Surviving an Existential Crisis with Six Feet Under, Part 1: Connection
Watching it when it was new, I thought Six Feet Under was the best television ever made. And in some ways I still do, 20 years later. It wasn’t until I understood myself and my passions better that I realized much of what I love about this show is that everyone in the Fisher family is having an existential crisis for pretty much the entire show.
Existential crisis gets at the core of what it means to be human and how we manage it. These characters are contending with the biggest questions we have: Who am I? Why am I here? What’s the point of life? Of death? What happens after I die? Am I a good person? Am I seen? Do I know how to love?
Their internal and outward struggles ground the plot in existential matters of selfhood, connection, meaning, death anxiety, and more. So just for fun, I’m breaking down, existential therapy wise, the main characters’ struggles. Today I’m talking about Ruth Fisher’s (the mom) existential crisis of connection.
Ruth’s existential crisis of connection
In its purest form, connection is a space without expectations or demands on us, in which we are seen and valued by those who care for us exactly as we are. We feel heard, we feel open and able to hear the other. We feel together, not alone. Humans are biologically wired for connection: it’s more than a want, it’s a need.
It gets more complicated when we consider that we are all working to connect within the framework of our various roles: parent, friend, romantic partner, sibling, child, and so on. We can’t escape these roles: we cast others in them, and we cast ourselves in them. They define the ways we show ourselves to others and what we want to see in them. While roles are meaningful and often necessary (fulfilling the role of a supportive, loving parent, for instance), we can be left adrift when those roles are no longer necessary or desired.
As a therapist, and in my own life, I see this challenge a lot in longer-term relationships (romantic, but also friendships): two or more people come together in desire and excitement and also because they meet certain needs. Over time, one person changes and no longer needs their partner to fulfill that role. Or one person changes and no longer wants to embody that role. Our old connection no longer fits or feels right. Is it possible to find some of that pure connection again, even as our roles change? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And this uncertainty can be terrifying.
As Six Feet Under begins, events quickly push Ruth, the ever-suffering mom of the Fisher family, into a crisis of connection. The show opens with her finding out her husband has just been killed in a car accident. Ruth, like many women of her generation, has been defined primarily by her roles as a mother and a wife. And now, everyone who needed her is gone: her husband is dead, and her kids are (mostly) grown.
Ruth wasn’t ready to give up those roles, but her family members and unforeseen circumstances took them away from her. And she doesn’t know what to do. She finds herself quite lonely. In her search for connection, she gets roped into a scammy self-actualization program called The Plan (a fictionalized representation of something like est or the Landmark Forum), which encourages her to reach out to the people in her life to reconnect and gives her a script to do so with.
We see her busily cleaning her house, making phone calls to her sister (who only calls her back when she needs someone to help feed her opiate addiction) and lapsed best friend. The funniest moment in this process is when she’s talking to her three children (two adults, one teen) as they sit on the stairs, and proclaims, “I want some intimacy. Give me intimacy. Won’t any of you have intimacy with me?” (season 2, episode 5)
Unsurprisingly, they laugh.
Euphemism aside, these three children (full of their own existential anxieties) are deeply uncomfortable with Ruth asking for something so far outside the rules of their existing relationships. And Ruth, on her part, doesn’t know how to go about connecting to her adult children; she’s still stuck in the mothering role. She cannot see them as they are now, full humans independent of her desires or plans for them. Nor can they see her as an aging woman, now a widow, fully human separate from her motherhood.
Existentially, the crisis of connection speaks to an inherent separateness of human experience, what Irvin Yalom called the “unbridgeable gulf between oneself and any other human being.” We are always alone with our subjective experiences of the world. But we also are social creatures designed to reach out for connection.
Connection helps us validate our reality by sharing it and seeing it reflected, which in existentialism is called intersubjectivity. This is about the way we are a co-creation of internal and external perceptions of self. I can think of myself as insightful, for example, but if no one else in my life perceives me this way, am I truly insightful? Being seen by others is fundamental to our sense of self. In this way, a crisis of connection is an existential threat to self. When there is no one around to witness my own reality (or when the people around do not see it the way I do), is it (or am I) even real? What a terrifying question.
This human yearning to connect leads Ruth into some humorous dating experiences and an unfulfilling second marriage with George, a troubled man—all of which do little to help her break out of her existing roles. She is unable to find someone to reflect herself, in her fullness, back to her. These men all bring their own ideas about what she is to the relationships—mainly she’s a woman who can take care of them and meet their sexual needs. And she’s not yet able to step outside the roles both they and she have imposed and ask for what she needs in those relationships.
For instance, when asked why she doesn’t leave George after she’s seen him through a months-long mental health crisis and wishes to be on her own again, she responds: “I can’t do that. The way he looks at me, I just see the little boy in him, you know? That’s always been my problem with men. it doesn’t matter if they’re 10 or 80. I see them standing there, like children in short pants, just skinny little boys, lost” (season 5, episode 5). Ruth can only see potential partners in one way—as boys who need mothering—and they see her in their own complementary way—as a wife who will mother them. The roles no longer work, but Ruth hasn’t figured out how to break free of them.
She does find great joy and connection in being a grandmother to her son’s unplanned baby. And there are some lovely moments of genuine connection between Ruth and Claire, the teenage daughter, as Claire matures. In these moments, Claire can step back, see her mother in her fullness, and offer—or receive—invitations to connection that Ruth engages with joy.
Ruth’s hardest moment in the show comes when Nate, her oldest child, dies at the end of season 4 from a complication with an arteriovenous malformation. It is this very crisis that opens up space in her life for deeper connection with others: her sister, George, and her own self. Ruth’s post-traumatic growth in the last days of the show find her choosing herself first. She rekindles her relationship with George, but on her own terms: she no longer wants to be a wife, but a companion. She re-engages with her sister and her friend Bettina. In the final moments of the show, Ruth decides to move in with her sister and they run a doggy day care as they age together.
Are you having an existential crisis of connection?
When we’re short on connection, we end up feeling lonely. The pandemic accelerated an already-growing epidemic of loneliness in the US. According to that linked Harvard study, chances are that at least 1 in 3 people reading this are experiencing serious loneliness—a lack of connection. So here are some ways to change this for yourself.
First, explore your own boundaries. What do you want and need from others? What are you prepared to give, and where are the limits of your capacity for giving? If you’re to build true connection, you’ll need to know these things about yourself so you don’t fall into the trap of serving a certain role or casting people in certain roles that limit everyone’s ability to be open.
It can seem hard to figure out boundaries when you don’t have people around to do this with. But you can start with yourself. What do you want and need from yourself (hobbies, sleep, types of food, work-life balance)? When do you hit your energetic and physical limits, and how can you start to respect those limits? I know that plenty of you probably have a revenge procrastination issue, for instance, which is an example of pushing past your own limits because you haven’t met your own wants and needs.
And then think about relationships with family members: what great fodder for figuring out your own limits! With the folks who might expect too much, or the wrong things, from us, learning our boundaries can entirely change our relationships—if not the ones we learn from, then others in our lives.
Consider who’s in your life. If you’re lonely, the people you already feel close to—or are supposed to feel close to—are simply not meeting your needs for connection. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong in those relationships, simply that taken together there’s not enough trust, openness, vulnerability, or witnessing to meet your needs.
Are there friends you’d like to know better? Acquaintances or friends of friends you’ve always been curious about? People at work you have felt affinity with? Family members you prefer over others? These are all opportunities for new connections.
Then comes the work of connection itself.
Be curious about others. For some of us, this will involve learning new skills. Learn to be curious about others and to listen well. This is not a skill taught in school, or often at home. You’ve probably heard of active listening, which is much more than simply making good eye contact and rephrasing what you hear. Active listening involves striving to understand the feelings behind the words, inviting further sharing, and demonstrating that you hear or understand the other.
Some ways to become a better listener are to ask open-ended questions, encourage the speaker to share more detail, check for understanding by rephrasing what you’ve heard, and join the other where they are instead of trying to get them to be somewhere else. This last one is particularly important when sharing about vulnerable topics. Rather than trying to cheer someone up when they’re struggling, be in a space of empathy with them and let them know you see the struggle.
Learn to be vulnerable. Openness to the other is half the equation of connection; the other half is to open yourself. There are so many reasons it’s hard for us to be vulnerable: rejecting or critical parents and siblings, dogmatic approaches to education, mean friends, social conditioning, various types of traumas. But we can move forward and learn to be vulnerable in our adult lives, with care and pacing. I suggest not doing this all at once; rather, take incremental steps as you build trust and safety with another person.
Vulnerability involves sharing your thoughts and emotions, asking for what you need, admitting your own mistakes, and holding your own boundaries. It’s hard and often scary, but it also leads to greater intimacy and trust, more self-acceptance, and more access to the full range of emotions. Remember that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the choice to do it anyway (whatever “it” is).
Feature image from: https://www.deviantart.com/zinavarta/art/HUMAN-CONNECTION-532215399