Hocus Pocus: The Importance of Listening to Children

Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster movies and psychoanalyze them.
My name is Bernie Brownfield and I'm a child therapist, and I'm joined
by Ben Stover, individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists.
We're all licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists, who practice out of
Chicago. Even though we are licensed mental health professionals, this podcast is purely
for entertainment purposes and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture in all forms.
Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists, we aren't
your therapist. If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find a
local mental health provider. Hello. So, for our second movie, the
Spooky Season, we're gonna be talking about hocus Pocus. I think it's been
on everybody's minds since nineteen ninety three, but especially right now as the sequel,
hocus Pocus Too, very imaginative title just got released on Disney Plus and
so and Hannah and I have watched it, but Ben hasn't had the pleasure
yet to watch hocus Pocus Too. I am not. I have not,
and I think I want to point out we're doing this episode as a fill
in. We expected to have a guest that wasn't able to make it,
and we decided on the spot that we're going to do this one. So
I hope you guys enjoyed this, because this seemed really relevant given that the
sequel is surging and a lot of people are watching it and I haven't had
the chance to watch it. So we're going to go ahead and just dive
in on the og hocus Pocus because that is a true Halloween classic. Yes,
so be kind us because we are moderately improving this episode as much as
you can improv stuff that's in your wheelhouse. But still, so, I
think we just started this episode with all three of us doing our best book
call, So who wants to go first? That was great, Ben,
that was pretty good. Beno. Okay, okay, Bo. You guys
can't even keep it together through there. I know, I know. So
what is this movie about? So? This movie is about three witches,
Winifred, Sarah, and Mary, who in like sixteen ninety three get hung.
A lot of crazy stuff happens in the first ten minutes of this movie.
For children, They get hung by a town mob and they make a
curse that they'll come back in three hundred years when a virgin lights a candle
in their old house Q. Three hundred years later, one said virgin,
light said candle, and they come back to modern days and Shenanigan's you know,
high jinks commence as these olden time ladies are now in the modern day
ninety three setting. So what we were we talking about in this movie.
We're talking about adjustment issues like such as moving, bullying, culture shock.
I will also talk about not believing kids, which is a staple of many
kids movies but also many movies from the eighties and nineties. And then we'll
also talk about the Sanderson's sisters as adult and meshed siblings. So the movie
starts off right away. We're established that Max, our main character, and
his little sister Danny, have recently moved from the crazy tubular landscape that is
Los Angeles, California two sama Massachusetts, which they act like he just transplanted
from one planet to another, and that he is a literal alien who would
not understand American culture whatsoever. Yeah, like his teacher says, I don't
know what you learn in your tie died California something something lifestyle surprisident throw rollerblading
in there somewhere. Everyone was rollerblading in ninety three Britney. That's why literally
everyone. But yeah, right away, this movie establishes that Max Armine character
is an outsider simply because he just moved there from a far, far away
Los Angeles. I mean, what I will say is Salem is a small
town, and so I think this probably isn't that far off from moving from
a big city to a small town in the sense of a lot of times
I'm from a small town. A lot of times in small towns, like
it's the same people you know that grew up there, live there and die
there. And so having someone come from I mean, if someone moved to
my high school from California, we probably would have been doing a bit of
ooing and iying at that time. Oh absolutely, absolutely, Well because and
also just because in the situation, just like we see in this film,
where Max, Max has different choices about his clothing, then I feel like,
which is just one really small way to show that it was him having
on a tyedyed shirt, which is like whatever, I don't But what's different
is that they are part of being a teenager and being at a school's kind
of trying to figure out what group you're a part of. I mean,
I think it's a major major change for this kid, going from living in
la to living in Salem. It's across the country. Number one, the
weather is completely different, true, and having to go from And he's also
in high school, so I don't know if we do we know what Grady's
in. I'm assuming based on literally nothing unless they said this, and I
can't remember that he's sixteen, So my assumption is that he's a sophomore or
a junior in high school. But my assumption is he feels more on the
younger side of sixteen. If I had to guess, I would guess fifteen.
I don't think he doesn't seem like a freshman. He seems like he
figures out high school. Yeah, I mean moving mid high school is really
hard. Yeah, you're right, Hannah, Like it's a great loss that
I think doesn't get treated like one. I know my parents were debating a
lot moving because of my dad's job when I was young, and my mom
made a very strong barrier or boundary that if we didn't find a house that
we like by the time I got into junior high that we wouldn't move period.
Because she was being very mindful of the fact that once you hit like
middle school, high school, if you're really establishing your friend groups and your
identity, and how hard it is when you're fully into teenager of them to
lose all that, because it's a great loss of like your friendships, maybe
even like your romantic potential partners or current partners. And like you were saying,
Hannah, there's so much identity wrapped up in it, like the way
that you dress and what you're used to, how you spend your time on
the weekends, feeling confident that you know the lay of the land. Even
he's in a new town that he doesn't know where the kids hang out or
what they do or and you have to figure all that out at a time
when you're already typically more insecure and a little more stuck in your ways.
Because they think we see with Danny, his younger sister who thinks eight,
she's shown as more like bright and cheerful, which might just be your personality.
But also I don't think I would be shocked if she was having a
better time adjusting because she's so much younger. And when you're younger, you're
also like you make friends a lot easier because you're just like, hey,
you're new, I just met you, you have a friend, I'd give
you your friend. Like it's everything's a lot less nuanced than when you're a
teenager. Yeah, and especially because we see that Max is pretty grief stricken
over his move actually, and that's going to make the adjustment issues stick out
more for him, and that sets him up even worse for bullying, which
we see happen exactly that way. Is you can see him kind of and
I know that this is also a nineties troke because he has nineties cut and
wears the nineties clothes that the teen heartthrob kid would wear like. It's literally
like he's Sean Hunter, but you know different. Oh, he and Shan
Hunter. If they touched, it would explode out of a paradox of two
doppelgangers touching exactly that, right, except one was the kid from the bad
side of town and this one not so much, but exactly a kid like
this would go through coming through a total culture shock of being in a place
that's old world, has old legends and old behaviors literally stitched into the fabric
of the town because of things that have happened there. From la he has
no basis of understanding anything about the culture of Salem, Massachusetts, and he
looks kind of ignorant and lost in that, and then he's upset about moving
and leaving all of that behind. That he did have established, he did
figure out. If he's a sophomore junior, he had already earned his place
through a lot of that. In the first semester of freshman year. All
of us make a lot of weird choices first semester of freshman year, and
you do a lot of growing up, particularly if you're an athlete, because
the older kids are going to haze the shit out of you, and you're
going to get the immaturity run or beaten out of you, at least in
that period time period. And he's already been through all that. And now
we see this kid just walk into this school with a bulls eye on his
back, like, Hey, I'm sad, I'm kind of attitude e.
I don't speak the same, I don't dress the same. I dress like
I'm a little bit higher class than some of these people are, just a
little hipper because La and the bullies zero in on him. And it's one
of those situations too where he doesn't know who the billies, who the bullies
are. So we see him with this first interaction with these two jackasses,
we see him kind of just act normal, like just be like I don't
like, I'm just going home, like not really it not really sinking in
like who they might be or like what they're doing and that they and that
they will use force if they have to, which which if you haven't been
bullied before or you haven't ever been, that situation would be pretty confusing.
I feel like, and they do use force. They take his shoes,
which was absolutely a thing. I don't think he had Jordans on be had
some other kind of cool shoes and they're like Nikes, I think, yeah.
And getting beat up for your shoes was absolutely a thing for some reason
in the nineties, that was the thing. People would beat you up and
take your shoes. That happened to kids all the time at my school and
like around like people would get jumped for their Jordans. And the thing about
being this new kid at his school is he doesn't have the social armor that
would have prevented that he doesn't have a group of friends. He's by himself
with his little sister. Yeah, and he's also runs right he runs into
them, not the other way around, so you're right handon that he doesn't
know, like maybe all the other kids know that's where these two dingdongs hang
out, and so they don't go that way, and he doesn't know any
better, so he literally runs right into them. Also right like you're saying,
two Ben. In the movie, we only see them pick on Max
and then literal children. So it also makes me wonder kid just sues an
easy mark and then also the social capital of he doesn't know that these kids
maybe aren't as big of a bully's maybe the other kids their age, they're
kind of a joke, you know, you could argue, and so they
have to pick on literal children and Max because he doesn't know any better.
So yeah, there's all these nuances that you just don't know when you move,
and you I don't think anyone parents I think definitely don't and my experience
don't really understand all those nuances and how it is a big deal. It
is a big deal when you move. Depending on the kid's age and I
think there's a lot of just suck it up kind of energy, You'll be
fine and eventually, Though we don't see a lot of their interactions with their
parents in the beginning of the movie, though you do see like he comes
home with no shoes on, and his parents make an observation and he just
shuts them down. He's like, I can't remember exactly what it says,
but he's just like whatever and walks upstairs, and instead of his parents being
more curious about that, they just say it must be like a form of
protests. So they're aware that he's unhappy and that he's been maybe making everybody
know about it. And then something odd occurs and they're not more curious about
what happened. They're just writing it off. Is like, this kid can't
he needs an attitude adjustment kind of energy instead of what's going on? Why
is he talking to us that kind of thing? And also you can see
that it makes me curious if also this is breeding antagonism between him and this
little sister because she seems to be doing better. And I could definitely see
me as like an oldest sibling with and I actually have a brother who is
the same age difference as Danny and Max, and if he was doing well,
I could definitely see me being like whatever and like taking it out on
him in a way that I wouldn't feel proud of later, even though we
had like we did have a good relationship by that age. And I think
parents aren't cognisant enough about that too, you know of how it can create
antagonism between their between their children too, which I think the major thing I
want to point out with this movie that we see is that we get no
interaction with the kids and the parents beyond passing. Yeah, I think that
felt pretty on brand for a lot of the way parenting was done the nineties,
or a lot of goal play, come home when the street lights come
on. And I think that's why a lot of these nineties adventures that we've
all grown up on, at least us in particular, that we grew up
on, have all of these same tropes is because there was a lot of
childhood from mid seventies to late nineties that was this Not that our parents weren't
involved, but there was a lot of time where kids were let set out
to explore the world and parents trusted it. It was generally safe. Yeah,
and I think it was false one. I think now we're trying to
find like the middle pendulum on that swing, because I think then the reaction
was a lot more helicoptering in parenting out of like anxiety, and now I
think we're finally starting to get to a middle ground. A lot of what
I do with parents when I do parent coaching and family work is, you
know, how do we let our kids learn independently, take safe risks if
you will, and be present in their lives without having to hover or be
like totally removed. And it's just like a sweet spot that I think we're
finally starting to you figure out as we are having because they say every generation's
reacting to the way that they were raised, so obviously there's a big pendulum
shift there. Yeah, I think it's starting. I don't as I mean,
my child is still small, but I am still seeing there's not kids
out playing sandlot ball, there aren't kids out just roaming impacts everybody's in all
these organized activities. It's something that I've commented on to my friends. It's
like these some of these parents, particularly parents of older kids, right now,
I don't know quite where those of us that have the little kids are
going to be. But it almost seems like there's pressure on all these kids
to be involved in all these activities, like they're all gonna be professional athletes
or actors or gymnasts or all these things. In the level of attention and
pressure put on all these kids to be in travel leagues and huge theater productions
and all these things don't lend to the level of spontaneous play and exploration that
some other kids got. And I think you're right that there is some degree
of reacting to you know, I remember that there was a lot of times
where kids got beat up and weird shit happened that absolutely should have had parental
supervision and did not, And people have kids now are going like, that's
not happening. But then I think it's leading to these situations where kids don't
learn to how to figure things out for their own anymore, like to have
conflict without involving their parents, or to problem solve without involving the parents.
And the people that I talked to who work more in like upper like college
level, and even when I was in ra the amount of times that parents
call on their kids, their adult children's now behalf to problem solve things that
they should be mature enough to handle themselves. Is very interesting, but we'll
see. I think I talked we talked about this in the Spirited Away episode.
I think that was the one where I talked more about free range parenting,
which I think is kind of what we're touching upon. Um, we're
like circling. So if you guys are interested in learning more about that,
you could listen to this Spareway episode and or google free range parenting. It's
kind of the sweet spot of what we're talking about of how do we let
our kids explore and be independent and also build up confidence without leaving them out
to dry. I mean, this movie doesn't help in the messaging that if
you let your kids hang out, they will be you know, terrorized by
three old timey witches who will try to suck their souls out of their mouths
and to kill them. So this movie is not helping the confidence lew well
so much. No, no, it's not. But is looking at adjustment
disorder, which is essentially it's a classification of disorder that allows for us to
clinically attribute a massive change in someone's life to do a change in behavior that
can manifest in a couple different ways. You can see it cause anxiety,
you can see it cause depression. You can see it caused anxiety and depression,
or you can see it with conduct. Yeah, behavior basically right.
And a lot of people when they hear conduct, they think conduct disorder and
start going, oh my god, is this kid a psychopath and thinking about
all of the horrible scary behaviors that can happen that go along with conduct disorder
when someone starts showing real difficulty following rules and complying with limits and maybe hurting
people or being manipulative. But when you see conduct due to adjustment, it's
not always that extreme, and often isn't. What you may see is some
of the things that we start seeing in movies like this and particularly this one
where you see maxim assuming was probably a pretty rule abiding kid that fit in
and was probably not super distinguishable from other kids as far as behavior wise,
Like, I don't think his parents would have got a whole bunch of comments
about his behavior in class, Like maybe he makes some smart ass comments sometimes,
but I think he would get letters home that said Max is a joy
to have in class. Yeah, And when you start seeing things like that
change due to a move or a stressor that is newly introduced, which could
be newly encountering bullies at a new school, you can start seeing some risky
behaviors emerge. It can be little things. It can start to be some
sass back to teachers that might not have happened, because which is what we
saw right away, mouthing off in class pretty disrespectfully to that teacher. Yeah,
which seems out of character for him, because you see the way his
sister is asking him all the time, like why are you acting like this?
Yeah, that's true. She's a good barometer that he's behaving differently.
She is, And I can't think of a better barometer than a younger sibling,
like what's your ass? Or a spouse, But you know, at
this age you don't have one of those. But looking at some of his
behaviors, we don't see the big time scary behaviors, but you do see
him willing to engage in a little bit more mischief breaking in trying to earn
his place away from being the new kid to his identity. His social identity
switches from new kid to cool kid, and therefore he has positive attention and
not negative attention coming from the community and looking at somebody who's dealing with an
acute stressor like this that doesn't necessarily have to be a big trauma but can
be traumatic. Is that you will see kids and adults have strong reactions that
cause them to act outside of the normal self. Yeah. Yeah, like
the Riskies showoffie stuff too is leaving, like giving that Alison his digits in
front of everybody in class, which is such a gamble like sunglasses on or
something like No, just very like stands up in the medal f class like
a real dorcasaurus and like slaps it down like James Dean style, like very
Sean Hunter for Borman's were all very call me sometime. And then she gives
him back his note his digits later when he thinks he's giving her a responding
note back and really she just gave him his note back. But yeah,
he's but you're right, like breaking into the Sanderson house lighting the black flame
candle, all that stuff that is pretty like you can get in real big
trouble. Also he's doing that with his little sister, so he's also pulling
his little sister into it, and he does seem like moderately protective of her,
and yeah, all to impress a girl. But yeah, and I
think you're right in that. And this is what I tell adults a lot,
is that kids with behavioral issues can be written off a lot. I
know said on this podcast too, and I think sometimes in this context,
what helps me understand it is like, it's cooler to be the class clown
or like the rebel than to be like the dumb kid or the new kid
or you know, the dorky kid. It's a way for a kid to
control the narrative within a situation that feels very uncontrollable. So being like,
is it the bad kid is a better identity quote unquote to teenagers than these
other labels that are on him right now, right and especially if he can
twist it that he's not doing anything truly deviant, but doing the things that
people might think are cool. But with him being new and not understanding the
culture of where he's at, he has no idea what he's messing with.
He thinks he's messing with some dusty old legends, and the people here are
like, yo, look, shit's real here. Stop and he's like,
no, I'm not afraid, and they're like, oh, let's follow the
kid who's not afraid, like he thinks he's being the cool kid. And
they're like, which, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. And
that's the culture shocked part of it too, is he doesn't understand, he
knows not what he do, and we do see that in like modern day
examples. A good real life example of this which I don't know if how
where you are of this person, because I wish I wasn't logan, Paul,
Do you have any idea who that joker is only in that I've seen
his face and I feel that I don't need to know why he's on podcasts
or wrestling or talking about fighting or maybe actually box. I don't know.
He's a certifiable douche canoe, which is what I was going to say,
And where he caught a lot of heat a few like two years ago is
because he went to Japan and to make like one of his YouTube vlogus or
whatever and did a lot of culturally insensitive stuff for like jokes, and so
that was just coming to mind as more like a real world example of what
we're talking about, which is that you're trying to have his very specific identity
by doing things that you think are just mischievous or or just like edgy,
but really you might be making wildly and sensitive, culturally disrespectful things that have
real life ramifications. In this movie, it is, you know, releasing
three, which is from the Grave, and like in real life, he
kind of had to do that that Foe cancelation thing where you just go away
for a while and then you just come back and hope everyone's forgotten the bad
things that you've done. It definitely makes me wonder how clue in the parents
are and how different he is. That sounds like he is acting pretty different.
Well. The other thing that I was thinking about is we also don't
know how many times he's moved, So my guess would be that this is
his first time moving to a different school, especially because he doesn't mention anything
about it. And so also when you have the first time moving away from
home, for a lot of people moving away from home for the first time
is going to college. Yeah, I mean that's the hope anyway. And
so we're seeing somebody who's had to move away from home and even though his
family came with him, it's leaving everything. He's ever known, which is
a little bit different than someone who's maybe had to move a lot, and
how sometimes I mean moving definitely counts in terms of when we have an adjustment
in life. And also for some people, they could move multiple times and
can sometimes affect their sense of stability in terms of where they live and or
I've worked with people who as adults have a really hard time with moving because
they've moved a lot when they were growing up, or because it was in
situations that were much more difficult than we see than we see in the film.
But I think one of the things that I feel like you're both keep
kind of touching on is how much the parents are aware of how big of
a deal it is for a kid to leave everything that they know, and
how important it is to check in with them on a more regular basis about
how things are going, what are things like at school, but also just
like checking in in terms of are you making friends, are you sitting with
the same people at lunch? And how there and how Again, it could
just be the nineties version of this film, and that's why we don't see
the parents ask more when their kid comes stomping through the room, but having
just them not having the awareness of what a huge change this is for a
teenager, but also for any kid who's who's maybe this is their first time
having to move and settle into a new place in any in any context.
So to sum that up, when you see someone struggling, particularly as most
of you who are listening to this or adults is, don't assume, especially
a kid, don't assume that there's just something wrong with that kid. It's
imperative to get curious. It's imperative to recognize that when there's sudden changes in
people's lives. You see behavior changes rapidly, divorces, breakups, moving deaths,
death of a pet, anything, people's behavior can change, and there
is an entire clinical diagnosis for it that does deserve compassion, and that diagnosis
has specifiers that can last until the effect of the change has subsided, which
means that some of these changes can be clinically relevant for quite a long time
and do deserve treatment. They deserved to be addressed, and it's often not
just going to be like, oh, he'll just get over himself, or
she'll figure it out. Yeah, Sometimes people are really struggling with moves or
change that is really hard, and it really can cause people to be depressed
or anxious or start acting different. And kids may assume a role to play
to fit in or to not be an ostracized or targeted entity in their social
circle, especially when they're isolated. Yeah, so adjustment disorder with disturbance of
conduct is what's called. And the symptoms are what we see in Max in
this movie, which is behavioral issues such as acting rebellious, destructive, reckless,
or impulsive check check and check. And one thing I always want to
highlight with this because I think also there can be this attitude now because of
the shifting climate around mental health of what now we got to send our kids
to therapy every time the wind blows. And one thing about adjustment disorder is
that the idea of it is just getting help adjusting to a situation that you're
just having a hard time adjusting to. So people can go to therapy for
adjustment disorder for short amount of time, you know, until they kind of
get whatever they need to get out of them and work through that with up
train professional. I think it also lends this idea that I think we still
suffer under that if you're going to therapy, there are people who go to
therapy, and they're people who don't go to therapy, And going to therapy
is a huge deal that if you'd send your kids to therapy, it's a
huge deal. And so something like a juststment disorder, I think touches upon
an idea that I believe should be more prevalent with mental health, which is
that it can be part of anything else that you get to help you out
with anything physical health, mental health. You know, sometimes you go to
the doctor for a checkup, or you go for like short term support with
a physicalth issue, and it doesn't have to be a big deal. I
think there's still a lot of big dealness around going to therapy and so and
it can be like this thing we're writing off about our kids that something's wrong
with them officially because they're going to therapy. And so something like adjustment disorder
is touching upon its other idea of therapy, which is that you should You
could just go to therapy if you're having a hard time or if something's happened
in your life and you need someone to talk to about it, and it
doesn't have to be this big to do that. We've made it out to
be because we're still getting used to the idea of therapy period. Yeah,
and it doesn't have to be something that you do forever. Yeah. People
who are going through adjustment sometimes when they get an opportunity to get validated,
get empathy, get a new neutral place to kind of to work through and
release the emotions that they needed to that they've been scared to, invalidated out
of ignored, or people have missed the signs that the behavior changes and mood
changes they're seeing are no big deal or attributable to other things. People sometimes
move through therapy in three to six sessions. Sometimes they need more, Sometimes
there's more things. But people who are generally struggling with adjustment disorder are certainly
capable of moving in and out of therapy relatively quickly, especially if true adjustment
disorder. The symptoms that you're seeing or that are presenting aren't things that would
be going on without the issue that caused the adjustment, And so why it
can be short term is the ideas that once the thing that you're adjusting to
is somewhat resolved, the symptoms that look more like anxiety, depression conduct will
resolve themselves. And if they aren't and you've been working with someone for a
while and had them under adjustment disorder and those things aren't resolving, then you
can get to a point as a therapist where you have to think like,
ooh, do they actually have like an underlying, more significant mental health diagnosis
and the adjustment was just kind of how it was coming up or what finally
got them into therapy, or maybe even your client was assuming everything was connected
to the stressor but maybe as you dial in things have been more long standing.
Right. And last thing I'll say about this is I am so happy
that in the DSM five tr the most current manual that we use as clinicians
to diagnose and understand what the standards of a diagnosis are, is they added
prolonged brief disorder to make the line between adjustment disorder and something more permanent and
pervasive clear. Because some of you who are listening may have gone, like,
wait a minute, if someone dies, an adjustment disorder can be something
that someone's given after a death, but death is permanent, so what gives
and how do we categorize that? And prolonged brief disorder now exists just now
in twenty twenty two because of that line, because there needed to be a
separate categorization for something as permanent as death that you could theoretically give adjustment disorder
to someone forever that wouldn't cover it accurately. All right, so is there
anything else about adjustment disorder and also kind of the bridging topic, which is
believing in kids. Nope, I'm good. We should probably break right here,
all right, Ale Kazam, Well, all right, we are back,
and so now we were going to jump into the Sanderson's sisters themselves when
Afred, Mary and Sarah. Like we said at the top, Ben hasn't
seen the sequel yet, Hannah and I just watched it yesterday, but they
do give a little background in the very beginning of Hocus Pocus too, So
this is a spoiler, a mild mild spoiler for anyone who hasn't seen it
yet. But basically, what we're told in the beginning of the movie is
that the Anderson's sisters, as very young people, were lost both of their
parents, and we're sort of raising themselves up to a certain age in which
the oldest sister, when a Fred, was going to be married off,
and at that point they made a decision as a trio to run to the
woods and live as sort of self exiled, which is if you will.
And so in thinking of that context, I think it helps us helps me
understand them as I think i'd put it as adult and meshed siblings. And
so what I was wondering in you guys observing them as siblings, Well,
I guess one thing we say first is what do we mean when we say
in meshed as therapists, because also that's a word that gets thrown around in
mainstream language as well. Oh, I think this is a good one for
our MFT to handle. That's definitely your jam u um. So essentially,
the idea of in meshment is that you have you have two people, but
there's only one identity. And so when that happens, when neither people are
are their own identity and are only worrying and dealing with their own thoughts and
worries and struggles and experiences, that when you have it where both people are
the same, are the same, or have to be the same, then
you have to keep a part of a you have to keep a part of
yourself away from it. Be it makes it very hard to have a relationship
that feels comfortable in any way there can be. There's so much more.
It's kind of like trying to keep two people happy with one I identity,
which we just can't really do a lot of times. What we talk about
on this podcast is how important identity is and how creating and shaping it for
yourself. And so when you have in meshment or when you have it in
a mesh relationship with someone, there's only one identity that you're allowed to have
and it has the impact of the other person, and that creates unhealthy relationships
because there are no boundaries. There are no boundaries. It's very all or
nothing, and it becomes very difficult to have your own identity, to even
seek out your own identity. And also and also having one identity with two
actual humans engaging is that almost impossible. It's like you have to be able
to agree on every single thing, or you have to be aware of every
single thing that the other person might be thinking or feeling, which is like
mind rating, which we know that we can't do. And so there's a
lot of conflict. There's a lot of conflict, often a lot of confusion,
and a lot of experience thoughts and feelings that don't necessarily even make sense
because you're in this in meshed relationship where you sometimes I feel like people can
be overwhelmed a lot and an in meshed relationship because there are no boundaries and
you do have to share everything, and so nothing is private ors not.
You're not allowed to keep anything for yourself, And there's definitely a lot of
focus on the WII right like the sisters. The sisters are all set on
essentially are stuck in doing whatever Winnifred decides, and Winnifred is the clear focal
point of the leader, but they're also enmeshed that they can't operate individual identities
separate from Winifred's idea of what the Sanderson sisters should be. And you see
throughout the film that both Sarah and Mary frequently try to break away into their
own wants or identities, like Sarah gets more flirty and tries to break out
and trying to fulfill her own needs, and Mary tries to break out and
fulfill her own needs and wants, and Mary Moore kind of shows that she
is probably actually smarter than Winnifred. Winifred is more charismatic and sure and because
she's so sure, Mary's less confident, but smarter identity gets pushed aside and
she has to adhere to this identity of we're sisters and we're a unit and
can't shake from the model where Winnifred is the leader, even if she's right,
and she goes like Winny, I don't know, I don't think.
That's just shut up there, that's her down. And that happens all the
time. And in mesh relationships wherever the leader for vocal point is, the
other people learn that they can't individuate from that and stop trying. Yeah,
in the situation like this, where there's one person in this triad who is
the dominant person who makes all the rules. And now that we have that
little snippet of backstory that the second movie gives us, it gives more context
to the idea that Winifred took care of them in a really real way when
they were little, and her being dominant and pushy and all these more quote
unquote like negative personality traits probably kept them alive when they were going through the
trauma that is their childhood. Probably not a dissimilar childhood to a lot of
people back in the sixteen hundreds, where it was very survived by the skinnier
teeth, the lot of the personality traits that probably kept them going and kept
them together and kept all three of them surviving into adulthood. Then you know,
starts to it's a snake that starts eating itself at a certain point and
becomes these situations where to challenge winifred is also somewhat dangerous because that's what's kept
them alive for so long, and they might not be feeling that in those
moments where one of them is trying to rise up a little bit and then
they're getting shut down. Is that there probably is genuine anxiety. There always
a genuine anxiety and a meshment when someone's trying to break away or just dismantle
the power structure or the dynamic period, because people get there pretty honestly,
when they're in an a meshed place like it's. It's sometimes to happen for
a reason, or it happened slowly, or it's usually trauma related. In
a lot of context, at least one of the people in a relationship like
that, you know as has a trauma back. It's one of those things
that when I work with adults who go through this kind of stuff where I
say, this is something that helped you survive, and that's why it's hard
to let it go and you don't need it anymore, you know now,
Like in this situation with these three sisters, what I would probably say to
like Mary or Sarah would be, you know, you're an adult now,
You're not a little kid anymore. You have a lot more resources, a
lot more skills. You're not in the desperate spot you were in before.
I think what's tricky about it is they are still being hunted as witches,
so they probably do need to still band together because it's very us them in
the literal sense. But if they were if they dropped into modern times and
then stayed there and we're doing oh okay, and then one of them went
to therapy, it might be one of those things where you're like, you
can't stand up, Wonderfred, nothing that bad's going to happen other than her
being upset with you. You're not going to die. She's not going to
die. No one's going to come and take you away. But that is
the part that keeps us stuck in these dynamics sometimes because it quite literally kept
us alive possibly at certain points of our lives. So how do you walk
away from something that saved you? Yeah, And I think what makes this
story interesting is that the only thing hunting them this time is time itself.
Yeah, no, one's hunting them as witches now, but they have that
mentality. They've been hunted and pained. But now they're being hunted literally by
just time because they have a limited indow to steal another soul or they're gone
by crumble, right, the crumble in Sunlight Right, Yes, as far
as I'm aware, Yes, that's the science. I do believe. I
do believe that's the curse. I do believe that is correct. But now
they have to hunt their prey in order to continue to exist or they'll die.
Yeah. I mean the long and short of it is that every point
that we see them, Yeah, exactly what we're saying, every point of
this movie that we see them in, whether in the past or the present,
they are in a state of desperation and in a state of like active
survival. And even in the moment before they get hung in the beginning of
this movie, like they are beating at their door. And it is kind
of also that unfortunate situation where they are doing things that also creates for their
ire from the town and therefore keeps them in that locked position. But honestly,
in that time period, if you were three ladies trying to do your
own thing as an independent woman, you were going to be hung as a
witch. So they were kind of in a sticky spot where I don't think
they would ever be in a spot where they could probably not be in meshed
because of the social norms of the time. Yeah, I think we are
just seeing three adult women who can't also grow up. I think also when
you're in mesh, especially with your siblings, you stay young or immature arrest
development forever too, which I think we see with them as well. I
think the way that as you were explaining it that kind of kind of to
me is like it evolves earnestly out of necessity, Yeah, but it persists
insiduously maliciously. They can, yeah, for sure, like it out of
self preservation, right, Like it fails to adapt to time and then therefore
keeps people who are evolving and are facing a new reality where the old one
no longer exists, but because the threat is still real in the mind of
the unit, yeah, they can't grow past the old roles. It kept
them safe from old terrors. So the other thing that I was thinking about
too, is especially in this example, is also that they don't know any
other kind any other kind of relationship because of the in meshment that they're in,
because they have to be we or because they have to be all three
of them, there hasn't been any chance for anyone to go off and have
a relationship, to be with someone else. There's no chance to experience any
other kind of relationship than the one that they're currently in. So also and
that can create its own anxiety of an expectation. If again this is in
the world where they're no longer in mesh. Somehow, even that can create
anxiety in a new relationship of not having it feel or having expectations of this
no boundaries, we have to be together, we have to be one.
That can be really hard for people to go into when they get past the
point of being in mesh in whatever relationship it is, of then also creating
anxiety of not really knowing what to expect out of a healthy relationship or have
ideas about what it could be like. And so that sometimes why we see
people who are struggling with repeated, repeated ad meshed situations and have a really
hard time because it can be very difficult to be able to tell the difference
between something that is healthy where both of you have your own identities and not
being able to get to that point and not knowing what to look for and
not knowing what it will feel like. And so really we're seeing people repeat
a pattern or repeat something and not in some ways not really kind of the
arrested development of not really knowing that they don't have to be it doesn't have
to be like this. Yeah, And I think the uniqueness of the situation
that makes all that such a challenge is all three of them are under the
same curse. Yeah, no, absolutely absolutely right, Like now that you
know, I know you guys just saw the second one and if you guys
voutroid, I go watch it because it was hesitant, but there's some context
to it where you saw it kind of how they had to evolve this relationship.
Fully believe that that fills it in. I think watching though them have
to be trapped under this particular curse where they have to complete this together and
then they could go off and do whatever they want, so they have to
retreat into an old dynamic that works and can't really bucket. But man,
you see Sarah bucking at the hardest because she is so horny. Also,
I mean, to be quite honest, go out and play, I think
honestly. More what it is too, is of the three like, she
hits the beauty standard the most, and so she probably also has given more
society of the acceptable opportunities to have her own identity, especially at a time
in the sixteen hundreds where your value as a woman was based on your breed
ability, and so she is by hitting the beauty standard more I'm assuming I'm
projecting nineties beauty standard, but that she would probably have the most opportunities to
do her own thing and maybe evolve sexually, and probably take an advantage of
more because of that too. But i will say you talking about ed Hannah
made me think about how this gets changed a little bit in the second movie.
But I'm going to go off the first one the relationship, because Winnifred
does get a relationship with Billy, and then the drama of that relationship is
that Sarah fools around with him too. And I think now that we're talking
about this, and I'm looking at him thrin meshed eyes. I'm not surprised
that happened, because Whenifred, for whatever reason, starts to do her own
thing with this billy guy, and you could argue that Sarah either is knowingly
or unknowingly sabotaging it out of anxiety about the dynamic shifting, or she's like,
well, we do everything together. We share everything. What she has,
I have, so why wouldn't I also be able to freak on her
boyfriend because we share everything. And from an outside perspective that sounds so wild
because we're looking at it from ideally securely attached eyes. But when you are
that enmeshed, that's how extreme it can get, you know of, and
the boundaries can get that be that low that it can be like also weird
sexual stuff and like inappropriateness in that way too, where you are sharing stuff
in that way that it would seem, like I said, truly wild from
the outside. Yep. I think in most cases it's more the first one
than the second. Yeah, they both happen. You're absolutely right, But
like the more common version of it is in Hannah, feel free to tell
me if I'm missing something here because family systems is something I'm educated on but
not my expertise. Is any time in a system that is a family,
right, it's a machine and each person fulfills a role that keeps the family
rolling. And when somebody starts exhibiting new behaviors are taking a new relationship that
takes them out of their role in the system, the system will buck to
try to pull them back in. And if Winifred and Billy were starting to
form a new diad outside of the triad, then it would be very,
very normal behavior within an a meshed triad for a sibling to try to sabotage
that to bring Winifred's attention off of her relationship and back in and onto the
sisters, especially especially if it evolved out of a need for safety and Winifred's
mom, because kids do this shit when there's a divorced or single parent and
that parent brings a partner into the relationship all the time. We talked about
a lot in our Psycho episode. If you want another Spooky season throwback,
we'll talk a lot about the meshed relationship with Norman and Mother, and we
speculate a lot on this pin itself. If we want to talk about it
more, we go, we go all the way talking about it. But
yeah, and so I think the microwaves we're seeing the ameshment instilled is the
bullying that Winterfid does to the other two siblings, like these little moments.
But then a macro version could be the Billy butcher Sin relationship for sure.
Yeah, absolutely, So do we have anything more on this particular topic or
we feel like we're good there, Look we got it. Let's take a
break then, all right. So parents, the parents we see in this
movie, and why we want to mention them is because something that's been a
theme of our kids movie Bonanza that we've been doing this year, especially even
in our spooky movies, is noticing a theme of how often in these films
parents don't believe what children are telling them, and how important it is to
listen to children when they're telling you bananas things because oftentimes there's truth to it,
and the kids may not have the right language for it, and they
may translate something to a story, or they may have had something happen to
them that they don't understand, or they may be just telling flat the truth
and it's so out there that the adult brain can will just reject it in
like that can't even happen. But it's important for us to remember that kids
often tell the truth and that they also will well. One I think,
yeah, is that we have this idea because we project our adultness onto kids
a lot, which is that they're capable of like ellaborate lies and manipulation and
all these wildly adult behaviors that then we project onto children unfairly, and then
we judge them based on that projection. And you're right, then kids like
can be fantastical. They obviously do pretend and make believe and have really great
imaginations, and they don't really lie that much, and even when they do,
it's usually little things like I didn't draw on my face with marker when
they clearly did, and then they usually fold within like thirty seconds. So
there's not a lot of kids running around just like dead to rights like bold
face, lying to parents, especially in situations like this movie and the most
top of recently, when they're clearly in distress, which I think is something
to make mention of. And all these movies like Coraline they recently talked about,
and this movie too, if the kid's coming to and there they are
upset and they're telling you something out out there, They're still upset. Something
is still upsetting them, guys, whether you believe the thing that they're actually
saying or not the content, it's like getting more hooked into the context and
be curious about the context. Why are they so upset? What's going on?
Because also too, what thing we don't realize? And if you're interested
in this stuff. Cycle linguistics is a really interesting gool. Is that when
we are really young, if we don't have the words, the literal words
for a situation, we cannot use those words, and so sometimes we will
just adapt our vocabulary to a situation. So when a kid is saying something
it doesn't make sense or it sounds like that that's made up, it might
just be because they are borrowing from the vocabulary. They actually have to explain
a situation that they don't have the words for yet. And that doesn't mean
that they're lying. It just means that they're doing their best with the language
they have. Right, kids often will insert the word monster or something into
explaining words that they don't have and go ahead of himah. Well, And
the other piece also is that they are. You know, how many books
do we read the kids? How many things do kids learn by hearing a
story about something? So we also would make the most sense that the way
that they can communicate something is by telling a story of some kind. And
because again that's where that's the kind of language they have, or that's the
understanding they've had of the world so far, because we read them books all
the time, or they see books, or that's one of the main ways
that I think also that they learn language. So it would make a lot
of sense that a kid would need to would have to create a story in
order to understand something or in order to explain something to you. But that
regardless of what you think the context of what the kid is giving you is
accurate or not, it's more about my kid seems freak the fuck out,
Yeah, and it's something or is acting weird or odd things are happening,
that there's something else going on here, And even if I don't understand it,
you can still validate the feelings and or be curious, like Britney said,
be curious about that sounds really scary. What were you worried would happen?
Can you draw me a picture of what happened. Yea, And pictures
can be helpful as adults. As a child therapist, I would do pictures
with kids a lot because then I would see what they're seeing more as close
as you can. Yeah, and then also it can help you get a
timeline. But sometimes I would draw a series of pictures with kids and then
have them line it up in order so I would understand what the fuck they're
talking about in terms of, like, what is this story that they're trying
to share with me that I'm not getting because I don't have that kid filter
in my brain anymore. And yeah, and it's just practicing, like I
said, the curiosity and also just respecting a kid's feelings. They're upset for
a reason because in this movie, if Danny were to bum rush your parents
and we're like, oh my god, these three witches they're gonna do,
they're trying to kidnap me and suck my soul out, and she's crying.
Even if you, as the parent, didn't believe all the magical stuff,
but you could still pick up on there are three women chasing my child,
making her feel like she's in danger, to the point that she has to
run out with her older brother and find me at a party and she's upset.
So even if I strip away the unbelievable parts, they're still a story
under there that is worthwhile, and both of them are there. Yeah,
yes, right understanding. It's absolutely true that as kids get older, they
get more capacity and capability of lying, and it can be tougher with teenagers
than little kids because little kids don't lie, not like Britney said, except
about like little bullshit because trouble, right, or they're worried they'll be in
trouble, or they're learning how to impact their environment and not do things they
don't want to. Yeah, true, they're believing with they're really good at
that, and sometimes they're like little adults that say the am does things to
you and you're like, it can make it hard to forget who you're talking
to. Remembering that, especially as they start moving through the developmental cycle of
life and getting older, the teenagers will still be only so able to understand
the adult world. They can't see past their egocentrism. Yet they can't understand
things don't revolve around them. And what they also can't do is like if
they're going to be trying to communicate something to you and you feel like they're
not listening is because of the egocentrism. What happened in this movie is absolutely
going to happen. Is if you miss your chance to solve their problem when
they present it to you, they will shut that down as an opportunity and
solve it themselves, and that will be a fucking disaster. And long and
short of this and why it's important to listen to kids is because keeping people
of different gender presentations out of bathrooms isn't what keeps kids safe, but listening
to them when they tell you stories and come talk to you about what's going
on does. Having the opportunity to listen to children and tune in with curiosity
and compassion to what they are telling you is how we protect our children from
predators, because they will tell you something is going on through their words or
through their behavior, and you need to listen. And the parents sure as
shit didn't in this film either way perceptively or verbally, and just to put
a put a you know, a lid on it in the sense of I
think then the reverse panic can be or are we going to leave these kids
take what they're saying and lead them into saying something more serious. You know
when people talk about you know, putting words in kids mouth and you know,
WoT culture and all that shit? Is you Curiosity doesn't mean that you're
filling in the gaps for the kids either that you're saying, oh did that
a man hurt you? Like a man hurt you? There like giving them
the answers. It's just like I said, something like drawing, something like
playing, something like just letting them tell you their story even if it doesn't
quite make sense or they're using whimsical signifiers. Is you listening without projecting?
Like I said, going back to with you out you inserting your projection and
assumptions and an adult onto what they're sharing and leading them in that way,
and so that so you don't have to. I think the anxiety can be
if I take everything they say seriously, then I'm gonna be putting thoughts or
ideas in their head that weren't there to begin with. And that's not true
either. It's just like I said, being curious, which is a neutral
which is a neutral state to be in curiosity and letting things unfold and then
seeing if there and also one thing to also always ask anybody but your kids
in this situation is like, what do you need? How are you feeling?
And what do you need? Do you need me to help you?
Do you need me to step in? Do you is this something you just
want to know? Do you just want to hug? And also that allows
your kids to feel heard, feel validated, and then also allows them to
start connecting the dots between an emotional stressor and something that helps them feel better
or helps them manage the emotional stressor, whether that's an adult's interference in an
appropriate way or just coping skills or just talking things through. And then it
continues to strengthen the bond where a kid feels like I can tell you what's
going on, and I can trust that you're going to listen to me,
because I think what we see more with like Coraline, our other most recent
episode is that she's done with her parents. She's like goodbye, She's like,
she stops telling them what's going on. She has something very scary happening
to her the whole movie, and she never tells her parents really what's going
on because she doesn't trust them to listen to her. No, she does
not and it matters. Protecting your children is listening to them. Yeah,
so, because I'll get the answers from you, or they'll keep their own
counsel or the council of other children, or they will try to find a
way to kill three witches on their own. Guys. And as we've seen
from this movie, that's spotty. You know, they really lucked out at
the last minute in this movie. Okay, really close. They were right
up to the edge of not being all right anything else. I feel like
we've been lecturing people, not listening to the kids, anything else before we
slide into treatment. No, I'm good. I think sometimes lecturing people on
listening to their kids is appropriate, and slap therapy through words is sometimes.
Okay, all right, well, let's slide into treatment after this break.
Okay, So, if we were to live in Salem, Massachusetts, oh
God willing, and we got to treat one of the characters in this movie,
who would we want to treat and how would we do that? I
guess I'll go first this time. I would treat the parents. Interesting take
explain please, Because of my background and I'm gonna say the magic word here
of trauma, because of my background in trauma and also my status as a
parent. When I put myself in the shoes of these parents who were partying,
ignoring their kids who came to see them, and were helpless, utterly
helpless to do anything to assist their children against a supernatural threat that almost killed
them and every other child in the city. I think, honestly, a
huge group debriefing would be necessary, or several of them. When disasters happen,
there is mental health first aid that needs to be offered. And I
think every parent that was in there that later comes back and hears their child's
story about how they too got bewitched and were being let out of their houses
by this witch up singing a song, and we're essentially lining up to have
their souls eaten. I think my child told me that I would have some
serious problems with guilt and shame that I wasn't able to protect my child,
or that I failed to do anything even if there was nothing to be done.
I think that's where a critical incidents debriefings and group debriefings are so powerful
is sometimes as adults, like we're cautioning against letting kids keep their own council,
but as adults we do it and sometimes worse because we think because we
know more, we're supposed to do better, are supposed to be able to
recognize threats that we can't, and we fail to recognize that predators exist,
and predators also, like prey, have perfect camouflage, and sometimes the predators
win, and sometimes the prey wins, and good and evil exists in a
balance, and you don't always wanting to not be a statistic does not make
you not become one. Sometimes you get robbed, sometimes someone you know dies,
Sometimes accidents happen, sometimes people get killed. These things happen, and
you can't protect someone from everything. And in a situation like this, where
everyone is affected equally and everyone is equally helpless, it's really important that they
start having an opportunity to connect to other people going through the same thing,
so that they can hear other people share what was going on with them and
share how this affected them, so that they can all kind of come to
an understanding that they can approach through different cognitive avenues that can help them accept
the reality of the situation that they were powerless against these witches. There was
nothing that they could have done even if they had listened to the kids in
this situation. There is nothing that they had done. Once Winifred and the
sisters took that stage and started singing, got them chanting after her. She
used her magnetic personality and Bette midlerness too. That's what I was just thinking,
the coler who was not going to say as to her right like,
oh is she a Broadway diva? Yep? Oh when she gets on stage,
pal like, never was she more alive in that whole movie than when
she's singing. I put a spell on you. And you know, assuming
that's just Winnie's personality, right, like seeing her latch onto that this is
her strength, Like this is walking into the lions den, You're fucked.
And every parent would need to be able to come to grips with that or
they'd be struggling with serious guilt. And we have seen over and over in
story after story, in episode an episode that we've covered on our show,
particularly about my friend Batman, about how this can absolutely corrupt someone's life.
I get, at what point if Batman got over his guilt about what happened
to his parents and accept that he was a helpless child against a robber with
a gun and it wasn't his fault that that happened. Would he be living
on his own private island the fuck away from Gotham, just having supplies flown
in and living its best life with Penia Cladus on the beach, not constantly
worrying about how the Joker's going to stab him in the neck with toxin next.
But our parents that we see in this film, I think everybody in
that gym, everybody bewitched by her spell, which seemed like it was everybody.
That particularly unique situation would require group debriefings and probably a lot of group
therapy to help people work on recognizing the guilt that they feel they don't have
to keep because they were victim too, and they were victims equally. It
wasn't the parents missed this in such a catastrophic way, And I think the
way that we assign responsibility to ourselves as and adults would get seriously warped as
they felt guilty about not protecting our kids. And so my move would be
getting as much help from mental health, first aid and from the people that
come in and to dr group debriefings after tragic incidents to human called the Humanitarian
Aid Program, and any other organization that can bring in large scale things that
might happen after casualty events where something terrible happened that everybody was out of control
of and couldn't have prepared for. Right, wheel, I guess I can
go next. So, in thinking about treatment, this would be a situation
where I think, in modern day, I don't know, if it's happened
the nineties, Max and Danny would be put into therapy by their parents.
This is very much something that I could definitely see a parent like me starting
to see a kid because something happened, and so we don't really see obviously,
Like any movie like this, it's very you know, and they lived
happily ever after where the lights go down and we don't know anything about anything
ever again about these characters even in the sequel, they're not a part of
the sequel at all, so we don't know what they're like as adults.
So this could be a situation where they could be fine, Like legit,
these kids could be fine after this. This also could be a situation where
there especially I think Danny having like nightmares and a lot of the ways that
you would see PTSD pretty much exhibit in a child. And so I guess
where I'm going with this is that sometimes when I see a kid and something
has happened, the parents can be more anxious than the kids in terms of
getting them into therapy and worried about them. And so what I will usually
tell parents is that I'm happy, obviously, I'm happy to see your child
and do an assessment and see how they're doing. And part of your job
as a clinician is to be always assessing the necessity of therapy, and not
just like whether they should have it or not, but the intensity of it.
And so this would be a case where I would probably be going into
sessions in the beginning with them just sort of paying attention to how they're adjusting
to the situation that has happened to them, and kind of more intentionally consistently
assessing how they're doing and how much do they need my help and what that
would look like even And this also could be an interesting situation in which I
might if I was seeing both siblings, which I've done before, like see
two siblings for in their own individual sessions, is if it felt helpful to
see them together. I think that's a part of family therapy or collaborate therapy
that doesn't get talked about a lot. It's always like parents and kids or
couples or you know, adults in a family, but we don't really talk
about a lot of like sibling to sibling, especially when they're children. But
it can be really helpful, especially in a shared situation like this where they
also might be more comfortable being vulnerable together, like Max and Danny together talking
to me about what happened. Or also it can just be very validating,
almost like mini group therapy, but with just the two of them and me,
of like how are you both doing? Are you supporting each other?
How are you guys talking about what's happened, you know, and just checking
in. So my roles at therapist like going back to what I was saying
before about don't be don't lead children, because that would be very mindful.
Then I'm not inserting the adult anxiety onto them of like, oh, something
really scary happened to you. How are you doing. I would be very
chill and just be like, hey, like I heard something happened, and
your parents are just worried about you and they want to make sure you have
someone you can talk to if you need to, So you play it very
not blase, but sort of like casual, nonchalant, like steady as the
therapist, but not inserting any of your emotionality onto it other than modeling empathy.
So if like the kids starts to say like, oh my god happened,
then I would say like, oh, wow, that sounds really scary
or wow, that must have been really hard. But I always make sure
the kid leads the energy of the sessions and they kind of dictate the speed
in the inten city because even what I've worked with kids where like genuinely very
horrific things have happened to them and all the adults around them are panicking.
And when I meet with the kid, for whatever reason, either to miraculous
resiliency or the agef they're at or the supports that they have, they are
on the spectrum of like one is fine and ten is a disaster. They're
like below five and just because for whatever reason, miraculously they're okay ish,
And so I just have to be very mindful that I'm not making them worried
about something that they're not worried about themselves. And by the time when it
comes to therapy, when it's the parents ownus to put them in it.
There can be a lot of that already, and so I'm very mindful and
I advise clinicians like if I was working with Danny and Max, I'd be
very careful that I wasn't projecting onto them anything that I think they should be
worried about and just being very like letting them take the lead. And then
they could be kids where like we've been talking about ajment disorder. I see
them a handful of times, and then I talk to their parents and I'm
like, I think they're okay. You know, therapy doesn't go anywhere,
you know, so I might say, like, I think they're okay to
stop therapy. They feel okay about stopping therapy, and if you ever,
if they ever need to come back, if something starts popping up that they
weren't expecting or just evolves, you can always come back. And that I
think too is really important as a child therapist and an adult too. But
I think especially as a child therapist is to be mindful of when to pull
the plug on treatment and not in a disruptive way or like this kid's acting
out, I can't work with him like discharging him like that. It's more
that sometimes when I work with kids, I'm like, they are okay enough,
and maybe they're not ready to talk to me more. And I want
to make sure that they leave therapy with feeling if they were respected, they
were listened to, that if they didn't want to do therapy, that I'm
not pushing on them about it, because if, if, and when they
need therapy later, they'll have like positive to neutral memories of therapy when they
were young. I don't want to ruin therapy for some body at the ripe
old age of nine because they were forced to go to therapy because something because
all the adults were assuming they need to talk about something and they weren't ready
to talk about or didn't even have anything to talk about. That's also sometimes,
well I'll see a kid for a short amount of time is because I'm
like, they're okay enough, they don't seem interested in therapy, or they
feel they seem fine, they have nothing to talk about every week and so
it's okay. Like I said, it's not going anywhere. And then too,
what can be interesting as well when you see a kids short term or
you're sortive as the clinician, you're like, hm, I don't know where
they're at with therapy. And sometimes I'll tell a kid like, so it
sounds like we might be at a point where you don't maybe need me?
Is that much anymore? Need to talk to me? How many more sessions
would you? Like? When do you want to be done? And kids
really surprising with their answers. I've had kids who because swore up and down
hated my absolute guts and they would say, oh, well, maybe we
can have like five more sessions and then we could talk about it again.
And I'm like interesting, interesting and interesting, And I have kids that are
like that. I think really like therep the like I'm good with today,
banal last session, and so you never know, and so it's always really
interesting and continued assessment, even having that conversation about like, therapy doesn't seem
to be your jam, do you want to be done? And what does
being done look like? And that gives kids so much. You're showing so
much respect and autonomy for them too, that I can also make therapy a
more positive memory even if they weren't in love with going to therapy overall.
That would be I think how I would attack the situation definitely good important.
Hannah so I've been thinking about what it would be like to work with the
sisters in a completely different universe where they survive and they just have to adjust
to a regular life in general, mostly because Benn and Britney Bills covered some
of the other options that I think would make the most sense. And so
it also and it feels like I don't know that there's something more specific than
I could talk about, besides the fact that just giving a little bit more
information about what it can be like, especially if you're in a family dynamic
where there is a lot of enmeshment, and so kind of thinking about what
it would be like if I had Rinifred in my office as an adult,
where Mary and Sarah have gone off and had their and kind of created their
own lives, and that as being the person who was holding who had the
most power in the dynamic, trying to help her adjust and have a better
understanding of what healthy relationships look like, of what kind of relationships could happen
with her siblings, how she could still repair those relationships, and also really
creating an identity for herself and what it might be like really just thinking about
what she wants and needs versus what anybody else wants and needs. When you
have an old the sibling who has had to take care of their younger siblings
because otherwise they would die, you have to having them really have to think
about themselves and putting themselves first could be very stressful and upsetting. And again,
this might be a situation where adjustment disorder would work because it would be
Winifred adjusting to the change dynamic in her family and helping her create an identity
that works for her and one that feels like is focused on what she wants
and needs versus what versus what she thinks she should be doing based on having
siblings that are younger than her. And it would be a little bit tricky,
there might be some resistance. I might see Winifred come in and maybe
sometimes not being willing to give all the context for a situation, maybe coming
in and only talking about Sarah or Mary. And sometimes when I have clients
who do that for all different nisive reasons. We defer and deflect and talk
about other people for all different kinds of reasons when we're in therapy, and
one of them sometimes can be is that we don't want to have to talk
about ourselves. We don't want it to be focused on us. Sometimes it
can feel so new. Sometimes it can feel like I've only ever talked about
you know, Sarah and Mary, and I don't really know how to talk
about myself, and so you know, there can be some gentle redirection of
so interesting about how your siblings are doing, and I'm just kind of curious
about what that feels like for you or what made it feel important for you
to kind of give me that information for the session today is or something that
we're looking for another way that I do it after I've had to maybe do
that a couple of times in session is kind of like, okay, so
I heard about them, and this time is for you. And I want
to make sure that we have time in our session to focus on what's really
important to you and that it's okay to talk about the other people in your
life. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with that. And I know because a lot
of times this is something would be somebody's goal right when they come in.
Is I know that you want to learn more about yourself, that you want
to have a better sense of what you want to focus on in this new
life, and how you can kind of fill the gaps of not having these
two people that you did such a good job taken care of for such a
long time in a very stressful, very intense situation, and now you don't
have to do that, And so I know that this is important to you,
So let's just talk about and sometimes it's like what did you have for
breakfast today? Like it also doesn't have to be this huge moment that we
have where I redirect them and all of a sudden they can talk about themselves
every session from then. It's something that we kind of have to get used
to as a therapist's and that's a part of meeting a client where they are.
That's a part of that of helping them even helping them take ownership of
the session and how important that is for them to say to them, this
is your time, m this is the time where I have clients who like,
oh, I'm sorry that I had I talked for like ten minutes straight,
and I'm like, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you talking for ten minutes
straight. I this is about you, This is this time is for whatever
or And my job is to keep some of the goals in mind that we're
working towards and sometimes we just need to get shit off of our chest by
getting it off our chest, and there's not a wrong way to do that.
That's kind of what came to my mind in terms of who I would
work with. And I think, oh, and I think Winnifred would be
tricky. I think she would be I think she'd be court mandated, maybe
even some instances of like stalking her sisters or beating up, putting spells on
her boyfriends, or something on herself friends, like imposing herself. And I
think to just another strategy that I would use that a clinician could use as
while who might be listening, is when I have a client who is preoccupied
about a certain topic and after I've seen them for a while, so you
have to have a decent rapport to challenge like this is I would say,
like, do you mind me making a reflection now that we've been working together
for you a few weeks, so you know a lot of these sessions is
you talking about? And so then kind of when you were saying about taking
ownerships, sometimes I'll give them homework of like so next session, I think
it would be interesting if you could maybe get a list of a few topics
that are just about you, and then we'll and then I just want you
to think about that, and then the next session we can talk about maybe
something on that list, or even talk about how it felt to try to
make that list if we have a hard time making it, and then let's
use that for exploration. And then yeah, I do like little thoughts experiments
with clients of like, how would it feel for this rest of the session
we didn't talk about anybody but you, and then let's let's let's sit in
how that feels. That would be so hard for each of them. She'd
be like, they'd be like, what, I can't talk about me?
Then how can I talk about me? And I talk about my sisters?
We are a unit well, and for Winnie, this being a parental child,
she would have a hard time talking about them or not talking about parenting
them essentially, and they would have a hard time about talking about her not
as an authority. M I can't do that. Yeah, all right,
whale. We will dip into final thoughts after this last break, so I
can go first, hocus Pocus. I mean I was seven when it came
out, so I was at the exact right age to eat at the fuck
up and I did. It's a movie where I couldn't even tell you the
first time I watched it. It's like I came into conscious form and this
movie was already a part of me. And and so it's a movie that
it's a kids movie. It's fun, it's harmless. I've watched it a
billion times, which I watched a billion more. In Chicago, where we
live, there's a really cool theater called the Music Box. They do like
a yearly hocus Pocus viewing where it's like interactive black rocky horror picture show.
So when they say virgin, you yell the specific scept for this green and
things like that. I will say in final thoughts, it is amazing how
many times they say virgin and this. And it makes me think in nineties,
was there just like an understanding among children of all ages what a virgin
was. And what I really enjoyed about this sequel is that, for the
first time ever, a kid goes what's a virgin? And then the adults
are like, m like, they don't really have a good answer, because
what the fuck? It'd be such an easy fix of like will they just
say somebody somebody who shouldn't light a candle or somebody who can't light a candle.
I think it is what the end. The end answer in the second
film is yeah. And so I watched this movie again and again it's very
modern day classic. The sequel I also really liked, and I hope that
everyone watching it remembers that these are children's movies and the first one is Goofy.
And the only reason why we don't think about how goofy it is is
because we were the right Asian we saw it. So all of you other
adults are on my age and your thirties forties who are going to watch because
focus too, remember that this is a movie for nine year olds, and
so it's not it's gonna be Goofy. It's gonna be goofy. And it
was and it's supposed to be. So those are my final thoughts. I'll
go next. We will let Hannah close out. I am a year older
than Brittany, so I have a similar experience with this movie. I don't
remember whether I saw it in a theater. We had Disney Channel for the
longest time. That was the only premium channel week we had in my house
at all. Was the Disney Channel, and then the one with all the
fuzzy lines that we all tried to watch as we got older, but not
at eight, not at DAG eight, but with watching this movie so many
times and even coming back to it later, and then watching my daughter's sort
of absorb a little bit of at a party last year. This movie is
just timeless. It's so good, it's so pure, it's so perfect for
exactly the time period it was. It get just a cap capsulete. It's
what the early nineties were in every way, shape and form, and what
being a kid around that time was like, and watching it is nostalgic,
but it's also generalizable enough that I think it will continue to stand for generations
of people watching. I mean some little context things we lost with people,
like they don't couldn't they just call their mom with their cell phone? But
they do have a fixed round the sequel because they do have to account for
phones, right they do. Indeed they do. Indeed, I think this
movie like Seinfeld, which almost every episode could have been solved by the existence
of a cell phone. But looking at this movie, I continue to be
enthralled in it every time that it's on. It's one of those like Christmas
Story or Elf that when they just pop on you just all right, I'm
in and you just sit and watch it and it's still good every time,
and I look forward to sharing it with my daughter and I will continue watching
this movie around Halloween every year and have absolutely no shame that I am a
thirty seven year old man watching a child's movie. Hell yeah, I love
this movie. Also didn't remember the first time I saw it, even though
I'm older than both of you. For some reason, I don't remember the
first time, I thought, but I definitely watched. I've watched it many
many times, and I enjoy it. It's just a fun It's just a
fun movie, and I just really like it, and I will continue to
watch it. And the sequel was really lovely and definitely will be on my
Halloween list from for spooky season from now on. So I really I love
I don't know. I love Danny a lot, I love any talking black
Cat is super fun kind of I know and just like I do. And
how silly the witches are in some ways, And I really love that their
parents, even though I know we talked about them then, how much they
should have paid attention bore to their kids, but also that it was really
nice to see parents who were doing their own thing in some ways and having
their own life, which I just you know, also a trip of nineties
movies, so I guess it's just the same, but well enjoying their lives
in a positive way like yeah, and not in like I'm too busy with
work to pay attention, which is what we saw them like Coraline and inside
Out, and it was much more parents caught up in their bullshit, whereas
in this movie it was actually refreshing to see two parents who seemed to like
each other and then seemed to also like hanging out with each other and partying
together. And that was nice. That was nice. It was nice.
It is nice to see like a family unit that actually, like, genuinely
lovest each other. There's no glaring problems, and that that felt accessible,
so I didn't feel like as out of place or forced. Yeah, you
guys, this movie is so timeless. I posted as we were finishing this
recording, I posted a thing to as I sometimes do, for people to
win a swag hack and went The only clue I gave them was we had
to change our episodes spontaneously. We picked a movie that we all three knew
and that we're all millennials, and immediately within a minute to be posting at
two people at the same time posted Hokus Pocus consciousness. It's wild. Well,
with that being said, I hope everyone has a fun Halloween. I
hope that you get to be spooky in whatever way. Being spooky is fun
for you, and we will see you on the other side by