Sarah Sherman’s Ex-Therapist Sent Her ‘Crazy Conspiracy Theory Paintings’ During the Titanic Sub Crisis

Honestly, it would be weirder if Sarah Squirm’s shrink was in any way normal.

Sarah Sherman, better known by her stage surname Squirm, represents Saturday Night Live’s absurdist, avant-comedy edge, bringing a small dose of her solo weirdness to the desk of Weekend Update whenever Colin Jost is contractually obligated to suffer her intrusion. Like most people her age, and like literally every comedian, Sherman requires the services of a trained mental health professional to keep her psyche stable — though one therapist had an absolutely insane interpretation of the job description.

Speaking to fellow SNL star Bowen Yang on the Las Culturistas podcast, Sherman revealed that her recently former therapist chose to treat her intrusive thoughts surrounding the deep sea horror of the missing OceanGate Titanic exploration submersible by texting the SNL star “a bunch of crazy conspiracy paintings done by a schizophrenic outsider artist about Titanic submarine conspiracy theories connecting it to wars in the Middle East.” It’s like ChatGPT wrote a Sarah Squirm sketch.

According to Sherman, she saw a couple red flags warning her about this particular mental health professional leading up to the paintings incident — the therapist apparently demonstrated “not appropriate” behavior when he once told her that she “looked as cute as a pumpkin.” Judging by her on-camera looks, let’s just assume he meant to say “jack-o-lantern.”

Then, when the five tragically misguided members of the OceanGate expedition went missing during a deep-sea tour of the Titanic wreckage, Sherman found herself in dire need of therapizing. Sherman told Yang that she texted her therapist that she had “constant intrusive thoughts that I’m at the bottom of the ocean” — strangely, his response was to “stoke the fire.” Though it’s hard to pin down exactly which schizophrenic artwork Sherman’s therapist thought would help his patient in her agitated state, we do know that the attempt was unsuccessful. Sherman said of her response, “I was like, ‘This is actually not helping!’”

Perhaps the strangest part of this story is that, when Sherman and her bizarre former therapist parted ways, he broke up with her. When asked if she has anything to say to her ex-therapist, Sherman proudly addressed him, saying, “You walked out on the best mind-pussy of your life.”