Inside Out 2: The Impact of Anxiety

Welcome to Season 8!!! We kick off with the 2024 sequel, Inside Out 2! We discuss the introduction of Anxiety as a significant shake up to the emotional control board. We explore various therapeutic interventions to manage anxiety and how the movie does a decent job of demonstrating some of these interventions. Hold on to your sense of self and join us!!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Ben Stover, individual therapist.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
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 and all forms.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
we aren't your therapist.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Welcome. So today we are going to talk about Insight
Out too. Even though this movie came out last year,
in twenty twenty four, I feel like we've gotten many,
many requests to do it.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
We certainly have absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Dropped people were asking us to do it, So we're
finally doing.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
It because we're happy to oblige.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
And as soon as I saw in theaters, I thought,
oh oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I mean, as soon as we saw the trailer, we knew.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Oh for sure. Yeah, absolutely, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
An episode is coming, no doubt.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah, And so we will be exploring sense of self
and anxiety today as anxiety is the new main character
of Inside Out Too, because basically what the movie is
about is our main character, Riley, starts to edge into
adulthood because she's leaving middle school right yep, And with

(01:39):
that becomes puberty, and with that becomes more complicated motions.
So she gets anxiety on we embarrassment and envy, envy
and nostalgia. Well, nostalgia's coming too early. Yeah, she gotta
go back in the closet. But yeah, so we will

(01:59):
be touching upon, like we said, sense of self and
anxiety as those are the two main hitters that are
discussed in this movie, because this movie pretty much starts
with the development of that idea. That's the thing that
gets introduced right in the beginning of this movie is
now that it Riley's older, she's developing her sense of self,
which is this how would you describe it?

Speaker 2 (02:20):
A trophy kind.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Of it's like a little light squiggle, yeah, in the
middle of her film.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, but like one of the fancy filaments you'd see
at a fancy restaurant.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, and it's still pretty I guess one dimensional, you
would say her sense of self, and that it's at
the beginning of the movie. It's still made up by
the basic emotions that we met in the first movie.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, still made by the more simple, basic right brain emotions.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah, I'm a good person, I'm a good friend, very
basic ideas.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Which is normal for kids. It's not until after ten
that they really start to develop that more complicated sense
of self in the first place.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Like we said, like puberty gets are introduced into this movie,
which immediately complicates her sense of self.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Oh, immediately, as as soon as we start developing into
a little mini version of an adult that can perceive
that there are in fact consequences to our actions and
things aren't so easy anymore. We really have to start
digesting a whole lot more information on a whole lot

(03:47):
more levels. And it gets hard really fast.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Because she's at this age where you're thinking, it gets
more sophisticated, and like you said, Ben, you're more aware
of everything around you, how other people perceive you. There's
just a lot more like I don't know, like what
I really like in the beginning of this movie is
when they're looking at her islands m h and they're
like family islands still there, but it's teeny tiny and

(04:13):
it's being blocked by friend island, which is huge.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
And that's such a good almost like foreshadowing absolutely in
this movie, where once you hit this age, you're just
very aware of the opinions of others outside of your
family system and get very influenced by the opinions of
others outside of your family system. Because we see a

(04:38):
Riley at the beginning who's very securely attached, thinking she's
a good person and all those things. Is because she
does have a fairly simple, secure relationship to her parents.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, their relationship seems really solid and comfortable most of
the time, but we do see the emergence of some moods.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
It's really interesting because I feel like I can remember
being thirteen and feeling all of the emotions at once,
like when everything gets really messed up as soon as
the puberty board kind of shows up and the demolition
the demolition happens, and how she goes from feeling all
these different emotions because and then her sense of self
is ripped off, and that's bananas, And it just made

(05:23):
me think of feeling that exact thing, of feeling so
uncertain of how to communicate what was going on with me,
and feeling overwhelmed, feeling overwhelmed, and feeling like my feelings
are so big I don't know what to do with them.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
I don't think I've ever once wished to go back
to thirteen years old. No, never, have you, guys ever
had a client say I really wish I could go
back to junior high.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
No.

Speaker 3 (05:51):
I think for most of the clients I work with,
middle school was horrible.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
I think for everyone, ever, middle school is horrible, especially
in that transition time we see Riley at where you're
realizing your friends are going to go to different schools
and you're alone and you're trying to fit in with
the older kids who you are suddenly realizing are so

(06:20):
much older than you.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, because in the first movie, right, we watch her
come to this place where she realizes you can have
more than just happy feelings, right, that you can have
all sorts of feelings. And in this movie we're seeing
her realize that even if you're a good person and
a good friend and you do things right, sometimes things

(06:43):
still don't work out right. And I feel like that
can be such a big introduction of anxiety, as we'll
talk about later, which is that confronting idea that you
only have so much control over the world around you
and how that impacts well, as we're gonna talk about

(07:05):
your belief system, and like that moment in the movie
when they're in the car going to camp and she
clocks her friend making that squishy face like the elevens
between her eyebrows and she's like what, And I think
how to pulse this idea that things sometimes don't work.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Out and sometimes messing with them more makes them work
out worse. Sometimes the more you do just screws everything up.
The harder you try.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, I think that's why fit. That's one of my
notes for later about how anxiety makes you act bonkers,
Like you get in your head and then you start like, well,
I don't know what to do with my hands kind
of energy, which.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Is something you've probably never thought about until that first
time you think about it. It's like the first time
it pops into your head again, that growing that awareness
automatically that we're being perceived in this completely different way
that we've never been perceived before.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
I've never felt being perceived, because there's a really great
moment in the beginning of the movie when she's at
the first hockey game, and if I remember in correctly,
she's kind of stuck in this moment of like trying
to figure out what to do, like should I take
the shot or should I throw it to Grace so
that she can score? And you can see her in
that moment, go to her sense of self, go to

(08:28):
like her collective, authentic self and find groundedness in who
she is to make that decision and how that makes
her feel so secure and how it makes you trust
yourself and part of what's getting introduced to her in
this movie, can you trust yourself? Does that even get
you what you want to? It's like it is this
like cracking of feeling like you can trust yourself and

(08:53):
be secure in yourself and that your belief system allows
you to be secure in yourself.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
It's the cracking of the egocentrism. Yeah, right. Kids see
the world through their own lens. They can't perceive the
world through other people's eyes. They really need adults to
prompt them to do that. They really just see through

(09:18):
what they think, what they feel. I decided it so
obviously that's the way it's going to go because everything
that I'm going to do works, and.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
Also because Joy's doing that thing where she's shoving all
the bad thoughts into the back of her mind.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
M hm.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
So Joy is also doing that thing that you can
do more at that age, which is just kind of
like put bad things, blink them out. And then as
we see over the course of this movie, which I
do love that Joy has to learn this lesson again, yeah,
which is that it can't all be positive. No, it
can't all be things are good and secure. That's not realistic,

(09:57):
and there's going to be a expiration date on being
able to push things back, and we see it in
this movie.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Which I love about both of these. It is brilliant
writing and directing and clearly consulted with mental health people
and neuropsychologists about how does our brain work, how do
we develop, and how does this change? Because understanding how

(10:25):
rapidly change starts to happen in between ten and fourteen
and then again from fourteen to seventeen is really important
to what this movie is illustrating so beautifully.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
And I think another great display of that with her
sense of self is when she starts shitting on that
band she likes Yep later in the movie, and it
makes that island crumble because the sark what they call
them like aasm, a sarcasm, and I talk across the
sarcasm and it mistranslates what they're trying to say with

(11:04):
the tone. But it made me feel sad like watching
that part, because I'm like, Oh, the way that we
will destroy parts of ourselves when we are that age
to seem cool to other people, and how we are
getting like a visual on this movie of this girl
in real time destroying parts of herself that she genuinely

(11:26):
likes or liked to seem a type way to other people.
And it's so heart wrenching. This movie really like stabs
me in the heart a few times.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Absolutely, And that's something that I feel like parents get
really worried about. Right when parents start to see that
a kid is starting to dress different or act different
or look different, they start to get really worried that
their kid is doing something that they don't really want
to do. They just want to be cool, and so
they'll destroy anything about themselves. So I feel like sometimes

(12:01):
parents also respond to big to some of the changes
that a thirteen year old ten to thirteen year old
does yeah, and then they're in their own anxiety.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Right, did Disney posters start to come down and upstart
the music posters, the punk rock or the rap or
whatever it is.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
The anime or any of the horror movies, horror movies you.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Know, yeah, black lights.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, going to hot topic absolutely well, because it's a
sad thing, right, I'm sure it's a very sad thing
to observe. You're not there yet, Ben, but I'm sure
it's a very sad thing to observe your child, who
a child like Riley, who is so comfortable in what
they like and so authentic and vulnerable to watch them

(12:57):
do that to themselves at that age because we as
adults know what they're doing while they're doing it. Yeah,
I'm sure it Like that's heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 (13:07):
I mean, Ava's largely out of the princess phase. Yeah,
and she's turning seven next month and she's already kind
of like eh princesses. Nah, She's into Barbie, she's into
Harry Potter, she's got Taylor's Swift stickers all over her bed. Oh,

(13:30):
and I mean Taylor is thirty five now, like Taylor's
writing grown woman music now, I mean Ava's discovering, you know,
the wide range of it, but rating from like that
kiddie country to where she's at now, which is grown
ass woman. And it is sad watching that, Like, but

(13:53):
what happened to the little girl that liked Elsa? And
she's like, Elsa's for babies.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
That's it, that's the that's the sentence for babies. It's
for babies. And once it's for babies, it's never for
me because I'm not a baby.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Anymore until for Rousten three comes out then then it'll
be fine again.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
But I would imagine though, at this age like this,
like thirteen preteen age, when you watch your kid kind
of like make fun of themselves, like demoralize themselves, Like
that's a little different than just growing out of stuff. Yeah,
I would say it probably feels really brutal as a
parent to watch your kid do a version of what

(14:35):
she does on the couch with the other older girls.
And it is kind of cool that her friends Grayson Brie, yeah, yes,
Grayson Bree call her ass out.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Well.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
I feel like when I was that age, I don't
know if I could have been that that authentic in
front of all those girls, the older girls like if
my friend was making fun of thing that we like together,
and the older girls were kind of giving them positive feedback.
I don't know if I could then double down, but
I still like that band, you know. I think that

(15:10):
says a lot about where her friends are at with
their sense of self. Yeah, uherable being like, no, we
like that. You fucking lie her, You're being a bitch.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
But they're also in the context of this film, those
two are staying together.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, that's true. They're not as unsettled, right.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
They're unsettled about knowing they have a secret, but Riley's
unsettled when she learns the secret of learning, she'll be alone. Yeah,
so she's trying to attach to new people and the
cool older kids because she's feeling lost.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
You're bringing up a great point, which is that the
belief that they keep talking about in the beginning of
the movie is I am a good friend and so yeah,
with her two close friends leaving her, and especially because
she's only lived in San Francisco for a few years, right, Yes,
that that is her core identity, is her as a friend.

(16:09):
So you're right, like them leaving Friend Island is crumbling
and there's nothing there yet, so she's trying in real
time to like build up or like reinforce Friend Island
for later and hockey. Yeah, that's true too, you.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Know, I know the movie highlights I'm a Good friend
over and over is that core message. So you're absolutely right,
But they the theme of these movies too, has always been
she's a good hockey player, and she's connecting and identifying
with the older hockey players too. So I feel like
those two ideas are struggling for her, or she's struggling

(16:48):
with those two a figure like which one do I
attach to? Am I a good friend to these people
that are going to be going to a different school,
or do I need to be a good hockey player
and attached to the better older kid hockey players and
be a good friend to them, Which is exactly that
kind of complicated feeling a thirteen year old isn't going

(17:11):
to navigate correctly because they don't know what to do
with you, and they don't.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Have the wisdom yet to navigate that situation that.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
It's okay for me to like this and that.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Or even that this isn't an emergency, right, that you
don't have to figure this out in the three days
that is hockey camp.

Speaker 4 (17:33):
And if you don't figure out these three days, your
whole life is fucked. Like you're just life is over
for you, everything over, high school ruined.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, well, I feel like we're starting to edge into anxiety.
Is there anything else you want to say about sense
of self?

Speaker 3 (17:52):
I think the only thing I wanted to say about
sense of self that I haven't had a chance to
say is something that I talk a lot to my
clients about is that our belief system has been made
over time, and so the things that you believed at
different times, that's what sticks to your brain. So like

(18:15):
the I'm a good friend, right, and then all the
thoughts that, all the little memories that have to do
with that go into a certain place. And something that
I work with people a lot on is these are
old You have a lot of old beliefs that have
compounded over time with all these other new emotions, and

(18:39):
that is what in some ways, that's what we're that's
what we have to help change. Oh for sure, the
way that sense of self connects down to your belief system,
the way that those beliefs can create your reality Yeah,
and then you're only reacting to all of these old,

(19:02):
complicated beliefs instead of what's literally happening in front of you.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Correct, because reality is based on perception, and to build
off what Hannah is saying here is helping people understand
that earlier sense of self identity formations are made off

(19:28):
experiences we have when our left side of our brain,
where our prefrontal cortex is, is not fully online until
we're ten, and it grows from there as we get older,
So that means older things are much much more rooted
in basic, simple emotions like the ones we're introduced to

(19:54):
in the first film, and watching this movie show how
incredibly important it is to expand upon those and let
them grow our sense of self as our neurological capabilities grow,
but also look back and recognize I may need to

(20:18):
reframe some of these with new information, and it's okay
to do so without damaging my sense of self and
giving up everything that means something to me.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah, it's always interesting working with even like adult clients,
where when you start doing that belief tracking like thought records,
irrational belief stuff, how often the belief is rooted in
something that we're talking about like something very young and

(20:52):
very simple. I am bad, i am stupid, I'm not
good enough. Yeah, what she thinks in the movie good enough,
And how those things will still that's still what you
can travel down and find when you're working on these things,
because you were, like you were saying, Hannah, when I'm

(21:12):
working with people and I use things like thought record
and they have to like track you know what happened,
What did it make me feel? And then what belief
does it connect to and does it actually rationally have
something to do with actually what's happening in front of me,
or I am pulling that belief forward and pushing it

(21:34):
into the situation. So if my friend rolls their eyes
at me, if I see my friend roll their eyes
or my partner roll their eyes, am I letting that stimuli,
that information go right down to nobody likes me, or
I'm not good enough or everyone's mad at me all

(21:54):
the time. And sometimes when I do thought records with
especially with adults, it can feel a little embarrassing how
simplistic those beliefs are because they are so simple and young. Yep,
And that part it can feel it's very vulnerable to
be like, oh, it's like just keeps coming back to
this very simple young idea.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
That is why in EMDR work we do what's called
the float back, and we start with wherever that perception
is right, what's the present stimuli that made you feel
that way, what's the situation, what happened, and then you
start walking them back to connect to that roof sensory feeling.

(22:38):
Like I keep a feelings wheel out on the table
in my office. That's one of the more complicated ones
that has the more expansive words in the outer rungs
and the simple basic emotions in the middle. And I
think I'm going to modify it actually to put a

(22:58):
black and white safe.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Oh in the very very middle in the very very.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Middle, because I've never seen one of those before, and
I really feel like that's the message I want to
communicate to people, is this is the way we always
think about everything. It's not optional. Your brain perceives sensory
information sight, sound, smell, touch, right, and everything goes in

(23:29):
to the right side of our brain first, weighed first
against is it safe, then to the simple emotions. Then
our left side of a brain starts analyzing it and
can assign bigger, more complicated words to it. But first
you go, am I safe? Do I need to be mad, sad, happy,

(23:49):
et cetera? About this disgusted? Then to well, I mean,
do I feel kind of okay with this? Is this
make me feel a little down? You can start making
more complicated connections.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
We'll create more nuance and emotional expression, right like I
am I frustrated? Or am I disappointed? Am I annoyed?
Or am I enraged?

Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yes? Thank you, that's a way better way of consolidating
that point. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
I used to teach this a lot to little kids,
and they used to love enraged when they learned it
is like the biggest way you can be angry. Yeah,
they got enraged a lot after I teach them that word.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
Of course they did. But looking at how we run
everything through right brain first always is critical because when
you do float backs, whether it's EMDR or any other
technique that focuses on these ideas, is recognizing it's all
going to go back to this simple, simple, simple shit first,

(25:01):
no matter what you do, and that's going to connect
to older, raw, bigger emotions because people aren't ever more
than that at their core. They can't be We need
to know simple basic information and then we can assign
more expansive language to it later to figure out shades

(25:22):
and nuance of what feeling is it.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Let's move on to anxiety, which is the second star
of this movie.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
All R Let's take a break, care and we'll be
right back. So anxiety. This movie really does a great
job of portraying anxiety. And I mean that in the
most insulted way possible to myself. When I watch this
movie and they were doing anxiety, I was like.

Speaker 5 (25:47):
Oh, Brittany was We saw it together and Brittany was
squirming in her seeds most of the time, especially around
the belief system stuff.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
It's just really good. Yeah, yeah, it is really good.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
You're right go ahead watching her pluck the little discordant
strings that complicate everything with like, oh, we're not just good,
we also need to be afraid we're going to ruin everything.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Well, I think when anxiety well, what I like most
about the portrayal of anxiety is that it's introduced as
a helpful concept. It does a really good job of
selling itself as a purely functional emotion, and that their
job is to like they say things like I plan

(26:37):
for the future, I help us be prepared. That the
selling point that they're making to the other emotions at
the beginning is like, I know what's up, and I'm
gonna help us know what's up, which I think is
exactly what I say to clients, which is that anxiety
is an emotion that's wearing a trench coat pretending it

(26:59):
is just a really smart problem solver, but it is
an emotion. Yes, that's pretending it's not an emotion.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Yep. This is what I walk through with people all
the time. I don't know if i've said on the
podcast before the metaphor I have for it, but I
describe anxiety as a little creature that sits in your
head writing out plans.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Oh yeah, I think it as the muse and X monster.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Maybe, I mean, if that's what you think about it. Yeah,
I try not to say it's a little guy sitting
inside your head.

Speaker 1 (27:35):
Writing plans, plotting and scheming.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Plotting and scheming, but that's basically what it is. It's
this little creature that sits in your head and writes
up a detailed response plan, a battle plan to absolutely
every possible scenario you can think of. But my favorite
question to ask people is what do you do with

(28:01):
all of the plans that created that you never used.
And they usually get eyes wide and go like, oh
my god, it's hoarding. Oh in my head, yes, yeah,
it's hoarding. It's keeping stuff that you don't need and
will never need, with the idea that because you thought

(28:26):
of it, you are now safer.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Yeah. And I think it's just a good job of
introducing anxiety as this problem solver, as this person that
thinks that collecting all this information and doing all this
what we call catastrophizing, is smart. And then also with
the juxtaposition of how it anxiety starts treating joy and
the other feelings like you don't know what you're doing.

(28:53):
It reminds me a lot of people that are high
functioning anxious people and how they will own over value
their anxiety as why they are successful yep, or why
they can do all the things they're doing, and that
they need their anxiety to be successful and productive, and

(29:15):
will kind of give me the same arguments that anxiety
is giving to the other fromotions, which is no, no, no, no no,
you are just like silly, stupid optimists, And it's not smart.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
To not be anxious because if you're not afraid, you're
not paying attention.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Yeah, you're being a silly, stupid, happy person.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Which is ridiculous because you should be constantly on guard
and prepared for all the things that could possibly go wrong,
because you don't dare want to be caught flat footed
and thinking there was something else you could have done
to prevent this from being a catastrophe, which is both

(30:04):
true and not true, which makes anxiety such an asshole
of a disorder, because normal anxiety is good. It's the
thing that lives in between perceiving a threat and resolving it.
You need it. You need to be uncomfortable with something

(30:26):
that is dangerous to you, whether it's dangerous socially dangerous,
physically dangerous financially, you should probably be uncomfortable enough that
you make a change that resolves the issue. The problem
was when it becomes a disorder is it's not functioning
correctly anymore. It doesn't let go.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Well because anxiety is supposed to be part of the team.
Anxiety is supposed to be at the same level as
all the other emotions. And this movie is showing what
you're talking about, which is when you have like generalized
anxiety disorder, and anxiety is running the show, and anxiety
is making all the decisions or the primary decisions, the

(31:08):
primary decision maker.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
And it's cloting up your brain.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
That it does not work well.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Nope. In fact, it makes you less likely to be
successful because you're going to be amped up because the
more anxious you get, the higher your stress meter goes.
And your stress meter only goes from zero to ten.
And at eight nine ten, none of us function well

(31:37):
because our other more simple emotions start kicking on and
do what they're supposed to do. Anger starts breaking shit.
I'm just so stressed up, throw and it can't see it.
It can't see that being that nervous, stressed on guard
actually makes you less able to use the whole team

(32:01):
in the ways you're supposed to. When I think about
the Little Creature writing battle plans, I always always pair
it with the quote from Colin poul that no battle
plan survives contact with the enemy ever, which is important
to understand. No matter how well you plan out every

(32:21):
step of this, if that's what you think is going
to happen, you're going to lock into that and not
be able to adaptively, to respond strategically and authentically to
whatever changes happen. You're going to be constantly trying to
shoehorn a solution into chaos, and it's not going to work.

(32:42):
You need to be able to just instinctively respond to
whatever's going on, because your instincts will take over and
take care of you. But anxiety never ever believes that.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Well, anxiety is distrustful, which serves a function when it's
part of the team, right, Like, anxiety is the part
of you that's supposed to be like ooh, like red
flag there, or hey, like what's that thing happening over there?
Like it's supposed to bring your attention to something that
maybe you shouldn't trust, correct And when it is so

(33:15):
full blown like this, you don't trust anything, including and
sometimes especially yourself, because, as we're saying, like in the
beginning of this movie, Riley is very grounded in her
sense of self. She's very grounded in what she likes
and what she's good at and who she is. And
so when anxiety is pumping at full throttle like this,

(33:37):
you don't even trust yourself. And because you don't trust yourself,
you can't relax into your instincts, into your body, into
how you move your body. Like even the scene where
she's walking behind them and she's like, how do my
arms move her hands? What you do with her hands? Yeah,
and she's like trying to do what the other girls

(33:58):
are doing. That's such a good example of how, like
anxiety you will get into your head to such a
degree that you don't even know how to like move
your body normal or move your body in a way
that is natural to you, because you don't even trust
yourself to like know what you should be doing, which.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Just causes you to be the awkwardest awkward turtle I know,
which is what she was. Watching her with the older
girls was just painful.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Yes, the many many well, every part where anxiety takes over,
and like when she's talking to the girl in the beginning,
she's like, sorry, I go, your phone's taken away. Every
moment is like cringe City on purpose, obviously, but it
just yeah, makes yourself self doubting and also makes you

(34:47):
do what you see what we see you're doing the movie,
which is looking outside of yourself for the correct answer.
Mm hm, Like if I just know what's in the
coach's notebook, if I just know what the other girl
are thinking about me, if I just copy what they like,
then that's the right answer. Like I can't trust my
internal compass, so I have to go outside with it.

(35:12):
But because it's external, it's always going to be weird.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
I think that's one of the meanest parts of anxiety,
is the fact that it undermines your sense of self
and it undermines your ability to trust yourself. And I
think that's one of the meanest parts because that really
shakes up every decision that somebody makes, especially when anxiety
is running the whole console. What I thought was really

(35:36):
interesting was how how I feel like all the ways
that they portrayed her in terms of like with the
walking and with the when whenever she's with the older girls,
all of those experiences, I feel like I've seen those
things happen. I've watched kids do that stuff, or I
was one of the kids who did that stuff.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
I was one of the right whatever.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
We were all so exactly exactly, all just trying so
hard to figure out how to fit in with other people.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
When she puts that red in her hair, I could
like die from secondhand embarrassment. Like that's what I mean
when I say anxiety is a scam artist. Trying to
trick you into thinking that it's being rational. It's like, yeah,
if I just put this road in my hair and
match the other girls, that'll fix all these problems.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
I'll fit in, they'll accept me.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
That is such like an emotional, fantastical idea that's rooted
in nothing actually rational. But anxiety will make you think like, oh,
we're being so rational right now, we're connecting the dots
like a motherfucker.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Obviously they'll just like I have read in my hair,
just like them. Never mind, it's a thing that's part
of their click that they earn through shared experiences, and
I'm just co opting that. Not cool?

Speaker 1 (37:01):
And something I really love in this movie is how
we see anxiety co opt parts of Riley's brain that
used to be positive, like the fact that they the
writers thought to incorporate her imagination and how anxiety takes

(37:21):
over her imagination to use for catastrophizing and what ifing
was so well done because I don't think I even
really thought about it as like your imagination going sour? Yeah,
And that is exactly what it is. Is your imagination
is using that strength within you that especially if you

(37:45):
identify it as a strength and then it's part of that,
like I said that scam, it's doing of like, see,
we're smart thinkers and we're thinking ahead when really that's
what we call in the biz a cognitive distortion, sometimes
also called thinking error. And that's one of my favorite
things to do with anxious clients is I show them

(38:07):
a handout I have from like the nineties and it
looks like something that would be on an overhead projector nice.
I like how old it looks too, because then I
say to people, see, how like what you're doing is
not a new thing. It's not a novel thing. It
is something that's so common when you have anxiety that
there's ten categories for it that's been around for decades,

(38:30):
and I go through them with the client and usually
they'll be like, oh, yeah, I do that, yep, I
do that, Yep I do that, yep I do that.
And noticing and naming something as a cognitive distortion is
one of the first ways that you can start to
crack the idea that your anxiety knows what it's doing.

(38:52):
And catastrophizing is the main one we see in this movie,
the what ifing she does, but there's also things like
mind reading, assuming what other people are thinking about you,
M M. Forecasting like the thing she does, which is
also like catastrophygzing. But the amount of times I've worked
with teenagers and they think if they like get one
bad grade on one test, that they're literally gonna have

(39:15):
a horrible life. They'll be like, if i get a
bad grade on this exam, then I'm going to fail
this class, that I'm not going to get into a
good college. Then I can't get a good job to
support a family.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
And I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
So this one test now is not just this one test.
It's like will I one day be able to have
a family or not? And we see her do that
in this movie. But like I said, these cognitive distortions
like all are nothing thinking which we do see her do,
like if I don't make the team this year, I'll
never make it, or I won't make any friends, or

(39:48):
I'll never play hockey again. Like taking a lot of
blame for something that's not your fault, not taking blame
for something that is your fault.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Mental filter, Yeah, it's.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
All like rigidity is the way you can think of
it too, Like M hm thoughts that are very like
extreme that use words like never, always, nobody, everybody. Those
are also usually signs I'll give people heads up on
like those are all like red flags that this could
be a cognitive distortion. And so once you can accept
that and identify it as that, then you can start

(40:18):
to break down. Okay, if I can recognize it's cognitive distortion,
then I know that this is something that's not rooted
in rationale. It's rooted in emotion, and it's rooted in
a very understandable desire to find certainty. Because also every
cognitive distortion is a way to try to grab at

(40:39):
certainty where it does not live. So forecasting catastrophizing is
you're trying to be certain about the future because you're
too anxious about as seeming uncertain. Mind reading is because
you want to be certain about how other people feel
about you, because it feels too difficult to not know
how people think about you, And so it creates this

(40:59):
idea that you'll feel better with certainty, but the certainty
is always negative.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
What is a really fun question to ask people after
you have them? I have this a similar sheet that
to the one you hand out that has all these
that looks very nineties overhead projectory, and I used to
have people just check off the ones they notice, yeah
that they do a lot. And man, watching people go

(41:29):
through these like oh yeah, I do that, I do that,
I do a fuck I need to double check that
I do that all the time. Just go watch them
empower themselves to challenge the cognitive distortions and do what
we would call reframing. Yeah, are going like, oh wait
a minute, Okay, So if I don't make the team
this year, like we see her do it at the

(41:51):
end of the movie, I could always try out again
next year. And you know, subtext being there's club hockey,
there's just playing in the park, there's roller hockey. I
can do lots of things to still have hockey even
if I'm not a fire hawk.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Absolutely, which was a cruel move by the movie to
be all about anxiety, and then we don't find out
if she made it.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
I like that and I liked it too. Actually, actually
it was like that's baller when I watched it again
today because I forgot that happened. M Yeah, And I
was like, I like that. They don't give us certainty.
They're teaching us a lesson in this movie. Absolutely, but
there might not be a quote unquote happy ending, although
we could stay Yeah, well, yeah, I agree, but I
still like that they kind of left it open ended

(42:37):
so that we have to sit with our anxiety and
uncertainty about what happens. It was a very artistic move. Yeah, absolutely, so.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
Hearing both of you talk about having the sheet that
you use with cognitive distortions, I also have one. I
don't think it's from the nineties, and I use that
and I do a step further, so I go through
and have clients identify which ones do they use the
most out of all of them, and then I make
them for a week, to the best of their ability,
keep track of how often it's happening, and kind of

(43:09):
what I tell them is we need to know where
to start. So like if you're doing if you're doing
fortune telling, like one hundred times a day, then that's
where we need to start, versus starting in another spot
and so, and then we come up with different thoughts
to help create neutral thoughts to go along with the

(43:33):
anxiety thoughts that they're having to kind of help them
switch to something that's a little bit less rigid.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Basically, yeah, and it's hugely important, and the entire basis
of CBT, ACT DBT, any cognitive based therapy is helping
people understand some of these things you're taking for granted
might not be the truth. And one of my favorite

(44:03):
questions to ask people that usually gets the oh is
when I ask them how their imagination got hijacked, basically like,
so you imagine all of these things, you run through,
all these negatives canna happen? How many times did you
imagine everything going well?

Speaker 1 (44:22):
What they try to do with her in the movie
where they start what iffing positives and what happens is
what usually happens right, which as anxiety goes, shut the
fuck up, yep, you're being stupid, you're not being prepared.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
And then the other question I learned to ask with
that is how often did you imagine things going just okay? Right,
not good, not bad, just okay? And they're like never,
never times do I imagine it anything other than awesome

(44:58):
or terrible? Me, Like, I always see that kind of
discussion with anxiety, like Luke and Han on the Millennium
Falcon talking about whether to go get Lea off the
Death Star, and like Luke's like trying to appeal to Han,
going well, she's rich, and Han's like, how rich? I mean,

(45:19):
she's more rich than you can imagine. I don't know,
I can imagine quite a bit. And you just watch
anxiety have a war inside your head going like, yeah,
I don't know, imagine, I can imagine so many ways
that this goes fucking terrible for me that I think
we need to prepare for all of them, and all

(45:40):
the rest of you parts going like all things could
be happy and shiny and fun, need to fuck off. Well,
you're bringing up with me.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
Both are bringing up an important point, which is that, yeah,
I also think that it's more helpful and matches more
of the situation to encourage clients to practice new track
in their thinking, because if you try to go to
positive it can be just as irrational or unrealistic as

(46:11):
the very negative, right, and so a lot of times
your anxiety or your brain in general will like poop
out the positive thing, be like well that's ridiculous now,
or like we don't want to get our hopes up,
and so neutrality is more realistic, and so it's your
brain's more likely to accept it, and it's also helps
to practice flexibility with your thinking, because most things in

(46:33):
life are neutral correct. Very few things are very very
bad or very very good things. Things are just neutral,
are nothing.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Burgers are neither good nor bad, but thinking makes them.

Speaker 6 (46:46):
So.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Most things are just neutral. But if you overthink them
or overhype and try to be something other than you are,
you're likely to end up.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Not Okay, you're gonna make it weird. You're gonna make
it a thing. We're more likely to make it a
thing by overthinking it. Like we've seen this movie, she
gets put in her foot in her mouth yep, because
she's getting in her head and that's what makes things weird,
and that's what's making the reactions from the older girls happen,
not just her as her.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah right, and then it can spiral into like the
complicated mix of anger and anxiety, which is envy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
I liked how they teamed up because it is like
that idea of like comparisons, the thief of joy that
envy does really pump up anxiety in a lot of
ways because it also goes back to when you don't
trust yourself and you're looking for the outside, so you're
looking around other people and comparing yourself and figuring out

(47:57):
what do they have that I don't have? Cove if
you will, very biblical way of putting it. And it
does make sense that those things, those emotions would be
little teammates in this movie because it's poking, poking, poking, poking,
poking at stuff.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Absolutely and what those like little emotions in between all serve.
The purpose of doing was showing that within our body
we have activators and deactivators. And the way they would
show On WE or embarrassment like snap, the ridiculous behavior

(48:37):
off of like what are you doing? Stop right now?
Embarrassment and just going like whoa hide, stop, you're being absurd.
And then I loved the on WE character.

Speaker 7 (48:54):
Yeah, oh absolutely my favorite mine too, those hysterical Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
I love that they hired like a French model to
be on WI.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
You just and she won the Pump Door. She's one
of the few women that have ever won the Pumped
War for acting.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
I do not know what.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
I don't know what that is. It's the con Con
Film Festival, like the biggest prize you can win. It's
one of the most coveted a cinematic awards you can win.
So she was one of those co stars and blue
is the warmest color, okay, which won everything like in
twenty thirteen. Yeah, her last name is this crazy long

(49:30):
Greek name like s S is that. Her name is
Adele Escar Pelosis or something.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
It's like ten letters, as many Greek names are. That's
why Jennifer Aniston chopped off half the letters in her name.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
But the beauty of that of seeing we have on
and offs, and we have off ramps to all of
these intense emotions that can literally stop us in our tracks.
Shame exists to stop anger usually or anything else, any
other basic emotion going like, hey, you're not supposed to

(50:10):
do that. If somebody cuts you in line at the
grocery store, your anger might kickanu, tell them all about theirselves,
throw them, grab them by the back of the collar.
And Shame's like, uh, you're gonna get arrested if you
do that. Shame and anxiety kind of combine and go, no, no, no,
we don't do that. You'll be cast out of the

(50:31):
tribe if you do that, and at that moment we
need it. Yeah, Or driving around in Chicago and thinking
about if this motherfucker cuts me off one more fucking time,
I'm just gonna drive their car into the wall. We
need that shame and anxiety to go. You will die too.
Check yourself, check yourself. It's not worth it. Let it go.

(50:55):
You'll never see them again. Do not follow them, do
not chase them down the street, do not teach him lesson,
none of those things.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Yeah, and as we see in this movie, the climax
of this movie that when something like anxiety is taking
the front row, taking control of everything, that eventually you
will have something like a panic attack.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
You will, which we should talk about after a break.

Speaker 3 (51:21):
I think they do such a beautiful job showing what
it can be like to experience a panic attack, both
Riley's presentation of experiencing a panic attack and also her
anxiety part getting frozen. Oh, that was fantastic inside because
a set of people freeze can also experience you just

(51:46):
get so you're just so caught up in it, just
like we see anxiety who's just freaking the fuck out
and feels like the world is caving in around them.
And I think they do a really good job of
also showing Riley experiencing some of the breathing that can happen,
some of the frustration and confusion that people experience when

(52:09):
they're experiencing panic attacks. And also and then also something
else that's really beautiful that we see that Riley naturally does,
whether it's something that she's learned before or not, she
naturally begins to ground herself. She touches where she's sitting,
she looks up into the light, she lets go of

(52:29):
her hockey stick.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
That's more like.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
When she's experiencing the panic attack. Something I wanted to
make sure to mention about panic attacks is also that
they can look different.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
For different people.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
They can It doesn't always have to be the I
feel like I'm going to die, I feel like I'm
having a heart attack. For a lot of people, that
is exactly what it is, but for other people it
can be something completely different. I break out in a
rash when I have a panic attack, and I can
start to feel it, like my neck starts to feel tingly,
and I can tell that this is where this is going.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
I'm hiding into a panic attack.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
You've seen it, yep. Yeah, so not just on you,
but on other people. Yeah, yeah, particularly during stressful EMDR sessions.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Absolutely absolutely people experience this, and so essentially what a
panic attack is is just really starting to feel like
nothing makes sense. I don't know what to do, and
everything that I thought was going to happen has happened,
or I imagine that it happened, so it feels real.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
It's your body entering a catastrophic shutdown where nothing that
you do is going to work, so freak the fuck out, man.
That's it. That's all there is to do is just
try to run all your parts simultaneously and recognize that

(53:51):
none of them feels like they have any chance of success.
So you just keep trying to run every one of
those basic programs or feelings over and over and over
and over, and none of them work, which is why
we see anxiety and that like tornado, but also constantly
moving and trying to flip switches so fast that she

(54:14):
just looks like she's glitching out because that's exactly what's happening,
and that usually causes our heart rate to spike, our
blood pressure to spike, because our system is literally overheating
and overwhelmwhelming itself. And they just did show it beautifully.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah they did.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
I even like the part where Joy pulls anxiety out
of the of the tornado. But the tornado is still
going h and that shows that our bodies are still
responding to this threat or whatever it is. Our body
is still responding to it, and it takes time for the
body to calm back down.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
Which is the key. Yeah, that is the key. A
calm body, calm mind. It never ever works the other way.
If you learn nothing else from us, learn that calm body,
calm mind. You cannot calm down without the grounding that
Hannah mentioned, coming back to your core senses and perceiving

(55:15):
that whatever it is that's activated in your hijacked imagination
isn't real. And what they beautifully covered with anxiety when
they threw her on the chair and calmed her down, like, oh,
but this could be happening? Is it happening now?

Speaker 1 (55:32):
No?

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Okay, but you have to deactivate that system out of
that complete hyper arousal by regrounding back to what you
concretely indisputably see, hear, smell, touch, taste. And we saw
Riley doing that, looking at the lights, re gripping the

(55:55):
hockey stick, looking at the faces of her friends, breathing
and slowing down and realizing all of those things could
be true. But what is true right now? How do
I solve this? Now? I can be a good friend
by hugging my friend, and then I am a good

(56:15):
friend again. But if you try to think your way
through that, you'll be that orange tornado that doesn't know
what to do. You have to ground.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
Yeah, And I think a good point too with joy
taking anxiety out of that tornado is that you can't
start to feel better. You can't start to like calm
down and regulate until you're like out of the situation
that's freaking you out. Because even though she has that anxiety,
the panic attack in the penalty box, it probably also

(56:49):
helps that it's in the penalty box absolutely, and she's
not like in the game with like things coming at
her and having to make decisions like she is kind
of in her own little space.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Right, And what's beautiful about that? Also? I mean everything
these movies just cover emotional health so well, But watching
that part of that system freak out and getting the
sense of self back online requires not letting fragmented parts
take over that can't see the whole picture. They have

(57:25):
to work together. It has to be the whole system
perceiving everything dynamically. Your anger side can't solve that she
shouldn't have been there, she got in my way. Wrong answer.
Oh my god, I'm terrible. All my friends are gonna
hate me. Incorrect, everything's terrible. I broke everything. Oh I'm gross.

(57:50):
All of that, none of it's going to work. But
coming back down to okay, hold on, life is going
to happen one minute at a time, one second at
a time, and the next right decision I make can
deactivate my stress, which then lowers your blood pressure and
takes you out of that sensory exclusion we saw her

(58:12):
going through. You can see her like not able to hear.
You can feel I don't know how they did that,
but you can feel the tunnel vision and whatever sound
they made. That high pitched wine is exactly what happens
when you enter an extremely stressful situation. Your blood pressure
goes so high that you get ringing in your ears
and your eyesight literally starts to narrow, and as you

(58:34):
calm back down and realize that nothing's trying to kill
you right now, your life is not literally ending right
the second you can reincorporate all available outcomes, meaning you
need all emotions.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
All right. Anything else we want to talk about before
we switch into treatment, So let's take a bag care
we'll be right back. So for this episode, because there's
really only like one character, we focus on Riley, that's
not an emotion, right, we thought for treatment we would
just kind of discuss different ways we help people with anxiety,

(59:10):
which you've already been talking about throughout the episode. So
does anyone have any more like pointed intervention strategies modalities
that they want to talk about when we talk about
anxiety management? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:27):
I have a couple of different a couple of different
things that I that I do that I wanted to
bring up. Some of them are very small and some
of them require more time and energy. But there's a
phrase that I talk to clients about, and it is
I am feeling afraid, but I am not in danger.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
That's a good one and.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
Giving somebody that as an option to say, to say
to yourself, to say if you're starting to feel the symptoms,
but also to remind your self that our bodies are
wired for whatever is going to happen, and if we
have a trauma history where really bad things have happened
to us, our body will act afraid and think that

(01:00:15):
something bad else is going to happen.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Because it already did.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Because it already did, It's irrefutable.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
History, which is really which is really tricky and makes
anxiety very just makes it just makes it hard. Some
of the other things that I talk about, which I'm
sure I don't know if Bernie will bring up already
because some of it is stuff that I probably stole
from her, is TIP. I talk to clients about TIP,

(01:00:42):
which is temperature, intense exercise, and pressure. And so when
I talk to people about temperature, I talk to them
about opening the freezer and kind of sticking your face
in the freezer, holding onto an ice cube, holding on
to it an ice cube.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
It's just enough to.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
Distraction for your body that you can the physiological response
of anxiety can calm down. Intense exercise can be I
tell people do jumping jacks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Do jumping jacks. That can help. Also pressure.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
So when I talk about pressure, that one is a
little bit harder for people to do sometimes, But that
can be getting a tight hug from somebody, that can
be using a weighted blanket, that can be even for
some people. That can be putting on tighter clothes, not
a rubber suit. That'siculos Batman wears that big old outfit, right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Because he needs pressure, whatever needs pressure whatever. So that's
so that's one of the.

Speaker 6 (01:01:41):
Things, Like it's nasty, So those are So that's a
couple of things I do.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
We already talked about the cognitive distortions and then I
just try And then the other thing that I talk
to people a lot about is the natural anxieties of life.
What is a natural anxiety? Natural anxiety is being anxious
about a job interview, being anxious about your first day
at a new job. Those are natural things that everybody

(01:02:16):
feels anxious about. And so really also helping people identify
is this a natural anxiety or is this the anxiety
that kind of lives in my head all the time,
just to give them a better sense of what they
can base their decision making on. Well, I think it
helps challenge the idea that we have to either be

(01:02:38):
someone who has a lot of anxiety and it's a
problem and we're irrational beings, or we don't have any
anxiety and we're fine and like easygoing, and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
People who are anxious or ridiculous and broken and anxiety
is for cowards.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
So it helps with this, like what you're saying, hen
and it helps with this idea that, like, anxiety has
a purpose, and there are some things that make anyone
or most people feel anxious, and you feeling anxious doesn't
mean that you have to feel anxious about feeling anxious,
or judgmental about feeling anxious, or start that train going right,
or that you can pull your anxiety in, which is

(01:03:19):
only even since I was telling yourself, like it makes
sense that I feel anxious because we're got a job
interview and I don't have to and being careful that
my brain doesn't make it about something more than that.
Anxiety is really good at making everything more than it is.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
I like to remind people that nervousness is anxiety light,
and it's okay to rebrand normal feelings of anxiety as
being nervous.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
Or just stress too, like as a stressor Right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
They're all synonyms, but if you can redefine them a
little bit aka reframe. Right, This is what a cognitive
reframe exactly is, is how you use them? Is going well?
Are you feeling anxious or nervous? Is this just a

(01:04:08):
natural response to something that's important to you that you
want to go well? Because it's normal for that to
cause you to have butterflies in your stomach and to
feel your heart rate go up because you care about it,
and it's okay to take it seriously and recognize it's
important to you. It's also important to recognize that when

(01:04:31):
you feel that way, you may need to do something extra,
to take action to reassure yourself that whatever you're imagining
might not go well doesn't. To the best of your ability,
can't control everything, and you already know that, but if
you do the best that you can, you'll be confident.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
And living on uncertainty is also something I talk about
with anxiety treatment with people, is that so much of anxiety,
I said, so much of anxiety is trying to feel
certainty where there is uncertainty. And so a lot of
learning how to live with anxiety is learning how to
sit in the discomfort of not getting the reassurance you

(01:05:17):
want of certainty that you can handle maybe not knowing
what's going to happen? Can you handle not knowing everyone's
opinion of you? Right, and practiced just sitting in that
instead of trying to do the kingn of distortion y
stuff or the reassurance seeking stuff like what I tell
people reassurance seeking is is that if you're having to

(01:05:38):
do something multiple times, or if something you're doing doesn't
have a lasting effect, like I ask my mom everything's
going to be okay, but then I have to ask
for that again like five minutes later or an hour later,
Then that's actually not doing doing it. If you have
to keep doing it, that's reassurance seeking, and that that

(01:06:00):
you're looking for a rational response to a irrational emotional
thing that's happening within you. And so a lot of
that work with anxiety like that is you just have
to learn how to sit in that feeling and that
you can handle not engaging in any sort of reassurance seeking,

(01:06:22):
not engaging in any catastrophizing or cognitive distortion, and just
be with the feeling and then try to do something
we've been talking about, which is which is pay attention
to if the feeling lives somewhere in your body, like
my anxiety lives in my stomach, how to like breathe
through that feeling, right the wave of that feeling. Maybe
do something like you were talking about handle like tip,
which can also include progressive muscle relaxation, so doing a

(01:06:44):
body scan and saying like am I holding tension somewhere
in my body? And is that adding to my physical discomfort,
which is then adding to my something is wrong feeling right?
And so paying attention to your body, paying attention to
also your needs like h gret angry, lonely, tired. That's
also not bad if you struggle with anxiety, because if

(01:07:05):
you struggle with anxiety, I kind of always just think
of it as like your brain's overproducing anxiety. You have
a delicate ecosystem in there when it comes with anxiety,
and so you have to make sure that you're taking
care of yourself because it can be so easy for
other forms of discomfort for your brain to misunderstand and mistranslate.

(01:07:26):
Is something's wrong, So I have to find what's wrong yep.
And so maybe you're just hungry, maybe you haven't got
enough sleep, maybe even spending too much time inside. Maybe
something else is still bothering you, and that's what's hanging
out inside of you. And then it doesn't have to
be something bigger than that, it's not it has to
be this big mystery you have to solve. And also

(01:07:46):
something I wanted to highlight too, is I really do
like how they treat anxiety at the end of the movie,
pulling her away from the situation, giving her a designated
safe space to hang out that armchair, letting her like
ground with like a treat like the hot chocolate or whatever,
or a tea and sitting with her blanket and getting comfortable.

(01:08:07):
And also she'd practices radical acceptance with her so like
what's in your control, what's not in your control? What
do we know? What we don't know? To help you
get a better sense of what's actually something you can
take charge of. So the hockey thing, we don't have
control over that, because whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen.
But what can we control our Spanish test tomorrow? Right,

(01:08:29):
And so it can help us feel more grounded in
our actual we actually have control over, which can just
help us feel better and put that energy somewhere useful.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Yes, which is the thing that I recommend most for
anxiety is chaining off. That is recognized that anxiety exists
to help you resolve a problem, and you've already perceived
the problem, and you also already know what you can
can and can't do and solve. The basic truths of

(01:09:04):
the universe are things you were born understanding enough, so
you know you can't control what other people think, do, say,
et cetera. You know, all those things trying to trick
yourself that if you do everything exactly the right way

(01:09:24):
and part way chain eight thousand extraordinarily unlikely events together
in a perfectionistic way, that you will prevent bad from
happening to you or anybody you love. Doesn't work, and
you already know that. What you can do with it

(01:09:45):
is recognize, my body is trying to communicate to me
that I haven't done enough that I can turn this
feeling off and respond to it in a way that
makes me feel prepared. So, like Riley did, Hey, you
got a lot of things you're anxious about right now.
It's not just hockey, it's also Spanish tests. You can't

(01:10:06):
solve hockey, but you can lower the stress thermometer's temperature
by studying Spanish. And you can do that right now. Yeah,
And that's the thing people forget to do all the
time when they're anxious, because we enter that freeze where
you just panic and freak out because we don't see
any pathway, any off ramp. We don't use the onway

(01:10:30):
to go chill it's whatever you need to use that
off ramp to go okay. Stop stop thinking about this,
separate it out, and focus on what can I do
right now that convinces me I've done enough. If I'm
worried I won't wake up in time to make practice

(01:10:51):
in the morning, I need to set a second alarm,
and if I do that, my anxiety will probably step
back and chill and go Okay, we've done a thing.
I could also call a friend and say, hey, can
we ride together? Can you come pick me up to
make sure I get my ass out of bed. If
I don't answer the door, throw rocks at my window.
I'm home. Don't get any ridiculous ideas that I'm not here.

(01:11:14):
I'm here. Get my ass out of bed. Here's my
spare key. If I'm not up, drag me out of
bed and take me to practice. I'll probably be up.
But if I'm not, please come in my house and
throw water on me, and you will have then, at least,
even in that ridiculous narrative, created solutions that allow you

(01:11:36):
to turn the anxiety off a bit. Because you've solved
the problem, you don't have to worry about it going
all wrong because you've safeguarded it, so recognizing we need
anxiety to propel us towards a solution, but it can
be used to solve smaller problems, to turn off the
intensity of it, even if you can't turn it off

(01:11:58):
all the way, all and nothing thinking doesn't help.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Yeah, which they also do in the end of this movie,
which I liked as well, which is something that is
also a intervention for anxiety, which is sitting with the
dialectic that at the end of the movie. That's basically
what they do, which your sense of self isn't just
I'm just a good person. It isn't all positive, fluffy rainbows. No,
it is like I make mistakes sometimes, and I'm a

(01:12:27):
good friend, and I can be selfish and I can
be kind, And so I think that's also something that
can help with that flexibility of thinking. Is challenging that
anxious idea that you either one or the other, or
even like the total reverse, which is that toxic positive
like joy on full tilt, which is I have to

(01:12:51):
be very happy and very good and a YadA YadA.
Is that the actual realistic thing that can be very
grounding is allowing yourself to be two things. I wants.
I can make mistakes and I can still have friends.
I cannot make the hockey team, and I don't have

(01:13:12):
to become a what I should call it, like an
anthno musicologist.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
Yeah, like I don't. I can get a bad grade
on this exam and still have a good life one day.
Like putting two opposing ideas together and sitting in that
can be a really helpful skill.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
And more importantly, building off that idea to connect to
the ideas of the first movie that we need all
sides of the emotional experience to assign context to it.
Not only can I be multiple things at the same time,
but I don't have to reject the mistakes I've made.
I need to embrace them because they help me learn

(01:13:54):
what not to do. I learned I shouldn't be a
to my friends and pursue only my own glory in
a team sport, because then people won't like me. So
I need to check that. And I shouldn't get singularly
focused and in my head because I might not perceive
that I'm about to run over somebody and they're going

(01:14:17):
to get hurt because I wasn't paying attention enough, but
just because I made that mistake doesn't make me a
bad person. But if I reject that experience, I won't
have learned the lesson from it. But my body's still
going to try to make me anyway. So I need
to incorporate all the things, because even if I put

(01:14:37):
it in my vault, it's still there.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
One of the things that I wanted to bring up
is also using guided meditation. Meditation is really hard for
lots of different reasons, and when you have anxiety, it
can be really helpful to do a guided meditation because
you just have to focus on the voice. And I
find that to also be something that can be helpful

(01:15:03):
either as something that you do every day. Most guided
meditations you can find with inside timer or Calm or
any of that shit that's out there, you can find one.
Most of them are between five and ten minutes, something
that you can start your day off with, to start
your day off with lowering your number as fast as possible.

(01:15:23):
And so that's something that I recommend to people to
not only try to do on a more regular basis
when they're experiencing anxiety, but also after having a panic
attack to allow their body to kind of really calm down.
And give their body a little bit more space.

Speaker 2 (01:15:38):
I love that it's very similar to what hypnosis would
do because it's guided. Meditation and hypnosis are parallel, yes,
almost synonymous processes. Getting yourself into a hypo aroused state
where you can be calm beyond calm allows you to

(01:15:59):
show off the parts you don't want to talk to
right now and focus only on what you're choosing to
and it's a beautiful way to reset. So I love
that idea.

Speaker 6 (01:16:11):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
Final thoughts. I think we all like this movie.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
I loved it.

Speaker 7 (01:16:15):
Yeah, I think we'll all watch it again. Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
I don't think I loved it as much as the
first one. But also I don't. I don't know how you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:26):
Catch lightning in a bottle twice like they did the
first one, But they came real close with this, and
it's just more complicated and less joyful than the first one.
Is of like recognizing, oh, I have to embrace all
my emotions this one's going on. Yeah, you have to
embrace all of the everything. Yeah, and that's just it's

(01:16:46):
a harder topic.

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
Yeah, we'll say this this movie and the first one,
but this movie because it has more sophisticated ideas. I
guess I just want to say, like, as a therapist
watching it, it like passes with flying colors, like there's
nothing about this so absolutely it feels like they're misunderstanding
a therapeutic idea or even making something more simple or
more complicated than it is. Like this movie does a

(01:17:09):
great job of representing everything very accurately and also very
complicated ideas in a way that's very understandable, like the
whole belief system idea, how you're anxiety to comment and
like rip it apart and put these other ideas in
that form your belief system. It does a really great
job of taking big, big, big ideas and really making

(01:17:29):
them visually understandable.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Absolutely, I think, and what I would love to see
somebody do is kind of superimpose this and stand by
me m. And it kind of cut scenes together because
that was the one. We watched a lot of that
in the adolescent class. I took it at Eastern watching

(01:17:54):
kind of how all these different developmental stages start to
collide at this weird aide range that these kids are in,
and then realizing how little you have in common with
the older kids, and that death is real and that
stakes are real and other people will kill you to
get what they want. Whereas that you know, the four

(01:18:17):
main boys age, they haven't quite got that idea together yet.
But this movie kind of superimposing all of these ideas
onto that movie or any other movies that cover this phase.
I think it'll hold up the scenes of the internal
stuff happening could be super imposed on any movie covering
this age group. And that's a beautiful thing. It means

(01:18:38):
they perfected it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:40):
I really enjoyed this film. I thought it was really
beautifully done. I sometimes recommend it to clients based on
where they are with their anxiety, and sometimes I don't
recommend it because it can be it might be a
little upsetting, because it is a very accurate portrayal of
this kind of experience.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
Oh yeah, and also I mean, and I just want
to add it. I like the part in the movie
when she's like joy, she wants you joy, and it's
like calling joy into the console. That makes me tear up,
and I'm like, oh, look, she's just having fun, playing honky.
It's like the importance of having fun, absolutely joy, no
matter what age. Yes, Well, on that note, we'll wrap

(01:19:24):
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(01:19:46):
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