Therapist Reacts to INSIDE OUT

well I don't think you can break into someone's brain and plan tonight an idea so that's fictional yeah okay everything's great everything's fine we're good in our new city it's okay but it's not okay well you finally did it you got me to cry welcome to cinema therapy I'm Jonathan Decker I'm a licensed therapist and I love movies I'm Allen see right I'm a filmmaker and I need therapy so so much but actually today we're doing something a little bit different Jenna what is that well you're a therapist right yes do you like to react to things it's like my favorite I wake up every morning thing I hope I can react to something today and my kids give me the opportunity instantly well you're in for a treat because this is gonna be something you can react to but you don't have to parent it it's a Pixar film inside out you're gonna make me cry I'm gonna make me cry and then you're gonna make fun of me I will help you through your tears and then I will charge you for it excellent so here we go we're gonna we're gonna take a look at a few scenes from inside out we're gonna get his reactions and I'm going to try to also have insights we'll see how that goes I don't want to get too technical but these are called core memories each one came from a super important time in Riley's life and each core memory powers a different aspect of Riley's personality so how true to life is this that our memories kind of form because that this seems this feels accurate yeah but it's a little simplified for the sake of the film because you're not going to have one core memory that's but power is an entire that's priors yeah yeah but you're what you're gonna have is overlapping memories forming a tapestry right sure and the overall color so let's say I have a tapestry of many different colors but overall it forms red then it's gonna look red right so if I have a tapestry of core memories suggesting that I have worth or that I'm beautiful or that I'm loved there's gonna be some strands in there that say that one time dad yelled at me or that one time kids picked on me but if the overall coloring is this positive thing that will be what that looks like so it's a little simplified but yeah basically it's true I know you're not a psychologist this is more I have a degree in psychology you do have a degree in psychology master's or a doctor yeah no I have my bachelor's of psychology my master's was family therapy so I'm a family therapist but I I don't I know psychology let's do this and some neuroscience there's some nerve I do I do know a bit of neuroscience if I went to a neuroscience restaurant like I'd be comfortable ordering food excellent I could not ask where the bathroom was in neuroscience go Pixar [Music] Wow the visualizations in this movie and animation of each of the different characters like the animations for sadness and disgust and joy and just the way the characters move is so brilliant yeah like how there some of them are floppy and squishy and noodley like figure and then anger is just this block of the Radel wall that constantly stops every time he takes a step you stop yeah [Music] so Riley's got a pretty good childhood this is pretty heartwarming stuff because I see a lot of families who are and a lot of children who've had negative experiences they have loving parents but the parents are inconsistent you know maybe the parent has a very strong temper problem or there's abandonment issues where the parent loves the child but isn't there very much and some of that is just part of growing up like you your parents aren't always there yeah but there's you can be in securely attached and ambivalent in securely attached and anxious or you can be securely attached and Riley her parents are there for her they're loving they're reinforcing they're reassuring and you know of course this is storytelling right you set up everything's happy and then things aren't happy and we got to find a way back to being happy sure but what we'll see an inside out that's really cool is we think happiness is the goal right in fact this is setting up for a classic story structure where they start happy and then things go to heck and and then they find their way to happiness again but the key to this movie is that happiness isn't the key right and that's the most powerful thing about it but we'll come back to that you see there's some anger there and there's some sadness there's couple other things a couple makes their way in but like I said she's a happy kid got a stable home and right now the films paying this really idealistic version of childhood that it should be all love she's great and we think you know we think it should be love and positivity that should be childhood right but this actually makes me think of Finding Nemo the other Pixar film where he says I promised that I wouldn't let anything happen to him talking about his son but then nothing will ever happened to you yeah but nothing will ever happen to him that part of childhood is you have to deal with heartache and disappointment it's a part of how we grow into adults and if it's all happiness there's no growth that's the toughest thing for me as a parent is trying to you know let my kids experience the bad things in life in a way where they still feel loved and parented but like they're also learning and growing it's it's almost impossible to ride that line yeah yeah you want it you want to save them yeah but you can't just deal with it Oh remember the funny movie where the dog dies so this is so this is so Phyllis from the office I are there any local companies that rent anti-gravity machines what could they do exactly they make you feel lighter okay we're starting to see here that joy is a little obsessed with herself mm-hmm you know she's the leader of the group and we talk about group dynamics joy sees herself as the ultimate goal and everything else is subservient to her and that's one of the themes of this film as we think we should be happy all the time and if we're not then something's wrong we got to fix it right and part of what this film is about is really being at peace with our other emotions and I see a lot of people in therapy and just in life trying to act like everything's okay and they've got it instead of just being real and it hurts them and it hurts their relationships this this fakeness positivity is a wonderful thing as long as it's real right if it's not real than you're lying to yourself yeah well and you know we did an episode about gas lighting recently and this is not Mother Gothel levels of stuff but joy is kind of isolating sadness right now into telling her you know in a very positive and upbeat way she means well you're wrong and please be quiet and don't do anything yeah don't see and this right here is great this is a common storytelling technique where at the very beginning of a film the filmmakers will tell you sometimes subtly sometimes with a shot sometimes with a glance but a lot of times just in dialogue here's the end of the movie yeah we're gonna get there just wait yeah and one of the things that does it's not telegraphing it's plenteous no no it's planting a seed and and one of the things that does you know that that builds trust that like oh this is going somewhere maybe and then at the end when it pays off that trust is rewarded the trust of the audience in the film yeah so and psychologically there is no happiness without sadness these these two characters are intertwined even though they don't really realize it yet joy is trying to crowd sadness out but the fact is if you've never felt sad then you can't appreciate what joy is exactly there's no contrast it's just all one thing yeah okay so you know I think first of all it's really gutsy to try and insert the concept of abstract or thought into a kid's film into a yeah I mean it yeah kids film and family film but like film that kids are gonna be watching and not absolutely lose them right but it is it is actually illustrative when they say this is a shortcut being able to form abstract thoughts being able to grasps concepts without con straight concrete examples to illustrate them is a shortcut to understand sure yeah and so when she says let's just take this way and it pans back and it shows they have like this huge way around you know as far as children's development when they start to be able to develop and grasp abstract concepts is a sign that they're no longer children that they're transitioning out yeah but it also we also see Riley still a child so going into her abstract thought it's not really well developed and all hell's gonna break loose doesn't go well I'm not missing that train bing-bong knows what he's doing he's part dolphin they're very smart he's smart really is a brilliant screenplay are these the actual like is abstract thought broken down into these four yeah no it absolutely is and once again they put this in a kid's film and what's fun is even the kids have no idea what's going on it's still it's still funny you know even if adults have no idea what's going on it's still funny but ya know those those are the four stages they reassemble themselves into just horrifying monsters [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] take some work go back to reality go back to the normal well so with my kids you know we have them do these meditations we've got an app on our phone that has them do meditations and part of the reason why we have them do that is because maybe they've eaten what they shouldn't or they've had too much screen time or whatever when we need them to settle down and in our home like the rule is if you have screen time you have to do a meditation afterwards and part of that is that transition from it's not abstract to literal thought but from one reality to the other sure right and especially if they've been watching superhero stuff they're gonna go into punching and kicking each other yeah and so we actually have them do these meditations to transition out because there is a period from one to the other otherwise they get stuck in between kind of like when these characters come out and here's one reality and they're still back in the other one I never realized that I needed to do that I have a real problem when I've been playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto I will get in a car and just like I hate sitting in traffic I'm just gonna drive up on the side I obviously never have but the urge is there urge is there to just mow down pedestrians and drive on the sidewalk and be Grand Theft Auto yeah I feel that [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] [Music] yeah okay so let's talk about this for a second the subconscious mind it makes sense that this whole area would be very active right now mm-hmm because when we're asleep when we dream the whole purpose of that or one of the purposes of that is there are things that we don't want to face when we're awake we don't want to think about us so the reason we have nightmares is because we don't work through them when we're awake and one of the ways to not get nightmares or at least not to have consistent nightmares is to bring the subconscious into the conscious and to actually face head-on what you think you're afraid of and sometimes you may know what's there sometimes not that why it's called the subconscious that's where a skilled therapist psychologist can help with that but I just think it's fascinating because some dreams truly are random but somatically and emotionally there's something there you're not dealing with interesting my wife has dreams that I'm a terrible mean man and she says and she says to me you're not a terrible me man I'm like yeah dream me is like freaking awful like he's he's an alcoholic womanizer gambler abuser right like it's just what she told me is we have it good and I'm I think on some level I'm afraid that it's too good to be true when like something's gonna happen but she doesn't want to face that in reality so it comes out in dreams right and so a lot of times when we face things in reality we don't have the nightmares anymore because they have graduated from the subconscious to the conscious what does he cry as a kid she's crying candidate I love that so much oh gosh what about this I'm only afraid of clay all the time am i afraid of clowns no I'm not but um I'm afraid of this clown I'm afraid of the I'm afraid of scary cinematic clowns yeah did you say I love that he's not especially evil or malicious he just acts like a clown and that's scary he just really wants to go to the birthday party and that's what's terrifying [Music] that's a pretty good interpretation of a nightmare interrupting a dream your dream about something and then something else jumps in the middle of it and I like a talk about an interception it only seems strange once you wake up right when you're dreaming it's like and now here's the clown now we got a deal [Music] take her to the moon dang it all right so couple things one sadness isn't even around but this is where joy first feel sadness yep and it reminds me of something that's that sadness is the price that we pay for love pain is the price that we pay for love that the only way to not feel pain is to never feel love and that's not a life worth living right right and so joy of course loves Riley but she's grown to care about being blown away she loves him and now he sacrificed himself and joy for the first time is experiencing what the whole film is building - you talked about planting seeds earlier which is the importance of grief or sadness which is not the same thing as despair but sadness in having an emotionally full life and in truly experiencing joy there are some things we have to leave behind for us to grow if we try and hold on to them then we're gonna stay stagnant even if it's hard yeah and it shouldn't have been Bing bong should know left Bing bong I'll try bing-bong I promise well it got real dusty in here I totally underestimated so one of the things that I wanted to talk about is a person who you know experiences depression not like I'm not medicated for it or anything but you know experienced it pretty strongly sometimes yeah this is what depression feels like for me yes just completely losing like the the control panel is graying out nothing works yeah right there's no more levers I can pull to regulate my emotions and your and they're trying they're trying like yeah inside my head when I'm depressed I I know that I'm depressed and this isn't a thing that should be happening I should be able to feel something yeah you know and a lot of times it's I'm either only feeling one thing or I'm feeling literally nothing yeah and it's it's just completely wiping me out I get a lot of people whose family members like anyone who doesn't actually because there's a difference between feeling depressed and being clinically depressed or really anxious and dealing with clinical anxiety and the biggest difference is how much it shuts down your daily life or impedes your daily life and so people who mean well just saying well you just got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and it's a question we'll party it's not yeah when you when your control panel yeah he's completely broken you know that's if you're pulling yourself up by your bootstraps using that metaphor you've ripped on your bootstraps they came off yeah there's nothing left absolutely and that's what people don't understand when they say you just need to try harder trying isn't the issue right like that's not that's not the problem [Music] you can't make Riley feel anything what have we done it's a bit like the Dementors in Harry Potter right as the as the cold and the dark spreads everywhere right the Dementors were also representative of depression I felt like I'd never be cheerful again that's what how JK Rowling wrote it oh joy you gotta get up there sadness it's up to you I can't joy yes you can Riley needs you [Music] wait [Music] hello about this is they've never trusted sadness with anything before right and now they're giving her like the entire panel yeah because sadness has to be felt and here instead of joy trying to fix it or anybody else or anger or fear sadness is what brings Riley back because she realizes I need my family because I'm hurting instead of just shut down [Music] and enjoy coming full circle and realizing you know what she said at the beginning of the movie yeah don't touch them because in the hall but it's what needs to happen all these happy memories from the past there now sad memories because they're gone because that time has passed and Riley needs to mourn that and her family needs to mourn that and they've been following Joy's path the whole time but being like no everything's great everything's fine we're good in our new city it's okay but it's not okay [Music] but it's okay that's yeah [Music] well you finally did it you got me to cry for me my mom's my mom's gone my mom's dead every happy memory I have of her is colored in blue like every single one is sad too but that's what makes them beautiful and we're crying but our crew is is like doing the ugly cry over there yeah it's real bad yeah so what's really impactful to me about this oh gosh I love this is that there is all crap and now they're gonna turn yellow not just yellow oh yeah what happens yeah that's right a new memory bittersweet it's both there is a type of love that is only experienced through sadness there's a type of joy that is only experienced of grief and in a lot of ways it's the most beautiful of all because when we give each other comfort we show compassion we show empathy that's the most beautiful form of love there is not hey I like you or I appreciate your company or I think you're fun or any of these affirming feel-good things but you're suffering and I'm not gonna leave you yeah you know you're struggling and I'm here with you and I love you and you're not alone and that is deeper and more profound and more lasting love so I think of families and I think of friendships I think of marriages that go the distance they don't go the distance because things weren't hard you know they go the distance because things were awful right and they found each other through that as a therapist this is one of my favorite films because it teaches us to embrace sadness as a means of being close and developing compassion and empathy and and how that builds relationships in a way that nothing else really can yeah one is a parent this is one of my favorite films because it's just simple visual way to explain these incredibly complex things that you studied for years in college and in your master's program and all those things we can watch a movie and then have a dis you know a conversation about it and like it's okay to feel these things yeah so we just experienced as a family we moved from Utah to Los Angeles and then Kovan 19 happened and we moved back yeah and so it was this you know kind of jarring move for my kids they were pretty excited about it in the adventure and everything they're very you know adventurous kids and yeah they were excited to move and we got moved and they were just getting settled and making new friends and then we had to pick up and move back again and they didn't even get to come back to their friends they got to come back to isolation and it was very difficult for them but watching this film really helped us as parents explained to them and it actually helped em you know my and just my sweet little four-year-old daughter you know telling us that a bunch of her memories of California are yellow and blue now she gets it yeah yeah that's awesome and I mean this is why you and I started this films our entertainment but they also illustrate truth and we talked about the the abstract thought and how they try and go into that room of abstract thought and and films help us take the abstract and make it concrete yeah and because of inside-out and because you were an a student of parent and your wife and a student a parent to look for an opportunity to teach your kids can work through stuff now and there's gonna be so much in their life where they're like it's okay for this to be bittersweet right or it's okay to feel sad and because there's gonna be people and I appreciate you being horrible today because there's a lesson here look at you you are a handsome largest man and you are you know not lacking in masculinity and what your M is at what you're demonstrating is okay like it's okay to feel things doesn't take away from you as a man doesn't take away from you as a person you model that for your kids you're modeling that for everybody watching right now you're welcome yeah so with that in mind we hope you've enjoyed right this presentation on inside out this will be the first in a long series of us watching Pixar movies and me crying like a baby it's not planned and it's not performance what it is is he knows himself and this is what Pixar does this I my wife makes fun of me constantly my wizard my wife your wife makes fun of me no no if someone's gonna cry in a movie it's gonna be me oh yeah unless she's pregnant then all bets are off but that's not her fault whew anyways if you'd like to purchase inside out or rent it to help support this program you can there's a link in the comments for that as well as scheduling a fifteen minute consultation with me if you'd like some therapeutic help or online relationship courses yeah as always please please please if you like this video share it with your friends family enemies we don't care who they are just share it with somebody follow us on Instagram Facebook Twitter it's at therapy underscore cinema and please subscribe like hit the bell until next time connect with your family connect with your loved ones cry your freakin eyes out and watch movies [Music] [Music]

Channel: Cinema Therapy

Views: 3,709,468

Keywords: therapist reacts, Inside Out, Pixar, Pixar Animation, Pixar Animation Studios, psychology, reaction video, pixar, pixar reference, analysis, real psychologist, psychologist reacts, couples counselor, Therapist, mental health, relationship advice, Cinema Therapy, movie therapy, jonathan decker, alan seawright, real psychologist reacts, psychologist, cinematherapy, joy, sadness, Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Bing Bong

Id: vTVQtsIfoo8

Length: 27min 43sec (1663 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2020