are tough people, a tech crew break down in tears. He threatened to withhold payment. She recalls Kaplan telling people, do you know who I am? Do you know who my wife is?

Are you fucking with me? Are you intentionally trying to fuck with me? The former contractor says the Kaplan asked her this on more than one occasion, telling people on set, you're wasting my money.

I can replace you at any point. Cooper, this person says again, another instance, this person says Alex Cooper was within your shot. When Kaplan burst out of the video village area during the production saying, I really

want to yell at somebody right now, other women who have spoken to Vanity Fair, say they have also witnessed Kaplan loose his temper in front of Cooper. You are producing a sex podcast. Why the stress?

From several women, several other women who have worked

in unwell told Vanity Fair that Kaplan referred to employees as quote stupid or quote the R word, which they print here and threatened to ruin their careers. Several alleged that he made employees uncomfortable with questions and comments about physical appearances

and people's sex lives. And there is somebody quoted in this piece who says Matt Kaplan loves to ask on a Monday morning allegedly reportedly, hey, what did you fuck this weekend?

This guy's bad news, but trust me, you cannot say that Alex Cooper is not complicit.

“She is, and you know what she's opening herself up to?”

Class action lawsuits. She should watch herself and she should get this under control if she wants to have real fucking longevity in this space and I'm telling you, I just don't know, you know, I don't know if her followers

are gonna come with her on the motherhood journey.

You never know, she should really clean house

before it's too late now. Onto another workplace disaster, Chloe Mao, the fairly recently installed new editor in chief or editor at large, whatever. She's Anna's little puppet,

Anna's minion, as I've said many times before, I truly believe Anna win toward Anna win toward, excuse me, installed this drip of a nephospawn. Her mother is Candice Bergen, her father is the legendary late film French film director, Louis Mao.

She's an only child, so I'm sure she grew up thinking that she was beyond special just by dinner for birth. So she's been at Vogue, and you know, the nerve has been the number one outlet that has been asking the question

that everybody else is afraid to say out loud.

“Everybody's thinking it, but nobody will say it, you know?”

She's getting interviewed by the New York Times, by Jenna Bush, Hager over at the today's show, and everybody's thinking her, it's like Jason Bateman, talking to Michael Sarah on a rest of development when Michael Sarah's character George Michael

began dating this real drip of a girl, just this real sad sack, plain Jane drip of a girl. If you keep reminding Jason Bateman, who plays father that he was dating this girl, and Jason Bateman every time would be like,

her, that's the reaction to Chloe Mao. - Kind of my girlfriend, her? - The end to my feed, this came on Thursday morning, and oh, was I grateful for it. We're gonna take two looks at this, okay?

She sat with NPR, she sat with NPR, where they talk very seriously, and they use a monotone. - See Sarah Jessica Parker, that's the proper use of the word monotone.

Not the way you just fucking mangled it, your commencement speech at Northwestern, these monotone categories of race and class and check, it doesn't make it, oh my God. Okay, back to Chloe, back to Chloe, she is not worried,

she says about the backlash. The way this is framed is like, are you worried about the backlash you're getting to your vision for American vote?

First of all, I reject the premise of the question,

Chloe does not have vision. She does not have a vision. She does not have an original thought in that head. She is as dry, as dailed toast. But let's treat her seriously as NPR is doing it's so reductive,

so just what if you really want to do an interview that's gonna get people's attention? Chloe, these are underwhelming issues you've been doing. What's up, let's just look at this first one, okay? Here we go, let's go.

- I don't worry about that. Whenever I feel for where, don't it, or unsure about something,

“the only thing that I find to be a real through line”

for myself is to be authentic to what I care about and I'm inspired by, and I think that as long as-- - Spid it out! - Chloe is representing people that we really

passionately believe in, then if some people don't like that, and that's a choice we've made. - Okay, now I have read, I read some comments

is speaking in code for like, Vogue is now dedicated to diversity, and if people don't like it, she's implying that they're racist.

“I actually, again, I reject that premise.”

First of all, she's like trying to get it out, trying to get it out, and she falls behind the cowards cliche of the millennial generation, as long as I'm being authentic to myself. I mean, we can thank Oprah for it, you know?

And we'll get to Oprah, and we've got an Oprah banger that you guys are gonna die for. It's not ready yet, it's cooking. But as long as I'm authentic to myself,

that's all that matters. No, it's not Chloe, it's certainly not all that matters to your bosses at Conday Nast. She's just, what little was left of Vogue? She has destroyed with her narcissism

and her sheer, ordinaryness, right? Ordinaryness? Yeah, she's ordinary, she's ordinary. And you don't install somebody who's ordinary to try to create or build upon or transform

something that was once extraordinary. I mean, again, Vogue as out-of-left is a shell of itself, a fucking shell of itself. But Chloe, here's Chloe on whether she needs to worry about what advertisers think, here we go.

And your advertisers and the designers who want to present there and also the many

of the powerful people who would like to see themselves

in Vogue and what if they love, I don't want to be in the same magazine as X. Well, that's a shame for them. It's a tricky question for me to answer because I can't quite imagine I'm really proud of.

“Who are featuring and what we're celebrating in our party?”

Who are you featuring? Nobody reads it. Our commercial and business partners will be as well. Really, you think, you think, you know, there are such things as metrics

and subscribers gained and subscribers lost and add dollars and new stand sales, what you're doing online, you know, look at her in that chair. She is wearing white on white. It is formless, it is shapeless.

It looks like a no offense because I shop at TJ Maxx all the time. She got it at TJ Maxx. I'm either editor and chief of Vogue magazine. No way, I'm not.

Have I put myself better to get today? Together better than this woman who's running Vogue has? Yeah, I would say so. And then look at the footwear. She's wearing dirty flip flops with her bare feet.

You know, it's like show, try, try to dress the part, try to dress. And she's acting like, you know, she's been personally insulted by like the other moms at the school run too bad for them if they don't like it.

I believe in myself. That's not how you make a cultural impact. It's not about you, it's not about whether people, okay.

Here's what real fashion magazines look like.

And they're still out there. You know, you know how I know? 'Cause I go to new stands in New York. The ones that still exist. And when I find them, I buy them.

I come home with stacks of them, okay. We are going to look at Vogue France. Stunning cover image. It heart, this is, this one I love.

“And I actually, this is from last March, I believe.”

So I think I bought it on the stand in February. That's at the American model, Carolyn Murphy. And those sunglasses are product. And I fell in love with those sunglasses. And you couldn't get them, they weren't even out yet.

I wound up calling the product offices in New York City. And I was like, you have got to save me up air. And I got them. I got them. That's what fashion magazines do.

Like the best ones, they like give you like these new ideas and ways of like presenting yourself and self-expression. And I just love it. Here's another one. This is this black and white, this gorgeous image.

It looks like something that like, horse would have done. It's just, it's beautiful. It's elegant, it's breaking typical rules for magazine covers. And that is in black and white. And here is an issue of British Vogue that I just put,

I picked it up a couple of weeks ago to end downtown, New York. It's so striking, because I was thinking about the Madonna package that we were going to do, or at least we were going to be talking about how she just humiliated herself at that time square concert she gave.

And then you look at that image at its Madonna at her greatness. And you know, she could put an image together. Do you know what I mean? You know what I mean?

So Chloe should maybe, there used to be this amazing,

amazing place in New York. It doesn't exist anymore. It was like a shop and a research place. And you could go, and this guy had every fashion magazine

they began publishing fashion magazines.

She needs to go into archives. She needs to travel. She needs to educate herself. But you know what, it's hopeless. It's hopeless.

So Connie asked, keep this mediocrity going, okay? You want to go to Vogue today? You want it to just die, die, die. Pull the plug on it, keep her installed. Our final entry.

This one is sad. I take no pleasure in doing this one.

“But I think it's important that we cover it”

because the rest of the mainstream entertainment media

is either pretty hands-off with it or they're kind of talking around it. And this is a real cry for help. We've covered a couple of these actresses recently who have made similar public appearances

in front of audiences, media, red carpet, for podcasts, hate and panetier, being one, and a farce being another, slurring their words, glassy eyes, looking completely out of it, sounding completely out of it, clearly in just my opinion,

just my opinion, but really seeming to be under the heavy influence of some kind of substance, Natasha Leone, who until very recently was enjoying quite the career resurgence.

“She went from orange as the new black to Russian doll,”

a Russian doll's, and then to poker face, that sort of reboot of Columbus. And she showed up at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 11th, and she got on stage, and she started talking, listened to this.

- I'm all, I mean, how are you able to make that (beep) (beep) how they allowed you, and on other reasons that you mentioned. So, what's happening right now, you know, where, where do you go from here?

- And that clip goes on and on and on and on. And you can tell, like, whoever she's talking to on that stage has no idea what to do or how to handle it. And again, I cannot believe that there is nobody in this woman's circle, nobody who works for her,

“a publicist, a manager, a handler, who takes one,”

look at her and says, you're not going on stage tonight. Natasha Leone has long been a very, very, very troubled person.

She first started making real noise in New York City

after the actor Michael Rappaport evicted her from an apartment she was renting from him. This is a page six article published April 9th, 2026 because Natasha announced in January that she was off the wagon. She basically said, I've had a relapse in my sobriety,

but she didn't say she was doing anything about it. A history of Natasha Leone's troubled past, page six from DUI and eviction to relapse and flight drama. In 2005 Leone was evicted from a New York City apartment in a building owned by Rappaport, who later wrote a skating

account of the actress's tendency. The comedian wrote in the May 2005 issue of Jane magazine that her bedroom looked like quote, a grenade had gone off. He continues, there was garbage everywhere, scripts, contracts, pages from hustler magazine, photos, letters,

and things I can't even mention. Natasha almost died in 2005. This is the New York Post reporting again. They were all over this August 19th, 2005. The report, American Pie star Natasha Leone on the lambs

and she failed to appear in court in April, is in Beth Israel Hospital's intensive care unit under an assumed name decimated by drugs and disease. The post has learned the only recognizable feature of the one's beautiful star of the indie film circuit

is her unruly strawberry blonde curls Leone suffering from hepatitis C. So I'm gonna guess she was an intravenous drug user. We're gonna hear her talking to Rosie O'Donnell in a bit about her heroin use as a teenager.

There we go.

Covered in track marks, set a source

“who has closely observed the tragic situation”

the source added that she's undergoing methadone treatment, which is typically used to mean heroin users from the drug. She came to Beth Israel after being treated at Bellevue Hospital and had earlier been living

on the street. Seven years later in 2012, Natasha Leone, and Silly Young woman, required open heart surgery so she's almost died twice. Here she is, on a one-on-one interview

with Rosie O'Donnell, it's not Rosie's daytime talk show. And she's talking to Rosie, this is 14 years ago about her heroin use. Now Natasha says she was out of her house at age 15, which means some dark things were going on

in that house, just my supposition. But happy 15-year-olds don't tend to run away. And she was using drugs by 16. Here we go. - About drugs is back then, what I meant was,

you know, you start your 16, it's not so heavy, so you show up, you're the only baloney pony, and that's a heavy. Then you kind of move on to the darker stuff. And then I feel like really once you get very dark,

like time speeds up, because your body simply can't maintain, really, I mean, some very strong men care, like William Burrows, but my idol, but in most cases,

“I think that, you know, your little body,”

maybe not as little as other actresses, but the little body just can't manage the intensity of all that. - I wanted to show that clip in particular, because I find it really poignant, you know,

she's talking about, she has a little body, she's small, and what she's already put it through, and knowing that it really can only take so much, you know, people were kind of shocked when Carrie Fisher died of like a cardiac arrest.

I was she on an airplane when she died, I believe she was, but I wasn't because heavy drug use, as Carrie Fisher had in her youth, heavy cocaine use. I mean, James Gandalfini's same thing,

dropped out of a heart attack, a relatively young guy.

“That's what's gonna happen to this woman.”

And I wish that journalists who sit in front of these subjects, you know, so during her resurgence, they did a piece on Natasha on CBS on the morning, and this interview was sitting there like, "Oh, just take what you're spoon feeding me."

This should be alarming, okay, this is from one year ago. Now, when Natasha began re-entering her entertainment career, something struck me, she clearly had some plastic surgery. I, it looks like she may be wearing a wig, and I wonder how much of that is the trauma

that her body's been through. And she has since adopted the voice and cadence of like an elderly Jewish man in New York City. Like things are not well.

Now, she says that she always talks about,

and she wants to be transparent about her history as a hardcore drug addict, because it might help the other guy. But listen to this, listen to how evasive she is and how tortured this answer is.

And I think this was a clue that this woman was no longer sober and no longer in active recovery. Just my opinion here we go. - I think really, I was very lucky that I was a serious reader.

So I sort of had a mind that was open to many permutations of a world and a life and saw sort of exit strategies or even saw like a deflated mental state as something that was not uncommon. By the 2000s, Leon was famous

and sometimes infamous. She struggled with drug addiction and reportedly came close to dying. - How tough were those years for you? - I guess you're trying to ask me about my crazy drug years

and why and I'd say in part, I was a little bit curious about why the world was set up the way it was and I sort of wanted to go on the road and take a bit of my own sort of investigative reporting tour and what the world was actually about outside

of my limited world.

I'm always very transparent around my whole history

can help the next guy.

- She's not transparent about it, that's a lie.

And that answer made absolutely no sense. I have no idea what being curious about how the world really works has to do with using heroin at age 16. None, zero.

And that journalist fell down on the job right there. I have no fucking idea what she's talking about there and it is not helpful if we're going to really have a conversation about hardcore drug addiction and mental illness to allow her to sit there

and spout that bullshit.

“It's not helpful and you know what else isn't helpful?”

She presents despite everything she's put her body through

as remarkably healthy and helpful

and she looks good and that is through cosmetic interventions. Okay, poor drug addicts don't look like that. They don't and Hollywood has to have a real fucking conversation with itself and the media, the entertainment media has to have a real fucking conversation with herself

because there is no responsible way. There is no excuse for Natasha Leone to have been on that stage at the Tribeca Film Festival in that condition. Far too many people had to sign off on that and allow for it.

If this woman does not get help very soon, she is going to die. Sharing her health update in a series of exposts on the evening of Friday, January 23rd, writing,

“quote, "Took my relapse public, more to come."”

There is not going to be any more to come if this woman does not get herself into treatment immediately. That is it, that is it. For our celebrity wrap up, we will be back. It's a trouble maker feedback and art in a minute.

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to add Leone to your healthy diet and exercise plan as soon as possible. Visit takeline.com and enter code moreene for your discount that's promo code moreene at takeline.com. Now, trouble makers continue to send in actual evidence

that there is, in fact, a poor-to-party company called Markles.

I love you guys, I've never loved you more.

You know how much I love you but I have never loved you more because we know the Sussex Squad or the Sussex's own people are in the comments at the nerve trying to convince us that this thing does not exist. It does.

There is a shit dispensing company known as Markles as there ever been a more on-brand name for a company. Marine, the 905 area code is in Canada, Ontario, the Greater Toronto area, my Google picked this up for me. It is the Markle or the Party Company.

Hey, Marine, I was inspired by the trouble makers idea of Meghan Markle launching her own or the Party rental business. I agree, there is a poor-to-party at the end of Meghan's rainbow just filled

with liquid gold, God, God, this is so funny. This is from Mike from PA, Mike from Pennsylvania. By adding her soothing handcrafted of rumatherapy sachets, Markle industries can bring a touch of luxury and calm

to those moments when we're forced to lower our living standards and step into one of those germ coffins. Interestingly, we have a local entrepreneur, also by the name Markle, who has made millions selling catheters, rectal thermometers, and other routine

medical devices, and other sign perhaps. I'll take it. Dear Marine, trouble maker Lauren here again from New York in the S U can use my name. I was so glad to hear Billy Bush's reporting

on Al, Roker's cramudgently behavior behind the scenes

His foe Joville on camera persona has always annoyed the shit

out of me, and I'm going to tell you in all the trouble makers why.

“Many years ago, I was on a daytime television show.”

So I know what it's like to walk around and be approached by strangers because you are in their living rooms almost every day. Well, I ran into Al Roker on the far west side of Manhattan one sunny spring afternoon,

and thought I would just say a simple hello, Mr. Roker. Nice to see you. I didn't run up to him in gravel. I was just passing him on the street from the opposite direction.

He was so rude. And responded with his trademark sneer by saying, "Don't talk to me!" (laughing) Just my experience, but I'm sure I am not alone

to quote Al the phony pal.

Here's what's happening in your neck of the woods.

And indeed, worrying storm, my great dean, won't let me watch the nerve. I have the same study, we'll do this to be too. Teddy will climb up on me and get in my face and block my field of vision

when he needs extra hugs, which is often. He's a needy little dude, but we love him because of it. Hi, Marine. Been a trouble maker for almost a year now. We love it.

I never miss an episode. My birthday is well tomorrow.

“Wait, no, it's the, I think you sent us on the 16th.”

So it's a couple of days late, but Hilda, you are asking for a birthday shout out in one of the nerves episodes.

And you got it, Sister, happy birthday, keep your feedback.

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After the last full nerve of the week, but before the mini nerve drops on YouTube on Saturday mornings at 10am Eastern Up Next, psychotherapist and friend of the nerve, Meg Josephson, will be here to answer your father's day

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how you heard about them, please. Support the nerve, tell them you're a trouble maker, and that we sent you. Previously on The Nerve, we discussed how to navigate various difficult dynamics with perhaps

difficult mothers right before Mother's Day. We had Meg Josephson, the psychotherapist and author of The New York Times Best Seller, are you mad at me? Help navigate specific, trouble maker questions.

And now with Father's Day coming up, we're doing the same. We asked you guys to submit any questions you have about difficult dynamics with fathers, and we've got a pile here and Meg is back,

and she is ready to help guide us all. Meg, welcome back to The Nerve. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. We appreciate it because no one else is having these discussions.

You see all of the advertising for Father's Day,

And for a lot of people, it's a painful time. So we are going to get into it. This is from a trouble maker who is writing about getting out of a very difficult marriage. She was married to her ex-husband

for, as she puts it, almost 22 long and painful years. I had hoped I got out before it impacted our children. My son is 16, my daughter is 25. Neither of them speak to their father. His drinking is out of control.

He continues to blame me for their relationship being broken with him.

This is the first father's day in which

neither of her children want anything to do with their dad. It breaks my heart. Do I let them continue? Now this is an interesting question, and I personally would challenge this trouble maker

in a kind way on her language here, because I don't necessarily think this is the right interpretation. She sees it as a binary make. Does she let them continue to hate their dad? Or does she try to push for a reconciliation?

“Do you see those two things as the only choices here?”

Do you see them as the only interpretations of the situation here? What do you think? Yeah, I agree with you in that I think the language matters.

And also what's even in your control in this situation,

even if you wanted to reconcile the relationship. Could you probably not? It's probably not in your control to manage where your children are at and processing that really difficult probably painful relationship

with their father. So I think the approach is rather, what do my kids need for me right now? How can I support them? While they're coming to terms with a lot of probably

a lot of grief and pain and anger and anger and anger. And it's okay, she says she says he's still drinking. He says it sounds like he's an active alcoholic. What I would really suggest, I think each of them need individual therapy

if that's available to them if they can afford it.

Because this trouble maker, who I believe

“is very well-intentioned, I think you have to let,”

I think what you're saying is right, you have to let them feel what they're feeling before they can even begin to think about a relationship with him. Absolutely, as someone who grew up with father who struggled with addiction, it's pain needs to be processed

and felt that anger, that grief, it needs to be there. And so I think just being a steady presence in your children's processing is the best thing you can do and props to you for being a steady figure in their life. You know, while they are processing this relationship

that isn't so steady. So I think that's the best thing you can do. I agree with you, Megan, and like you, I had a father who struggled with addiction. And it's not a linear thing.

And it's not a thing where you get to a certain piece within yourself, and that guides the relationship. So much of it is often going to feel chaotic, based on wherever that parent may be in their addiction and sometimes distance can be the healthiest thing.

Again, it doesn't have to be a permanent distance, but it can be on an as needed basis. Yeah, it can just be what this season is needing for those children. And what I also hear from this troublemaker

is maybe some resistance or guilt or shame

“that that's what the children are feeling.”

And so maybe a little bit of acceptance work of, this is really hard for me that my children have. This relationship with their father. And what does that bring up for you? And that's okay.

It's probably hard to see this because you wish it were different. And of course, but if this is what it is right now, what do your kids need to be okay, what do you need to be okay, and how can you support each other through it?

And I think so much of the messaging around holidays, such as this Mother's Day, Father's Day, is that if you as a child aren't acknowledging it, you are a bad child. And I think that is the absolutely wrong messaging.

If these children, one who is an adult at 25, one who is 16, say that the way that they need to deal with it is to not acknowledge their father on Father's Day, that is absolutely okay. - Yeah, yeah.

- And to your point, it doesn't mean that that's forever. It's just what they think they're going through right now in their healing and processing. So I'm with you. - Yeah.

- Next question, this is a great one.

Now, born, this troublemaker is a man.

“I'll call you troublemaker, are born in 59”

to silent, generation, parents. In 1979, 15 years later, mom divorced dad. She wanted to have more fun, dad at the same time became a more popular man in his mid-40s. Something mom didn't see coming.

That anger consumed her, this troublemaker writes, for the rest of her life.

He says he was always mellow about their split,

rooted for each parent. The father pretty much, oh, says 92, found an age-appropriate woman. They have been consumed with each other. Over the years, this troublemaker writes,

these, the father and his new girlfriend slash wife over the years, it has gotten progressively more pronounced and disappointing. The distance between me and my father over me being ghosted.

This is a very common issue, and I love talking about this. Okay, this troublemaker believes, yes, no, no, that the father has now ghosted his son because it's a reminder of his past life back when he was married to the first wife.

I deal with the ghosting. It has been 15 years since I last saw my father. And the irony is not lost on me as he is still a most mobile fellow. They travel a lot.

Also, big picture, I do contend that people who came of age in those 1950s, happy days were just very silent about their emotional issues and feelings now. Yeah. This is a very common one, Meg, where a man who has had

a first marriage and children with that first wife

moves on to another woman has another family with that woman

“and the children become, this is a narcissist, I believe,”

far too painful or a reminder. I think that, what advice would you, I have so many thoughts, but what advice would you have for this troublemaker who is still in pain about his father basically ghosting him? Oh, it's so hard and so painful and it's so hard

because even if you were to say the perfect words and justify your case perfectly to your father, it wouldn't necessarily change the situation because he's stuck in his protective mechanism of not wanting to think about this period of his life.

So more than anything, I want to validate the pain of that emotional abandonment and neglect. And that's really what it is.

Let's just start there and then we can pivot

to more tangible things. So I just want to acknowledge that deep abandonment wounds that's there, that has nothing to do with you. Let's be really clear. - It doesn't, I know, I know people

who have dealt with this very thing. And even though you can logically know that this doesn't have anything to do with you, it is nonetheless a rejection and there is no way not to feel it personally.

- Oh, I don't know if it's a deeper cut than a parent deciding that you have now become an inconvenience to what they see as the story of their life. - Yeah, we can't think our way out of an abandonment wound. Abandonment wounds are the deepest, most raw painful.

And so you're totally correct. There's the disconnect. It's like, well, I know I didn't do anything wrong to earn this, but it still feels so painful. And those two things can be true at the same time.

And so I think it's feeling that pain and abandonment while also reminding yourself when you feel, did I do something wrong? Am I bad? What happened here?

This has everything to do with his learn coping mechanisms, which is shove it down, avoid, be quiet.

“And that's how he's coping with this situation as well,”

which is unfair and sucks and really hurts. - Or the father and or the father may just be a malignant narcissist, may just be incredibly selfish. You're absolutely right.

And I also think what this troublemaker seem to go to great pains to be like, "Hey, I'm very easy going." I just try to go with the blow. I'm trying to deal with this.

And I think this troublemaker may not be in touch with the rage and the anger that that can produce. And like, that's a healthy thing too. Those are scary emotions. I get it, but they can also be very healthy

to let run through your nervous system

you really have kind of made your emotional intellectual piece

with like, you know what? I got dealt a really shitty parent. - Yeah. - I had a good one. I had a bad one.

And you know, that's not on me. That's not on me. Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that in. I noted that in my head while you're reading it of there's this easy-going nature

that you probably, this troublemaker probably learned to adapt, to keep the piece at home. I have an archetype in my book called The Peacekeeper where we learn to promote harmony at home and make our parents happy by being super chill

and easy and good. And oh yeah, that's totally fine.

And my mom's anger doesn't bother me, but that, you know,

it's okay if it does. And it's okay if you feel angry now and it's okay if you're not even in tune with that anger. It can feel like grief. It can feel like pain, but it's okay if you are feeling that

and it's important to feel it. - I'm so glad you brought up the archetype in your book which is so good and I cannot recommend it highly enough

“because I think so many of us grew up in homes”

where as a child, the worst possible thing you could think is one of them is mad at me. One of the parents is mad at me. Basically because you're taking on, you've become perentified and you are trying

to sort of keep the piece and keep everything even killed and manage anger and manage a ton of stuff. It's great stuff in your book. Okay, I'm a native New Yorker. This is troublemaker P.

This is a great one. I am from a blue collar family in New York City. My parents divorced when I was eight, due to my father's falandering. Still remembers this, one father's day.

My brothers and I decided to get dad one big present. Since, Meg, speaking to you,

it was always nerve-wracking to see him open up his presence.

- Okay, walk in on the chair. - I saw children giving their father

“a presence for father's day and their nervous”

that he's not going to like it, which means something bad is going to happen. And it did. He actually yelled at us saying he wanted separate presence. Yes, he was a Gavone.

Gavone, Marlene, it tells me, it's a Gavone. I'm Irish, not Italian. Now, he wanted to be a doctor since he was a child. He went to a good Catholic schools in the New York City area

when I was in high school, dear old dad went to prison or a white collar crime. I was the starting goalie on my high school team and working while a junior in high school, the toughest year.

Since my father had been paying my tuition, my mother gave me two choices. Pay your own tuition or go to public school. I paid my own tuition, remained the starting goalie,

realized all of his goals enrolled in the United States Navy, which paid for his tuition to med school, became an intern at President's hospital in Bethesda, Maryland and also served as the senior medical officer in charge of health. Of 600 al Qaeda, detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,

this is an impressive and trouble maker. My father is 90 this year and has no relationship with any of his kids. Many men love the film field of dreams because it reminds them of their relationship

with their fathers. Sadly, this film has no impact on me and I trouble maker and Meg feel that this, you brought up field of dreams and it having no impact on you

“because I think this trouble maker may feel”

father's day has no impact on him, but it seems it actually does sort of bring up a lot of complicated emotions. And again, underneath that letter, that beautifully written letter is rage, I think.

- Yeah, and oh, I'm just so impacted by that story of how quickly this person had to grow up, how responsible this person had to be from such a young age, whether that looked like managing dad's moods

with the perfect present or needing to work. - Wow, in high school. - In high school, starting goalie on his hockey team. - Yeah, university and just had so much on your plate and so much to think about.

And I think to a child and to a teenager, it feels just normal. Well, that's what I had to do. That's just what life was, but perhaps now as an adult, you can see, huh, I really took on a lot of emotional labor,

real like actual labor in order to make this work

And there's a lot there, there's a lot there.

I would agree with you and that perhaps even by writing in to the nerve, there is some impact. There is some lingering emotion beneath the surface that it's just worth acknowledging, you know? - You know what we don't talk about enough mega in the culture.

“I think is grieving and mourning those parents”

who are still alive. - Yes. - You know, we think of grieving and mourning our parents only upon their death. There are other kinds of deaths in the parent child

relationship. And one of those is when the child at whatever age they come to it realizes my parent was pretty awful. - Yeah, I know we talked about this. - We did.

- That's right. - Yeah. - And it applies to the paternal wound as well. Of, oh, I'm yearning for a relationship with my dad or an apology for my dad.

And acknowledgement for my dad

that I'm never going to get.

And that is so painful when that person, when that father is still on earth, breathing alive, well, capable of picking up the phone and that relationship isn't there. That is such a specific, under discussed type of grief

that is very painful and very important to talk about. So. - And, you know, another dimension to trouble maker,

“P's email, I think, is that when you look at the man”

he became without a true father figure to guide him into becoming a man, right? - Yes. - Worked himself, put himself through a good Catholic school, paid his own tuition, remains starting goally.

And then went and grabbed you enrolled in the military, enlisted, rather, in the military,

became a not only a physician,

but he oversaw the treatment of 600 detainees at Guantanamo. And has an emotional, not just resilience, but a facility and an ease with his own emotional state to talk about this, right? He made himself this man.

He made, in spite of that father, and I think that trouble maker needs to give himself a ton of credit for that. - Absolutely. And I hope that you feel you are doing enough

and have done enough, because I know with often, when we cope by kind of being the golden child and being the poor achievers, or achieving nothing can feel like enough, or inner critic can be really challenging.

I hope you feel very proud of all you've accomplished for yourself, not just on your resume, but also internally as well, the things people don't see. - Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay, our final email.

I wish to express my deepest emotions for my granddaughter's. My son, their father died four years ago on June 11th. We are so sorry, trouble maker S. The children were 10 and 13 at the time. Oh, I love this email, because I don't think this ship

belongs in school. I do not think Mother's Day, Father's Day stuff belongs in school. There are too many children who don't have parents, or who don't, who don't have their mothers,

or their fathers, or things are very difficult at home. I don't like it. This trouble maker says all of the print media, commercials, school projects, donuts with dads, and Father's Day celebrations

are a painful reminder of what they are missing, and we'll have to deal with for a very long time. I do my best, excuse me, to downplay the day, and reminding them, while reminding them of how much their father loved them.

I feel this ever growing population of children is forgotten, more at least, underthought of during this day, what suggestions could Meg give to help family members navigate this hurt and pain?

This is such a great question. I mean, Meg, it goes beyond trying to distract yourself, right? I mean, what do you recommend for these children? And they're very thoughtful, emotionally intelligent, grandmother.

- Absolutely, I can really feel how loving and thoughtful she is, and I'm so sorry for your loss. And I want to say, you know, this holiday being painful for you and for your family members, doesn't mean you are failing.

It means you are feeling and seeing what is, which is that there's grief and there's pain.

“And I don't think you need to put any pressure on yourself”

to downplay it or to distract them, or I think it's actually the power, what you're doing right here, which is acknowledging it, acknowledging, gosh, how hard is it to see all this propaganda of father's day,

how challenging for that to bring up these emotions, I think the power of acknowledgement can be the biggest healer of them all. But it being an uncomfortable day doesn't mean you need to do something differently.

I think it just means it's bringing up what was already there in the first place. - I like what you just said about not feeling that the owners should be upon you to necessarily try to distract them from that,

because I think even the actively trying to distract them might only compound with their already feeling as a loss and they actually could take that and think potentially that you're trying to distract them also because you two are in pain, right?

That was your son, of course you're in pain, of course you're mourning.

“Perhaps the best thing to do is just to follow the lead”

of the children and see how they like maybe they hold up in their rooms for the bulk of the day. Maybe that's okay. - Yeah, absolutely. And that acknowledgement and letting them lead can be,

I'm really thinking of him today, how are you all feeling? Like it can be as simple and as loving as that. And yeah, letting it touch. - Shall I touch? Just knowing that you're acknowledging the holiday

which you're already doing by emailing in this question, it is painful, it is painful. And to that thing with these tender ages 10 and 13, you know, I have a God child who just suffered a loss and my God child made a point of talking to me

about the people in this child's life who have acknowledged that loss, that death and those who are ignoring it. And when I tell you, Meg, that the people who are ignoring it loom larger than the people who are acknowledging it.

“And I think you're so right, the good way is always,”

it can be the lightest touch, it can be a text. I am thinking of you today, I am sending you hugs, it can just be that and that goes so far. And it lets the person who is mourning determine how far they want to open that conversation up.

- Absolutely, I think it's so powerful, it's so healing

and often that any resentment that we can trigger resentment when people don't acknowledge. And also, we're not putting work on the grieving person, we're not saying exactly. - Exactly, what do you need, what are you feeling?

It's just, I'm here and I'm, you're on my mind, that simple, simple statement really goes a long way. - Meg, we love you on the nerve. I love you all, thank you for having me. - Thank you for coming on, you give such good advice,

“you are such an old soul and you are just extremely kind.”

I encourage everyone who has not availed themselves of Meg's brilliant book, are you mad at me?

It's incredible, buy it and we will see you soon,

we will see you soon. - Thank you so much, Meg. - I will be here when you need me. - Oh my God, the perfect therapist, the perfect therapist, thanks, Meg.

- Thank you, I'll talk to you soon, bye. - Talk to you soon. - That does it, that does it for our Friday edition of the nerve, come back and see us tomorrow. We're a great, many nerve, one of your favorites,

back sooner than we ever hoped. That will drop on YouTube at 10am Eastern on Saturday morning. If you haven't already, what are you doing? Go check out our sub-stack. It's over at the nerveshow.com.

That's where you sign up for it. It is our weekly email. It is so much fun, there's behind the scenes stuff, there's extra stuff, my recommendations, it's great, Teddy's got to call 'em, it's so fun.

Plus, nerve, merge, grab something for yourself, or a fellow troublemaker at shopthener.com. We will see you tomorrow for the mini. And then again next week, right here at the nerve,

where you will never guess what we're about to say next.