Ashley, oh Ashley

I don't want to sound Tom Cruise-like on the subject of psychiatry and therapy in general, but this story about Ashley Judd spending 47 days in a "treatment facility" strikes me as a little "much".

First, what was her malady? She was treated for

[C]o-dependence in my relationships; depression, blaming, raging, numbing,
denying and minimizing my feelings.

After I got over the bizarre use of punctuation in that sentence, I was struck by the notion that minimizing one's feelings is now a mental disorder. What the @#$%? Seriously, I don't want to downplay the legitimate value of therapy (or so I'm told), but why did Ashley Judd do this interview and let herself be quoted saying she was seeking help for "minimizing her feelings"? Was there any way this would make her look good -- outside the weepy Oprah crowd? Nay, I say! The ONLY reaction I see a normal person [It's my blog, hence I'll use myself as the paragon of normality.] having to this is, "You silly, spoiled, out-of-touch Hollywood woman! You wanna' here about problems? I'll tell you about problems ..."

Okay, even though these complaints hardly seem like a 47-day problem to me, maybe they were crippling Ashley. Was that the case? No! Ashley was at Shades of Hope visiting Wynonna (who was being treated for food addictions) when the kind staff helped her identify her own problems:

[B]ecause my addictions were behavioral, not chemical, I wouldn't have known to seek treatment. ... And those behaviors were killing me spiritually, the same as someone who is sitting on a corner with a bottle in a brown paper bag.

So she had to be TOLD about her problems before she recognized she had a problem?!?! Okay, I know that people do stage such interventions because often it is difficult for us to see our own problems. Fortunately for Ashley, the folks at Shades of Hope were there for her:

"When (the counselors) approached me about treatment, they said, 'No one ever does an intervention on people like you. You look too good; you're too smart and together. But you (and Wynonna) come from the same family -- so you come from the same wound.' No one had ever validated my pain before. It was so profound," she says.

Again, does anyone talk like that? "No one had ever validated my pain before!" Hell, she didn't even know she had pain. She thought she was happy being a Hollywood star and being married to a race car driver. Good thing Shades of Hope caught her in time!

Yes, I'm being overly snarky in this post, but this is the kind of stuff that drives people to "poke fun" at therapy. Honestly, Ashley, what was the purpose of this big interview with Glamour? Could it have something to do with the fact that you haven't had a movie in a couple of years and you've got a couple coming out this year? I could understand that, but one of her movies isn't out until December and the release date for the other hasn't even been announced. So again, why? I just don't get it.

Oh, and is anyone else freaked out by this Shades of Hope place? Almost sounds like a cult to me. Hmm, maybe Tom Cruise would approve after all.