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After watching the recent GOP debates, I looked at all of the candidates and found myself thinking more about the individual who has been absent: Sarah Palin. As I've watched Michelle Bachmann play hardball with Rick Perry, I wondered what it's like for Ms. Palin to watch her female counterpart take center stage while Ms. Palin seems poised to fade into political obscurity.
That said, I also caught myself engaging in the kind of misogyny that so often clouds professional contexts where two women are involved. After all, everyone seems to love pitting two women against each other and simultaneously fantasizing about the drama between them. So, perhaps it's not as relevant to compare Ms. Palin's current trajectory with other GOP women, but rather to ask the bigger question: What happens now for the former governor?
As the race toward the White House heats up, the once-asked question about whether she'll run seems as distant as ever. Given this reality, it makes me wonder what the heck has been motivating her the past couple of years if she was never terribly interested in running in the first place. At the end of the day, was it all about celebrity? Is it so simple that she merely loves the cameras and attention, and did whatever she had to do to keep her name in the media?
Wow, if that's the case, she's not terribly different from Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian. All along, Ms. Palin seemed to hunger for a microphone and podium behind which she could issue provocative statements and rile up the masses. (Death Panels? Don't go there). Even when it came to the concession speech that McCain had to deliver in the last election, Ms. Palin asked if she could give her own speech as the Vice Presidential candidate.
As a psychologist, I often focus on what needs a person has that have gone unmet, as unmet needs tend to cause your average person to get off-track in some way or other. For example, if a person has an unmet need for love and connection with others, that individual might become promiscuous in their attempt to get as much momentary love and connection as possible.
In Ms. Palin's case, one might make the snap judgment that attention is the ultimate goal that she has long sought. Yet when we consider the fact that Ms. Palin already has multiple children and has had a high powered job that garners widespread respect, it's hard to understand how she might still have an unmet need for more attention. Following this logic, it occurs to me that her unmet need may be more for approval than attention.
Recalling the dreadful Katie Couric interview that turned her into a punchline, I gather that going from respected to humiliated in a heartbeat might be more than a little difficult. No one wants to be considered a joke, and absolutely no one wants to ride that train (to nowhere) in front of millions of men and women across the world.
While I am not suggesting that we should feel sympathy for her fall from grace, I do believe that viewing her behavior through this lens helps us to better understand her sometimes-confusing behavior. Though her public appearances reflect an attractive women in designer clothes, smiling ear to ear, it's safe to say that her glossy exterior masks a more powerful conflict underneath. Seriously, where is she headed? What is her purpose? What does she really want to do in this life?
Everyone must have a purpose, or their spirit otherwise perishes and all sorts of problems follow. Loss of purpose and a vision for where one is headed are prime triggers for excessive self-destructive behaviors, and the rich and famous aren't immune to this reality. As a mental health professional who has witnessed Ms.Palin's downward spiral in the political race, I hope for Ms. Palin that she does some deep soul-searching to recover her sense of purpose and pride in what she does, something that every human being must have to live a full, meaningful life.
Without purpose and pride, less applause and the dimming lights from the cameras can feel incredibly traumatic and hurtful. In some ways, what seems to be happening to the strength of her star isn't unlike what happens with child stars who outgrow their cutesy charm and face older age with awkwardness and anxiety. For anyone whose star fades and who faces a newly apathetic public, it occurs to me that we should strive to have empathy for her because, sooner or later, we all experience our own pitfalls, too. For some, that fall lasts a few minutes when something bad happens; for others, it lasts a long, painful lifetime.
Though I have never met, assessed, or treated her, I wish Ms. Palin well as she navigates the rocky course of her future. Above all else, I wish her purpose.
