Inception with Dr. Isaac Taitz: Consciousness, Dreaming, & Shame

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
are all licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists, who practice out of
Chicago. Even though we are licensed mental health professionals, this podcast is purely
for entertainment purposes and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture in all forms.
Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists, we aren't
your therapist. If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find a
local mental health provider. Buckle up, everybody, because we are going into
a dream, and then into another dream, and then into another dream,
and then into another dream. Because we're finally talking about a much requested movie,
Ristopher Nolan's Inception, y'all, So everybody get excited, Yes, get
excited. And we also have a guest with us today who specializes in some
of the concepts will be talking about. I mean, hopefully all of our
guests specialize some of the things we were talking about but this feels especially nice
to have someone here, so I will throw to him. Go ahead and
introduce yourself. Hello, everybody, My name's doctor Isaac Tights. I'm the
president of All Mind Health and All Sleep Health Clinical Psychological Services Corporation in California.
I specialize in helping patients get better sleep, and for those that do,
we can also work on and utilize their dreams for their benefit to improve
with anxiety, ADHD, trauma, and whatever else ails them. I present
at comic cons talking about the science and psychology of different topics, including the
Sandman series, which is a very dreamy one that connected to this one here.
Fun fact, when Inception came out, I was actually doing my honors
thesis back at Cornell on lucid dreaming, so I managed to get twice as
many participants as I intended. Makes sense, Yeah, So let me try
to explain Inception briefly for anyone who's listening who for whatever reason, hasn't seen
it. Basically, we're joining Leonardo DiCaprio as plays Dom Who. It's basically
a heist movie, if you want to think about like that. So he
is the head of a heist in which they go into people's dreams and they
steal from them in their dreams. So it's obviously a science fiction movie,
so there's gonna be some topics of them that we're going to try to make
some sense of as much as you can within a science fiction movie. So
we're gonna be talking about dreaming and consciousness, kind of like the fact versus
fiction. I'm also gonna be talking a lot about that main character, Leonard
DiCaprio dom and his deceased wife mall that name, and the trauma, grief
and shame. You know, we've been really on a rip about trauma,
grief and shame in this show lately, so apologies, we didn't realize that
every movie we picked recently, somebody is dealing with the death of somebody very
close to them because some kind of traumatic way. Yes, it's almost like
that can be the impetus for so many great stories. Yeah, it really
is, though. The theme of this season like every Disney movie ever or
the origin of the best comic book here that's ever been. M h,
spider Man, you almost got me there, all right, Batman, you
can't conjure it first, Okay, you can't conjure it first. Oh I
forgot. See my new game is to get you guys to say it before
me. So you just fell into a trauma. There is a villain of
Spider Man on occasion. That's true. That's true. So let's talk about
this movie. This movie was definitely something that took over the imagination and the
discussion point of the nation when it came out. I remember this one being
one that people left the theater talking about. And it's not common that we
get to see movies with people going like my mind just broke, but this
one didn't. Why do you guys think this one broke people's brains so profoundly
that they actually left the theater going what well? I think I mean,
just from I know this is kind of final thoughts territory, but just from
I think the look of it, it felt like it happened at a perfect
time, this movie where you hadn't really there's no Doctor Strange yet like Marvel
was still kind of kicking up in a big way. And so this movie
visually was just so different than a lot of things that we had seen.
And I think there's so going back to Moore, may I think where you're
asking Ben is dreaming is still something that is really mysterious to us. It's
one of the things we can't control really, And this idea that you could
I mean lucid dreaming, Sure you can, definitely. I don't know a
lot about this stuff, so you can score me as much as you'd like.
Isaac will Is, I think just this idea that you can go into
your dreams, into a space where we're very vulnerable. And also it's a
good ass heist movie. Like I think that's also part of why. But
I think this idea that someone could go into your mind in this way,
I think just wigs people out. And I certainly think so Isaac and Hannah,
what about you? What do you guys think? Why did this movie
capture people's imagination and attention so hard? And up? Hannah's cats are interfering?
Yeah, sorry, something other than us? God, that's not allowed.
Well, and she had like a mini stroke a couple of weeks ago,
so she's a little weird. So anyway, perhaps ye way to bring
it into me maybe just waiting for that opportunity. But what definitely can capture
people's attention. In addition to these kind of clever names, and we're going
to hear a whole lot about how clever these names are in a little bit,
but definitely the element of dreaming, which is so important, so integral.
Everybody experiences this. This is one thing that unites all humans is that
we know what a dream is. We've experienced it. We may not remember
it so much because we're working so late and we're barely getting any sleep,
but that's a different issue altogether. And our dream worlds feel so fantastical to
be able to see it represented a pretty solid way on screen. Granted,
I don't know if any of your dreams or nightmares have that bomb sound effects
so often, but that also captures people's attention too. I imagine, well,
Hannah listens to enough Hans Zimmer that I wouldn't be shocked if her dreams
said have that sound in them. Yeah, that's definitely true, only a
true thing. You know what's really funny is, I didn't see this movie
when everybody saw this movie. I saw this movie maybe like five years ago
roughly or something like that. Like, it's not a movie that I saw
when it was really popular. So, but I would imagine just the idea
of having something that talks so specifically about dreams in that way, and everybody's
so interested in dreams in such a general way that I feel like, of
course people were talking about it because it's not something that it's something that like
people might ask you a question about if you're a therapist, because I get
that question all the time, what about this dream I had? But also
it just seems like people are so interested in They're just interested in talking about
it, and I think it's fun to talk about in some ways too.
But Hannah brings up an interesting point, which is, well, I'm reminded
of the fact that you guys remember when you were little and you would see
a movie and afterwards you'd be like, I want to be just like that
character, Like I'm gonna do this thing like that character. Here everybody gets
a little bit of that again, like you get to kind of connect with
that little channel, be like I could maybe do that in my dreams tonight.
Maybe like I could literally do the thing and that for all the crazy
stunts that happened, like, oh yeah, I shouldn't probably practice this at
home. I'm not a trained professional, but in your dreams, you could,
you know, run around on the walls and the ceilings in some weird
zero G situation if you might, Well, I'm really interested because I don't
know a lot about this at all as because it's not my area of expertise.
But I'm really interested in kind of what stands out in this movie as
being like total BS in terms of dreaming and consciousness, and then what are
things that as like this field of expertise or even I know that then you
also have gotten more into this stuff with like hypnosis and NBR and that kind
of thing, like what FLAGS is like more realistic than you thought? And
then what FLAGS is like total BS? When I was watching this movie,
all I could think was is Freud would just eat this movie up or be
totally enraged by this movie one or the other. That's kind of the extent
of the actual dreaming consciousness part, because that's just not a wheelhouse psychologically or
therapeutically that I've delved into as a therapist. Yeah. Nine, I haven't
seen a single mother in this movie, but the one that killed herself sounds
right like that would be his perspective probably. I think that he would probably
say that nobody wanted to Schwang. They wanted was a spinkle. Anyway,
I had to be sorry. I had to make her friend's reference from my
wife. If she listens and I didn't do that, she would be mad
at me. So it had to The joeyous Freud reference had to come through.
But I think, you know, starting to look at this, Isaac,
this is definitely your area of expertise. Tell us what what kind of
truth and what kind of nonsense did you see in this dream and within a
dream within a dream heist movie. So I'll start actually with the viral marketing
that they put out about a year or so beforehand. Like I mentioned,
I was working on my honest thesis at the time, and so I was
researching different dream researchers and just trying to kind of, you know, see
who's doing what. And I saw a YouTube video of a few of the
various members of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, of which now
I'm a member, and I'm okay. I hear them talking about, you
know, lucid dreaming. How cool. Yeah, I want to study that,
and then another character would appear on the screen. They didn't give a
name, they didn't put a title card to that person, but she started
to talk about how, you know, we've been doing experiment mens with soldiers
and getting them to enter into a shared dream, and they're actually able to
communicate and engage with each other. And I almost lost it, and I
was like, what this is real? And I went to the comments section
because just to be sure, and everyone's like, don't get too excited.
This is viral marting, marketing for a new movie coming out. It's like,
oh man, but it sounds like a cool movie. So the element
of being able to affect your dream, to be able to intentionally create some
change or to kind of bring about some change in your dream, that's true.
The aspect of lucid dreaming that we just mentioned before is your ability to
be aware of yourself while you're in the dream and know that it's a dream
and stage dreaming. Some people get too excited about it and then the adrenaline
kicks in and then they wake up, so they can't really have fun.
But to be able to maybe morph the setting of your dream, or to
teleport or to sun characters in your own dream, sure, that's been well
researched and validated by a lot of studies, some of which include my own,
So there's definitely something there. Whereas the ability to empirically enter into somebody
else's dream, transmit information, and then how the other person know this without
any other communication. We haven't been able to validate that just yet, but
that's science. You can't prove anything, or you can't disprove anything. You
can only prove it. So far, that's where we're at. I've had
personal experiences where I believe I've been able to communicate some information with a friend
of mine. But then again, if you're friends, you know each other
well enough, you kind of get the vibes of each other. You eventually
you would be like, well, what would my friend think of in the
situation, and maybe you'll dream of it. So that's one aspect that gets
more on the science fiction side of things. In addition, this concept of
dreams within of dreams in the field are called nested dreams, kind of like
a Russian nested doll, the old the old field you or you know.
Colloquially, we used to call them like false awakenings, but we don't want
to kind of disqualify what awareness or awakening you may have in your mentality,
so we call them nested dreams. Those happen you guys have probably had or
remember them where you wake up and you think that you're in your in your
bedroom and you go when you start your day, and then something happens you
wake them again. It's annowledged. Yeah, it could be, or you
can or you can see it as like, uh, you know a take
two, or you know a second chance. You missed something, you forgot
something. Oh cool, I didn't actually embarrass myself in front of the class
while presenting on something without my pants on. I actually get to remember to
put on pants today. Good job. Yeah. I mean, there's no
better feeling than waking up from a dream in which something horrific is happening to
realize that it's happening. I mean, your body still needs a chance of
time to like chill out, and you have to keep reassuring it that it's
not going on. But I know what you mean, Like it's an opportunity
to reframe your thinking of it, because say, I think it's a It's
really important to highlight what you said about the body because if you've been listening
to this show, you know, or you know one of my clients who
might listen in, you know that I'm gonna hyper focus on understanding the relationship
that your brain lives in your body, that the mind brain connection and the
division between those is much less significant than sixteenth century philosophers would have us argue,
because the brain is an organ that is in your body, literally wired
in to your entire body through the nervous system. So recognizing that even if
you've had a dream, that it is vitally important to calm your body down.
I am talking from experience because I've done this, had a dream where
I thought something was happening that was add and then woke up and literally needed
to actually calm my physical body down in my awake form because I was still
not convinced that the bad was not happening. And that was because my nervous
system was going bananas, because my adrenaline, as Isaac mentioned, was firing.
And it's really important that we have kindness for ourselves, for particularly people
suffered trauma that deal with nightmares, that you recognize the importance that calming your
body back down and can regrounding to the reality you're in are separate, but
the processes it must be done at the same time. I wanted to say
separate but simultaneous, but that doesn't even make sense. So I can't say
it out loud, but like my brain wouldn't let me say it, But
the concurrent processes you must do, all right, You got to do both.
You gotta calm your body down and you gotta ground to reality. Similarly,
how we can tell what reality we're in, waking reality versus dreaming reality
can be done by a very mindful check of your space. In fact,
lucid dreaming is positively correlated with mindfulness. So there are such checks that we
can use to tell whether we're awake or whether we're dreaming. Things that we've
empirically had people go into dreams and test and then you know, signal or
communicate upon waking. So some of them actually do involve the body, like
our hands in dreams, they tend to be very malleable. We might have
extra fingers, They may be blurred. They may be very malleable. You
can stretch them like rubber for any one piece. Fans out there might recognize
that one, but in essence they're so you know, outside in our periphery
they appear to be very blurred anyways, but you always have your hands on
you can always test that in what you know is still called reality checks state
checks by your check which reality are in, but you do real reality dream
there's all out there too. If I saw a Britney's smile, I'm gonna
have to tell you that when you started talking about fingers being malleable, I
just saw Britney's brain. I saw right into it directly, and we had
a shared dream right now where I saw Britney's mind go into beetlejuice. No,
I was saying about one piece, because one piece reference not to poop
on your fingers, saying no bullshit. Well no. What also why I
was smiling is because I had a close friend and roommate who used to lucid
dream and she used to have like scary dream like so she did some research
into it to try to help herself, and she realized how she what could
help her kind of start to get out of it is that she noticed that
her blinds, she had up and down blinds like slanted, and that when
the dreams, it would be horizontal. And so once she noticed that,
it would start kind of kicking off a thought process in her brain that this
isn't real, and then it would allow her. And then she learned that
if she threw her arm up, like tried to throw her arm up in
her dream. It would wake her up. It would like jostle her awake
because she used to have and they used to always be about not about me.
But she would also describe these dreams and I'd be like, I sound
like like I'm just crawling into your room in the middle of the night and
like staring at you like so she would have really unsettling dreams and sorry,
and she learned how that trick that you were saying to kind of help her
to bring her out of it. Yeah, she noticed what are her dream
signs? And each individual will have their own unique dream signs. That's why
if you do want to lucid dream or just get to know your own brain
better, journaling your dreams regularly and then you can see, Okay, what's
a common thread, what's a common dream like element that keeps on coming up?
For her, it was the blinds that people might see a big red
dog. So whenever you know they see any of these common themes in waking
life, they can start to do a check. So every time you know,
they hear about Clifford, they do a reality check. Okay, Nope,
in waking reality, and eventually it becomes a habit and you may catch
yourself in the dream. But like Ben was saying, you gotta calm yourself
down because it's still you in that dream if you get too excited, just
like most things in life, we get too excited and we go we ruin
it for ourselves. So you're saying that the shared dream concept in the movie,
you said you haven't proven it yet. I definitely, and the field
has not like empirically proven it just yet. Gotcha well? And also because
in the movie they make it seem like they have to rely on I can't
remember what chemicals I hear them say if they named anything specifically, but I
know there's a heavy reliance in the movie on chemicals to get you into this
heavily sedated place, but also into that sort of shared dreaming space like you
kind of got to pick whose brain everyone kind of fell into, if you
will. Yeah, it looks like that was what that machine is for that
the one dreamer got plugged in and then the other ones. And I don't
I don't think they named chemicals either. I think the chemist that they talked
to I was noticing that specifically did not name chemicals, but talked about making
sure whatever he formulated did not affect the inner ear so that they could still
use the kick. Maybe they did talk about chemicals and I missed it because
I'm really no, they didn't. I paid attention today. Yeah, And
I think Christopher Nolan did a good job in writing a sci fi movie,
which is that you don't give too much information. You've just enough information and
exposition so that it makes sense, but you don't get so caught up in
the reasoning behind it that everyone gets bored or starts picking it apart. Like
I think that's where Tenant got a little nutso is like it got too in
the weeds with a lot of things. But I think Inception did a good
job of being like, well, you need these chemicals. There's a chemist.
Just trust that and let's keep the story moving. Yeah. The movie
that this actually was inspired by called Peprick. It was an animated Japanese animated
film that Nolan had actually made mention it'd seen before it was inspired to make.
Inceception, based off of has a similar concept of characters entering into others
dreams, and the protagonist, you know, she was working on this DreamCatcher
device, but it was some you know, futuristic tech that you put on,
you know, around your ear, and allowed a therapist to enter into
a patient's dream or individuals to share dreams. So this is kind of the
unobtainium. This is the mcguffin that they can use to kind of explain this
component without any chemical explanation, because they knew that everyone would There'll be one
scientist in the audience calling out, Nope, that's wrong, that's mail.
Diracetyson would be on Twitter talking about why didn't make sense? Sure, those
guys are the worst. I watched National Treasure with some guy and he's like
telling us the whole movie about one shot in the movie that ruined it for
me. We're like, dude, we know this is nonsense, Like like
it's Nicolas Cage being Indiana Jones in America. Okay, we know, and
I agree. I think it was important that we didn't get into the weeds
with chemicals because then the you know, geeks of the world like us right
now would be sitting here and doing this talking about it. But so we
kind of covered that. The premise of the movie is is a little bit,
a little bit wonky, but it's really fun to consider. I'll go
ahead, yeah, because it is a dream based movie, and like in
dreams, we suspend our disbelief. We allow ourselves to go with whatever the
narrative of the dream is telling us and be like I have to build a
go cart with my old landlord, okay, And so we get to follow
that dreamy state into the movie and we don't need to question it so much.
Most dream narratives is just a tool to tell a story anyway. So
we get to follow this when we don't need to challenge it so much,
right, which I think is an important part. And I'm going to just
share my bias here and make some people really mad and other people really happy.
Is I think that's what makes Star Wars more fun and more successful than
Star Trek is. How dare you see already? Did it? You know?
I'm right? Once made billions of dollars, once made millions. There's
a reason, but that suspension of disbelief of well, let's just kind of
skip over some of the deep science and go right into the What makes this
interesting is a powerful tool to use with dreams and also when you're or doing
anything like hypnosis that works with people's layers of consciousness, because at some point,
relying on metaphor to let the brain fill in the gaps becomes important that
I'm not telling you all of the answers. I'm creating a scenario and letting
your brain be curious about it so that it fills in things by itself.
That was some of the things that that Dom said to Tom Hardy's character that
I thought was fascinating. Or maybe it was Tom, maybe that was him
and Elliott Page, I can't remember, but talking about not making things no,
it's about the bridge. Don't use things that are too real, right,
don't use actual memories, but use things that are shades of this or
inspired by, but not actually from it, because then it gets too real
and it can ground it to something. And I think that that's really important,
and I imagine that's important with the dreamwork you guys do, is making
sure too like, don't make it too real, because then the suspension of
disbelief that we need in dreams and to do any kind of subconscious work doesn't
happen. Definitely, what you were mentioning about allowing some kind of wiggle room
for the client to the patient to fill in the gaps. That's exactly how
modern dream work utilizes it. It's more humanistic approach. Let them be their
experts. And I know for me, I am not. I don't do
a lot of work with sleep. I'm not big into dream or sleep work.
But I do talk to clients and create space for them to talk about
their dreams and what the recurrent themes may be. And I don't do that
kind of work simply because I just don't know. I'd be operating outside of
my realm of expertise. Is why I'm really glad we have Isaacon for this
because it is his expertise, and this is great. Is what I do
understand is working with people's layers of consciousness, which this movie sort of borrowed
from then put into dreams. Even in hypnosis states, you can measure people's
brain waves, and you need to understand that when you get two different layers
of brainwave. And I'm going to have to pull up a chart because this
is a little also beyond the training we get as counselors. But when people
are in gamma waves, their brain waves are operating, I'm making finger signs
like you guys can see what I'm doing The brainwaves are really active visual me
if people on Patreon maybe, but the gamma waves are when we're in problem
solving. The brain waves are operating in a high frequency pattern when we're awake
with an active mind. That's beta waves when we're relaxed and reflective. Alpha.
Theta is drowsiness and deltas when you get dreams and sleeping, and hypnosis
wants to increase theta waves and delta waves to try to engage people at a
lower level of consciousness where they're more suggestive and reflective. That's something that's really
important that you can get the body in a measurable way, an approvable way
to be an a state where the mind is more willing and to be flexible
and calm because the body is safe. The body is grounded in safety,
The body is grounded in calmness, and by creating that environment drawing attention to
it, the mind can be more flexible and creative and allow for problem solving
that can't exist when it's grounded to a real problem. When you're trying to
solve something, if there was a tiger in your house, you are not
going to be so interested or even not even possible for you to wonder,
is it possible to go into a shared dream within a dream within a dream
within a dream, And what would it be like if I went into my
friend's dream and got into their head. Would we be able to solve world
puzzles together? No, you're going to be worried about I'm a tiger in
your house about to eat you, because your brain's going to be like danger,
danger, danger, danger. And when you do any kind of work
with a client who has anxiety or has a history of trauma, which through
my lens, everyone has trauma, but not everyone has PTSD. We've all
had small to traumas, things that disturb us. You have to get the
bodied back to a state where it can be calm again, so that you
can help someone reach a state of consciousness where they're able, not willing,
physically able to be suggestible to interpret the information through a different lens. If
you're activating the part of them that was in danger with the memory, their
body is in danger. And the things I reject about doing cognitive their cognitive
behavioral therapy with trauma patients directly is that it relies on this idea well help
them tell them to think about it differently and they'll be fine. So I
actually utilize cognitive behavioral therapy and I approach the trauma work with more of a
may maybe a polyvagal neural approach that actually can coincide with yours, in essence
allowing them to activate the cognitions that are connected not to those fears, the
emotions and memories. Two of the main components of dreams. The pyramidal cells
the hippocampus are in charge of kind of person, place and context, and
we have the amygdala activated and engaging with memory consolidation there. So when we
have a traumatic experience capital or lowercase, those neurons between the fear and the
memory are fused very strong, they're very fine tuned, and unfortunately that's where
we get our flashbacks. That's why we have are reoccurring dreams and nightmares of
the event. So the approach that I'll use, at least initially, is
to cultivate their ability to connect to memories of safety, to get them to
intentionally go to that memory, to feel it somatically, to kind of remember
or all of the site, sounds, touch, tastes, etc. So
that they can feel safe again and cultivate that from the past, the recent,
past, present, the future, so they're eventually able to essentially grow
their brain in this new direction that they'd like to do, and we might
see similar changes happening in the dream space. There are some dream based interventions
to change or to add in novel experiences to the dreamed experience of those neurons
firing. And when we can bring in the more bizarre elements of dreaming,
it gets to move away from the traumatic reproduction of that traumatic event. So
because we can get dreams to be more bizarre and getting more elements, we
get too broaden and build. That's the parasympathetic nervous system as opposed to that
fight or flight or freeze response we get when we are re or traumatized.
And I love that you mentioned the blending of the techniques because it's not the
It's not that CBT is an invalid approach. CBT is validated over and over
again. It works. But where it doesn't work, where it falls short,
is when the part of the brain that can't activate and doesn't have those
resources. Right when that sympathetic nervous state is our nervous system is active,
people aren't calm enough to engage the things they've been taught, and the memory
they're activating that you're saying is physically stored in their neurons does not have those
resources at that time, and therefore that information is irrelevant until they're calm again.
And that's what I think is so important that people miss. I think
I was ten years into my career before I finally took trainings that concratised that
for me, and I'm EMDR certified. So that's where you know, MDR
pulls heavily from poly Bagel's. They don't even know shy away from that.
They incorporate that idea that we need to keep in mind. Like I said
earlier, that the brain and the body are all wired into each other,
and how memories are stored matters, where they're stored matters. We can't just
tell someone to change the way that they're thinking when their body is telling them
they're in danger. Doesn't Are you trying to say that the body keeps the
score or something? I might be saying that the body keeps the score.
God, I wonder too, I have. I've just been listening, and
I wonder and just listening to what you guys are sharing, and what I
know about clients I see who have trauma and then it comes out in their
dreams or even with myself because I have anxiety, and how my anxiety will
so stereotypically manifest in my dreams. And so my only thought about this,
and this is what I would say if I was Christopher Nolan, just to
I don't know, be lazy is well, one of the chemicals that they
get injected with must take care of this part of it. But I don't
know how all of these people in this movie, you know, aren't when
they're in each other's subconscious, within each other's dream state, how they're not.
They're so activated. Obviously they're fighting for their lives, like in these
dreams within dreams. That's it, doesn't It does seem kind of outlandish that
there wouldn't be more going on within their dream states besides just dom and mal
right and these subconscious sort of like armies or fighters that are coming towards them,
Like you would think that there would be more manifestations of their I guess
neurosis if you want to call it that, or they're undealt with feelings,
or even just you would think in one of the dreams. In the dreams,
there'd be manifestations of the anxiety they're having in the upper dream, like
in the what I would call the business hotel dream, that there wouldn't be
stuff coming up in the snow dream because of that. And my assumption would
be if I was christophal and I would just say, what one of those
chemicals shooting into their brains is, I don't know, lexapro or something,
and it's or out of van or something. That's like keeping their anxiety low
so they can be so centered and grounded while their body and brain is doing
a million other things that are so stressful simultaneously. Like it makes me curious
if these henchmen are heist. You know, people in this movie have to
do their own like meditative, grounding process based work between heist just so that
heis don't go awry, like the elements that they feel like they have to
you have to control in this space that to me almost feels like the most
unrealistic part of this movie is how that could things not be like the most
that something goes awry if I would even say that, and they could they
catch it right away? Is in the business hotel dream layer of the dream,
Robert's actual godfather shows up that they were going to imitate, and then
they kind of use that to their advantage. But you think there would be
more stuff going on like that that they wouldn't be able to predict for.
And I'm assuming I'm just going to give it up to this, this bunch
of disbelief, because this is obviously reality, an alternate reality where this is
so well known that businessmen like Robert are being trained on how to deal with
it, Like there's already security businesses to deal with these things, and probably
mercenaries and all that stuff too. But I think that's the part that,
Yeah, I find really interesting that only Dom, only Dom is the one
having trouble keeping control over a part of his psyche that's manifesting and sabotaging these
dream states. I agree. I love your framing of that question because I
think that ties into what Isaac was talking about earlier about how you can't stay
in a dream state and can't lose a dream once your journaline start firing,
right, and that you're just not gonna stay in a sleep state. It's
not gonna happen because your body's gonna wake you up. At some point,
your body's gonna say you're in danger, wake up and design that way right.
It's almost like if there was a tiger, your body gonna wake you
up. Yeah, we have a problem here, But I think it's more
personal, right that that would be a That's a really important question because there
is no way all of these characters have not had lives, and you know
it's fright to say mothers right, like, and I would also say you
don't get into that line of business crime without problem. I would assume a
significant background of stuff going on in your life that you would be I don't
know. It makes me curious if there's like a psych work up that you
have to clear to be part of these teams of like to do these highs,
which I guess they don't because they recruit Elliott Page's character just because that
character is the brightest kid in glass. Unless unless all of these characters are
elements from the level above all of that, we don't get to see whether
they're not that top falls at the end where Don was dreaming all of these
scenes, whether there's all one big metaphor of his you know, very extreme
dream that he had after a really powerful therapy session. Well, this is
going to lead into a whole other conversation. We're going to take a break
here and we'll be right back, all right, so you can we'll definitely
keep weaving in like dreaming consciousness fact for suspiction into this. But I think
you're bringing up the kind of the next portion of this, which is that
there is the argument that this whole movie is a dream, perhaps that Dom
is happening right, and and I it makes sense to me because he is
the central figure, because it's only his manifestation that is fucking shit up right.
And also a note that I wrote is how perfect that he's given the
opportunity to reframe inception, to reframe the awful thing he did to his wife,
to reframe it in a positive way where he not only is like the
hero and doing something exceptional, but he is going to be cleared of all
wrongdoing. He's going to see his children again, He's going to be safe.
I think it's what you've Ben would have called recent episodes a corrective experience.
He gets to now use something he did that had led to a horrible,
horrific, traumatic outcome that he's been sitting with all that guilt and shame
and now he's this perfect opportunity to use it in a way that will solve
everything. So I did touch on that and I was like, oh,
that does feel like I mean, I could just be like the narrative of
the story, right, the hero's story, And it feels like a perfect
sort of like reframing experience to reconceptualize something like a piece of huge guilt that
you're holding inside of you. Yeah, I mean and exactly. And I
think that's a huge point to make that. There's so many things that open
up that question, right, it is of all these characters, like taking
a look at Tom Hardy's character Eames, right, that dude is operating at
legit special forces level like single man incursion tactics, and you don't learn that
stuff without some serious bad coming your way. You know, like you're gonna
have to put yourself through really really difficult training and do really difficult things that
will have consequences on you. Not saying you know that you these people are
bad people, but saying that they train in hard ways for hard realities that
most of us can sleep through the night and pretend don't exist. Because there
are people who do them and to do those kinds of things. The argument
that his subconscious would have its own version of Malls showing up to haunt him.
I've done way too much work with people that have killed people to believe
for one ounce of a second would not be there so that it's only Doms
memories that get corrected, that it's only Doms memories that show up and interfere.
I think the argument exists that the top never would fall, well,
that this will similarly, oh, go ahead. Similarly speaking, I work
with a lot of vets and service members and their PTSD also comes with a
large amount of nightmares and for however much training that they do, again,
there's not a lot in the realm of mental fortitude and health and security,
especially against these traumatic experiences. Whether they've committed that anything, whether they've witness
anything, we even just heard about anything. Trauma can come at you,
you know, even by word of mouth, and they're so severely affected by
it. So once again we have to suspend disbelief that such individuals would not
be haunted by their actions in the past, if they are actually real people
and not just conglomerations of Dom's mind right which you know, the operating theory
seems to be all of us kind of are on that team. It's just
fun to think that it's all well, I was kind of more watching this
and me and Hannah watched it tous who were talking about this, because Hannah,
you kept noting every time, well, he spend the top this time,
and the top did fall, so you kept like clocking. But I
do think where this movie feels really interesting to me psychologically is if you do,
which is regardless of it's his dream the whole time or whatever, what
is true in the movie is that Mall is him right. It's a manifestation
of him talking at him right, coming at him, if you will,
and if you really hold that in your mind, the whole movie psychologically for
me is a therapist that all lined up, like the fact that during one
of their first interactions in the movie, it might have been where they're Insito's
mind at the beginning and she shows up, he says, She says to
him, do the children miss me? Which is such a brutal question,
and he says, oh God, I can't imagine. And that to me
now that I know the whole story, because they've seen it a few times,
I'm like, woof, that does feel like something a client you're subconscious
would haunt on you, like those would be the kind of questions that you
would torture yourself about. And this idea of mal Mail walking around as this
punishing self sabotaging, toxic, hateful creature in his life does make a lot
of sense to me as a therapist who has worked with so many people who
have gone through something where they feel like not only a trauma, but a
trauma that feels like it was my fault. Because I think that's the important
things. We've talked about a lot of trauma on the show lately, a
lot of trauma through grief and loss and bereavement, and I think what's important
to keep in mind that this one is this what's different for this character is
that he believes that he is the one who did this to her, that
he caused her death. It's interesting that you bring up specifically bereavement because that
was actually my dissertation topic for grad school. I did a dissertation on the
cultural differences in bereavement dreams, and so I looked at how do different groups
of individuals dream of the deceased? Does this change by ethnicity, religion,
or gender, and the more conclusive evidence was that it's mainly just by gender
the most. Most women tend to dream of the deceased either being high,
being healthy and radiant, kind of doing well, or being separated and kind
of separating or kind of saying goodbye, things like that. As in waking
life, the grief process can be very socially straining for most women, and
they either feel the loss is very strong or they need a lot of social
connection. Whereas men, most men tend to dream of the deceased essentially doing
kind of the mundane things that they always used to do together. So if
they used to kind of sit and chat at the breakfast table, that's what
they'll probably see them doing. If they used to go on walks, and
they'll probably continue to go on walks with them. So if that's true,
that means that maybe Dom's either relationship with Mal either has always been or he's
at least perceiving it as reprimanding, unless it is so traumatic, so excessive
that it is shifting and changing, and this is that traumatic elements that his
brain is showing him can little comb Yeah, it's like this whole, this
whole movie creates a lot of metaphora parts or allegory perhaps, but looking at
how all of these could be parts of Dom and that Maul represents that chamber
because she never says one single positive thing to him. No, not ever.
And and Arthur, the character of Arthur, he does say to Ariane
like Mao was lovely in real life. So I think that is the clue
to us as the audience that this version of Mau is not the version of
Mao that existed in the real world, or at least not until maybe they
fell into limbo together and she came back with him, right. And some
of the work that I don't even wrote about this in my and a Stranger
Things psychology book, I wrote a chapter in with understanding the role of shame
in recovery from trauma and grief in bereavement even is that when people believe that
they contributed, they have responsibility or the loss, healing becomes blocked because shame
deactivates the arousal state that's needed to emote enough to grief. And we see
Mall every time there is some completion of this task that domas created for himself,
Mall shows up and blocks it and I see that with clients and session
over and over again, where they get so close to reaching that point they
can release, they can have that cathartic release of emotion that they need in
order to grieve that they go, no, but it's my fault. Boom,
but I did it. There's something I did something about it my fault,
or I can't recover. Bam, the shame shuts it right down,
and the healing loop starts all over again. Yeah, I mean, Arianna
says it. Arianne says it towards the end of the movie. She says,
You're gonna have to forgive yourself, you know, because that character is
a good job of kind of getting right to it. I mean, it'd
also be interested in your guys's thoughts about the levels of the dreams when he's
that elevator kind of metaphor the use in the movie where Ariana goes through them.
But that character quickly picks up on the fact that, like, your
shame is like eating you up, and not only is it eating you up,
it's going to eat all of us up with you, because we are
now part of your shame spiral. And and I think what you're saying,
Benice so true. And when I work with clients and the shame, it
keeps blocking us time and time again. You Know, the question I stimes
ask them is why does it feel so important to keep punishing yourself? Like,
like, what do you think you're genuinely gonna this is a real I
mean I have to ask myself this question sometimes too, which is like what
function does it continue to serve? Like why does it feel so necessary to
hold on like this? What do I feel like I'm gonna lose if I
actually forgive myself? What's the worry on the other side of forgiving myself that
I'm gonna You're gonna do something or You're gonna say something, You're gonna be
someone if you don't keep you know, punishing yourself. And I have to
always acknowledge that we live in a culture that also very much not rewards shame,
but it has this belief that shame has a lot of mirror right like
discipline and no pain, no gain, Like we do live in a culture
that does really I mean you could probably I don't blame it on puritanical culture.
This idea that shame keeps ups in line, shame keeps us good boys
and girls, and so what I do also have to acknowledge sometimes. What
I have to acknowledge sometimes with clients is is there a real fear or worry
or anxiety that if I don't keep punishing myself that I'm gonna start doing bad
things. I mean, it's but it's that like simplistic kind of the thought
process. I don't even know if they could name what the bad things are
if you really got there. Not always. Sometimes I work with and it's
more just like this hovering hypothetical for some people of like, well, I'm
a bad person, which is what shame tells us, and so if I
let go then or if I forgive myself, then I'm opening up a door
because I don't trust myself that I'm gonna just be a good like I'm gonna
be a moral, ethical person, which is also the big not to get
on a soapbox. But I think the big argument that you see with people
when people talk about do we need a religion or not to stay in line,
I think it also people who think that you don't need religion will say
the same thing, which is that do not think that you can still make
ethical, moral decisions without this worry that you're going to get punished by something
bigger than us if you don't behave. And it goes back to this idea,
can you like trust yourself, forgive yourself after a horrible situation in which
maybe you do have some fault in it, maybe not, maybe you do,
you know, and then how do we move forward to that? And
there's there's an approach that combines this part's work that we're talking about here.
Part of it could be pun intended, part of it could be engaging with
your different dream characters as different parts of you. It's called get Stalt dream
psychology, kind of acknowledging that this is all you're You're projecting these different characters
into your dream uh you know there your mirror neurons that normally are receptive in
waking life are projective in the dreaming world. So you project elements of you
into your dream characters. You can interact with them, ask them questions,
engage with them just in my in my experience, asking them what's it like
to be my dream character? And then they just kind of give up,
the give up the game and they I don't know, but in waking life.
In addition, we can also do internal family systems. There, you're
an approach where we get if shamey's coming up so much, and you know
it served us as a child, It kept us kind of okay, Well,
I don't want the group to dislike me, so you know, feel
shame when I say something awkward or wear the wrong socks, and so it
keeps us in line. Sure, but most things can be helpful to a
degree, and when they become unnecessary or maladaptive, we need to analyze them.
So I'll work with a patient and ask them, all right, can
you connect with your shame? What service does it provide for the whole and
can we maybe even ask that part what it would rather do or if it
let you take over from there, I let you kind of keep the system
in order. And some amazing work happens when the patient finally acknowledges you know
what, Yeah, I was feeling ashamed. It kept me from doing the
bad thing again. But now I think I know not to do the bad
thing again, and I can start to move forward from that. And then
they get to girl again. So Hannah, I'm gonna tap you. I'm
gonna do that. The tag in here because Isaac said the magic word,
right, like we probably would pretty much almost have a bingo for those listening.
We've we've talked about Batman, We've talked about trauma, we've talked about
grief, and we've talked about Star Wars. One of the other themes that
we've talked about, because definitely both Hannah and I talked about parts a lot,
is how might Dom have manifested Maul and some of these other characters as
parts. Do you think, Hannah, because I know this is definitely an
area of interest to yours, is dealing with parts work. Yeah. Absolutely.
How I feel like I feel like, as I'm listening to all of
you talk about it being the whole deal is this is his dream and this
is his experience. That makes a lot more sense to me in terms of
in terms of just how I think about the movie in general. So I
really feel like his clearly his shame part is mal I feel like his.
I feel like his. I don't. I don't even know if this based
on all the different things you all were talking about, I don't even know
if this works. But his subconscious being Aaron Adney or however the fuck you
say her name or their name in the movie the Greek or Greek listeners Hannah.
Either way that that is kind of the part that's like, are you
sure about this? Like is this really like this? It's also the part
that is showing him very clearly No, this is what the problem is.
You need to forgive yourself. You need to walk away from the situation because
this is dangerous. Like you continuing to engage with the shame part of yourself
is not You're not growing from this. Nothing is changing, which is kind
of what all of you were saying. So I really feel like the shame
part is mal I feel like his maybe introspection part is is Elliott Page's character.
I feel like, I don't know if I feel like I can identify
any other parts. I mean, it certainly could be Tom Hardy, could
be his fight part number one, that could be a part of that experience
Mogadishu to find him, you know, like, yeah, that's his operator
for sure. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, and so and I feel like
and I feel like in some ways then Joseph Gordon Levitt's character, I feel
like I don't know anybody's name Arthur early actors Arthur. I feel like,
yeah, I feel like Arthur his part is kind of he might be the
protector, but a kind of like a protector that's given up and one way
or another, like he seems to be able to push to come to him
and say are you sure that? Are you sure you have a handle on
this? Are you sure that you're able to do this? Are you sure
that you're able to do you have this under control? Kind of checks in
with him. So yeah, So I don't know what part I think that
Joseph Gordon Levitt is. Maybe well, I want to jump off of that
in what's interesting now that we're kind of thinking of it, this hypothetical is
Arthur. Joseph Gordon Levitt's character seems to be very, very type. I
guess I would to like that very and he makes a big mistake that makes
the whole mission really in danger. Right, So it also I guess you
could kind of argue, like is this movie a representation of dom kind of
finally saying like it's not working anymore, Like the way that I've been trying
to do it is not working anymore. I can't plan for everything, I
can't be ahead of everything. You know, that rigidity that we all can
fall into when we're trying to pretend like we can have a lot of control
over the world around us. And so that does seem to be a moment
in the movie where Arthur's character is really out of character that it's really shocking,
and of course Dom reacts and kind he screams in his face, and
he's also like where we can't change though, like we still have to push
forward, push forward, push forward. Which that's also something I think that's
real, really realistic, right, is that until shit gets really, really,
really bad, we can struggle to swerve, we can get very locked
in till no, we have to complete the mission. We gotta do the
way we've always done it. We can't move, we can't move, even
though we are in like dire straits, we'll fall into limbo, even though
I've pissed off everybody on the team. Because I think something Dom also does
is keep a lot of secrets, keeps a lot of secrets. He's very
secretive with his team. He does not tell them things if he doesn't want
them to know. It's very like rules for THEE but not for me,
which they even name out right in the movie, like you'll know if they
say I think like they say verbatim, you'll notice that Dom tells you to
do a lot of things, not to do a lot of things that he'll
then then do. Yeah, And I think that says a lot about the
theory that we're in Dom's head the whole movie, because we keep secrets from
ourselves. Because I think how also this movie resolves is him, I guess,
reconcile if we're thinking about like parts, like he reconciles with that Elliott
Page part of you know, kind of finally saying out loud to someone what
he did the part that he played. Because my because the feeling that I
got, unless I really missed something, which I wouldn't be shocked, is
that he's never really told anybody anybody maybe Arthur, but I feel like no
one that he put an idea in his wife's mind that led to her I
guess you could argue psychosis that led to her suicide, right if you wanted
to want to think of it in those terms. And it's in the end
of the movie how he can finally move on and like resolve things, is
he finally admits that out loud, kind of like the big exhale of the
movie. This is what I did, and he doesn't nothing. I'm going
to say it like this, but nothing bad happens. Like he says the
big horrible thing out loud and the world doesn't explode. You know, I
know, right right when you admit to these things that you've held in yourself
for so long and you think are so terribly bad, that your shame system
has kind of wrapped up and hold itself away and made you think you'd have
to think this way. Whether it's in zion, whether it's depression, whether
it's trauma. But if we can finally get to just check in with somebody
and say, hey, listen, my brain's been telling me this thang a
whole bunch. I'm just gonna say it out loud, and the other person
is a you know, qualified therapist of some sort can tell you, yeah,
it do be that way it sounds, doesn't it? Yeah, it
does. Then you get to move on, right, But we don't like
immediately send you to an execution chamber of like, ooh, you said that
thing you gotta checket to fit for you. I mean, any tips for
any therapiace and training out there listening when your client tells you something really hardcore
like that. You have to practice making your face very stoic and calm and
compassionate. Do not make a goofy big face are Yike's face, which is
what Isaac just kind of made. Leonardo DiCaprio just kind of squint face.
Am really looking hard? Right? Yeah? Especially that. So there's something
I wanted to follow up on this because Brittany, you're talking about great stuff,
and Isaac and he know you guys have both talked about great stuff.
So I'm going to do the thing that I do sometimes kind of conquertize this
back into some of the theoretical language to help tie it in. Is Isaac,
you brought up IFS, which is internal family systems, and I don't
use his language a lot, but I'm going to today because it's simpler.
I like structural dissociation. I like Genina Fisher's way of talking about things a
little bit more because it's a little more expansive. But the way that Dick
Schwartz did it, who's the creator of Internal family Systems, the way he
wrote these things was a simpler, direct language. And his focus is getting
the self part back online. That's his focus. Some other people focus on
some different stuff in addition to that and build upon that work. But the
language that he uses in the base levels, right, is that within our
internal family system, we have managers, firefighters, and exiles. So when
Hannah and Brittany are kind of like naming out these parts and Isaac using the
language and explaining this too, you guys have to I'm hoping that our audience
right now is starting to see these characters for what they are. In Isaac,
your term of like maybe this is a really powerful therapy session is where
my brain is at with this. It's not just a dream, it's a
really powerful therapy session. Is the managers are Arthur and also we see I
forgot his father in law, Michael Kine, whatever his character's names. If
we do learn his name, it's very fleeting. It is very fleeting.
Alfred, we'll see, I'm here for this. He definitely was daddy Butler
here. But we see the managers, right, the managers who try to
keep stuff. And I don't know if it's in or Brittany who said,
like the Arthur is like a manager's kind of like given up. It's kind
of like I'm gonna run this stuff, but like I'm not going to try
to control you. Al must just like war out, like I can't keep
operating at this level, dude, right. And then the fire the firefighters
we see like Eames. Eames is a firefighter and he looks so good in
this movie. Surprised you guys, don't like he's like very cleaned up.
He's not all trimed up, and he like of a little work, don't.
The way that Christopher Nolans Nolan will hide his face in movies is hate
is hater is hater behavior, and I you know, I'm glad an inception
he does not do that. Yeah, let's him be the beautiful man that
he is anyway. So you see Eames as a firefighter. The the chemist
is kind of sort of a blend of firefighter and manager kind of because he's
kind of taking on a couple of different roles. And then the exiles.
Ariadne is an exile. When looking at it, as you know, and
Isaac, when you dropped if on it, I'm like, already been thinking
this way, but then it conquetizes for me. So the way they're described
is vulnerable usually young parts that hold trauma, fear, and shame that are
shut away to keep them safe, but also to stop them from overwhelming the
system. So here's why the interaction of parts makes sense for me watching this
story and the share of factoid about this movie that I learned this weekend watching
it is the manager part of the father in law of Alfred Daddy Butler in
Brittany and Hannah's language was introducing Dom the self to a younger, better version
of him. Remember he tells him, I've got someone better. He is
interacting with an idealized version of himself that can do all of the things he
can do and is operating a memory. That bridge memory concretized it. For
me, this is exactly where my brand went when I watch at this time,
I went, like, son of a bitch, that character is him?
Is that memory using that bridge? That then Mall shows up on ties
all this theory together because yes, she walks over that bridge every day to
school to go to what I'm assuming his Oxford. But watching the way Mall
shows up and the whole world starts to break when that bridge is using,
Dom realizes where he is, is the part starting to interact and talk with
each other. But watching how Dom interacts with the exiled part of himself that
he still believes is good enough and has the skills to get him out of
this, but stays isolated from the self by the shame. Is exactly what
we see illustrated in that that the shame comes in and disrupts the connection of
self and exiled part that is protected because that is where his hopes and dreams
lie. And as the same problem we run into with clients where they are
given the opportunity to connect to what EMDR would call a resource memory, and
you get them almost activated enough that they feel enough hope that they can overcome
again and feel engaged, but shame shows its face again and destroys it.
I don't know if this is the fact to it you're going to say,
Ben, but it's something I had mentioned before Star recording, is that that
character's name is Greek for creator of dreams Ariadne. That's why that name,
I think is kind of anachronistic sounding, which is why it's not rolling off
the tongue. So if they are, if that character is a creation of
dom it makes sense then why they would have this pretentious ass name with this
pretentious ass meaning and which good to speak. Christopher Nolan no offense to him.
And also I'm sure Dom's done a ton of research doing the work that
he does, and would know things like Ariadne is the name of the creator
of dreams within Greek mythology, and so too, would your subconscious know that
and then likely name apart that from a bit of learning that was meaningful to
you at some point in time, and would name a part we crack the
movie podcast over. It only took ten years, but we figured you out.
Bro. So the fact what I wanted to drop that I learned from
The Lovely Amazon X ray was that when Christopher Nolan was writing this movie,
he was writing it from parts that he understood and wrote each character as if
they were a part of the creative process of writing a movie. So Sito
was a producer, Eames was the actor, Ariadne I think was the writer,
that I think Don was the director, and then maybe Arthur was the
EP or something. Well, it makes sense he's writing a heist within the
roles that of the group work. Then he understands. Yeah, So I
feel like that's that's a good breaking point for me. But if you guys
have other things you want to follow upon that idea with I am all yours.
One thing that comes to mind is who is the target? So originally
in the conceit of this dream, it's Robert, This this young businessman trying
to get his daddy's love. Write another exile. But if he is a
part of Dom, part of him that is feeling without you know, appreciation,
without affection, without well, I really love. I mean for somebody
that blames himself for his wife's death, where his wife's suicide as if it's
his awful Yeah, it's going to be really hard for him to accept any
love. In fact, that's one of the symptoms of PTSD, is an
inability to feel loving feelings or happy feelings. So this may be his effort
to help himself acknowledge his inner child and engage with the fact that he is
a human being and worthy of some sort of love, and perhaps even why
he chooses to stick around with the kiddos whether or not the top falls.
I'm going to take that. I'm a room with it because that has inspired
me too. Because also I think what's really interesting about the robber and his
father's storyline is that connecting it with Dom is that right now he is arguably
failing his children right, like he is not handling their mother's death well.
And one of the few things they talk about within the Robert and his father
relationship is how poorly Robert's father supported him through the death of his mother,
and so part of it too, I wonder as a bit of a reconciliation
resolution factor for dom of you know, even down the road, you can
forgive your father and find a place where you still feel loved and connected to
him even when he's really fucked shut up, including how to support you emotionally
through a horrific time of your life. One thing I wanted to say,
and then I'll throw it to the break, is that what I love about
the actual inception Heist is that it does boil down to something that I think
is really true, which is that because I'm a child therapist, that's my
background, is that, yeah, is that everything I feel? I believe
there's a kid in us forever? Right. We could argue that's the part
stuff too, And so what I love about this movie is it does make
that case, which is that regardless of all the esteem and the money and
the prestige and the business and the ego and dad, that this Robert person
has that you could definitely dial into. Em says right away, it doesn't
matter. You have to go down to the simplest thing, which is his
relationship with his father. Because I think when I talk with clients, so
much can be boiled down to and not in that stereotypical way where people get
all up their butts when they're like, oh, you're going to therapy because
it's your parents fault, But it is this idea that, like so much
of what we learn and so much of what is imprinted upon us happens when
we're young, when we're figuring out the world, and so how can it
not dial back to that, not in a way where it's anyone's fault,
but just it's like cause and effect, right, And so I love that
this movie, realistically, I believe goes back to that idea of you know
it is the most common denominator is do you feel love? Do you feel
love from your parent? No matter how old we get. I wrote my
notes, we're always children that penwell being in the same you know of like
we always want even if our parents suck, even if they're non existent,
even if they're whatever. Because I've worked with I've worked with a lot of
like foster kids, adopted kids, adults that have a lot of different experiences,
there's always a part of us that hold longing for them to be validated
by them, even if they suck, even like I said, even if
they've been a black hole of nothing for you, and so part of it.
So the fact that they connect to that. In this movie I found
to be very realistic about the psychology of us as human beings. And I
think if you were to incept someone and for it to really stick, it
would have to connect to that because that is one of the most powerful elements
and all of our core beings is our relationship with our parents. So I'll
throw it to a break there we'll be right back. So getting back from
that idea, Ben, I know one thing you wanted to make sure we
touched upon is the concept of implanting an idea. Since you are trained in
hypnosis. We talked about this if you really want to get more about this
in our get Out episode from a few years back. We obviously talked about
hypnosis and depths because that's a big part of that movie. So if you
want more, I would suggest you listen an episode. But Ben I'm sure
you want to do a little just PSA about implanting an idea for anyone who's
nervous that they're going to get incepted and you're going to tell them that the
world's not real and it's going to drive them insane. Yes, I'll make
them believe they're a chicken, you know, one of those embarrassing ones.
It's almost always that one. I don't know that it's it's so pervasive.
I don't know why. I mean, I do know why, and it's
why people who are trained in clinical hypnosis and choose to be members of the
American Society for Clinical Hypnosis, in their joining of that society and accepting of
the training, etc. Certifications, must agree not to do show hypnosis because
of how harmful that is. And what people don't understand about show hypnosis is
that people who would get up and act a little goofy and silly in front
of a group of people would probably do it if they were a little inebriated.
So it's more permission, like, it's more correlation, not causation kind
of stuff. It's correlation, it's encouragement. It's engagement of parts that might
allow them to be a little childish and silly. And some people have that
right on their sleeve, and you know they would do it. Like,
if you know me, you know there's a one thousand percent chance that I
would participate in a hypnosis show and let whatever ridiculous nonsense happen go within and
make it fun. There are other people who would be like, that's a
secret, hidden part of them they might like to let out, but wouldn't
tell anybody about. However, the people who would die immediately of shame by
having their insides melted out like hot lava. If I shan't be hypnotized,
I shan't because you are that person. I am imagining you immolating from the
inside out in shame. If someone made you afraid of a rubber fishing lure
and told you it was the scariestmunster. If I remember in a situation where
I'm in a magic show, we're already in an ultra reality of my life.
But but no, like as far as can a therapist implant an idea
into your mind, can they implant a reality? No? Right, we
can't put something into your head. We can't incept an idea. However,
what's important to remember is that when doing any kind of work with the subconscious,
you do want to avoid creating an opportunity. Was that suggestion kind of
telling the other person what their experience means or what they are thinking, right,
You want to avoid doing that because well, you can't implant an idea,
you can affect how they might view something in the idea of like false
memories, where there has been studies and why hypnosis in many cases in courtrooms
is not allowed is because like if someone's trying to say that they remember being
abused, for example, like if this memory was produced solely under hypnosis,
it would not be admissible, and it's a psychologist cannot insect, but a
lawyer can. Ah, Right, see how that works. One more reason
to avoid lawyers sincetimes. Right, But remembering it's absolutely not okay for us
to when someone is in a vulnerable state, interpret something for them and assign
meaning to it. It's important for us to encourage growth of their own understanding
so that they can confront things that are difficult and while not completely hidden away
from them, may be blocked, and help them understand meaning of it on
their own without us telling them. This means that happened to you. You're
having this bad dream because somebody touched you inappropriately. You're having this bad dream
because this bad thing happened to you. We have to avoid doing that.
And when someone trusts you as a provider to use hypnosis, it's very important
that you use suggestions. Maybe you'd like to uncover a deeper layer of this
memory without saying, maybe you'd like to remember the time that somebody did something
wrong to you. I think that's closer, But like those two things are
okay, Well, what you don't want to say is maybe you'd like to
remember the time your uncle did something he wasn't supposed to to you. If
the client has not mentioned that, you don't want to incorporate ideas into their
head because false memories are real. So why you can't incept clients having false
memories and then parts locking into it is, ah, look, an avenue
for me to defend my vulnerable psyche parts. Let's lock into that. That
can't happen. Doesn't make it real and doesn't mean the person will fully believe
it, but people will attach to an idea of oh, that's it.
That's why the miscuse of the authority position as the one with the knowledge.
If my hypnotist is telling me this, maybe maybe they're onto something. Maybe
they know something that I don't know. Maybe they are unlocking because they didn't
study that. The patient, the client didn't study this, so they do
depend on those of us who are guiding and supporting them, whether it's hypnosis
and dream analysis or even just therapy and of itself. We need to be
humanistic about it and let the patient kind of be their own expert, and
we just act as the guide and get them to ask themselves these questions.
Yeah, thank you. I feel like I made a topic that's clear as
moud already merk here, So I don't feel like I did the best job
explaining that. I mean, I think what you're saying, which I think
is true even outside of hypnosis, which I think is also what you're hitting
on, Isaac, is that therapists we're not supposed to be they say bad
therapist gives advice like therapists aren't supposed to be super directive in that way unless
you're doing like even like CBT work, Like you can give homework, but
that's not like you're not telling people who they are and what they're what's wrong
with them, like dad, YadA YadA. Because also, especially when someone
is engaging in therapy, they're at different levels of vulnerability. And so there
are certain clients and certain people I've worked with where I have to be very
careful about, like every reflection that comes out of my mouth, because I
know there's a possibility, because of whatever state of mind they're in, that
they're going to take that thought and run with it. You know, Oh,
maybe something did happen when I was young, or maybe my dad did
do that, or maybe that, and I have to be like, oh,
like you know, like you were saying, is like they're the expert
of their own lives, like you. I be very wary of any therapist
who makes a lot of like leaping connections, especially when they're new to you,
because people I have worked with people where I can definitely tell they've taken
something that an old therapist or a life coach or maybe something they read and
like ran with it and have really let it like it didn't scept them in
the way, and it formed a whole beast of ideas off of that one
idea and sometimes even like formed the way that someone thinks about themselves. And
then my job can ironically be to get to the bottom of that and dispel
it as needed as needed, and you know kind of say like, well,
what did that idea give to you? More like with the idea of
like implanting an idea, like what was so not seductive is the wrong word,
but what was soguing, intriguing, interesting, relieving, powerful? Why
did that feel good in some capacity to find that idea and to run with
that idea? And then I would probably wouldn't say run with it, but
you know, why did that feel so empowering or whatever or whatever I'm can
insert of vigilian adjectives here, but I think that can be interesting. But
there are in populations of people that I work with who they are more vulnerable
to suggestion, even just being in a therapy session with me. So I
hear what you're saying, Ben, because with the hypnosis part too, like
you just have to be careful about the influence you have, but not necessarily
that you're going to make someone think something totally an original thought that they wouldn't
have had themselves, right, you can't. The idea of the defenses the
way that they were depicted in the movie is really important, because someone who
doesn't want to think something, doesn't believe something will not your brain will not
let you believe things that are not true. Yeah, I mean, I
wish that was different in therapy, if I could get my clients to believe
some of the stuff I'm trying to get them to believe about themselves. Fuck.
Yeah, So you're making a good point. Yeah, I mean I
wish I could get people to believe things. But two, but it's if
I can't get them to believe things are true, how the hell can I
get them believe things that aren't true. Makes it very similar to how the
modern dream analysis approaches where in you know, old Freudan times, if you
would tell you exactly, oh, you're dreaming of going up and down the
stairs, up and down, up and down, obvious if you all know
what this means. But nowadays stairs can mean different things to different people,
as well as you know, floods or even teeth falling out. So dream
diaries or dream dictionaries more specifically, you know, they're very eurocentric, They're
very focused on just the population that you know made those initial associations. But
you're the expert of your dreams. You're the expert of your life. You've
been with you more of your life than we therapists have for you know,
just a few hours over a couple of weeks. So modern dream analysis for
anyone who's curious or interested in it, or even dream work or dream therapies,
it goes about in the same way that then was mentioning that we would
just be there to help you. Ask yourself these main questions, what does
this mean to you? What are your associations with this imagery or this character
or this emotion and reaction and pattern that you seem to be going through in
their dream? And where do you see that in waking life? More likely
than not, the dreamer probably has a better idea than any idea that you
know someone can concoct from their own associations. Its completely independent. Just the
same way that we can't enter their dream, we can't read anyone's mind,
even though we have psyche in our job description. Correct, And where that
line is that we're trying to explain to this is this is several hours of
graduate school and ethics training that we're trying to impart and cram into a short
segment on a podcast to help understand what is one of the more important concepts
of being a responsible provider and Asac said, respecting the power we have as
the role of an expert is that it's important that we don't take away the
autonomy of the experiences clients have had to assign meaning to them from our reference
point, because it might be completely invalid to the meaning clients have assigned to
things, and letting them be the expert and use their own lexicon and own
definitions of things. A cigar maybe just a cigar to some people, but
to other people maybe something else, and that could be nefarious or could be
completely benign. But the beholder gets to be the keeper of that information and
the utilizer of it. I think it's really important to recognize we have a
responsibility and why it's important to work with people that have ethics training that they
don't give advice, that they help pave a pathway where it's safe for clients
to explore thoughts and meanings of experiences from different angles while managing their effective responses,
but not be keepers of the information because and keepers of the healing that
we're empowering our clients to heal through their own means and reconnecting them to it,
not providing them with access to them that they have to keep paying us
for. That's actually fucked up. If anybody's have a therapist that you're starting
to recognize hers starting to hear, Wait a minute, this is sounding suspiciously
like X therapist here or that therapists there. You are always more than well
welcome to shop around. Yeah, definitely, it's like dating. Just swipe
around. If you don't like it. You can also tell your therapist listen,
I don't like that A, B, and C is happening? Can
you do it X, Y, and Z style? And if they can
at a good ethical therapist would probably say, you know what, you might
better have better luck with this other therapist stuff here. And if they're like,
no, no, no, no, it's very important that you do
it my way and only my way and there's no other ways, Well,
that sounds feels kind of culty, and maybe it's best to just say goodbye.
Well, within reason, obviously, make sure you can carry yourself and
have the next therapist ready to go before you go. A therapist list for
a bit if you absolutely need it. Yeah, well said yet Hannah,
go ahead, Hannah, Well, I was just thinking about what are the
things that I say to clients to help give them some autonomy in general,
And one of the thoughts that came to my mind is I always say to
them, I can be wrong. So if I if this doesn't sound right,
or if there's something about the way that I reflect it back to you,
always let me know, because it's not going to hurt my feelings.
It's not gonna I need to know. If it doesn't match for you,
then it doesn't match. And that's okay because there's a billion different ways to
feel and a billion different kinds of thoughts that we can have about it.
So I feel like I was just really thinking about what do I do to
help clients besides let them know too that they have a choice that like,
if we have some sessions and they don't feel like it's a good fit,
that that's always going to be okay with me. That I know that I
know because I have been really lucky and have gotten really good therapists every time
I've had to. But I know that that doesn't always happen. I know
that actually most of the time that doesn't happen based on just based on people
that I've worked with. But I mean, it's what I was thinking about,
if this empowers people listening. I fired a therapist myself like this year.
And I'm not saying this to shame the therapist. I'm not going to
say her name or anything, but because it's like we weren't and she didn't
really necessarily do anything wrong wrong, It's just we weren't clicking. It became
more and more clear that her viewpoint on some things were just in direct opposition
to kind of pities I have and things that I need. And I didn't
want to do the emotional labor to clear that up for her. And you
can decide as a client if you want to do that or not, you
know, And I didn't want to do that on top of the other work
I needed to do, and so I very peacefully just part of the ways.
But you can do that, and it's you know, I did I
feel anxious doing it? Oh a thousand percent? Did I read the message
I sent her about twenty eight thousand times? Yeah before I sent it,
Yeah, And nothing that that happened. But any who, any one thing
else you want to say about inception before we go into treatment and final thoughts,
I think just the last thing I want to say on it is because
I think I've got, you know, clarified in my head now, is
that it is very possible to implant ideas in people's mind. It is not
possible to implant things that people do not want, are not willing to accept
and consider, and are not true. People will inherently activate their defenses to
rejectings that aren't true that they know at their core. And that's especially true
when we're trying to I see this with young career therapists when they try to
absolve people of faults in a situation that they feel guilty about that they know
our facts. And I think that's an important angle that we haven't talked about
on the show enough, is that you can't absolve people of faults they know
they have, and it works both ways. You can't tell them things that
aren't true and infect an idea in their head that their father loved them and
wanted them to break up their company when that is most certainly not true.
Their father wanted them to be a spitting image of them. And you can't
tell them they don't have fault when they did, But you can adjust the
way that they think about that thought Okay, maybe my father would have wanted
at this, but is this what I want? And do I need to
adhere to the world my father wanted? Or I'm I allowed to see my
own world and operate in the way that I see fit and in the same
way of do I have fault? And even though I had some degree of
fault in the loss of X, Y or Z, person's life, job,
etc. Am I the sole cause of that? Are there are other
factors that contribute? And is it appropriate for me to have as much guilt
as I'm holding. You don't try to take the guilt away, but it
is possible to add to the perspective. So a trained in NIGHTSNSE therapist is
going to be able to navigate those barriers where we often get friends to say
like, well, that's just not your fault. You just got to let
that go, and you go like super duper, I'm all better now.
It worked for everybody, right, all yeah, Isaac is blowing it off
his hands like all gone, that it works so well for all of us,
Like we'll just forget about it. Thank you scared me. You can't
want nothing that I had fought of that, like, just stop thinking about
it my god, So you know it is inception and it's core real,
I think no. But it responsibly managing the influence you have in the ability
to implant ideas which are infectious. I think that is that's something to be
mindful of. So the yes and the no, all right, So we
will take another break here and be right back. So with the treatment portion,
we've kind of touched upon a lot of treatment in this discussion. Does
anyone have any specific characters and anyone can jump on this that they would like
to do a specific approach with in their office. And the only thing I
would add as a someone who's on a lot of family work and child therapy
is I didn't like it when Dom was calling his kids home and you can
hear that their grandmother. Who I get it, it's Mall's mother. She's
probably gonna have her. She has her own trauma that she is or is
not dealing with. Is like telling these kids things that are really bad that
one kids don't need to know, and that two that I mean, it's
just her not dealing anyway. So I just thought it would be interesting.
Let's say if it is real I know we've been positing, is if this
is all Dom's internal world. But if it is real, he now is
back at home. He's back with the grandparents, which are his deceased wife's
parents. Specifically, they have been doing a lot of the primary caretaking of
his children. I don't know what now the parenting situation is going to look
like, because he strikes me as someone no offense who might need a decent
amount of support, especially if he keeps doing this kind of work. You
know, my hope is that post he's made it sound like this is his
one last job. Who knows that maybe he settles down and maybe he starts
teaching architecture. I don't know, but I'm making a whole fan fiction in
my head right now. But you know, my assumption is going to be
like the grandparents and him are going to have to be doing some version of
co parenting, probably for the us of these kids' lives, and so family
therapy can be used to do that sort of blended therapy work, which is
one I could see me as their therapist, just even just helping with the
logistics of co parenting without the kids involved, fish because the kids are so
young. Just like, what does co parenting look like now? That you
as the grandparents are taking on more of a parental role. And also you
maybe did a lot of the soul parenting for a good chunk while don was
you know, fleeing extradition, and you know, and then how do you
civilly co parent knowing that you're all who harboring your own initial feelings about your
grief, about the modality of the grief, about the fact of like did
their sudden law play a part? And what part did he play in her
death? And so I think that I just want to highlight that that is
an opportunity to do family therapy, not necessarily to work on the relationship between
them and the more of like way we think of family therapy, but more
about like how do we co parent in a way that helps the children?
And so if I were to work with them, maybe how I'd get buy
in from the mother in law, who I feel like has a lot of
thoughts going on understandably, so is can we prioritize the kids giving them a
stable household, and can we put some of our own personal feelings on a
shelf in these moments when we're trying to make the kids have a calm living
situation. So that's my only additional RANDO treatment idea I had, because it's
hard to think about treatment in this idea where what is every lost so much
is hypothetical. Yeah, I totally agree, and I think it's okay.
I think I'm gonna go next, just because I very much thought about that
very similar thing of like doing like almost like reintegration therapy with him and his
kids. Is what I was thinking about about, how based on how young
they are, based on but I even was thinking about them as I was
considering it. I was even thinking about what it would be like when they're
teenagers and they have and they start figuring out what actually happened and maybe putting
some pieces together and have the brain capacity to understand the nuances of the experience
that they've been either told about or whatever they actually experienced, and what things
look like for them. So that made me think of of of working with
them as a family and kind of really again helping them manage their grief,
because when everything changes in a kid's life like that, the chances that those
kids have properly grieved is probably pretty slim for a couple of different reasons.
One their ages in terms of how they can conceptualize death. Like I think
the little the boys seems to be younger. James seems to be younger.
Yeah, like really little, and so he wouldn't have the capacity to understand
things at that time. So it would be it would be a lot different
when they're when they're teenagers and have more a better sense, a better sense
of those things. And I think that's honestly, I think that's when he
would have a really hard time with them and really have and really and and
again. And it would depend on the work that like Brittany did with the
grandparents, because that has a big that has a big part in in how
they would maybe see their dad, the narrative of their mom and their dad
for sure. Yeah, absolutely so so yeah, I can't remember I was
going to say anything else. May I jump in here and if you think
of anything you can. Yeah. So I'm gonna lend a bit of both
the parent child therapy as well as some individual and more dream based work,
which are kind of my main specialties. I also work with kids, but
in the context of parent child interaction therapy or pc I, because at this
time the kids very much need some attention, needs some one on one time
with their dad with the remaining you know, direct parent, and in doing
so can get a sense of safety, a sense of security and stability in
what understandably is a very chaotic time in a kid's life. So I would
work with Dom and his kids in order for essentially for Dom to join the
kids in their play, in their dream world, but in waking life,
and follow their direction and promote the kind of behavior that you would like to
see, sharing and communicating, you know, even emotion control, some things
that definitely, you know, Dom and many of the other adult characters in
this movie could benefit from. And at the same time, I would love
to work with Dom in perhaps some imagery rehearsal therapy where we would take maybe
if this was one of his major dreams that he was having, or the
dreams of Mau that he recurrently has over and over again, always goes the
same way, and it always terrifies him so much he has to run away
and hide this part away. This is something that not maybe not I would
incept in him because I can't, But I would work with him and essentially
rescript what this dream would be, just like most recurring nightmares or even post
traumatic nightmares starting from that same neutral beginning, but then instead of going in
the negative direction, he chooses and rewrites it in either a positive or at
least a neutral direction, and then rehearses and rehearses and rehearses, so that
perhaps the dream starts to change, and whatever that waking life pattern is also
can start to change. I think that's phenomenal insight, and I love that
you guys are looking at the family members. I'm gonna pick up the trend
here. I'm going to talk about the character we haven't talked about much with
the another usual brilliant performance. There's two that stick out in my mind,
being Sito, who would almost certainly need therapy. But also I think the
biggest opportunity to make change would be it doesn't seem like it happened at all,
would be getting mall therapy after they come up, because I mean,
I had some questions about like the whole plot, like plant of her death,
like getting cleared by three psychiatrists, like enough to get in the weeds
in that, but I don't know how that would fly. But anyway,
go ahead on you know people who I mean, it does echo the realism
that people who want to commit suicide are going to do it, and there
is absolutely nothing even qualified professionals can do to stop it because they will not
tell us the truth, and they can construct a narrative and constructive part that
can tell us whatever truth they needed to and to make their plan happen.
I have experienced that and had seen it was completely deceived that someone was in
that place and then they were unfortunately didn't issue any clear mental bills of health
or anything. But I think getting Malls in therapy would have been helpful and
helping, like having someone meet her where she's at if she were willing,
because if she was really where she has presented to have been, I don't
know that therapy would have been any good, to be completely honest, because
she was quite clearly decided what she was going to do, that her world
was not real and that this is the choice she was going to make.
And thing I want to say, dude, try to illustrate some of the
harsh realism of dealing with when people are truly suicidal, is that Lanka just
said there's nothing, there is nothing anyone can do, which means it's no
one's fault, it's something that happened. It's terrible, it's heartbreaking, it's
hard, and it's tragic, but understanding that it is no one's fault,
that it is something someone decided to do. A part of them got hopeless
and believed that there was no other way out, Like I know. It's
something I've asked on this show before. It's something I'll talk to clients about.
Is understanding that there is a part of you that already knows what you
would do if you were trapped on one hundredth floor of a burning building,
whether you would jump or burn when those become your only choices, there is
a part of you that already knows what you would do. I'm going to
burn trying to run down the stairs, or I'm calling and I'm jumping because
I'm not going to burn. There's a part of you that already knows.
Inside of you, biologically, we are preprogrammed with something that tells us when
the game has been called and a choice must be made to get ourselves out
of pain. And Mam made hers, But if treatment could have been handed
to her to help her and meet her where she's at, that she doesn't
have to explain this whole experience that she had that is unexplainable. I think
there is a very powerful story for a therapist to pick up on there.
That clients we encounter will have stories that to them feel so beyond belief,
so unique, and maybe that no one can understand them, that no one
can hold the space for their story, that they one will believe them or
understand the gravity of it. But that's not a real thing. Therapists who
are skilled and a good fit for a client. Now you can, like
guys excited, shop around find a therapist that resonates with you. Because I
already young person approached me at the Khan talking about this very issue, which
might be why it's on you know me in Brittany's brain today is asking about
how you go about switching therapists, because that's important finding someone who is a
good fit. But a good therapist for you won't make you explain your situation,
but we'll let you be the expert of it and own the story.
And I don't think Maul got that, and I wish that she would have.
So having someone have that humanistic space where she gets to be the expert,
she can tell her story in a way that she doesn't have to explain
every detail or have someone go evaluate whether she's psychotic, but just let her
be the expert and tell her story. And that someone connects to her pain,
her terror, her confusion and validates it and lets her emote it safely
would be hugely beneficial for her. All Right, our final break here,
and then weave back for final thoughts. All right, so this is just
the portion where we talk about are I always want to think my thought is
always our secular views on the movie, but our non therapy views on the
movie. Would I love this movie. Christopher Nolan very rarely makes a movie
that I'm not into. I just saw Oppenheimer with Hannah recently we did Barbenheimer
and it was beautiful. I've never been so stressed out while watching two people
in a boring meeting room talk at each other. So I definitely will,
of course, I own this movie. I'll probably watch it and many more
times. It's the Nolan aesthetic, executive businessman aesthetic. You know. I
always think fun in his movies. It's like his own niche. I love
the music. I love a heist movie as well, and this movie,
if nothing else, I think is a good heist movie, which is why
I will keep coming back. I love a montage we're getting the gang together
and we're figuring out what's going on when you exposition dump on me, which
I also know as part of are on this character's role is to be the
exposition dumper, or like to have exposition be dumped through them. But no,
I love this movie. I'll keep watching it a bajillion times if nothing
else, for how beautiful Tom Hardy and Killing Murphy are in it. God
bless that they're real friends in real life and they just keep cranking out material
together. But that's my thoughts on that, Isaac, if you want to
go sure, I mean I love the movie obviously as well, specifically because
it is a dream movie. I love movies that have the dreaming elements.
I love this movie. I love Pepperrika, I love Doctors Strange. That's
why I dress up at like him at all the San Diego La comic cons
and Wonder cons. You'll see me. They're doing presentations on exactly these concepts
because they are great narrative tools for helping us discuss these kind of inner worlds
that we have. And it's always great to see Ken whatnot. Bay just
you know, do his thing and do a great job. And Elliott Yeah,
and Elliott Page did a fantastic job. And it works really well because
you have these amazing actors and these stunning visual effects that complement their stunning work.
So it's always great. It's just you know, let them cook.
Hannah. Yeah, I like this movie. It's fun to watch. I
feel like I see something different every time I watch it, And yeah,
I think that's pretty much it. Like I love a Christopher Nolan movie.
I think he's I think it's always kind of what Britney said, like,
it's always just interesting to see what comes out of his head and how he
puts it out. And I think this movie is so visually beautiful to watch
in general. So yeah, so I definitely feel like I'll watch this movie
more. I agree with all of you. I love this film. It
was instantly one of my favorites when it came out. I forget how much
I love it every time I watch it, and the more I watch it
as a therapist, the more I see and understand it and look at it
with eyes of kum like curiosity and also appreciation for the level of understanding Christopher
Nolan and his writing team and his visual effects and cinematographers have for understanding the
human condition at a deep psychological level that they can represent incredibly complex topics like
ifs visually and through dialogue. And then higher actors who have such chemistry and
ability to communicate these very specific ideas in very specific ways that I think I've
only seen him capture and I love watching every one of these and need to
get caught up because small child tends to prevent you from seeing things like Oppenheimer
when you want to go out, like, let's watch a movie about it.
I need to see. I wasn't really like repen Hard for Oppenheimer.
I was seeing it as proud of in barden Beheimer, and I was like,
WHOA, all right? Well one on that note, Isaac, if
you just want to let everyone know again where they can find you, you
can definitely find me on all the socials at All Mine Health or All Mind
Health one if somehow someone's already gotten that first one man. And you can
also go to my website online health dot com. If you're in California and
are in need of therapy, you can go there in particular and seek out
sessions. We're gonna be having new therapists on board soon, so other than
that, I'll see you at the cons at hopefully knock on wood La Comic
Con coming up, but of course to be determined. All right, well,
as always, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok
at Poprint Psychology, Twitter, slash x at Popcorn, Underscore psych for right
Now, Popprint Psychology at gmail dot com if you would like to email us
if you have any messages or requests for us. We also have a t
public and Patreon if anyone is interested in supporting us in any way, you
can get merch and you can also just get oh we have like privileges.
If you get fifty dollars or more and Patreon, you can pick the movie
that we talk about in an episode, so that's pretty cool in my opinion.
As always, you know, stay awake everybody, because we're coming for
you in your dreams