Stranger Things and the Weight We Carry: Healing, Shame, and the Courage to Come Home
- Jason Henry-Ruhl
- Dec 31, 2025
- 5 min read
🚨 SPOILER WARNING 🚨
This article contains MAJOR spoilers for Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 5 (“Chapter Five: Shock Jock”).
If you have not watched this episode yet and want to experience it unspoiled, pause here, go watch it, and come back. This reflection dives deeply into specific scenes, dialogue, and emotional moments from the episode.
There are episodes of television that entertain you. And then there are episodes that quietly tell the truth about you.
Stranger Things Season 5, Episode 5 — “Shock Jock” — is filled with everything the show does best: urgency, dread, impossible plans, and the sense that the world is teetering on the edge. But beneath the monsters, the strategy, and the ticking clocks, this episode is doing something far more intimate.
It is telling the story of healing.
Not healing as a clean victory. Not healing as “everything is fine now.” But healing as coming home — and the courage it takes to do that.
Because coming home is not passive. Coming home means facing what you ran from. Coming home means telling the truth. Coming home means feeling again.
And that takes bravery.
1. “It’s like this weight lifted.”
The courage to tell someone is often the first real step toward healing
In one of the quietest but most powerful moments of the episode, Robin talks to Will about what it was like to finally tell someone the truth about herself — to stop carrying it alone.
She describes telling Steve. Not perfectly. Not confidently. Just honestly.
And then she says:
“Really, drugs or not, just saying it out loud to someone and hearing him be cool with it, you know? It’s like this weight lifted.”
That line lands because it names something so many of us know but rarely articulate:
Secrecy is heavy.
Shame convinces us that silence is protection — that if we don’t say it out loud, we won’t lose anyone. But the cost of silence is isolation. And isolation is where fear grows strongest.
Healing rarely starts with answers. It usually starts with telling someone.
One safe person. One honest sentence. One moment of being seen instead of managing perception.
That’s not weakness. That’s courage.
Confession isn’t about exposure for exposure’s sake. It’s about refusing to let shame define the story alone.
If this part resonated with you: Sometimes the hardest step is simply naming what you’ve been carrying. Our Mindful Faith Living guided journals are designed to help you gently explore those hidden weights — at your own pace, without pressure or shame.
2. “It’s just a memory… it can’t hurt you.”
Why trauma feels present — even when it’s in the past
As Max guides Holly through memories, the fear becomes overwhelming. The environment feels dangerous. The body reacts as if the threat is happening now.
Max grounds her with this line:
“It’s just a memory. Whatever’s down there, it can’t hurt you.”
This is one of the most psychologically accurate lines in the episode.
Trauma doesn’t live in the calendar. It lives in the nervous system.
That’s why your body can react before your mind catches up. That’s why logic alone doesn’t calm fear. That’s why a smell, a sound, or a look can pull you right back into something you thought you’d moved past.
Max doesn’t shame Holly for being afraid. She doesn’t minimize the fear. She does something far more helpful:
She anchors reality.
“This feels real.” “But it isn’t happening now.” “You are not where you were then.”
Healing isn’t pretending the past didn’t hurt you. Healing is learning that the past no longer gets to run the present.
3. “You might start to feel things… it means you’re almost home.”
Why feeling again can be a sign of healing — not failure
This may be the most important moment in the entire episode.
As Holly begins to feel overwhelmed by emotion, Max prepares her for what’s coming:
“We’re close to the final memory. You might start to… feel things, some things that you felt that night… But it’s just like an echo. It’s a good sign. It means you’re almost home.”
This line reframes something many people fear.
For those who have been numb, shut down, or in survival mode, feeling again can feel terrifying. Tears feel like regression. Anxiety feels like failure. Grief feels like weakness.
But Max names the truth:
Feeling isn’t the opposite of healing. Feeling is often the doorway to it.
Numbness keeps you alive. Feeling brings you home.
And this is where the metaphor becomes clear: Coming home is healing.
Coming home to your body. Coming home to your emotions. Coming home to the parts of you that had to go quiet just to survive.
That takes courage.
If you’re in a season where emotions are returning and it feels overwhelming: You don’t have to navigate that alone. Our course Healing Your Inner Child Through Faith walks through this exact process — learning to feel safely, compassionately, and without fear of falling apart.
4. “That was old Holly. You would now.”
Shame freezes us in the past — healing reminds us we’ve grown
As Holly watches a moment where she froze, she spirals into self-judgment:
“Why didn’t I fight? Why didn’t I help her?”
If you’ve ever replayed a moment in your head — blaming yourself for how you responded under fear — you know this voice.
And then Max interrupts the shame narrative:
“That was old Holly. You would now.”
This is the difference between shame and healing.
Shame says: That moment defines you. Healing says: That moment shaped you — but it doesn’t get to trap you.
Freezing is not moral failure. Survival responses are not character flaws. Growth means you respond differently now, not that you rewrite the past.
Healing doesn’t erase your story. It redeems it.
Coming Home Takes Courage
Stranger Things has always been about monsters, but “Shock Jock” makes something clear:
The real danger isn’t just what’s chasing you. It’s what convinces you to stay hidden.
Healing asks you to:
tell someone
face the memory
feel what you numbed
release shame
step forward as who you are now
That is what coming home looks like.
And yes — that takes courage.
Practical Steps for Your Own Healing Journey
Name one weight you’ve been carrying alone Just name it. No fixing yet.
Tell one safe person one honest sentence Courage doesn’t mean telling everything.
Ground yourself when memories surface “This is an echo, not an emergency.”
Let feelings be information, not judgment Feeling doesn’t mean failing.
Speak to your past self with compassion “That was old me. I would now…”
Ways We Can Support You
If you’d like support as you walk this path of healing and coming home, Mindful Faith Living offers:
All designed to help you move from survival to wholeness — with courage, compassion, and support.
Comments