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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 C. Wright. 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 gonna have one core memory that's but powers 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.
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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 some of them are floppy and squishy and noodley, like figure, and then Anger is just this block of the red wall that constantly stops every time he takes a step. You stop. Yeah.
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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 insecurely attached and ambivalent, insecurely 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 in 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 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 a couple of other things, a couple make their way in. But like I said, she's a happy kid, got a stable home. And right now, the film's painting 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 happen 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 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. Mmm-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, is 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, then you're lying to yourself. Yeah. Well, and you know, we did an episode about gaslighting 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 planting. No, no, it's planting a seed. And, and one of the things that does, you know, 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 thought into a kid's film, into a, yeah, I mean, it, yeah, kid's 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 grasp concepts without con- concrete examples to illustrate them, is a shortcut to understanding. 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, it's 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, yeah, no, those, those are the four stages. They reassemble themselves into just horrifying monsters.
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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.
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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. Mmm-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. 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's 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. She says, and she says to me, "You're not a terrible, mean 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 clowns 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.
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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 like, 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 to deal.
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Take her to the moon. Dang it. All right, so couple things. One, Sadness isn't even around, but this is where Joy first feels 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 for Joy. For the first time, is experiencing what the whole film is building to. 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 have 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 you're, 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 gotta pull yourself up by your bootstraps." And it's a question. We'll party. It's not. Yeah. When your control panel, yeah, is 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.
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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 J.K. 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.
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Wait.
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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. And Joy 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, they're 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."
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But it's okay. That's, yeah.
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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 through 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 how that builds relationships in a way that nothing else really can. Yeah. One, as 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 COVID-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 explain to them, and it actually helped them. 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 are 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, large 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. It doesn't take away from you as a man. It 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_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.
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