The Inner Critic Book Club: Jack Barlow

The Mental Health of Jack Barlow — When Self-Protection Turns Destructive

Jack Barlow from Fourth Wing isn’t exactly the fandom’s sweetheart. If anything, he’s the character people love to hate — abrasive, competitive to the point of cruelty, and seemingly fueled by the downfall of others. But when we trade the reader’s lens for a therapist’s lens, Jack’s behavior shifts from being just “villain energy” to something much more human — and much more familiar to anyone who has worked with trauma and attachment wounds.

In therapy, we often say: Every survival strategy had a reason when it began. For some, control, aggression, or arrogance aren’t simply personality traits — they’re armor. Armor forged in childhood homes where vulnerability was unsafe, in schools where showing weakness was punished, or in life situations where power meant survival.

Jack’s relentless need to dominate isn’t just competitiveness — it’s a nervous system trying to stay one step ahead of perceived danger. Through the lens of attachment theory, his patterns could lean avoidant or even disorganized. Avoidant strategies push people away to stay safe. Disorganized patterns pull people in, then push them away — because closeness feels just as dangerous as distance. Either way, the message the body is screaming is: If I’m in control, I can’t be hurt.

When someone’s nervous system lives in fight-or-flight mode, every relationship becomes a battlefield. Jack’s hostility may not spring from pure malice, but from an internal belief that life is a zero-sum game: If he doesn’t win, he loses everything. And in that worldview, there’s no room for trust, rest, or genuine connection. The cost of living this way is high — burnout, hypervigilance, isolation, and an exhaustion so deep it can’t be fixed by sleep.

From a therapeutic perspective, these patterns can change — but only in the presence of consistent safety. Polyvagal theory reminds us that regulation happens through connection, yet for someone like Jack, connection itself is the most threatening territory of all. It requires a slow approach. No sudden demands for vulnerability. No expectation that armor comes off all at once. Healing, for Jack, would start with small signals of safety — predictability, boundaries that hold, and moments where closeness doesn’t end in betrayal.

It’s easy to look at Jack Barlow and write him off as a villain. It’s harder — but more healing — to ask: What happened to him that made him choose armor over trust? And even more powerful to wonder: What could happen if he finally felt safe enough to lay down his sword?

Because in my work, I’ve seen this truth again and again: When someone’s defenses stop being their only line of survival, they can start becoming their truest self. And that’s when the story changes.