Awake at the Wheel

Did Inside Out 2 get it all wrong?

Dr Oren Amitay and Malini Ondrovcik Season 1 Episode 64

Awake at the Wheel | Ep 64

In this episode, Malini and Oren dive deep into the movie Inside Out 2 from a psychological perspective. They share their disappointment with the film's portrayal of anxiety, noting its failure to differentiate between normal and disordered anxiety. They critique the movie for its ethnocentric viewpoint and lack of representation of diverse experiences, highlighting the stigmatizing visual depiction of anxiety and the overemphasis on happiness and joy. Malini and Oren argue that Inside Out 2 missed a crucial opportunity to explore the complexities of emotions and the importance of balance. Their discussion focuses on the movie's flaws and missed opportunities in depicting emotions and mental health, with insights on how anxiety and fear could have been handled more effectively. Join them as they unravel the nuances and offer a fresh perspective on this highly anticipated sequel.

00:00 Introduction and Background
03:13 Disagreement with Majority Opinion on the Movie
06:58 Differentiating Between Normal Anxiety and Disordered Anxiety
11:20 The Need for Accurate Portrayal of Anxiety
14:25 Impact on Different Cultural Experiences
22:01 Overemphasis on Happiness and Joy
23:22 The Importance of Embracing a Range of Emotions
24:06 Missed Opportunity to Explore the Complexity of Emotions
25:59 Flaws in Pacing and Integration
27:16 Therapists Filling in Gaps
29:35 Fear and Anxiety
30:03 Locking Up Emotions
32:06 Portrayal of Anxiety
33:33 Criticism of Father's Reaction
34:19 Inaccurate Portrayal of Anxiety
36:39 Importance of Discussion and Problem-Solving
37:06 Life Imitates Art
41:53 Missed Opportunities for Healthy Emotional Development
42:22 The Need for Critical Thinking

We want your questions! Future episodes will feature a new segment, Rounds Table, where Malini and Dr Amitay will answer your questions, discuss your comments, and explore your ideas. Send your questions to rounds@aatwpodcast.com, tweet us @awakepod, send us a message at facebook.com/awakepod, or leave a comment on this video!

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I feel that there is an overemphasis on the emotion of joy and happiness. And that's not just in the movie. I think that's in society in general where we we seem to have determined that happiness and joy is the be all and end all emotion where the reality is like we're going to have blips of joy and happiness. But if that's your goal, you're going to be disappointed over and over and over again. Hello and welcome to Awake at the Wheel. Though in today's episode, we're going to be discussing the movie Inside Out 2. So is it strange that we're talking about a kids movie? Maybe. But I think that there's a lot of relevance to the topics in relation to the topic that we discuss on this podcast, especially looking at this from a psychological perspective. I'm especially interested in having this discussion because after watching this movie, I was notably underwhelmed and actually quite perplexed by some of the choices that they made. we're going to watch a few videos and watch a few clips, maybe some reactions as well from other professionals about this movie. And then we're going to discuss what our thoughts are on it. Each of us have watched the movie, and I have a feeling that maybe we're not on the same page, which is okay, because I think it'll make for some interesting discussion. But let's start out with watching the first video and we'll go from there. I'm a therapist who went to go see and set out to. So if you don't eat spoilers, don't keep watching. If you do, that's on you. I went last night to see the second one and I didn't think it could get any better than the first. And I was blown out of the water by this movie. It was amazing the way that they integrated these emotions and really described these emotions, especially like as they become new in teenage years was nail on the head. I specifically want to talk about anxiety because I thought the way that they portrayed anxiety as an emotion as this character was spot on. Anxiety creeps into this, the core emotions, and it's kind of like it looks like it's a power. It's like I'm helping plan. I'm helping. I'm trying to like, you know, plan for the future, get things under control and quickly loses control. I think that's what's so scary sometimes about anxiety, because anxiety is some anxiety is normal, is what keeps us safe. It's what keeps us on our toes. It keeps us planning for things but so quickly can get out of control as we see in this movie. Anxiety begins driving all of Riley's decisions, even decisions that she normally wouldn't make. One of the crazy things that I loved about this was that the five core emotions were working on, creating a sense of self that was, I'm a good person. And when anxiety took over and started creating core beliefs based off of memories, it changed and it changed to I'm not good enough. And I thought that that was such an accurate representation of anxiety. And its core belief is that at the end of the day, I'm not good enough that no matter what, that no matter what I do, I will never be good enough. And when I heard that, I was shook it to my core, like I was like Drew, you hit that. And it was so interesting watching the anxiety attack scene happen, because even the representation of that at the emotional level, like in their little world, like it looked like anxiety was running over and over and over and over again. But when joy entered that space, it was actually anxiety was frozen at the control panel. And I have never seen such like an accurate representation right there of like when when you're in that thrall, it feels like I'm out of control, but I can't do anything. And then at the end of the day, it comes back to that. All of these emotions serve a purpose. It's figuring out what purpose that they serve. I literally can't wait to watch this movie again because there's so much to dissect. And it was just so, so good. Okay. So this is where I feel like I must have missed something with the movie because the majority of the opinions out there on this movie are similar to what this therapist just said, especially from other therapists. Rotten Tomatoes. The critic score is 90%. The viewer score was an A, but I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree. First of all, I will say there are a number of things that she said that were accurate for sure. Talking about the role of core beliefs, talking about the way that anxiety can take over. There were some certainly valid points that she made there. But I would say one of the curses of being a therapist is I can't just watch a kid's movie and take my therapist hat off. I was fortunately, unfortunately, whatever you want to say, watching this from a case conceptualization perspective and standpoint. So Disney has this reputation of being excessively woke and so on and so forth, especially in their recent movies. And there were some diversity inclusions in this movie. There was, you know, females playing a predominantly male sport. There is a player wearing a hijab. There is, you know, some diversity elements which, okay, great. But in my opinion, this movie was from a psychological perspective, presenting a very ethnocentric viewpoint. And what I mean by that, it was very much looking at the experience of a suburban white, young female who came from an intact family with two parents who, you know, at least the way that they portrayed her, reportedly does not have any trauma or oppression or any issues that were noted throughout the first or second movie that would contribute to perhaps having disorder or anxiety or a trauma response. So I feel that the depiction of anxiety in this movie was, you know, while accurate in some ways, also didn't take into consideration what the experiences of many Americans and Canadians are experiencing when it comes to anxiety. The with anxiety being a fear response, oftentimes in, you know, teens and kids, it's coming from abuse or neglect or fear of not having their next meal. In this situation, it was about not getting onto the hockey team, which is a legitimate fear. But looking at her objective reality. That anxiety depiction, I feel, was, again, ethnocentric and maybe a little bit surface level. Okay. So, yeah, I watched the movie. I didn't see Inside Out first one. So I saw this one only because I knew that you want to talk about it and I knew that you had a hate on for it. So I was a bit biased going into it. Yeah, I was. I was kind of struggling with some of this as well. I'll talk about how at the end I think they did a good job of like there were certain parts of it. It was like saying, okay, they better take care of this and do something with that. Okay? Because otherwise I think they're doing a real disservice to to any kids trying to understand emotions in the best way to cope and everything. Basically where joy is shooting all the bad memories into the back of the mind. So like I was hoping they would say, okay, we have to be able to integrate that. If you want to have a sense of self, you got to integrate the good and the bad, you know, and so on, which they did toward the end, which which I'm glad that they did that part. Anxiety. Yeah. I mean, a couple of things. First of all, embarrassment and anxiety only emerge at puberty. So again, I didn't see the first movie, which was a trial. But my. Issue to. Yes, I mean, that's ridiculous. You know, and the anxiety that she was experiencing, especially when she seems to be having a panic attack in the in the only booth, that's not anxiety any more. Now we're talking, you know, an anxiety disorder. She's having an actual panic attack. And as you said, it doesn't just come out of the blue. I want to fit in. Yes, kids have that. So it didn't distinguish between the, say, anxiety that we all feel to some degree and anxiety to a level where now we're talking, you know, a disorder potentially. So if they're going to do that, if they're gonna make anxiety, that core character basically, or one of the core characters, I think they should have done a better job of, you know, differentiating between regular and because the therapist who I'm sorry, it's just my bias. If that was my therapist, I would run out of the room. I just I'm just there's something about her. But that's my energy. That's my style. That's okay. I just did not like how she was describing it. It's so amazing. It's the best that. No, let's have a little bit more nuance in our descriptions of these things. But anyway, putting that aside, the way she said, that anxiety takes over. Okay, That's pretty you know, I think that was a good depiction. How it starts off whatever. But I actually didn't like, quite frankly, the way anxiety was portrayed at the beginning as and again, I understood what they're trying to do, like, you know, we're planning ahead, we're doing this for doing that. And every day, like, you know, the anxiety is the hero and it's all this it's just real anxiety is more chaotic than that. It doesn't start off really, really well. And then again, I understand that it's as you saying, it's almost shooting. It's sort of it's almost insidious. You think you're preparing for the future, You think you're doing that, but then it creeps up on you. If you're going to talk about that, then once again, let's differentiate between healthy, normal anxiety versus the type that reaches, you know, a disordered level. And they failed in that regard. It just seems like all anxiety the same, but it can just spiral spiral out of control. You know, these are different phenomena. Absolutely. Okay. So we do agree on this. On that part. Yeah. Yeah. That that was a big, big issue that I took with that as well is that they did not differentiate anxiety versus disorder anxiety and perhaps an unpopular opinion. But I think that I have some street cred here as far as my ability to make this comment. I think that this is in large part what contributes to quote unquote, everyone thinking they have anxiety, right? Anxiety is a normal human emotion, but disordered anxiety, as you said, is a completely different animal. Panic attacks, anxiety attacks, very different. That is not a normative anxiety response. That is a disordered anxiety response. And to that point, what I took issue with in that respect is, you know, in relation to what I said earlier with Riley coming from an intact family and I described that that case conceptualization framework there as that she is probably internally well-resourced, meaning that she has resilience and some coping tools, presumably. But again, that doesn't match with the depiction of her having an anxiety attack, what tools that she have, how did she cope with that? It just magically go away. I know she you know, the emotions are moving around and thinking it through and so on and so forth. But that doesn't just go away. And it's usually not a one time thing, though again, I feel that that was grossly an inaccurate representation of of what that would actually look like. And there's no discussion, again, of her coping even to see a therapist. Is she going to talk to her parents about it? She doesn't in the end. So I think those are all real misses in that respect. Right. And I mean, the thing just another analogy and this is from David Burns, who wrote The Feeling Good book about anxiety. He describes anxiety just in case anyone's wanting, like, what's another way to depict it? Again, I like the way that it sort of got out of control and everything like that at the end. But he described it as it's like a drop of ink in water, like just a little tiny, tiny, tiny drop. Think that's all it takes? It starts off and it starts to sort of slowly kind of dissipate and not to speak, but to kind of spread out. But then, you know, if you take a few seconds to shake it a little bit, suddenly it clouds the entire glass, like one tiny little drop. So but again, he's not just talking about he's talking with people, you know, the anxiety conditions rather than just regular anxiety. But it's like I like that idea that it it clouds your vision. So it's just another way to to portray it. I'm just I prefer that what I'm just putting out there for a metaphor for the end of the whole movie is a metaphor. So that's just one thing for people to sort of consider that the clouds your vision, you can't think straight and so on. And it doesn't have to be as manic as it was portrayed that way. I mean, people have an anxiety disorder in having a panic like, yes, it does feel that way, that it gets out of control. But for other people internally, it may just be more like like I just can't think straight. So it's it's a different portrayal, a different manifestation of how I think that it could be. And it would be nice if they the point is this if you're going to tackle such a and important issue and you're going to make a movie that, you know, millions of people are going to see billions, maybe then I think you get a team on and you say, okay, are we going to do this at all or are we going to do it If we're gonna do it all, we're going to do it right. And if we can do it right, let's maybe have several manifestations. Maybe there could be different characters, because I know they show they showed the inside workings and I don't know if they do with the other movie as well of different characters. So, you know, they could have had different people. I mean, it's a whole other movie maybe, but at least it would portray it properly now, I think. And it was watching this will go, really, this is what you're worried about, this way you're anxious about it. But again, it's if you are if you're a professional chef and you're watching shows about cooking everything like that, you're having the same reaction. Like, no, that's such a misrepresentation. And again, as you say, the fact that so many people think they have anxiety disorder, even if it's just regular anxiety that we need to learn to cope with, because that's my concern. And again, in this movie. So she seems to have a panic attack. But again, this no discussion about, you know, true helping everything. So it doesn't differentiate because somebody who is just dealing with regular anxiety, we would want to help them build up the resources, the coping and everything like that. And be able to deal with that, maybe even on their own or through other means. But if it's this level, then is again, as you said earlier, like should she be going to psychotherapy? Should we talk about getting tools and everything beyond what you know, beyond the typical way of trying to cope with anxiety like low level anxiety? So again, I don't want to be the same, you know, the same horse with the same brush. I'm really mixing metaphors here inside of me, all that stuff. Okay. But, you know, it's sort of it goes back to the same point. But if you're going to tackle something like this and you want to be if you're Disney and you want to be socially responsible, you want to, you know, again, have diversity, inclusion and equity, etc., etc., well then do do deal with something as important as this in the right way, because so many people are going to see this. Don't contribute to the confusion around a complex issue. Help differentiate, help parents understand this because parents, a lot of parent don't understand anxiety. They don't know if the kid has a disorder or whatever. And and if some professional professional or someone says, well, yes, they do put them on this medication or something like that. Right. Like, I think it would be helpful to really sort of distinguish the two. So and that's the I would say in large part the crux of the issue for me is that, you know, this is many families first look at anxiety, right? Again, I'm talking about the the various cultures and experiences of the individuals across Canada and the U.S. and frankly, across the world who are watching this. And many of such people. It's not part of their vocabulary to discuss mental health. So if this is their first portrayal of it, again, I think that it's really problematic. And Disney does have a huge responsibility to portray this accurately. You know, I again, back to what I said before about kids and their different experiences and how that influences their experience of anxiety, You know, what about I'll pick on my my background here. So South Asian families, we are notorious for not talking about our emotions. And in fact, it is discouraged in many households to express emotion or have any emotion other than happiness or anger, quite frankly. So what is a little South Asian child supposed to do with this information? When they're watching this movie, they're watching this experience of this kid and how they're dealing with the emotion, but that doesn't match or mirror their experience in any way they're going to internalize That is, what am I doing wrong? What's wrong with me? So in that respect, I feel that it is problematic. I understand it's just a movie about a kid and her story and her experience. But again, looking at the larger picture of it, I feel that there was some, you know, some misses as far as their responsibility. And I did actually look up if they had clinical psychologist and professionals consulted and they did one in particular whose name escapes me, very accomplished, you know, seems like she's got a great platform. She's an author. The child psychologist, I believe works with teens and youth and kids. And I'm surprised that somebody who is, you know, without accomplished consulted and this is what it translated to. Okay. Know, I might look into that, go down that rabbit hole and see because, look, we know life imitating art imitating life. Life imitates art. So, as you say, if this is a lot of families, just the kids, the family's first foray into, you know, either anxiety or mental health issues and so on, then do it right. As I said earlier. And I just I'm going to shift gears a tiny bit, but just to help people understand that we're not just harping on something, let's say you're relevant to the state. And by the way, I bounce back and forth on this as well. I've got mixed opinions on this, and I've been dealing with this for maybe 30 years. About 30 years. Okay. The question of whether, let's say, major depressive disorder or a major depressive episode is a totally different phenomenon from, let's say, feeling depressed, feeling sad, feeling blue, or whether it's the same phenomenon, it's just on a higher like it's on the farther end of the scale that you go from mild to moderate to extreme or severe depression. Right. Or major depression. And I've been following this debate for about 30 years, and I've seen arguments on both sides What the problem is. And this is not a Pixar movie. It's not like a Disney movie that billions of people are going to see. This is an argument that plays out in journals that nobody reads or very few people read it, or the professor University. It's a much narrower scope, you know, when you think about audience. And the fact is because of this, because of a bunch of researchers and again, it seems like it's shifting gears, but it's connected because a bunch of academics who maybe have very little or limited or not very good experience in the clinical world, in the professional world when it comes to mental health, are just academics and nothing against just academics, but stay in your lane if you don't work with actual people. If you're only researching students and what do they do? They take universities, students. And again, I know it sounds like a digression here, but I think it's I help people understand this is relevant so they will look at university students, you know what a university student who is capable of doing a study or, you know, like a first year interest like courses, You know what they're you know, what they don't have at that time that they're doing the study. Any clinical knowledge. Actually is pretty good. Yeah. As you say also the student that have any major depression. Okay well sure. Yeah. If you have a major depressive episode, the chances that you are going to participate in a study is is very low. You're just you're going to not be doing it. All right. Some people can, but most won't. So what they're doing is they're looking at a bunch of students who have, let's say, mild distress. Maybe they have anxiety, maybe they're feeling down or whatever. But the feeling of these questionnaires, they're doing this research. And so a lot of policies within the government, within mental health institutions, were everywhere. And a lot of knowledge is being based on a bad, let's say, that representation of depression, it's not. And so but they say, well, we know they're not majorly depressed, but they claim that, you know, it's minor to moderate to major. So we can extrapolate from the major sort from this minor depression and say, what's the major? The point is this so much confusion within the mental health world, within the medical world, and again, within the broader world resulted from this type of bad practice. And again, this was a it was seen by a much narrower audience. It was just the professionals. So anyway, the point is this. So now people see someone who has major depression and they don't they don't distinguish. The average person can't distinguish. So they say, I know that exercise is good. So they say that the person with major depression come on, let's go for a walk. Just go for the go to the gym, go for a swim. It'll make you feel better. And I always tell my patients this, that if someone says that to you and you try to explain depression to them, major depression, just tell them it's like having a flu without the fever. Okay? Because everybody can understand that, if I have a flu and someone says, Let's go for a walk, I'm going to say, F-you, I can't. You just can't. Can't do it. Right. Whereas other people think, well, they're just feeling a bit down. I know I felt down before, you know. I know. You know, like when the when the Lisa were eliminated, I felt depressed. So I'm going, you know. And so, again, there's a lot of misunderstanding among the general population. And then you have the supposed professionals, your GP, who says, you have a few symptoms of depression, let's put you on antidepressants right away. This put you on an SSRI or something like that. And we've had a podcast where we talked about some of the harms of accessorize. So the point is this happened over the past 30 to 40 years at least, and it's seeped into the rest of culture. And so we have people not being empathetic enough to people with major depression. We have doctors or prescribing people who shouldn't get this medication because they only have like mild distress or something like that. And it that doesn't warrant such, you know, strong psychotropic medications and so on. So the point is this kind of even if people think we're making a big deal out of nothing, this kind of confusion, misunderstanding and so on can lead to bad choices, stigma of unintended harm to people. So that was just my little diatribe there. But I hope people can understand why people like us get, you know, get that they are our feathers ruffled when we see misrepresentations. Yeah. And to your point, one of my takeaways from it was this feels like this movie feels like it was created by somebody who doesn't have anxiety or hasn't experience disordered anxiety. Right. It's almost maybe I shouldn't use this term, but it almost felt like anxiety, blackface in some ways. Okay, your words, not mine. Maybe I'll cut that part. So let's watch the next video. Okay. Hello? my gosh. I'm anxiety. How can I help? I can take notes, get coffee, manage your calendar, walk your dog, carry your things, watch you sleep. Wow. Did Operation New Riley begin? I plan for the future. Silly. This will actually happen. Whatever you say. You're the boss. Okay. Don't worry. You're in good hands. Now let's change everything about you. Okay. So another issue that I had with this was the visual depiction of anxiety. So to your point earlier about stigmatization and how that can happen, I feel like this visual portrayal of anxiety does touch on that for sure. Like I feel like they make anxiety. Look like crazy and erratic. And that in and of itself like that, that just crazy look on her face, I feel is very stigmatizing and can create some feelings of shame for people who do feel anxiety. Anxiety is erratic. Anxiety is, you know, a lot of what they describe there. But that visual depiction, there's something about that that was very off putting. And I think it is how it lends to stigmatization of it. Another challenge I have that that video that we just watched Brought to Light was I feel that there is an overemphasis on the emotion of joy and happiness. And that's not just in the movie. I think that's in society in general where we we seem to have determined that happiness and joy is like the be all and end all emotion where the reality is like we're going to have blips of joy and happiness. But if that's your goal, you're going to be disappointed over and over and over again. I don't say that to be, you know, doom and gloom and, you know, negative. But that is the reality, is that we do experience a variety of emotions. And as we've spoken about before, we should be aiming for fulfillment and meaning, not just happiness and joy. But I feel like this movie seems to make joy be like the you know, the president of headquarters, let's call her. And she's leaving her way into everything and trying to supersede every emotion. Well, and it's interesting to say that because at the beginning where she's like, you know, shucking these bad memories in the back. Right. You know, I didn't I didn't know what to expect, etc.. So I thought that, like, if if you think a child, you know, and for any older people hear a Supertramp, the logical song that that was kind of a depiction of that the transgression from a sort of transfer sorry the trends my gosh the transformation from childhood to adulthood, you know, where we lose her in a sense, where, you know, we have to become like proper people. We have to understand what the world is like and so on. I think that song captures it, and it's also a great moment. Anyway, the point is that Joy doing that, I thought that the plot was going to be like, okay, the other emotions are either going to start to rebel or they go, Wait a second, you can't do that. But, you know, there's one point where she says, you know, hard is to be so positive all the time and everything like that, which they could have done that with an adult as well. Like they just the struggle of trying to be basically to deny reality. Like, that's what I really thought that would have been a great plot point where as much as anxiety is freaking out and doing all these selfish director or self-sabotaging things in the in the interest of helping, Joy is doing different ways. She's in denial because that's what that whole about. It was about repression, suppression or repression of bad memories and bad thoughts and trying to have a, you know, a self image based on, again, a distorted view of of oneself and of reality, a very narrow or myopic view, so that in the end, again, they kind of wrapped it up and they said, okay, well, Joy, it was not just joy, but, you know, we have to have it both sides of that balance. We have to have the good and the bad and everything. So I think they did a good job doing that. But Joy's role in all of this, I thought they could have handled it so much better because, you know, it sort of kind of happened when you're trying to go to the unkind or the back of the mind, everything sort of having sort of epiphanies. But I didn't really get a good sense of that maturity process. Right. It was it was clumsily handled. Then again, I know it's just a kid's movie, but if you're going to have professionals on board, if you're going to spend millions, hundreds of millions of dollars making a movie that's going to be seen by billions of people, then get it right. There could have been done. There could have been so much more that it was like there was a movie with Jack Nicholson years ago. And what's the thing about some I love, I like Del Toro. Benicio Del Toro, I think was a werewolf. I don't want to mix up the movies. Okay. But the movie, like it's chugging along at a certain pace and then it seems like the last 5 minutes, everything but it was such bad timing, the pacing, the terrible, and I felt like that was it. Like with the set as I was watching it and watching the time, I'm going, okay, it's going to be a really quick wrap up. And again, I'm glad that they did integrate the different, you know, the good, the bad and so on. That was important. So you hit the points, but they should have paced it differently. They should have cut out certain stuff and they could have made that transition again to from chaos to this much better and more nuanced and really show that joy. She's she's a problem. I'm sorry. I'm keep my eye on joy. I don't trust her. Yeah. Yeah. And this relates more to the first video that we watch. But I feel like from from what I've seen online in terms of, again, professionals who are commenting and posting, I feel like it's well-intentioned. I think that therapists are really excited to see something that is about emotions and normalizing emotions like that. Like I said, from the get go, there are certainly good things about this movie and what it represents, but I think that through that excitement, many of these therapists are filling in gaps in their explanation and excitement that weren't actually present in the movie. Excellent point. Yes. And again, inside out. I know when it first came out, everyone's raving about it and everyone's asked me, have you seen it? Have you seen it? And it's like, No, no, I don't like to watch those kind of movies about what we do. You misrepresent that. I only watched inside of you because you told me to watch it. Okay. All right. Now, maybe I was the first one to see whether it handled it better. All right. But again, let's go to another point, a few other points. When anxiety takes over and we have anxiety ennui and embarrassment was there one more And with envy or jealousy? Yes. Yes. Jealousy. Yes. Okay. So a couple of points about that. One embarrassment. What? That only happens when you're a teen. Again, I was in the first movie, but there was embarrassment before. Like there was a certain type of embarrassment. But that ennui, okay, that's the only one where I could see that being a teen thing. Okay. But the embarrassment, the jealousy or whatever, that makes no sense. Where were they before? It's always this kid in the first movie. Again, I don't know. I'm I'm ignorant here, but was this kid delusional at first? Again, I understand we have this period of innocence. I don't know how old the child was in the original movie. Was she? You know how old you are. Now, she was 11. Okay, So at 11 years old, right? That's well beyond the age where the child is completely innocent and doesn't know how any part of the world works. So envy, jealousy, embarrassment, that should have all been there previously. So suddenly it wasn't. And then one more point when anxiety is there and taking over and so on. And, you know, I understand locking up the kids emotions, everything like that. But, you know, the younger ones are the basic emotions. But what about anger? People like that? The anger should have been part of that, that group and something they could have made it so that, you know, just joy was locked up, for example. And the other people sadness. I mean, this is part of that as well. That would be much more interesting to watch. Anxiety interrelate with these different emotions that would have been on the way to do it. Just joy gets locked up, which I think that any of the most that could have been locked up with joy would just be joy, I think. Right. The basic emotions and interact with with anxiety. So that was such a poorly, you know, way that they handled a poor way of handling it. I can't believe none of the professionals said, no, no, keep everybody else and figure it out, work it and stuff like that. Make joy, do it. On her On the hero's journey to understand, I was delusional. I was like, It's time to grow up. I've got to figure these things out and so on. Yeah. And I think somewhat related to what you said there, there is a lot of overlap as well, right? Like and you know, maybe and I've seen other professionals commenting upon this and disagreeing fear and anxiety and I'm surprised they think you let those off into two different ones because anxiety and fear are one in the same. And, you know, there's there's nuances and levels and so on and so forth. But it's interesting how they split them emotions off into two and then others remained as one. Right. So so is joy. I think like joy and sadness. This must be the flipside or something like that I think she said about you. Yeah. And then there's anger and disgust and then jealousy and ennui and whatever the other one was there Disgust. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now I sort of remember that I'm a blank about our time, but, but the fear part. Yes, that's the, it would have been amazing to watch fear and anxiety interact and because there's natural fear. And that's, it's funny because some of my patients like who had PTSD, began to get a little of shifting gears here. And I know, but I just want people to kind of consider this where they and and sometimes they see it harshly. So people with anxiety, please don't take offense. That's not my words. But people with PTSD before, when it was part of the anxiety disorder and the up until the DSM four TR anxiety, sorry, PTSD was within the anxiety disorder family, as you know. And so I had patients with PTSD saying I don't have anxiety this dying day. This is fear. It's terror. It's you know, what I went through was hell. And when I have my flashbacks, it's often irrational. Fear of the future is like, no, no, I am going through terror. Don't tell me I have anxiety. Okay? And then when it was taken out of the input into its own category, I had some patients go, Thank goodness, I don't want to be guilty with things that it's not. I sleep totally different. So yes, So the fear, anxiety, how they're similar, how they're different, that could have been a movie into itself. It could've been Bad Boys 35 or whatever is different right now or whatever. That could have been a way to handle it. And again, I know we're making it seem like we're making a big deal out of it, but if you're going to make a movie like this, you're going to see it do it, right? Yeah. So one more video. There's one more. Let's watch it. Yeah. Riley. How was Camp? That was good. She goes away for three days and all we get is gone. She goes away for three days, and all we get is. Yeah. Sounds better than. Anything. Aspects of the game. Yeah, it was better. so many thought then one little tiny clip there. So I do like the how Riley's brain was like on fire and that was that was cute. I found it frankly, offensive the way that they depicted the father's reaction because we want to talk about stigma. Well, here we go. This is suggesting that fathers don't give a crap about how their kid's doing. They have a brief moment of caring and then move on to some silly thing like thinking about the game. So I found that incredibly offensive and stigmatizing of men. And I guess a disconnect or an inconsistency is that the movie seemed to suggest that anxiety is something that happens in adolescence and then, you know, maybe fizzles away. And I say that because mom later on at the end of the movie in that clip I think is Owings ideas back or something to that effect. Like, did it just go away? No, it doesn't. Again, if it was even if it's not authority, anxiety, anxiety is a normal thing that we feel regularly that helps to motivate us and helps us to get things done. Though it just seems strange that like anxiety quote came back for Mom that. That's inaccurate. Okay. So yeah, I guess the other way is funny because when I saw that, I thought with the father, it wasn't that he was not interested in his daughter. It was more like, Yeah, that's how teens are. That's all that we can expect. Okay. Rather than pushing, pushing, pushing. Cause that's why I tell my patients, like you get a one, you get more than one syllable out of them, you're doing pretty good. So that's kind of how I interpret that. I didn't see that more as, you know, he doesn't care or anything like that. But I get the stereotype, you know, like I understand that. And the thing with anxiety. Exactly. Again, that sort of thing about the pacing where it just wrapped everything up neatly and stuff, I would have loved to have seen how anxiety integrates properly, but I don't even know if they actually did. A Yeah, they really did. They stuck her in a corner at the end there. I think that when you go in they were patronizing to her and yeah. Right, Yeah. Okay. Again they could have done 510 more minutes and just really helped people see how to integrate because like I said at the end where they integrate the sense of self should have the good and the bad, not just the delusional. Okay, so anyway, yeah, I, I didn't take so much offense in that scene. Like I said, I just thought that that was a yeah, that's how teens are. I thought I thought it was almost, you know, insulting toward women like that. The mother doesn't get it. Like, come on. Though that that's interesting that we we see it so differently. One other thing that I'll say here is, and again, I feel like I have to preface this clinically. I understand this is a kids movie. I understand they were limited on time, blah, blah, blah. But if you're going to be portraying such a serious topic, it needs to be done in a fulsome manner. And I feel that that last scene is also problematic because they're not showing the importance of talking out what her experience was and leaning on her parents to problem solve or again, just share that experience. That was really difficult for her. So I think there needs to be some more normalizing of those conversations. I love that they were having dinner together, knows that that's something I talk about all the time is the importance of having a family dinner. So like thumbs up for that. That was great. But there is no discussion. And yes, that is typical with teens. But there's also a fine line between us accepting a teen who is shut down as normal versus a teen having changes in their mood. That's normal. But a teen being completely shut down and sharing nothing, that's not healthy. Right. And the fact that it was as severe as it was, you know, she's breaking into the coach's office and doing all the stuff and shunning her friends and all that. I mean, again, I don't know if you would actually have to share all of that with the parents, but the fact is, as we were saying, kind of like this mixing up of just regular anxiety with whatever. Okay, So if a kid has an actual anxiety disorder or really extreme anxiety, they are they going to walk away being fooled into thinking, okay, you know, I just have to do A, B and C and everything's going to be okay. And I don't have to share with parents and so on. Like it is like again, like for me it's like, you know, good faith. That's normal. I expect that, right? But in a movie like this and it's the ending, it's like toward the end where you try to deliver some messages and so on. I agree with you 100% that some kind of discussion or something like that or with a coach or somebody where they just just that's modeling for children how or teens how to deal with it. Don't just keep it bottled up and so on and seek some kind of help if you can. And yeah, just having a couple of friends there and like, you know, like doing the fist bump or whatever, like they have, like it's just it's too, it's so we're here, it's not nuanced enough. It oversimplifies it, basically. And once again, life imitates art. And so this will seep into the kids consciousness. And if people don't think that's true, I mean, that's our schemata, our our understanding of the world and what's right. Our norms are based so much on, you know, on the media that we consume. So yeah, and especially if everyone's saying it inside out is amazing. And I was saying that. So I haven't, you know, bad enough had to watch the movie. Okay. Which talk. About Sorry. That's okay. It wasn't I should have watched with my kid anyways but actually they get better knowledge on the emotions for me. But. And you but I haven't watched the critics talking about. not the critics are the professionals talking about this. And yes, if they're all going out there and saying it's amazing and great and everything and parents are seeing this as well, then once again, we are normalizing and, you know, all the flaws that we saw in this movie. So do you know of other mental health professionals have actually been criticizing this? And like we. Couldn't I literally was searching, like purposely searching like what are criticisms of this movie from professionals? And I think I came across one video who had a similar viewpoint to mine and, you know, confirmation bias. But nonetheless, I was relieved to hear a psychologist say things that were very similar to what my stance was, because I seriously felt like I clearly missed something with this. And in my rationalization of where I was coming from then, which the point that you made, I think that your family, much like my family, is probably more psychologically minded than the average family. So we were watching it with a different lens and I get that. But that is problematic that the majority of people watching it don't have any sort of psychological, real in-depth psychological knowledge or background. Well, so we've just proven ourselves to be this crotchety old, you know, I guess, you know. Yeah. Killjoys. So no pun intended, but. All right, I'm off my game. I got that one. All right. Thank you. Thank you so I guess I've got nothing I can also be repeating myself. So uncharacteristically. I'm going to shut up. Though. Yeah, I guess to summarize with, you know, what can people do with all this that we just bitched about for, I don't know, 40 minutes? The point is here, I think that what a lot of the critiques against specifically from professionals is lacking, I would say from everybody, quite frankly, is looking at this critically. We always talk about critical thinking. And I think that everybody is so excited. What a cute movie this was and how it's talking about a subject that is not often talked about and then getting caught up with that excitement. People are not watching it critically enough and noticing that there are gaps. And is it a great start? Absolutely right. I hope that people's psychological vocabulary increases and this is normalized more, but I hope that it's normalized in a more accurate manner. Right? I agree. And, you know, I kept talking like envy and jealousy. Like I click remember which one it was. Okay. But for a teen, like, they could have taken a few more emotions. I mean, they had the ennui for maybe for for what's like for humorous relief. There's a word like epic comedic relief or something. So maybe that was that character. And yes, a lot of teens are like that. Right. But they just they didn't, I think, make great use of these supposedly, you know, I would say more mature emotions, but let's say these later stage emotions. So I wish they would have had a few more. I would want to see jealousy and envy more, you know, done more, kind of more, let's say what's called like developed more and let's just let it play out and see like so much more could have been done with this movie. Just help people see this and help deal with it in a healthy way. It was just done. So let's say almost are ham fisted. Quite frankly, I didn't see any nuance or subtlety or anything else like that. It was just so blatant, so obvious, and I think it could have been done with more drinking more of that. A nuance. Yes. So I want to hear from our listeners because, again, if we're off base, let us know if we're completely missing the mark here. I want to know because like I said, in my desperate search for someone to agree with me, I came up with very little, so I'd be happy to hear it. Some others comments are on this. Well, so. So I guess I don't count as agreeing with you. So I will. What will that be? Emotion be humiliation, shame. I can't think of the. I should know that. I mean, that's on the spot. Almost like watch the whole movie. Come on. I got to figure that one out. Yeah. So in any event, jokes and jokes, but yes. So until next time, keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel.

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