Quiet Confessions, Episode 7: Why I Can't Watch Friends Anymore

In this week's Quiet Confessions mini-episode, Chelsea opens up about a seemingly small but deeply powerful memory: the night Friends reruns helped them survive the aftermath of a traumatic postpartum experience. What began as a comforting background show morphed into a ritual, and eventually a trigger.

Chelsea explores the complicated way trauma can imprint on the ordinary, from sitcoms to songs, and how those once-safe things can become tangled in survival. It’s raw, reflective, real, and, as always, a reminder that you are not alone if the “little things” hurt like hell.

📌 Key Takeaways

• Trauma often imprints itself on the mundane—TV shows, songs, smells—and can turn comfort into distress.
• Rituals created in survival mode can bring temporary relief but may carry long-term emotional weight.
• It's okay to outgrow things that once made us feel safe, especially when they become emotionally triggering.
• The grief over losing access to a comfort item is real and valid.
• Healing includes honoring past versions of ourselves, even if they feel far away or painful to remember.
• Shared cultural moments, like 9/11 or popular shows, can hold deeply personal meanings.
• There’s no shame in setting boundaries around media that hurts, no matter how harmless it seems to others.

🔊 Soundbites

• “It wasn’t about enjoying the show—it was about surviving the night.”
• “Friends became a ritual. A numbing one. And I still didn’t feel safe.”
• “My nervous system remembers. Not just the show, but the fear, the disconnection, the panic.”
• “I can’t watch Friends anymore—and that’s okay.”
• “When a piece of pop culture becomes part of your trauma story, it’s confusing. And it’s lonely.”
• “If you have a trigger that seems really mundane—it’s not. You’re not alone.”
• “This is your permission to stop watching something, stop listening to something, stop eating something that hurts.”

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

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Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:01)
Hey, happy Thursday. Welcome back to Quiet Confessions. It's just me and you. Honestly, I wasn't sure that I was going to record today. Even though I had the time and the space, I am in kind of a rough spot. So that's me being transparent with you. Also, it is raining and I have a fan going. So if you can hear either of those, I...

greatly apologize. I will do my best to clean that up in post, but this is real. And ⁓ yeah, this is this is just it's just us, right? There's this one memory. I mean, among many, but this one is kind of pervasive right now because of the timing of when I'm recording this. And it just keeps coming back to me. So I thought I'd talk about it a little bit.

So it's a memory yeah, it's not big. It's not dramatic. It's just one of those really quiet, haunting memories that has stuck with me and has changed shape over time since having my youngest who just turned three yesterday as I'm recording this, which is insane. So this was after

my postpartum hemorrhage and emergency D&C ⁓ That date is coming up in just a couple of days because it happened after I was discharged and sent home. yeah. So I'd just gone through something really intense and I'd lost a ton of blood. And at this point I was technically okay. ⁓ I was out of surgery. I was back on the ⁓

postpartum floor, which was weird in and of itself because I didn't have my daughter with me. It was just me and my husband. was technically okay, but I did not feel safe. I did not feel grounded. I could not sleep. By the time I got out of surgery, was, you know, I'm just going to guess because I don't remember. I know it was evening, if not night. And if you go back to

my episodes you can hear about my family meeting me after surgery and all that stuff. But this was, this was in the moments after that. I was in my room. My husband was sleeping beside me and I could not sleep. ⁓ I was completely drained. I was confused. I was scared. ⁓ I could hear other moms and babies and I didn't know what else to do. So

I turned on the TV ⁓ and there it was like an old friend, literally. Friends, Friends reruns. think it was on Nickelodeon. think they do that sometimes like on certain nights and they just played Friends all night. And that had always been one of my favorite shows. I'd watched it hundreds of times. It was easy. It was predictable. It was familiar.

⁓ So I just I turned it on and I filled the silence and I literally stayed up that entire night with Friends playing just episode after episode after episode and I Don't think I was really paying attention I can't even tell you what episodes I watched But it was there and I just needed something to be there ⁓

And I wasn't going to wake up my husband because he needed to sleep. And in my opinion, we literally had just had a baby and my baby wasn't with us. And yeah, and I'd been sick and, ugh, so I wasn't waking him up. And I honestly don't remember nurses coming to check on me that night. They may have, but nope, it was just me and Monica and Joey and Ross and Rachel and Phoebe.

Chandler all night together. the next night they gave me something to put me to sleep and that is another story for another episode but yeah I slept the next night. When jumping ahead, sticking in the vein of Friends here

I, yeah, when I got discharged, I went home and I turned on Friends. literally, like I walked in the door, held my baby and I turned on Friends. And I, yeah, my, I don't know. I do know it was definitely my panic and my OCD kicking in.

⁓ and I had inadvertently created a...

Ritual. I'd created a ritual. Friends had to be on for me to feel safe, but, ⁓ spoiler alert, I still didn't feel safe and I still wasn't sleeping. I was up almost all night, every night and all day. wasn't sleeping during the day. And Friends was just, whatever room I was in for weeks, Friends was on the TV. I watched that in that entire series.

back to back to back to back. I don't remember how many times it must have been three or four times. Not because I was enjoying the show, but because it was, it was just this numbing ritual. And even though I didn't feel fully safe, like having it on made me feel safer than having it off.

So it was just something I could kind of hold on to when everything else was completely out of control.

⁓ eventually I was hospitalized again, this time for psychiatric reasons. And we've touched on this again, and these will get their own episodes, but that was kind of a succession of the next four to five months of me being in and out of psychiatric inpatient, units.

because of all of my mental health struggles. And of course in there, I had to create new rituals ⁓ and I still, I still watched In my first inpatient stay in Vermont, ⁓ I didn't watch Friends because at a certain time the,

The common room was closed. so those late night repeats were not an option for Again, I know I keep saying this. I'll get into that in a different episode because there were different rituals that I created in that, during that stay. When I went to North Carolina I still, would, I found Friends during the day and I would

put it on, I would ask the other patients if that was okay. There was a bigger common room and a smaller common room and in the smaller common room I would have Friends on. ⁓ But then I also started a ritual with Jeopardy, which I continued in my third hospitalization. That common room was open all the time, but

That third hospitalization was so traumatic that I tried to maintain those show rituals of Friends and Jeopardy, but I was so beyond, I was not present. So it just didn't happen. ⁓ When I was finally discharged for the last time from my last psychiatric inpatient experience and I started my partial hospitalization,

experience, I still turned on Friends. I still watched Friends when I came home.

But it didn't hit right anymore. It felt wrong. ⁓ And it started evoking really uncomfortable feelings. So I stopped watching it completely. I still cannot watch that show. I cannot watch that show at all.

If I hear the theme song or if I see like clips or bloopers on reels or whatever, like my whole body has a reaction. ⁓ and I can't, my nervous system just remembers everything from that time, the fear, the disconnection, the exhaustion, the panic, the everything like it. And I don't say, I don't mean like

I remember what that was like. Like it happens. I feel it in that moment. It's crazy. ⁓ But I shouldn't say it's crazy. I don't like that term because we're not crazy and triggers are triggers, but it's just so wild how trauma can imprint on really ordinary things.

a TV show, a smell, a song. There are still songs that I can't listen to. Some by my favorite, favorite, favorite artist who has literally kept me alive. Her music has kept me alive. Shout out to Brandi Carlile. That's something I'll talk about someday too, but her music and her energy has kept me alive. But there are songs that I struggle to listen to now because

they relate to trauma during this whole experience. Maybe I'll talk about that in a different episode. I'm just giving you, I'm just telling you all the things I'm going to talk about someday. So something that used to before all of the trauma was a comfort show and something that I could enjoy and like Friends.

literal Friends, not the show Friends. Like it's something we could relate to on. Like I had other Friends that I worked with way before any of this that we like, we were just really big Friends, nerds on time and other things like Gilmore Girls and the office and stuff like that. And you know, comfort shows, we all have comfort shows, right? Like I'm not, I'm not on my own here. But Friends.

See, I'll be there for you. They can't be there for me anymore. And it makes me really sad. I did try to watch the reunion special, and even that was really difficult. Even though they've all changed so much. ⁓ But yeah, when they if you haven't seen the special, it's good. You should see it. But like them reenacting iconic scenes from the show, that was triggering.

It's wild. It's wild. And a lot of, mean, a lot of people don't understand that. And you know what? I'm thankful if you don't understand that. Or I should say I'm thankful if you haven't experienced that. Understanding is different. And you don't have to necessarily understand to be able to show empathy. And I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me that I can't watch Friends anymore, even though.

It's a really freaking awesome show and I cannot watch it. It's a bummer. Watch it for me, guys. ⁓ But yeah, it's just like when a piece of pop culture becomes part of your trauma story. Millennials, you, mean, we've lived through so many unprecedented events. It's absolutely mind boggling. like, this isn't technically pop culture, but...

We all remember where we were the day the planes hit the World Trade Center towers. We know where we were. know, like you can see the people around you. I know that I was in science class. My teacher left the room, came back in sobbing. Everything shut down for the day. I was so confused because New York City, I had just been there. I had just been there a few weeks prior and I had been to the top.

of one of the towers just a few weeks prior. This is a tangent, but like, that's what I mean. Like it's imprinted on you and it becomes part of your story. in this case, like with my story with Friends, like it's really confusing and it does feel really isolating because it's, it's hard to explain to people like, no, I can't, I can't watch Friends or like, please.

don't do that one liner that really is hilarious because it's, yeah. And it's, I am learning to process that and obviously I am not so deep in it anymore that I have to tell people like, don't even talk about Friends around me. That's not happening. ⁓ But it does, it does still elicit a response. So yeah, I don't know. And that's.

That's my confession today. I can't watch Friends anymore. ⁓ But that memory, yeah, it's just, so it's not just a show to me anymore. It's a reminder of who I was when I was trying to survive, literally, literally trying to survive. And I'm still learning. I'm still working on being gentle with

that version of me and this version of me. So for not knowing what to talk about to having this random idea like, I've been thinking a lot about this lately. just thank you for letting me say it out loud. If you've got something small that feels really, really big, you are not alone. If you

have a trigger that seems really mundane. is not. Feel free to DM me on any of my social media accounts. Quiet Connection podcast. Let's talk about it. Let's sit together. Let's sit in it. ⁓ But between now and then, be kind to yourself. I'm going to try to be kind to me if you need permission to stop watching something or to stop listening to something or to stop

eating something that hurts, this is your permission. So I will see you next Thursday and I thank you so much for sticking with me.