Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster movies and psychoanalyze them.
My name is Brittany Brownfield and I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by
Ben Stover, individual therapist, Hannah Espinozo marriage and family therapists. We're all
licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists, who practice out of Chicago.
Even though we are licensed mental health professionals, this podcast is purely for entertainment
purposes and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture and all forms. Please
remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists, we aren't your therapist.
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find a local mental
health provider. Hello. We are discussing Arrival today, which is one of
my favorite movies. We're going to talk about communication and existentialism. Here's a
synopsis of the twenty sixteen film, which was based on a short story by
Ted Chang titled The Story of US Linguistics Professor Louise Banks. Amy Adams leads
an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touched down in twelve locations around the
world as nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew
must race against time to find a way to communicate with extraterrestrial visitors. Hoping
to unravel the mystery, she takes a chance that could threaten her life and
quite possibly all of mankind. Yeah, so first we're going to talk about
communication, which is about mostly what the movie is about. So what were
you thinking about communication, Brittany? This movie, right off the bat establishes
this idea that you can't make any assumptions about communication because she gets brought in
right by the military because these spaceships land freak everybody out obviously, and force
what A comes in and he's like, very bruntly, is like you need
to just ort how to talk to them, as if it's just this problem
of like finding the right language, like human language that you need that the
aliens would understand. And I really love the scene. It's one of my
favorite scenes actually, where she breaks down that there's so many layers to language
that is based on assumptions cultural understandings, like the idea of like if I'm
asking what's your purpose, do I mean you Joe alien or do I mean
you the collective? And it really inspired thinking in me about the assumptions we
make with communication and how that comes into work as a therapist, even like
specifically when she brings up the idea of purpose and how that's an abstract concept,
like what our definition of purpose is? What does that mean to an
alien? Absolutely? And what a daunting idea that is too to communicate with
someone where you might not have any shared vocabulary, And right away it made
me think about when I do work with people human beings, we do this
a lot where we assume everybody walks around with the same dictionary that we have.
We all have the same glossary, if you will, and so like
specifically, when I work with couples or families, they'll say, like the
classic example is I want us to have better intimacy. And then I say,
can you define intimacy for me? And often than not, I get
very different answers from one partner and the other partner. One partner will say
intimacy is holding hands and having communication, and the other partner usually says sex
sex, yes, And I think people get annoyed. Sometimes I can see
people get annoyed with how pedantic I can get about defining terms. But it's
such an important starting point to get to communication. If I assume that you
both have the same definition of intimacy and then we're working towards concrete steps to
get there, we're not even working towards the same objective, right, And
I think that is all. How so, how the human ego presents right
Like force Whitaker, his ego centricism is showing up by assuming that aliens have
the same dictionary and glossary that he does. They just have to find the
right words. And we all do that to a certain extent, of course
we do, and more importantly understanding that, Let's say, in the example
of the intimacy definition, you are addressing the intimacy as it's meant by a
partner A, who was referring to closeness, and you're working on concrete steps
to be there, and partner B is sitting there with their arms crossed,
going this, what the fuck are you talking about? Has nothing to do
yeah with me getting what I need, because we are talking about closeness and
snuggles, and that usually results in partner A falling asleep on me on the
couch and no sex happening. And as long as we're not talking about sex
happening. I'm not fucking interested in this conversation. Absolutely, And if you're
shutting partner B down while hearing out Partner A, we aren't communicating exactly.
We are deepening the divide and assumptions of the definitions are very important. And
why therapists will frustrate the shit out of you by it not assuming you have
the same lexicon they do and asking you what does that mean? How does
that make you feel? Because we can assume but will be wrong. I
think a good example in the movie is this idea of the word weapon,
right, and what is the word for war? It's the Sanskrit word for
war. And she asks she asks the kernel to ask the person that they're
going to go to second, the second best linguistics person, and she said,
make sure you ask them what the word for the Sanskrit word for war
is. And the answer came back as it's meant to disagreement, but what
it actually means is a desire for more cattle. And just the huge difference
between those two things. Yeah, and how if you will go off of
that assumption of what that words mean within the different cultures, whatever different lexicons,
Like you said, ben that can lead into a whole different problem,
and I see that a lot when I do therapy of someone will use a
word and it'll feel loaded to the other person, and they'll react off of
the loadedness that they're inferring onto that word, and then they are having two
conversations about the same thing, thinking that they're having same conversation, and then
getting pissed at each other because why are you fighting with me about this?
Why are you assuming that? Why are you saying I'm acting like this when
I didn't even mean that. And then they come into my space and I
make them do really annoying active listening techniques that maybe we can talk about later
in treatment. Yeah, we will, where I make them slow down and
repeat back what they're hearing right exactly. And a big part of that is
we also hear in a lot of ways what we want to hear, and
so sometimes we'll listen to part of what our partner is saying, but we
won't listen to the full thought. And so that also gets us into a
pattern of that back and forth. You said this, I said that,
you said this, And that is where communication completely breaks down and becomes completely
unhelpful and then you just have two people who feel like shit and both feel
like they haven't been heard or seen by their partner and so and I feel
like communication. I mean, that's what couple's therapy is. It's communication.
It's helping people with communication. It's almost exclusively what you're doing. Yeah,
And a part of the reason why we ask so many clarifying questions is because
your personal experiences and thoughts and feelings is what has a big impact on what
words mean to you and what they don't mean to you. So I feel
like there's so many times when I'll say to a client, so, what
does that word mean to you? Yeah, And sometimes they'll be confused,
or sometimes they'll be like, what do you mean? And I'll say,
well, so this is what I think you're saying, but I'm not sure
if that's what you're saying. So again, just this piece of we can't
make any assumptions. And I think that's a big thing that we do as
therapists, is not making assumptions that we automatically understand what somebody is saying just
because they're using language that we're familiar with. Yeah, it's a good point,
it's very important, and it makes a huge difference to use your own
language to invite them to explain further, to clarify and crystallize the point and
the feelings that they're trying to get across, which usually gets lost within whatever
dynamic you're working with, whether it's a family, couple's friends, whatever it
is that's coming to sit in a therapy office and talk to you. Something
is breaking down because there is not that extra layer of clarification happening. There's
just reaction to it. And throughout this entire film, we see the military
primed, yeah, ready to respond to a threat and constantly assessing for a
threat, without ever once considering that there could be a peaceful purpose for this
visit, Like they're ready to lay down their lives fight this obviously superior force.
Definitely, absolutely, I mean even just based on the fact on the
way that they get to the space of how the the twelve spaceships that drop
down, of how it switches and they become where they were, gravity changes
and that's how they get the rest of the way. There's like even just
that small piece shows how much more technologically advanced they are than us, right,
yeah, you have no chance. Yeah, And something else that I
was thinking about as I was thinking about this film, is how I feel
like I teach communication in every session that I'm in, whether it's communication,
helping people communicate effectively with other people and helping them kind of decide like what
are they going to say? Like? For instance, an example of that
is helping so like helping a kid figure out how to talk to a parent,
helping an employee talk to an employer, helping a couple one partner of
a couple talk to the other talk to their partner, and so there's I
really feel like that's mostly what I do when I work with people, is
I help them with some form of communication, whether it's them expressing themselves and
helping them just express themselves because there haven't had good experiences with that in the
past, or helping people communicate effectively with others, or even just helping them
understand you can't assume, yes exactly, that this person you're talking to knows
what you mean. People get really frustrated with communication techniques like dear man or
dear woman and things like that because it's so it breaks things down into such
simple things that I think sometimes people even feel like offended, Like you think
I can't communicate without this thing, imagig and yes, that's why you're here.
Get it through your head. Yeah. And what people don't understand is
how much we struggle with concretism around communication too, and being clear and the
clarification part that we use so much overarching language and we get pissed when people
don't know what we mean. Like even the saying like what's your purpose?
That's a wild question really to ask, absolutely, because that could mean so
many different things, even if they kind of understood the language, you know,
and kind of what you were saying too. Ben reminded me of the
scene of the movie when they realize that the Chinese have been using majong to
communicate with their ship. I would love to be able to see how everybody
was communicating with their ships anyway. And how she talks about the influence that
putting things in the context of a game would have on how they communicate with
each other and how they infer what they're talking about and when they do the
whole. You know, if you think everything, if all you have is
a hammer, you see everything being as a nail. And I think how
that comes into therapy work is when we work with families or couples where they're
already defensive and pissed off, and maybe at the contempt territory, and so
they will go to the other place where they assume everything their partner is saying
is an attack, or is to hurt their feelings, or it is from
a very bad faith place. And like you were saying, Ben, like
that defensive position that you can be in where you are waiting to be attacked
and you're waiting to defend yourself. And I've been in many a couple session
where one partner will say something very innocuous, something very chill, whatever,
like you know, I'd like it if you helped with the dishes more.
And I watch this look go over their partner's face, and I'll say,
what did you just hear them say? And they'll say that they think I'm
so stupid I can't even do the dishes, And I go, I hate
to say this to you, but that is not what they said. That
is not what I heard. Can you trust what I'm saying I heard?
And how quickly jump to what we're worried about or what's already in our mind's
eye. So what you were saying, Ben about the military is so ready
to strike in this movie. They're so scared of the threat of these aliens
that they want to interpret everything as a threat. Well, that's also their
role, don't agree, it's I mean, of course they're scared. Everybody
scared. Yeah, But remembering that the military they are a hammer. They
are most certainly a hammer. They are the only hammer we have. They
have been trained to be a hammer. They swore an oath to be a
hammer, and much like our fight parts that exists withinside us, once they're
activated, they're there to do one thing and that is the only thing that
they do, and that's essentially the metaphorical role they're playing in this film.
Recognizing the importance that when you bring a weapon, you then have a weapon
as an option, and when things are interpreted through the lens of fear,
you're not assessing rationally. You're assessing reactively, and if you have a weapon
to use against something that appears the threat, you will use a weapon.
So recognizing how important it is in this story to see that the parts of
society that are functioning as the weaponized front are constantly assessing everything only through that
lens and are struggling to grasp the lens that Luis is trying to pitch of.
There is more than one way to look at this situation. And as
she's trying to explain the nonverbal part of communication, which I don't think she
ever directly addresses of how much communication is nonverbal, because it's just sixty percent
or something. I think I can look it up to find the exact amount
later. But yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right enough
of that well, and even the fact that we see later of how big
they actually are and how're you're not even we're not even able to see the
full being. She's talking to their feet basically, yeah, exactly, go
ahead, sorry, right now, it's okay. It's recognizing that she's there,
always in a calm, curious position. She was afraid at first,
but then as she's assessing, she's recognizing, we're not seeing any posturing,
We're not seeing any defensive stance. They're not making any aggressive movements. We're
the ones making aggressive movements. We're the ones rolling up with tanks. Yeah,
we're the ones interpreting everything they're doing right and preparing to strike and threatening.
They haven't made a single threatening move their body language is not demonstrating threat
at this time, we need to not And that's kind of the importance of
recognizing in the old Freudian terms, like the difference between what your id ego
and super ego are for it is the desires and biological responses to things where
your fight's going to live from. Ego sits in between, and super ego
would be more thought and hyper rationalization. And you kind of see the military
play that ID role. I think Luis sits kind of right in the middle,
and the super ego is Ian because he's he's not feeling anything, he's
just completely thinking and yeah, he's in full science mode, full science all
the time. Agreed. Agreed, He's just interested in what's going to happen.
He's not emotionally invested in a single thing. Yeah, at least the
way I read his character. No, I feel like you're absolutely right.
I feel like that's exactly how he plays the role for sure. But also
I think that is the role, Like I think that is the idea of
having of why they need so many different types of people to help them figure
out how to communicate, and why they have to have people who are in
different mediums in order to do that right, because the colonel and the military
as a whole, depending they kind of used him differently. The kernel is
very short, very now or never do it or don't? He's all id,
yeah, all ID, And it seems to me like the writer's conceptualize
it that way. But looking at those three kind of parts of the human
psyche, it's important to recognize which one is dominant when people are having a
conflict, because it gets more expansive from there, depending on which theoretical orientation
you're using. Right, if you look at some of the more advanced ones
that look at how deep parts go, whether it's ifs or structural association or
ego state, it's all different words to describe the same idea that expands upon
the Freudian idea of breaking the psyche down into three components. That we have
what's called parts of ourselves that are specialized subfunctions that emerge to match whatever the
situation is. And it's important to recognize when communicating that which part is online
dictates how well someone can accept the communication. If someone's fight part is on
and they're doing what Hannah said of when you can see people doing it,
they're not listening to the whole thing. Someone is saying they're listening for the
next threat and then they're going to launch. Well, guess what the military
was doing in this movie. Exactly that, exactly that. Whereas Louise was
constantly staying in kind of a neutral space, she was aware of her fear
and aware of their fear and their feelings and trying to stay kind of balanced.
And Ian had no awareness of anything. He's just full analyzing. He
wasn't perceiving any ounce of danger that he was in at all. He was
just this is cool, happy to be there. Yeah, And we're going
to take a break right here, and just want to double check about the
cultural differences when we think about communication and what that looks like in our sessions
when because then we have a whole new context for language. I know that
I get asked a lot if I speak Spanish because I'm brown and I don't
speak Spanish. And a part of that also is when people ask me that
question, I also tell them, even if I did speak Spanish, I
don't think unless I had been a native speaker, I don't think I would
be able to do therapy in Spanish, even if I learned it as an
adult because the nuances and the differences in that language, there's no way I
would be able to allot So much of the work we do is reflecting back
to people what they're feeling and thinking, and so I would never be able
to do that unless I was a native speaker, and even then it could
be tricky based on the age of the person that I'm working with, based
on maybe based on even the region that they're from. We know that language
can be different, even even with English, of how people sound different from
based on what states they're from. Yeah, or even do you say soda
or pop? Yep? Cultural like dialectical changes, which the correct answer is
pop. That is right. That is also correct. Can you believe there
are places where people say cola or coke and they mean pop and soda,
they mean they call everything coke or cola? Yep, right, that's right.
Go see a therapist. But I think you're bringing up something so important,
which is why you've heard us talk about many episodes how sometimes people will
actively seek out a therapist with a shared background because it can be helpful to
not have to understand will explain all these different context Like think about when I
was watching this movie, I was just thinking, how exhausting when she explains
every little part that you have to break down that one scene to even like
do they even understand what the concept of a question is, like that it's
asking for a response, you know, it's inquiring, And how just to
talk to them and to break down take so much work. It takes them
so long just to understand who they're talking to and their names right exactly,
And how it is exhausting to have to think in a different language, exhausting
have to communicate in a different language, and how much nuance get lost with
that. So and not even just like you were saying, Hannah, not
even just if there's a different language, but also a different cultural glos like
lexicon, right, like, and how it's a lot of work to have
to explain that. And so if you can get that out of the way
to do therapy, that's good, Especially in therapy when you talk about such
abstract concepts, such emotional concepts that aren't necessarily rooted in a concrete thing that
has a definitive term for it, and to get into all that language is
so hard. And in this movie, the only reason I think they really
get as far as they get is because these aliens are able to go into
her mind and reach her there. They're able to surpass written language, written
spoken language and have an understanding telepathically, and that's why this speeds up so
much. And then she's able to connect with them and you know, if
you time all differently and stuff. But we can't unfortunately, cannot do that
yet in modern world where I can't hook myself up to a client and be
able to infer what's going on for that, and don't say that's too loud,
They'll find you. They'll scientists will take you away. How do you
know they did not already find me? And that's why I can do it.
How do you know I'm not a robot? Well, you should be
saying this on recorded medium. The definitely not. You should see a robot
energy. I was saying before we start recording, I'd rather do with an
alien than a robot. That's how much I distrust the concept of robots anyway,
which is assumptions you're making that robots will kill me, that robots I
do seriously, I do see every robot as a hammer and I am the
nail. And I know that we don't have as diverse of a population of
therapists as I know that I wish that we had so that people could have
those experiences. That's another reason why it's so important as a therapist to do
a lot of clarifying, especially when there are some when there all are cultural
differences between you and your client, because we want to make sure that we're
giving them the chance to give us the definition of something that they are trying
to described to us without well coming from our centered view like in this movie,
the humans like Fort Whittaker, for example, are coming from a strong
human centered view. When they are saying weapon, they mean weapon, and
she says, we don't know that they mean weapon. They might mean tool.
And when they say offer, you know, they might be trying to
give us a tool, not fire a weapon at us. And I think
that's a great example too, because I've worked in different settings, and I've
worked with diverse populations and so and I'm white, and so one thing you
have to learn to do to be culturally competent, especially if you are part
of the arguably the oppressive party like white people are, that you're not coming
from a white centered view into therapy as well, and assuming when someone brings
something up about their family or the way their family structured or the fact that
they believe, which is something you've brought up in previous episodes when we've talked
about ghosts and stuff, like when people talk about communing with spirits, that
we are not coming from a white Anglo Saxon centric viewpoint of that means that
your family has no boundaries, or that like you all live in the same
house together, What the hell is that about, you know what I mean?
Or like why are you so close to your parents? Or yeah,
and like why do you talk to your ancestors? And you know, things
like that, and assuming that the white point of view is the correct point
of view, and that what they're talking about is unhealthy in some way or
inappropriate, you know, and that they might have another way of meaning what
they're saying when they talk about family, for example, when they talk about
family in white, well, the white culture I unfamiliar with. Your family
is usually your nuclear family. That thing other cultures, it could be your
grandparents that live in home with you, or like aunts and uncles and stuff
like that. And so it's good to be aware of not assuming, like
the word of the day in this episode, yes, that your viewpoint is
the correct one, or that even when I say, like, how's your
family even me assuming what they would define as family if they're from like a
markedly different cultural background than me. It's very important to understand how vital a
role that plays. You can't communicate with someone if you can't allow them space
to share their reality with you. And it's challenging in therapy to own the
differences between your culture and someone else's and create space in your head for what
people are saying to mean different things. It's why diversity classes are important because
we often get trained as therapists, most of us in life when we're just
starting to break out of our own egocentric viewpoints of the world, where well,
the way I see things is X, Y, and Z, and
that's not the only way to see things. And as you get into a
therapy session with someone, it gets really important that you can respectfully create that
space but also not make it laborious for the client to share their reality with
you. That you don't need to explore every aspect. You just need to
be on the same page enough that you're picking up the major emotional themes.
And I think too many times people get stuck in the investigative side of things
where they want to fully understand what everything means, and you can't Canna.
You're talking about not speaking Spanish, and even if you did, Mexican Spanish
might be different than Peruvian Spanish. There will be different contexts and different references
and different cultural relevance points that would use the dialect different diferent yes, and
that's true of every language in the United States. It's true the Southern United
States have a different style of speaking than the Northern United States, the East,
and the West. Everything, it's different. And just assuming you can
let someone or that someone can come in and you can understand everything about the
world because you can label them is dramatically false. And where therapists, I
think, get in trouble. Coming back to this idea of which parts of
someone are online, is when therapists start to feel pressured to be able to
fix something, they may not be taking the space to be as calmly taking
attempts to clarify so their own roll down, which can lead to communication blocks
that might also be playing out in the system you're trying to talk to.
And it's very important the therapists can kind of emulate what Louise is doing in
this movie and dial back and go, let's not assume anybody is communicating clearly
with anybody and slow this down to use active listening skills and go, what
did you hear them say? Don't just respond, don't react to part of
it, don't throw more guests, stop trying to fight fire with guestline.
Yeah, and get yourself into a place where you can calmly encourage whoever it
is you're working, whether it's one person or several, to be able to
break down what are you hearing this person say? Repeat it back to them
and give them a chance to clarify before you say anything. And I think
a big and I think another big part of that ben that making assumptions based
on how long we've been together. I feel like that has a big aspect
that plays out in couples a lot of we've been together for twenty five years,
or we've been together for ten years, why don't you know what I
mean? And that creates its own problem of again going back to assumption making
and how no matter how long you're with someone, you never learn how to
read their mind. Yep. And that's the way they don't love you.
And it doesn't mean that they don't love you. It just means that we
can't guess what is in each other's minds. We just can't. We're never
going to be able to do that. And so in a lot of my
work when I work with couples is pushing up against those assumptions and all of
the assumption making that is happening. And people will go back to, but
we've been together for ten years or we've been together, It's like, exactly,
that doesn't mean you know every thought or how I feel, or what
it's like to be this human in this body right now in this moment,
or what is activating whatever is exactly activated? Exactly. There are lots of
things that people don't tell you about their life because they may not know themselves
until it just came screaming back into their consciousness right this second, exactly.
And the only way you can ever properly attune to that is asking what just
happened? Why is this causing this reaction for you? What's prompting that?
What are you feeling right now? Yeah, Like I encourage clients and I
model this as the therapist is to come at things like you said about Louise
with curiosity, like if something hits you wrong, instead of getting defensive,
can you go towards each other with curiosity? Hey, this is how that
sounded to me. Is that what you meant? Or me as a therapist,
I'll say, oh, okay, like I think I heard what you
said, but I'm not sure, or ooh that brought up a feeling in
me. I want to clarify what you meant, and not getting defensive,
because even as therapists we can get defensive sometimes kind of say things at us
about us, And in those moments I try to drop into We'll take a
deep breath, try to regulate myself and then I go, okay, can
you help me understand what that means? Or can you help me understand what
I'm missing? That's a great question. What am I not understanding? And
that really helps people feel like you're willing and you're open, and people will
really de escalate themselves when you respond that way too. They will. And
another technique that sometimes you can use that I definitely use sometimes is to unbalance
the situation by recognizing the emotional content underneath what someone is saying and leaning into
that even if the words don't match, Like if somebody is starting to look
really ang you're like, so I'm hearing you say you really fucking hate what
your spouse is doing, and're like, well, oh, I don't know.
I wouldn't say I really really hate it because what I'm what I'm doing
is having some paradoxical intention. I'm leaning into it, but I'm trying to
unbalance it by because there it is starting to come online. Their their fight
part, some part of their defense system, their army is activating, and
it wants to do what it does because it's detecting it's needed, kind of
like we see the military do throughout this whole movie, and that same thing
of it's prime to do that. You will see that when you talk with
couples or families, people will listen only so far when they feel their feelings
may be in danger. They don't trust they will be safe, so therefore
they brought with them weapons. Yeah, because we always have them with us.
And when you can sometimes detect that somebody's getting hot as a therapist,
you might want to pop that bubble because if you unbalance and push it a
little farther than they are. They may come back with their another part of
them and reregulate and go like, well, no, I don't fucking hate
my husband when he says that, like, oh yeah, Like I wouldn't
go that far. I was like, Oh, tell me more about that.
What does it mean to you to fucking hate your husband when he does
that? I don't feel that way. I love my husband, Like oh
yeah, they'll put it in more appropriate level terms, correct, because their
ego will grab hold of it again. Yeah, And it's important that you
help people realize how to do that because it causes instant physical deactivation when they
reregulate their body to get control. And it matters because once that warlike part
turns on, it's there to fuck stuff up. All right, Is there
anything else we'd like to say about communication before we move on? No,
all right, we'll take another break care and we'll be right back. All
right, So we're back, and we're going to talk about one of Ben's
favorite topics, existentialism. Yes, this movie has a strong existential theme.
I think Luis might be one of the most existentially tuned in characters that we've
seen in a film. And it's a powerful psychological modality that formed in philosophy,
and then in the sixties and seventies became a very large movement in psychology,
kind of running counter to the cognitive behavioral therapy movement that emerged a little
later. And I think why I feel so drawn to it is because existential
psychology and philosophy are focused on the truths that we all have base level fears
just from being alive. That we are all afraid of death, big scary
number one, because our prime directive is to stay alive, So we're afraid
naturally of everything that makes us closer to death. This is just logical,
right, Yes, we are all afraid of being out of control. We
are afraid of being alone, because humans are not solitary creatures. We are
pack animals, and predators tend to pick off who in the wild, weak
lengths, stragglers, outsiders. Those are the ones that don't fit in to
the group, right, So we fear being cast out, We fear the
unknown, We fear what we can't control. At the root of all fear
is loss of control, because that makes you closer to death. So if
you can understand that there are a great many things about being alive that are
fucking scary because they make you closer to dead. We also have to come
to grips with there's a great deal of things that no matter what we do,
we can't control m h an. Unfortunately, big scary Number one is
at the top of that list. Being alive does not in any way guarantee
you're going to continue being alive past this moment. And that's a lot,
and that gets to be more as people have more people that depend on them,
more people that they're responsible for, and it creates intense fear and desire
to control things past a point that is rational in human beings. When people
start dealing with existential level fears, they get strongly reactive. When someone thinks
someone's going to leave them, what kind of bonker shit do they do?
Yeah, people will act in ways where later they feel embarrassed or they were
like, that's so out of character for me, Like people like I always
tell people when I'm working with someone who's dealt with grief, you know that
you might act in a way that is very antithetical to yourself. You might
act in a way that's very unpredictable to yourself. You're you're emotionally, you'll
be all over the place. And it's because when we lose things or there's
the threat of losing something, it is that existential freak out that we have,
and we can really bebop all over the place internally during that process.
We can, And it can happen during times when you're facing death of a
loved one or pet. It can happen when The most common existential crisis we
get culturally familiar with here in the United States is the midlife crisis. You
are realizing half your life is over. You are not young anymore, and
sometimes people struggle to accept that and they try to cling to youth that they've
already lost. Bro, you are balding, your hair is gray. You
are fifty two years old. I just bought this corvette and it is a
convertible and I'm gonna pick up chicks. Yeah, and I might get an
earring. It's like, sir, you are married for the past twenty seven
years, and these chicks you are thinking about are your daughter's age. But
where the existential work becomes important with people is helping them accept the things they
cannot control or change and stop trying to fight against them, because you are
fighting something that cannot be fought. There is no person alive who has ever
won against father time. We will all die, there is no changing that.
None of us want to die tomorrow. And you will get older.
There's no way to stop that. Yeah, we all just got five seconds
older right now. Yeah, And Hannah, what's one of my favorite quotes
from a movie, Cosmo? One day You're gonna die? That's from Moonstruck,
which we still haven't done on this podcast. I'm gonna write it down.
I'm gonna write it down, right. But what existential psychology wants to
do the main goal of it really is helping people understand that if you fight
against those things, you will act outside of yourself. You'll act in ways
that aren't appropriate to your situation, and you'll struggle to fit into reality,
and you'll be perpetually anxious because your fight modes and your defense systems will be
active against things which you have no chance of winning against. Kind Of like,
this movie is a giant metaphor for your military is gonna shoot their tank
shells at a ship from outer space? You think they haven't thought about that,
bro, Yeah, they don't have tanks or weapons in their world.
That your magical shells that are ineffective against earth bound things will just puncture a
hole right in their ship because you want it to. Because I'm trained in
this and I can use it. That does not make it an effective solution,
Sir. Recognizing the amount of irrational control we try to place on these
things, like people who don't trust their partner, that think they're getting more
control over things by tracking their phone. I just need to look at I
just need the password to your phone. I just need to Oh God,
in modern technology, I just you need to turn your location on and I
need to be able to like this is how we make trust is me being
able to surveil you, which is incorrect. What that's actually doing is feeding
the irrational anxiety that somehow that gives you more control over your partner's behavior and
they can't possibly deceive you, which is so fucking false. They could just
leave their phone at the gym. You know what this is actually really making
me think about is when I used to do more family therapy work a few
years ago, and how many parents were spinning out around this dilemma that now
all their kids carry computers around in their pocket and then get life three sixty
and they're like, I want to read your texts and a lot of times
what I would, and it's part of that existential Then you're talking about ben
where it's like I have this thing available to me that allows me to surveil
my kids at all time, and so it makes sense that I use that.
It's a new tool that I take advantage of, and I would have
to tell those parents, well, I had two approaches. One is is
this making you feel better to know what they're up to at all times,
and then trying to make like an analog equivalent of that. This is like
if your parents pull like picked up the phone in another room when you're on
the landline and we're listening in, or they were reading your notes or your
diary, or or they were following you around in a car in the station
wagon as you you bopped around the neighborood with your friends, Like this doesn't
actually make you feel better. It creates this surveillance state energy that causes I
think, more anxiety and it degrades trust if you need all this evidence to
trust them when you don't trust them. But I get my parents do it.
It actually makes me think of two are we did a demo episode of
this podcast before we did it, and we did it on a Black Mirror
episode which was about this, right, like she puts a chip in her
kid and what that looks like and how is that good for us? Like
a lot of Black Miror episodes where they're like, is this actually good for
us? And this is part of that. Right, It's how our existentialism
and technology get all like fucked up together and create this like horrible anxiety provoking
soup, right, and so so how it works as an overarching theme when
you hear me talk about it, especially if you see me, because I
will talk about it is and we will be confronting it because it's brain breaking
and life changing. But it's really fucking hard and it takes quite a while.
But looking like to understand it, I can say it and it'll take
years. It took me years in grad school. Like we watched a brilliant
clip from UH that I heard Huckaby's. I'm gonna say I heard Hakkaby's has
got to be what you're talking about so long I haven't watched that since I've
been in the field. But Dustin Hoff been talking about metaphysics and the interconnectedness
of everything, and it's it's beautiful and reassuring. But he says, write
in that quote, I'm going to tell you about it. It's you're not
going to get it right away, but it'll help you. And it's the
same kind of thing that you're It's a tremendous ask to ask people to deal
with their shit, because what you're doing with existentialism is you're asking people to
accept that there are things beyond your control that you have never had control of,
that no human alive who has ever lived, has ever had one single
ounce of control yep over and you're not any different, And expecting yourself to
be different or have some control that no one has ever had is irrational,
and that's going to make you perpetually anxious as you fight against something that you're
underlying, collective unconscious, the database you were born with basically your genetic knowledge
knows is false, which means there's a constant war inside of you telling you,
no matter what you do, you're not safe. And it's important that
what you do with people is you help them accept the big truths. The
world is not safe, the world has never been safe. You will die,
and all the people that you are close to. Your relationships with them
are precious because they're impermanent. And you know that what we can do is
refocus our attention on to rational things we actually can influence. We can make
it less likely we die, we can make it less likely our children die,
We can make it less likely bad things happen, but we can't prevent
them. But we really like to live in a fantasy that we can we
do because then we're in control. Yep. And that's where Louise is a
character is so powerful, and why the movie punches the way it does is
because we get to see that she's going to have a child, and her
child is going to die young, and there's nothing she can do. And
she finds acceptance of this because she sits in that egos thing, it's in
between the rational and the emotional, and she gains this existential idea that life
has never begun or stopped. Time has never begun or stopped. It just
is. And if once she embraces that idea, she stops fighting against the
things that she can't control, and she embraces every moment that she has.
And there's beauty in that, and there's an opportunity to live without regret.
And as I was thinking about this movie hit me hard. It's kind of
pissed off for a little while. My part's got pretty talkative because seeing kids
die in movies is hard for anybody that's a parent, and seeing as I
have two kids, watching that was not the easiest experience for me. But
watching this had me thinking about I also own a dog, and I will
outlive that dog. Yeah, And I love that dog and she loves me.
But I am choosing to have this dog knowing I will have to go
through the pain of losing her and that I get no say in when that
is. I hope she makes it to seventeen years old and dies happy in
her sleep. But I'll be in young man still yep, not quite at
the age that I'll be uh needing a Corvette and a new wife. But
understand close, walking real slow past those car dealerships like hmmm yeah yeah,
hair, skin little thin on top a little bit in some paces, so
we're getting close, but recognizing the power you see in Louise, Except she
knows this fate, she sees it, and when she does, she chooses
to have a child anyway, to have the marriage that she knows is going
to fail, and to follow through with these experiences and live every single moment
of it, embracing each emotion as it comes without trying to control it.
And you see a piece on her that Ian can't half. Yeah, Ian
struggles to get in control of it. Seems to be the subtext. He
can't rationalize with it. There is no winning, there's no getting in.
And she knows this. And we see the difference in what happens to their
mental state. And it's of course an idealized version because she's had some kind
of divine intervention to reach it, to be this enlightened person. But too
many people fight against the concept of reach a point in your life where you
get comfortable with being uncomfortable and focus on being more comfortable as the standard,
not completely comfortable, not in control of everything, but in control and acceptance
like you do every time you drive a car. Driving a car is the
most dangerous fucking thing any of us do, for the most part, unless
you're a first responder, military, or somebody does something inherently more dangerous than
that. Driving car is pretty fucking dangerous, But you don't think about that
every time you get in your car and are jamming out to your tunes driving
down the highway. You trust to yourself to be able to respond to whatever
you see on the road and that you can reasonably protect yourself, and you
just accept that that's the only way you have to get there, so you
don't think about how deadly it is every time, other than to stay a
tuned. But the truth is, you could fucking die on your way to
anywhere anytime you get in that car, and you have no control if somebody
hops, a median, does something you don't expect the one second your attention
is broken or just rear ends you out of nowhere, you could die life
over and it's scary as hell. But if you focus on that, you
get so anxious you don't operate the vehicle correctly and make it more likely that
you get in an accident and less likely you're allowing your body to perceive what's
going on and empower yourself to respond. And those are hard truths. Yeah,
I mean, something I feel like I'm always working on with clients is
understanding that so much of life is a gamble and we're making educated risks,
hopefully, and that because I think also the talk like there's a lot of
that could be arguably toxic about this. And I think part of it too
is when things don't work out or go wrong, we make that reverse engineering
of this idea, right, which is I must have done something wrong,
something's wrong with me. I should be able to control it, and if
it's not working out, it's because I'm fucking up. And this is where
this really eats us too, this lie we're all buying and selling, which
is that if I'm doing the right stuff, if I'm smart enough, if
I'm dedicated enough, of especially in American culture, you know where you see
this idea that if you're meditating and you're doing ice plunge baths in the morning,
and you're walking outside and regulating your getting invitamin dep like you know what
I mean, Like people will have like if you just all these regiments,
then nothing bat will ever happen to you. You'll never get old, you'll
never be lonely, you'll always have sex, and you'll never die. There
is this like when I hear Elon Musk and guys like him talking, I'm
like, you really think that you'll never die? You think you're gonna outrun
and out smart death and you ain't and Nope, that's gonna be rough stuff,
buddy. Maybe we'll freeze your head like Walt Disney. I don't know,
but this, yeah, it eats people up right, So when things
don't work out, when they just have bad luck, bad circumstances, and
then they come to therapy and they're like, what am I doing wrong?
What's wrong with me? And then I have to do more of this work
you've been talking about, Ben, which is have you done what's in your
control? Have you been trying? Have you been doing this? Have you
been listening to your values and your sense of self and your authentic self?
And if you you are doing everything that you legit have control over. And
sometimes I have to help people understand what's actually in their control and what's not,
because we also love to pretend like things are in our control that aren't
most definitely, and then when you if you're doing that, we have to
practice sitting in the discomfort of uncertainty and that sometimes things just don't work out
and we can be typically okay, it can still be painful. Things can
usially go to our heartbroken, things can school go wrong. We'll go through
grief and we can work through it. We might be forever changed, but
we can still find a version of life that has still has value and beauty
and worth right, and it's just all this stuff like Well, I love
extensions too because it acts us to expand our minds and to I like the
idea of committing to the chaos in a way and letting go if it's also
like letting go of what we can't control. It's like banging your head against
a wall, and people also get stuck doing that. I have to just
make that work. If I can just make that work, if I can
get that person to respond, if I can have a kid or have that
body, then everything will fall into place and people will stay stuck at that
wall forever their whole life. And is that the quality of life that they
want to live? Because where you can pull an existentialism into therapeutic work is
helping people find their values and their meaning. What is meaningful to you?
And is your day to day behavior connected to your values. Something I like
to do two people it does feel like I'm doing it to them, is
do something called a values questionnaire, And one part of it is you're asked
to rate your ideal values, so prioritize them. I think from like one
to ten, I'll be like family, work, physical health, recreation,
stuff like that. And then and this is where it gets you, is
you flip it over and it's like, okay, and I'll think about the
last two weeks and how you spend your time, and now I want you
to prioritize your values, your real values based on how you spend your time.
And that people will come back and I'll be like fuck, yep,
fuck, And I'll be like, yeah, so you're saying you value family,
but you're spending eighty hours a week at the office, so you're actually
valuing work. And so because Louise has this benefit of like time being like
a circle for her, she's able to be more conscious of her values right
of Like, I really want to value my family, my daughter, and
so I'm going to make sure that my day to day behavior matches that value
and I'm going to be present about that and I'm going to really be there.
And we don't do that enough societally. I'm sure I don't. I'm
sure if I do this to myself, I would have to have a hard
look at the mirror and be like, well, shit, you know,
and like you're saying, ben, A lot of times when people feel uncomfortable
or anxious or at odds with themselves, or though they don't feel like they're
in their lives correctly, a lot of times if I do something like that
with them, there is a mismatch between their ideal values and their actual values.
And sometimes people don't even know what their values really are. They haven't
even asked out of themselves, and so then it becomes that question of okay,
like what do you want to have meaning to you? If you want
it to be social justice? Are you doing anything that goes towards social justice?
Let's try to do that because it also helps take these like these bigger
abstract ideas and make them more concrete, actionable things that you can do.
And that's where you do have control of your life, and that's where you
can find groundedness and satisfaction and fulfillment instead of getting hung up on the things
that are outside of your control. But we love to get up hung up
on the things so side it is scary. I think we just just get
scared, and we don't want to be scared, and so we like to
pretend that we can control. I mean, this makes me think of two
that podcast we did like twenty twenty it was peak COVID times when we were
a guest on that other podcast and he asked us questions about why are people
so reactive about masks and COVID And we had that long conversation about how this
is bring up a lot of existential fear for people. Yes, this is
something we're all going through that we can't control, and it's difficult for them
to accept it's even real and how deadly and scary it is that they're literally
loading bodies on refrigeration trucks because the morgue is full, and why are people
engaging in so much denihalism around it? Because yeah, fear, because it's
fear, and it's uncomfortable, and it makes me confront the fact that I
am closer to death than I had accepted. And that's the critical component of
it is. And what the philosophy and the use in therapy preaches is you
got to get comfortable with that. You got to get comfortable with it,
and it's okay to be uncomfortable with it, but accepting that you can die
tomorrow and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, and kind
of you know, if you're the Chris Traggers of the world from Parks and
reg he's such a person a microchip. He's a microchip. I even get
dust in it when he's that person, right, and he goes to therapy
because he starts spinning the fuck out because he's spiraling, and he was a
lovable version of that. But is his doctor Richard Nigar whatever, he always
says his full name. He does always say his full name. Yes,
my therapist, doctor Richard Nigar's head. I go three times a week.
He's even trying to Oh. That's also where people will do this control thing,
is they'll try to do the control stuff on therapy. And I will
tell people, you can't crush therapy so hard that you speed this process up.
You cannot. Sorry to disappoint you, but that, more than anything,
will probably push you over an edge than if you just surrender to the
process. A lot of what we're talking about is surrendering, right, surrendering
to the process of therapy, surrendering to the universe. That's why people people
don't love AA because there's that God element to it, which I get And
the point though of it is you're supposed to humble yourself before something bigger than
yourself and accept that existential idea of you're out of control. There's something bigger
than you. Your addiction's bigger than you. Check your ego. You can't
control it like you think you can, and continuing to do so will make
it worse. Yeah, you can't just go to a bar and think you
can be fine and have a drink. You can't just you cannot have one
drink. It has not worked. The alcohol affects you differently or the substance,
and it's you can't just have one. You can't and it's tremendously difficult
to accept. Dennis Leary's No Cure for Cancer was such a brilliant comedy,
specially he did in the nineties, and it covered this in one of the
sections where he was talking about kind of this idea in his antagonistic way.
But if talking about you know, I remember there's this guy who was on
the cover of all these magazines and talking about jogging and how important it is
to jog and how good it is for your health to be running and jogging,
and you know, when he fucking died when he was forty two years
old. And you know what he was doing when he died. Who's fucking
jogging? I'm not dead yet, lights up his cigarettes and smokes Yah.
Yeah, Dennisliero with lean over his body smoke a cigarette in a Hamburger walk
off. Correct, at least that version of him streets you know, probably
not that now, but when in that routine he was talking about, you
know what I love. I love living in New York because you have to
accept that death is around every corner as you're walking down the street. To
live in this city, you have to accept that at any point in time,
a poodle could be dropped off a forty seven store building and land on
you in Bam dead. What a way to die. But that's the truth.
That's the randomness of the world that this is trying to preach acceptance of
is you can't control that. You can get diseases for no fucking reason.
You can be the healthiest person in your friend group and be the sickest for
no fucking reason, and it's not fair. And understanding what I love is
kind of how how she addresses that with her child is there are things that
are unstoppable. There are things that we can't change. Opposed to the messaging
we tend to give kindergarteners, which is everybody gets a turn, everybody gets
to stand at the front of the line. If you do the right things,
like you were saying, good things will happen to you. Things will
work out if you just do everything right. That's the Western lesson we teach,
and it's false. You can do everything right and still it not work.
What are your thoughts, Hannah about Ian going away basically like engaging in
avoidance with their daughter once he knows. I think that his reaction makes sense
in terms of that immediate first reaction that you might have, but that what
I think really breaks my heart is when is when the daughter, When Hannah,
the daughter says, he looks at me different. It doesn't feel the
same to be around daddy anymore. And how he isn't able to look at
it with calm curiosity the way that Louise has. And maybe a part of
that is because she again had that divine intervention and that's a part of why
she has a better understanding. But I feel like with Ian his response,
he's not able to accept that there isn't anything that he can do, and
that there isn't and that and that it was still made sense to have a
child anyway in order to have the experience of being parents in order. But
also in a lot of ways, it feels like for Louise all of the
different because of the experience that she has, that I don't know that she
could ever not have that child after essentially experiencing being a mother but then also
experiencing grief at the same time. So again that's a little bit of the
movie magic of the film. But I feel like with Ian, him leaving
is really him not being able to accept what's going on and what's going to
happen to his daughter. Yeah, and also too, it's a good case
for a flexible way of a flexible mind in a rigid mind. You know.
I think when I work with people who identify as pragmatic, and they
usually identify as such, they tell me who they are. People who are
very logical, yes, even though no one is only logical. And when
I work with people who are more pragmatic, maybe more scientific minded, like
Ian, they can really struggle with this idea of radical acceptance, this idea
of letting go this idea of sitting on uncertainty. There is a lot of
fear there, which I think is ironic because they're hiding behind sometimes hyper pragmatism
out of as an emotional response to their existential dread, angst fear. Of
course, if he limits his contact with her, he won't be as close,
so that when she goes it won't hurt as bad. But the regret
he feel later will punish him for eternity. He will haunt him for not
taking the time that he could have taken knowing that the time is limited.
Yeah, it's this Also the thing of life where which we talked about four
with Midwesternism is this idea that we only can feel the good things and we
can avoid the bad things, and so much of life and this existential acceptance
acceptance is that in order to feel really beautiful, profound things, we have
to be open to feeling hard things, things that hurt. And like you're
saying, Ben, like why do people keep getting pets? Because there's the
positivity, a love, a comfort, all these benefits to having a pet
that outweighs the disadvantage the negatives of losing them one day, the grief of
that that's why people when they lose a pet, they'll go get another pet,
even if it really hurts them. And because I think there's some of
that that we can acknowledge that the pain is worth it, the juice is
worth a squeeze, you know what I mean. And every day without a
dog is worse than a day with a dog, and that I think that's
what Louise accepts, right, is that the beauty and the benefits of experiencing
our child period is worth the pain and sadness and grief of losing her early.
And my assumption is is that Ian couldn't get there mentally, which is
awful, and yeah, that will haunt him forever, but on that perky
note, will take a break here and be at back with treatment. All
right, So whose life are we saving in this movie, guys, Luis
doesn't need saving. No, Luise has the I mean, like the ability
to see everything like that. I would love to talk to her as a
therapist, just to pick that brain. Absolutely, I mean, I think
she should be a therapist. She comes at it like a therapist, Like
the way we've been describing her is therapy esque, like being the middle man
between the military and the aliens, her able to approach things with curiosity and
flexibility, expanding her mind. Being flexible like these are all traits. Being
empathetic are all traits that therapists ideally has. And I guess I'll go because
I'm about to launch on it is looking at for her even though she's kind
of gotten this. I'm gonna explain what I think metaphorically has happened, which
is she's essentially gotten work through a logo therapy lens, which has gotten of
co opted by a great many other things. As logo therapy is now I
don't know, ninety years old and getting close to one hundred. It was
created by Victor Franco who was a psychiatrist from Germany in the thirties, and
he went to Auschwitz and he survived. And even though we all learned about
the Holocaust, I don't think processing the numbers that of six million people that
went to those concentration camps, only hundreds of thousands survived, and that's stunning
odds against survival. Tragic horribleness happened. But what he realized through his experience
and writes about is that the people that survived, the people that didn't give
up. Were the ones that held on to the things that brought meaning to
their life and held on to those things, like he kept being the doctor.
He had no medical tools, no medicine to give, but he kept
up that role because it was meaningful to him, even in odds of tremendous
human awfulness, and that kept him going enough that he survived. And he
saw other people do the same. Like people that would make stone soup,
they kept being the cook or became the cook, or people that became the
cobbler. Even with leaves, they made shoes for people, even if they
could only make one pair a week. They did something, and later from
that experience starting to digest other philosophy and learning that suffering and pain are inextricable
components of the human experience. They are part of being alive. Pain teaches
us what to not do or what to keep doing because it hurts to lose,
and we need them and people especially this we are all three Midwesterners from
different corners of the Midwest that have collided. Here is this Midwestern idea that
everything's fine and that to be accepted, I must be fine or I am
not accepted, and no one will talk to me because I'll tell them the
truth and they're not here for that, like whoop, oh oh oh,
nope, here my mom calling me gotta go. And understanding that what Louise
is demonstrating masterfully by Amy Adams is a piece with that that I cannot avoid
the suffering. I cannot have the experience without also having the pain. But
if I don't have the experience, I don't have an a reason to be.
And I must have a reason to be, and I accept that it
comes with that, and I'm going to make the most out of my suffering
and I'm going to make meaning of it. And then it's kind of heavily
imply that she's through her pain, has found an after. And one of
the things that I think part of the existentialism and logo therapy would work on
with people is understanding you don't know the version of you that exists as an
after yet. Yeah, but it will emerge if it has to, but
it won't be without the pain. You can't not have it. But what
the meaning of life comes from is what we do with the pain that we've
encountered and how we make meaning of it. Mothers against drunk driving is one
of the I think the example given in his book man searched her meaning that
a mother lost a child to a drunk driver and created an entire campaign that
got shit Done've got the be see lowered from one to point oh eight.
That led to significant changes in legislation and work, and none of that was
ever going to bring back her child. But she also found meaning and connection
and the ability to be seen and heard and connected to other people who had
similar laws, so she didn't feel so alone and not so powerless, and
she took her pain and turned it into something to try to do something better.
And I think when we look at Louise, to me, I interpreted
this scene about where they asked her really specifically if she was pregnant before she
got on that ship, that to me, it was the undertext that the
cost of her communing with these aliens was that her child would contract this disease.
Oh. To me, that was the she's like a christ like figure,
so that her sacrifice is going to be necessary. And I think that
just my interpretation. I don't know if it's right, but that's the way
it struck to me that there was some purpose in that being said. Right
in that second with then flashbacks of the child coming up. Not long after,
there was some invocation that the impact of her doing this and saving the
human race, this was the cost, and she was accepting it, and
she's making peace with the amount of suffering that she's going through by saving humanity
that she will never meet three thousand years from now. It doesn't matter how
we find that contextualization, but when we can do something with our pain that
makes us feel like we can go on with some reason to be going on
instead of what many parents, myself included, struggle with is I don't know
what I'd do if I lost my child. My life would cease to exist.
But that's the truth of it, is just this version. I don't
want that version, but I don't get a choice. And that's a lot,
but it's true. But our prime directive to survive will keep you going,
and you will through pain if you can embrace that suffering and face your
losses, make something of them, and it will create a healthier post version
of you, no matter what that loss is. And that's what Victor Frankel's
book is all about, of accepting that. And then it's what I think
Louis went through in this story is finding a way to make peace and meaning
of the suffering. She has learned through connecting that time is a circle.
There's always been pain, there will always be pain, there will always be
death. But I can do something to affect the world being a better place
through my pain, and that's powerful, Hannah. You want to go sure.
So I really thought about working with Ian and Louise, and the way
that I thought about working with them was after the fact that Ian couldn't be
with Louise anymore, based on the decision that she made, which is what
we're assuming happened, Yeah, which I think is a pretty accurate assumption.
And so a part of what I wanted to talk about is how important it
is as parents to still have good communication even if you aren't still with the
other partner, and how important it can be to still engage in couple's therapy
in order to help support co parenting together. And it's also a way where
they can do that with each other and not in front of the children.
You can, like, family therapy is still something you can do even when
the two partners aren't together, and couple's therapy is something you can still do
when even though you're not going to be together because we still have to communicate
with each other and we still have to engage with each other. And even
though people say, oh, I only have to deal with them for ten
more years or five more years, No, you have to deal with that
person for the rest of your life in some context, because you have children
together, and the way it goes, kids outlive their parents. That's the
hope, that's the expectation that we all have, and ideally you'll both be
in the kid's life forever, exactly at their wedding or their graduations, or
we have kids, when grandkids get involved like all that stuff or whatever they
do. Right, So, my parents had an effect on my first marriage
even though they were together based on how they can't couldn't be in the same
room together, and they at that time weren't talking, and that still had
effect. So guess what, you still had to deal with each other.
And I can't help but think about how important it would have been for Louise
and Ian to be able to communicate more effectively about what was happening, not
only to help support them both expressing thoughts and feelings about what was going to
happen to their daughter, but also so they can communicate what they want the
rest of their daughter's life to look like together. Yeah, which is vital
because that daughter is going to need both of you. Her relationship is with
an attachment, her primary attachments are to both of you, even if you're
no longer attached to each other exactly. And so really wanting to make sure
that I helped support communication between these two people, and a part of the
way I would do that is by using couple's dialogue, which is something I
believe I have referred to in the past but haven't really discussed further than saying
couple's dialogue. Of that is because it's something that has to be taught.
It isn't necessarily something that I can just tell you how to do it on
the podcast and then you can just do it. Because, let me tell
you what talking about communication in this episode today, even when I communicate it
very clearly and directly, people still go home and do it wrong. Oh
God, and every time, every time, every time, they do it
wrong. And so that's a part of the reason why I don't usually go
into a lot of detail about it, because it is really is something that
has to be taught. But I wanted to talk about it a little bit
today. So the couple's dialogue has a couple of really big tenets, and
the first one is surprise surprise, mirroring each other, and that literally means
saying back, So what I heard you say is you want to take the
kids to the zoo? Is that right? Yes, that is right.
I heard you say that you wanted to take the kids to the zoo.
That is what I said. So that's and that's just the first step.
And a big part of that first step is allowing again that space that each
partner needs to really hear and understand the person who is across from you,
and how important it is to be able to really hear someone without the without
all of the big emotions and escalation that can happen. So something else that's
important about the couple's dialogue is you can't do it when you're pissed, because
guess what trying to say what I heard you say is, And so it
sounds like becomes completely loaded and it's a complete and utter mess. So something
else about this is that you have to be in a place where you can
actually hear each other if you're both pissed. You have to take a ten
minute break before you can come back and even try to use this skill.
So the first step is mirroring. The second step is validating validating, and
validation is so this is what it sounds like to me or or you,
I would imagine you might be feeling this way, or this is the way,
this is what it sounds like you might feel like, I get that
you feel that way, and I understand that you get that way. And
even though and you can say that you understand a person and still disagree with
them, validating someone does not automatically say that you agree with what they're saying.
But that is a lot of times how people take validation, and it
is one thousand percent where it gets fucked up. Always, always, that's
where it gets fucked up because people will I heard you say this, but
you're on bullshit and you're wrong because you and you just like sit there doesn't
even matter, what does it matter? The amount of times that I have
had this skill thrown back in my face is too many fucking times to count.
People who are not interested in being uncomfortable, people who don't think it's
in important to listen to their partner, all for all different reasons. So
I've been through it with teaching people, this couple's dialogue that has three steps.
The third step is empathizing. And what that means is I understand that
you're going through this because blah blah blah, because I've there, I've had
that same experience or what I'm hearing I'm trying to remember exactly. I feel
like my brain is not helping me. Well, if you wuyse google Amago
dialogue, you can find a template that walks you through this like a handout,
and if you put it into YouTube, you can find couples, like
therapist couples practicing it with each other. Yes, so yeah, like the
mirroring, the validating, and then empathizing. Right, it's great, Hannah.
What I hear you saying right right? Exactly see what I did there?
Yes, it is. I hear you saying that it's very important for
couples to recognize this three step process at which they can fuck up any of
one of the three steps, and if they fuck them up, the fight's
going to get worse, guaranteed, because step one is making sure you're saying
this is what I heard you say before I open my big fat mouth and
react to it. Am I reacting to the correct interpretation? Is that what
you said? And it offers them an opportunity to do what clarify? Ooh,
rephrase and clarify so that the point of what was intended is actually validated.
No, communicated, communicated validating. Yeah, my brain is like,
the validation is important because we need to communicate. I understand that what you're
feeling is real, yes, and that that is not coming from nowhere,
and you're not just wrong. This one is a particularly sensitive point in couples
that I see that drives me up a fucking wall hashtag thanks mom and dad,
because Midwestern parents who are boomers don't apologize for a goddamn thing, and
have all of us, being millennials, have all had parents that told us
I'm sorry you feel that way oooo. And that's not validating. No,
it's not. It sounds like it could be, but it is not,
Ye validating. It is I'm sorry you have a problem. Yes, what
would validating look like, Hannah, Validating would look like, I understand that
I've had a time when that happened to me. It can feel, it
can be frustrating to walk in and see a mess like that exactly. How
on the other two are empathy? This sord gets tricky, right, It's
like, yeah, the validating is like I get that you feel that exactly.
So validation is very much just saying I understand that. I understand that
this is what you're feeling, and that's what you're communicating to me, and
it's real for you, and it's real and it's valid. And then the
empathizing is you take that's the only part in a mago that from what I
understand, where you take a mild leap and you're like it sounds like you
feel and then you make a judgment about like you infer and then you also
ask for clarification like it sounds like that would make you feel really angry,
or like I can you know, and making a leap an empathetic leap,
and then you allow them opportunities to say like does that sound right? Do
it? Am I understanding you exactly? Because I definitely that part. People
will make that leap, and then they have to be okay with the other
person saying no, yep, they have to be okay with the other person
saying no, that's actually not how not how I was feeling. The empathizing.
Usually the way that it goes is you have to pick three feelings that
you think that your partner is feeling. Now, most of the time they've
already said how they're feeling in one way or another. So again that's why
taking that leap actually shouldn't be that big of a leap, because most of
the time, if you're doing active listening and mirroring back what they're saying,
which is indicating that you're understanding what they're saying, is that you are I
just lost my train of thought. You are tuned. You are tuned in
to the conversation exactly exactly, you are into the conversation. So yeah,
so I'm going to stab me, I'm uned that. So that's what that's
what couple's dialogue is. I would suggest that you look it up, but
also just know that the thing that we need most as humans is to be
seen and heard, and that's really what we need. And as much as
the couple's dialogue takes time to go through, this is it's not a five
minute conversation. Oh god, no, it's not. It's like four sessions.
Yeaest exactly. It takes some time to get through all of the stages,
and what it really helps show is how important listening to your partner is,
understanding what your partner is going through and also being able to identify feelings
that they might be feeling to help them feel seen and heard. And so
that's what I would want to do with Ian and Louise. Yeah, And
I think the only follow up on a give to that is the way of
kind of boiled this down from Hannah's Imago book really helped me a lot with
couples therapy back when we all worked in the same practice so long ago.
Is like learning this and going, why the fuck don't we just start with
this? Always an active listening technique of the time. Why is this not
because anything else of why are we here? Why have this fucking asshole cheated
on me? Or that she did blah blah blah. She's always bitching.
We never and you will go nowhere relutigating fights. But what is very important
to understand, and I don't think Louise got it. I think this is
like a kind of a flaw for her, is that I think she thought
telling him would enlighten him the same way she's been enlightened while ignoring that she
had a spiritual awakening, that a divine encounter, basically a celestial encounter.
If you will absolutely that her brain's different now, her brain's different, and
his can never be the same. And it's not going to be the same
for him, even if he can think about it doesn't work that way.
Yeah, and what hurt people want to know? There are two things,
and one of them she could not communicate to him, and I think that's
why he left. There are two things hurt people want to know. One,
what hurts me is understood thing. Two, what's hurting me will stop
hurting me. That's it, And that's the point of that couple's dialogue.
You must hear them so that they feel like they're communicating the right thing.
You must validate them so that you understand that is that it is real and
whatever you did actually impacted them, regardless of what your fucking opinion of is
that that is irrelevant. Well requires a lot of ego death to do with
this kind of active listening. Sure does. If the checker yougo at the
door. That's what I love about a Mogo dialogue. It makes people have
to really swallow it, which they need to. And thing three is that
your feelings are something that I can perceive and understand and connect to, which
allows me to enable the caring parts of me that care for you to turn
back on. So I stop fucking hurting you in a way that you'll be
convinced by. So we meet condition one and condition two, which makes a
MAGO brilliant. Absolutely, And just to clarify for everyone, Ben is explaining
this. He's not explaining this to me. He's explaining this to everyone else
because we all know that we hear, as we've been talking about all fucking
episode, is that we all hear things differently, and sometimes I'll say something
a certain way, but sometimes you might hear it better through the way that
Ben says it. So he's not explaining this to me, He's explaining this
for everyone. Yeah, And I just want to point that out. I
appreciate that, Brittany, are you, but I don't like to hear just
joking. Are you the one that wrote that review? You bet your ass.
I'm just hooking up iPhones still peple iPhones and reviews. So I'm going
to go a different angle because I happen to just randomly work with a few
people that are in cancer remission, and so we're doing a lot of processing
now that they feel safe sing back. And so what I want to talk
about is the perspective of when you've gone through something like that, how support
systems around you engage with you, and how for Louise's daughter Hannah, and
I assume Louise can do this for her because Louise has reached this existential radical
acceptance place but Ian couldn't get there. Is how when someone we love becomes
sick, whatever that means mentally sick, physically sick, how we sometimes as
the person who loves them, have a really hard time getting out of our
own way and being actual support for them that is helpful. I think the
thing that I hear a lot from people that I work with or that I
know who's gone through something hard like that is how they will pull away sometimes
from their loved ones because their loved ones are getting so caught up and how
sad they are that they're loved that the that the person is sick, that
they are not Intentionally I can give people mone fit out prioritizing their sadness and
their grief and their distress over how they're showing up for the person who's actually
sick. And how a lot of times people will tell me, you know,
I am resentful that when I was going through the hardest time of my
life, I couldn't go to my mom because she'd get so upset about what
was going on with me that I ended up comforting her. And how when
if you really want to show up in a supportive way for someone in your
life who's struggling, you need to check your emotional stuff before you are with
them. So and we see this with the in right, like he can't
get out of his own way to show up for his daughter exactly, and
he is prioritizing his feeling over being a good story, over being a good
father to her. And people don't necessarily go that extreme with it, where
you like totally ostracize your kid or your loved one. But they'll do the
other versions, right, which is micromanaging them, being all over them,
do a lot of reassurance seeking, calling them a lot, crying all over
them. You know, all these things that make the person who actually needs
care pull away, not feel supported, and like I said, like actually
feel like they have to take care of the emotional well being while they're sick
of these people in their lives and almost feel like they have to apologize for
what they're putting the people in their life through, so they can't even sick.
Yeah, so they can't even focus on their own healing. And then
they will pull away sometimes from their loved ones, which I'm sure then causes
a train reaction where the loved one is like what and like it's needier or
whatever, And so how much that people will engage in their own reassurance seeking
And I would say this too, like when I worked in more intense of
settings and I'd work with teenagers or kids who had been to the hospital,
like maybe they eat an attempted suicide at some point, and their parents would
make it about them, and not in a shitty way, not in an
intentionally asshole way most of the time, not where they're like how could you?
I mean, I have heard parents say how could you do that to
me? Which is one of the worst things you can say when your kid
has attempted correct suicide only exists when people feel so bad that death seems the
only acceptable alternative to being only available, not acceptably only available alternative to stop
being a paint. And so the amount of times that I have watched parents
specifically, you know, make it about them. I can't. I can't
deal with that. How could you do that to us? Family? Like
I can't like there, or even when they're trying to show up, well,
their feelings are so all over the place, and the kid picks up
on that, they're like, I don't want to talk about that stuff because
I know my mom is going to freak out, or I know my mom's
going to get up so upset, or my dad is going to get up
so upset that I can't talk to them about that, you know. And
so like ironically, the people that you're trying to show up for will pull
away from you because you have shown that you are not a safe place.
So when I do this work with people, what I would do with parents
specifically after like a Kidden crisis, One, I would acknowledge you're going through
something traumatic or you have gone through something traumatic by loving someone that's going through
this or has gone through this. So get your own therapy for fuck's sake,
and have a place where you can just barf all your feelings out if
nothing else, don't make it your kid's problem or your loved one's problem.
About your feelings, talk to a friend, talk to your therapist, talk
to somebody else. Don't talk to them about them. That's not fair.
And you know, when you show up with them for them, ask them
what they need. Because people have different responses to this, like I want
you to be talking about how I'm doing. I want you to be checking
it with me. I want you to be like very emotionally tuned in,
and I want you to be like coddling me or like, you know,
babying me. Some people do like that, you know, they want to
be taking care of in that way. And a lot of times, though,
especially when it's more the mental health part of it, they'll say,
I want my parents to treat me like I'm fucking normal, Like I want
people in my life to not be weird with me because I already feel weird.
I'm already going through something that makes me feel very othered and very outside
of normal life. I want people to treat me like I'm normal. And
so when so, anyone who's listening who might be going through this kind of
situation, like, yeah, get the help, get your own help,
and be be aware of where your emotions is coming up and where you're engaging
in things with your kids or whoever because you want to be comforted about how
upset you are about how they're doing. Am I calling them every day multiple
times a day because I genuinely think that helps them feel better and support it?
Or am I calling multiple times a day because I'm so anxious and upset
about how they are that I need them to continuously reassure me that they're okay.
And those are two different things, and one is very egocentric, unfortunately,
any other one is actually helpful. And so, like I said,
Ian unfortunately is choosing the more egocentric route because he's not working on his stuff,
yep. And Louise, because she has had this divine intervention, is
able to show up and not engage in reassurancy as we I mean, we
don't really see a lot of it, but she's not doing that, you
know, even in the way that she talks to her daughter, like she's
trying to be thoughtful and age appropriate. But yeah, So that's where I
wanted to go with treatment, just in how I wish people would be and
what I hear firsthand from people who have gone through tough times like this,
like how they want their support system to show up for them. So that
was my thought for treatment, Like if I have to work with Ian,
for example, how I might go with that. So we will take one
last break here and be back for final thoughts. I feel like, Hannah,
you should go asked because this is your one of your favorite movies.
Do you want to go, Ben? Or do you want me to go?
Maybe we'll do a sandwich. I'll go go for it. So I've
only seen this movie I think three times, which if I like a movie,
that's not a lot of times for me to have watched a movie.
I'm the kind of person Hannah as as well. Ben, I think you're
like this too. Actually, we're all people that if we like a movie,
we'll watch it, will burn the tape longer times. I don't know.
Absolutely yeah, And so I've only seen this movie three times because it's
a heavier topic. But I will say every time I turn that sucker on,
I'm like, hell fucking yet one. I love alien movies. You
gotta you got a movie about an alien, and then you gotta like a
movie about a crack team coming together to solve something. I'm in on either
of those ideas. I love the although linguistic thoughts, how much it makes
you think about like communication, like we've already talked about to death. And
I love the look of it. I feel like this movie was Denis practice
for Doune. Absolutely, like you can see Dune yes, and like specifically
the planet that Paul trades is from on screen, yes, with the coloring
of like the planets and things like that. Like this was definitely a practice
run for Noon. And I love it is where House of Tread's is from.
Yeah, Caladan. Louis said it was Montana. I think it is
Caladan, which I would be shocked if that was right, but but yeah,
So I love and I love Deni Vella note like I love Blade Runner
twenty forty nine. I love the Dune movies. I won't ever watch Prisoners
again because it makes me feel physically sick when I saw the first time because
of the subject matter. But I've everything I've seen of his I've loved.
I'm sure I'll watch this movie again. I love the ideas about it.
I'm very big into like an idea of like radical acceptance and the chaos of
the world and giving into the chaos of the universe and stuff like that,
and I try to practice that for myself, to varying degrees of success.
So I'll define watch this movie again. I think it's beautiful. I love
the music, I love pretty much everything about it. I guess that's me
because I'm getting pointed at. So this movie I thought was an incredible film,
and I see why it got so many reviews. It was a difficult
movie for me to watch, being a cancer survivor myself and realizing that fears
one A and one B for me are being played out on the screen,
which is losing a child or losing myself and leaving said children behind. That
ties into the existentialism. But beyond noticing that, I got some pretty significant
parts activation from this movie and was a little bit bitchy. Sorry, you're
forgiven. Seriously, you guys fucking kid dying in the first minute of the
film. Are you fucking kidding me? It was like, really, okay,
But the beauty of the film and the way it addresses some of the
things and makes us confront the shit that we ask people to confront every single
day is important to tune into how uncomfortable it is and how impactful it is
and how much work it really is to grapple with these in escapable truths of
the world, that your life is impermanent, you do not have control,
things can change and be taken from you, and you would have to form
an existence beyond that and an understanding. And it's really hard. And while
walking around being angry that I was subjected to this, but also immensely impressed
with the beauty of the film, I was thinking, like taking my dog
out in the yard, that I realized I faced the same choice by choosing
to own this dog that she chose with a child. And while dog is
not a child, not equivalent, it is still the same thing in concept
of I will outlive this dog, but I am choosing to have her anyway,
to enjoy her life, knowing I will endure the pain when she goes,
and there's beauty in that that I am choosing to accept the happiness.
It's something we all have to do. And we watched watch Louise do on
a screen in front of us of accepting the consequence of doing all that she
did, and why it had to be done, and what that would cost
her what she did it anyway, and found a beauty in its powerful film.
I don't know that I will volunteer to watch it multiple times, but
I respect the hell out of it and see why it is kind of an
under the radar gem of a film. I love this movie. I saw
this movie more than once in the movie when it came out, because it's
such a beautiful film just to watch and look at. And I think a
part of what I really loved about this film is not only the intricate storytelling,
but also the idea that with language we can change our mind and we
can do something different with our mind, and how that's such a big part
of what we do as therapists is helping people find the language or communicate language.
And how of what a magical idea to have to Basically, once you
understand the language, you then understand their concept of being and their concept of
time and how beautiful that really is. And I really love I really love
the story. I really love Luise. I love her character. I love
the way that she presents herself, I love how I love how much she
has confidence in herself in this film. There's so many films out there where
we don't have a woman who is able to be engaged in the same way
that the men are in the film. And I really feel like in this
film, Louise is just as important and as important as every as the other
characters in the film that are men. And really, I just really love
the way the story is told. It also probably helps that the daughter's name
is Hannah at least a little bit. And I just really enjoy the again
the idea that language can really change us and can really help us better understand
ourselves, and I just thought that that message was so beautiful, and so
yeah, so I love this film. I'm sure I'll watch it one hundred
more times. I don't watch it as much as I used to, for
sure, but again, just experiencing all of the different thoughts. I feel
like every time I watch it, I have different thoughts about something, or
it brings up something else for me that I haven't thought of. And so
that's another reason why I really love rewatching this film. It is beautiful to
watch a female character retain her femininity and solve the issue while not having to
take on a masculine role or identity or solve things be in the way that
the men do or the way that the men say, she uses her own
power, her own viewpoint and fiercely holds it through the whole film, and
she's not hyper sexualized. She's also not demeaned, like even when she's questioning
the movie, it's more from like a legitimate, like militant, like I
don't know if I can trust that, and not like you know you women
with your feelings and your horniness, exactly the very modern feminist take of women
have power being exactly how they are. There is nothing wrong or broken that
needs to be fixed or corrected by another point of view or a male point
of view or anything else. And then look at that she solved the problem
and saved the whole world and didn't worry about being likable while she was doing
it. Nope, she's also very unique. Yes, she didn't beg the
kernel to come back. She's like, all right, bruh, ask him
this question, come back, see if you like the answer. Yeah,
I'll see you. Well. On that note, we will wrap up here.
So as always, you can find us via intergalactic communication or on TikTok,
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