I don't have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapist is in my paint brushes.
I met with my spiritual teacher and went to a therapist. I realized that if I came from a positive place, not only will everyone feel better and I will feel happier, but the company will work better.
So we had psychiatrists and counselors and therapists around the set regularly, especially for those scenes in which Jason would be dealing with a patient to make sure we were doing it all appropriately.
I think that the enormous emphasis on violence and sex, and in particular violent sex, may not make rapists of us all, but it predisposes us to accept a kind of world in which these things happen.
I think secrets often come out. I spoke to a friend who is a therapist and I asked her if there were people who came to her and admitted to doing horrible things and she said, 'More than you know.'
As a therapist, I've worked with many high-achieving people who don't feel worthy of their success. Whether it was a recent college graduate who had landed a high-paying job or a mature adult who had just received another promotion, all of these people suffer from impostor syndrome.
At the age of 19, the day after I graduated high school, I moved to a place where it snowed, and I became a massage therapist. With this job, all I needed were my hands and my massage table by my side and I could go anywhere. For the first time in my life, I felt free, independent, and completely in control of my life.
And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist.
Back then, people thought if you could talk you didn't have autism. I was just seen as this slightly odd child. I saw another therapist aged 12, and another in my early 30s.
My years as a therapist working with abuse and neglect families taught me at least one important lesson for my own life. Never judge until you can see through the eyes of that person you are judging, and then... never judge.
