Jumanji & Trauma Reactions

In the jungle you must wait, til the dice read five or eight! We are jumping into the 1995's Jumanji! We will be discussing the four main characters: Alan, Sarah, Judy, & Peter; and how they all demonstrate different reactions to trauma. We cover a variety of topics: selective mutism, pathological lying, identity issues, and arrested development. 

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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, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
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 3 (00:40):
Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
we aren't your therapist.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
We are talking about Jumanti today. We will be discussing
the four main characters and their experiences with trauma and
as always, treatment and final thought. Jumanji is a story
based on a supernatural board game that releases jungle based
hazards on its players with every turn they take. And

(01:11):
first we're gonna start talking about Alan. Yeah, So in
the movie, we're first introduced to the character of Alan
Parrish in nineteen sixty nine, and I think something we're
supposed to pick up right away with Alan is he's
a pretty lonely kid. Absolutely not just lonely at school
in that he seems like he's pretty isolated and bullied,

(01:32):
but also the movie makes a point in the very
beginning of showing how alone he is in that house,
like a very poignant shot in the very beginning of
the movie to establish his life is a meeting dinner
at that big table in that big room in that
big house, by by himself. Yeah, like, this is a

(01:52):
kid who gets beat up by the other kids, goes
to his dad's work to hang out with what seems
like his only friend, an adult man for his dad,
and then he goes home and eats dinner by himself,
not even with his parents.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Who are busy working and working the political scene and
not necessarily paying too much attention to him as they
are secretly preparing to send him off to boarding school
at a school run or named after his ancestors.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
His dad. The the main dormitory is named after his father,
So he makes a point of I'll be living in
a building with my name on it.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
It says his grandfather's is.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, well, he says, with my name on it. His
side goes your grandfather's day.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
Right, you just said his dad. That's why I'm like,
huh yeah, right right.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
But yeah, which he makes the astute point that I'm
getting beat up by kids now because subtexts, my family's
company employees a significantly large portion of the town.

Speaker 4 (02:57):
So people resent me.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Now I'm going to go to a school that's named
after me, and you think that's gonna make it better.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
I thought that was a really good point by a
very lonely, sad kid.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, because I don't even get a sense, like when
the movie starts and he's getting bullied by the other kids,
you don't really get like a reason for why he's
being bullied that day. It seems like he's someone that
just is the kid that gets bullied by the other
kids in town.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
It seems like he was getting bullied for being friends
with Sarah that the other kids, Yeah, didn't want him
to be around her, particularly the kid who was Billy Billy,
who was either dating her or trying to.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
It's her boyfriend.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, she didn't, or he wanted him to be away
because he was uncomfortable with their friendships. Because it seems
like Sarah's the only person who's friends with him besides
David Allen Greer's character Carl.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Carl, Carl, it is Carl.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Yeah, Yeah, that's those are the only people that are
actually substantially nice to him and listen to him, because
it's clear that him and Sarah have a friendship that
kind of maybe it operates a little bit in secret
that they've been friends since they were little little kids,
and even though he's kind of the social outcast, she
does still come over to hang out and talk with him,

(04:19):
But she doesn't seem like she makes that especially known.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Well she brings she comes over to play when they
end up playing the game, because she drops off his
bike because her boyfriend stole it from him, And so
it does make me wonder how much they actually hang out,
because it did seem like she was doing more of
like a good Samaritan thing in the beginning of like
my boyfriend. I get that he's a dick, you know.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
I also felt like they were I also felt like
they were childhood friends though too, Like maybe she lives
close and that's why she could bring his bike home
because she was also coming home. They said, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
They said they were friends, they talked about that, okay,
that they used to hang out more and.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Oh, I'm sorry, that's right.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
So there's an established relationship from being small children that
we all know tends to start to change around that
middle school time.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Where yeah, sixth grade is what the age they're in,
which is a horrible age.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
That's an intense one. That's for goddamn sure in.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Terms of like social development.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah, I mean if you ask people if you could
go back to any age, any age you've ever been,
Literally no one has ever said any of the ages
between eleven to thirteen, not one time ever.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, middle school's pretty bad. I would say it's worse
than high school. Yeah, in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
I would say so too.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
A lot of people will say I'd love to do
high school again, knowing what.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
I know now, Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Some people are Uncle Rico and they're stuck there like yeah,
you know, or they're Albundi talking about you know, their
four touchdowns, say through.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Oh yeah, but.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Nobody wants to go back to junior high. And it's
because they like this. You have painful things where your
friend groups start to transition and people who may have
been friends or close friends or family friends, whatever, start
to drift away if they find their own social group,
their own things, and you don't all necessarily blend anymore,
and it's hard and I think that's all.

Speaker 4 (06:18):
We're seeing between these two.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
It also feels kind of wild that he gets a
shit beat out of him out in public during the
day and nobody does anything about it.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
I mean it's the late sixties.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yeah, Oh, I guess that's true.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
I feel like, look, I don't even know if in
the nineties they would have done anything, to be honest,
they would not. Yeah, so, but like it's either way.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
It's like, yes, they were making like a loud ruckus
that would bother the adults, or if they're doing it
in front of like a business, maybe they would have
said scraam for sure. And I don't think they would
have stepped in to defend allan Yeah, especially like who
knows if you like zoom out to the culture of
the town. Yeah, is what that even looks like in

(07:01):
terms of like the parishes being these like richie rich
family that hot like that employs all of the other
people in town. Absolutely town, like they could be like
there's a weird reverence toward the family, the same as
there could be also a like look at that fucking
parish kid. He's a rich kid, you know, like, yeah,

(07:23):
he'll be fine kind of thing, like resentment.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
I guess his own dad tells him to go out
and face his bully, that you can't hide forever. Yeah,
that one percent would have been said in the nineties,
so I assume it was only worse in the sixties.
Go go face your own battles, Go fight your own fight,
stop being a little bitch like would have been essentially

(07:48):
the message that people would have given in not realizing
the harm that that can do. Like go punch the
bully in the nose. You want them to stop punch
them in the nose.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, Like as if every kid can do that, Like
Alan's the kind of kid that he would just get
the chickened out of him again. And also this assumption
that every kid wants to have to fight that hard
for peace in their lives. You know, Also this idea
that a kid like Alan or any kid wants to
be aggressive like that and they should be and that

(08:22):
they're going to get some empowerment out of it. Yeah,
you know.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Right, But that's you know, looking at what would have
been in the sixties, or even when speaking as a
child that grew up in the nineties and most certainly
got this message was a thing.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Oh for sure, I know it was a thing, but it's.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
You know, it's important to recognize looking back on this now,
even a movie that's now almost thirty years old, which
we won't be saying that again.

Speaker 4 (08:51):
Don't look at me like that, it's twenty nine years old.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah, newsflash, but looking at how how different things were
even in the nineties, how different they were in the
sixties when they're trying to show of like adults didn't
do anything to protect kids, and then in the nineties
we were slowly embracing the oh we probably shouldn't let
kids beat the shit out of each other.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, it's I mean, it's part of that whole like
almost like victim blaming mentality of if you're getting bullied,
it's your responsibility to rise above it and to overpower
the situation, instead of someone approaching those bullies and being
like what the fuck, yeah, leave him alone, or at
least being more curious about like what's going on here

(09:36):
where this situation keeps happening? Yeah, and making it the
bullied kid's fault, the victimized kid's fault of why can't
they stop this from happening to them? That they're responsible
for it not happening repeatedly, and you know that it's
something that his parents are really aware of, right because
when he goes home and his face is all bloodied up,

(09:56):
his mom says, oh, not again. So they do make
it very clear in the movie f in the beginning
that his parents, or at least his mom, is very
well aware that he gets his shit rocked regularly by
the other kids in town. And he's not trying to
hide it from his parents either. I mean, it's hard
to hide when you have like a busted lip and
a black eye.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Right, and then last I checked, getting bodily injuries does
in fact qualify for that t word we use so
often trauma.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
What I believe you're talking about trauma?

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yes? Me?

Speaker 4 (10:30):
Never on this show?

Speaker 1 (10:32):
What? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (10:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (10:34):
It Having profound powerlessness and feelings that you're out of
control and you can't stop the bad things that are
happening to you absolutely qualifies. And we are introduced right
at the beginning of this movie to all of the
ways at which this kid is feeling victimized and helpless

(10:55):
and out of control of his own life.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yeah, and then his parents think they're doing him a
favor by saying, we're sending you to boarding school in
like three days.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, there's no discussion. They just pulled it on them all.
And also it feels like is a punishment.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Even though they frame it as a reward. Yeah, it
was gonna happen no matter what. The parents were either
going to frame it as a reward or a punishment,
depending on I guess what was happening with the kid
that day.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
It was clear.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
I mean they knew. Who wouldn't send their kid to
a school that's named after their family. I mean I
assume Alan also knew this day was coming.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yeah, even though he does seem shocked. He does seem shocked,
which is kind of silly when you think about it,
because families like that where they generationally send their kids somewhere. Yeah,
it is something you learn to expect, Like when I
watched The Crown, you know, the real world examples of this,
where like there is this expectation everyone's going to go
to these very specific schools.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Absolutely, yeah, right, I mean I'm just seeing Alan knew
that I think maybe the surprise was coming that he
didn't know it would be Monday.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah, oh yeah, well also too. Honestly, I think maybe
Alan could thrive going away to school somewhere, but not
to place that's just going to replicate the same sociocultural
issues he's having at home, which we point out earlier,
right of like, you're just going to put me somewhere
else where I am in this weird category above all

(12:29):
the other kids.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
Absolutely, And you see that become his character arc. That's
what he has to deal with in faces he grows
that Alan must overcome this sense of being abandoned, being lonely,
being scared, being weak. It's his journey.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah, And this idea that I think people like his
dad very old school mentality, this idea that it'll toughen
you up in a way that's good for you. Whereas
as we see when the movie progresses and it gets
sucked into a game and is there for twenty some years,
that even though it makes him tougher in these very
specific ways, it doesn't heal him, you know what I mean.

(13:16):
He doesn't become like necessarily like a well rounded, strong
person because of it. And I think I don't know.
Sometimes it's the way I think about it, and I'm
sure this isn't going to be a shocker to hear.
Is the way that we will sometimes give meaning to
trauma and to bad experiences to try to make them
feel worthwhile and have value. This idea we've talked about

(13:37):
reseent episodes, I think of instead of being able to
just wrap our heads around the fact that sometimes bad
things happen to us and we don't deserve it and
it just is what it is. Yeah, people will do
like And this is something that I think gets passed
on a lot generationally. Is this idea of like, that's
good for you, and it was good for me, and
it was good for your grandpa to go through these
bad experiences, these isolating experience, these tough expis variances because

(14:01):
it made me who I am today, and I have
to believe that was good. So now I'm passing that
idea down to you, and you better get on board
with it, because you can't crumble my idea of my
story correct.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
And if you do, I'm going to crush that out
of you like it was crushed out of me, because
that's how I learned to conquer the world. And that's
how I, as a parent can teach you to survive
the world I know is coming that you don't know yet,
but I do, and I know better than you.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Because they make a point in the movie too, of
naming that his dad isn't very affectionate either, Like it's
not just a dad who isn't around, like who's just busy, right,
but also a dad who like barely hugs me.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Like.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
He makes a point of talking about how cold and
removed his dad is as well.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
And then of course, symbolically that's represented by the Hunter
character being his dad, Yeah, pursues him aggressively throughout the film,
so that even though it's a character that interacts with
other characters therefore as a real character, symbolically it being

(15:12):
his dad seems like it was a little more than
just out of convenience of not having to hire another actor.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Well, that was kind of I was telling Canada that
was sort of a trope of movies of this time period.
Like one of my favorite movies growing up is a
Little Princess and the Dad, and that also plays the
main protagonist in the story. She tells her friends when
she's in an Orphanage. In the movie Pan, Jason Isaacs
plays both the Dad and also Captain Hook Like, I
feel like there was the thing in this time period

(15:39):
where I feel like the writers were thinking they're really
doing something psychologically by making the dad characters also play
different roles in the story, like a little you know,
Freudian stuff right there.

Speaker 4 (15:52):
Right, which of course they were.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yeah, I had not thought about Little Princess for so long.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
End it's one of my favorites of all time.

Speaker 4 (16:03):
So good, it's so good.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
I don't remember whether it was this movie or something
else that made me think of that, but then I
maybe it was this because it came up recently. I
was like, oh, what was that movie that was like
Secret Garden? But it wasn't Secret Garden.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Yeah, those were like a twofer. They came out around
the same time to have the same author, and they're
in the same place in my brain. And we will
definitely do one or both of them on this podcast
at some point because they both got good dark themes
to them.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
And with as much as we're being asked about Game
of Thrones, Liam Cunningham Yeah was the Dad. Yeah, And
I knew i'd seen him when he came on Game
of Thrones and I could not figure it out.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
And sees the dad in Little Princess.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
And now that we're several years past Game of Thrones
realizing that's where it is, it's very satisfying.

Speaker 4 (16:47):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
Anyway, so we see Alan go through this journey of
being challenged, Like we set the scene of where he's at,
where does he go a Jumanji.

Speaker 4 (17:01):
Juwmungi.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, so then we experienced this person who has spent
twenty some years in hell. Yeah, pretty much like the
idea of someone at the age of twelve with limited
life experience, limited life skills. I mean also considering what
socioeconomic status he comes from, who knows what even like

(17:25):
practical life skills he had. He probably didn't clean anything himself,
nothing like that. They probably had servants, right, So I
was thinking, like a kid that probably doesn't have to
do much for himself to them being in this situation
where it's both terrifying, you've no control, You're surrounded by
the wildest versions of jungle creatures, and you have to

(17:48):
figure out how to take care of yourself and you
just have to keep doing that for two decades. Is
it would break you and you can see that. I like,
when he comes back, he is not this like normal
version of himself. He's a jungle man.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah, he's very wild and clearly damaged and stuck in
a survival mode. He comes out of it a little
too quick, frankly, but it's kids movie, so it didn't have.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
To be real.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Well. Yeah, like everything probably takes place over the course
of it never turns dark out, so from eight am
to four pm, possibly because the ant is gone, like
just gone for the day at work or something and
she gets back.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
So yeah, I feel like this is like maybe one day.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
Yeah, it's it's just one day.

Speaker 2 (18:46):
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Yeah, it's definitely like eight am to four point thirty,
maybe because the ant's planning to be home by we'll just
say six.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah. Yeah, So he within the course of what like
fifteen minutes between a good shave and an outfit change.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Come. Yeah, he's a shower. He's come back to being
part of a civilized society.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
And as the story goes on, we learn a little
bit more about what he's had to learn to survive
from being what was clearly a we'll say early puberty
phase for him. It looked like the actor that was
playing him, you know, didn't have a whole lot of
adult man features just yet.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
Well yeah, and he's so much shorter than the girl character,
which I really liked.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
It was a good touch.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yeah, you know, Robin Williams being this like massive hair
that he was they did. Yeah, you know, clear that
he has undergone quite a lot of life in a
jungle and realizing the terrors that he's faced, that he's
had to learn how to adapt with his little turtleshell
helmet and understanding how to fight lions which don't live

(19:59):
in jungle.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
And.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
Because whatever was in the game was in the jungle right.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
Right, everything but everything that he had to survive. Knowing that.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
This boy, somehow, without the guidance of any adults, figured
out what to do with everything that he faced in
that game. Thinking about that as a therapist now and wondering,
the good God, there's no way he would have come
back at all. He would have been lying lunch hmm.

(20:38):
But had he come back, I don't think there would
have been much chance. He was that adaptive.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
I think you'd be experiencing someone who was having consistent
psychotic features possibly even coming out of that kind of
trauma coming back into the world in that way that
he did. Also the realation that he comes to that
he has to come to immediately, which is also that
it's a different, completely different time and his family is dead. Like,

(21:09):
there's the fact that the character jumps through those experiences
so quickly in the movie is so absolutely unrealistic. And
again it's a kid's movie. We get that, and that
is impossible.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Well yeah, it's the idea that he wouldn't be immediately hospitalized.
I feel like in a more grounded version of this movie,
he would run out of the house be acting a mess,
like viewing everything and everyone is a threat.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Well even how yeah, sorry, yeah, that makes me think
of how he jumped onto the police car, right where
like in movies like this, where somebody comes out of
like a dream state or something, they run out into
the street and they get hit by a car, and
instead he jumps on top of the car, right Like,
that's a part of him responding to something as a threat,

(22:04):
even though that's not what the intention was with the car.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Well, and also what makes me curious about his mental
state and maybe even how you where we're going with
this is so funny. How he perceived time in Jumanji
is that he comes back to the present time or
in the real world, assuming that like he almost acts
like no time has passed, like his parents were just
out to dinner still like he's like, my dad must

(22:29):
be down at the factory, like he's he's acting as
if he's been gone for like a month in terms
of where he thinks time is, which I get, like,
you probably don't know sense of time where he was
the way that we do, because they probably didn't have
like clocks and calendars and stuff. But to act as
if so much time hadn't passed, it makes me curious

(22:52):
how he was even like perceiving time psychologically or how
time even passes in Jumanji, because it does seem like
he was kind of stuck to in some ways, well.

Speaker 4 (23:01):
He's developmentally stuck.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
He knew he knew it was twenty six years, but
when the simultaneous difference between what he'd be perceiving and
knowing logically versus what the feeling side of his brain
would be telling him to keep him alive, like where
his hopes would be that wouldn't have grown because he
didn't have another adult besides the Hunter who he clearly
knew to interact with that we know of for twenty

(23:27):
six years, as he went through all those moments of
life and survival and jungle shit, he would have not
had a single adult to challenge any of his childlike
thoughts with. Nobody would have broken it down from him
as he got older, like happens for most of us,
where somebody, some adult and older siblings, somebody pulls you

(23:50):
aside and goes, hey, buddy, h So life's real life
is rough out here. Shit happens, people die. Nobody had
those conversations with him, and he didn't watch people age,
and he didn't have a mirror. He may have seen
himself in water, but I don't know that the child
part inside of him that left the real world and

(24:12):
went into Jumanji that didn't have an opportunity to grow.
So as he's investing hope, is he finally gets that
wish he would have been dissociated like that, h pulled
back into Oh.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
My god, I'm finally I'm home. Everything I've ever wanted
is beck.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
And assuming it would be kind of right where it
was when he left it.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Right, which you have no reason to believe otherwise.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah, well, and also you get sucked into a game
you played, I guess all bets are off in terms
of what could be possible.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Well, I was even I was even thinking about the
propensity to give up hope while he was in the games.
It's interesting. I mean, like, I think it makes sense
because he's just trying to survive and that's all that
he can focus on, and that's all that he can do.
But it really makes me wonder if it was just
like NonStop, like a NonStop nightmare that he was in

(25:01):
the whole time.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, must I was thinking about this as I was
talking with my wife about doing this movie, of whether
I would say he would even qualify for PTSD yet,
And I think the answer I'd come to is no,
because he literally, as we're watching this film in the
middle of it, just gets ejected from the game.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
But he's still in the game.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, the game follows him out pretty much.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
So we don't until the very end, which we'll talk
about that later, yep. But the we don't see him
out of threat, so he's still in survival mode. It
can't be a post traumatic experience because he's still in
one that hasn't stopped.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
That's a good point. He's very much go go going,
you know, we got to do this. We gotta change,
we got to get over here, we got to get
the game. We gotta find Sarah where we got to
get her to play the game. Like he is in
that mode, still just trying to get one foot in
front of the other to get to the end of this.

Speaker 4 (26:07):
Correct. Correct, So I think he'd be.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
It makes sense that we see two different like realities
have to hardcore collide when he first gets out of
the game, that he's coming back into his house, but
it's in complete disarray, and he's not even perceiving that
that house has been abandoned for twenty years. That he's

(26:30):
just oh, it's my house. He's probably not accurately even
able to rely on his senses at that point because
he's just running through seeing all his stuff and everything's there,
and he's gotten his.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
Wish to be back.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
He'd have no reason to assume that it would be
twenty six years later outside of the game like it
was inside of the game.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah. Well yeah, And also, as we're talking about like
dissociating and stuff like that, how that screws of their
concept of time. And how if you're in that much
rival mode in Jumanji the Jungle, you probably aren't perceiving
time or the passage of time in a way that
feels as fully realized as when you're present.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Correct, And I think the same thing happens to anybody
that leaves home for a while, the idea you have
of home, even going to college, you still think things
are going to be the same when you come back
after the end of the semester or whatever frequency you did,
and you don't realize that life goes on without you.
And Alan, being a twelve year old kid, wouldn't yet

(27:37):
have the cognitive capacity to overcome the egocentrist and to
understand that life would have gone on without him, and
people would have assumed that he was dead.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, it is an interesting little kind of side throwaway stuff.
How they talk about how basically everyone thinks his dad
murdered him and chopped his that's like the town rumor, right, Yeah,
it doesn't sound like his dad like went to jail
or any thing, but it sounds like that's maybe more
the lower the bean legend in their town is that
the parish boy got killed by his dad when he

(28:08):
went quote unquote missing.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
And let alone, having to digest that everything that he
knew was gone, to the point that there's a homeless
man who is the only other person that shows him kindness.
Immediately yep, HM offers him clothes, like dude, you're gonna freeze.
That tells him the truth, which is that your dad

(28:33):
kept looking for you.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
I don't like though, that he goes, yeah, your parents
are over there. Say your parents' graves are over there.
Don't make it sound like they're hanging out in the park.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
I wondered if Alan knew where that was already, so
like when he said where they were, if he already
knew that the cemetery was there. But I don't know.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Maybe yeah, I mean, I agree with your point, and
that's that's something that in the critical incident training and
peer support training that I've gone through working with first responders,
one of the things that they make sure you know
is hit the hard truth immediately. Don't let people wait,
don't leave them wait, like listen, so and So.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Died, yep, Like, don't mislead them.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
Don't mislead them, don't let them wonder, don't let the
don't try to shy away from the reaction. Just tell
them the fucking truth right now. That's one of the
things that people struggle with of like how do we
handle lot we don't want to tell them yet or whatever, like, no,
tell them now right now, because nothing that you say
will even matter anyway. Yep, they're not listening for anything

(29:42):
except that, So tell them what they need to know. Yeah,
and I agree with that point that telling them all
they're over on.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
In a front street or right.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
No.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
I was like, come on, don't make it sound like
they're hanging out.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Or like they live on a street or they just
moved someplace else, which is what it very much feels
like his energy that he's giving to mm hmmm, yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
Which you know was narratively interesting but not you know.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Not fair.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, well, just not thoughtful.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah. I think one thing I also wanted to just
talk about further is this idea of yeah, like this
being a man thing that kind of resonates through the movie.
It seems like that's the thing because of this arrested
development component, like these are the last messages that Alan
gets about the world kind of and who he needs
to be and how to be a man, right, So

(30:32):
then he gets sucked into this game where then unfortunately
that gets proven right in the sense that you have
to face things that you're scared of, you have to fight,
you have to fight, you have to fight. And then
the only other person human he encounters in the game
is a hunter that looks like his dad. I wonder
if the game made him look like his dad to
fuck with him. Probably mean, and he's definitely well, and

(30:54):
he's he's saying the things that his dad. It's like
they did like pull from his psyche and create a
person that looks like his dad who is a uber
version of that concept. Like he calls him a coward.
He's like, come and face me, you coward, like just
throwing that narrative in his face. So also, how could

(31:17):
that not result in a person who thinks that, who
stays in almost like perpetual fight and then thinks that
that's the correct way to be because that's the messaging
he got before, during and probably after too.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yep, and had to constantly square with what he was
and was not and never had any other opinion of
another human to balance it off for twenty six years.
That does deep damage to people.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
And just the loneliness of that as well of how
much we as human beings need human connection. And then
the only other human that we know of that he's
encountering in this hellscape is a guy who is the
most traumatizing version of his dad. Yeah, you know, like
I think, going back to like the unrealistic parts of

(32:09):
this movie.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Of course, him coming back.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
And being as socially adept as he is, being able
to even be chill enough with the kids, even though
he's like irritable, which is very understandable. I do like
that version of his presentation that he is on edge.
He is not like George of the Jungle. He's not
fun and like ooh, like he is kind of a

(32:34):
prick and he earned it. I get why he's a prick,
And I kind of like that. Robin Williams went with
that Edgi or more irritable presentation.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
And I just realized that we said the house is
all dilapidated, but it was. I forgot they fixed it.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Up before he Yeah there and over the course of
an afternoon a school day, fixed up that whole house
and fully furnished it.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, right, watching him come back and somehow competently cut
his hair and shave was moving magic, but also absolutely
that child part trying to actualize and present now that
he had a mirror in a way, to face it
in a way that was less disturbing and distressing immediately

(33:21):
upon visual stimuli being perceived. That matters to understand that
if that's the part that's in control, that's the part
that's going to want to look like it's in control
and present outwardly.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
The shaving part. What actually that made me think of
is how when we've gone through something traumatic or chronically traumatically,
he has how you can gain all of these survival
skills that are very unique and impressive, and you can
almost argue like post traumatic growth esque, but then simultaneously

(34:00):
you don't know how to do activities of daily living
kind of stuff, and they don't know how to do
like basic things like him not knowing how to shave.
Just felt like a very that struck me as realistic.
Two people I've worked with in real life who have
survived and have a lot of like street smart survival

(34:20):
skills stuff, but there's like very basic things that they
just never learned how to do because no one took
the time to teach them. Or was able to teach them,
or they were never an environment where someone thought to
teach them that, And how he's going to have a
lot of those post this experience, like if we cut
off the corrective ending, like let's say they just had

(34:41):
to keep going right at when this movie, when the
game ends, He's someone that would probably need a lot
of social skills teaching in these very specific ways that
I think we take for granted, knowing when you're raised
in a either like community or a family where you

(35:01):
learn how to take care of these more like smaller
minutia tasks.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
Agreed, it wouldn't have been relevant those things, right, Those
things are negligible when your survival's on the table, when
you put that into scale of I could actually get
eaten by a lion or run over by a rhino
which also doesn't live in the jungle, or an African elephant,

(35:29):
which maybe but Indian elephants live in the jungle.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
But looking at the idea of.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
The amount of danger, the basic survival skills and things,
they wouldn't be relevant. And looking at the way Robin
facially and bodily acted through those moments of seeing the
sadness and also the weird combination of competence against immense
danger but none against society. How that man only got

(36:03):
one oscar in his career baffles me.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
And it's very also similar to if you think about
Shawshank redemption, like people who spend a lot of their
lives in an institution of some sort, like prison, where
you're just trying to survive. You figure out the lay
of the land. You're very good at this kind of world,
and then you have to go back to or or
grow into the quote unquote regular world. Right. I think

(36:29):
we see it with like Morgan Freeman's character and just
how much we forget is a learned behaviors that if
you've been outside of quote unquote regular life, you either
never learn or you forget. And that stuff can feel
really hard to ask for help about because it can
feel really embarrassing to admit to other people I don't

(36:52):
know how to do these very basic things.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
I think he'd present more like the girl from US
and has its own human ecosystem. This he had no
human I would be surprised if you remembered how to speak.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah, I thought the same thing.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
I was thinking the same thing because after and also
how easily he drops and again, this is just a
part of the movie, I'm sure, But how easily he
drops into communicating with the monkeys, communicating with the other
animals like making loud noises and doing different grunts and
different kind of yeah, animal sounds, I guess is the

(37:33):
best way to say defensive noises exactly, And how it
would make a lot of sense if you forgot how
to speak, because he doesn't have to talk to anybody.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
I think realistically, the most likely things he would have done.

Speaker 4 (37:45):
Would be attack or flee. Yeah, I don't think.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
I think you would have struggled to come up with
the social parts of him that were encoded for a
third of his life and then not reinforced for the
next two thirds.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, and the only person you have a conversation with
your running from. I don't think he was sitting down
and having tea with the Hunter and keeping.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
Fresh on his English seems doubtful.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Yeah, I feel like he was ever never heard of
him talk. He probably ran. Because that's also a part
that I thought was really well acted in the movie,
is when he realizes the Hunter when he says he'll
make you feel just like a child. That was really
well done. And that felt like trauma. Yeah, like the
way that he like curls in on himself as soon
as he realizes who's coming, and how scared he seems

(38:37):
of that than anything else. Yep, absolutely, even though the
hunter is would be you'd imagine what was quote unquote
less scary than like a lion coming at your face
or like giant spiders or rhinos. But that does seem
to hit him at a level because who knows, like
the pain and agony of like I miss people so much, yeah,

(38:59):
and then being taught, but it's the only person I
would like want to be, Like, the only person available
to me is this fucking asshole. Yeah, Like that is torture,
Yeah too probably long for other people have one around
and you can't even let them know that you're around

(39:20):
because you're in danger.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
Yeah, and let's not forget that that person carries an
elephant gun. So we've talked about Alan in his journey
rather not quite the ending, but anything more we want
to say on Alan, No, I think.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
The only other thing I want to say is that
I think he does a really good job of acting
a little bit like a young like a twelve year
old as an adult when he kind of is teasing.
He kind of teases Sarah a little bit. He makes
a couple of faces that are kind of like little
kid faces, And I thought that that was a really
accurate way to show somebody who is who has who

(39:58):
is literally arrested development.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Yeah, like his dynamic with the kids, he is more
like peers, and he's kind of shitty with them the
way that you'd be shitty with a peer. And then
when he tries to be more of a father figure,
he immediately starts emulating his dad, which is like when
kids play act a version of the adults around them. Yes,
like he's he has a little bit too much insight
where he says like, look at me acting like my father.

(40:21):
That's very much a nineties movie line, absolutely, but it
makes sense that as soon as he's put in that
position he just acts like his dad, Like literally just
make believes like his dad.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
Yeah, yep, he sure does. And watching how pervasive that
becomes in his behavior is brilliantly acted by Robin Williams,
who clearly has taken the direction to act like a
kid in a man's body.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
Yeah, that's kind of I mean, that's hook, that's Jack
like so many movies he's done.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Is that almost like it wasn't an accident he got
cast in this. Yeah, let's take break here and we'll
come back and talk about Sarah.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Sarah. Oh, I have a soft spot for Sarah. She
makes me sad. I feel like in the moon when
I watched movies as a kid, she really stuck with me.
Mm because Sarah is, as we've kind of mentioned, she
is the friend of Alan who is with him, the
only person with him when Alan gets sucked into Jumanji.

(41:27):
And I think this movie does a really good job
of showing a realistic aftermath for someone put in her position,
someone who at the age of twelve witnesses something truly
unexplainable and unbelievable. You know, there there is no I
don't know if any sane therapist, psychologist, especially not in

(41:52):
the seventies or late sixties, early seventies, wouldever corroborate that
kind of story the way that she's explaining it. I
get the idea that, like, if I was her child therapist,
as much as I hate to admit it, like I
think I would also be like, oh, she must have

(42:12):
seen something happen to this kid that was really bad
and her brain made it this. To deal with it,
to put it into this context of like a child's game,
I can understand why she has the narrative she currently
has where she has been a therapy for many years
and on medication and she just thinks it's a delusion
or something she made up, or like a fake memory

(42:33):
or something for when she was a kid.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
Right, And.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
Having something like this show up in a film is
difficult because the therapist's side of you is going, Yeah, people,
people go through stuff that other people don't validate all
the time. Absolutely, you really need to let their story
be their story, and in some respects, it doesn't matter

(43:03):
if it's true or not. If that's the story they
need to tell you. As a therapist, it's your job
to sit with them, listen to it, validate it, and
operate within it being real because it just might be
or it might be the way their brain encoded something
they couldn't explain in an age where they didn't yet
have the cognitive or emotional capacity to concretize. But also,

(43:30):
like Britney said, looking at this from the standpoint of
knowing how our profession has advanced in the sixties to
expect anybody to say, that's not gonna.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
She gets slapped with a psychotic disorder of some sorts.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Well in that well, in that time, probably just schizophrenia,
because that's what they gave people who had any kind
of hallucination m hm or what or delusion or whatever.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
They didn't seem rooted in reality.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
Yeah, right, or simultaneously or not simultaneously, but alternatively, her
parents may have told her stop saying that, or they're
going to put you into this place is on these
kinds of medications, But she knows what she saw and

(44:21):
it was her reality. And it's a really delicate line
to dancy, because people's brains are capable of all kinds
of things and at different ages like that could be
a very deep discussion. We're not going to get it
fully into today. It's important to understand that how the
human mind chooses to repusent represent stimuli can be really

(44:42):
powerful and take many forms that can represent something very real.
Like all of us worked with clients with psychoses, and
it's very important to understand that their feelings underneath the
delusions and paranoia and hallucinations were all very real and
rooted in something they went through or were going through

(45:06):
that they didn't have the ability to process, or their
brain because of the way their neurotransmitters were operating obstructed
them from having a reasonable way to explain it, and
it became something different. But there's always always a real
emotion underneath it that is important for clinicians to respond

(45:27):
to and they will always It was a very important
part of our training working with those populations. Don't argue
with the psychosis, don't try to tell them it's not real.
Validate the feeling underneath it. That must be really scary
for you. I don't see the same thing, but I

(45:48):
understand that you do, and that you're seeing it right now,
and I understand why that's really scary.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
I feel like I remember I would say so often,
but I believe you, right, But I believe that this
is what you're ex experiences like, and I believe that
this is this is and that sounds really scary or
that must be really scary, and how that is so
much more important of helping someone process the way that
they feel, versus whether or not what they're talking about

(46:16):
is real or not.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Well, I think what's hard about the Sarah situation. This
is the movie of it all exactly, is that this
really happened to her, Yes, and the story so outlandish
that who would believe her? Right?

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (46:33):
And also I would imagine if I was her, You've
witnessed someone you care about, a kid, get sucked into
some place that you imagine is really dangerous and he's
still there for as much as you know. So also
from her perspective as a kid, the urgency factor of
it's not about whether you believe me or not. From
a validation perspective, are we going to save him from Jumanji?

(46:57):
So needing the adults to believe her was just a
validation thing. Like I think for some of our clients
they just want to feel validated when they have psychosis,
but for her, it's probably more like they're a crime
has occurred where someone that I care about who's a kid,
needs help. I can't stop bringing this up until someone
believes me, and then I'm sure eventually gives up because

(47:21):
of the consequences of continuing to reiterate her story. I
think that's what would be really hard if I was
working with her as her therapist, is if she kept
repeating that story to me, I could definitely do what
you guys are saying, which is this kid went missing?
So like that's real. You know, she was one of
the last people to see Alan Parrish alive, right, so

(47:44):
something happened. Who knows what the police might have Like
it makes me even curious. I'm very curious about her story,
Like did the police interrogate her? I'm sure they did, right,
They did say.

Speaker 4 (47:54):
That many times.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yeah, And so she's put in this herri position where
she's trying to tell the truth and there's urgency to that.
And even if I was validating, like, yeah, it's really hard.
I must have been really scary when your friend Alan
went missing. Like even if I really dug into the
parts that emotionally were true, I could see her being like,

(48:18):
I don't need you to say I get it anymore.
Are we gonna get this kid out of Jumanji or not?
So I could see why eventually she just has to
give up and just say I must have been making
it up because it is a wild story and because
I can't get anyone to believe me. So if I

(48:39):
want to keep going without breaking my own goddamn brain
more than I already has been, I have to relent
with the story. Everyone else is telling.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
Well, this is where all of those things are true
and how it would present in reality, which it sort
of does in this movie. Obviously they can't get deep
into it because it's the kids movie. But someone like this,
when something they encounter a reality, they know that a
part of them knows that nobody else knows. This is

(49:11):
how di Id forms because a part of you knows
the fucking truth, and all of the other parts are
telling you this is dangerous to your survival, so you
don't know it, and you will shut the fuck up
and you will put it in a box and it
will stay there. This is how Diid forms. Sarah forms
an entire another identity. She doesn't even go by that name.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
But to choose to become like a psychic in the
house that you grew up in is interesting. I would
have a lot of questions about that.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
For her, I guess I think about it in terms of,
especially when you're in a small town, that there might
not be anything else that she can do where she
can be kind of like secluded and take appointments only
and like stuff like that, where she doesn't have to
do any kind of training of any kind, and like
she's already known as like a weirdo in the town,

(50:04):
so it would make a lot of sense that she
would kind of lean into something like that. Yeah, Like
her house is probably definitely the Witch's house. Yes of
the town, the every town I feel like has a
has a house with a bunch of like lower around it.
I'm sure the parish house is also won both those
houses following that incident. But yeah, I mean, I think

(50:28):
what we see with her, like we said, is she
seems to after this incident total social isolation of her own.
Like Alan and her what they have in common as adults, unfortunately,
is that this trauma has totally isolated them since it
initially happened. They're doing this like parallel story the two
of them, where since that happened, it has pulled them

(50:50):
metaphorically and literally from the world of everybody else. Like
what's interesting is later in the movie, Alan, because he's
stuck in his arrested development bring except her boyfriend, brings
up Billy, like did you marry Billy? And she doesn't
even know who She can't even remember Billy. She's like
Billy who Like that says a lot about how her

(51:11):
life has been going.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
That she's like that. I wonder if, like the parts
of her before this happened don't even really feel like
her life.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
They don't.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Like Billy is a race, like all that time when
she was maybe a popular girl or whatever.

Speaker 3 (51:28):
Is moot they are, Yeah, it's gone, it's a it's dissociated.

Speaker 4 (51:36):
Mm hm mean.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
And I realized I said de id without explaining it,
So let me explain, yeah, and respond to some feedback
sometimes that I that we sometimes say things without explaining
it for people who may not have the same education
as us as The idea is dissociative identity disorder, which
used to be called multiple personality disorder, which was a
incredibly poor name for what the disorders. And what happens

(52:02):
with that is that sometimes people encounter such horrible things
that make them feel so profoundly trapped, stuck, unable to
survive their reality or square with it, square with what happened,
that they start having to form alternate parts of their
identity that become more adaptive to a reality that they're living,

(52:26):
that allow them to keep something dangerous in a secluded
place in their consciousness. And it's something that Sarah essentially
describes going through and she's becoming whatever she's calling herself,
and it is Madame Serena, Madame Serena, right, but it's
it would also be fitting that she wouldn't be able
to leave that house.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Oh yeah, Like I wouldn't be shocked if she was
like a gorphobic, Like if you could give her that diagnosis,
if she'd fit the criteria of that at least social
anxiety for sure.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
She says, she's leave, yeah, so, but that she would
also be I mean socioeconomically stuck in a home that
she inherited because she can't escape as one component of this,
and especially in the nineties where women at this point
are only what twenty three years into being able to
have their own credit cards, Yeah, something like that. But

(53:22):
looking at how mentally, she would also be likely adhered
to the town because the part of her that she's
isolated away that we're talking about, how she would feel
like we need to save Alan. She never did get
to do that. And because her story couldn't be validated

(53:44):
or real because it was so bonkers and outlandish that
there was no validating of it.

Speaker 4 (53:52):
It still knows it was true. Yeah, and it can't
be denied because it was true. That's the way our
memory works. You can't lie to yourself, not successfully, not completely.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
It's still there and you still fucking know, and you
don't always have access to it. But it's not always
a conscious process. So I don't want to say that
people that have gaps in their memory it's their fault.
I'm not saying that, But I'm saying that the survival
messages you got from those moments will still present themselves,
and they may seem like they don't attach to anything,

(54:26):
but they do. It's in there somewhere. And for Sarah,
she knows what she saw and what she went through,
and the guilt she would feel knowing she was unable
to communicate that in a way that got Alan saved,
would be stuck in her twelve year old self where
it got frozen in time. So it's a twelve year

(54:47):
old guilt self with all that egocentrism and none of
the lessons learned from adulthood, that thinks she's responsible because
she played the game with him, that she wasn't able
to save him or keep playing or doing anything. That
she ran away and nobody ever saw these bats or
anything else. Yeah, it's a psychological trap.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
That it's so.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
Impossible that the only survival for her was to fracture
that identity off, freeze it, and become something in someone else,
because she was in this recurring terror where no one
believed her and everyone made up a story that she
knew wasn't true that she either had to square with
or face a worse reality herself. I keep holding onto
the story that no one's believing and get sent away

(55:32):
and be in even more danger, or deny your own reality.
That was her choice, and then thinking about what happened
to that town and everything that happened, Like we still
see the town looking okay, but context of the story is.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
It's a little dilapidated. It's gone down.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
It's gone down because the major economic driver was the
Parish family, and after this event, everybody lost their jobs
and had to do something else. The town transformed.

Speaker 4 (56:00):
A lot.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
I think what's also interesting about the Sarah story to
kind of continue to bring it into like the real
life version of this is there are a lot of
people who get told that what happened to them did
not happen to them, And so I also think Sarah
is a really accurate representation of someone who has been

(56:23):
told over and over again by authority figures, you're wrong,
You're crazy, you can't trust your reality, you can't trust
your perception. You need to be on I'm I would
bet money that she's on antipsychotics. When she calls her
psychiatrist and she's like, I'm seeing things again. I think
we need up my dosage. I bet you she's on
an anti psychotic. You know, based on that, that seems

(56:46):
like to be her central presentation. Yes, And so I
think she looks like someone who is very timid, socially isolated.
You know how your confidence in yourself and your sense
of self also doesn't develop when you are repeatedly told
from a young age that you can't trust your own mind,

(57:08):
especially in this situation where she could actually trust her
own mind, Like it would be different if she was
having actual psychosis and maybe had some awareness of that,
versus where she just has to kind of believe and
trust that everyone else is telling her the truth and
she cannot trust herself, and that being like the central

(57:30):
theme of her life from twelve on, I guess I
can't trust myself. What that does to you from like
like if anyone else is se an inside out too,
when like it's all about your belief system, and how
like things will go down to your belief system and
form your identity, Like that is an orb that goes

(57:51):
down and fucks up the entire ecosystem of her belief
system and everything splinters from that. If I can't trust myself,
how do I date? How do I make decisions? How
do I figure out what I want to do for
a career, How do I move out of my parents' house?
How do I go to college? I can't trust myself,
And I've worked with people because of trauma that will

(58:13):
tell me why can't make that decision? And we have
to work together on trying to build trust in yourself
and that you can trust yourself and that you aren't
just inherently crazy, wrong, whatever, bad.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
And those memories get stuck and they become formative. And
it's what a lot of therapy, like some of the
ones I'm certified in.

Speaker 4 (58:45):
Entirely are.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Designed to deal with, is how insidious those ideas become.
And if you can reach the point where they formed
and work on bringing that version of reality into present
emotional awareness without the encoded danger, you can help heal people.
But people think if you just tell someone to stop

(59:09):
feeling a certain way and think about it without accessing
where the memory is stored emotionally, and they'll get better.
It's missing the point. All learning, all information, everything that
we take in has to be processed through the emotional
side of our brain first, which means that if you're

(59:31):
going to change any learning, it must be done through feeling,
not thought. And Sarah gets a gift in this movie
that Alan comes back and shows back up, and she
gets an opportunity to re engage from the point where
she lost and has to make a decision to either

(59:54):
continue hiding from the reality she's been hiding from herself
that she simultaneously knows she's hiding from herself, but has
gotten so used to hiding from herself that it's painful
to admit. Nope, all this hiding you've been doing for
all this time was actually the bullshit, not what.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
People have been.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Telling you for the past twenty six years as bullshit.
And she rejects that for a little bit when they're
telling her, which was accurately done, Hey, the only way
out of this is we have to play this fucking game,
and she's like.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
Nope, Well, well, because if one thing, it does seem
like she's very bought into the idea of therapy, like
she says, I've been going to therapy for a year.
She calls her psychiatrist right away. Like the narrative she's
bought into is that I am unwell, this isn't real.

(01:00:45):
And so when that reality gets proven for her, which
you think, like logically that would be a very positive
experience for her, Like if you're coming at this from
a very pragmatic mindset, I could see and like not
a therapeutic mindset of being, like, well, that's a good this,
there's a win for her, Like this thing that she's
been telling everybody her whole life is real gets proven.
Finally she should be feeling great. And what she actually

(01:01:08):
presents as, which I think is more realistic, is oh,
I'm losing it. This is something bad is happening. I
can't trust, like going back that I can't trust myself.
And like in real life, how this more happens is families, right,
not necessarily like the whole town like we see here,
but it's more that your family of origin will tell

(01:01:31):
you a story about yourself and what happened and what
didn't happen, and that forms the presentation Sarah has.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
It certainly can and to add to the layer of that,
not only does she feel the I guess the impact
of realizing that all those things she had hidden from
herself were actually real.

Speaker 4 (01:01:57):
And she's.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Like, you're saying that it would be a struggle by
itself to realize. Okay, so all that stuff that I
had created safety for myself that okay, I'm I've misperceived
that I can't trust my brain. Something's wrong with me,
and that's why I had this experience and Alan just
ran away or something happened to him. But I'm not
responsible for that. That was something my brain created because
I'm not okay, that was well, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
A safer truth. Then there's a fucking board game that
can suck you into another dimension yep, because you didn't
think it would be dangerous to play a board game, right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
I do think that one of the things that is
the worst thing about trauma in a lot of ways
is the taking away you being able to trust yourself.
I think that that's one of the that's one of
the symptoms that I feel like I experience a lot
with clients and how and how truly hard and tricky.

(01:02:54):
It is to shift those beliefs like you brought up
inside out too when you because a part of having
beliefs a belief system is that then your brain only
looks for those things, yeah, confirmation bias, confirmation bias, and
then you end up with a whole file that proves

(01:03:14):
all of these awful things.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
It like proves like for her, like oh bonkers.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
Exactly exactly. And so that's really the only thing that
I that I think I wanted to say, just in
general about Sarah's experience is that not being able to
trust yourself it really throws it can really throw people
for a loop because again, the impact that you both
talked about on the sense of self is so big
and just and just really again, I think is just

(01:03:43):
one of the meanest and one of the meanest parts
about trauma, is it taking that ability away from someone
and then it being reinforced all over the place because
of the experience that she had.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Should we take a break here and move on to
Judy and Peter, Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Yes, please right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
Judy. I love a kid like Judy.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Judy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
It was my favorite kind of kid when I used
to work exclusively with kids. I loved a Judy just
like such a little defiant kid, and so kind of
what I wanted to touch upon with Julie is they
established very quickly. Well. One one thing I don't know
if we clarified was Judy and Peter are siblings that
move into the parish house in the nineties with their

(01:04:26):
aunt Nora because their parents died in a car accident.
And they don't really say like how long ago that was.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Do they say how long it was A year ago.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
A year ago, last year? Maybe she says that. I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
So the only reason why I'm not sure is what
the timing is is because I do feel like they
had to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
Move started a new school, started a new.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
School, and that usually that that would happen after, like
not long after maybe the parents had died. I don't know,
because they couldn't have kept them out of school for
a year, but they could have kept them at their
own old school for a year and then came. I
don't ever remember there being something said about how long
it's been.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
It could definitely been a thing where their aunt was like,
I'll we'll make the end of the school year work,
just to not make a ton of changes at once. Yeah,
and then we'll find a new house, a bigger house
where I can fit us all, a huge house actually,
and we'll start you in a new school in the fall. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Yeah. And it also and I feel like it also
feels like the sister inherited the house.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
Nora, she bought it. I think the Subtexas. I think
she's intending to make this a bed and breakfast is
what I think she starts making like a reception area.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Oh shit, you're right, you're right. Yeah, I do remember
that part. Never never took that in anyway, And yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Don't know if that's true. That's that's just the perception
I got, So don't take that. But I thought I
got the feeling it kind of like maybe kind of
like Forrest Gump, or maybe it said I watched Forrest
Gump recently, so.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
This is a boarding house situation, a.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
Boarding house situation, or if she actually said it, but
like the impression I got was she was getting this
big house not because she's super wealthy, but because that
was gonna be the means of.

Speaker 4 (01:06:15):
Income she had.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
And honestly, that makes more sense because it's just her
and two kids, Like she's a single lady it seems
like before yeah, like taking these kids on post her
brother's death. Yeah. Yeah, But so right away we get
introduced to Judy as this kid who's pathologically lying, as

(01:06:36):
we would say, she is telling not just like little lies,
but she's making up like whole soap opera esque personas
that she tells adults around her and probably kids too,
But we only see her really interact with adults besides
her brother, right right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:54):
It's and you know that she's not had a lot
of time to process this happened what like the winter
before or something. It's there's not a lot of time
to get a balanced perspective. And we don't even know
where they lived before this. I don't think that's ever covered.
We don't know how much change is happening. And then
to only have a brother that interacts with you, that

(01:07:16):
you're responsible for and an aunt that you know questionably.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
Yeah, we don't know how well they know the aunt,
you know. Yeah, Like, there's a lot of unknowns about
their life before the beginning of the movie. And even
if we make an assumption, I think this is where
maybe you're making the assumption, Ben like that in the
very end the parents it's Christmas time, and the parents say, like,
we're thinking of going on a ski trip, so afford
to take that as the same narrative that they maybe

(01:07:43):
died during the holidays, oh maybe. And then this aunt
who maybe was involved in their life takes them in
like it's a big life adjustment for both of the
like for the air every about the kids, right.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
Yeah, And so.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
I think what I like about and a lot of
kids I work with like her is she's the kind
of kid that I think would get labeled with a
really unfeeling diagnosis. What I mean by that is like
something like oppositional defiant disorder, maybe even conduct depending on
how intensive presentation is.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
We don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
All we know is she tells a lot of lies
in a way that seems very cavalier, and that she
maybe got in trouble at school the very first day.
Yeah like that. I even rewound that part when the
aunt says, it's only been the first day of school
and your principal's already called me and I have to
go meet them tomorrow. But the aunt never says who

(01:08:42):
it's about, because so it could be about Peter and
maybe the fact that he doesn't talk. It could be
about Judy and maybe she's doing shit at school already
that's causing a lot of disruption. Yeah, you know, I
don't or maybe even the principals just being on top
of it. And it's like, we have these two new
kids who are siblings whose parents tragically and they're a
little odd. You know. It could be very innocuous like that.

(01:09:03):
We have no clue that is true. But I could
see Judy being a kid that isn't taken seriously in
the right way. Judy feels like a kid who would
get in a lot of behavioral trouble. Yes, And because
she isn't like weeping and very emotive in that way
that the adults would project a lot of their adult bullshit.

(01:09:25):
And what I mean by that is the amount of
times I've worked with kids who have like behavioral stuff
like this, like lying, bullshitting, stealing, and the adults project
all these adults sophisticated thinking onto them. This kid's so manipulative.
This kid's trying to like get the best of me.
This kid like as if little kids like well, she's
like probably twelve, but as if younger kids are like

(01:09:48):
plotting and scheming like soap opera villains, because they're trying
to fuck your world up, and we give them too
much sophistication at that age. When I've worked with kid
like Judy, the very first thing I thought when she
was doing all that Banana's lying in the beginning is
she really needs attention. She really needs attention.

Speaker 4 (01:10:11):
She absolutely needs attention at minimums.

Speaker 3 (01:10:16):
She's getting diagnosed with adjustment disorder and with conduct is
absolutely a specifier in that. Yeah, And the thing that
brings kids out of that when they have an experience
that causes them to have an adjustment that is so
profoundly life altering that they may have a lash out
reaction against this reality is attention, is validation, is letting

(01:10:41):
them feel seen and not trying to take away their
experience so they're easier to manage, because that will cause
them to react even more aggressively against whatever bullshit you're
peddling to them, because what you're not doing is making
them feel seen and heard, and that they simultaneously have

(01:11:02):
to just get over the fact that life isn't the
same as it used to be, but also they need
a lot of space for that to be okay.

Speaker 4 (01:11:08):
That it's not.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
Easy, and people, especially in the nineties, would just like
life sucks, get over it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
Yeah, for sure, you're difficult for me. Yeah, exactly, exactly
one of the things that I was thinking about too,
knowing that we also hear their aunt describe her brother
as a very loving and very involved parent. Yes, and
so I feel like the other piece that would make

(01:11:37):
a lot of sense with Judy Ben, like you're saying
and Brittany, is that she needs She's used to getting
a lot of attention. She's used to getting a lot
of love and support and caring, and now that the
people who have given that to her are gone, and
she just doesn't know how to get her needs met.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Way go ahead, and even just from like a lifestyle perspective,
to go from two parents and what seems like a
very conventional nuclear family, very involved parents to an aunt that,
even if they're closer ish with, is a single woman,
probably a business owner. She has that very type of
like she was a single business lady in the city

(01:12:22):
and then her brother and his wife died and now
she has to like like drastically change her life and
become a mother pretty much and figure out what school
districts are and like shit like that, you know, like
I wouldn't be shocked if she lived in the city
in New York and she's moving them to New England
where like families are and how that big adjustment. You're

(01:12:49):
just not gonna get the same kind of attention as
you would with your parents because it's a different dynamic
and it's yeah, and it's also like not like their
aunt chose to adopt them either necessarily like chose to
adopt kids. It's also she's probably also having to adjust
to now I have to be very present for these

(01:13:11):
two kids that are going through a horrible trauma and
my life maybe was just about me. And that's a
big shift and lifestyle for all of them. And so
I'm sure, like you were saying that Judy and Peter
are left and a lot of times she's kind of
just the two of them doing their own thing. Even
from like a single mom perspective. Now they have this
aunt who's basically a single mom, who knows like if

(01:13:34):
their mom was a stay at home mom, they're like
their biological mom and if they were getting someone was
home when they got home, Like she even asks, did
you guys used to get picked up from school or
did you take the bus? I can drive you if
you need to get driven, or do you want to
take the bus? Like That's how removed their aunt is
from what their routine was like before her.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
You know, speaking is someone who is a parent. The
life change that happened when you get pregnant, let alone
all the things that change when you raise the tiny humans.
There's a fuck of a lot to deal with by itself,
let alone having that suddenly come upon you without all

(01:14:16):
of the transition period that goes with growing said human
and seeing them develop and slowly adjusting to the ideas that,
oh you're tired. Now go through a pregnancy, you start
to feel all of these changes coming and you have
time to adjust them.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
And this is an overnight situation for Nora too.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
Right, and without going through all of that pre attachment
that goes with having children and watching them grow and
that knowing they're a part of you.

Speaker 4 (01:14:49):
That's a hell of a lot to ask someone to
do overnight.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
As well intentioned as she is, she just isn't a
parent and doesn't know how to be all of those things.
And you can see it. They do a good job
of representing with showing how lost she feels.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
I think, if nothing else, they're going from being kids
that might have had a school a mom waiting for
them after school to hear about their day and give
them like a snack like some bagel bites. Like they
went from probably that to now they're basically either like
latchkey kids or they come home to an empty house
and they just have to watch themselves for a few
hours until their aunt Nora comes home. So like that's

(01:15:28):
a big life adjustment to feeling very seen and prioritized
to then you are an afterthought now and no matter
how much Nora tries, it's a different vibe, like the
kids are something she's thinking. She's learning how to think
about them first, right right, Like the even the fact

(01:15:49):
that she didn't even really think about the transportation to
schools thing until it was happening, and she was kind
of like, that's what I mean, Like you can see
she's trying, like she's clocking their reactions. She's trying to
but it's definitely a work in progress, like they are
in the transitional stage of figuring out how to live together,
and she's figuring out Nora, like the questions that she

(01:16:12):
never thought to think of or asked before, like oh, fuck,
like I guess fuck, how were they getting to school before?

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Shit? Like am I just assuming they're how to take
a bus?

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
Like oh?

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
And like so you can see her do that work
in the moment, and unfortunately, I think what I got
from that scene is that Judy doesn't want to bother her,
Like Judy's making it work. Judy's like, we're fine, We'll
take the bus. I could see Judy saying that even
if they've never taken the bus before.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
Well, Judy's armor is also taking on she guarded, as
of course she is, but also she can play the
role of caring for her brother in that loving way
of I've been with you your whole life, and that's
going to be something she can lean into for purpose finding,
which is both healthy and unhealthy if not guided properly.

(01:17:02):
It can be very healthy that she's that attached to Peter,
that she looks out for him, and that's part of
her role now to care for him. That's very it
could be very important and healing for both of them.
But also she needs somebody to step in and remind
her that she still gets to be a kid and
still has to be, and you know she's not gonna
trust Nora to necessarily guide her through that just yet.

(01:17:25):
I'm sure Nora is well intentioned and is trying very
hard and will get there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
Oh, but I'm sure Judy clocked her immediately, Like I
like Aunt Nora, she's cool, but she's a freaking mess.
She doesn't know anything about me and a mom. Like
I'm sure she clocked that from a million miles away.
When they were like, you're gonna live with here, Aunt Nora,
she was like, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):
I mean everybody's been around kids figure out adults and
they test constantly.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
Which could also be part of it with the Judy thing, because,
like I said, like she's going Judy is going through
this moment where who she is in the center of
other people's life has changed rapidly. She no longer has
two parents that center her so intensely, especially if they
were as involved as like you were saying that Noras insinuates,

(01:18:11):
well she outred says. And so when kids do weird
outloopy stuff like well, I want to say weird, I
mean things that don't make common sense, like lying, like
stealing chochkey's, like things that our adult brains are like,
why would you make that? Why are you like causing problems?

(01:18:32):
It gets people's attention. Like the reason why Judy tells
those stories that are so intense is it immediately draws
people in. And I think what's actually great about that
is she's very creative. Like those stories she tells are
very creative. They're very funny too, and it gets we
see right away with the real estate agent that it
makes the adults give them all of her attention when

(01:18:54):
she starts telling these wacky lies. And that's just it.
When yep, when adults get all like in their head
with me about like what's going on with my kid?
That they tell these stories? Are they like this diagnoses this,
diagnoses this, diagnosis like overpathologizing it. I just think, what
need are they trying to get met? Everything that everybody does,

(01:19:17):
of all ages is trying to get a need met,
whether we realize that or not. And so with Judy
and kids like Judy, I always just think, well, what
need are they trying to get met? By acting that way? Also,
telling those crazy lies keeps people from asking her about
what's really going on, which is her parents, if she's
if she's distracted. It's also a distraction technique, right, Like

(01:19:39):
if I tell these wacky stories, either they get so
caught up in the story or they're so put off
by my lying that they just go away and I
never really have to talk about what's actually happening, which
is I've lost my fucking parents.

Speaker 4 (01:19:54):
And Peter does the opposite by not talking.

Speaker 1 (01:19:57):
Yeah, well, I think I think what is cute about
their dynamic is when she goes to Peter in the
very beginning, when they're in bed and she goes to
Peter's room, I think, yep. And he does tell her,
if you don't cut that out, the lying, you're going
to go to a shrink. And I think that is
well one. The term shrink is always so funny to me.

(01:20:18):
That's such a nineties term. It is saying a shrink
and that he's not wrong, though it makes me curious
where he heard that. I wonder if people have set
that stuff around him, like Judy, if you don't cut
that out, I'm gonna make you see a shrink because
that's a very adult like, where would you have heard
that language?

Speaker 4 (01:20:39):
I mean, they just grew up real quick.

Speaker 3 (01:20:43):
Oh yeah, so it's likely they were exposed to quite
a bit of that language.

Speaker 1 (01:20:48):
And I'm curious like when you were when I was
saying I really like to work with kids like Judy,
and you were kind of out in your head and Hannah,
what do you like about working with kids like Judy?
I guess what came up with for you with me
saying that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
I think what I really like about working with kids
like Judy is that what they really want is someone
to be real with them, yes, and that I really
enjoy getting an experience with a young person who doesn't
feel connected to anyone else to be able to be

(01:21:20):
someone who can be real with them that they can
and not even like, oh I want them to talk
about this or they have to talk about this hard thing,
but more of somebody who is going to see them
for where they are and somebody who's going to be
able to just tell them the truth. I think a
lot of times what adults don't understand about kids in

(01:21:44):
this position kind of more of what you were saying, Brittany.

Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
Is that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
They take it as kids have specific intentions, yes, all
of the time, and that there's always this intention behind
every single in a mean way, a malicious in a
malicious yeah, a malicious intent, that's a better way to
say it. And I feel like and I feel like
I get these kids in my office and they just

(01:22:13):
want to talk about how they're feeling. They want to
they want to like the attention exactly. They need the attention.
They want to be able to to talk about whatever.
And I think one of the things that I enjoy
about working with these kids is that because most of
my work is with adults, so when I get to
work with a kid, it's so refreshing because there's so

(01:22:36):
much they can be real in a way that's different
from an adult. They can't help but be a certain
level exactly all the time, exactly. They don't know yet
how to not.

Speaker 3 (01:22:48):
Be yeah, all the time, depending on age, these two
a little past that, but many just tell the truth.

Speaker 1 (01:22:56):
Well, Judy could definitely probably bullshit to a point, and
they give yourself away yeah, yeah, correct, because they're trying
on these adults coping defenses. Yes, but they don't have
the sophistication yet to master them, yes, exactly, and so
they give themselves away yeah all the time, almost always. Yeah,

(01:23:18):
but no, but Judy is like a kid that I
think she actually probably depending on how therapy was introduced
to her, Like, I could see her being someone who
might really thrive if she had a good match with
a therapist, because to have a place where an adults,
like you're saying, taking her seriously, listening to her, not
getting on her case. Because also I wonder too with Nora,

(01:23:42):
even Dora is trying to also logistically do so much
problem solving, like moving, getting a good school for these kids,
figuring out how to be a parent, YadA YadA, that
even with all of that going on, there probably isn't
a lot of room to be like sitting with those
kids and just listening to them. Yeah, you know. And
so I hate the fact that they like the shrink

(01:24:06):
line because it is also it's very nineties to use
seeing a therapist as a punishment. Yeah, and then that
gets introduced as a punishment, it's gonna feel like a punishment.
And then what would really happened with a kid like
Judy is she'd lock the fuck down or she would
tell such bombastic lies until the therapist, like told Nora
she's not ready for therapy because she's not being honest

(01:24:29):
or because she's acting out too much in therapy, Like
I don't know in the nineties how savvy maybe therapists
were to clock someone like her, yeah, and actually have
the patience to work through it. I can't know, obviously
because I was still a kid in the nineties.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
But it's certainly more savvy than anybody Sarah would have gotten.

Speaker 1 (01:24:51):
Yes, Yeah, Oh for sure, Sarah probably got someone who
was just like snap out of it or or over
pathologizing her and like labeling her with all these neurosis
and heavy handed disorders and like prescribing freakin' like hal
ball or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:25:12):
Certainly, and I think Judy has a chance that even
the defiant behaviors that she got probably wouldn't have end
up labeling her with ODD if anybody would have had
the context to what happened to her.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
I would hope so, because I think depending on what
happened at the school, if she's starting out the school
year day one causing problems, That's how kids get labeled
with ODD, is they have problems at school. I also
wouldn't be shocked at Judy was like argumentative with teachers,
you know what I mean. She's definitely kind of doing

(01:25:47):
her own thing, And I would hope that teachers would
take them into context. But unfortunately, in my experience working
at partial hospital programs where kids were either being kicked
out of school or going to my program, there's just
not a lot of resources or education or just like

(01:26:10):
mental space availability in the school system to give kids
the benefit of the doubt with this kind of behavioral stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:26:20):
Unfortunately, no, not always, but that's why it's important that
people talk to parents, guardians or whoever and not just
take what they see at face value, which we know
sometimes they do and becomes dangerous, especially when there's little
resources like in a small town in the middle of
New England that as possible, but that's why a responsible

(01:26:43):
practitioner needs to understand. You need to understand the whole
story of what's going on here, because one thing could
look like you know, one presentation or diagnosis or another,
but there's some pretty critical information like parents died, recently
moved that would changed the level of thought and the
type of intervention is appropriate. Helping Judy get that and

(01:27:06):
Peter would be important and critical because kid walking in
having problems day one out of nowhere that nobody knows
sure does stand the chance of getting labeled.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
But it's a problem kid, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):
But also a little bit of a conversation that principal
calling going, I sow sup.

Speaker 1 (01:27:28):
But I will. I mean, I'm being so cynical right now.
Unfortunately from experience, the amount of times I have to
explain to adults how defiant behaviors are connected to situational
factors and traumas, The amount of times I have to
sit parents, teachers, everybody down and be like, these behaviors

(01:27:52):
are connected to this thing that's happened. We really, that's
what I mean. Like with the adult projection shit, Like,
there's so many adults I've worked with who would be like, yeah,
I know that horrible thing happened to them, but what
does that have to do with the fact that they're
why they're acting out so much? Or why are they
stealing or why are they misbehaving? The amount of times
I've worked with kids with trauma and the number one

(01:28:14):
goal their guardians had was I need you to make
them listen to me and mind me. Oh my god,
that's what I mean. Like, and so I can just
imagine a lot of like teachers in her school being like,
what does lying have to do with her parents dying?

Speaker 3 (01:28:28):
Because sometimes the school system gets up its own ass
so profoundly that they forget their more important things and
fucking tests, and it's it is frustrating and tragic and
makes therapists want to introduce slap therapy to the teachers
and like, uh, yeah, let.

Speaker 4 (01:28:49):
Me explain to you real quick, her parents died.

Speaker 1 (01:28:52):
Yeah, But I have people really struggle to connect those
behaviors to trauma mm hmm, or to understand how one
causes the other. They really want to separate behaviors like
obedient behaviors minding from like the emotional inner life of
a child.

Speaker 4 (01:29:12):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):
And So though I would hope that Judy would get
that kind of advocating, I think the way that she
especially because she's presenting so chill, that she's smiling and
she's telling these lies that the whole movie she's pretty
he haha, which is a defense mechanism of itself, acting
like she's cool as a god damned cucumber. Yeah, but
I think her presentation, that's also something a lot of

(01:29:36):
parents and adults would say to me. But they're not crying.
But she's not upset, she doesn't look depressed, she doesn't
look like she's gone through I think she's smiling when
she does that.

Speaker 3 (01:29:42):
The number of times I've had this conversation in supervision
with my baby therapists that are just like I'm like
sitting with my head in my hands and going, I
swear to God if you do not like I. Obviously
I don't outwardly do this, but the the internal version
in my head is going, like, if you explained to

(01:30:03):
me one more time how her parent's dying isn't trauma,
I swear to God, I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Lose my shit, or like it isn't because there don't
seem fucked by it emotionally, right, Like there's a specific
presentation that they're supposed to have and if they don't
seem wrecked emotionally in the very specific ways, then it's flid.

Speaker 3 (01:30:26):
Right then they're fine, Well that can't well it's not
that then like I'm gonna scream. I'm gonna scream. I'm
gonna scream. And obviously I'm I am actually a very
patient supervisor and try to guide people, but like there's
there's a part of me inside that's going like.

Speaker 1 (01:30:39):
Oh, it's so loud, how are you not getting this?
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:30:45):
Like, yeah, I just explained to you, like, please tell
me again how their parents dying isn't trauma?

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:30:53):
So Judy's the kind of kind I like too, because
once you do enough of that work with kids, I
would feel like I'd call her quickly. Yeah, I like, oh,
I got your number girl.

Speaker 2 (01:31:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
And unfortunately, she's the kind of kid that falls in
the cracks so easy because she quote unquote seems fine
other than this bratty behavior, which might just be her
being a brat yep, regardless of her parents dying or not.
So is there anything else we want to say about
Judy before we move on to Peter? Okay, so let's

(01:31:27):
take a break. Care So, Peter, I think is really
interesting to talk about because we've never talked about selective
mutism on this podcast before. I don't think I don't
believe so ever, And to be fully transparent, I've never
worked with someone with selective mutism. I've worked, like in
a group where someone in the group had selective mutism,

(01:31:47):
but I never personally work with someone with selective mutism.
And what it is is kind of exactly how it sounds,
which is when a person it's what it seems like
is they just choose not to talk one day, like
they either were able to talk before or they have
the physical capability to talk, but they seem to quote

(01:32:08):
unquote be choosing not to a lot of times. The
selective mutism, it is a trauma response. Some people say
it is kind of a version of freeze, where you're
just freezing and you're just not engaging and you're not speaking.
So the reason why selective mutism came up for us

(01:32:29):
is because in the beginning of the movie, even though
she does tell a lot of lies, Judy does tell
the realtor the real estate agent, oh, Peter doesn't talk
to anybody. He hasn't talk since our parents died, And
then she goes into the whole tall tale she tells.
But where it does seem like he actually does struggle

(01:32:49):
with that is later when they are having that little
one on one conversation in bed, she does say to him,
if you don't start talking, they're gonna make you go
to a shrink. So it is, and he does and
fight her on that. So it is clear that since
their parents died, it seems like maybe the only person
he talks to is Judy. When it's just the two

(01:33:10):
of them.

Speaker 3 (01:33:11):
It seems probable, and it does struggle to talk. I'm
not sure whether it's part of the presentation that's resurfacing
for the character because something else bad just happened, or
the fact that he's actually becoming a monkey.

Speaker 2 (01:33:27):
Oh yeah, that he talks, because he does talk much
less once it's the four of them, or once he
once it becomes a monkey, is talking less. Is that
what you're saying.

Speaker 3 (01:33:36):
He struggles to like talk it all. And I don't
know if that's because he's becoming a monkey, right, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:33:45):
Physic if he's starting to law instead of talk.

Speaker 3 (01:33:48):
Right, But he just like when the when he's having pain,
like tale, the tale gets stuck and he you know,
it makes it clear to Alan that something's wrong. But
he's not talking. He's just kind of like whimpering and
looking sad and weird. And he talks a lot less.
From the point that he rolls that dice and gets
whatever he's cheating, Yeah, he gets in trouble for cheating.

(01:34:09):
He gets in trouble for cheating by manipulating the dice.
He was talking quite a bit up until that point
that something else bad happened again, and it seemed like
the movies, you know, kind of self referencing that selective
mutism hitting well, it's not entirely clear.

Speaker 4 (01:34:25):
If that's just because he's a monkey.

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
Now, the kind of questions we ask him popworn psychology.

Speaker 3 (01:34:32):
Especially can really jar our attention to like what is
the filmmakers doing here? It's more how is it represented
to us as therapists. That's different than it would be
represented to a director that's relevant to our lens and
struggling with figuring out is this selective mutism or is
it a metaphorical allegorical representation is very important to understand

(01:34:55):
when we're trying to figure out is this symptoms presenting
again or is it something happening, because that's the same
thing in reality you would look at is if somebody's
not talking for a particular day of something happening. Did
something else happen in their life when this kid would
talk in the office and all of a sudden, isn't
or do they have struck throat today? You need to

(01:35:16):
kind of suss out isn't an external cause or isn't
an internal one. It's very important to understand with something
like selective mutism, which most certainly is a trauma response.

Speaker 1 (01:35:27):
Yeah, I don't know if I've ever heard of someone
having it just because they woke up one day and
they're like, I'm gonna stop talking.

Speaker 3 (01:35:35):
Not that persists. Yeah, kids will do that to you.

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
And I think also where it does feel accurate to me.
But if this sounds wrong to anyone out there who's
more trained in selective mutism, feel free to let me
know that he would still be talking to Judy. You
know that he would because that's probably the one person
he feels the most safe with, and she's the most

(01:35:59):
consent and he probably feels the less self conscious about
what he shares, and so when they're alone, him freely
talking to her as if nothing's wrong. It does make
sense to.

Speaker 2 (01:36:12):
Me, absolutely absolutely. And I haven't worked with anybody who
has selective mutism either, but I do have someone that
I work with who has a child who has who
struggles with selective mutism, and it is very much that
when they're alone, or it's or it's whisper only, or

(01:36:32):
it's like they come and whisper in your ear and
then they and then that's all that they can do, Yeah,
with one person that they really trust. So it makes
a lot of sense the way that Peter presents And yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (01:36:43):
Think a lot of ways they can feel like that
trapped feeling of freeze where your brain's going. People who
are af selective mutism, they're not like frozen, they're not catatonic,
they're thinking. I think the effort to open your mouth
and speak feels like a hill that's too tall to climb.

Speaker 3 (01:37:03):
Yeah, it can be that, and it can also be
a way to control what emotions you experience, because it's
not like it's unheard of for any of us to
speak our way into feelings we did not know we're there,
or we're not intending to release him. The more you talk,

(01:37:23):
the more you feel. And for there to be something
as horrible as your parents suddenly dying in a car
accident away from you that shatters your world, it makes
sense that Peter doesn't even want a hint of that
to be felt in his present conscious mind right now.

(01:37:45):
He just is going through so much change that he's
trying to control what he can and the only thing
that he can control, and this is usually a subconscious process,
not deliberate, is his body can control not speaking.

Speaker 1 (01:37:57):
Yeah, I don't feel like talking. I'm not gonna and
I don't want to. And also it does make me
curious if with Peter and Judy, if we are seeing
a exponential presentation of their natural dispositions, like if she
was the chattier one and he was the quieter one.

(01:38:19):
And I think when you have that dynamic, especially if
the chatterier one's older. I've had this growing up because
I have a lot of siblings where if one sibling
will speak a lot for the other sibling, they will
just not talk as much because they don't have to.
So I also wonder in this dynamic, because Judy is
sober bose, if it has kind of allowed Peter to

(01:38:42):
just be quiet that he doesn't have to talk because
Judy will talk for him, both maybe as her natural disposition,
but also as his big sister. It's also a way
for her to take care of him, to maybe the
I mean, you could even argue, I could even argue that,
like is that why she talks so much? Does that
fill the space that Peter's not talking? And is it

(01:39:03):
a protective thing for her to yam or on to
fill up the space that Peter's not taken up? Because
if you're distracted by her being such a little liar.
Then you're not noticing that Peter doesn't talk, and Peter
gets left alone.

Speaker 3 (01:39:17):
And the inverse can be true too, that Peter's controlling
a lot of attention but he doesn't respond. Then more
effort must be placed by the caregiver to communicate with him. Yeah,
and then he is getting more attention than he would
otherwise have gotten or bed that might be again subconsciously

(01:39:41):
filling a bit of a void of how much he
feels he needs. It's a really challenging situation to work
through on. It's not my area of expertise either, but
it can be something that really changes an entire dynamic,

(01:40:04):
and it's important to be mindful of that. The Piano
is an excellent film that represents this.

Speaker 1 (01:40:10):
Oh yeah, mm hmm. Yeah, and then that situation, her
daughter does all the talking for her, mm hmm. It's
always important to consider the sibling dynamic when it's a
shared situation like this. You know, just I don't think
you could look at Peter or Judy in a vacuum
with their presentation, like if both of these kids are
doing stuff like this. That's why when you are a

(01:40:32):
kid therapist, it's important to ask a lot of these questions,
like what are the other siblings, like, what's going on
with them? How are they interacting with each other? Is
this a dynamic that maybe was already happening, Like was
Peter always quieter or did he become quiet? Was Judy
always more like verbose and telling stories or was she
like a pretty honest kid that this is flipped on them?

(01:40:54):
And I do think, what do you guys think about
the fact that as soon as the Jumanji stuff starts happening,
that for the remainder of the movie, besides the monkey
quit question, that Peter is talking and engaging with Alan
and Sarah as if nothing's wrong with him from a
mutism standpoint, I.

Speaker 2 (01:41:16):
Don't know if that's movie magic stuff or it snaps
him out of it, or he's so terrified that he
has to communicate, or maybe like their survival, Yeah, like
the survival overtakes the freeze element of the not talking

(01:41:40):
or whatever advantages is he gets out of not talking? Possibly, Yeah,
that one mm hmm. Yeah, that's what I That's what
I kind of think would happen because I think about
how it goes right into then the kids are starting
to get traumatized. And oh, by the way, what is
the first way that they are with Alan is in

(01:42:02):
a car and he doesn't know how to drive, and
their parents had just died in a car accident, Like
it would make a lot of sense that both of
the kids would just be in survival mode after that.
And I think, and I think they do a good
job portraying that.

Speaker 4 (01:42:19):
Correct.

Speaker 3 (01:42:19):
They think they're understanding that they're in survival mode this
entire movie from the point that you know.

Speaker 1 (01:42:27):
There's not a beat where they're hanging out having a sandwich, Like,
they don't get any breaks. The close thing they get
to a break is when they're walking down the road.
But then the cop finds them in the end the game,
like they are diving into rivers and running from riflemen
in supermarkets and he almost gets crushed by a car.

Speaker 4 (01:42:48):
There's a fucking lion in their house.

Speaker 1 (01:42:51):
Yeah, Like, there's no beats to stop, Like, there is
no stopping points in this movie to relax because it
takes place in like over what six hours.

Speaker 3 (01:42:59):
Yeah, right, which means we're not even remotely in the
criteria could even discuss trauma until afterwards. They're just trying
to fucking survive, and they're relying on anything their body
is interpreting through their senses that they need to do
to survive this moment. That's the way we work. Everything
is run through that survival lens first. Therefore, whatever is

(01:43:21):
relevant to your survival is going to turn on or
off right now, because that's what happens. And watching like
him that that selected mutism. You guys are like right
on it, like they're gonna die, you know, talk, Yeah,
it's real simple, Yeah, exactly. If you aren't communicating with
the only people here interested in keeping you alive who

(01:43:43):
are not in fact tigers, alligators, bears lying, no bears,
no bears, sorry, no bears, but alligator crocodiles, sorry crocodiles
because they didn't cover that.

Speaker 4 (01:43:55):
Don't then the oh no, it's not a crocodile. Yeah,
you're like really.

Speaker 3 (01:44:01):
Crocodiles and elephants and rhinos and giant mosquitoes that are
trying to puncture the roof of your LeBaron and whatever
else is going on that's crazy with strange animals and
diseases and suddenly turning into a monkey. Probably better communicate
with the only things not trying to kill you.

Speaker 1 (01:44:22):
I do wonder for they roll from with the punches both.
I wrote that in my notes both Judy and Peter
like roll with it, like the monkeys thing and the
mosquitos thing. They really roll with it as they're playing
the game, like Okay, the monkey's left the house, let's
keep on going in a way that does feel very
true to kids in some ways. And I wonder too

(01:44:45):
they've dealt with something that's so out of their control
and changed their whole lives, Like even though all this
stuff is very scary, it's like tangible problems that they
just have to figure out how to solve.

Speaker 3 (01:44:57):
And that's hardcore survival right now, because if you lose
this game, we have already seen what happens. You know,
we have Sarah as an example of what happens to
you if you don't solve this game problem and Alan,
so the kids are presented with concrete information that makes
letting that game just disappear not an acceptable outcome, so

(01:45:20):
they have to save it. And they also are compelled
to stay alive by our own biological drives. So that
flexibility they're showing is inherent in kids and is something
that they get a ton of credit for that adults
lose that kids can adapt and survive because they play

(01:45:40):
that way. Kids rotate through games and activities in changing
conditions in ways that adults just lose some flexibility to do.
They lose the cognitive and adaptive flexibility to free play
and move through things and just let the game change
as it needs to. You watch kids playing, and this

(01:46:02):
is how one therapy modality I studied for a while,
psychodrama was created by literally a psychiatrist watching children play
and realizing, oh my god, they just rotate through whatever
another kid says is like, Okay, that's what we're doing now,
and the whole game changes. A whole pack of kids
may not even know each other, like okay, and now

(01:46:24):
we're flying in a spaceship and there's asteroids coming, and
all the other kids that were maybe playing Jungle Crews
switch their minds. Okay, now there's asteroids.

Speaker 4 (01:46:32):
They just switch.

Speaker 3 (01:46:34):
And I think all of the kids demonstrating that ability
throughout this film feels very realistic to me, that kids
would just play this way, that they audition reality this way.
You go like, all right, fucket, there's an alligator now,
like I guess youd better jump on the sandal ear
or get eaten.

Speaker 1 (01:46:51):
Well, I mean when you're a kid, like you're still
figuring out what's true about the world. So there's a
version of this where like if Peter's like nine or ten,
you know what I mean, Or when you're littler, if
you're just like, Okay, well, now I know that there
are board games where the things come to life. I
didn't know that before because when you're that little, when
that you're that young, you're learning novel things all the

(01:47:11):
time that yesterday you didn't know was the fact about
the world. And so to adapt like that is I
think your brain yet you're saying, is just is more
developmentally flexible because everything is new information. Whereas when you
get older, you think you know everything about the world
because you do to a certain extent, and so it's
harder to accept something so different than what you know.

(01:47:35):
Whereas when you're a kid, everything's new, everything is something
you might have known the day before, and so you're
just more open to the possibility that something fantastic is.

Speaker 4 (01:47:44):
True, especially when it is.

Speaker 3 (01:47:47):
Yeah, and they can just respond and adapt and adjust
in ways that adults.

Speaker 4 (01:47:52):
Is the flexibility to do.

Speaker 3 (01:47:53):
We see Alan is better at it than Sarah, because
Allen knows it's true and is accepted it's this is
not different than every day suburban life. For Alan, this
is every day. All this stuff happening in another realm
doesn't FaZe him at all. He's just responding, boom, we're
dealing with this. Sarah has quite a bit more lifting

(01:48:16):
to do. However, there is a part of her that
has been locked away. It already knows a bullshit that
can happen with Jumanji and knows it's real, so it's
not as big a lift. But if we look at
somebody like Carl, who is a police officer and even
in a small town, knows the truths about the world.
He doesn't have that veil of innocence that other people do.

(01:48:39):
He knows all the shit that actually happens, or how
bad car accidents are, how bad domestics are, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
a lot of things that lets people in small towns
like to pretend like God, it's not real. It happens
to other people. He knows that shit's not true, and
it's a much bigger lift for him to lock in
and do anything. He behaves in all sorts of ways
that are bananas and like, let's stuff like there's children

(01:49:00):
who are not at school, bro, and he's just like, uh,
oh shit, what happened to that car? Never mind, you
guys are fine, doesn't pick them up, doesn't put them
in the car, doesn't take care of them to go.
You guys are coming with me, just like Leaves. Because
he's so flabbergasted by the fact that there's giant mosquitos
going around and causing bigger problems, he doesn't engage and

(01:49:21):
know what to do until the rifleman is there, and
then he just drives his car into him.

Speaker 1 (01:49:29):
Yeah, Whereas I think the one of the best examples
of this sort of flexible thinking is towards the end
of the movie when Alan and Sarah are stuck in
the floor and they're trying to figure what to do,
and Judy's like, I just have to keep playing. I'll
just do this, I'll put the dice like that. You know,
she is thinking very flexibly yep, Like she's not getting
stuck in the barriers. She's like, let's just keep going,

(01:49:51):
like and she figures out how to keep going. Whereas
I think an adult it would be like how can
Sarah possibly play? You know what I mean? How can
we keep going? They're stuck, like we have to figure
this problem them out first before we can move to
the next one. Yeah, whereas Judy is not trapped by that.

Speaker 3 (01:50:06):
Correct and that can be a thing that's really important
to reintroduce into adult lives is the ability to tap
into that play and flexible thinking, and that everything doesn't
have to be in these little boxes you've created, That
there are ways to solve problems that aren't past fail
there are ways to solve things that can change with

(01:50:29):
the situation. And doesn't matter what the rules are, It
doesn't matter what you've dealt with before, what you know
how to do. Everything is the same, even if it's different.
That kids have access to metaphysical thinking that adults have
to rediscover, and watching Sarah get re exposed to that

(01:50:51):
and have to accept that the absurd of this is
true and she can adjust to it really helps propel
her along this way. But you see some of the
other adults really struggle to know what to do because
they're so shocked by the ridiculousness of this whole premise

(01:51:11):
that all of a sudden there's jungle animals loose and
giant murderous mosquitoes, and people are dying all around you.
And there everyone's trying like what's happening. They're trying to figure.

Speaker 4 (01:51:22):
Out what it is? What do we do about it?

Speaker 3 (01:51:25):
As opposed to just enabling your ability to flexibly react
to the situation and just do things, trust your body, go,
adults do not do that very well if they are
not used to playing. And it's why things like role
playing games and improv classes can be so powerful for

(01:51:48):
adults because it forces them to be You're in a situation.
Now you're going to react to it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:53):
Go, yeah, to get out of your head.

Speaker 4 (01:51:55):
Get out of your head?

Speaker 1 (01:51:56):
All right? So anything else before we move on to treatment. Nope,
all right, let's take a break here, all right. So
I'm gonna keep it very short and sweet. So I'm
gonna pretend as if the corrective ending of this movie
doesn't happen. Let's say I just have to start working
with Judy as she's presented for the majority of the movie.

(01:52:17):
Let's say the lying Judy in the very beginning. So
when I say, like, I like working with kids like Judy,
I can kind of explain, like what would I do
with a kid like Judy. So with a kid like Judy,
I would just shoot the shit with her for a while. Yep.
Because kids like her usually get sent to therapy because
something bad has happened so their parents. So the guardians
are like, the best course of action is sending her

(01:52:38):
to therapy regardless of whether she seems like she needs
it or not, like almost like preventative reactive care, or
because she is causing a problem at school or driving
her aunt bananas, so that she gets sent to therapy.
And so a kid like her will test you. She
probably would come into therapy and tell me a bunch

(01:52:59):
of bullshit, you know, or she wouldn't tell me much
at all. So she's a kid where even though there
is something that has quote unquote capital h happened, I
wouldn't talk to her about that for a while. Well,
I would see what she comes in with. Like if
she comes in like bullshit me and telling me a story,
I would be like, okay, Like I would just listen.

(01:53:20):
I'd kind of let her talk through all of her lives,
just like listen, talk, don't get caught up in the behavior,
don't call her out about lying. I would just listen
and be like, Wow, that's intense. And I wouldn't give
her like a ton of that reactive almost like punitive
schold the adult energy, because with a kid like her,

(01:53:43):
if she's doing it for attention and protective factors, you
want to reconfigure how she gets attention. So maybe I
wouldn't give her a ton of attention when she tells
me bullshit, but as soon as she starts telling me
something honest, it's something small, I would give her a
lot of attention. You know. I would say like, oh, wow,

(01:54:05):
that sounds like that matt To has sound like it
was really hard. And then if she goes on and
on with some like superfluw story, I'd say like, oh
that's crazy. But I wouldn't like get caught. I wouldn't
have the reaction like the real estate agent where you're
like what, oh my, like so over the engaged, because
I would want to loosen the connection between that behavior
and getting attention and instead make and make attention more

(01:54:26):
of a neutral experience, skewing towards honesty, you know. And
I wouldn't punish her for lying in the therapy space,
I think the farthest I might go with her is
kind of asking her like, why do you think you're here?
So I've I've some like your aunt and some people
from school who told me you have like a problem
with lying, Like what do you think about that? Because

(01:54:48):
I do think kind of what you're saying earlier, Hannah
is kids like Judy love it when you talk to
them with respect, And I'd say with her, I would
kind of cut to the chase and be like, yo,
like I heard that you're here because people say you
like Lyle, what do you think about that? You think
it is? It? Are you? But I wouldn't come at
it with like, so you're here because you've been lying
and you didn't cut it out. I would be more

(01:55:09):
like curious, and I'd just be like, what's up with
like I? I Ha'd have a more like casual tone
so that I wouldn't want her to feel like she's
there as a punishment or that she's gonna get the
same reaction from me as maybe she's gotten from every
other adult. And I might even just say, like, I
know your parents just died. I want to just name

(01:55:32):
that because that's something that's happened recently. Do you want
to talk about that? We can talk about that here
if you want to, but we don't have to and
just leave it like she's a kid that I would
play it very loose and I wouldn't get heavy handed
with anything because I'd want it to feel like it's
her space and she can do whatever she wants. But
with kids like her that are testing, you just have
to not get caught up in it. Don't get in

(01:55:53):
power struggles with twelve year olds. Don't get into this
like reality testing, like that's not true because this that
and the other who cares the lie is not the point,
you know what I mean? And me challenging the lie
with the kid is just me one not teaching good
communication skills or personal skills. And I'm arguing with a
child or two like getting showing irritation in that way

(01:56:17):
is also not healthy towards her And what point is
it serving other than making her feel ashamed? I think too,
Like going back to what I was saying when I'd
work with families, where like I want the kids to
mind me. We get so hooked into this idea that
the best thing a kid can be is obedient, and
my job isn't to break a kid spirit a spirit,

(01:56:38):
So that they're easier for all the adults around them
to deal with with her aunt, I would say, like,
regardless of her behavior, one day a week, you guys
still have a day where you do something fun together.
Maybe not like blow it out of the water, because
you don't want to be like acting like she can
do whatever she wants and still have like I don't know,
a water park on Saturday, but just be like, no

(01:56:59):
matter what happened, you still give her one on one
time that feels positive that isn't conditional on her behavior.
And I think that's really important too, like you can
build in rewards that are conditional. But also I think
having positive attention that's not attached to behavior is really
really important, and that you also don't take away attention

(01:57:19):
that kids need because they're misbehaving, because that then that'll
then you get stuck in that horrible cycle where they
only get attention if they're negative, act negatively, and then
kids will go do that all day long. So that's
kind of my thoughts about Judy. Okay, I'll go next
UH again, dismissing the UH corrected experience at the end

(01:57:41):
of the film. I think that I would want to
work with Sarah, and I think that something that I
would want to do. I mean, first, we would definitely
have to just talk about decreasing her symptoms by increasing
coping skills, so helping her learn grounding skills, helping her
learn breathing exercises, help her take good care of herself.

Speaker 2 (01:58:01):
Doing some of those pieces first is usually where I start.
And then something else that I do to kind of
help people start to trust themselves again, is we find
something that they can feel confident about, no matter what
it is, no matter how small of a thing it is,
and I have them do that so that they can
sit in that feeling and experience the feeling of I

(01:58:24):
can trust myself that when I do this, this is
the outcome I will get to help kind of support
the work that we'll have to do down the road
of helping recover from the trauma that they experienced. So
that's what I would want. That's where I would start
with Sarah, And that's what I would want to do
with Sarah.

Speaker 1 (01:58:42):
Can you to give an example of like a thing
that would be confidence building, Like can I like what specific,
like painting or like a hobby.

Speaker 2 (01:58:51):
So like yeah, so like something creative would definitely be
a place that I start doing something that they can complete,
doing something they can feel confident about. So cooking is
a really good example of that, of being like, no
matter what, you know, how to make this meal, so
let's make this meal, or let's have this thing that
you can do once a day or once a week
or whatever the fuck that can help you feel a

(01:59:13):
little bit more connected to yourself and to the person
that you want to be or the person that you
envision yourself to be. So that's kind of so that's
kind of what I would do cool.

Speaker 1 (01:59:26):
I.

Speaker 3 (01:59:28):
As we can probably detect from when we were talking
about Sarah earlier, Sarah would be the person I'd hone
in on. She fits best into the modalities that I'm
certified in and spent a great deal of time trying
to understand. It's exactly the kind of case that interests
me clinically, the most really complicated stories, the difficult experiences, the.

Speaker 4 (01:59:51):
Really hard.

Speaker 3 (01:59:54):
Mental blocks that we all have to uncover and slowly
work through. Hannah's description of what she would do would
be excellent and very important, And I think the only
thing that I would want to do from my orientations.
To add to that, with that kind of theory, because
Hanna's ideas are excellent and would be critical to even

(02:00:15):
getting to that point is recognizing how complex it is
for people to confront their realities and when it's something
that happened to them is validated and they realize that
their story was something that was real, for example, that

(02:00:39):
they weren't sure about or were told that they remembered wrong,
or all kinds of ways that you can get invalidated.
Is what people miss without some pretty significant clinical education,
is that because of dialectical thinking, because we can feel
and think more than one thing at the same time.

(02:01:00):
Someone like Sarah would be struggling with immediately having to
process that she told herself lies to survive.

Speaker 4 (02:01:15):
And what that.

Speaker 3 (02:01:16):
Means, how she would have to reckon with what she
would likely interpret or the part that she put in
a box would come out of the box and like, see, bitch,
I told you and it would have some shit to say.
And internally she's going to be dealing with a lot
of grief for what her life could have been. That's

(02:01:37):
going to be from the mindset of a hopeful twelve
year old and everything she wished and wanted and could
have been she'd be struggling with trying to replay that.
And I see that with people all the time, the
struggle to assess what their life would have been had
something not happened, and that's really difficult. That's really hard work,

(02:02:00):
and helping people kind of grieve for that loss is
work that doesn't get done enough. In my opinion, I
think someone like Sarah would really need that. And we're
gonna have to grieve for what your twelve year old
self lost, because the ending of this movie is some
horse shit that, while I get it, tied a nice

(02:02:24):
little pretty bow on every the fuck did and just
gave everybody everything they could have ever wanted to do
over where everything goes well and nobody makes a bad decision,
everybody sucks up, and we sing Jesus see Christmas songs
hoo to the nineties. Shine threw on that, huh, the
sunshine shining out to everybody's butt. But the unrealistic expectations

(02:02:46):
that that creates are kind of the point I'm trying
to make here is that some part of her twelve
year old self would you don't want things to be
like that where you can do that, you can go
back and if you just knew that what you knew
now you could fix everything and stop death and then
stop these people who you met and became attached to

(02:03:09):
from going through the pain that they went through, and
that it's your fault that you haven't done. That is
some really powerful emotional work that has to be done
to get the adult side of the brain that's survived
everything that happened since twelve to thirty thirty eight. Is
that what they're at twenty six years twelve to thirty eight, right?

Speaker 1 (02:03:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:03:33):
Who I did math good, that's rare, folks. But looking
at all the stuff that she's survived, she gets credit
for and that she can use and is adaptive to
her survival, But it's they're kept in separate realities, and
that twelve year old self needs a place to kind

(02:03:53):
of learn and reckon with that. And that's the kind
of work that I really like to do and final
at the value in of helping people hit to the
truth of those things that really need recognition to heal.

Speaker 1 (02:04:08):
All right, So we'll take our last break care and
be back with final thoughts. I love this movie. I'm
a classic nineties kid. I love Djumanji. I'm the one
who made sure that this episode was on our spreadsheet
to do eventually, and I made sure that we stuck
to it to do it today. So I will watch

(02:04:29):
this movie again. It brings a little thrill to my
little kid heart. Jumanji is me. I'm Jumanji. If anyone
hasn't seen the SNL skit where they talk about Jumanji,
it's pretty recent one. I kept thinking that when I
was saying, go into Jumanji, come out of Jumanji. So
that's a little teaser for that SNL skit. It's all
I don't want to Yeah, but Jumanji is going into

(02:04:51):
Jumanji or s Jumanji Jumanji coming out. It's basically the
extent of that skit, So I would YouTube it if
you haven't seen it already with I think Kristin any who,
I will watch the movie a bunch. Love this movie.
And yeah, Hannah.

Speaker 2 (02:05:06):
I also really enjoyed this movie. I definitely want to
watch it again after talking about it. That sometimes happens
on the podcast, and yeah, and I like, I think
it was a well acted. I think everybody did a
really great job. I love Robin Williams and it was
lovely to see him in this role, and yeah, I'll
definitely watch this movie again.

Speaker 3 (02:05:28):
I also still love this movie. I watch it with
a bit of bewilderment of what in the fuck were we.

Speaker 4 (02:05:35):
Exposed to in the nineties and people thought.

Speaker 3 (02:05:38):
Was just normal and good natural And watching, as you
may have heard me mention recently, things like Beethoven other
things that came out around this time, leaves you with
a little bit of what the fuck compared to the
things we've adjusted to now. But I still enjoy this movie.
I enjoyed watching it with my daughter and seeing her

(02:05:59):
wonder men added, even though some of the stuff looks
just so hokey now, especially the spiders.

Speaker 4 (02:06:06):
Oh my god, I.

Speaker 1 (02:06:06):
Would say mostly the quicksand floor.

Speaker 2 (02:06:09):
The quicksand floor was a lot, but the spiders just
looked plastic. They didn't even walk like spiders.

Speaker 3 (02:06:16):
No, I mean think those are physical props that were Yeah,
so too Brittay's favorite thing of like robots.

Speaker 1 (02:06:22):
Oh yeah, animatronics, but.

Speaker 3 (02:06:24):
Not the scary kind. But these this movie still holds up.
The graphics and stuff don't.

Speaker 4 (02:06:30):
And I was.

Speaker 3 (02:06:34):
This year old when I realized that Jumanji was a
book that was written by Chris Van Alsberg.

Speaker 4 (02:06:40):
Who also wrote The Polar Express.

Speaker 3 (02:06:44):
M HM AND's a thorough And I didn't realize that
until I saw the credits, and I think I had
the book. I read the book a bunch as a kid,
and like, I can see the art's the same. Yeah
it is, it's so obvious.

Speaker 4 (02:06:57):
But wow, how different the book and the movie are.

Speaker 1 (02:07:01):
Oh yeah, it's very much a kid's book. Yeah, much
much of simple picture book.

Speaker 4 (02:07:06):
Yeah, it's got.

Speaker 3 (02:07:06):
Some menace to it. But the movie like really added
some stuff that really I think only Robin could have
pulled off. And I'm glad that we got to watch
him and appreciate his work as an adult because he
meant so much to us all as kids. But watching
the brilliance of that man act and the gravitas he
carried still still is like no one else. And I

(02:07:28):
love to see that and love to share that with
my daughter. So I think we'll hold on to this
movie for a while.

Speaker 1 (02:07:33):
Yeah all right, So, unless you have been put into
a game like Jumanji, please find us on all social
media platforms. We are on Facebook, Instagram, threads, and TikTok.
At Popcorn Psychology, you can also get in touch with
us at Popcorn Psychology gmail dot com. If you would
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(02:07:55):
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leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. It's
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we really appreciate it, all right, everybody, So if you
find a game buried in the ground, please don't just
play it, okay, bye? Also, why wouldn't they have burned

(02:08:21):
the game or kept in the house as soon as
they dumped in the water, and to make a sequel?

Speaker 2 (02:08:27):
Probably?

Speaker 1 (02:08:29):
Maybe, but yeah, I agree.