hi hello! sorry this is extremely random but you literally have the best analysis! a friend and i were talking about derek shepherd and the way his trauma affected him throughout his life. something along the lines of how his trauma compares to amelia. he tries to save everyone (falling in love with broken women) and how amelia destroys herself. and i was wondering if you had any thoughts about that? :)
hi! and omg thank you that’s very nice considering i feel like most of my analyses are just me word vomiting incoherently in an empty room and scratching at the walls lmao.
okay i will try to do my best here but i don’t know how much sense this will make or if i have anything new or interesting to say. i don’t really consider myself a derek expert (NOT that i consider myself an addison expert or anything but i do spend considerably more time thinking about her than i do about him). but YES you’re so right
something that i think is interesting is that we get a lot more direct focus on amelia’s trauma than we do derek’s. maybe that’s just the byproduct of her struggle with addiction or maybe it’s because private practice was often a lot more character focused than grey’s. i also think, at the risk of sounding uncharitable towards meredith (whom i adore with all my heart) that a lot of times on the show, his issues take a backseat to hers- although that may also just be a deliberate choice on his part or because its her fucking show lol. but i find it interesting that he is vulnerable about her but rarely ever vulnerable with her.
i find the shepherd family dynamic endlessly fascinating and i especially think a lot about the idea of derek and amelia being the two out of the flock that were so directly impacted by their father's death. the math on grey’s is sloppy at best but it’s stated a few times that amelia was five years old. i think derek may have said he was eleven but that gets contradicted so i always just placed him between eleven and thirteen.
before i get into derek specifically i want to talk about amelia bc i love your point about the comparison/contrast of them in the wake of that shared trauma. i think that honestly the driving factor for her addiction wasn’t necessary the shooting itself, but the aftermath. amelia shepherd really pokes at my Little Sister Syndrome and i think her conversation with carolyn after the fake husband dinner was especially telling. amelia frequently describes her mom as “the best/great” (addison describes carolyn as a great mom too iirc) but after christopher’s death, carolyn was not as attentive to amelia as she was to her other children. that combined with amelia being the youngest with such a large age gap makes me think she had a pretty isolated childhood. there was a sort of disconnect from her siblings who were much older, her mother was changed by grief, and her father was gone. for a huge chunk of her adolescence, most of amelia’s family was already moved out of the house. not that i don't think the shooting itself or the trauma of losing her father had a big impact on her but i think a lot of her issues stem from feeling abandoned by the rest of her family. i think her addiction resurfaces when she feels most alone/abandoned. i think that a part of her is trying to avoid feeling the depth of her loneliness and a part of her is trying to be loud and take up space a) so that the people in her life will notice her b) like she couldn’t that day in the store with derek’s hand over her mouth.
derek on the other hand, was old enough to be cognizant and understanding of what was happening that day in the store. he 100% felt a responsibility to protect his little sister and i also think he felt extremely powerless that he couldn’t save his father. obviously derek has a bit of a god complex but he also does have a savior complex.
he protected amelia by keeping her quiet. i think that’s actually a big part of it (for both of them). also idk how to articulate this well and i’m no psychologist but derek only likes his women broken to a certain extent. i think he likes to be needed but he doesn't want them to be needy. he doesn't like when it’s not something he can fix with some immediacy (the powerlessness again) and his discomfort with being unable to fix it makes him lash out and withdraw. he liked saving meredith, until her trauma deeply affected how she behaved in the relationship. he liked (and this part is 80% assumption and conjecture from my addek brain) being able to soothe the wounds from addison’s childhood (her loneliness and feelings of inadequacy) until her “neediness” started to feel cloying and almost accusatory.
so imo derek likes to save people, until they are too difficult to save. it's established that he is VERY black and white, which is why he thrives in brain surgery which has finite rules and steps he can follow in order to save people’s lives and bring relief to their families. he's good at surgery. its where he turns when he's feeling lost in his personal life. the guy clearly has some control issues. conversely, when things are going poorly at work (i.e jen harmon), he doubts EVERYTHING about himself and his choices bc the one thing he can always control is destabilized.
i think that derek gets angry when he feels guilty which ties back to him lashing out and withdrawing when he can't fix something/someone. I think this is a huge component of his tension with amelia. he is extremely judgmental of her struggles with addiction, and he (like their other siblings) has trouble separating Adult Amelia from Teen Amelia. maybe a part of him has always felt like her addiction was his fault. like, if he had shielded her better, she would have less pain (which isn't true). so while on the surface, it seems like maybe he is just harsh on her because he is tired of her shit and still angry about the chaos she caused before she went to rehab the first time, a lot of it i think is actually resentment/anger because he feels guilty (and again, anger/moodiness is how derek reacts to guilt).
its an oversimplification, but i think what a lot of it boils down to is little preteen derek with his arms wrapped around his baby sister, holding his breath and needing to use both his hands to keep her still and quiet, and it has to do with her watching her father’s blood on the floor and being unable to scream. of course there's also the aftermath (amelia’s loneliness and how much grief she had to fit in such a small body, derek’s guilt, anger, and the horrible feeling that he's somehow now “the man of the house”)
idk this isn't well organized and certainly not as articulate as it could’ve been but god i do love thinking about the derek and amelia of it all. tysm for the ask. srry for the long-winded answer :)
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