Up w/ Raiders of the Lost Podcast!

Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster movies and psychoanalyze them.
My name is Bernnie Brownfield and I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by
Ben Stover, individual therapist, Hannah A. Spinoza, 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 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 provider. So today we have a very special episode.
We're doing a crossover hybrid episode of Raiders of the Last podcast, which is
hosted by twin brothers Anthony and James, who break down your favorite movies from
the past and present. We're gonna be talking about very much requested favorite up
So everyone who's listening, who's asked and instagram messaged me and all that stuff.
We are finally doing up Squirrel. Yes, because it's a hybrid episode
it's gonna be a little different because we're gonna be pushing together the format of
Raiders of Lost podcasts. In our formats, we will be talking a lot
more film behind the scenes stuff that we usually don't touch upon in our episodes,
while also talking about you know, our fan favorites grief, loneliness,
trauma, and adjustment disorder actually too, so we've been touching upon a lot
of different topics as well as getting more film knowledge in trivia that we don't
usually do in our episodes. So I hope you all enjoy this. I
hope you also check out Raiders of the Lost podcast. Welcome to today's crossover
episode of Raiders of the Lost podcast and Popcorn Psychology breaking down Pixars Up.
Thanks so much for doing this crossover with us Popcorn Psychology. We're so excited
that you've joined us and we can't wait to talk about. How are you
all doing. We're doing great. Hi. This voice is Brittany Ben.
Hi, my name is Hannah. Welcome to our show, everyone, and
we love Pixar Up is one of their greatest achievements, I think narratively with
animation when it was getting really advanced, but they also were tackling very intense
themes, very mature themes for children to take on when they watched the film.
I thought they did a beautiful job. And in terms of like the
writing and storytelling the first act of Up, it could be the best thing
Pixar has ever done in terms of narrative fiction, I think it's really wonderful.
And then tackling mental health themes so beautiful means with so much nuance.
I think this is a special movie and every child should watch this as they're
growing up. And I would love for our audience to find out where they
can find your show, Popcorn Psychology, give a little background on what it's
about, and we can do the same thing for your listeners that are tuned
in for our show as well. Sure so pop Psychology if we are on
this is our sixth season. I believe we are all licensed clinical professional counselors
also known as mental health therapists, and every episode of our podcast we pick
a movie like Up and we talk about the themes of mental health we see
in that movie. You can find us any we're on social media on Popcorn
Psychology, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok on Twitter. You can find us a
popcornt underscore psych and we're on pretty much every big podcast app. Wherever you
find podcasts, you can find us and where can our listeners find you all.
Likewise, we're very easy to find Raiders of the Lost post podcast on
every platform. We do about four to six episodes every week about new and
old releases of cinema and film TV as well. We talk a lot about
movie news as well, so we're super easy to find TikTok, Instagram,
Twitter, just search Raiders of the Lost podcast so easy to find, or
our website Raiders of the Lost podcast dot com and where. Two and a
half years into our pod casting journey, it's been so fun to connect with
so many movie lovers and cinephiles around the world and finally making this connection.
Very excited to be here with you all, So thanks again for joining us
on this crossover episode of Raiders Lost podcast and Popcorn Psychology. Now let's get
into up, which came on two thousand and nine IMDb. This is at
an eight point three with one point one million ratings. That's absurd and that
puts to that number one hundred and eleven on the all time IMDb user rating
list. It's very loved, clearly Rotten Tomatoes critics scores at ninety eight percent.
I don't know who would give this a rotten review. I don't know
ninety percent audience score. It won two Academy Awards off five nominations. It
won Best Music for Michael Jaquino and Best Animated Feature for Pete Doctor, who
was one of the co directors of the film. On a budget of one
hundred and seventy five million dollars, Up was a massive success at the box
office, making a total global box office of seven hundred and thirty five million
dollars. Good Gracious and It follows seventy or eight seventy eight year old called
Frederickson, who, after the passing of his wife Ellie, reluctantly goes on
a journey to the location of their mutual lifelong dream adventure Paradise Falls in a
floating house held up by balloons. Directed by Pete Doctor Bob Peterson, written
by Pete Doctor, Rob Peterson and Tom McCarthy, and Up was really important
I think for Pixar in its future because it was relying obviously on toy story
on cars, something like The Incredibles Bugs Life, so kind of the fantastical
and so rather twee as well, you know, we're at thick and Cook
a little fantastical, and so UP was really, Yeah, It's a really
important step in Pixar's future in terms of storytelling, to relate to all audiences
and to relate to human beings and telling truly human stories. And that's why
I think it's so special in Pixar's filmography because after this, they could basically
make a film about anything. It didn't have to be talking animals, didn't
have to be talking inanimate objects. It could be just about human beings.
So I think that was really important for them. Although there are talking animals
in this movie are yeah, technology. What do the three of you think
about Up as a film? Well, I remember I did write in my
notes that this in the intro is perfect storytelling, like you said earlier,
like such a perfect way to succinctly tell a lifetime with almost no dialogue.
Really the montage is like I think, dialogue less pretty much. And so
and I also remember watching it this only second i'd watch it actually, and
when I watched it the first time, that intro was such like a gut
punch in terms of a kids a quote unquote kids movie being so grown up
in certain ways, like talking about infertility and cancer and death and for all
that to be in like the first fifteen minutes of a child's movie. I
remember when I watched it. I think I was with my mom and my
brother and we all looked at my brother. I think he's the one who
want to watch it. We're like, what the hell is this, dude,
Like we're supposed to watch like a fun movie and we're all weeping on
the couch right now. The cool whip. Yeah. I think this movie
is fantastic. I think the storytelling is just absolute perfection, and it did
open them up to be able to tell any story they want, which they
went on and did with Soul and some of the other things that they've done
where they addressed some pretty deep topics, and I think this movie did pave
the way for them to do it. It is profoundly human storytelling. I
think it's targeted at an elder audience than they usually do, as they watched
it last night with my five year old, and I think a lot of
it was over her head, but even still enough she asked some of the
right questions because of this movie and was able to grasp the concepts of someone
being sad because someone has gone and that they're life changing when they're old,
and also meeting your heroes might not be as advertised, and I think that's
an important lesson to learn at any point in time. But also watching just
the colors and the animation grab her attention, even if she wasn't the most
enthused that this is maybe with Frozen or something else that she might have been
the right demograph for, but she's still gravitated to this and enjoyed watching it.
And I did too. I love this movie. I've watched it probably
a hundred times, I would guess. I feel like every time I watch
it. I listened to the music a bunch afterwards, because I really love
the music that goes along with the film. I think it's a really beautiful
story and that's told in such a different way, and such an interesting connection
to have between an older generation and a younger generation that we don't normally see
and stuff like this, and so yeah, I really enjoy this film.
I think there's so many different important thoughts and feelings that are brought up,
and the way that they even even if they're not always directly talked about,
you still get to really experience them with this in this film, and so
I think that that's really fun. But I love this movie. I laugh
and smile and cry in all the same spots I did the first time that
I watched it, And yeah, I'm really excited to talk about it today.
Yeah, and the animation in general, just to go on the production
for a little bit, it's just spectacular. Still holds up. I think
is one of the best that Pixar's ever done. I was watching it for
the first time in years. I'm just the things like the reflections in the
window, the hair of young Ellie, poofing Yellot and falling back down.
It still holds up compared to, like I would say, their last three
features that Pixars come out with. And there's so many cool facts, like
all the characters are based upon circles and rectangles, except for the villains who
are triangles. Not only are Carl and Ellie bas on squares and circles,
but objects around them are also based on shapes, like their chairs and picture
frames. When they both appear in a photograph, their frame is both circle
and square, and I just think that when Pete Doctor, he's one of
Pixar's best filmmakers and directors. He's done Monsters, inc. He's done up
inside out soul. He really connects you animation wise as well as the story
to the audience to the story so well. And I think he's just operating
on so many different types of storytelling to intrigue people subconsciously whether they see it
or not, like seeing that everyone's based on a shape, whether they're a
hero, protagonist or a villain. I think that, you know, animation
is just the ultimate form of artistic imagination where it comes to storytelling, and
I think Pete Doctor knows how to connect to an audience. Yeah, And
in terms of the storytelling, Pixar has always done a wonderful job of relating
themes beautifully in weaving them into their narratives and oftentimes, like I said,
in the early days of Pixar, there are pretty simple themes, more themes
that were more relatable for children. Movies like Pixar's Toy Story and The Incredibles.
They definitely touched those themes really well. But in terms of the themes
of this film, tackling mental health, tackling grief and depression, tackling intense
loneliness losing a loved one. It was really complex and very mature for the
young demographic that they usually hit with their audience with their audience, and so
it was a challenge, I think, but Peg Darctor being such an experienced
pro. Also fighting Nemo is another great one, excellent themes about family,
But this is darker themes. You know, you see life and you see
the you see the formation of life and the beautiful aspects to a love in
a relationship and creating a partnership with another human being, but then losing that
human being and then this person is left with nothing. That's a very complex
thing for children to take in when they watch a movie with talking dogs.
And yet Pete Doctor in the Pixar crew and team did a wonderful job tackling
these complex themes in a way for kids to be able to digest it,
understand it, and even learn from it in a lot of ways. Yeah,
I think it's interesting just in the beginning montage. Like we discussed earlier
that so many of these kind of movies, like Disney pixaresque movies, like
well animated movies. If you think back on like Disney Princess movies, is
this once you find true love or whatever, that everything will work out.
So I think what is really interesting and probably pretty hard for like a little
kid to wrap their head around so bit more of an older kid or older
person is in this movie we see two people who pretty much meet their soulmates,
like their perfect person when they're teeny tiny, and that does not mean
that they get everything that they wanted, that it's just happily ever after.
It's kind of is really heavy to watch these two people not get the two
biggest things they really wanted for themselves, which is to have a child or
have many children, and to go on this big adventure to this place I've
always wanted to go. And it does make me think what was going on
in the animators or the storytellers, the writers, the director's mind to keep
showing that they would get this money saved up and then something would happen,
such a real life thing, get in the car accident, break your leg,
whatever your roof needs repaired, and then you have to spend the money
you've saved up. I think that idea that you can be a quote unquote
good person, you can be with the love of your life, and life
is still going to happen to you, and you don't always get the things
on paper that you thought you always wanted. And that's such an interesting message
to deliver up top right up top for a kid's movie. I definitely agree,
and well, I think that connects Berney to one of the main themes
of the film that I love is an adventure in a journey, and you
know, Ellie and Carl, their life, their life dreams mutual. This
adventure to go to Paradise falls. But I think also the same time,
what the film is showing is a partnership or someone to spend your life with,
or a relationship is just as much of an adventure as going to the
most fantastical place in the world where your hero Charles Munt went to discover this
suppose a giant creature that he supposedly made up, and to be an adventurer
and to explore. I think that a relationship can be as much of an
adventure as the most fantastical thing you can imagine. I think that's important to
connect that you don't have to do the most grand thing in the world to
live with a filled life as long as you find someone who makes you happy
and you make them happy. That's a great point because when Carl does make
it to Paradise Falls and he has the house there, he's not even close
to satisfied. And then he realized he was chasing a futile dream that wasn't
going to fulfill him. He already did find fulfillment and he lost that.
But now it's time to search for it again in other human beings, which
was beautifully indicated in the little note that Ellie wrote him in her book that
said, thanks for the adventure, now go find another one. I guess
got goosebumps. Well. A lot of our recent episodes we've talked about meaning
making and yeah, just how to find meaning in your life. Like we
opened this season with everything everywhere, all at once, and so that was
a big theme when we talked about that movie. And I think what you
guys are touching upon is that idea of what brings meaning to our life and
what you saw, what we saw Ellie and Carl do is when they realized
they couldn't have children, is they switch that meaning to this idea of Paradise
Falls, like we will find something else to get us through this or to
give us meaning within our life, and then that didn't happen because of all
the other stuff going on in life, and Ellie trying to switch that meaning
for Carl of like what an adventure means as she's moving on, and then
we see Carl. I mean, that's kind of the course of this movie
is Carl finding his meaning again, like what is a sense of purpose now
that his biggest sense of purpose, his wife is gone? And that's really
hard to do when, as we've talked about in our recent episodes, sometimes
that's all the work we do with clients, is how do you find purpose
for yourself? And how do you find something that feels meaningful when there are
so many circumstances in your life that are either out of your control or that
feel like they're out of your control, And when those things that are out
of your control feel so closely tied to the things that you want, like
having children on going on what we would in the dictionary kind of put as
an adventure and then what and then what do we do with that? Which
is the course of like Carl's journey On the movie Carl's Journey, it really
has two paths, and they're reflected and married by two characters to keep going
off that. So Carl and Charles are a reflection of each other, and
then also Carlin Russell are reflections of each other, and both Russell and Charles
represent paths that Carl can take after he's lost Ellie. Russell is this young
kid who's very excited and wants to be an explorer. He's just trying to
get that one helped the elderly patch for his boy Scouts troop to become the
ultimate cup Scout or whatever he has to be. And it's exactly like what
Carl was like when he was a little kid as well, before he met
Ellie. He was so excited. He was very nervous and shy, but
he was excited about adventure and he has those goggles. He's obsessed with Charles
Mounts. So Russell's a path in his life that he can take because they
marry each other. If he can find that adventure in his life again in
excitement, then Charles on the other hand, even Carl and Charles their names
are very similar. Charles is a representation of a path of never letting go
of his obsession or letting go of his gre So Charles can't let go of
his obsession of finding this animal and getting his reputation back on the secluded place,
and Carl won't get let go of his grief of Ellie. So they're
both kind of reflections of Pats that he can take going forward in his life.
They both also represent self isolation, where Charles isolates himself on the island
for decades, just like how Carl's isolating himself in his home without wanting to
make any established any new relationships with other people. So they both have representations
of self isolation, which is a dark trait that a lot of people can
suffer from, and it's really well explored in this film. Yeah, you
might say that Charles is his shadow if we're looking at it in Union terms,
it's a shadow self and seeing that and getting a chance to confront it
and defeat it is a classical theme that you would deal with in psychoanalytic therapy
or union therapy. We're helping people find and recognize the darkness in themselves and
I had what they can't become. And Charles Muns represents exactly that he has
so lost himself that he is willing to forego everything that it means to be
a national hero just to prove that he was right and that darkness has festered
in him for must be fifty years. M it's a long time to be
isolated, chasing a giant bird, talking dogs with dogs that it feels like
he made technology so that he wouldn't be as lonely and day because also the
US I'm sorry, no, no, go ahead. Well they use dogs
separately as well, Carl and Charles. Carl eventually learns to love Doug,
Doug the dog perfectly named sure and whereas Charles is really just using dogs as
a tool for his obsession in his isolation as well. So you can look
at the way they accept dogs and treat dogs later on for Carl, for
how they're able to move on past their their grief for their obsession. I
also think that this film does an incredible job of showing a more nuanced and
human take on elderly people for children. I think, I mean when I
was a kid, I remember you look at old people. You can't imagine
them being children. You can't imagine them like having their lives to you,
Like they're just old people and they can be sometimes off putting when you're a
little and maybe a little scary. There's like an archetype, and this film
shows that, you know, all these older people they were just like you
one once, and they had they had a childhood. They used to have
fun, they used to go out adventures, they used to do the same
things with their friends that you do, whether it be playing and whatever.
So I think the entire intro of Carl and Ellie's entire life together but meeting
as children and showing that the lead after the film. We walked into this
movie understanding it was an old man named Carl was going to be the lead,
but when you watch the first seven minutes of this film, he's a
child. So I think it's important that I've never seen that in a kids
movie where you can really the children can relate and understand that this old man
was just like me once, which I think is really important. Yeah.
I think that's really interesting because typically in movies where they're trying to teach kids
to be nice to older people, it's usually like Home Alone style, where
first they're like a spooky villain and then they're like, no, they're like
human beings like us, but they don't really connect them to like you're saying,
like being you, like they were like you one day. It's not
just like they're an older person that isn't as scary as you thought, like
a boogeyman. They're actually kids too, which I do think is I did
write in my notes that this movie is trying to It seems like it's trying
to highlight the humanity in older people and that they need love and affection and
care and consideration just like everybody else, and that we're all gonna get old
one day, god willing, and so what how do we want to be
treated as an old person ourselves? So kind of breeding hopefully some empathy for
everybody on every stage of life that they're inn which is important. And it's
also important that it provides parents an opportunity to start implanting truth into children early.
As I know my child was asking me. He's like, oh,
what happened to the girl? Did she get sick? Did she die?
And like you know, yeah, kiddoo, nobody lives forever. People don't.
They don't live forever. And I think that's such an important truth that
parents don't always want to tell kids, and you don't always want to talk
about with kids that just life is precious due to its impermanence, and communicating
that to children early and often that they can understand and taking the picture and
being with somebody and doing special things is important because you never know how much
time you get. And the more we can start teaching that earlier, the
easier it is for kids to understand and not be shocked and for parents to
have to tell more stories about what happens when somebody's not around anymore. Are
there any documented statistics or anything of parents if they wait too long to teach
their kids about grief and death in life, or does it have any kind
of effect on kids? Is there any kind of study like that that you
would know of, not off top of my head, not top of my
head, other than what I always told parents, as like the resident kid
therapist, is that kids are smarter than you think, and that they're savvier
than you think, and they're curious and if you choose not to tell them
some thing, they're going to figure it out, either from their peers or
a book or now the internet or a movie. And what I just like
to remind parents is you're going to lose your window to have some way to
not control the narrative, but to hold the narrative in such a way that
your kid will know what to do with that information. Because kids are,
especially when they're little, even like Russell's age, maybe looking eiger than that,
they're forming boxes in their brain with all the information that's coming in all
the time, and you get to decide, well, you get to help
the kid decide like how to put those boxes in their brain. And so
either something's going to be scary or misinterpreted, or I don't know, they're
just going to put their kid lens on it. And so I don't have
any statistics to back up what I'm saying other than what I know anecdotally from
doing this work, and that kids usually know more than you think about what's
going on espectually if you hold onto things pass a certain name age, like
I would say probably past. Well, I was about to say something,
I'd take it back, because I work with kids as little as kindergarteners where
I could tell that they knew something was up, whatever that up is,
if it's death or even incarceration or something like that going on within their family,
and no one's really telling them because they don't want to break the bubble
of it, but the kid is usually already somewhat aware that's something odds going
on, and now they have to use their little kid brain to try to
conceptualize what it is. So yeah, like movies like this that introduce topics
I think are great for parents to launch off of and then kind of like
sounds like you might have had been like have a more deeper conversation, like
not even necessarily like Carl with Ellie. But also I think this movie does
a good job with like Russell, of bringing up another really heavy topic,
which is a parent that's not that around and that they don't really skirt around
it, like they bring it up several times in which Russell, even though
he's a happy, go lucky looking kid, has a dad that neglects him,
and the movie does a good job of making that obvious without getting to
Hallmark you know this is a very special episode energy about it, and also
without like really belieguering it too. It stays right in that sweet soot spot
pocket of how a kid would really conceptualize and maybe even talk to their friend
about their parents not really being around as much as they should, which really
illustrates the point of the question you guys are asking. Look at the difference
between how Carl or even or not Carl, but the kid who's name just
off my head with Russell Russell, thank you how Russell and even Forrest Gump
answer when people ask where's your dad? What does Forrest Gump say? He's
on vacation, as that's what Missus Gumps says is God. Yes, But
when you see these kids, they don't have the opportunity to grieve if we
don't tell them the truth. They don't have the opportunity to both pre grieve
and grieve and close out a relationship that's hurting them. Now. Obviously that's
difficult with parents, but kids that are told truth that Dad can't come,
Dad isn't going to come, Dad isn't making space for you right now,
and have the opportunity to go, oh, okay, well, I guess
I don't need to think about Dad anymore. We're taking away the opportunity to
grieve and close out a chapter or a connection that they need to close out.
And lessons from movies like this of getting to see kind of the damage
that can do when we tell kids half truth. But they still figure out,
like Britney's saying that, like, yeah, dad doesn't really have time
for me. It's heartbreaking to them and we need to take lessons from even
what Sesame Street did in the late seventies or eighties and mister Hooper died watching
episodes like that where they just address it and they tell the cold, hard
truth of it, where the cast has to tell big mister Hooper is not
coming back ever and listen to Big Bird's childlike questions of what will you come
back tomorrow? And it's heartbreaking, but it also allows them to adjust and
deal with the truth rather than waiting for the time that they invented in their
brain that the details that make sense to them makes sense to the rest of
the world and it doesn't come. In terms of Russell is his happy,
go lucky nature. Clearly he's being affected by his father, as he reveals
it multiple times in the film, and it's it's very sad at times in
a way would you say he could be projecting in outward happiness that he isn't
really feeling around others. He wants to just be perceived as being very happy,
having always having fun while trying to hide his real inner turmoil. I
don't think kids that age think that deep into it. Usually kids not until
the age of twelve have their brain developed enough that that may be possible.
I think Russell is probably just trying to do the best that he can to
be happy and be in the moment. There may be some of that,
but it won't be as intellectually available to him at this stage in his development.
I will say where I'm I'm nervous for Russell. My little horror is
nervous for Russell is I think he's already developing quite a people pleasing, like
coping mechanism, like I wrote in my notes, like he's very brave and
doesn't worry enough about his own health and safety overhelping others. And it made
me so happy because I didn't watched this movie in like fifteen years, so
I didn't remember what happened after that. But then right after that, Carl
tells him that I don't need your help and I'd rather you be safe than
give me help, and I was like, that's exactly what I was talking
about, because I do think with Russell, he probably, like you're saying,
Ben, that's probably a lot of that is probably his personality, and
I would if I was this therapist, I would want to make sure that
to keep an eye on that behavior as I continue to work with him as
he gets older, because I work with a lot of older people too,
that there's so much of that good student, good kid, people pleasing energy
to over compensate for places where they feel like they're lacking or they must be
lacking because if Dad's not showing up, then maybe I just need to try
harder. Or they connect their achievements with their value. So where we see
Russell making that one to one connection already that if I just can get this
badge, then my dad will show up. And that's enough for my dad
to show up and be there for me. And I see that, like
I said, we're all still little kids inside of us, right even as
adults, And so I work with adults sometimes where that little kid still shows
up. As you know, I have to go above and beyond or I
like perfectionism, or I can't, you know, say no to anybody,
or I have to always be happier of a smile on my face because I
don't want to like rock the boat or upset anyone, you know, And
then I think what happens with that is then you end up denying your needs
and yourself. I think what doesn't make me where I'm on with you,
Ben, and that he's still a little too young for that, is he
still does things that's very age appropriate and annoying kid behavior, like laying down
and letting themself be dragged because he's not dealing it. So he's not a
kid where he's not already doing that thing where like they're totally denying themselves and
totally like I don't need anything, Like I think in an older kid with
this stuff going on, there might be a lot more of denial of things
and trying to like smile really big the whole time and not act like anything's
bothering them. But Russell Soul does enough of noxious um self driven behaviors that
I think is very age appropriate that says that he's not quite hit in that
like perfectionistic thing yet because I don't like Ben missing, I don't think he's
quite old enough yet. I appreciate him as like ten. Yeah, And
so he's he's desperate and he's always been seeking the approval and acceptance of his
father, and so in a way he's seeking that and other people by being
a people pleaser and and the achievement he is that one badge'll do anything to
get that, helping the elderly badge. I mean he like puts himself on
a floating house, like so dangerous for a badge because in his mind it's
not a badge. It's like, this is how I'm going to see my
dad again. And also, to be fair to Russell, it wasn't floating
when he got on it. I mean scared choices that are wild. But
he's also like a little adventurer. I assume he's a little explorer. Well,
speaking of the floating health so fun fact, so, if Carl's house
was approximately sixteen hundred square feet and the average house weighs between sixty to one
hundred pounds per square foot, it weighs about one hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
If the average helium balloon can carry point zero zero nine pounds or four
point six grams, it would take twelve million, six hundred and fifty eight
thousand balloons to lift this house off the ground, but only twenty thousand,
six hundred and twenty two balloons appear on the house when it first lifts off
only enough to lift about one hundred and eighty five pounds, so picks,
are you guys? Step your game up? But still looked incredible. But
the motif of balloons are so important throughout this film. It starts early on
with Ellie sending that little balloon message to Carl when he's in his bed when
after the injury, which is so funny, he's like, I'm gonna go
on a venture and falls right down through the attic and what he breaks his
arm or something like that, And then obviously Carl does that in their elderly
age when she's in the hospital, as well as being a loon salesman,
and then eventually lifting up the house out of frustration when he's going to get
evicted out of his house with all the balloons, and even just the little
shots of him they worked at was at a zoo or an amusement park where
she works with the animals, and he has the balloon carts and he's always
preventing it from falling. But this motif of balloons is obviously the main image
of this movie, the posters and everything, and for me, I'm always
trying to figure out what the balloons represent to Carl, to anyone, for
I'm pretty much usually stumbling upon. They represent youth, they represent love,
and they represent dreams, whether Carl realizes it or not, and it represents
Elli in a lot of ways. For me, it's rising from a hardship
and rising from turmoil into a new level of your life. So they're rising
the ascension, getting out of that funk. If someone's in the funk,
what do you all think? The balloons mean? Fragility, the fragility of
that happiness and the youth that Carl makes points throughout the film to constantly put
his elbow back down to keep things from floating away. But much like a
balloon and the happiness that they bring, life is precious and fragile, and
it only lasts for so long, and we all have to eventually say goodbye
to our balloons, just like Carl has to say goodbye to Allie, and
Russell will have to say goodbye to Carl. That was good. I was
gonna say, I don't know, I'm sorry. I mean, you did
the therapist make you feel something by but you guys still have emotions. I
was just gonna say I don't know, because it's like little kids like,
oh, but you can't deny. I mean in terms of Fixar's entire filmography,
and they've made a lot of movies now, I think that just the
image of the house flying because of the balloons, just still the floating house,
it's the most striking and memorable image they've ever crafted as a company,
I think in terms of all of their films, just like the flying house,
I think it's just their most iconic thing that's ever been created by the
Pixar team. Yeah. That or I just think New Nemo, it's just
a fish, though he's so iconic. I'm just talking like an image,
an image image in the theme and represents so many things. I think the
floating House is is the pinnacle of like the iconography of all Pixar films.
Yeah, I think that Pixar were just operating on just a different level back
then, because this is two thousand and nine, this is when Disney bought
Pixar, and I wouldn't say like there their quality of animation's gone down,
but a bit of the story selling has changed over the last five to ten
years, and I feel like we're not getting dense Halley thematic stories and characters
like we were getting with movies like UP and rad A TWOEE and Toy Story
Monsters, inc. And I think the last great one was Coke. I
think that was twenty nine terrific And so yeah, I'll give that one as
kind of an soul is good souls really great too, But I mean,
Luca didn't really have it. It was was fine, and the the most
recent ones were fine. But I think UP is like the pinnacle of what
Pixar can achieve as a as a production company and studio. Yeah, it
influenced all the other movies they made. I mean, Toy Story took a
much more mature themes on the next two films after Up, and so I
think UP changed the trajectory of what they realized they could do as storytellers in
that plane of making children's films. Well yeah, and if you look at
just the themes in Toy Story three alone, like the amount of cure jerky
storytelling that happens in that and yet again it's the same themes of having to
let go and move on and let things transform and find new meaning, which
is therapy. All right, what else are we gonna talk about? What
I love about this movie is this is coming off RAD two in two thousand
and seven. Two Rad Twee really changed the game when it came to filmmaking
for their animation style and really kind of incorporating production elements cinematography, making digital
lenses, digital cameras to kind of give it that like you're actually on a
set shooting a film with lenses, with setting up shots and Dolly zooms,
and you know, at times when I watch up, I sometimes feel like
they're trying to do their best Steven Spielberg impression with a lot of the cinematography
and a lot of the sequences, especially the first act of the film.
But I think that's why this one's also so special, as they started really
developing those techniques, and I mean they mastered it with Toy Story four for
sure. Yeah, it's beautiful, But I also think that definitely the first
time I saw it and watching it again, and I think I've only seen
it twice, but I've definitely would relate to Carl more than any other character
because I've had instances in my life where I've just been in that in that
rut, and I've isolated, and I've pushed people away, and I've kind
of had a nihilistic view of things and not wanted to open up to other
people. And that's that's something I've struggled with in the past when I was
in my twins, these off and on a few times and I was in
very dark places and alone and never felt lonelier in my life. And so
I think the character of Carl and how they portray those ideas and those things
that so many people can can suffer through in their lives, it's really well
done. And for me, I found it to be extremely relatable because I
think, I mean, everybody goes through their rough spots and the rough patches
in life, and it's hard to get out of it, and it's impossible
to get out of things like that on your own, which I ultimately I
think is that one of the main messages of the film is to not isolate
yourself like Carl does, because he found that it had it did nothing for
him, and then embracing life is really the only thing that worked to pull
him out of that. Yeah, and thank you for sharing that. I
think that's going to make it more connectible to the audience to recognize that there's
something about these stories, these films that connect to the real experience as we've
all had, and that we're seeing it told in another avenue that allows us
to connect to our own experience without it being as on the nose as our
own life was, and it's not as painful, but you can still relate
and find healing, and like we talked about in our last experience, sometimes
even watching a film can help us find a narrative pathway to a corrective experience
that can heal a wound. And it's so important, and I think you're
dead on. This movie almost to a tie, follows the work of Victor
Frankel, who was a psychiatrist who is imprisoned in Auschwitz and lost his wife
to extermination, and his entire work, his therapy, logo therapy, and
the idea that he comes up with both taps into Nietzsche and nihilism, and
where Nietzsche himself ended up with was a famous quote that gets falsely attributed to
Frankel, including by me before, which is that a man who has a
why can endure anyhow. The pioneer of the question of nihilism is the one
who came up with that question. And then Frankel takes and extrapolates into the
most important point I think it's ever been made in existential psychology, which is
that suffering is unavoidable. We cannot escape pain, we cannot escape death,
we cannot escape any degree of suffering. So what we can do about it
is to make meaning from our suffering. And we see that in this story
where Carl takes his suffering and instead of staying deep and isolated in it,
like we have all had periods of time in our life that we have done,
and chooses to let this little kid in who's a complete representation of his
past self, and rediscover it and make meaning out of his life now by
being someone who can be important and there for Russell. And that is where
he finds his freedom and can let go of the thing it means more to
him than anything else, which is that great soda button or a bottle cap
that Ellie pinned one to him when he was eight years old. Yeah.
I think along with the meaning part is shifting roles too, because Carl is
so identifies with being like Ellie's partner, and I think that's what he's still
that's the well he's still dipping into to try to help himself. Feel better.
So I would argue that he I wonder if he really he probably can
acknowledge that he is isolated. And I bet you because he's still talking to
her, like through the house and through like then like the house later on,
if there's a part of him that is telling him, well, I'm
still with her, and because we're I'm still in this home that I refuse
to leave, and I'm still talking to her, and the house is still
surrounded like I'm still surrounded by her. And we see in like the third
act that he throws everything very symbolic. He throws everything that was the two
of them, pluding the chairs that they've focus in on, out of the
house to save Russell. And I think in that moment, he is allowing
his role to shift from Ellie's partner and the Carl he was before to the
carl he can now be to Russell and being like an adult protector in support
for Russell and letting himself evolve and grow. I mean, it happens in
a dire moment, so his brain doesn't have to be His brain's moving quick,
so he just kind of makes that choice, right, It doesn't have
to toil about it, really and I think that's a big part of that
meaningful work, Like you're referencing ben is you know, also, how can
we shift the role we have in our community, the role we have with
others, and that I think we all kind of acknowledge, specially coming off
of like pandemic and like you know, significant times of lockdown, that community
is really important and that being with others and having a support system is important.
One of my first notes in watching this is, like, where's Carl's
support system? Like, once Ellie's gone? Why is that it? You
know, he's older, but he's not like ninety, where everyone he knows
would no longer be around. You know, why doesn't he have community?
And like I mean his neighbors, I guess we're gone, but even just
a girl? Were they both only children? You know? It makes it
really curious of like how did he get to this place of isolation? And
that we do it because we want to protect ourselves. Like something you guys
brought up I think before we started recording as vulnerability, Like the anecdote to
this isolation is allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, to like go out in the
world and allow yourself to be potentially hurt again. I mean, a lot
of why we isolate is very protective in nature, on top of jested,
feeling sometimes insufferable, the idea of trying to change or trying to do something
different in our lives to bring about change because we have to. When I
talk about vulnerability with clients, a lot of times, what they look like
they want to Marph, which I get. But it's kind of like everything
you want in a lot of ways is on the other side of vulnerability and
discomfort well, and it makes me think a lot about how you know,
one of the things that anxiety and depression do really well is make it feel
like you're alone. It's a big part of how they work together of really
making it seem as though you're completely alone and as if no one would understand
and as if no one else has ever felt this way before, and really
makes it feel very singular. And I would wonder too and be curious about
Carl. In general, I think there's some natural isolation that happens with our
elderly community in general, because I think if they don't have a big family,
if their kids are spread out, if they don't have any children,
I think that there is a lot of ways that we don't interact with people
over a certain age in our community because it's not something we don't We don't
really honor the elderly in our culture, in this culture that we have,
we don't really honor them, and so there really isn't a lot of ways
for them to naturally be supported unless they already have a group of people around
them where they've stayed in the same place for a long time. But even
with Carl in the situation, even the people that he knew around who lived
around him, maybe that was his only community. Nobody everybody sold their place
or maybe they had left previously. So I think one of the things I
think Carl's experiencing some natural experiences of isolations as well as isolating himself from not
being with the person who is who he shared his entire life with. I
mean, he knew her since he was eight, and a lot of ways.
And I've heard this said before, just like I don't know online somewhere
or this is how people talk about it in general, is that men often
are married to their best friend and sore their motivation to find an entire community
is not often as likely as it is for women. To want to have
a community, continue to build their community. It's not the same. Men
aren't really given the same choice. And again not that all men don't have
their own communities, because they certainly do, but more that it's not as
supported in our culture that men for men to be happy. That's one way
that a man could be happy is by having a community of people around him,
and so and so. A part of this, I think too,
is just swing that as you get older, I think sometimes some of those
relationships and experiences are just harder to come by. And I think and also
knowing that when we lose someone that we see, the world changes a lot
and it becomes and the way that we experience grief also feels very singular.
That's great. That's a great point because it can relate to the cause of
his depression, because I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but my
understanding of depression is a hyper focus on the past and kind of an obsession
over the past events, whether positive or negative, and that can fuel the
depression. And why he's so consumed by his past, by his history,
because he's not there anymore. So he's focused on how good his life used
to be, and so he's not paying attention to the present or the future,
and so he's just lost himself into the memories of the past that was
good, and so he's not embracing what can be anymore. I mean,
there is the saying that depression lives in the past and anxiety lives in the
future. That could be a bit of what you're talking about, and I
think there can just be a lot of not living in the present. I
think most mental health diagnoses symptoms a common feature of them as you're not living
in the now, your brain is somewhere else. That's why a lot of
mindfulness practice is what is recommended as practical coping skills for depression anxiety to bring
you back into the now, like what's currently happening, because also depression,
you can't do anything about what's already changed. It's a really good way to
stay stuck and to beat yourself up and to marinate on the things that aren't
going well. Or maybe in the other way you're suggesting to romanticize the past
sometimes as well, or to get really stuck on it, like if this
had gone different, or if I had done that kind of what you mentioned
earlier, Ben, which we talk about in our Spider Man episode, our
most recent one is like that corrective experience ideal, like maybe if I could
go back and if I just had, you know, not tore my ACL
and gotten into the NFL or whatever, that my life would be totally different
and I wouldn't feel the way I am now. And it's really hard,
Like a big component that I teach clients's radical acceptance, just the idea that
we can't know that, and so to keep marinating on that, what if
what function is it serving If it's just to torment ourselves, because sometimes it
is helpful to look backwards, if it helps us gain perspective on or just
information about where did I used to find meaning? What used to help me
feel good? A lot of times I work with clients I talk about one
of their kids. Maybe I went to this with Carl, you know,
like what made you feel good and like yourself when you were young, when
before we get we got like kind of bogged down by life and social you
know, acceptability, And could you bring some of that into your life now
to help yourself feel I don't know, like yourself, feel authentic and getting
yourself out of the isolation in the negative habits that can form with depression,
because a lot of depression too is just ruminating being stuck. And then depression
is so good at feeding itself then like you know, take care of yourself
as much as you would like to. You don't see other people. It
just keeps you really locked in to your head, and you can get really
stuck in the past because you're not really creating new, new, good experiences,
and or the future is not available to you. You either can't visualize
it, you can't see it, you can't believe in it. So what
is the future other than more of this? And then to contrast that,
in a way, anxiety is hyper focus on a negative outcome of a possibility
of the future and presenting it as a too real a possibility even though it
hasn't happened yet. But having too much of a focus on a negative outcome
in the future that can be part of it. What's important to understand about
anxiety is that anxiety is the overactivation of our alarm system that is designed to
make us uncomfortable enough that we do something that promotes our survival. And why
that's important is because we only have one body. We have one body,
but our mind is capable of dissociating into infinite realities, so kind of like
being uploaded into the matrix where you can imagine infinite worlds, or be in
the danger room for the X Men. You have one body that is fighting
imaginary villains, and you can get really tired and really worn out, but
the machine that can run those simulations can never ever stop and it will be
fine. So understanding that anxiety partially comes from overactivation of the nervous system,
you can understand that part of the way for dealing with an anxiety is calling
the body back down and grounding to the present, because otherwise you can run
infinite scenarios and ask yourself infinite of those what if questions that do have that
negative outcome that then you hyperfixate on. But the key that gets missed in
a lot of early therapy, even for like early career clinicians, is understanding
that talking to somebody who's anxious, to tell them, well, why don't
you just be calm or calm down, or why don't you just stop it?
Like the old Bob, not think about that? Why don't you just
not think about that? Well, that doesn't even make sense. Why why
would you worry about that that's not going to happen. It doesn't work,
and just promote shame. That internalizes the messaging that there's no way out and
then builds in a depression. But what is important to understand is that it's
yes, the fixation on those things, but it's also the activation that comes
with it, and the only way out of it is to solve the activation.
First ground back to the present and the question I love to ask people
with that of is there a tiger trying to eat you right now in this
room? And they go no, Like, then do you need your body
to be that tense right now or your heart to be going no? Okay,
so nothing. So we've established nothing is trying to eat you from like
alive right now? Right? No, okay, breathe, It's okay to
breathe, and you can see the level drop and then then the thought speed
up. And one of my favorite stories to tell this little anecdote is think
about all the ridiculous shit you will do when you are running late and you
lose your keys. Yeah, there it is. You felt that, right,
Yeah, absolute panic, right, like tearing couch cushions up and emptying
the garbage can, and like behind the milk because one time your friend left
the keys there and you ought to be sure you didn't too, and like
making sure you check, like in between your car seats, until you realize
what happened was a piece of mail fell on top of where your keys always
go. But because you were distressed and running late, your body was already
so activated that you couldn't even perceive to think move the paper. All you
looked and saw, because you were stressed and in reactive mode, was no
keys, which prompted you to elevate further into anxiety of what if I get
fired, what if this happens, what if I can't pay my rent?
What if it? And then those points you were making come true. But
think about even when I said lose your keys running late, you guys had
physical reactions to it. You got to be like that. And so in
that regard, So in terms of Carl and his depression not being in the
present, so to contrast the effects of anxiety, he is not moving,
he's stagnant. He's in an active person and he's become a passive person in
the world, and he's all stem from his depression. And so I would
wonder if Carl walked into your office to seek treatment, what would you what
would the steps be for you to treat him. So I'm going to tell
you that I am going to go try not to go too deep, but
the I would differentiate between hypo arousal from trauma and grief and depression. Chronic
hypo arousal is a really important thing to understand, and that if you try
to just treat Carl for depression, which I personally view depression more is when
people have that chemical imbalance that prevents them from producing enough of the neural transmitters
they need to get the natural rewards for doing things normally. Like when you
were saying, you know how to period where you're feeling like lonely and depressed
and down, did working out or anything you would normally do the same buzz,
same boosted about absolutely not right, Like no matter what you did,
it wouldn't feel good. Your brain was not producing enough chemicals to give you
the natural reinforcement that comes to doing it. And I think when I look
at depression, I usually view it more as getting stuck in that where you
have like depleted your well and you can't get out. But the question we
need to ask is what happened that caused that? Because sometimes sometimes there's no
reason, sometimes something that we're just there, But other times there's grief and
trauma that's unprocessed and get stuck. So for Carl, I would want to
process with him the trauma of losing Ellie, of watching her get old,
watching her get sick, and then seeing her die. I think I would
want to start there because I think where Carl is at is that every minute
he's alive, he has to face the reality that she's not there. So
he's kind of harshly dissociated. Our dissociative defense system works on two levels.
I can win, and it is where our fight and flight live. Right.
If I can win, I can win by doing something, so I
can either run away or I can fight this to beat it. There is
no running away from death and there's no fighting it, so we choose the
other side, which is freeze and fawn. Carl's not fully frozen, but
he's shut down, like you're saying, he's withdrawn. He's not engaging.
He's staying stuck in a reality that's pleasing to him so much to the point
that he strikes somebody in the head with his cane, who's grappling with the
only physical representation of Ellie that he really has left besides the house, which
is that mailbox. Yeah, that's a trauma response right there, like whenever
you have a reaction that doesn't match the situation, right, And we don't
as a society understand trauma reactions enough, and we tend to, really,
which what happens to Karl in this movie, vilify people when they have those
over the top reactions, Like that'd be a situation which you'd call someone crazy
in like a not so nice way, or incompetent or senile, And really
Carl is quite sharp. He is not senile at all. He does not
need to be anywhere. He's not a public menace where he is. He's
so stuck in this I can't win. So he's finding his freeze out point.
And for me, coming from a trauma focused narrative or trauma focused orientation,
I am going to want to process with Carl the things that he believes
he can't escape from, so that his only way out of pain is to
shut down because otherwise it's too painful and he can't do it. That's where
I would start yeah, And I would just want to say as well,
like Carl wouldn't be in hannahra Ben. You can disagree with me, but
Carl would be someone I would even diagnose with depression. I'd probably diagnose him
with adjustment to sord, which is how it sounds, which is you're having
difficulty adjusting to a big change in life, which can be bereavement. And
that's when someone like Karl walks into your office, you need to make sure
you ask their whole story, because if you just ask, what are your
current symptoms like, you would maybe diagnose someone like him with depression, and
that wouldn't be correct unless these symptoms that he's showing now were things that have
come up before and other moments of his life, even when he was with
Ellie or you know, a different stages of his life. But if it's
just something that like depression or anxiety symptoms that have only come on after a
significant life change, then we would give them an adjustment diagnosis, not like
a mood disorder or even like generalized anxiety disorder, unless the anxiety started popping
up everywhere about everything. And even then I would take my time before I
would switch someone over from adjustment to generalize, but you can have both too.
Adjustment disorder comes with specifiers for with depression, with anxiety, with mixed
with disturbance of conduct, With all of the above, it's a diagnosis that
can be applied for thirty days or so long as the effects of the change
are active in their life, which is where it gets really difficult to provide
a correct diagnosis for someone who's grieving because death is permanent. Yeah, it's
not like you know a situation is going to go away anytime soon, which
is why I like breakup. I would say it's more yeah, like an
active, ongoing situation, which I would argue is most things people have to
adjust to, like our active ongoing situations. Adjustments of slippery diagnosis, mostly
with insurance companies. They're the ones that don't want you to have it hung
on for too long. M Hannah, you look like you have an opinion.
Well, you know how I feel about insurance companies, which is what
I was thinking of. No, but I was thinking about how you know,
definitely what Ben said in terms of treatment. But I think also the
important thing with Carl will be helping him figure out his identity again. When
we have a big, major loss like this, when we lose the person
that again gives us so much meaning, We have so many roles attached to
being their partner, being their friend, being a part of their family,
that how Carl identifies himself for the rest of his life will be different than
it was before Ellie died, and helping him create that identity, feel comfortable
with identity, even think even just thinking about what he means and what that
means to him now, what it means to be a widower. Helping him
identify that and find that identity for him that feels the most comfortable for him
going forward. I think that would be one of the big things that I
would focus on with him, And of course along with all the things that
Ben said to like, all those things were really important as well, but
I think also just really helping him understand that he's going to be different than
he was before Ellie died, and that's just the truth. That's what happens
when we have a major loss in our life, a major a major loss
to lose a spouse that you've been with for more than half of your life,
would it's going to change who you are? I mean, I can't
even imagine for him because if they met at like eight, I would imagine
like he's never really existed in a time that he remembers without her, Like
that would feel as a therapist, I would feel overwhelmed on my client's behalf
about that, Like I feel like, oh, if we aren't going to
be on a journey together, you and I, because that's a hardcore,
you know, not just to have lost the spouse you met when you were
in your twenties, thirties, your forties, but when you were little and
that's been your best friend. That's that's really tough, all right. And
then on top of about his life has been defined by her in their relationship,
not having children, not having like you said, a support system of
other people around them. So once she's gone, what does he have?
Yeah, this therapist, is is it dangerous to be that dependent on somebody
else and vice versa in a relationship and like you said, not having a
support system, is there is there a danger to that psychologically? Yeah?
I mean I always I do couple therapy every now and again, and Hannah's
also a couple therapists, so she can chime in from getting anything wrong.
But I have this conversation with couples where I'm like, you're not supposed to
be each other's everything. That's also a toxic sort of like Disney narrative that
your partners you're like your best friend and your lover and your confidant and everything.
And that's not fair, like a lot of pressure to put on one
person for starters, and then two, we're supposed to have a support system.
We're supposed to diversify where we get our needs met because you know,
your partner might have no offense to them, like they're not super strong maybe
in one area, and that's where you go to another person in your life,
even for silly things like if your boyfriend doesn't like to watch movies,
so you have a friend that you go to the movies with because if that's
a passion of yours. And then there are certain things that you know,
when I work with couples, sometimes they have sensitive topics that are triggers for
them and that will become a hard topic between them of like, well,
I should be able to talk to you about anything, and so I sometimes
have to tell a couples, you know, it's okay if you can't talk,
that's why we have friends, That's why we have close friends, we
have family, because there are some topics that your partners are allowed to have
boundaries around for their own well being. And so yeah, it's not healthy.
And also from the like this movie brings up is if God forbid something
happens to your partner or your best friend or whoever what, then you never
want anything that makes your well being stable to be one thing, whether it's
I mean, I talk to the te teenagers about their phones, like,
I'm like, what if your phone falls down a gutter and dies, are
you going to be screwed? Like? You never want just one person,
one object, one activity to be the end all be all for yourself because
life is out of our control in a lot of ways, and you don't
want to be at the whims of that one thing. So yeah, I
mean, And also it can create a lot of incidental codependence and aveshment where
it makes me curious how much of that might have been going on with Carl
and Ellie just organically, not that I think that they're toxically codependent. And
also it makes me curious because Ellie is shown when they were growing up as
being seeming to be the more outgoing one of the two. So I'm also
curious if maybe Ellie was the person that brought in other relationships into their partnership,
and once she died, I'm curious if their work, if there was
community that petered out because Carl didn't know how or couldn't or chose not to
or maintain it. So, I mean, there's still a lot we don't
know about what their life looked like outside of their specific relationship before she died,
And maybe he did ostracize the people that were around and became kind of
a classic curmudgeon, which is kind of how the movie opens, you know,
like really, which is a way to have control, right when you
feel like something has happened to you that's really out of control. We can
always control destroying something, So when we get into more self sabotage behaviors,
it can be a way to also feel like we're protecting ourselves. And depression
loves that. They're like, oh, you're gonna keep doing stuff that confirms
that you're a piece of garbage, But we already feel like you're a piece
of garbage, so this is great for us. So yeah, like,
why don't you yell at that guy, or why don't you throw your mailbox
at that dude? And then we just we can just lay in the confirmation
bias euphoria that you are a piece of garbage that no one likes anymore.
The only person who liked you died, so now what you know? All
that stuff? It's like I try to tell clients, there is like a
weird it is satisfying when, especially when we're depressed or going through depression symptoms,
there is satisfaction to being confirmed in those beliefs that are really negative,
like why does it feel hard to take a compliment? And why is it
sometimes feel so satisfact satisfying to screw something up. I mean, it's all
that simple fact that our brain loves sameness and our brain hates difference because it's
uncomfortable. And so it's very long answer to your question, but it was
a great answer, fascinating honestly. And I look at I look at the
finale when when Carl is ridding the house of all the items to lighten it
and save Russell. I look at that he's of him finally saying goodbye to
Ellie and finally accept her passing, accepting what happened and being able to move
on, but essentially came clearing the house of items. Is he's finally saying
goodbye to her. Yeah, it's like a little like rich, like it
doesn't quite happen, like this is the movie because it's done under Durest.
But I do think before that, though, he does have that sort of
more ritualistic grieving moment where he lets himself finally sit down and look through her
adventure book. And that's something that really true to griefing process and sometimes I
talk about with clients is do you need to find time to be with an
essence the person that you lost, and to maybe watch them thing or do
something or read something that you shared together or that reminds you of them,
to really well one say goodbye, right, that's kind of the typical response.
But also to let yourself feel your feelings. You know, that's a
hot topic right on TikTok somatic therapy, feeling or feelings, but it is
like letting yourself really have those feelings and are not finding them him anymore.
So I wonder if part of him being able to do that is he finally
let himself have that breathing moment right before of like dys radically like acknowledging that
she's gone. He did, he had to. And Brittany, there was
something that I wanted to point out in your your metaphor before Yeah, that
you were talking about essentially like how important it is, and you guys asked
if is it dangerous? Right? You guys called me a dork, and
then you then proved my exact point in your very long answer that the whole
movie uses a balloon as a metaphor for the fragility of the relationship and how
dangerous it is to base your happiness on that. But that I will give
you the past, because you probably have not had a child who had their
birthday balloon blown away in the way. I'll give you a little anecdote.
One of my first anxiety freakouts as a child is like four, and I
had to have a balloon for a dance recital performance, and my brothers popped
it villain origin story and I cry hysterically with anxiety about showing up to this
dance recital without my balloon. So you know, we're all having great memories
about balloons in this room, and now we know why you guys responded to
me with a hostile response. You see there it is. Well, I
thought your silly ass is gonna bring up Batman somehow. I also thought you
could bring up Batman. I was waiting for you to be a dick.
So yeah, there's still time. There's still time. But I didn't even
have to be the first one to say Batman. So I don't know if
you guys know, but in every single episode I essentially played the Kevin Bacon
game with them with Batman. And I find some super obnoxious way since the
beginning of our show to tie every episode to Batman some way, somehow,
And they never know when I'm gonna do it or how I'm gonna do it.
I can feel it sometimes. I always know when you're going to do.
Don't act like we don't know. You get this stupid look on your
face. The cow exactly this medium attached. Ben just made himself a mask
with his fingers. You're the coolest guy I know, Ben, I could.
I could connect this movie to Santa Claus though. So the actor who
plays Carl played Santa and Elf. Yes he did, and Asner is awesome.
M what so if someone's if someone's dealing with this adjustment disorder, whether
it's from you know, a loss of a loved one or or a hard
break up. How does someone move on and let go of that grief and
try to accept new people into their lives and accept maybe a new relationship without
being in the stead of a state of isolation and having this massive wall built
up. I think it comes primarily through the acceptance and acknowledgement that feelings exist
to communicate meaning from our experiences, and without them, we can't feel what
we need to to move what had been true from an is and a predictably
will be so to a was, and deal with the pain that it takes
to re encode all those memories and all that information and all those predictive expected
memories like oh, on Christmas, I'll be unwrapping presents with Ellie and I'll
get her this for Christmas, or when you break up with somebody, Oh
we're going to go on this trip, or we go to the wedding,
or I'd normally do that with her. All that has to be felt as
we re encode it. Because when you encoded the memory in the first place
as a good thing in your brain, of oh, being with this person
makes me happy. All of those memories now have to get re encoded with
loss, and people avoid the hell out of that because it's terrible. So
it's not until we can accept that and deal with those feelings that we can
close that chapter and move on, Like you have to be done with something
before you're ready to go on. Yeah, And I feel like that could
that definitely affect finding a new relationship because obviously in this film Carl, there's
nothing about him finding a new love or dating. But I know they came
out with a little short film about him going on a date. So what
challenges is Carl going to face in terms of maybe pursuing another partnership or to
try and find a new companion in his life, because all those memories he
made with Ellie were in a relationship, and so what he would he suffered
those consequences of trying to pursue dating to cause it would cause him pain to
be around another woman, to start dating another woman, or to try and
put himself in these situations that he spent seventy years with Ellie as a couple,
as a partner, So would becoming trying to become a partner with someone
else cause in pain as well. It certainly would cause him pain. Yes,
it absolutely would cause him pain, and at that stage in life it
usually takes. Is something we went over in some of our marriage and family
classes. In Hannah can probably talk to it better, but even in our
marriage and family and lifespan classes is that as people age and you start looking
for partners in different phases of your life, you have to remember that by
the time you're seventy eight years old or by the time you're in your thirties
or forties, the dating pool of single people that have no kids or people
that haven't had a life before you is almost none. And you have to
create space for that to be real and that to be okay to have a
successful partnership. And I don't know if you want to build on that,
take that as a yes, I mean, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
You just gonna say, I think what'll be hard? I mean,
I guess my hope would be that is dating pools around his age. Carls
and I haven't seen this short, but that I can't imagine anyone he wouldn't
be dating, wouldn't have some sort of similar life experience. If you're single
at that age, my assumption would be statistically that most of those people would
be widows or widowers, and so I can't imagine there wouldn't be a lot
of empathy and understanding around that. And I would imagine a part of dating
in that pool of dating is what are our boundaries around talking about our maybe
dead loved ones? Like do we give room in our relationship for discussing who
we've lost? Are like husbands and wives that have passed? How what does
that look like? Maybe it's comforting for you them both to have permission to
discuss as much as they want or need to about who they had before.
Maybe there are some relationships at that age where they have a line to that,
you know, like, once we've kind of gotten serious, can we
not bring up Elio all the time? And so, I don't know it.
It'd be interesting to work with him and figure out what he's looking for
and then how ready he feels, which I think sometimes you don't know how
ready you're going to feel till you're doing it. So sometimes when I do
like that kind of adjustment work with people after a big change is one do
they feel not necessarily ready to jump back into the situation that came from before,
like if it's dating, but if they feel ready to dip their toe
in and be curious about how that will feel. So I try to remind
people that it's not like an on and off switch, like you have to
be like fully healed and like fully ready to like jump back in full force,
which is why I think we can stay stuck. Is there this idea
that either we're fully into dating again or whatever, or we're fully out And
then it's more just can we think of ourselves kind of like an experiment where
we try some things out, we have an hypothesis about what we can and
can't handle, we dip our toe in, we learn from that information.
I tell people sometimes it's like data gathering, and then in our sessions you
bring the data in and then we kind of just talk through how that felt,
did it feel too soon, did it feel awful? Did it feel
fun actually better than you expected? And then all that stuff in terms of
I don't know, like dating at that age. It would be interesting to
kind of figure that out with Carl, and I think that would be something
too. Where I took a genetology class, so that was like a million
years ago in grad school in terms of what it is like to be that
age and to be still like I mean, like a sexual, vivacious,
romantic person. You know, it's a different experience than when you're younger,
but some ways it's not. Yeah, I think I think the most important
part would really be what is Karl looking for and what is he hoping for?
Because to be looking for a partner, I mean he wasn't looking for
a partner when he was eight either or yeah, so so really it would
really be more about like what is he interested in now and what is his
hope for now? Because I think when we think about people who are dating
in this generation, I think it's a lot more about companionship and a lot
more about finding somebody who has some similarities in terms of their experiences and having
somebody to share and do things with. And so I feel like I feel
like, really making sure that it's that it's something that he that he isn't
awareness about what he's looking for, I think would be would be helpful.
And then and then, just like Britney said, trying some stuff out,
seeing what's sick, seeing what doesn't and you're going to be uncomfortable. A
big part of what I talked to clients about is absolutely sitting in discomfort.
It's not this thing where like you just won't it won't feeluncomfortable anymore, and
then you'll be ready to do it. It's more that, no, you
have to be okay being a little bit uncomfortable, like a safe amount of
uncomfortable. And my job can be to help figure out what that line is,
and that can be like, you're going to try something that feels possible,
doesn't feel too scary or too unsafe or two whatever, and then we'll
see where that falls in terms of your window of tolerance. And then also
ideally we teach, like Ben With referenced a while back, that your body
can be quite activated during these experiences. So I also always want to make
sure that when I'm asking clients to take chances, because that's what I'm doing,
that they have a toolbox of coping skills, like practical ones like CBT
skills, grounding techniques, mindfulness techniques that they can draw on and feel empowered
by and feel confident in that they can rely on. When they will become
anxious, I tell clients it's not like you probably will you will be anxious.
You may have this experience. It's not going to be like all roses.
And you have skills and I hope that you can trust me, your
therapist, that I think you can handle it. Even if it goes badly,
you can handle that. You know, it's not to run away from
discomfort, yeah, which we love to do. And anxiety is always like
if you feel uncomfortable, that means it's bad, so go away and avoid
it, please, please, and thank you. Well that's what that's what
Western society teaches us. That's true. Society teaches us something something much different.
And I think it's really important to recognize that someone like Carl would have
been taught your feelings. Your feelings, nobody cares about those. I mean,
like that Charles guy that he analyzes, he's basically been hiding in the
frig and nowhere forever because he doesn't deal with his feelings. He's made a
bunch of dog robots. Well yeah, and like looking at looking at this
movie, we get one piece of information that tells us when this takes place,
and that is that yes, no, well actually that's an interesting point.
Maybe we don't well no, because never mind, because he did have
GPS. So that's interesting because I was like, oh, maybe this movie
is set a little further back because the cars are always old, and then
they go to see Star Wars together. That's true. But like the businessman
in the beginning, he's talking on a cell phone. That's true. Yeah,
some tech, there's some tech in there. So I'm assuming it is
present day of the movie. Yeah. I always assumed it was present like
contemporary when it was made. I guess. Yeah, I actually can connect
it to Batman. I can. Are you ready? Yeah? I want
to stay together together guy two two three three. Composer Michael Giacquino. Yes,
yes, Michael Michael Giaquino. He just the Batman's score. He's he
absolutely did and the Batman score was fantastic, and uh wait, we can
connect this one more time on another level that I can be super super thrilling
about the same composer is also the first person not named John Williams to do
a Star Wars movie. Correct, right, Yeah, he did Rogue one.
He did, which is the new Star Wars movies. Fight me.
That's usually like the Rogue one hive. They're that determined, very determined.
There were good ones are also, but the best he's a wonderful composer.
He's one of my favorites in UM. When I like to say, who,
maybe who the contemporary John Williams is, I think John. I think
Michael Jaquino is the guy. They have such similarities in how they write and
their tendencies and their use of classical instrumentation. Jacquino doesn't use electronics, UM
very rarely. Most of the time. He just sticks to the traditional orchestra,
which is what John Williams has always done. So, plus the complexity
of his writings, UM, it's very reminiscent of how John Williams composes of
music. And also the simplicity of an incredible theme for a character for a
movie. I mean, John Williams has made so many, even Harry Potter,
even obviously Star Wars, but Jaws, very Jaws is very simple as
well, but something simple that everyone can think of and connect to with this
movie. They're both geniuses and perhaps Indiana Jones guys come on, of course,
I mean, I mean, we could go through the whole filmography of
them both. But yeah, and even like this, the whimsicalness of his
voice. When we went to see Indiana Jones last week, and I realized
it comes up for me when I when I hear it, But I didn't
realize how similar Lay's theme and Marion's were. Oh, it's basically the same
thing. Yeah, very similar. And then if you watch you could watch
Home alone to like Sorcerer's Stone music. It's like you can watch the same
movies vice versa. You can you can hear Lay, you can hear that
same lay A Marian theme and et here and there as well. Yeah,
you know he's written a lot of music sometimes, you know, because you're
wanting that. John Williams sank exactly that stank and I love all your Time.
Hans ever made Time like four times with all different movies, and I
don't care. It's great. Pirates and Gladiator, same thing. Yeah,
Gladiator is Hans, Uh what's zimm So he pirates this theme and then Gladia
like the same kind of brass percussion. It's basically the same song. Yeah,
yeah, I want Doom score just screaming into my ears. Wait for
Dud was so good. I know I cannot wait for the sequel. Do
you have anything more you want to talk about from a therapist standpoint? You
three? Um, no other than I think this movie speaks a lot to
how powerful it can be for different gen rations to connect there. I can't
remember the country this was in, but there was a I think it was
like a YouTube sort of like docu series thing. I watched just like an
episode of a merging of a like a daycare kindergarten facility and a like elderly
home. And how for mental health, how good it was for the residence
of the elder facility to have these little kids around them that they because the
little kids basically had preschool amongst them, so when they were doing crafts,
when they were having their snacks and lunch, all this stuff they were doing
together. They would read stories to other kids would sit on their laps and
like read books. And how revitalizing it was for the older generation to be
like feel love and to feel mastery. I think that's what's also beautiful as
well. And I think other cultures who do more respect their elderly and and
bring them into society. There is so much that can be gained from that
of just the past down not just wisdom necessarily, but just having someone having
a place where you, as an older person can demonstrate mastery to someone younger
and feel worthwhiled in that way and feel yeah, just worthful. And also
I think for the younger kids, these little kids, it just helps humanize
older people. I think that they we do a lot of, like we
talk about home alone earlier, we do a lot of disservice of them being
these like scary oggie boogie like people that are like around us. We kind
of try not to like be outwardly disdainful in our expression to little kids.
We kind of just teach them to like watch their mouths, like watch their
faces and you know, maybe go up there and give grandma a hug and
don't look scared. But there's not this more organic connection. And I think
in that like that example, I watched that thing on but so beautiful is
it just let organic interactions happen between them. They weren't like pressuring little kids
to mingle with the older adults. It was more just we're all here together,
and we're all having a good time, and we're all chilling out and
learning and being and letting those community connections form instead of totally isolating those two
community to communities from each other and or forcing the connection, which what we
see more often, which is got Grandma a kiss and don't look scared.
So I think it just says a lot therapeutically about sort of like mente mentor
relationships, having more chosen family, you know, thinking more creatively about community,
which I do think I'm hearing more and more of my clients talk about,
and I'm thinking about too as my own individual about how are we finding
organic community around us and not and trying harder to not be isolated, which
is really easy to do nowadays with zoom and our phones and stuff. It's
it's easy to not realize how I slated you are, or that how how
far we have come from centralized community in our even our neighborhoods. So that's
more like my therapist slash just person perspective on this movie. All right,
well, how about we wrap up this crossover between Popcorn Psychology and Raiders of
the Lost podcast. Brittany Hannah Ben, thanks so much for joining us.
This is a total blast. Raiders listeners, definitely go check out Popcorn Psychology
and Popcorn Psychology. We would love for you to come check out our show,
Raiders of Lost podcast as well. Y'all want to say anything last words
to the fans and listeners. No, just that you can find us forever
that you get podcasts, and you can find us on all social media popcorn
psychology, not threads yet. Haven't really experimented with threads yet. I've heard
mixed reviews, so it's okay. I'm already given up on it. That's
what I've heard pretty much. And then if you could let our fan base
kind of here one more time where they can find you all Raiders of a
Lost podcast on every single audio platform as well as YouTube. We do video
podcast podcasting as well, TikTok, Instagram threads as well, Twitter, Raiders
of Lost Podcast, Letterbox Raiders lost Pod. We are everywhere. We're so
easy to find. Raiders of Lost podcast dot Com is the easiest place.
We have everything there on the homepage. And thanks so much for checking us
out if you do. Take care everyone,