Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster movies and psychoanalyze them.
My name is Britney Brownfield and I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by
Ben Stover, individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We
are 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 in 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 providers. Hi. Welcome everybody. So we are Popcorn Psychology.
I am Brittany. This is Ben Stover. Nice to meet you all
today. We're Janet Snake, Coole and Burt Macklin from Parks and Rec if
you are familiar. We also typically have a third Hannah, but she's often
the Pacific Northwest? Right now? Can everyone say hi to Hannah? All
right? So, if unless you don't know Popcorn Psychology, we are licensed
therapists who work out of Chicago at private practices things like that. So we're
all therapists who actively see clients. And our podcast is that we pick a
movie every episode, whether that's a rom com like While You Were Sleeping or
a superhero movie like Batman Begins, or a fandom like Harry Potter or Hunger
Games, and we talk about it through the lens of a therapist. What
are we noticing here in terms of mental health themes? If one of these
characters in our office, how would we treat them as a therapist. Would
they be treatable? Would they allow a therapist to help them? I'm looking
at you, Bruce Wayne, because I don't think you would. So it's
our kind of way of sneaking a little mental health or a lot of mental
health education through the fun, you know, medium of movies, TV shows,
and fandom. So today we were kind of going to touch upon a
few places where we have seen good mental health and good therapists and a few
places where we haven't seen the best therapy portrayed within TV and movies. And
as always, we welcome any audience interactions. If anybody has any questions thoughts,
feel free to raise your hand, go to the mic at any time
during our talk, and we are happy to bring that bring your feedback in.
So I guess where we can start is, well, let me ask
you this. Has anyone ever seen what they consider to be a good therapist
in a movie or a TV show? There's a lot of cringe faces noticed
that. Not one hand shot up and went, yes, I saw one.
How many people did what I just wouldn't like? Wait, okay,
who had a good one? Oh? Wait, no, they slept with
their clients? Again, we got a hand. Can you go go up
to the Mike Thos. We can hear you love to hear what your input
is. What I can think of is doctor Sydney for mash oh mash Ah
was that his name? I think Sydney was that his last name? I'm
trying to remember. I'm trying to remember. But that was but interesting that
you had to go approval from Ghostly Podcast back there. But interesting you have
to go all the way back to the seventies to find that reference though unfortunately
so. Part of why we wanted to do this show, besides teach of
mental health, is to kind of dispel a lot of the how we've seen
the therapist portrayed in a lot of movies and TV shows in a way that
is not super It wouldn't make me feel confident as a person going to see
a therapist, right, Right, Seeing a therapist should be a safe situation
where you're able to have an open space to process whatever is going on in
a nod judgmental way with some one who's going to approach you with kindness and
curiosity and empathy and challenge you to explore new behaviors and thought patterns about things
that are going on in your life. It should never ever be about any
kind of relationship. Yeah, romantic relationship ever, And seeing that that becomes
a narrative trope that writers love to us makes all of us therapecistic. It's
like the first thing they teach you in grad school Rule number one, we
do not have romantic relationships with our clients. Rule number two see rual number
one. So I'm curious how many here have watched Ted Lasso. So hands
now ted Lasso. We actually did a panel two days ago with doctor Scott
Jordan about Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso portrays mental health in a beautiful way most
ways. Right, It's a good portrayal of how you can be two things
a she can be both very positive but also very anxious and struggling. It
also is a portrayal of a decent therapist. Ted's therapist, doctor Sharon.
Doctor Sharon, Yeah, she's a therapist too, is very available, but
has good boundaries. Isn't trying to become friends with her clients, even though
that is a tricky situation where you're on staff for a team where you're kind
of in the mix even though you are their therapist. And she actually does
a good job of maintaining an appropriate boundary, does not even just for herself,
but also the teammates as they're coming in and out of her office.
Now, that show also has a common trope of a really bad therapist trope,
which is that Ted's couples therapist starts dating his wife after they divorce,
which, let's consult the ethics board. You all, is this okay?
Wait? Is anybody nodding? Look around? Did anybody say it was okay?
Did you see anybody say it was okay? I did not see anybody.
I did not see anybody say. So let's say yay, doctor Sharon,
because yeah, doctor Jacob, because I would say what felt really shocking
watching Ted lasts, so is that up to that point it did such a
phenomenal job portraying therapy, portraying mental health, portraying panic attacks, like so
many tropes that you saw on that trow Mont helf were so good that the
fact that they had that happen on that show and no one seems to have
a problem with it. The only issue is just almost like this doctor just
had the vibe of Oh, Ted's ex wife's new boyfriend, and that was
the antagonism with it, not what the hell? Oh, I almost swore
harder, what the hell is her couple's therapist doing dating your wife? Because
I'll tell you this as a therapist myself. Once you're my client, it's
like you're my cousin, you know what I mean, Like there's no part
of me that's like, oh, I think you know actually, especially since
I'm helping with the relationship issues, I really think you're very datable to me.
So the fact that that gets as doesn't get addressed on that show in
anyway other than he's a foil for Ted romantically was very It seemed very out
of character for the writing of that show. It did, but not for
the show runner, I think, as he also did Scrubs and cougar Town
and Shrinking, Shrinking, where some questionable boundaries start to become a narrative device
yet again, and I think as a professional therapist, it is something that
I feel like goes against the mission of what we're trying to do with our
show, which is to try to create an accessible way that people can talk
about mental health through the lens of characters and try to diffuse some stigma that
everybody is going to encounter mental health at some point in their life. Like
I've been to rock concerts seeing Disturbed in Godsmack and they did something similar where
we're gonna right now, if you have known anybody who's dealt with mental health
in your life, RaSE your hand, have you dealt with it yourself,
take a look around, feel some peace in that is normal. Accessing therapy
should be normal, and that shouldn't be a place of fearing that someone's evaluating
you for your dating and whether your Bible dating partner. And I think seeing
it in ted Lasso, where they did such a beautiful job addressing mental health
concerns so clearly, so cleanly and compassionately to then be like, oh,
and by the way, the therapist is dating his wife not it's something that
makes me scream internally and sometimes externally. I don't about you. Yeah,
And I would say what's interesting about doing this podcast as we watched a variety
of things, like I said, and so then watching something again through the
eyes of a therapist can be very telling about the legitimacy of the writing and
the storytelling. And there are some places where you can be very pleasantly surprised,
like Wanda Vision was a place where we were pleasantly surprised about how mental
health was portrayed. How many you guys saw that. Yeah, we shall
not speak of her development Wanda and multi verse of madness also as mental health
people. That was very disappointing as someone who had so much growth in Wanda
Vision and really took accountability in a lot of ways for how her unprocessed grief
harmed others in a really real way. For them to her totally switch on
a dime and continue that unhealthy cycle with others with a child to America was
really difficult to see. And I know Sam Ramy's here and I'm going to
try my best not to fight him about it. I mean, if he
wants to, you know, that would be I think that would be okay.
But I think for me, I'm a trauma therapist. Trauma is my
specialty. I work with it every day, all day long. I worked
with first responders primarily, and watching that show do such a beautiful job,
even though the way Agatha forced her into it was completely unethical and harmful,
seeing a show depict what it's like to live with trauma that it's these little
vignettes, these stories from your life that get stuck and start defining how you
see yourself and how you see the world and create a protective shell that you
then harden as you go through more in life. Watching that be shown so
beautifully was really meaningful to me. Is a trauma thetis because something I can
point to people and go like, look, this is what we're gonna do.
We're gonna but not force, but we're gonna walk backwards in time to
look for these moments that have defined why you need to have this hardened exterior,
why you have to keep people out, why you formed extra parts of
yourself to keep you defended to see them then torpedo all of that in multiverse
of madness had me doing yet again? Why Yeah, because I think with
the new Marvel Disney Plus show is it is giving us ample stuff to watch
that is finally starting to touch upon mental health, like Moon Nights. Another
one where they get right up to it with like the Betrayal of d Id,
but then skirt a little bit for you know, the fantasticness of the
story. That's another thing where they almost get it right until they don't.
I would say a place though, where I was pleasantly surprised about mental health
was Falcon in the Winter Shoulder. I don't know how many of you guys
watch that, but watching the story of Bucky Barnes and watching someone somewhat of
an avenger finally friggin get therapy was very nice to see and a therapist who
actually was a very good match for the client in front of her. I
thought that was great, Particularly doing what I do. You have to meet
clients where they are, you have to learn to speak their language, and
having the therapist we saw be competent in the culture of military and warriors and
be able to speak the language and have some tolerance for the harshness and the
crassness and the skepticism of the clients while being able to sit in it and
operate from it and use it to break the shell I thought was beautifully done.
Yeah, she does a good job of using what we call them the
field irreverence, which is when you have a hard client who's not really buying
what you're selling, sometimes you want to do what Senems therapists called spit in
their soup, which is lean into the way that they're being difficult, which
is like, you're right, okay, fine, who cares? You know
what if you want to do that, it's not really what I told you
to do, but fine. And I know it can seem off putting when
you watch it on screen, but that is a therapeutic tactic the Centimes therapists
employ. It's not quite reverse psychology, but to get people to kind of
own up to what they're doing and how it's not working and what are we
doing here together? Why are you coming to my office? I know for
him it's kind of different because it was sanctioned therapy, but you know,
being able to work to meet the client that you have in front of you,
not just only be one version of yourself as a therapist is important to
keep in mind it is important, and it's important to be flexible and work
with clients to meet them and be able to address what they need how they
need it. So many times we see in shows that therapists are like,
oh, well, I do this style, I am this kind of therapist,
we do this kind of work here, and that's not what real therapists
do. It's our job to find a way to connect to the client as
they are and help them in the way that they need, not be the
keeper of all the mental health secrets that we're then going to bestow onto you.
I would say, another kind of unlikely place where a reverence is used
by a therapist and done well is Rick and Morty. Actually with miss Sarandon,
who's here this weekend, is she does the voice of a family therapist
that works with Rick's family. It's the famous Pickle Rick episode, if anyone's
familiar with that. And he does the same thing where he's one of those
clients who comes in and he's like, therapy is stupid. I'm smarter than
therapy. I don't need this, I don't need that. Yah yah yah.
Therapy is boring. And she actually delivers a speech that I kind of
paraphrase and stole with my clients, which is, yeah, sometimes the maintenance
of being well is maintenance, and it's boring and it's work, and it's
monotonous. It's mundane. That doesn't and the way she says in her speech
is like, also, brushing your teeth every day is mundane. Washing your
ass every day is mundane. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it or
that it's not healthy for you to do it. And you have to get
over this idea that things have to be exciting in a way for them to
be worthwhile, which is something that comes up a lot within therapy. Is
this idea that life should be exciting in a way that is chaotic and confusing,
passion and those kind of things for a positive quality of life. Thinking
that there's some big action you can take to solve everything, or that one
session and fixed are realities, I think is a really challenging aspect of working
with movie characters in particular, where they come into session once and the therapist
joke goes, ah, beard stroke, beard stroke, it's this and they're
better and yeah, but that's not that's not real, and it does take
time and effort, and it takes doing the little things, following through the
mundane steps of working towards wellness, and sometimes it's slow. Yeah, And
I think another movie that portrays that well is The Sixth Sense. How well
has seen The Sixth Sense? Maybe not a long time. That's a lot
of hands. That's a long hand on of hands. That is actually so
I'm a child therapist, And so that is one of the best portrayals of
a child therapist I've ever seen on screen. And you know, I don't
want to say the spoiler, just in case no one's seen it twenty years
after the fact, Britney, it's I think we're good. But I think
that is a good example of sort of like the Man, like, what
real therapy can look like is you just kind of hang out with a client,
especially kid client. You kind of just are with them. You meet
them where they're at, You do magic tricks, you just chit chat,
you kind of shoot the s together, and you just try to be what
they need when they need it, until finally they trust you enough to tell
you their big secret. So that movie actually is an excellent portrayal of kind
of the steps of therapy as well, especially when you work with kids that
you don't have to. We talk about this a lot on the podcast.
There's this idea and I get this when I work with kids in there.
This is anxiety from their parents of like you need to talk about the issue
right now, like when they come into your office. By the first second
session, you need to be talking about whatever the thing is. And what
I have to impress upon parents is that's not me pushing to get to the
objective is not really going to do anybody any favors. There's especially with kids
because I don't know about you guys, if you ever went to therapy as
kids or no kids in therapy, they're very rarely choosing to go to therapy.
It's usually like my mom or dad's making me, my school's making me.
Like there's not a lot of kids who are self actualized enough that they're
walking up to their parents and like, I would really love to unpack some
of my trauma with a therapist. Can you find one for me? And
so what that movie does really well is it demonstrates that you do have to
take your time and it's okay. And I warned parents like the first several
sessions, maybe the first month or two of sessions might be me and your
kid playing games, talking about Marvel, talking about TV shows, talking about
their friends, talking about benign school stuff, until your kid realizes that I
can be someone that they can trust to tell their secret, until I'm no
longer a stranger. And in that movie, you see him just kind of
goofing off a little bit, being calm, being quiet, being gentle with
him until the kid feels comfortable to tell him the big thing. And once
the kid tells you the big thing, then your work together can really kick
it up a notch, and they can really it's almost like going up the
roller coaster and now you're speeding along. I agree it's really important to even
with children that come into therapy, to make them feel like the space is
theirs, and that the therapist is their therapist, not mom's agent or dad's
agents. It needs to be somebody their own space where they can process through
the problems as they see them the way they see it. How many of
us can look back on our life and things that happen as kids and go,
oh, that's what was going on there, and go, like your
adult brain tries to play it back and go back into the scene as a
kid and fix it from your adult perspective. But the kid never had that.
So we have to as a therapist meet a child from the way they
see the world, not the way the adults do. Are the way we
do as the therapist, you have to meet and work with kids there and
I think Bruce Willis did a phenomenal job of executing that and see of sitting
with Haley. Joe Osmond's character and letting him have his space is just about
him. Yeah, and not every thing we talk about on Popcornithology it has
a therapist in it. A lot of what we talked about actually is just
what are we noticing thematically that shows us something about mental health. Like one
of our last episodes was The Mummy and we talked about does ev have ADHD?
And what do we see in Nazi that shows that to us? And
I would say one thing that I know you've been talking about Ben, because
Ben's the one on the podcast that has his own child is Bluey. How
many of you guys watch Bluey? Okay? Who loves Bluey? Yes?
Did anybody see the episode Space who cried? Yeah? Every time? I
think Bluey is one of the finest examples of ways that we can use even
a seven minute cartoon to make things successful. In the episode Space, we
see three of the Little Boy Dog characters starting to play out this scene where
they're out exploring space, which you know, like our hungry each other by
friends, and many of us Star Wars fans have gone a space story.
I'm here for that right or at a fan convention, we're half the people
here wear in Star Wars Star Treker something else space related. So seeing kids
just naturally go to that as great. But watching that episode, you get
to see one of the kids start playing out his trauma of being left by
his mom and getting scared and remembering that. For kids, it's just a
flash of a moment that can define how we feel, because feelings are the
only way we get to make sense of our experience. Having a feeling about
something that happened is the only way we differentiate what was a relevant memory and
what goes in a pool. Like think about your drives to work. When
you remember a drive to work, it's one of any of the thousand times
you did it right. Okay, I drive past that, I drive past
that. But if I ask you about the day your child was born,
or the day you got hired at your next job, or the day you
graduated you remember really specific memories, or the day someone broke up with you.
You remember that day, you remember the feeling flashpoint. Watching this is
a that episode of Blue is a fantastic reminder that that happens for kids too,
but in different ways, because what we see happen for Mackenzie is he
keeps trying to break away from the other boys and wants to play like they
left him, And it's not until he gets into a slide tunnel that the
memory becomes clear to him that as a much smaller kid, he got lost
and went down the wrong slide and he couldn't find his mom. And the
teacher does this beautiful thing, or she comes up and says like, Okay,
you've seen what's here. Now, you don't have to keep coming back
here anymore. And for me as a trauma therapist, that's what I try
to guide clients to every day is let's get back. Let's re explore this
moment where you got hurt, but from a place where you have resources and
aren't scared, aren't lost, aren't afraid in your body's not activated and seeing
that in a seven minute kids cartoon, beautiful and over and over we see
these things popping up. Now, Yeah, I would say, kind of
going back to how our podcast started, because I know this usually sparks some
conversation. Is the very first episode of our podcast is about the Last Jedi.
So let's talk about trauma. Now they're already talking about it. Who
here likes the Last Jedi? Who here hate the Last Jedi? It's usually
this but fifty fifty right, Yeah, it's getting us and last over time.
Yeah, and the last shot actually is what inspired our podcast as we
were working all together as therapists and we loved the Last Jedi, and we
couldn't really wrap our head around why people not only didn't like it, but
really couldn't stand the portrayal of Luke Skywalker. And that is what inspired us
to start our podcast itself to really help people understand why we as therapists not
only had no problem with that portrayal of Skywalker, we actually loved that portrayal
of Luke Skywalker and that for us, it was so clear that he was
someone who was not dealing with his trauma, who had been traumatized and was
engaging in one of the most classic trauma responses there is, which is fly
and avoid yep, and then and then, if you're going to bring it
up to me, you better be ready for this attitude that's going to fly
at your face to keep you at arm's length. Every step to his portrayal
and last Jedi made sense to us as therapists and as therapists who've dealt with
many people who have gone through trauma, and we can understand why. And
Ben can speak to this more as he is a Luke Skywalker lover. I'm
a Luke Skywalker hater. Is that, you know, it is hard to
see someone that we want to think of as our hero behaving in a way
that doesn't align with that image. It is hard so many things about what
draws to fandoms, what draws to these fantastical stories is finding hope, and
Luke has been a representation of that throughout his existence. But when you really
explore the hero's journey, any story going far back as the Odyssey and further
the cost of the journey on the hero to provide us that hope almost always
consumes them, and watching what happened to Luke makes sense from real a six
standpoint, Luke has been through such tremendous amounts of trauma, there is no
way that watching his nephew take over the mantle of his father, which he
gave every last ounce of his soul to fight against, follow the same path
and the same psycho repeat again that it's not very likely Luke would find that
light within him again. And it's watching him retreat away was really hard for
people. How many people had a problem with Last Jetti because of that,
like watching Luke not be the light anymore? Yeah, part of it,
Yeah it would. I mean it had problems, right, they had problems,
especial especially especially all the anything but Luke and Ray. But but what
I loved about that, and I think more movies. I think the first
time I felt this way when this is back when I was an intern as
a therapist, is the Hunger Games, right. I think it also was
a story that behaved very similar, which is a lot of stories before and
we're, oh, our hero goes through something wildly traumatic, and then once
the trauma is over, they're like back to business, back to being charismatic,
back to being a leader, as if out of side, out of
mind. And I think what the Hunger Games and so well with Catness.
And then I think what Last Jed I did with Luke is that though there
are ramifications, real life ramifications to going through horrific struggles, and that we're
not really doing I think human beings a disservice by not seeing those stories,
but not seeing that trajectory seen on screen. You know that these stories,
prior to this level of emotional intelligence, we're perpetuating this idea that you should
be fine, and if you're not fine, what's wrong with you? You
know? It kind of continues that, you know, part of our Miston
statement the show is decreasing the stigma, right, stopping the stigma around mental
health. And a big part of that stigma, at least in our culture,
especially in midwesterner culture, is you're fine and if you need therapy,
you must be genuinely crazy or something along those lines, right, like something's
wrong with you? And what I like about these newer way of things like
WandaVision, like Falk and The Winter Soldier, like what we're talking about Hunger
Games Last Jedi is this idea that you can both love a hero, see
yourself maybe even in that hero, and they can have hard times where they
don't really act the way that they should, where they might be really unlikable,
really hard to deal with, not like themselves at all, possibly totally
go backwards in their progress, and they can still be have a I don't
know if I want to say redemption art because I don't love the vibe of
that, But they can still grow and they can become a more integrated version
of themselves too, because I think with a lot of these stories, like
even I'll keep going back to Hunger Games, is she doesn't become someone that's
like, oh, I love being a leader, like a lot of the
Hunger Games ripoffs. After that, we're very like I am now the figurehead
of this community and I'm the leader. And she was like, no,
I want to go back to my hometown and I want to be where it's
quiet. I want to take a nap for the next month and a half,
and I don't want to talk to anybody about anything. And I was
like, that is actually more of a realistic version I think of someone who's
gone through these hard struggles, you know. And I also wonder with Skywalker
of part of his thing is I want a break. I need to go
somewhere where nobody knows me, there's no pressure to be Luke Skywalker that presence,
and I can finally have space to deal or not deal, emphasis on
not deal with what I've gone through in the mistakes that I've made, because
also with Luke Skywalker, that big mistake is, oh my god, I
almost killed my nephew, right. And I think too, when you become
sort of like a monolithic figure within a community like Luke is, your identity
becomes really specific. And so when I work with people, you might have
heard this through Berne Brown, their idea of being shame based versus whole hearted,
which is when when your identity is wrapped up in a specific version of
yourself and you do something that pushes on that identity, you can't really deal.
It really makes you feel a lot of shame and you shut down,
or your self esteem tanks or whatever. And so I think for him,
he was lacking that dimension that allowed him to make mistakes, maybe make huge
mistakes, and still can be a leader within his community, still be a
quote unquote good person or a hero, definitely, And I like that.
We're starting to go through this narrative period lately where we're seeing the effects of
the heroic act on the hero right, watching all of the recovery that needs
to be done. It doesn't matter how glorious the act is in the stories
other people tell, getting the chance to see our heroes have to go through
the work it takes to recover from what they had to go through in order
to do the heroic act. Oftentimes you must become a monster yourself or find
a monstrous part to deal with a great evil. Luke's bad against Darth Vader
in the Return of the Jedi, we watched Luke confront his darkness and come
this close. It's not until that flap on his black suit opens, revealing
that white inner side to it, that we see it, even visually represented
for us, that Luke has rejected the darkness in his heart and throws his
light saber and says, I won't fight you. It's not until that point
that Luke recognizes this for himself, that the monster it would take for me
to defeat this I can't become. I can't pay that price. And watching
hero stories over and over now confront those things because we as the audience know
our story. When we've done great things, we know what it took out
of us to do. And I think well as going back to TLJ,
the problems that it had, the issues in the bad storytelling that existed in
some parts of it that didn't exist with Luke. Was watching that play out
in front of us for the first time with one of our mythic heroes of
society. Look at the cost on him. Luke had to confront his father,
he had to fire a torpedo that blew up a death start with two
million people on board. That's a lot of ethical issues that can cause a
moral injury. It's not going to be simple to recover from that. Yeah,
and watching that happen in front of us is something I thought we thought
was important to convey his therapists to the world, Like, hold on,
let's not defend the parts of the movie that are bad, but let's look
at the real psychology we see. That I think is important. Yeah,
I think. And also another recent fandom we can swerve away from Star Wars
that we really liked and we actually talked about I think last year here at
fan Expo is Stranger Things. Stranger Things season four. I don't know how
many of you guys have caught at is one of the best portrayals of not
just going through a trauma, like we've talked about time and time again,
but also depression. You know, the seeing Max on screen in that season
was really hard to watch. You know, if you've ever gone through depression
yourself, I have, you know, you could really see the way she's
shut down, the way she's so irritable, the way that she won't almost
let herself feel better is such a It was such a realistic portrayal of what
depression can really look like and how it's not always I mean, she definitely
looks sad as hell, so that was that going on, but also being
angry not allowing other people to help you feel good. You know, so
much of the struggle with depression and where it's such a great con artist is
it feeds itself. You don't deserve to feel better, so you don't get
to do the things that make you feel good, which will reaffirm how you're
feeling, which then'll reaffirm that messaging, and then we're gonna ride this cycle
to hell to gather the two of us. Shame is a powerful emotion.
It's operates on the same biological principles is discussed. So I'm gonna trigger this
for you guys for a second, so you can see. I want you
to think about having leftovers at home in the fridge, but they've been there
for a couple of days. Maybe you went away for the weekend, but
you had something you were really looking forward to having that second part of and
you come home and you open that to go bag and that container, and
the smell hits and lets you know it's turned. What happens to your hunger
plummets right, You feel your mouth watering, You're gonna get that excite you
get and then you yeah, your hunger's gone, just like that. Shame
does the same thing to other emotions. Shame is a biological deactivator of arousal
states and really important when looking at somebody like Max. You need to feel
sad, you need to feel angry, You need to work through the stages
of grief in order to move through something that's happened. And if you don't
feel like you deserve to do something because it's your fault that something bad happened,
that you failed in some way, the negative thoughts of you don't deserve
to feel better because this is your fault real or not, provable or not,
doesn't matter if it feels real to you. Your shame response shuts down
your ability to feel other emotions, and you go through this loop of almost
activation, almost crying, almost getting angry about it, and then going no,
I don't deserve that boom. And we see Max go through that in
Stranger Things better than I think I've seen it almost anywhere. But helping people
understand that there are things within us that exist to shut down shame is the
same thing that shuts down that feeling of I would really like to punch that
guy that just cut in front of me in line at the grocery store in
the face. Right now, you notice my face does the same thing of
like I'm not eating that That effect stops you in your tracks, and it's
really hard to recognize that when we start feeling something we feel like we can't
deserved or we don't deserve to feel better from, it's going to shut us
down in the same way. M Sweet have about ten minutes left, So
I'm curious anyone here have any questions, thoughts, comments, and what we've
talked about so far, or does anyone here have a fandom or a favorite
character that they I don't know, have questions about our thoughts about in terms
of how you've seen them psychologically through the mental health realm, or like what
would they be like if they saw a therapist? Oh, okay, I
sort of have two. One is when you think of like cop show like
Law and Order and stuff like that, and they have a therapist, especially
with children, and they have to get to what happened. Or I think
of hill House because shunting of Hillhouse hunting and we actually do that on the
show and we talk about it because she can feel it, so she doesn't
need to know what the secret is. She can find out. Yeah.
Right, So how bad do they portray it? And how any examples of
how good they portray when it's like one time case and you have to get
to the bottom of it. And two is there ever an instance where someone
does not meet therapy? So short answer in the second of the last question.
No, So I would say Haunting of Hillhouse is interesting in that you're
right, she can touch the person. I will tell you what's not true
about Haunting of hill House. She calls one person and makes a report against
one guy, and he's getting arrested and taken down down towntown. That doesn't
happen. I've actually, because I work with kids, I've made a lot
of Unfortunately, I've made a decent amount of reports to children's services. I
feel like whenever I'm taking it seriously, they're not, and whenever I'm not
taking it seriously, they are. So that part was my biggest bug of
bian Haunting Hill. Also, I was like, there's no way on this
earth where I could just ring somebody up and be like, arrest this man
and they'd be like, yeah, sure, okay, we'll take them right
out of that home. I would say, what you're talking about, it's
a little out of my wheelhouse because I don't do that work. But there's
a difference between being a crisis worker and a social worker and a long term
therapist, so their objectives are different. Like there are people in our field
to do things that's called SaaS, which as you go out to the home
during a crisis and do like an emergency assessment. Those kind of people they're
not going to work with you long term, so they are they're objectives more
to get to the bottom of it. For the objective of law and order,
as you said, and then ideally that kid will be referred on to
a therapist who might have to also process the trauma of that of Like,
so you had a lot of adults asking you to tell the same story over
and over again. And that's also a kid where I would be there very
slow and the work we did together because I don't want them to think I'm
another adult who's like kind of like pulling something from them for my own agenda
so I can tell other adults about it. Like, that's the kind of
case where I'd have to really establish for the kid that my objective with them,
our relationship to each other, is going to be very different than their
experience up to this point. I agree. I get called to scenes where
officers or family members have been injured or unfortunately killed or and there's a very
different type of work that needs to be done in the moment. People need
time and space to grieve what's happened to them, what's happened in their life.
And you're in a forty three minute episode where you've got commercial breaks,
you gotta you know, tight window where you got to cover this narrative piece
and move on. And I think it does a poor job even though the
actor that plays the psychiatrist or psychologist on Law and Order does a wonderful job
there. And then I thought it was so interesting they hired him to Hugo
Strange in Gotham. But watching the care that they put into the writing of
how he speaks about cases but then things get resolved so quickly is not real
and doesn't create realistic expectations. Yeah, Commander, and so are either of
you current on Star Trek Strange New Worlds. I haven't watched it yet,
though it looks very fun. Well. One of the things I keep running
with this past season is that the character of young James Kirk has always used
this kind of this comic relief because he's constantly going for a snack every time
he gets really nervous. And then I thought it was funny. This time
I realized, Wait, he survived a famine on a failed colony. This
is a trauma response, And like, do you think that plays out pretty
well? Fased on what I just said, I mean, I think based
on just that little bit you said, so basically you said that this portrayal
of Captain Kirk is that he will snack every time he's nervous. It was
almost like a like a nervous tick kind thing. But then he also comes
from a background which he experienced great famine. So I think you're hitting upon
something which is really real, which is what do we find comforting, what
do we find reassuring. I talk a lot with clients about when we have
anxiety or trauma, we can have reassurance seeking behaviors that we fall back into
when we are disregulated, and sometimes that is food. Food is comforting for
a lot of people, so sometimes it can be that. I've also worked
with a lot of kids who come from rocky backgrounds and so were they maybe
didn't get fed a lot, they were neglected, or they were passed around,
and so you can have a it's very easy to have a very complicated
relationship with food as a kid and as an adult, because it's tied to
survival. It's just not like, oh I love to I'm a snacker,
you know. And when I've worked with kids who've gone through a lot of
households, caregivers been neglected potentially also they would hoard food and then their parents
would be like, I don't unders like they're adoptive parents or whoever's caretaking at
the time would be like, I don't understand why this kid has cake mix
or a can of beans in their room. One that's not fun food,
and two I'm feeding them every meal time, And I go, yeah,
for now, you're feeding them for now. They don't know that you're feeding
them tomorrow or next month or in a year. So whatever they got,
that's good. They're grabbing it because they're hoarding from a survival standpoint. So
I'm almost with Kirk too. It makes me wonder is a part of him
like I gotta get food while I can get it, And that's the connection
being made and watching things like that where they show people having a response that
they're trying to reregulate their body. When we are going through a survival moment,
our physiological system is activating, our cortisol starts firing to prepare our body
to receive adrenaline. Adrenaline activates our survival modes where there's no more thinking,
there's no more talking. But sometimes in Star Trek they do a great job
of showing like the importance of staying in that window of tirelance and not using
it because if you lose your mind, like the jj Arams did a good
one of that, showing him stay completely cool during the test in the academy
where he had to like, now we're just gonna we're gonna watch it explode
and stay in that pocket where you can think logically but still operate in a
flow state, because if you get too activated, you lose your ability to
think logical and you'll just start reacting. Anybody here lost their keys when they're
late to work. What kind of stupid crap do you do in your house
to find those keys? Yeah? Yeah, all right, you got a
question, Go ahead, please, Yeah. I just saw the question that
you post in the beginning of kind of why you started this show. In
terms of in media, do we see good or bad therapists and shows?
And so one that I saw recently the Patient with Steve Carrell, either of
the two. I watched that whole thing. Yeah, it's really interesting,
and I'm kind of just curious on what you think about it, because that
was something interesting of therapists or people too, as I'm sure the two of
you know. And it's kind of interesting about how you see that raw side
of him and how he's not a perfect person. But it's interesting that trauma
brings him to a weird, safer place, and I was wondering what your
thoughts on that were. Yeah, have you seen it? I recommend everybody
to watch The Patient. It's like eight episodes is thirty minutes an episode.
Get into it. I don't know if I'm exactly going to get to what
you're saying, but I think that he does an excellent job of a therapist.
The way that he tries to continue to engage with him is a very
good there, Like, I don't feel safe. Therapy can't be done in
an unsafe environment. If people who don't know the premise of the show is
he's a therapist that one of his new clients is actually a serial killer who
then kidnaps him, keeps him in abasement to heal him from stotting opping a
serial killer. And so what he does really well, which actually I was
like, they have therapists on staff writing the show, is that he says
he tries to win him over the serial killer by saying therapy. For therapy
to go well, both the client and the physician, the clinician have to
feel safe. I don't feel safe right now. I don't know how to
feel safe right now, and because of that, I don't know how we
can work together. And I think that that wasn't excellent. I mean,
it doesn't quite. He doesn't win in that way, But I would say
that was an excellent use of something that's very true in therapy, which is
that everyone has to feel good and safe. And I think you're right.
It does an excellent job of showing that therapists are just humans. Just because
we can teach a lot of techniques doesn't mean that we necessarily utilize them well
because the way I see it, because my sweet mother, who might be
listening, when I start a therapist, he was like, well, you're
a therapist, Why I don't don't you just know what to do? And
I go, well, being a person. To be a person is to
be knows like up to your knows at the painting of your life. You
can't see yourself. You can't see the big picture of who you are.
And part of being a therapist is and why they're not your friends, they're
not your lovers. They're not your wife or your girlfriend or your neighbor if
you can help it, is that they don't have any personal bias that keeps
them from being able to step back and look at the whole picture of you
and notice patterns, notice things that are getting in the way or the things
that you haven't noticed yourself. And so I think that showed us an excellent
job of showing that you can be a good therapist and kind of have a
messy personal life if you can keep it together, because we all have parts,
right, Yeah, how many of you are the same person at work
that you are at home? No hands? No hands? Okay, so
same for us. But that was a really great question. And if you'd
like to come up get a shirt, We've got a lovely surf for you.
All. Love that question. Yeah, does anyone else have any questions?
I know you had your hand up, do you still You're good?
Okay, So I think we're wrapping up there. But as anyone else have
any comments or questions, I can just say that if you enjoyed what you
heard today, we typically will pick up a movie an episode, so our
recent ones have been a goofy movie, The Mummy, Spider Man, No
Way Home. That's a great one in terms of grief empathy, the way
that he got to see himself at different ages and they got to kind of
counsel him. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, stunning work. So if you'll
do you have a question, go ahead. So a couple of nights ago,
when I was having a dinner with my family, my brother was like
talking about the show. He didn't tell me the name, but like it's
I think it's like a crime show, okay, And it was. It
was something about like a false rape case where like the guy, the guy
was like he was found not guilty, but like it's still like messed with
him, Like he had like nervous breakdowns and stuff. How would you think
that will like affect him in like the long run, because like he was
like having all these like problems. Explain it, because I mean, I
think what you're bringing up, I can generalize that question out and that whenever
we've gone through something that inherently shakes up our ability to feel safe, which
can be also being accused of a crime right with it turns your life upside
down, we have to find a way to process that experience and then to
realize that we're not going to be the same person we were before this thing
happened that shook up our reality. And I think for a lot of people,
there's this idea of that, and maybe this is why you were thinking
that I have to go back to who I was before and if I can't
do that, then I'm screwed. Something about me I can't fix. And
instead it's more like, well, now this thing has happened, we have
to radically accept that that's part of your story. Now, how do you
live with that? And how do you try to make a life that feels
safe enough again. You'll probably never feel safe as you did before, but
that doesn't mean you can't work to a place where you feel safer than you
do now. Yeah, And I think the only follow up I have on
that is I want to say, like, finding the ability to grieve your
past self after something happens to you. So many people just come into my
office and say, I just want to get back to who I used to
be, But that person doesn't exist anymore. The person who felt safe doesn't
exist anymore, and you have to find a new safe now with what's happened
and realized that that's not happening now. That's really easy for me to say
at the end of our show in a four second clip. So I don't
wanted to come across like it's that easy. It's not easy. It's really
different. You have to regulate. There's one thing that heals trauma. There's
lots of ways to get there. One treatment isn't necessarily better than another.
It's what's right for the person. But you have to be able to have
a relaxed muscle body while having the thoughts or memories of what happened to you
online to be able to recover from it. But that's a really great question.
If you want to come up, we'll give you a shirt. You
can choose between the gray and blue or the black and red. All right,
so we gotta wrap up. I'm sure we're getting the cane. So
like, you can always find us wherever you listen, Spotify, YouTube,
Apple Podcasts, wherever you enjoy podcasts, you can find us. Popcorn Psychology.
You can find us Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Popcorn Psychology. You
can always email us a Popcorn Psychology gmail dot com. And we're around.
We're in Chicago. So yeah, so thank you all for joining, Thank
you for excellent questions, and I appreciate all your friendly faces that I can
find in the crowd while i'm talking. Thank you, Thank you guys,
okay, thank you, tipor