Originally published as “What Wicked Teaches Us About Balanced Decisions, Validation, and Acceptance” on 11/29/2024
Many of my teen girl clients have benefited from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills to help them learn to regulate their emotions. I’m always looking for ways to connect key concepts with relatable things. After seeing Wicked Part 1 in the theatre three times, I realized that you can find almost every element of DBT in it. I’ll talk through the main three (all of which were in “Defying Gravity”).
The Three States of Mind
DBT teaches us that we make better choices when we use Wise Mind — a balanced place where we consider both logic (Reasonable Mind) and emotions (Emotion Mind).
Where the Characters Fall on the Scale
Elphaba naturally leads with her Emotion Mind. There’s a line before “I’m Not That Girl” when she’s rescuing the baby tiger where she tells Fiyero, “You think I like caring this much?” All of her magical mistakes happen because she struggles to regulate her emotions.
Glinda is in Reasonable Mind throughout the musical because she bases her choices on what others think of her (“Popular”).
Fiyero is usually in Reasonable Mind because he pushes down his feelings to avoid painful ones, as stated in “Dancing Through Life” (“nothing matters when nothing really matters”). Elphaba points this out when they’re rescuing the baby tiger, and it clearly affects him. Glinda notices he’s been “thinking a lot, which is very concerning.”
Impact on Decisions
In “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba is fully in Emotion Mind when she decides to fly solo. Glinda tries to pull her back by reminding her of her original goal (meeting the wizard). Because Glinda brings in Reasonable Mind, Elphaba starts weighing the Pros and Cons of what she’s considering and reaches Wise Mind — where she uses both facts and feelings. She realizes she needs Glinda’s ability to understand others’ emotions and make choices based on them.
Glinda recognizes that her gift and Elphaba’s emotional magic are both needed to make change happen (“dreams the way we planned them/if we worked in tandem”). We all need people with different strengths to help make our goals real (or at least close to real). Glinda chooses not to go with Elphaba but wishes her “happy travels” because she realizes the best way she can support her friend is by helping from the inside — and she also genuinely craves others’ approval.
Elphaba flies away anyway, but now it’s not a decision based only on emotions.
Validation and Invalidation
“Defying Gravity” begins with Glinda asking Elphaba, “Why couldn’t you stay calm for once/instead of flying off the handle?” Later, in the intro to the main ballad, Glinda says Elphaba has “delusions of grandeur” and assumes she still wants to be with the wizard — which Elphaba corrects. In these moments, Glinda invalidates Elphaba by suggesting her thoughts, feelings, and actions are irrational or wrong.
Elphaba has probably heard messages her whole life that she’s “too emotional,” especially because her emotions affect her magic. It isn’t until she arrives at Shiz and Madame Morrible helps her see she can learn to control both — turning “a curse that I’ve tried to suppress or hide” into a gift that could help her reach her goals (“The Wizard and I”).
In the OzDust ballroom scene, Glinda notes that Elphaba suppresses her emotions because she’s scared of expressing them, which invalidates her again. When Fiyero says he admires how Elphaba doesn’t care what others think, Glinda says she does and “just pretends not to” care.
Looking at her sister, Elphaba’s father invalidates Nessa Rose’s need for independence by making Elphaba stay for orientation. Elphaba backs Nessa up when she tells her father — and then the dorm assistant — that she can do things herself, but her father’s actions reinforce the belief that she can’t.
Radical Acceptance
The “dialectical” in DBT means two opposite things can be true at the same time. Radical acceptance means you can accept something as it is and still work to change what’s in your control.
In “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba accepts that “some things I cannot change” (the “love I guess I lost” and the truth that the wizard is a fraud who now labels her as wicked), “but till I try, I’ll never know” (she still wants to help the animals he harmed).
Also, when the wizard hints he can change her skin color during the Oz of Tomorrow scene, Elphaba refuses — radically accepting herself.
Returning to Nessa Rose: her father likely invalidates her because he struggles to accept that she survived while her mother died in childbirth, and that she wants independence despite her mobility challenges. This could make Nessa feel incapable and lead her to overcompensate later — like when she invalidates Boq by cutting him off in the OzDust ballroom scene when he tries to explain his feelings.
Biosocial Theory: Why Elphaba Struggles with Emotions
Elphaba is also an example of DBT’s biosocial theory. This theory says some people are born more sensitive to emotions, and when they’re told their feelings are wrong or “too much,” it becomes even harder to regulate them. They may either overexpress or suppress their emotions — in healthy or unhealthy ways — to avoid intense negative feelings.
Elphaba was judged for her explosive magic when emotional, so she tried to “suppress or hide” her feelings, but they came out anyway. She has trouble accessing Wise Mind. (The armchair diagnostician in me thinks she has Borderline Personality Disorder, but I digress.)