Speak Honest Podcast: Real Talk on Relationships, Attachment Styles & the Work of Healing Childhood Trauma

66. The Shadow of Shame: What Marvel's Thunderbolts Teaches About Healing

• Jennifer Noble, ACC | Certified Relationship, Dating, NLP, & IAT Coach • Episode 66

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Ever feel like you’ve outgrown the pain but it still haunts you?
In this unexpected (and totally unfiltered) breakdown of Marvel’s Thunderbolts, I explore how this action-packed antihero movie became a mirror for real-life healing. From scenes that had me sobbing in my seat to powerful metaphors about shame, shadow work, and inner child healing — this episode shows how even fictional superheroes can teach us something about our very real wounds. And trust me, the emotional insights are just as powerful as the explosions.

You might want to listen if:

  • You’ve moved on from your past… but it still weighs on you in quiet moments
  • You carry shame around things you did (or didn’t do) that you’ve never fully processed
  • You relate more to the “antihero” than the polished version of healing everyone else seems to have
  • You want to protect the little girl inside you the way no one else did
  • You crave community but feel like you're too messy to be fully seen


FIND OUT MORE!


DISCLAIMER: Speak Honest podcast content is informational, not professional or medical advice. Jenn is an ICF relationship coach, not a licensed therapist. Consult health professionals for specific concerns. Client opinions do not reflect Speak Honest’s stance. We aim for accuracy but are not liable for errors or outcomes from th...

Jenn Noble:

Hello and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal what's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve. Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs and boundaries without having it blow up in your face? Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths and honest conversations. Now let's dive in.

Jenn Noble:

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. I am Jenn Noble, your go-to relationship coach, and on today's episode I want to actually do something a little bit different. So just this weekend I went to go see the new Marvel movie Thunderbolts with my husband and as I'm sitting there watching the movie, I am just overcome with joy and excitement and just so many thoughts in my mind about oh my gosh, this movie is just built for mental health. The storyline was so fantastic and all of the tiny little nuances just made me want to come on here and talk about it. So I'm not going to spoil anything yet, but this is your warning that as the episode gets going, I will be spoiling the new Marvel movie Thunderbolt. So please, if you haven't seen it yet, go ahead and just stop this podcast today. Save it for later. Come back after you've seen the movie. I highly recommend going to go see the movie and then come back here, listen to this episode and then jump into the Facebook group and let me know what you think, if you had the same thoughts I did when you were watching it. And something about this movie that really hit home for me was how important community and people and togetherness truly is.

Jenn Noble:

And if you are looking for a community of women, then this is the perfect time to come and join our free Facebook community. You could just go on Facebook if you want to and look for it. It is called Speak, honest, secure Attachment and Confident Communication for Women. You can also scroll on down to the show notes. There is a link right there for you to just go ahead and click on. You can find me on Instagram or Facebook and ask me hey, jen, can you send me the link? Whatever it is, the goal here is to get you connected with other women who are in similar situations as you, so you can see that you are not alone, so you can see that you have a community behind you, helping you heal. And, in fact, right now, we are doing an amazing challenge for the month of May. It's called the Speak Honest May Mindfulness Challenge and for 31 days, we are spending five minutes every day going through a mindful meditation. I walk you through the meditations live on Facebook every single day and it is the perfect time to get plugged in.

Jenn Noble:

And as we get to talking about the new Marvel movie, you're going to see why it's even more important to have a community. So, with all of that said, I hope that you enjoy my kind of review of the Marvel movie. But again, this is your warning that once I get started talking about the movie, that you will be spoiled. So please shut it off right now and come back when you get a chance to. All right, now let's get on with the episode.

Jenn Noble:

All right, everyone, I am so excited to get to talk about the new Marvel's movie, thunderbolts, and I wasn't expecting much going into this movie. To be honest, I go and see all the Marvel movies with my husband. He really likes them. I'm kind of hit or miss, I don't know. We went to go see this one recently and Harrison Ford was in it and it was dumb. It was the dumbest movie I'd ever seen. I won't spoil that one at all, in case you haven't seen it. Not that there's anything to spoil, but I remember I think I went to the bathroom like three times in that movie. I couldn't be bothered to sit through, and that's what some of the Marvel movies are like. And so I was like, okay, fine, I'll go see Thunderbolts. It looks cute, it looks funny.

Jenn Noble:

I do like a good ragtag group. If you don't know anything about the Thunderbolts movie, I mean, hopefully you do because you went and saw it and that's why you're listening to this. But you know, it's just about a group of ragtag antiheroes, basically right, it's like the people in the Marvel universe that are kind of bad, but they wrong side of the track, so to speak. And I feel like this is really reminiscent to a lot of us, which is, you know, there's not something inherently wrong with us, we are not villains, we are not evil, but we had some really shitty stuff happen to us in our lives and so, as a result, we don't do and say and act the way that we want to be acting all the time, and it's probably why I always kind of have a heart for these anti-hero movies, but in the beginning it was pretty normal, it was pretty typical. You know, we're getting to know all the people. There's funny parts.

Jenn Noble:

I love the Red Guardian. He just he cracks me up so much. The Red Guardian is so perfect and the relationship he has with his daughter, Yelena, which is just so beautiful, and I really love seeing that dynamic of like well, no, dad, you haven't contacted me in a year, so why do you think that I would even care right now? And a lot of that, I think, will speak to a lot of us. I thought that was good, but what I really want to talk about is just this overarching theme of shame and community. If you watched this movie and you saw the same thing I saw, could you please just jump into the Facebook group and go into the post that I put up for each episode and just like, let's talk about it in there, because I feel like I need to talk to someone about this. And it was stunning.

Jenn Noble:

I was sobbing y'all, like I was actually sobbing during this movie because there was this particular scene where she's having to go through all these different shame rooms in order to work through stuff and she had to watch the very first memory she has, the very first shameful thing she ever did, which was her first test. So if you don't know, like, right, yelena was a black widow, which means she had to learn basically how to become an assassin as a child, as like a nine-year-old which is ridiculous, by the way, girl and she's looking for her and then this guy comes around and he shoots her right, you know, it's marvel stuff, so it is what it is. But in this she has to like relive this moment again and again. And it shames her because this is her first test and this is the first time, honestly, she killed someone who's innocent and this is the biggest shame that she's holding on to. And the interesting part of this movie was having to kind of sit with that. Even when she tried to, to change it, even when she tried to do something else, it wouldn't let her Like the memories, wouldn't let her change the situation. She had to sit and process through the shame in order to kind of move through to the next one.

Jenn Noble:

And there was another scene right after that where she's putting together her guns. There's a row of nine-year-olds at a table and they're all putting their guns together. She's the first one to do it and after she finishes putting her gun together, the mistress or the lady who runs the program starts to whip the other children. Thankfully, we don't see anything. Marvel does a good job of not actually showing too much, which I'm grateful for, because I can't handle too much like that.

Jenn Noble:

But this part made me sob. If you remember this part at all when you're watching the movie, she takes her hands and puts them over her little girl's ears and like stands in front of her face so she can't see it, and I just was like, oh, whoever wrote the scene has absolutely done inner child work right Like this is what I think about when I think about helping my inner child. The things that she saw, the things that she had to deal with as a child she should have never had to. Becoming an assassin at the age of nine, no. But also the shit that my little girl went through is not okay, and sometimes I want to just be that adult that wasn't there at the time and I just want to wrap her up in my arms, hold her ears, protect her from everything and just take her out of that, and that's why that scene alone was just really powerful.

Jenn Noble:

And then from there she goes into the next scene, which is her kind of adult self, sitting on the bathroom floor drinking her bottle of vodka, passed out, and she's just looking at herself. And again there's just shame. Because why did she get to this level? You know, she got out of the Black Widow, she's doing her own thing now. So why is she still so sad? Like how many of us relate with that? Oh, why is she still so sad? Like how many of us relate with that? Oh, I got out of the bad marriage, I got out of the bad relationship, I did all the things and still I'm just depressed, I'm sad all the time. I can't get myself out of this.

Jenn Noble:

And that's the interesting part was the shame that holds us back from who we really are. And it wasn't just about shame, and that's the next part I want to talk about. It talks about community. So there she is and she's passed out, drunk on the bathroom floor and she tries to do something about it. But that side of her, that older self, the drunk one, gets up and basically kicks her ass right and again it's to show us you can't change the past. You have to live through it, you have to process it, you have to see it, you have to own it. How many times have I talked in the program or in the support sessions? It's like we just have to really honor the things that we feel inside of our bodies. We have to honor our shame, even those little cringe moments. A couple episodes ago I did the one about spring cleaning. You know, marie Kondo-ing those cringe moments. Those cringe moments are still just shame. They're just lighter shame. They're not as heavy of shame as some of us have, but those big, heavy pieces of shame that we hide inside of our hearts, oh, they hold us down. And what I really thought was powerful in this movie was what is the consequence of shame? The consequence of shame is that we then keep ourselves away from others.

Jenn Noble:

Okay, so, not only does Yelena have this big, massive kind of revelation throughout the movie, but then we have the adorable character Bob. Bob is great, also, just again on a writing aspect. Great name for this character. It's so funny to me because, you know, bob is just such a common name, such a normal name, and this Bob, he basically turns out to be the big villain, but not quite the villain.

Jenn Noble:

You know also an antihero who gets sucked into this ragtag group and we see that he struggled a lot and he was addicted to meth. He was roaming around I think it was like was it Southeast Asia or something and uncertain of what he wants to do with his life, and somebody came in and was like, hey, you know, I have this new medical procedure I could give you. And I mean, how many of us have tried, thing after thing after thing I don't even blame him for trying something, because his life is just meaningless to him. And he says like, what's the point? That's something I've grappled with for so long in my life. What's the point? What is the point of all this? Sometimes, in those big heavy moments in my life, even today, I'll still struggle with that thought process of what's the point.

Jenn Noble:

And throughout the movie they kind of show you what the point is. And the point is togetherness and the point is community. The point is having people with you. I mean, as a human species, our one big amazing thing that we have is one another. Is this community, is this kind of connection between each other? And I just feel like the more and more that we are developing and expanding as a society, we are losing that connection, and I don't think that that's necessarily a problem, like I have no problem with the internet, I have no problem with our phones, you know, I think, like everything, we will figure it out in the end. But it's important also to see this just epidemic of loneliness that is happening. And if you know anything about me, you know that I believe that the fundamental aspect of our humanity are happy and fulfilling relationships, not loneliness, not devastation in that area of our life, but togetherness.

Jenn Noble:

And so in this movie, in the Thunderbolts movie, which again just such a funny, funny movie, I loved it. If you loved it too, please let me know. But in this movie there is a scene so we get to know Bob a little bit more. He turns into this big golden god. He becomes I think he's called the Century. Again, forgive me if, like you're, a massive Marvel fan I am not, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. I'm just kind of sharing with you my lived experience of how it felt.

Jenn Noble:

And so, bob the century, he starts becoming this bigger than life character, like basically, as he is told by Julia Louise Dreyfus's character I think her name is Valentina, who is the actual villain. Right, valentina is the actual villain and she said like you are more powerful than gods, you know you are, you are so powerful, you are so amazing. And she talks him up and he's able to kind of fill this up. Except what happens? What happens when he starts actually believing in himself and seeing this? Well then this void comes out. Or, as I totally saw this in the moment, was his shadow.

Jenn Noble:

So if you are familiar with any of Carl Jung's work, with the Jungian psychology, I love it to death. But it's about your shadow, those parts of you that you want to hide, those parts of you that you don't want anyone to see. And what is that? It's shame, isn't it? And as Carl Jung speaks about in his work, true integration is when we are able to take that shadow part and the golden parts and bring them together and really live in both sides and see we are all of these parts of ourselves.

Jenn Noble:

And so throughout this movie we have this void. And now this void is coming and he's sucking up all these people and he's putting the people into their worst memories that they have. And it's interesting because, again, the memories they have are about shame, not necessarily about, like, just the bad things that happened to them, because even when we see Bob's memory of his dad abusing his mother in the memory, it's not just oh, here's a bad thing that happened to my mother and here's what I had to witness in the memory. He is trying to stop it and instead of his mother saying thank you or maybe even being able to take him out of that situation, she says to him why do you always do this? You make things worse. I pictured that attachment wound already forming in his brain. You make things worse. You make things worse. Listen to that limited belief. Why do you always do this? You make things worse. That's how we get those limited beliefs, those attachment wounds, stuck inside of our neurons and they carry on with us.

Jenn Noble:

And again, marvel is a fictional movie and it's all this stuff going on. And at the same time, there's a lot of us that had that kind of trauma in our lives and have been told that stuff. Even when we tried to fight, even when we tried to push back, even when we tried to make things better, we were told that we were too much, or we were told that we were getting in the way, you know. And so that, what did that teach us? That taught us to stay small, to get out of the way, to not do anything big and powerful in our lives. And that happened to bob. And so, as a result, he's, he's lonely, he doesn't feel like he can trust anyone. He's wandering around life and now he finds this group, the, the Thunderbolts, and Yelena kind of takes a liking to him and they start connecting and all this stuff is happening.

Jenn Noble:

And then, at the end, his shadow self, the void, is again kind of taking over everything and sucking everyone into his shadow. And Bob runs over to him and he starts punching him and he's like I could do this, I could take care of this. And he starts punching the void, punching a shadow, and I remember sitting there watching this and I was like, oh well, they did such a good job with this movie until this one part. This one part really doesn't sit well with me, because you shouldn't punch yourself, you shouldn't beat yourself up. That's not going to work. And then, like most things, I should have just waited. I see, as he's punching his shadow self, as he's punching the void, he's starting to get sucked up into it. How powerful is that I mean, come on it like totally shows us that beating ourselves up for our past doesn't help at all and it sucks us into the void as well. It sucks us into the shadow parts, into that bad self.

Jenn Noble:

And Yelena notices this right and she says wait, no, this is making things worse, you can't be doing this. And so for this whole time she couldn't get out of this thing. That's holding her down. Something's holding her down, I can't remember right now, but because she wants to go and help Bob, she manages to find the strength to get out of her restraints to go and hold him and help him through it and say, no, this isn't the way and haven't we felt that way with other people before where we don't have the strength for ourselves but we do have the strengths for other people.

Jenn Noble:

And that's what a community does. We talk about this so much in the reboot program with my ladies, where I say if you can't hold a positive and empowering belief for yourself, then let us hold it for you right now. And we go around and as a community we all tell that woman how amazing she is, how great she is, how fantastic she is, and maybe she can't believe it right then and there, but we will hold space for her until she can. And that's exactly what started happening. So first Yelena gets out of her restraints and then her dad gets out of his restraints. And so first Yelena gets out of her restraints and then her dad gets out of his restraints and then everyone else starts getting out. Because when one person makes a change, it's powerful what it does to the rest of the people. And next thing, you know, they're all going around and they're surrounding Bob and they're hugging him and they're holding him and they're telling him this isn't the way. And it was through that, it was through that love, it was through that togetherness that his shame actually released. And then they came out of it. I don't know, they just wound up on the street again or something like that, I forget, but that part was just so powerful and I want to that wrote. This has absolutely been through some deep healing work, because you don't write about this kind of shit without knowing what you're talking about. And they did such a beautiful job with this.

Jenn Noble:

So, yeah, that's my thoughts about the thunderbolts movie. Again, I just thought was hilarious. Even past the mental health work, it's probably one of the best movies I have seen in a long time, definitely one of the best marvel movies that I've ever seen and I highly recommend going to check it out. But again, hopefully you've already seen it if you're listening to this. All right, everyone, thank you so much for coming along on this ride with me and listening to my kind of half-brain thoughts about this movie. Again, if you want to talk about the movie, jump into the Facebook group and let me know there about this movie Again. If you want to talk about the movie, jump into the Facebook group and let me know.

Jenn Noble:

There's usually a post I put up every week about the podcast episode, and that's where we go in and we chat about.

Jenn Noble:

Hey, Jenn, you know I have a question about this, or I noticed you said this in the podcast. Can you elaborate? That's what it's there for. And again, join in, get joined in with this community, be with other women who want to help lift you up, and then you come in and you help lift them up as well, and that's what this is all about. That's what life is about, as we saw in the Marvel movie, and I cannot wait to speak with you all next week. Take care.

Jenn Noble:

As we wrap up today's conversation. Always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination, and it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we covered today, be sure to head over to our show notes, where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode right there, and please remember to rate, review and subscribe if you enjoyed today's podcast. Your feedback means the world to us and helps others discover our podcast. Until next time, remember to speak up and speak honest.

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