Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - Ecological Grief, Individuation, and Internal Family Systems

Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster movies and psychoanalyze them.
My name is Bernie Brownfield and I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by
Ben Stover, individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, 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. Hello. Everyone, So we are finally getting to the
second part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Lord of the Rings and
the Two Towers, and today we actually have a guest with us, so
I'm gonna have her introduced herself. Justine, go ahead. Hello. I
love how you called it end the Two Towers like it was in her daughter
movie A little bit when that happens. I'm doing absolute best, guys.
I loved it. I loved it. Hi, I'm Justine Maston. I'm
a licensed marriage and family therapist and a licensed to Alcolm drug counselor. I'm
also a sometimes yoga teacher, podcaster, writer, adjunct professor. I have
too many jobs, is what I'm saying. I am best known as the
Captain of The Starship Therapizze, which is both a book and a podcast.
If you're interested in the book, it's Starship Therapized Colin using therapeutic fan fiction
to Rewrite Your Life, available wherever books are sold. Yes, a real
publishing house did put that book out. And I have a new book coming
out called The Grieving Therapist, Caring for yourself and your clients when it feels
like the end of the world, and that'll be available for pre sail in
the next couple of months. And I'm stoked to talk about Lord of the
Rings. This is very close to my heart. I'm stoked here. The
first I've heard about this other book you've written. I require it immediately.
Yes, agreed, same. It is full of harsh truths and whimsy,
which is like description of me as a parson. And I wrote both those
books with my collaborator, Larissa Garsky. Yeah, and she was supposed to
join us today, but unfortunately couldn't make it. But she's with us in
spirit through you, fellow Chicago, and she is a fellow Chicago and you
you could like see her. Yeah, she is still of this Earth.
She's still earth bound. Yeah, she's still part of the terrestrial plane.
Well, I mean, Chicagoans think that Chicago is the Earth, the whole
Earth, the total Earth, and that everyone here is on Earth and everyone
not is somewhere else because we forget with it. We are not in fact
as cool as New York, but we think we are. We think we're
cooler. I was just there in New York New York Comic Con. Oh
yeah, you're a big time panelists on a lot of con. Yeah,
I'm like a big time celebrity for a very small, niche group of people.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, we love it. So the themes of
today, we're going to be talking about grief in individuation. I'm gonna stumble
over that a few times, and then the character of Gallum slashed me gol.
We're just gonna be covering a few things in regards to him, such
as integrated family systems, dissociation, and a little discussion about addictive personality situations.
So and then, as always, we're gonna have treatment and final thoughts.
So as I'm sure anyone who's listened to our previous episode on the first
part of Lord of the Rings, you will know that I am the weakest
link in terms of this fandom in that it's a blind spot for me.
So that being said, I'm going to throw it to Ben to explain what
this movie is about, even though I literally just watched it and it's ninety
years old. But that's okay. I'll be happy to summarize the plotter.
So in the Two Towers, what happens is this story picks up right after
the conclusion of the Fellowship of the Ring, where the Fellowship has broken up.
Bourmer has died murdered by Raki, and we see each of our groups
split apart on their separate versions of the Quest to Destroy the Ring. Froto
and Sam have taken off towards Mordor, Mary and Pippen have gotten kidnapped by
Orkai, and we see Gimli and Legolis and Aragorn off to rescue them,
and then they split apart even further, even though once they rescue Mary and
Pippen, Mary and Pippin get lost and find an ant who helps them to
try to get to safety before they convince the Ants that the Ends need to
actually go to war because the fires of Eisngard and the mechanation of war is
becoming relevant to them and they can't just hide in their forest and take their
time and wait everything out like they always do. And then we see Frodo
and Sam encounter Gallum, who promises to take them to Mordor, and right
is Frodo is showing compassion, allowing Gollum to assume his regular identity as Smigel
for the first time in quite a long time. Fairmere, dealing with his
own ship, comes in and Is forces Frodo to betroy or betray Gallum,
which means that Smiegel and Gallum comes back out, leading Smiegel and Gallum to
betray Frodo and Sam yet again. And we see this constant cycle of push
and pull, and we see so much work done for each one of these
members of the subgroups to start separating out from their previous identities, from their
home races, their home countries, their homelands, to realize that they have
to be their own people to solve these problems, and this film culminates with
the Battle of Helm's Deep, where we see the people of Rohan and King
Theadin recognize that doing things the way they always had works to some degree,
but can also betray you by trapping you in a predictable pattern. And I
think that is such an important thing that can tie into why in this episode
we'll talk about individuation slash differentiation as a huge part of human development, because
at some point the world you grow up in is not the same one your
parents trained you for. Yeah, and so this movie kind of starts with
our first topic, which is grief. You know, quite literally recaps the
death of Gandolf and then Frodo having a grief stricken stricken nightmare that he wakes
up from in experiencing our capital g Gandolf staff. Yeah, Gandolf as working
in is the deity figure that comes in and out of the story, providing
guidance and magic to help solve the problems in ways that can't be understood or
done by our more earthly races. Wizards are sort of like angels and oh
Tolkien mythology, Okay, that's why they're dicks. Sometimes if you're in the
supernatural fandom often angels and dicks. Well, there's good angels and bad angels
like everything else, not just one thing. I'm monolith if you will.
Um, Yeah, there's a lot of I guess where do you all see
grief other than this, like outright example, how the movie starts. Where
does grief represented for you all? In the movie? Oh, I mean
it's all over town. Ergorn is grieving for what he believes is the loss
of his relationship with Rwen, and the poor hobbits is are all grieving for
the loss of their fellows. And the big thing that kind of just like
hit me in the face watching it this time, all four hours, just
just a little bit ago, was Marion Pippins, specifically their grief around the
loss of the forests, the loss of their earth, the eco grief.
Yeah, and the fact that hey, if we don't do something, we're
going to lose the shire too. We can't we can't say oh, well,
you know like people in the world today that are like, well,
you know, it's fine, I'll be okay because I live in the Midwest
and so I'm not going to burn as the global temperature rises, Like,
well, but we all need to give ship because we all live on this
pale blue dot. I thought that was really beautifully done and like so ahead
of its time obviously, and you know Tolkien ahead of its time, but
also like this movie came out in two thousand and two, which we were
not having quite the conversations then that we are now, and Treebeard is just
this, this beautiful personification of the shepherd of the forest. And I'm like,
yeah, buddy, I want to save your friends. You knew them
from Nut and Acorn. Save them. I mean, I think this movie
is talking about, and we've talked about this more in the podcast, that
there is sort of this very concrete idea of grief and in the mainstream of
that grief as someone dies or you lose someone and you grief for them.
But I think what you're talking about, and what I also noticed in this
movie outside of the grief of Gandolf, is the grief of more like concept
rual grief and more abstract grief and ambiguous love. But yeah, and I
think where I kind of noticed it when you brought up like Mary and Pippin
was the grief of sort of growing up too, and the grief of realize
of like tragedy and that things aren't ever going to be the way they were
before. And the profound grief that can come from realizing that, you know,
when, oh my god, I do not know who is who?
Which one is Dominic Monahan, Mary or Pippin. Dominic Monahan is the bond
or the brunette. Who's the bond? Dominic Monahan is Mary. When Mary
was like talking and he was like, we gotta fight, and Pippin was
like, na, man, we'll just go back to the shire that exchange
when and I think I said out lybra right before Mary said it was like
there isn't gonna be a shire anymore. And so this idea that you can't
go home again, that you have to grieve the life or I think I
saw the grief on his face of like the life you knew before is gone
and hopefully we can get some version of it back again. But right now
there's no there's no settling into that life and staying in that life anymore.
It is done. And there's such profound grief with moving forward in your life,
you know, from one stage of life to the next, which is
what we're seeing here too. Like they once were happy, little Hobbits and
now they are part of their warriors in this huge battle that is so much
bigger than them, and there's so much grief with that. And I know
from what very very little I know about Tolkien, and you can correct me
if I'm wrong, Like a lot of inspiration from this was from him going
to war right in World War One and witnessing his peer group go through that,
and so I'm sure this was a huge inspiration of that, of like
these young people and kind of light in their eyes going away and the grief
of that, well, it's that you can absolutely true. Tolkien himself was
a soldier in World War One in the trenches and most of his company did
not return. And you can feel the World War One politics at play throughout
both the Hobbit, especially the Hobbit, but this movie as well the story
as well, and in it you see the particular clash of World War One
was the isolationism of so many world powers as evil is coming. Evil is
coming, and war is coming to your door whether you like it or not,
and it is affecting everyone. And we see that theme playing out with
the Aden who's refusing to help Gondor, and we see Pippin, who just
wants to go back to the Shire and pretend like all this isn't happening,
because in his head, if we retreat back to the Shire, no one's
going to notice that the Shire is here. And although these movies don't show,
in the book, there is an absolute burning of the shire where even
Hobbits turn on Hobbits and join the Orcs and burn the shire. And you
see this theme reckoned with over and over throughout the movie, as each player
has to recognize they have to grieve the loss of the life and the reality
that they thought they once had in order to accept that all of their resources
that apply to the world they thought existed no longer apply, and that they
must let go in order to accept the new reality and form new strategies to
survive because the old ones will not work. You know, it's interesting,
Ben, when you were talking, something kind of clicked into place for me
that I hadn't thought about before, because one of the big relational shifts that
happened during World War One was that social stratification barriers just kind of tumbled as
everybody was in the pits together. You know, it didn't matter if if
you were the president of a bank or a person without a home like you,
you were fighting for your country and suddenly you were all you know,
all of that social shit came tumbling down. And I'm thinking about, like,
obviously all these folks are people of status except for the Hobbits and Gollum,
but suddenly they're all in the same war and there's some interesting relational dynamics
there that I wonder if if Tolkien was like, oh, look, all
of these people could come together except for women, or we don't allow any
more than one woman per story or two two, but like they can't talk
to each other, never have to be absolute smoke shows. Yeah, just
like stunning a great time, you know. So we can bring a bunch
of slightly different people together like a ditch and it's just slightly different, and
those those social barriers can come tumbling down. You know. That gets real
fucked up when we go back into the real world. Like those folks that
came back from war, it was very confusing for them because it was like
me and this president of the bank were in the trenches together, but now
he's the president of the bank and I'm you know, this unhoused dude and
I'm not supposed to talk to him anymore, which, you know, Brittany
gets to your idea of like growing up and changing and oh, such rich
relationships. You brought a structural and relational thinker in and these are the thoughts
I'm having, oh for sure, Yeah, which is good and it's it's
so powerful to watch, especially the scenes in this one where you see not
only those types of relationships where people of all different social stratification must form bonds
in order to survive, but also the reality that people you thought were good
or neutral wheel joined sides with evil, that they're in the parade of evil
men marching into mordor Is. Yes, the men from the east and the
South. Not a great look, a great look at all. Yeah,
Tolkien was pretty racist as well as being misogynist. What a male writer of
that time, bab Well. And also think about just psychodynamically what's playing out
for him is in his war, that's exactly who he fought. England is
west of Germany and north of the Ottoman Empire. So that makes sense,
yes, if you, if you, if you really break it down,
and he swore it wasn't. He's like there's mouth and allegorical in here,
I don't know what you're talking about. That speaks to a fair amount of
lack of insight if I ever heard it. I mean, yes, such
a lack of insight. You mean, if I create art, part of
me will be in that art. You don't say that is something a client
would say, and I'd be like, hey, girls, try to break
this to you, but I'm noticing some things, whether you mean to or
not, right, I mean, I have to remember this atoic englishman from
the would definitely think exactly that that. No, this is just a work
of my brain and my creativity and my research of Norse cultures and Saxon cultures
and how they intersect, and go like yeah, yeah, dude, I
was in high school and I wrote a paper about how this is a World
War One allegory and found hundreds of journal articles even contradicting your own quotes and
psychologists going like yeah, nah, b in short, oh my god,
stepping into what you were saying about, like eco grief, just going back
to that just in like, I also felt it because we're finally socially starting
in a general way, starting to talk about climate change and the planet.
So you're right, like it was kind of been watching this movie that's twenty
years old, based on a book that's a bajillion years old. It was
striking, and I really noticed a lot of the themes that it's the only
second time I've watched this movie, so it's not like I've watched it so
many times. I wish, I wish I had your mind. I wish
this was only the second time I was. But I did write art orcs
the Industrial Complex ruining nature for progress, And Wow, what a thought to
have in a book written by as We just talked about a man from like
nineteen tens, because so much of what they talk about with you know,
we're going there's like a whole speech that Sorromon I think that's his name,
says in the beginning where he's like, you know, we're gonna rip this
stuff down and we're gonna build it up, and then it's never gonna be
the same like it was before, and then also finding disenfranchised men and making
them part of his group and then having them attack their own people. I
was like, Hi, yeah, yeah, I think I even wrote insults
in my nose. I was like, insull stuff, it's got climate changing
kind of stuff. It's got an industry capitalism. I was like, jeez,
Louise, I mean, I know I'm viewing it through this specific lens,
but it felt very timely and yeah, and like the true grief of
that, of that when things change, when we quote unquote progress societally,
there's also something we greatly lose. And culturally we've been moving at such a
rapid clip that I think we're now allowing ourselves to realize the true sacrifice of
that. And I see that in this movie too, You do, and
you see it all over and remembering, like, what makes something timeless is
that the same theme can be applicable to any time period, and that the
same degree of human inner conflict can be told through metaphor and still be relevant
now. And that's why I think these books, among all the other great
fantasy that's ever been written, have stood such a strong test of time,
and why these movies were so hotly anticipated and became such a huge part of
the cultural zeitgeist is because of how powerful all these metaphors are continually, because
of that loss you're talking about. Every time there's progress, something old is
lost, and for Tolkien, it's having lived through the Industrial Revolution to see,
of course, men develop a better way to kill each other, because
unfortunately, that's always driven industry is better ways to kill each other. And
for World War One, we're talking the development of better explosives, airplanes,
machine guns, and gas and watching the way death was distributed in ways never
seen before wars prior to this guy's lined up in lines with guns that don't
shoot accurately at all and stood and kneeled behind each other hoping they didn't get
hit with musket balls. We saw in this movie people just kind of going
towards each other, which is such a gnarly idea, right, I mean,
you want to just charge straight into the face of a spear, you
know, no thanks, but that's what heroism was considered. And you see
people having to grieve the idea that people would come back from war and now
they don't. I mean not everyone did, of course always. But this
starts to translate the timelessness of human evolution, because human beings are always finding
better ways to do things. But in military industrial complex still is part of
that, and that's an evil must be dealt with, and seeing the impact
that has on nature becomes part of the eco grief of this story and why
Treebeard and the other ants are so relevant. Yeah, and they have their
own thing like we talked about in the beginning, where they're like, this
isn't our battle, and then having to realize that this is coming for us.
And I think the shame of it is in the whole concept of eco
grief and how we're recognizing it now, unfortunately, is that you don't really
understand it's happening until it's at your front door. And with the situation with
Treebeard as he's taking them the Hobbits home, as he thinks we're taking them
back south or whatever, and he sees that like they've already killed some of
his friends, and it's right there, and so him and the other ants
can no longer ignore what's happening, and they're doing the thing which happens often,
which is I'm not really taking it seriously or that I have a role
in it until there's already been death and destruction and personal pain absolutely, which
we see over and over again and our country in general, of until it
is, you know, at my doorstep, it doesn't apply to me.
And unfortunately that is a part of how we got where we are currently,
and also how they end up in the same place where this isn't something where
tree Beard is just taking you know, taking them back. And it's also
really interesting because the part of what changes that is Mary and Pippin deciding and
knowing that now we have to do something different, and we're going to go
and we're going to fight because now we know we have like that acceptance that
you and Justine we're talking about, that acceptance of no one is safe,
right. And then when they show up and it's again it's that example of
him already having to deal with the grief immediately of something, not something that's
coming, but something that's already happened. And I love when he makes the
call to the other ends and his like his call of like outrage, and
the scene with Eisngard is one of my favorite fight scenes probably in the whole
series, because in our world the trees can't do anything. Yeah, the
trees can't change anything. They just have to take it. And so watching
them try to save themselves in this impossible experience, I think, again,
Ben, when you were saying that this how this movie applies over and over
and over again, I have cried at that scene the ten the first time
I watched that scene and the millionth time I've watched that scene, and and
how I think it is a really good pinnacle of grief in terms of experiencing
what it's happening in front of you, and then having to make a decision
if you're going to do something about it or if you can do something about
it in the moment because it's happening, and then having to live on with
your life after you've experienced this, and what does and then you know,
having to figure out what we're to do next. Yeah, and calling on
supports too, which he knows right away, which he has. The beauty
of community, which is that I know instantly, when I'm going through this
deep sorrow and shock, that I can bellow aloud, and my fellow tree
shepherds whatever ence will come to me, And they will and we all are
going to be on the exact same page at the exact same time. And
what a lovely idea that when you're in the throes of grief, there's so
much certainty of who you can call on, and there's so much trust and
certainty that they will immediately present themselves and be available to you, and you're
not going to waste any time explaining why they should take it seriously or why
this is a big deal. Everyone's on board one hundred percent. And it
is beautiful that that can occur, and it's a shame that we don't have
that more often. There's so much time that gets argue wasted by having to
explain and convince people of why something that's going on is tragic and important and
then what to do next, And that's time that's lost, and also emotional
labor on the part of the person trying to make other people realize what's going
on. Yeah, and that that brings up stages of grief stuff, which
I mean, we could debate about coolber Ross all day, which we have,
yes, But I think there's some interesting if we just want to take
that paradigm. I like that paradigm because it's very narrative. There's if we
think about the hero's journey, there's the call to the there's the call to
adventure, and then there's the rejection of the call and then you know,
so we're kind of like moving through this this circular paradigm, and we see
folks going through different stages of grief as they're discovering that there is war,
or that this world is changing, or that this world is ending, and
the ends before they feel it themselves. They're in the nile, get this
away from me? Is it mine? Go away? And then they go
right into anger, which is what we needed in that moment. We needed
that tree that was going to get caught on fire and then just stick his
head in the roaring water to put himself out. That's what we needed in
that moment, which is amazing, and that even as you guys are talking
about this, another angle of the timelessness of this occurred to me is not
only do we get to see people moving through these stages of grief and deal
with it in real time, which is how life happens right oftentimes other than
the death of a family member where or a loved one where sometimes we get
kind of stuck in a bit of suspended animation in the world. If we're
fortunate enough gives us some space to do that is, life continues to evolve
around you immediately. It does not stop because you had a loss. Everyone
else and everything else continue. For this story, I think what's amazing about
it is, in addition to all of that we also see the stark warning
that our world needs and that those who are constantly pursuing too much from nature
need to also grieve their hopes, dreams and aspirations if you will, because
if you push nature too far, it will be nature itself that reclaims.
And that's exactly what's happening with people. Where like all the water levels are
rising and storms are increasing, is like the ants are going to war.
I don't know why you are getting crazy the wildfires. It's like, yeah,
bitches, Like mother nature is like I've had an ass ants will go
to war. And in addition to that, I think the most stark conversation
on grief and guilt that I saw in this happened telepathically between l Rond and
Glaudrille, where they recognize that the time of the elves is ending. The
light of their star that gives them their ability to be immortal and have influence
over the world and be supreme beings is gone. It's time for them to
go, and they have to accept that. As having that social responsibility,
it's irresponsible for them a to leave without helping, and they send a detachment
to help the people at Helm's Deep and they certainly would have died without the
elves help, but alsolutely they would not have made it to dawn on the
fifth day. They would not have. Yeah, the Elves definitely felt like
no offense to them, But I guess offense like the elitist class, who
is like, we were all set up though, and we're like hot,
and we live like a long time, and we've got like dope ass palaces
and transportation. So babe, let's just like get out of here. Let's
take that rocket ship right to Mars, like all of the billionaires are doing
right now, and you're interpreting the Elves or Elon Musk and fucking Jeff Daso.
I want to give them more credit in that, which is why I
gave that caveat. But that was the energy of like, we're above all
this and we've got resources, so why are we going to get involved in
all this muddy lower class business. And Arwen's like that rich daughter who's like,
I'm going to be different. I get the triumph of the struggle of
the working man because I fell in love with one and I'm gonna go down,
dad, and you can't stop me. But he's not really a working
man because he's he's also a king but in her brains, you know,
yeah, and so. But it's definitely that that kind of relationship or that
example. And you're right, it took someone who l Ron views as an
authority to say, bitch, you're a part of this too. You can't
just fuck off to Mars with your family or go into your little like bunker.
We are part of this too. It's class solidarity, y'all. It's
what we all got to get our arms around. Class solidarity, right anyway,
leverage your privilege elves, which they have to do. Yeah, but
you also see them acknowledge the cost of what they're putting Froto through that Glaudreel
says to him, like, you you know what I know, and what
Froto is likely soon realizing or realizing now, is that this quest will consume
him absolutely. That's oh, go ahead, Ben. I was just in,
can we ethically abandon them? Yeah? And it made me think of
that's what I thought you were talking about when you said the grief of them
both acknowledging and you kind of see it on their face that they clearly have
known all this time, and also their realization of Proto is not going to
make it through this, and we knew that when he stood up at the
meeting that he wasn't going to be able to live through this. And it's
so interesting because they both have relationships with other people, right, So it's
also interesting that they never say that to anyone or never and I guess and
in some ways it probably doesn't make sense because if they told him or told
anyone, then they would they wouldn't be able to hold any hope throughout the
war. They wouldn't. I mean, And people are watching the elves leave.
That's a scene that got cut from Fellowship, is the passing of the
elves. You see them leaving. You all watched the extended edition of both
of these, right, I mean I have many many many times. Yeah,
I have. I didn't watch it for this because I knew that Brittany
wouldn't be watching the extended version, So we didn't watch the extended version because
the regular version is three hours long. To the minutes. Okay, it
is one minute short. Actually for the record, well, I felt the
extra minute that Okay, I can I just step aside for one second,
even if you don't love these Brittany, it is worth the extended edition because
what they cut out is like people speaking in exposition and it's hilarious. Like
someone will show up and be like, so, here's what's happening to this
other person. So like if you don't follow Tolkien that well, literally people
are showing up and they're saying like, okay, so King Thaden is under
the spell of like the dummy edition. This is like here's I'll say,
here's my I'll say this aloud on the podcast. Is Hannah for you?
Maybe over the holidays, I'll watch the extended editions, but only if we
can make some sort of drinking game out of it. Oh, I would
highly I would highly recommend. This is something that I've done with folks before,
is you watch all all the extended editions in one day and you make
it a full hobbity experience. You have first breakfast, second breakfast, elevensis,
like you got all the food, you got all the drinks. By
the time you get to sheilab your potatoes. I will say, what I
do know is we're taking they're taking that hobbist eyes and guard and the song
that came out of that. So when he said that, I was like,
ah, I know that I know that reference. What do your elf
I see? Like, damn it, Eric, irn you talk that way
to your boyfriend? Well, is there anything else you want to say about
grief before I move on to individuation, One more thing I would like to
say about grief. I have used this a lot with clients. We give
the ring a lot of qualities as therapists. I've used difficult relationship with chemicals
as the ring. The burden that we're carrying. You can use like anything
for that burden. But I've used grief as that burden. So you know,
the carrying of the ring is the is the the person who is really
holding the grief. And Brittany to your point about having community, I mean
you gotta have your sam wise. Yeah, and you might inadvertently hurt your
sam wise because you're in the throes of the grief taking hold of you.
But if you don't have that sam wise, then you you can become a
gollumn. Yeah, I'll I'll alone in a cave for five hundred years,
just you and your grief. So having a fellowship is so important and um,
you know, taking walks, getting some exercise, having some elven bread.
Yeah, skipping around, you know, frolicking around the greenery New Zealand,
if you will. I've been there. It's amazing, it looks beautiful.
It is amazing and beautiful. And they have signs up for where the
things were shot Nearragorn's Cliff. There's no cliff spoilers. Okay, good to
know. A line of heartbroken. Sorry, we'll take a break there,
We'll be right back, all right. So we're going to jump into individuation.
This isn't really my bread or butter, so I'm going to throw it
to use scholarly types on the podcast. I don't know if I call myself
a scholarly type, but I will own being a nerd. But the thing
that stuck out to me a lot in this movie is I'm a therapist that
really prefers to focus on individual in my career. I've learned from doing multiple
kinds of therapy that really where my bread and butter lies is helping people understand
themselves, and that the dynamics of family and other things play into that,
but really understanding that at the end of the day, we have to understand
ourself and our interpretation of the world and what our skills are in order to
survive, and the process of that happening throughout this film is something that's I
found really powerful in watching it, as the amount of time spent split away
from the parents in this film versus the first one, where you have the
parents of Glaudriel and el Rond and Gandalf being so involved in the story and
they have to separate from all of them, and even Bormire coming with his
despite that the ring corrupts him. He initially comes with a very fatherly and
older brotherly attitude to be a mentor and guide people, and the split from
Rigorn too. All of that, you see these Hobbits who had all of
these mentors, who've been through war, who have seen more than just the
Shire has to offer, have to all really start figuring out who I am
in this world and how can I use my understanding of the world and my
skill set and combine them in the unique ways that make me me with things
that spontaneously occur to me in the moment and start trusting them as viable and
correct solutions. Never mind the powers and things that I can't do, never
mind that I'm three foot tall and I'm battling men and orcs who are so
much bigger than me, and that I have no physical power against them.
Okay, but what can I do? And seeing that process of people having
to realize everything I've been taught and told is the right way no longer matters
or applies, and I have to trust myself that I as I am,
with my skills, my traits, and my knowledge are enough to survive this
world. And I think watching that happen is really powerful as people start rejecting
all of these narratives that they're stuck in and have to start writing new ones
in order to allow themselves access to their spontaneous, right brained solutions, finding
modes that weren't available to them when they're stuck in old thinking that doesn't apply
anymore. Ben, there's a book that I'm going to recommend to you that's
literally about individuation in the Hobbit Do if you haven't read it. Yeah,
But I just want to speak to differentiation for a minute. Friends at home.
If you're not a therapy nerd welcome. I don't I don't know how
you how you found this podcast, but if you are a long time listener,
I'm sure you know that there are many different schools of thought in different
ways to conceptualize the way that we think about psychology. And differentiation was the
idea of Murray Bowen of Bowennian Therapy, and Bowen's concept was similar to what
Ben's talking about, but his point was we need to find a way to
be separate from our family of origin, the folks who raised us, and
still in some way connected. So Bowen was against cutoffs. I'm not saying
I agree with that in its entirety. I think sometimes some relationships are too
toxic. But the idea that I pull away from it is it can't be
either or it can't be black or white. We can't be one hundred percent
enmeshed with our family or one hundred percent cut off from our family because they
still live inside of us. We're going to get to that in a little
bit, and I think the best example of someone who experiences differentiation through this
journey is Sam, because Sam is very enmeshed with Shire life, and he's
very resistant to change Shire life, and he really has to get pulled out
of his comfort zone to be able to figure out who he is as more
than a gardener, even though that is an aspect of him. But he's
becoming all these different identities and all these different aspects of himself and retaining his
love of potatoes and his firm and fervent belief that they will go home and
they need some food for the journey back. So he feels like he's done
the best job of differentiating to me. He is in the Bowenian sense,
he is both separate and connected to where he came from, which is hugely
important to Sam's role in this story because, like you said before, without
Sam, Wise, Proto becomes Gallum and succumbs to the darkness around him.
And the value of differentiation versus peer individuation is that where you separate from everything
is, you have to retain the parts that have made you who you are
and connected to something so you don't succumb to everything. You must retain a
sense of value and values. And Sam represents that and the story that no
matter how much growth he does, where he shows courage and fights and spontaneously
defends and does things he never thought he could, he never ever loses that
connection to what makes him him, and Frodo does. Frodo starts to lose
that, the Ring starts to take that from him, Yeah, it reminds
me of this is a little tangential, but not too much of when I
do work with clients and I do more like values based work and like what
feels like your authentic voice and what I feel like your authentic values versus what's
been projected onto you by your family or the community that you're a part of,
or the society at large, and how a lot of times in my
work and my anecdotal experience is that when we feel the most discomfort and distresses,
when the values we are trying to align with our in values that actually
come from us, and that we feel the most fulfilled, even if it's
really uncomfortable because it might be an antagonistic to parts of our lives, is
when we are living more closely aligned with what feels like authentic values. And
I think bridging into what you guys are talking about is that when I do
that with clients, and kind of where I think Sam is going too,
is that you have to figure out what values, what parts of yourself might
have been part of your family as well, but what parts of that don't
actually work for you, and that we're the parts of you that maybe we're
trying to conform and fit in with your family versus the parts of you that
you still like about how you were raised and still feel good and you're right.
When I work with people, sometimes there can be very like throw the
baby out with the bathwater, like fuck this, I'm not going to do
anything like and everything that came from this part of my life is trash,
or they go the opposite way, which is kind of what Sam's doing a
little bit, especially the more beginning of this trilogy, is like grabbing onto
it so tightly, and it's the need to evolve and that knowing and trusting
me as a clinician, but trusting the process period that you will feel better.
It'll still be hard, but you'll the inner turmoil will be turned down
if you can find this middle ground somehow this well, as we'll talk about
in the second integration between where the values that were brought up on and the
values that feel like they're actually you. And that's really it's a real like
head fuck for some people some times, even for myself, to really think
about what feels like the parts of me that are good and that I feel
proud of, and what parts of me are maybe from my family of origin
or something like that that I'm still clinging too because either I don't want to
change or I'm scared. And it's really really hard. And I would say
to anyone listening, if you want to do this work, it's one of
the things that you definitely need to see, I think a therapist about because
it's impossible to be unbiased to have perspective on this, Like you really need
a third party guiding you through that. Myself included. You know, therapists
go to therapy, you know, most of the time, and and it
you need that help no matter how much knowledge you have, Like is it
even as like a therapist, you need someone else who can help guide you
through that. Yeah, because it's so hard to parse out this idea that
like someone in your life might have hurt you and they offered you something positive,
or someone in your life was this really positive force and they offered you
some kind of negative messaging, right, Like Gandolf. Gandolf is wonderful and
he kept a big secret and sometimes he just disappears, and that's fucking problematic.
Yeah, all right, the double door of it all. And Bilbo,
right, he writes these beautiful narratives that only include the stuff that he
wants Frodo to take from him, and yeah, kind of problematic, right,
So there's some stuff we can take from folks, and it can be
hard for people to reckon with this idea of like, Okay, this person
hurt me, but I love them and there are these things I want to
carry forward. Or this person is this beautiful shining light in my life and
they did some fucked up stuff and I need to reckon with that too.
As we're talking about them being individuated. It also makes me think about how
sam Wise is so connected to being a gardener that that is something that's very
positive for him. That is something that is also very helpful on the trip
as he's you know, as we can see he's grabbing different herbs and things,
and how Froto was still kind of looking for his vocation in some ways.
And so it makes me wonder if a part of the reason why sam
Wise is in a different place and also, guess Froto has the ring.
I know that, but I wonder if a part of the reason why sam
Wise is able to get to this place is because he already felt very connected
to his values and very connected to the life that he was living, and
I wonder if a part of the reason why he's able to be this light
for Frodo that without that the film would be would have ended the end,
like you know, we would have gotten anything else and just exactly exactly like
his uncle did and so and so. Just it's just interesting because I feel
like we also find that characteristic when we talk about people who are resilient for
whatever reason. I feel like that is a part of the way we can
look at the differences between the two of them and how their experiences and being
connected to values and how important things are. For Sam Wise really is the
pushing motive of hope, and that beautiful speech that he gives in this film,
which is one of I love that speech so much, the amount of
time that I have snapped that whole speech and sent it to people who've already
seen the movie and been like, I love this fucking speech so much,
and I love how much he because he's able to carry so much hope,
because he has so much belief in the world for himself, because he has
experienced being connected to the world, of being connected to himself and really believing
that he's doing what he was meant to do, which is it's amazing how
powerful that is and how these words in the way that they were written and
delivered, carry that meaning for so many people ever since this book first came
out, And it makes me think of when I was in my existential therapy
class the professor made us watch a clip from a movie that did not do
very well overall, which is, I heart Huckeybees. I knew that's what
you're going to say. I knew it was that one going weird choice.
It is, but it's also not because the whole metaphysical conversation with Dustin Hoffmann
on the blanket theory, where he's trying to help the other guy understand that
the kid that he's investigating that is going, Hey, what you need to
understand is that everything is the same and everything is connected, and it essentially
proves the shakesperience thought that things are neither good nor bad, but thinking makes
them so. Assigning value to things that don't necessarily have value outside of their
context is an important thing to recognize as you go through this individuation or differentiation
process that you have to change your relationship to these things in order to understand
the most powerful line of that that ties in is that everything you could ever
want to be or ever have you already have an r and very Buddhist it
is. It is all metaphysics and existentialism is all very Eastern philosophy and not
in the slightest pull yourself up by your bootstraps horseshit that we adhere to so
strongly. Well, there's a similar quote that I actually wrote down, one
of the few quotes I wrote down, which is sam Y says something along
the lines of like we should be back, like none of this would have
happened, and Froto says gand Oft didn't mean for a lot to happen.
Things to happen, and they did. End of story, right, And
like understanding that for going through anything like this, that a it's going to
affect every single person equally and differently at the same time, and that every
person is going to have their own journey through it, and that every person
is going to have to both find connection to their values and what's going to
drive them to find meaning in their suffering, but also that they must look
inward and find their resources to solve it in the way the situation requires.
And I find that to be such a powerful like way that this story shows
essentially people breaking out as siblings, experiencing the world away from their parents and
learning those things. All right, anything else on this topic before we move
on? Okay, we'll take another break here, all right. So the
last thing we wanted to hit is basically the character of Gallum. He's a
big part of this movie. He gets a lot of FaceTime, if you
will, in this part of the trilogy. And so I know we had
a few topics we want to touch upon, but I guess we can start
with the first, which is IFS or integrated family systems, which I think
we've covered here. Oh internal, I'll do that every tongue, Internal family
systems. You know what's so funny about this. I'm seeing an internal family
systems therapist right now and I still couldn't say that correctly, but any day,
So we'll throw it to you, Jess, because I know this was
the topic that came to mind for you when talking about Gallam. Yeah.
Yeah, So I've gone through three levels of internal family systems training, which
means nothing other than I've given a lot of money to a mania reports,
You've given a lot of life. We don't realize. It's like it's so
expensive to get trained in specific things. It's very expensive to specialize. Takes
like a year per per well for level one. Anyway, people at home,
if you aren't familiar with internal family systems, it's just the idea that
we humans do not have a unitary mind. We contain multiverses, or like
Walt Whitman said, we contain multitudes. We couldn't say that in our first
book because we would have owed money to the Walt Whitment state. Oh my
god, So we came up with we contain multiverses. I know. Yeah,
Walt Wani state is like, you want to use a quote, give
me some of that money? Still yeah, still wow. But we all
experienced this on the day to day, right, Like when you get invited
to go out to coffee with someone, you immediately have multiple thoughts about it.
You've got a part of you that's like, yes, I totally want
to go have coffee with this person, and then you have this other part
of you that comes in and is like do we have time to do that?
Don't we have other stuff to do? Oh no? And you have
another part that comes in and is like, why are they inviting me,
do they have some kind of ulterior motive? Are they going to ask me
for money? And then maybe you have this other part that comes in and
is like outside COVID, right, And with this one request of do you
want to go to coffee? You have you could have twelve different parts of
you involved in weighing in on that decision. And that is normal and healthy
and we all experience that, and when we've had some trauma, sometimes those
parts get to be a little bit louder or a little bit more wanting to
grab the wheel of our life rather than checking in with this is in ifs
I know this is not everyone's belief system, but that there is a grounded
capital s self that we all have that's kind of like the conductor of the
parts orchestra. And so when you get a whole lot of Tuba playing,
which is the part that's like govid, go vid, govid self comes in.
He's like, hey, Tuba, what's happening, buddy? You for
you bemp kind of aloud, what's going on? And Tuba's like, I'm
scared of COVID. Like okay, yeah, man, I hear you.
Let's sit down, let's talk about it. Let's talk about what you need
and if you don't have that capital s self, Tube is just screaming at
the violins, and the violins are like, let's see you, and everything's
just really discordant. And I see this happening with Smigel turned Gollum because Gollum's
been through a trauma, he's had an evil power in his head, and
he's been alone in a cave for five hundred years with all the parts talking
to each other, and sometimes parts of us can think and this is getting
a little bit deep and existential into ifs So, friends at home, if
you don't follow this, that's okay. Sometimes we look for that capital s
self in other people. M or hey, you seem like you have your
shit together. Could you be myself? Hey, dark Lord, could you
be myself? Yeah? Yes, yes, sure the fuck have Yeah.
And it makes sense then why he grabs so strongly to Frodo, who he
was going after five minutes ago, and now he's calling him Master, and
he's arguing with himself about Master knows best and Master believes us and we can
trust Master, and and really wanting Frodo to be that self for him.
M Right, it's kind of like there's that children's story Are you my missing
piece? Are you my missing piece? Are you my missing piece? Like
are you myself? Are you myself? And sorrows happy to be like,
yeah, I'm yourself. And Frodo doesn't know that's what Gallum's doing. He's
just like, oh, look this pitiful creature. I'll help him. But
if we don't turn it back around and say, hey, actually, those
parts need you, they'll just keep grasping and that you're all right on.
That's how we get cults, because the GIRs like, I am yourself and
I'm gonna tell you what to do and what do you think? And when
I want your opinion, I'll give it to you. That's why there was
a podcast I used to listen to called Zealot It Done Now they don't have
any new episodes, but one of their jingles they would play was when disenfranchised
you finally came into the picture, because you're right, it is, you
know, needing someone, because that's what you know Spiegel is he's disu He's
someone who is disenfranchised who does not have a Yeah, exactly what I'm just
repeating you. But yeah, he's right for being taken up, but unfortunately
he's still kind of on his own, you know, because you're right,
Frodo doesn't understand the part he's playing for him, and so he's still kind
of left his own devices of fingering it out until finally that part of him
that isn't the best one, you know, for him, you know,
the more self destructive part, starts taking them to danger at the end,
because Tubo will always win versus the violin because it's most distressed. It's the
sweaky whale. Sweaky wone gets the grease, like, yeah, the most
freaked out part of you is if you don't know what to do with it,
will win because how could it not if you're scared? Yep. And
I love that you came in hot with that, Justina, that you happen
to be IFS trained, I am not I trained, but I am trained
in structural dissociation, which is a cousin of it's all parts work right,
It's it's all ego state, it's all the same shit again. I mean,
I think what I would love for clients and budding therapists to understand is
as much as places offer you credentials and training and knowledge that do crack your
head open and give you the ability to help people and yourself help people.
Is watch the dogmatism in these treatments, because even the people create them will
later go on and talk about how somebody else's model influenced theirs in their life,
and that what they are doing is running a business and they are preaching
their thing because they've researched it and standardized it and manualized it through their viewpoint
in order to make a business, and understanding that is important that these are
all ways of saying the same things, but you may need to hear it
in a different way, and that's the value of their being a different voice
saying it, but speaking out of different voices. What I love about the
way structural dissociation puts things is understanding that these parts that Justine is talking about
all exist for a reason. Every one of them evolved in response to an
event or series of events that happened. And Geninea Fisher, who did one
of the trainings that I took and very much adored this viewpoint, is understanding
that the more trauma occurs, the more splitting is required, so the more
parts have to develop. And while we see primarily two parts of Goloman Smiegel
that interact, probably for simplicity purposes, right is what you see is that
in all of us there are several different parts that evolved that are parts of
our personality that are functions like our personality operates like a phone or windows.
You can have the base operating system that all runs the same, and then
you install different apps based on what you need to do, specific things that
might turn off or on other functions that exist within that operating system. And
Gallum is the survival part of Smigel. Gallum can do things that Smigel cannot.
Gallum exists to murder, cheat steel and do whatever is necessary to keep
that ring in his possession, keep it hidden from Saron, and eat and
survive. That's it. That's all that's for. It's the ID personified basically
because even parts goes back to Freud, ad ego, super ego. Guess
what part part part and understanding that we can lose connection with the self when
we thrust into situations we must survive. And Gallum has been doing it for
five hundred years where he has lost the connection to who Smigel is. And
the scenes where Frodo being kind to him and asking him what his name is
shows such beautiful acting by Andy Serkis, even though it got digitally represented.
You see just this emergence of Smiegel again for the first time in so long.
And I have seen that with clients a great many times. In Richard
Schwartz's language, it's getting the self online, which is a huge focus of
things that he works on with clients. But for a therapist, being able
to help someone recognize that you have ceded control of yourself over to these parts
and when they take over, because they evolved out of necessity to survive,
they have limited functions that correspond only to the situations they evolved from, and
they get stuck. Well, they're trying to help, but they're not very
skillful, right They're not. And the parts might get stuck at a developmental
stage different than you are at now. There could be a trauma you went
through at eight years old and that part continues to have an eight year old
mindset and you as an adult recognizing I am acting like a child right now
and I can't figure out why could be because of a part and that part
having formed then and understanding that is really important. Understanding this beautiful interaction we
see between Smeegel and Gollum, where Smigel is doing what we would coach,
but a therapist who's understands these models would coach a client to do. Is
it's okay to tell your fight part you don't need it anymore, that right
now I don't need you. You usually want to do that with a more
compassionate voice, because that part does exist for a reason and it knows it.
Yeah, And the way Gollum talks to Smigle of you'd be nothing.
Well, it's a little bout you. I'll give it that. I wasn't
quite prepared to do it. Then I decided to go for it, and
I absolutely failed. So I'll just on that. No, it's all right,
go ahead, No, you finish. Just wanted to point out that
that argument, you usually want to be more compassionate with yourself because your parts,
because the parts evolved and succeeded because you're still here, so they know
that their existence is valid and purposeful. But you need your core self,
or as I like to call it, your president to tell your secretary of
Defense that, hey, I'm aware that if we knew to them, no
longer a problem. I am aware that that is an option, but if
we knew them, we're going to have more problems, and actually we need
to solve this with diplomacy right now, not nukes. Okay. Well,
And one of the ways that I that I talk about it with clients,
or a way that I actually used for myself, is thanking the fighting part
for doing such a good job of getting us to where we are right now,
and that I'm really grateful for all the help that they've given and that
right now I'm actually okay and I don't need their help right now, but
that I'm really grateful that they stood up and wanted to be a part of
this. Yeah. I tell clients a lot that I said, yeah,
this part of you is like your friend who is really scrappy and always wants
to fight, and they're like still your best friend though, or one of
your best friends. And then you have to tell like, I understand the
sentiment, and you're gonna add stress to me now because now it's like we're
gonna have a fight at public Park and you're adding more to the drama than
you're helping. Tell them they can put their earrings back in, and you
know, like that we that's not the energy right now, because I think
the unfortunately, the sort of mainstream concept because we're just I don't know,
we're also mean to ourselves in each other is to like dogpile on ourselves in
those moments, like the amount of times and we see it with Smigel in
the movie when I'm with clients and they're like, yeah, I had this
thought pop up, and I was like, come on, you know that's
not true. Why are you acting like this? I'm not that at that
and like being mean to themselves And I'm like, hey, so we dogpiled
to that help us feel better? Do that help us feel worse? Are
we just adding to the mean voices in our head that already tell us we're
trash monsters or whatever? And so a lot of times what I'll tell clients
too as well is too And this goes back to the idea that different parts
of us are younger or at different ages. Is like, how would you
have wanted an adult to have talked to you when you were young? And
would how would you have wanted to be comforted at these different ages? And
you can give that to yourself and that question like will make someone cry like
that, and when you ask them that question, But I think it helps
us conceptualize that we still need this same amount of responses and comfort internally that
we did when we were young, And I think it really helps adults think
differently about how they're approaching themselves. It does, and especially if you tie
that into where they feel it in their body so they can release. And
people spend so much time rejecting emotions as weakness, but I try so very
hard to help them understand that trapped emotions make you weaker. Expressing them makes
you stronger because it helps you connect to the meaning you're supposed to get from
that feeling in the first place, that got stuck because it wasn't allowed to
come out at that time. I could go on a five hour rant about
how you're not better as an adult because you're logical and you're so pragmatic that
you're better than everybody else. The scam that we've sold ourselves as adults is
that if you're truly mature, then you shouldn't be having feelings anymore, and
if you're having emotions, then something is still childish and immature about you,
and that you've truly reached. I don't know the zenith of your truest form
if you can like always apply logic and you never get emotional and do and
that's such a disservice we do ourselves and each other in this day, this
mythology that like, feelings are stupid and immature and young and you know,
dummy stuff, and it's not. And I always feel like I'm constantly having
to break it to clients that your emotions are there, buddy, and they're
just as worthwhile as logic parts of you. And you're not better because you
are so pragmatic. And actually pragmatism can get in the way of actually feeling
better and quote unquote winning a therapy, because I feel like the people that
are most pragmatic incline also come into therapy with a very like I'm gonna win
a therapy energy and like so they have to like kind of get through all
this, all these walls, all right. My competitive part enjoys the process
of helping them realize that that is complete nonsense. Yeah, questioning social constructs,
it's one of my favorite pastimes. And Spock parts aren't better than Kirk
parts, that's true. What's so interesting about hearing you guys talk about this
is that what I took away from the Gallum Snegel, Sam Wise Froto all
that collaboration in the movie was I viewed it like such a typical child therapist
to ask to do like a lot of like parenting and family work as part
of being a child therapist. And that's the total zone that I've viewed it
as where what came up from me is honestly like the only times I ever
feel disappointed with Sam, which where he is just truly vilifying Sniegel. I
feel like I want to call Snegel now because I have one more affection for
him. Calling them Gallum feels mean both see fold compassion. We just have
to find a point of compassion and absolutely, and so I think what really
like felt oof Sam? Come on? Ish? They when Froto does take
Snegle under their wing and is calling him Snegele and is giving him, giving
him things to be proud of and really trying to meet him where he's at,
and Sam keeps going he's such a bad person, or he's not even
a person. He's a thief and a liar, and he's intentionally evil and
full of bad intentions, and how can we trust him? He's garbage monster
person, and Frodo is like basically says, I wrote it a lot down
basically like the svation it's to me was you don't get it, and you're
not going to get it because you don't know what it's like to go through
what he's gone through and now what I'm going through. And I see this
a lot when I do family work, where I know I put it when
I was introducing the topics under sort of the form of like addiction, but
honestly it's any sort of like mental health, which you know, addiction can
be part of that analogy, which is that if you've never gone through significant
mental health issues or addiction issues, or you've never been close to someone who's
gone through that stuff, really yeah, you can really struggle to understand how
they don't have more autonomy over it. And there can be a lot of
vilification in the form of how Sam's viewing it, which is like, well,
he's choosing to act this way, and he's choosing to be a bad
person, and because I'm making that decision that he's choosing to be that way,
he's an untrustworthy person. It's all behavioral and he is no and he
is every say in the matter, And what Frodo's understanding is more of the
voice that can come in and family work of maybe another parent or someone else
or something as me, which is that's not the long and the short of
it. And when you've gone through hard things in life, like I'm going
through that, like he went through, it has an impact on you,
the choices you made. He's not a bad person, he's just had bad
stuff happened to him and he's struggling, and if we can give him some
modicum of respect that he can make it out the other side and we can
help him feel better, get better if you will. And that's such a
huge battle. I think I see that. I think maybe I'm thinking of
it like addictions. They think that's how I see it a lot, like
on Facebook and stuff like that, where people are like, how could you
choose drugs over your kids? And how could you, like really vilifying people
that struggle with addictions specifically, But it can go mental health at large,
and we really are still struggling in mainstream society to hold compassion and empathy in
this arena. And I know my assumption is it's coming from a place of
I can't accept the idea that there might be things that we don't have control
over. So I have to tell myself that you're choosing to do drugs,
you're choosing to be depressed, you're choosing this, choosing that because it allows
me the comfort of thinking, well, I'm not choosing those things, so
that can't happen to me. And what Frodo is trying to explain to Sam
Wise is sometimes it happens to you and it changes you and it sucks and
it's scary, and like, you have got to have more empathy for this
dude, because we are two bad decisions, two life events away from being
sniggle from being goal. And that's such an important lesson And that's really what
I saw, and I think it is beautiful. How as soon as I
can't want to say, Elijah, what, as soon as Froto starts showing
him respect, he takes it up. And I think that happens more than
people realize. As soon as someone is given dignity, they will respond and
kind for that, and they will start to grow. We can't dehumanize people
and then think that there's going to rise above that dehumanization. That is so
that is trauma over and over again when we get to the point of dehumanization
and to think that people can rise above that just on their own will is
so unkind and compassionate, and I think it is just a good lesson of
if you give someone space and forgiveness sometimes too, that within limits, boundaries,
whatever, that that's when they can truly start to quote unquote become themselves
again or get to the other side of the situation. And I think it's
just really hard unless you've been a part of it, or you're part of
like mental community like we are. It's really hard to wrap your head around
that at first. But you can get there if you allow yourself to your
mind to be cracked open a little bit by somebody else about this concept.
But it's really hard. It's really really hard. It's really hard to overcome
being relegated to villain hood. And the short and simple example I'll give of
that is when there's suspicion in a relationship that someone is cheating, especially when
it's not actually happening, and that's somebody else's past trauma playing out on their
current partner, and they keep accusing them of cheating and accusing them of cheating
and accusing them of cheating, till the person eventually goes, fuck it.
If I'm gonna keep getting accused of cheating, I'm gonna go fucking cheat because
this shit isn't even worth it might as well have the benefit of it right
and reaping all of the consequences. And it's important to understand that we as
a society go, okay, well, you did a bad thing or a
wrong thing, or you gave into this or whatever broken mentality we want to
have about something, and then gay say, let me shame you because you
weren't able to get better. But also, I'm gonna make it as hard
as fucking possible for you to get better by shaming you to a point that
you feel that it's hopeless. And then your part system will take hold of
that and say, hey, we don't need any of that shit. Fuck
it, let's just associate and go to makes us feel good, yeah,
or just a part that helps them survive because they can unplug because there is
no path to success. And when our body recognizes that and chooses that for
ourselves doesn't have to be true, but when the perception of that is there,
our body will start choosing from our freeze and fawn responses, and our
ability to fight or run away from what's causing that will cease to be a
viable option, and our body will choose the num out options to escape pain.
Yeah, because one thing I always try to emphasize too to people when
they're stuck in this, that's a choice they're making. You know, they're
deciding to be a jerk, or they're just an asshole, or you know
whatever is I do try to tell people everybody's just trying to get their needs
met. You know, no one's ever just like I'm deciding to day I'm
gonna blow up somebody's life or I'm gonna be a total d bag. Maybe
someone is very very rarely, very rarely and a little more often than not,
especially with younger people. But this is all ages. You know,
they're trying to get a need met and they're just going about it in a
way that is unhealthy or is causing more strife or instant gratification, but long
term consequences. And that's a way to have like compassion and like you were
saying, Ben, is like recognizing that they're trying to deal with something with
and you're seeing you're just seeing like the behavior part of it or the consequences
part. And yeah, and I think too, you know, we have
to be careful about how much we reinforce as supports, we reinforce the thought
patterns are already going on inside, Like when he starts saying nobody likes you.
Of course nobody likes you. Everybody hates you, You're a piece of
shit. All the stuff that Golam Smigel was saying to himself behind that tree,
like towards the end and roll throughout and going back to dog piling is
what I tell people in their life, Like, we have to be careful
of the messaging we give out because if we're just reinforcing that, then why
wouldn't they just go down that road like you were saying, Ben, like,
why wouldn't they just succumb to that thought process because you're fertilizing their belief
system that they're bad or whatever it is anyway, and that the world's bad.
Yeah, this hopelessness in general, hopelessness, helplessness, all that stuff.
Yeah. Yeah, And I think the last thing I want to say
about it is recognizing the way that this is written and shown is so important
because, like Justine, you were talking about when the self is ascribed to
someone else, it is weak because it's not real. You're you're placing impossible
tasks and standards on another person to be your regulator and your basis, and
that that doesn't work because things that are alive are fallible, they are not
perfect, and they are susceptible to life happening to them too and being put
in impossible situations. And we see that dynamic play out when Fairmere forces Froto's
hand that either he's going to have his men shoot Gallum in the pool for
I think a made up rule, and I don't think that's a a forbidden
pool. I think that's some bullshit. It's a pool and the woods.
He decided to use his leverage in order to manipulate the situation and put Froto
in an impossible situation where he had to choose. But because Gallum's self is
placed on Froto when Frodo is in perfect or Smigel's ability to be himself is
placed just on one person. When that person fails him, it opens the
door for Gallum to come back in and say I told you so. Yeah.
Gallum seizes control again. He never fully seizes control until the end,
but Smigel never gets back and control of that body. Fully. My retention
of these movies is so low that I was gentleminely like, oh my god,
what's going to happen now? Is it's Megel? Because I could not
remember he's going to lead to a giant spider because the tent for me,
it happens. I remember the third one's my favorite, So I hope you'll
have me back. Okay, all right, well after this, let's take
another break and then we will slip into treatment. All right, treatment,
I can just go first because I stole my own answer, which is that
I kind of talked about it already in this last section, which is that,
you know, we like to make these funny, made up scenarios in
our head. And so if let's say same Wise and Frodo were to adopt
Smiegel and take them home with them to the Shire, he wouldn't automatically get
better like people like to think that, oh, if I take someone out
of their current situation and give them X y Z love, comfort, security
like shelter, that they're just gonna get better and be so grateful and just
everything's gonna be copasetic and then it doesn't and then you're in my office growing.
And so what I typically do, like what I've already sort of talked
about, is just a lot of psycho education. This can be the kind
of work where I would probably see Sam wise and Frodo without Smiegel involved.
Sometimes when you do family work, sometimes I'll do from the work without the
if I'm gonna put him in the kid role, without the kid involved,
because one, they don't need to be there as I'm talking about them in
front of them, because a lot of psycho education is talking about what's going
on and saying like this is probably why they're doing this, is probably or
they're doing that, And you don't necessarily want to do that in front of
the person because it can be very mothering and of nothing else boring, especially
if we're working with actual kid aged kids. Is it's just freaking boring.
And so that would be the kind of work It was more like coaching is
what I call it, where I work with just like the parents in this
situation, and I think Sam, God love him, I think would just
need a lot of psycho education and Frodo would probably help me out from an
anecdotal perspective when we work together about like this is what it's going to look
like this or like the trials and tribulations when you decide to take care of
someone who has a long history of trauma, abuse, neglect, YadA,
YadA, like Smigel clearly does, and to have realistic expectations about how they'll
progress in your care and that when they do things, it's not a choice
necessarily making you know, they're trying to like they're trying to manage a lot
of internal struggle, a lot of coping skills that worked for them up to
a point, and they're acclimating to a new environment and also having to continuously
decide if they can trust you and the situations that they're in, and you
have to be patient with that, and you have to practice a lot of
radical compassion and empathy while also setting limits like any good parent would. And
so that's kind of where I would go with them, is I would I
think Sam would need somebody, you know, to really kind of sit his
ass down every once in a while and be like, this is one arena
where you kind of don't know what you're talking about, and your goodness and
the simplistic view you have of the world is not serving you, and I
need you to think a bit more out of the box and sitting its comfort
of that and even if you don't like understand it, try your best to
understand it from a educational academic point of view if you can't get it internally.
But that's where I would go with treatment. Can you treat? Can
I can you just personally? Can you just treat all of them so that
we can work on the understanding that the world they continue to vote for and
values they continue it here too might need to go through exactly that experience I
would love. I mean, I mean, we'd really have to think about
how that would go about. If it'd be a long line of boomers that
would go into an office one at a time, or if it would be
sort of like a stadium situation, like an arena situation, which I think
that that might not work. I think they'd need one on one. Well,
and here's what I'm going to say, which is something I always point
out. I don't think the boomers are going to come into your office,
so I don't think you have to worry about it. Go ahead, Brittie,
I mean, I wish they would, and sometimes they do because they
think it's in the situation that Sam is in, which is that now it's
at my front door, and now it's causing strife in my life. And
so it's usually almost like a bait and switch when I do this kind of
work, which they come in where they're like, smigles the problem. They
don't necessarily say it like that because in the parent child dynamic I'm talking about,
they love their children, but they're like, this kid's the problem.
The amount of times I've had a family come in where they're like, my
goal is for my kid to mind me, and you're going to help them
mind me, And then I have to do a little bit and switch on
them, and I'm like, actually, we're gonna talk about what you can
do differently and what your kid will follow suit. Your kid will follow a
suit or maybe they won't. And you know, in this one to one
comparison to adoption, what I tell parents who do that work is you have
to be what I really want people to understand, and if you're listening,
everybody, open up your listening ears is that when you choose to adopt a
child or take a person into your home that has a hard history or maybe
an unknown history that you have to be ready for whatever that looks like.
And sometimes it looks like this, which is that it's not about behavior,
it's about it's a whole nother story. And so yeah, that's why I'll
go with that. I'll just stop there. But anyway, who would like
to talk about treatment? Next? Mine's going to be a real downer?
Should I go in the middle? You can go now, yeah, well
go ahead and go so that there's time to like bring it back up so
I'll be great. That's perfect. So I want to work with Marion Pippen.
And the reason I want to work with Marion Pippen is because they just
had this really big realization that the world is going to end, and they
just had a big win where where they helped and then they're like, oh
cool, everything's fine, let's go smoke some South farling weed, and they're
about to go into existential crises about well what do I do now? And
this is so common to the folks that I see in my office. I
work with a lot of folks that are struggling with nihilism and existential dread.
Because I work with a lot of folks that come out of cultic environments who
have completely pushed away the idea of spirituality or faith, and so even the
language of believing in something, even if that is yourself, is very hard.
And folks who are really woke and tuned into what's happening in the world
around them, up to and including the fact that the earth is really unwell.
And so a lot of the work that I do with them, and
that I would want to do with Marian Pippin is get curious about how we're
finding meaning when we feel so nihilistic or when we are shut down with this
existential dread. And I am going to take us to a different fandom for
a minute, because this is what I would do with my clients. And
this is an example from the book The Grieving Therapist. Caring for yourself and
your clients when it feels like the end of the world. Imagine if you
will. The Titanic, the historical Titanic, not that James camp in fan
fiction. It took different folks on the ship different amounts of time to accept
what was happening. Some people didn't believe it to the last possible second.
Some people knew right away, but at some point we can all look around
and go, this ship's going down, and we have about two hours.
And so my question for clients is, we know that the earth is unwell.
We also know that mortal life is finite, and so you only get
this one life that we know of. If we equate that one life to
the two hours on the Titanic, how do you want to show up?
How are you going to make meaning with the final two hours of your life?
Are you going to be someone who helps other people into boats? You're
going to be a helper? Are you going to be throwing people off the
side of the ship to get a spot and a boat? Are you going
to be cuddling with your loved one as the water rises? Or do you
want to be like the band who played together on the deck until they couldn't
play anymore? And I don't get to tell you what the answer is,
but for me, i'd want to be in the band. I want to
do what I love for me, it benefits others, and that's why that's
how I want to spend my life. And so clients and I have really
good conversations about this, and believe it or not, it can be a
really fruitful conversation where folks have to think and reckon with mortality, which isn't
easy, and I don't think it would be easy for Mary and Pippin.
They've probably never thought about the fact that they will one day no longer be
with us. And what do they want to do? Are they making enough?
Meaning smoke and weed and eating snacks. Maybe, But it seems like
now that they've you know, spent time with Treebeard and the Fellowship and you
know, helped save the world, that maybe there is something else out there
they want to do or be and there can still be room for them to
smoke weed and have snacks in addition to this other work. Love it,
Thank you, love it. And for the record, I want to be
the chef. The guy who was throwing the furniture overboard and then goes to
cling to the back of the ship, and he survived partially because he had
drank enough alcohol at his bottle blood temperature lowered, but he radically accepted what
was going on. We still don't quite know how that dude survived because alcohol
should have made him more susceptible to frostbite, right, should have. But
that dude was real and he lived. I know, I'm a bit of
a Titanic scholar myself. Then I figured based on the movie fan fiction,
he just didn't go through that one weird phase when you were twelve like I
did, where you read a Night to Remember whatever it's called, because you
were so deeply into Titanic because of Leonardo DiCaprio, nobody else. I'm I'm
a little bit older than you. Okay, I think that was Yeah,
likes great when Titanic came out. I was born in the seventies. A
Titanic stuff aside, which could be its own episode and probably should be given
its status in movie history. Hannah, do you want to go next year?
On me too? Oh? I can go next. Okay, I'll
go next. Um So, something that I was thinking about while we were
recording today is that part of what I help clients do, especially when they're
trying to deal with some of the negative narratives that they hold, usually based
on experiences that they've had. We all have to start some kind of narrative
in order to continue to live our life. And one thing that I try
to do that just has to do just with the language of how we talk
to ourself or how we find hope or are able to find a way to
kind of connect back to the self that we were discussing earlier. And one
of the ways that I do that is we hear a lot of shit about
affirmations, and some people really throw them out the window as like they have
to be really positive, that it has to be this huge idea of how
everything's going to be fine, everything's going to be okay. And what I've
really found when I work with people is that And something that I use a
lot for myself is having and being able to shift and change and affirmation based
on what you can actually believe. So it's not necessarily dissimilar from values work
or from finding meaning as much as it is when we say when we have
these narratives, usually there's about ten or so negative thoughts, negative cognitions that
go along with that I'm bad, I'm too much, I'm unlovable. So
a part of what I try to do is, let's find something that feels
meaningful and helpful when that negative narrative pops up for you. And and a
lot of the time what I'm talking about is using something that feels that resonates
with you, something such as I am learning how to take good care of
myself, I am learning to accept that I will have good days. I
will have good days and hard days. I am learning more about my story
and there are a lot of different parts kind of anything. The way that
I talk about with people is we have to have something that's neutral. We
can't go from I'm unlovable too I'm lovable, because that doesn't feel realistic.
It's kind of going back to the idea of hope that we see sam wise
have and and how important it is to find some meaning or some hope for
yourself, and that sometimes we have to use various wording to kind of get
us there. And so that is something that I would want to do really
with anybody. I mean, it kind of makes me think of Initially I
was thinking for treatment to have them, all of them, all of the
people that survived the end of the fellowship and everything happening, and have them
kind of being a group setting. And the more I thought about that,
the more I thought that what would really be helpful is having a couple of
different ways to help them slowly acclimate back into the world. And sometimes that
comes with having a way that we think about it for ourselves. And so
that's how I use affirmations with clients. I tell them, you know,
we can't have something that's like very black and white. We have to have
something. We have to be able to live in the gray and be able
to find something that can help us just in those moments when the negative narrative
is popping up or those other parts of us are screaming instead of sitting down
and being able to gently talk with us. And some of those ways really
is having your own wording for yourself that you believe. I also use a
set of emotional rights with my clients that is so old that I can barely
what is the word when you It's hard to site because it's old and so
and what's really interesting about when I give these people these emotional rights, I
talk about how these might not all feel true for you, and that's okay.
And if they seem helpful but they don't really connect, we can go
over it and change any of the words I don't feel like they like they
fit for you, so that we can kind of meet you where you are
to kind of help you believe this idea, especially when I work with people
who've experienced a lot of trauma and and anything like I am allowed to ask
for what I need even if the answer is no, and sometimes those things
don't feel true. So that's another one of those ways where I kind of
talk about, Okay, what feels like it would work for you, because
right now you're not there and that's okay. That's a part of why you're
seeing me. And so that's kind of a part of the way that I
use language, or I use different kinds of affirmations in different ways to help
people be able to look at themselves and use and just use something in the
moment in order to help neutralize the negative cognitions or negative thoughts. So I
would kind of use that with anybody in this anybody that we've been talking ab
out. Okay, thank you, Hannah. It's all very important stuff,
especially when people are dealing with such intensely traumatic situations. To be able to
provide themselves some reassurance through affirmation is huge for me. Looking at this,
We've covered a lot of characters so well, and some we've just completely left
out. So I feel like I want to kind of highlight some of the
characters we haven't talked about much because I know if some fans are like,
what about Ericorn, what about Gimley? What about Legolis, we haven't talked
about any of them, and largely because Gimley and Legolis in this film are
almost coming to relief for up. Yeah. Well yeah, because John ry
Stavies got to do all his dramatic stuff is triebuard, so he didn't have
to do it as Ghimley in this one. But I think I want to
cover is when people go through traumatic situations, particularly people that have to be
combatants in them, when you talk about things with them, it's important in
the way they tell the story. It's our trauma narratives and just see,
hopefully this can resonate with you. As someone who's written a fanfick book about
how to essentially use narrative therapy to retell your life. It was just sitting
right in the motioning to my book for friends at Home. But the power
of how the story is told is important because, as we've highlighted, your
parts will pile on you and create shame and guilt that keep the bad feelings
stuck, and they keep you replaying the moments where you fail over and over
again, and those can prevent you from developing spontaneous access to the flow state
that helps you connect to your ability to use your skills and be so invested
in the moment that you're just operating exactly at peak performance. And we see
Leglis as a perfect example of that in this film. There are so many
moments where Legolis and I know he's an elf and he's perfect being and all
of those things, but he spontaneously generates solutions that could not possibly have been
pre thought of. When he skateboards down that staircase. People were so bad
about that. You have no idea, but right, it's so perfectly represents
the exact kind of things that sometimes spontaneously occur to us in the moment when
we're able to attune to the situation and give ourselves credit for what we can
do and don't bother listening to our negative voice. It tells us what you
can't and sometimes you have to get there and helping people sometimes process they can't
always do that. You can't always be in flow state, and sometimes you
have been successful doing that in the past and couldn't find it in a moment,
particularly in the chaos of battle. I work with police offer there's a
lot I have to help people debrief from all manner of fucked up stuff,
and they have this part of them that has been able to access flow and
do crazy shit that they never thought of. And soldiers are no different.
And therapists can come up with solutions in a moment that you forget immediately and
it was the exact perfect thing to say, but you can't repeat it.
And helping people understand that in these moments where you faced immense pressure and immense
terror, that there are things that you did right that you get to integrate
into your story and you have to balance what didn't go right that your parts
are piling on yourself with and telling you how much you sucker, how much
you failed, or what you couldn't do with the things that you did do
well in order to process all of it together from that neutral point that Hannah's
talking about, because as we look to ascribe meaning to terrible situations that we've
been through or good ones, when we're done with the emotions that have been
stuck, we reach a point of neutrality with it that helps us reach an
objective point of Okay, this didn't go so well, but this did,
and it helps you recognize what you can learn from both good and bad because
we learn from both. We learn as much from failure as we do from
success, sometimes more. But you can't do it if you continue to hold
on to the negative narrative that you suck because you didn't do it perfect.
But if you can look at it from a balance, your point of I
did this well and I didn't do this well, you can find a way
to succeed. And I think Aragorn is really good at that. Aragorn recognizes
what he's done well and what he hasn't done well. But one of the
scenes that got cut was him explaining to Aowen that he's eighty seven years old.
See it explains stuff, Brittany, and he's so hot, so hot.
He's in that flow state for sure, flow state, daddy. But
he gets here, right, he does get He gets more scenes, and
so does Owen. But the importance of that is just recognizing that when someone
can be integrated with all the things they've ever learned, all the successes and
the failures, they can embrace that even if something goes against your core values,
such as nobody tosses a dwarf, that at some point you must be
able to spontaneously let that go, except that that's a limitation, and the
exact thing you need to do is abandon your shame and preconceived notions about a
situation and open your mind to out of the box solutions that can be applied
right now, and let yourself get absolutely heeded into a crowd of work.
I was like, are you going to do it? Or am I going
to do it? Right? Okay? And ORCS not the same anyway.
I said to you aself about that today while you and I decided I didn't
want to know, I was like, you know what if we're gonna think
of it like the mind callus, like Sherlock Holmes, like talk about I
don't need to evacuate anything from my mind too, so that Rokai or whatever
can live there. I'm good, So we can anything else before we slide
into final thoughts. Then nope, all right, well one more break final
thoughts. I'll go first because I'm the bummer of this part. I'm not
as much of a bummer this time around, of guys as if you listen
to our Fellowship episode, you know that I was like really dogging on it
that for whatever reason, I can't retain anything from I watch these movies,
and this time I was really trying to come at it with a different energy,
especially after I saw that two hours fifty nine minutes. And I will
say I was still kind of like for most of it, but then by
the time the battle scene came up, I was like fully in. I
don't know if it's because I'm like knee deep in House of Dragon right now,
but I was like really into the battle scene. When those ladders came
up and they were started going with battles or whenever you guys call them,
I was like, oh, this is crazy. When that when they blew
up that part of the wall, I was like, this is dope.
Like I was fully into it. So about the end it had me,
you know, I know eventually we're have to watch the next one next season,
so I'll be into it. And so I'll say that the wig games,
they're awesome wigs. Wig game is very strong in this movie series,
and you know, beautiful wigs. So that's my final thoughts, Justine,
And do you want to go next? All right, so this is my
final thought about this film. Yes, just kind of any like, any
opinion you have on it doesn't have to be therapy. It's you as a
film lover, as a Tolkien lover, as whatever lover. Okay, so
Return of the King is my favorite. But I do love Two Towers because
we get all of this great hot end action and the row here, who
we did not even mention. That's so brittany. Those are the horse people
led by Carl Ruban. What there were horse people like, not centaurs,
the guys that ride horse horsemasters. Oh, you can't say horse people.
And my brain said, there were half horse people in this half horse half
matching Twilight, not Twilight if anything, mister Jackson, which I have not
read but I'm finally aware of. Yes, okay, I thought I was
making it easier. I made it worse. Um about this specific thing,
yes, thank you. So we we get to we get to go to
Rohan and and see all all of that interaction. And I do love I
do love a Carl Urban. He's good at all ages. Um, he's
beautiful and zena warrior princess. He's beautiful here. He's beautiful in the boys.
He ages like a fine wine. And this is gonna be so nerdy,
but here we are. I love that Tolkien called them the roehirem because
I am is a plural in Hebrew, so the he's saying multiple horse riders
and he's using the EM. I loved that as a linguistics nerd, and
good thing you didn't invite me for Star Wars. I'd be telling you about
how Yoda means to know in Hebrew. Anyway, that's just a bonus fact.
So I I mean, I loved it as much as I always do
when I watch it. I watched the extended edition obs I opened up my
entire afternoon. My partner was like, what are you doing. I was
like, I need to watch The Two Towers. By eight thirty. All
I did today was laundry and watch this movie. And he would come in
and talk to me, and I'm like, I can't pause there because this
movie is four hours long, like like Gandolf three hundred years among men,
and I don't have enough time exactly. But he's like, you know what
happens. I'm like, I do, but I haven't been watching with this
particular mindset. And what I got from at this time that I feel like
I didn't previously was just how socialist socialist it is and how much it's shitting
on capitalism and I loved that. Hell yeah, I don't think. I
mean, I could continue talking about this in a myriad of ways for many
minutes, but listeners are like, wrap at the fuck up? So I
will all right? Who wants to go next? Hannah or Ben? I'll
go next? So I think I know all the die I logged to this
film, not the extended version, I don't think, cause I have.
I've definitely watched that one, but not as many times. So I love
these movies. I just I love them. And I probably would just watch
Return of the King because I can never last time. When we did the
first movie, I watched the whole trilogy because I was like, I just
need more of this. So yeah, So I love Lord of the Rings
and I love the Two Towers. I really I've always really enjoyed the second
film, and I'll watch it a billion more times because it's there's just there's
something. There's just something about it and and I just love it. I
guess that leaves me used to bring it home here. I have loved the
Lord of the Rings universe since I first watched the cartoon version of the Hobbit
as a child, and I continue to love the Lord of the Rings series,
and as much of it as I can get, I will consume because
it's just so good. It's so good, and these movies were done with
so much love for the material that you feel it no expense was spared in
the details of the helmets and the town and everything about Rohan feels like you're
in a Norse village, and it's just so beautifully done. And this movie
in particular is among my favorites ever because of how powerful it is and how
much it speaks to the ability to start growing beyond everything that you've known and
find growth and success in dire circumstances and recognize that believing in yourself sometimes is
exactly enough, and believing in yourself and your friends more importantly. And this
movie just hits so hard and I think it will just continue to throw audiences
forever. I love it so much that I have watched all of the extended
stuff, the interviews, and I feel like it's point I have to remind
my friends Sarah, who I know we'll be listening to this, that I
did, in fact take your bishwap. And on that note, we will
wrap this up because I don't even know what you're talking about. So,
Justine, where would you like people to find you if they are wanting to
know more about you after listening? Yes, please follow me on Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter at Mind Body Fandom because I take a holistic approach to healing
mind Body and fandom. I also have a website, Justine Maston dot com
where you can learn all about the stuff I do outside of the therapy office,
such as mental health consulting and voiceovers. If you can't get enough of
this voice, you can have it on your fill in the blank. And
of course you can find Starship Therapies using therapeutic fan fiction to rewrite your life
wherever books are sold. Starship Therapies the podcast is available wherever you listen to
podcasts and the Grieving Therapist caring for yourself and your clients. When it feels
like The End of the World will be available for pre sale pretty soon,
I will let you know as soon as it's available. All right, great
and letting me watch this all afternoon, giving you a good reason too,
And thank you of course for joining us. And we've been trying to get
you and Larissa rip Um back around, don't you guys know how comedic beats
work and so we were able to finally do it. Ideally, next time
we will have Larissa as well, should she come back from the Spirit realm.
And as always, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok
at Popcorn Psychology. You can find us on Twitter at Popcorn Underscore psych You
can always email us at Popcorn Psychology at gmail dot com. You can also
find us on Patreon if you don't. If you start even just a dollar,
you can have access early to some of our episodes and also unedited unedited
pieces of those episodes, and if you are a fifty dollars or more patron,
you can actually pick the movie we discussed for an episode. And we
also have a t public if you wanted to get some of our merch,
a T shirt, a mug, what have you. And as always,
if you can find time to rate and review us, especially on Apple podcasts,
it's the best way for other people to find us and to get us
out there to other people. So thank you again for joining us, and
we will see you guys next season when we finally talk about Return of the King.