The Breakfast Club taught me a crucial lesson I still think about to this day 👇
This film is one of my all time favourites.
If you haven’t seen it, come on, sort it out!!
It’s the story of 5 teenagers, each representing a classic high-school archetype, stuck together for a Saturday morning detention.
Each character, whilst navigating adolescence, is also experiencing an exhausting social pressure:
- The crushing weight of parental expectations
- The loneliness of feeling like an outcast
- The pressure to fit in at any cost
- The consequences of an abusive home
- The relentless demand to be a perfect student
At face value, these characters would never mix.
They all represent a different rung on the high-school social ladder.
But throughout the film, their unique challenges allow them to break barriers and develop bonds.
They begin to understand that, beneath the surface, they’re not that different after all.
That’s why I love this movie.
It reminds us that behind every label, every facade and every forced smile, there’s a person, just trying to figure it all out.
As a psychologist, it’s helped me to read between the lines with my clients.
A lifetime of pressure can create a fragile mindset, and that deserves empathy, not judgement.
The truth is: you don’t completely know anybody. Not really.
You only know what they want you to see, unless you know when and how to ask the right question and create the space!
If each of us spend a lifetime trying to understand our own complex existence, it seems crazy to think we could ever truly understand another.
So when I catch myself judging,
Making assumptions,
Or thinking I have someone all figured out,
I think of The Breakfast Club, and choose kindness instead.
