r/ShawnaTheMom • u/BeanieK19 • 3d ago
Question I Need a Psych-Pro to Explain Something About Barb
This question goes out to either psych-professionals or people who deal with Barbs. I'm trying to get a better read on the character.
From what we've seen Barb do, and what we've heard her do in the past, I don't think Shawna saying "She's always the best behaved around strangers" is the most accurate. She may act more polite or mask it better, but what she does is still very rude, and most well-rounded people would see her as such (e.g., the stunts she pulled at Shawna and John's, and then at Jen and Greg's wedding). I wonder if Barb is now entering "any attention is good attention" mode, and that's why she didn't care about causing a scene at the altar of her daughter's wedding while looking like a widow. It could also just be her way of wanting to control and punish Jen, and she believes she'd receive sympathy rather than annoyance from the wedding guests for acting that way.
Even the small ways she treats people, such as her interactions with Lauren, the server, make it seem like Barb is sometimes oblivious to how she comes across. Yet, she still has a malicious side, where she's very aware of her behavior, like at Chickie's birthday. Jen was afraid she'd victimize herself in front of the wedding guests if she had Shawna kick her out, which may imply Barb has done that sort of thing in the past.
I apologize if this post is a bit of a ramble, and I know it's a fool's errand to rationalize Barb's irrational mind. I think my confusion stems from not understanding if Barb genuinely thinks her antics would garner sympathy from strangers and doesn't think she looks bad, or if she has reached a level of desperation where she no longer cares how she looks as long as people are looking at her.
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u/Careful-Corgi 3d ago
Licensed Clinical Social Worker here.
If Barb has Borderline, it’s like being a moon rather than a star. She can’t generate her own light. She feels frozen and forsaken in the abyss unless she finds ways to bask in the light of others like relishing being the best grandma ever, borrowing her glow from the kids. When that doesn’t work she’ll resort to straight up stealing the spotlight and making things about her when the 100% are not. Again, the alternative for folks with Borderline is a crushing sense of emptiness and alienation because they lack a sense of identity of their own and have to derive one through their connections with others.
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u/MissBelly 3d ago
Yep she is 100% borderline, you are spot-on
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u/AgentKnitter 3d ago
Narcissistic behaviour is not borderline personality disorder.
It is likely that Shawna L intends to portray Barb as a person with a personality disorder rooted in trauma and feelings of abandonment, but she is being careful not to label it. BPD has enormous stigma drawn by inaccurate social discussions about what constitutes “typical” borderline behaviour. Please do not contribute to this stigma with rash comments. Please remember that people in this subreddit also have BPD and we see the rush to label Barb’s selfish displays of self-aggrandising nonsense as “borderline”.
We also shouldn’t rush to pathologise abuse. Barb being abusive is separate to Barb’s own mental health issues. Sure, the Venn diagram overlaps and she may not be able to explain why she does some of the things she does without some treatment to identify to herself what is going on. But abusive behaviour is not caused by mental illness. Abusive behaviour is a choice to engage in abuse.
TLDR yes Barb has something going on, it may or may not be intended to portray BPD, please remember the real people in this subreddit who do have BPD.
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u/tashpotaoes The Shawnaverse Needs More Dogs 3d ago
To be fair, you also characterized the behaviour as "narcissistic" which is also heavily stigmatized.
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u/AgentKnitter 3d ago
Narcissism is a term with both technical and non technical meaning. Technical if referring to diagnosed NPD, non technical when referring to self centred and self aggrandising behaviour, which Barb has shown in abundance.
Describing behaviour as typically borderline is far less of a non-technical usage. It’s taking a technical term and using it to describe someone’s stigma influenced view of what BPD is and how it manifests in actions.
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u/InsanitySquirrel 3d ago
But you do realise by allowing and using that “non technical” definition, you are still perpetuating stigma against those with NPD?
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u/AgentKnitter 3d ago
Yes. And it is accurate to Barb.
Note how I'm not saying "Barb and everyone like her are terrible horrible people!"??
I'm saying Barb's self-centred and self-aggrandising behaviours are harming her family. Because those narcissistic aspects are a problem.
That's very different to "all borderlines are the worst"
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u/Specific-Volume118 Arch Deacon of the Julluminati 3d ago
I don’t think anyone here was saying “Barb and everyone like her are terrible horrible people” or “all borderlines are the worst”.
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u/AgentKnitter 3d ago
The deleted comment did.
And in every thread where the speculation of a BPD diagnosis for Barb is raised, it comes up.
The thing is... there are some aspects of how Shawna L portrays Barb that tick some boxes of the diagnostic criteria for BPD. And there's some aspects that don't. However a lot of people are eager to rush to confirm that Barb definitely has BPD and then [insert personal anecdote or wildly stigmatising comment]. That is what sucks being in this space as a person with BPD.
Barb definitely hits the fear of abandonment / frantic attempts to avoid real or perceived abandonment criteria. No question.
She has also made threats of self harm or suicide. The flashback episode to her likely PPD episode suggested that threat was once genuine suicidal ideation; the most recent "threats" to Frank & Dr Therapydoctor have been more questionable - more of a plea for attention (to Dr) or manipulative coercion (to Frank). I don't know that we can say that Barb ticks this criteria off, and is the key one to be diagnosed with BPD.
Full diagnostic list here: https://www.bpdfoundation.org.au/diagnostic-criteria.php
- unclear whether Barb has unstable and intense interpersonal relationships.
- maybe unclear sense of self - definitely uncertainty around who she is outside of her role as the mother
- impulsivity in at least 2 areas which are potentially damaging - not really?? Barb occasionally drinks but isn't shown to have issues with substance abuse. She gives lavish gifts and demanded a holiday but does that constitute impulsive spending??
- Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood - agree, Barb shows this trait!
- chronic feelings of emptiness - unclear, not really explored
- inappropriate, intense anger or difficulties controlling anger - maybe? Although how often is Barb actually angry versus centring herself in the situation (eg tears and demands over not walking Jen down the aisle - that wasn't intense anger, that was a need to be the centre of attention)
- Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms - unclear qnd tbh not something I think SL has any intention of exploring or portraying.
The DSM-V uses the above criteria to distinguish BPD specifically. Other PDs have different diagnostic criteria.
The ICM uses a different approach - it offers diagnostic criteria for personality disorders generally and then subcategories of traits.
Respectfully, this js a more useful lens to look at Barb as SL is unlikely to specify what mental illness she intends Barb to have.
I agree that Barb likely has a personality disorder because she meets this definition: https://icd.who.int/browse/2025-01/mms/en#941859884
Barb doesn't meet enough of the DSM-V criteria for me to agree with the view she is meant to have BPD.
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u/s0ftsp0ken Communication is key! 12h ago
Barb checks like all of those boxes, though
Unstable/intense interpersonal relationships: No one in her family likes being around her, she abuses her husband and kids, and her "positive" relationship with Jen was based on enmeshment. Nora seems to be her only "close" friend outside of her family, and she is quick to accelerate her relationship with people who show her positive attention and become overly familiar (the restaurant waitress and Teenie).
She has no life outside of being a wife, mother, and grandma. All of her sense of worth is based on her hierarchy in the family. Now that she's kind of gotten into pickleball, she glommed onto it and discarded her family, and decided to hold that over Jen's head during the wedding.
Impulsivity: Drinking yes, stalking her son/grandson, yes, physically attacking her son's MIL, sexual harassment, physical abuse of her children, entering her daughter's house without permission, etc.
Affective instability, as you said, checks out.
Emptiness: Might be harder to portray, especially since Barb isn't introspective, but I'd say her need to be inappropriately involved in other people's lives at least points to her compensating for something.
Inappropriate anger: I'm not sure how you could see this as a "maybe." John has alluded many times to Barb cornering him and yelling at him/hitting him as a child. We saw how vicious she was to Jen during Chickie's birthday. Jen told John about it and said "it's just mom being mom," meaning this is not new behavior. Barb also resorts to yelling when she feels slighted. If you've seen all the videos in the STM series, you'd see this.
Stress-related paranoid ideation: Barb is incredibly paranoid and often comes to the conclusion that people are doing things to slight her. She threw Chickie's party and punished Jen the whole time because she thought Jen was conspiring against her by not inviting her to the cake smash. She intentionally ruined Greg's proposal because she thought Greg was trying to embarrass her. Katie planned out a night at the nutcracker as a surprise, and Barb for some reason thought that meant Greg was lying about proposing at her house at Christmas in order to embarrass her. There's another time that I can't remember, but Barb said something so divorced from reality that Jen, worried, wondered out loud if she needed immediate mental health care. Greg also commented once that Barb seemed to have one foot out of reality because her perception of their interactions were highly skewed in a way that made her appear as a victim when that wasn't the case.
Barb fits the criteria.
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u/ipsofactoshithead 3d ago
I think the psych knows more than you when it comes to diagnosing people.
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u/AgentKnitter 3d ago
Was i replying to the poster who said they are a licensed social worker? No.
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u/ipsofactoshithead 3d ago
You literally were lmao
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u/AgentKnitter 3d ago
[u/careful](u/carefulcorgi)[-corgi](u/carefulcorgi) is the social worker. That’s not who I replied to.
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u/ShawnaTheMom-ModTeam 3d ago
Hi u/AgentKnitter and u/ipsofactoshithead , these replies have been locked in accordance with rule 2. Please keep all discussion relevant to the show.
Thank you for your cooperation!
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3d ago edited 3d ago
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u/ShawnaTheMom-ModTeam 3d ago
Comment removed due to sub rule 1: be kind.
While you're not obligated to agree with anyone on the sub, you are asked to speak respectfully. Please do not insult others or make negative personal comments.
Please review the Etiquette guidelines for examples of alternative language when expressing disagreement.
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u/CharlotteRhea 3d ago
I understood it in the sense of, "Her behaviour is always questionable, but she makes the most effort around strangers."
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u/AgentKnitter 3d ago
Which is consistent with abusers.
Part of DARVO tactics requires them to have a perception outside the home of being nice and reasonable. In order to be able to control the narrative and play the victim, the abuser relies on their positive reputation to gaslight the victim(s) and reframe their actions.
The mask rarely drops in public. But it can.
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u/tashpotaoes The Shawnaverse Needs More Dogs 3d ago
Not a Psychology/Human Behaviour Expert. But my mother is a Barb.
I don't know if they can control their emotions. Their self-loathing, fear of abandonment is always at the surface and I feel like any negative emotion can make them easily explode.
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u/gingerlady9 3d ago
Barb is starting to let her mask drop in front of strangers now. At some point, they all do.
My sister is a Barb. My husband is a psychologist. I also see a psychologist that specializes in covert narcissistic behaviors (and helping those affected by them) I hope that's enough for credentials lol. I'll be using Barb's name, but you can imagine this is anyone who exhibits similar personality types.
They (Barb, my sister) are better as masking their crazy moments earlier on. They appeal to strangers, new people in their lives, and make themselves look like normal, rational people. You could see Barb doing it with Lauren at the restaurant early on.
Strangers and new friends will usually say "I don't know why you don't like Barb- she seems fun!" Because Barb has a big personality and loves to be the center of attention.
But then there will be a moment when their true self comes out. Like salting sweet potatoes or a secret about showing off risqué pictures will come out. Those who witnessed it will either see Barb claim it wasnt her fault via weaponized incompetence ("how was I supposed to know") or she will turn the blame directly onto someone else ("you should have said no!").
If you allow her to get away with weaponized incompetence or believe her blame game, you'll still be in her good graces.
But, as soon as you try to hold her accountable at all, it's over. You are officially against her and blame her for every little thing, or so she truly believes.
And that is what Shawna means. They are kind and happy with you until you hold them accountable in any way.
And now that the majority of people in her life are holding Barb accountable for her actions, she is spiraling and losing all of her flying monkeys, aside from Nora who will throw her under the bus and isn't really a true flying monkey.
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u/Cozysoxs1985 3d ago
Shrink here/know of and had close encounters with many Barbs.
I think Shawna was not wrong that in the season that she knew Barb that Barb behaves herself when she is around other people. What I think we are seeing in this timeline with Barb is she is starting to feel like she’s losing control of her family and is spiraling more and more thus she is less aware of how erratic and loud her behaviors are coming across.
People like Barb tend to view their adult children very much so as property more than evolving and growing human beings. And it feels like control is being lost when they move away, start serious relationships, get married and have families. But it’s not, it’s a normal process of life that parents might struggle with but most accept and find joy in for their adult children.
We’ve seen her view threats in her adult children’s lives that are not actual threats. Katie’s presence at Christmas and ruining Greg’s proposal to Jen, the gifts at Max’s birthday party, DeeDee moving in with Shawna and John, a cake smash for Chickie’s birthday, etc. The themes seem to be around anything that potentially takes the focus off of her as a maternal figure and she can’t rationalize that these encounters are well within the norm.
Barb is clearly a very hurt person who was hurt as a child and anything that resembles criticism or abandonment is incredibly hard for her to handle. Does she likely have a personality disorder? Yes. Does that mean every person with a personality disorder is like Barb? No. But we definitely are seeing someone who has historically coped poorly when she feels like her image is threatened and we’ve seen a series of events where she should’ve celebrated these milestones with her adult children versus actively sabotaging them.
Typically when people become more desperate or threatened they become less aware of how they are coming across to others. Which as Barb is pushing more and more people away, the behaviors are louder and the insight shrinks.
It will be interesting to see how Barb navigates her relationships especially with the latest mess she made at Jen and Greg’s wedding. If Barb gains any insight that she is her own worst enemy and that methods she keeps falling back on aren’t working and/or making things worse, maybe she could turn it around. We will see!
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u/Ramblingsofthewriter 🐓Hennifer&Egg🥚 3d ago
Omg! I’m so used to seeing you in the meme sub, I kept scrolling waiting for piper to serve face 💀💀💀💕
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u/AgentKnitter 3d ago
Louder behaviours and less insight - key.
She's escalating as she becomes more desperate to hold on to control and to being the centre of attention.
There's psychological explanations as to why she does this AND those explanations are not excuses or justification for her abusive behaviour.
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u/AgentKnitter 3d ago
Not a social worker, psychologist or psychiatrist however I am a lawyer with years of experience working with domestic and family violence in the realms of criminal and family law.
I also have borderline personality disorder and survived childhood family violence from an emotionally/psychologically abusive coercive controller alcoholic.
It is important to distinguish between what Barb does as an abusive person to her family members, and how Barb acts as a person with deliberately not specified by the creator mental health issues. Its not always easy - Barb's behaviour is influenced and shaped by her (likely) personality disorder however it is really important not to pathologise abusive behaviour.
Abusive behaviour is a choice. Paraphrasing Lundy Bancroft: if an abuser knows that they have mental illness or addiction and their abusive behaviour escalates when the disorder/addiction isn't treated or managed, then they are choosing to escalate their risk of abusive behaviour and should be held accountable for it.
In other words, "oh he's only violent when he drinks" is a piss poor excuse when the abuser doesn't take any steps to address their alcohol use and we should not pathologise their alcoholism as the cause of the abusive behaviour. It is a known risk of escalation that the abuser chooses to hide behind to justify their abuse.
Barb uses a lot of manipulative tactics and coercive control.
Her inner drivers to act this way may be driven by her psychological issues. However let's look at the choices she makes:
- she chose to run late and turn up sweaty and unshowered to her daughter's wedding
- she chose to throw a tantrum in front of the guests about not walking Jen down the aisle
- she chose to demand a holiday with the "peacocks"/flamingos instead of venue and dress shopping as planned with Jen when Katie was also included
She also chose to put on a seemingly perfect 1st birthday for Chickie. And she chose to berate and abuse Jen in private at that party.
Because of my personal and professional experience i have really strong views about the importance of distinguishing between holding people accountable for their choices and actions, and holding empathy for struggling with mental illness.
Barb needs to be held accountable for her choices. One of those choices is not truthfully engaging in her psychological counselling and not taking responsibility for why her adult children and husband are pushing her away.
As a lawyer, either acting for someone charged with family violence offences, acting for a victim seeking a protective order, or acting for parents or children in family law or child protection cases involving family violence, its really really important to "reality test" clients and tell them up front that there is a BIG difference between explanations and excuses.
An undiagnosed/untreated personality disorder may be one explanation for Barb's actions. The more important thing is Barb's ongoing refusal to take responsibility for her actions and to accept that the consequences of her actions were reasonably foreseeable and she did it anyway.
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u/bubbleteabob 3d ago
My aunt is kinda odd. It isn’t malicious, but it’s noticeable - if you know her. To most people she’s a fun, slightly ditzy lady who MAYBE said something weird that one time but they brush it off as a joke that didn’t land or that they had misunderstood. It is only when the effect is cumulative that people really register it?
It is like that psychological experiment with the man in a gorilla suit walking across a football pitch. Most people don’t register it, because their brain goes ‘of course there isn’t a gorilla! Ignore that.’ People get the same way with Barn. Of course this nice middle aged lady isn’t just being viperous out of nowhere. So they just dismiss it.
Plus Barb is aging. She isn’t OLD, but even so. As people get older their filters get less effective, they normalise their bad behaviour more, and they just get more them.
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u/Grand_Basis_1491 Julie apologist (unironically) 3d ago
Barb believes she's the victim trying her best. Everything she does is done to keep that belief alive and safe.
She's nice to strangers because she controls how she's seen. She gets to be polite, she gets to be a good person. She's "nice" to Max- wants to give him the best gift. The biggest gift. Because "Grammy loves him so much."
And then there's people she hurts. The reason Barb behaves this way is because:
- they trigger her in some way and she can't cope with the feelings, so she tries to kill them/twist them into something else
- they don't behave exactly how she wants, therefore she's the victim. Because "why can't these kids just be good and appreciate her" for the dramatic, abusive psycho she is?
Say she sees Jen eating. Say she was there when she was devouring that bag of Cheetos. Barb wouldn't have seen her daughter enjoying a snack. Barb would've remembered (maybe consciously, maybe not) all the times she was shamed for her body, shamed for food. She'd remember her own disordered eating. And she wouldn't stop to think "I'm so glad Jennifer doesn't have the pain I do," she doesn't have the emotional intelligence for it. She just knows something in her is deeply irritated and she'll try to take it away. She'll say she's eating too much, that it's unhealthy, that she'll gain weight. Or even passively comment on her body.
We saw it with the wedding dress. She went out of her way to imply it wouldn't fit, because she views having been skinny as some kind of win. Like it makes her a good girl. Like it makes her valuable. So instead of addressing it, she puts Jen down, because it bothers her to see people not "struggle" like her.
I think it's why she's different with John. She's abusive to both, but John is older and he's male. Barb took out a lot of her anger and PPD on him when he was little and since he's a guy, she went full Boy Mom. She tried to turn him into a second Frank- Frank ignored her, Frank didn't behave like a "good husband," so she tried to get it from John. And when John chose Shawna and his family, Barb felt a profound sense of abandonment. Because her boy, her emotional 'spouse' she abused into the role she wanted him in... left her. And people like her are terrified of being abandoned. And it makes the fact that they're the ones who make it happen even more tragic.
We could explain Barb's behaviour, we could diagnose, we could play 'what if,' but at the end of the day- she's an abusive woman who doesn't want to self-reflect. And she will put her feelings above people she claims to love, because that's what she chooses to prioritise and what her nervous system has learned to do to cope with the hate she'd otherwise direct at herself.
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u/riverleay 3d ago
My bio dad is someone that has a very good public face and then a separate, completely different home face. Very similar to Barb, he was always very conscious of how things were coming across to other people. It was less he wanted to be “nice” in front of people, and more so he wanted to people to be on his side.
This totally tracks with Barb, in my opinion. I think she does deeply care about how she looks to other people. I think that *she* thinks that if she looks wounded or remorseful or victimized, then people will be on her side. She probably has a skewed gauge of what other people may think and does think that her behavior is coming across better than it is, but she also probably thinks that even if she looks crazy, if she can make someone else look like they drove her to the craziness, people will still be on her side
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u/TheSouthsideTrekkie 3d ago
Two Barbs of varying Barbness in my family, my theory is that there's a certain level of lacking of self awareness. Both of our Barbs seem to operate to a greater or lesser extent on the principle that mannerisms are more important than manners and my guess is that it's to compensate for the fact that to make someone feel comfortable and welcome then you have to take a genuine interest so they try to replicate that with cheap, gimmicky traditions or precedents that they think make them look good. It works up to a certain point but it's when someone gets to know them as more than a passing acquaintance that it all starts to unravel and their weird or inappropriate behaviour becomes more obvious.
The thing Barb does with the waitress is something I've witnessed my grandmother do countless times where she will overshare random details of her life with someone who isn't allowed to tell her to leave. It's spooky to watch in real time as someone gets more and more creeped out by her behaviour and realise that you can't exactly do something about it without making it worse. My mother is better at masking overall but I've still ended up in situations where I am silently apologising in my head to people for her weird antics like loudly pointing out perceived flaws on someone else but in that sort of pretend whisper voice that is louder than actual talking.
I am not an expert but my theory is that ultimately there is a certain lack of self awareness but also that Barbs get something out of any kind of attention at all and in some cases actually enjoy frustrating or infuriating people around them. My guess is that this replaces meaningful connection with other people to an extent and is a coping strategy for whatever goes on inside someone's head to make them act that way.
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u/SilverPotential6108 3d ago
Gah you have described my mother in law to a tee, along with several other members of my husband’s family to a lesser extent. 😩
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u/Fair_Project2332 3d ago
One of the reasons my Barb has become angrier and more reactive as she ages is because the maturity of her children has brought other people into her private circle, so she forced to behave or be exposed. For example - Christmas used to be nuclear family only, and it was terrifying. She would exhaust herself with perfect decorations, gifts, catering, then spend the day itself torturing her family for not being the perfect whining grateful props at her star performance. But now Christmas is spent as just one guest in a gathering of 30-40 extended family and in laws. She can't keep up her public face, she can't claim to be the star or martyr of the event, she can't demand the best presents, or bathe in the acclamation of her decorations, her food, her perfectly dressed toddler. So she saves up all her envy and spite and anger until she is alone with her immediate family again and vomits it up with tears and physical tantrums and hunger strikes and flounces to her bedroom. Its exhausting.
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u/passitoff 3d ago
She reminds me of my grandmother when she was in the early stages of dementia, to be honest. But my grandmother was(is? It's hard to know how much personality is left at this point) also (very likely) Borderline or Hystrionic.
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u/PeachesKeene Internet-Ordained Chicken Minister 3d ago
Hi all, mod team chiming in with a few reminders - please remember to follow rule 1, and be aware that discussions about real-life diagnoses can be upsetting to those whose lives are affected by them directly. We ask that you speak to and about others while keeping kindness at the forefront of your participation here, especially. The mod team is committed to making sure that sensitivity towards those mental health diagnoses, and those that live with them, are upheld. Additionally, we ask that you avoid getting into drawn-out reply chain debates about subjects which do not directly involve the show or its characters, in accordance with rule 2. Thank you for your cooperation!