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[exhales]
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[grunts, cries]
[man] What's up, Stutz?
[Stutz] Hi, Jonah.
[chuckles]
-[Stutz] Okay, entertain me. -[both laugh]
[Jonah] That's actually what you say when I sit down.
It's what I say to everybody.
Yeah, when we have a therapy session that's not filmed for a movie.
[Stutz laughs]
The… the other thing you… you say that always cracks me up, which is great,
is, "You better not come in here and dump all your shit on me."
No, yeah, you know, you've been dumping it on me for years,
and I'm tired.
[Jonah chuckles]
Well, here we are.
Why do you think I'm making this movie about you?
I think it's… it's my ideas.
I… I think my ideas had an effect on you,
and I think you wanted to expose other people to the ideas.
And maybe…
I don't know, maybe it's just an attempt to gain control over me, or…
[Jonah laughs]
I'm not sure. Why did you?
Yeah, I have decided to make this because I want to present your tools
and the teachings of you, Phil Stutz, my therapist,
in a way that allows people to access them
and use them to make their own life better.
So I thought we would just film one session in one day
and cover some of your tools
that have been most helpful for me in my life.
I think that's good.
And do it in a way that also honors,
um, the life of somebody that I deeply care about and respect.
Okay.
But can you be funny once in a while? Just…
-[laughs] -["Lovesick Blues" by Mason Ramsey plays]
[Jonah] What's usually the first question you ask a new patient?
The first thing I ask them is, "What do you want? Why are you here?"
The average shrink will say, "Don't intrude on the patient's process."
"They will come up with the answers when they're ready."
That sucks. That's not acceptable.
When I got into psychiatry, the model was, "I'm neutral."
"I'm just watching. I have no dog in this fight."
It was a very slow process, and there was a lot of suffering.
You know me, my reaction will be,
"Then go fuck yourself. Are you kidding me?"
[laughs]
If I'm dealing with someone with depression like that,
who's afraid won't recover,
I say, "Do what the fuck I tell you. Do exactly what I tell you."
"I guarantee you'll feel better. Guarantee, 100%. It's on me."
[Jonah] When I walked into your office, we sat down,
and you were just like, "Here's what you should do."
You gave me some form of action. You gave me a tool.
Yeah, it's… it's imperative.
I wanted speed in this.
Not speed to cure somebody in a week. That's impossible.
But I wanted them to feel some change,
some forward motion.
It gives them hope.
It's like, "Oh, shit, that's actually possible."
So what are the tools?
A tool is something that can change your state, your inner state,
immediately, in real time.
It takes an experience that's normally unpleasant,
then it turns it into an opportunity.
Tools change your mood
and then just give you a sense of hope that that won't be your mood forever.
[Stutz] That's correct.
[Jonah] It's basically a real-time visualization exercise
you do in your head at that moment.
Yeah. So in that sense, I'm a teacher.
I'm teaching the person how to use it and also teach them when to do it.
All of your patients, myself included, we have all these note cards.
[Stutz laughs]
[Jonah] And they're drawings of the tools that you do in our sessions
that we take home and keep.
[Stutz] I tend to think in visual terms.
So I started drawing these cards really for myself,
but it helped the patients tremendously.
The power of the cards is that they turn big ideas into simple images.
It was a way of communicating with the patient
that I actually felt was more powerful than using words.
The moment they take out the card,
there's a connection between the two of us. There's a bond.
Yeah, we have a uniquely personal relationship.
So much so that you're letting me make a film about you.
That is something I've never experienced in the therapeutic world.
And, ultimately,
my life has gotten immeasurably better as a result of working with you,
and so, if it worked for me, maybe it will work for other people.
-[alarm blares] -Um…
Oh, yeah. Time for medicine.
-Time for what? -[Jonah] Time to take your medicine.
-Oh, thanks. -[Jonah] The alarm went off.
[Stutz] Oh, shit.
[grunts]
Jonah, you want to do some Parkinson's drugs with me?
[Jonah laughs]
I kicked the stuff years ago, man.
[Stutz] You know, when I was a kid, when I was using drugs,
if you ever told me, "50 years hence you'd be taking all this medicine…"
So that's all medicine for your Parkinson's?
Yeah.
With Parkinson's, the biggest thing is, and there's something good about this,
you have to preplan a lot of little things.
When I have to get out of bed,
I have to go through contortions to get out of the bed.
The hardest thing for me in life is getting out of bed in the morning.
-But for very different reasons. -For different… [chuckles] Yeah.
So, before meeting you, my experience with therapy was very traditional
in the sense of I would be talking
and the person would say, "How does that feel?"
-Or, "Interesting." [laughs] -[Stutz] Right.
Basically keeping me at a massive distance.
Yeah.
[Jonah] And I was thinking about how, in traditional therapy,
you're paying this person, and you save all of your problems for them,
and they just listen,
and your friends, who are idiots,
give you advice.
-[Stutz] Yes. -Unsolicited.
-[Stutz] Yes. -And you want your friends just to listen.
[laughs]
And you want your therapist to give you advice.
Here's the thing.
The shrinks, it's not that they don't want to help you.
It's really not.
But for me, I always felt there was something missing.
So a tool is a bridge
between what you realize the problem is and the cause of the problem
to over here,
actually gaining at least some control over the symptom.
It all has to do with possibility.
And not a bullshit definition of possibility.
Possibility means you feel yourself reacting differently.
It sounds, um…
What do you call it? Trite. But it's actually the truth.
[Jonah] One of the first things you got me working on was my life force.
That was such an immediate thing that can change your life
and something that I think anyone can easily latch onto.
And it was the first step for me
in beginning the process of getting better.
Yeah, that's correct. Here's the classic thing that happens.
A guy's depressed, he comes into my office, and he says,
"I know my habits are shit."
"I… I… I know I'm undisciplined. I know I'm lazy."
"But if I only knew what I was supposed to be doing,
what my mission was in life, essentially, I'd be like I was shot out of a gun."
"But I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing,
so I'm just gonna be lazy and do nothing."
Then, from that, obviously comes the depression.
There's something that… that will apply to you
and to anybody else who doesn't have a sense of direction
or doesn't know what they should do next,
and the answer is, you can always work on your life force.
[piano music plays]
The only way to find out what you should be doing, like who you are,
is to activate your life force,
because your life force is the only part of you
that actually is capable of guiding you when you're lost.
If you think of it as a pyramid, there's three levels of the life force.
The bottom level is your relationship with your physical body.
The second layer is your relationship with other people.
And the highest level is your relationship with yourself.
The bottom step is your relationship to your physical body.
All you gotta do is get your body working better, and it always works.
The most classic thing is they're not exercising.
Diet is another one,
and sleeping.
So what percentage of that stuff
is what makes you actually feel better at first?
Well, when it starts out,
it's probably 85%.
It's very high.
[Jonah] How fucking crazy is that?
When I was a kid,
exercise and diet was framed to me in like,
"There's something wrong with how you look."
But never once was exercise or diet
propositioned to me in terms of mental health.
I just wish that was presented to people differently.
Yeah.
[Jonah] Because, for me,
that caused a lot of problems
and even problems with me and my mom.
I really met her, like, with an attitude of,
"Fuck you, I don't want to do that,
because you're saying there's something wrong with me."
Yeah? Explain that.
Um, I can, but I'm not gonna go into it, 'cause this movie is about you, not me.
But what if I said the more you elaborate on it,
the easier it's gonna be for me to take some chances.
Did you ever think of it like that?
I would say you should make a movie about me,
instead of me making a movie about you.
[both laugh]
Yeah, that's a good one.
Okay. So that's the first level.
The next one is your relationship to other people,
'cause when people get depressed,
it's not that they end their relationships.
It's like a ship disappearing over the horizon.
They start to get pulled back, away from their life,
and relationships are like--
You know those things when you're climbing a mountain, pounding those pitons,
it's like a handhold.
So your relationships are like handholds to let yourself get pulled back into life.
The key of it is you have to take the initiative.
If you're waiting for them to the take the initiative, you don't understand.
You could invite somebody out to lunch that you don't find interesting,
it doesn't matter, it will affect you anyway, in a positive way.
That person represents the whole human race, symbolically.
So that's the middle tier,
and the highest tier is your relationship with yourself.
The best way to say it is to get yourself in a relationship with your unconscious,
because nobody knows what's in their unconscious
unless they activate it.
And one trick about this is writing.
It's really a magical thing.
You enhance your relationship with yourself by writing.
Some people say, "Well, write what?"
"I'm not interesting. I'm not a writer." It doesn't matter.
If you start to write, the writing is like a mirror.
It reflects what's going on in your unconscious,
and things will come out if you write in journal form
that you didn't know that you knew.
These are the three levels of the life force.
If you're lost, don't try to figure it out.
Let it go and work on your life force first.
It's about passion.
Increasing your life force
so you can find out what you're really passionate about.
But step one is to be passionate about connecting to your own life force,
and anybody can do that.
[Jonah] If I just do that pyramid, everything else seems to fall into place?
It will. Everything else will fall in place.
[Jonah] So how do you come up with this stuff?
Well, I once had a supervisor-- I was very young.
I didn't even have my own practice yet.
I'm talking to people about what happened 30 years ago in their life
or what was the cause of their problem.
They would walk out the same way they walked in,
feeling like shit and basically hopeless.
So I said to him,
"Is there anything we can do so that they can feel better,
feel something at least, sooner?"
And the guy… [chuckles] The guy says to me,
"Don't you dare," he says.
It was like somebody who fundamentally didn't understand the human condition.
I said, "Wait, we have to do something right at the moment."
It doesn't have to solve all their problems,
but you have to give somebody the feeling that they can change right now.
I didn't want people walking out of my office with nothing.
Did you ever worry, with that strategy, you'd give them the wrong piece of action?
No.
In this area, as I always say,
I'm just a regular person, nothing unusual, except for this.
I zoom in on you, and I block out everything else.
Since I was a little kid, people have always walked up to me
and told me their problems. A little kid.
I would be ten years old, and a grown man would come up to me.
Most of them I didn't even know. They're just pouring their hearts out.
Who knows where that comes from.
[melancholic music plays]
I was in the Bronx till I was five. Then we moved down to Manhattan.
[Jonah] Where in Manhattan?
The first place was 78th and Broadway. 215 West 78th Street.
It was regular, middle-class, working people.
My father was a very nice guy.
He was loud, opinionated.
He loved to entertain.
If it was up to him, he would have people over to the house every single night,
and she hated it.
My mother told me, she said, on a beautiful sunny day in the Bronx,
a trillion kids out playing in the streets,
she told me her favorite thing was to stay indoors and read a book.
Her thing was, "Stay off my case. Stay away from me."
"I want to get lost in this book because life is too painful."
"I don't wanna deal with life. I wanna deal with this book."
So you can see these two people, there was big problems.
[Jonah] What time period? The '50s?
Yeah. That was, like, uh… '56.
It's probably…
Let's see, he-- When did he die?
[melancholic music continues]
[Jonah] What was your brother's name who passed away?
[Stutz] His name was Eddie. The one that died, yeah.
They knew immediately.
It was a certain kind of tumor that has a certain kind of rash, I think.
The doctor, he told me years later,
he said he knew the moment he walked into the room what it was.
But my parents didn't tell us. It was a mistake.
[Jonah] How old are you when he dies? You're nine?
Yeah, I was nine. Yeah.
[Jonah] And he was three?
He was three, yeah.
I would go into the bathroom.
I remember, I'd put one foot up on the toilet bowl,
like I was some kind of a medieval knight or something,
and I talked to God, and I said to God,
"If you let him live, I will believe in you."
"If you don't, I won't." Obviously, I had to overcome that.
Any time I'm in New York, I try to go past that building.
I like to stand in the spot
where we were standing when my father came up to us.
My mother gets out of the cab
and just walks right into the building and takes the elevator upstairs.
She didn't even look at us.
Seriously, I asked my mother, "Can I go back to school?"
And she said, "Yeah, you can do anything you want."
And I did.
And I think that was part of my denial.
Everybody was moving quickly to deny what was happening.
Everybody was avidly not accepting what was going on.
That was Part X. Part X was in my mind
before I understood any of this.
[melancholic music continues]
[Jonah] Part X is such a major part of understanding how your tools work,
so I wanted to talk about that.
So, when adversity comes,
it's an opportunity for you to--
At that moment, you're gonna face Part X directly.
Part X is the judgmental part of you,
the antisocial part of you.
It's an invisible… force
that wants to keep you from changing or growing.
It wants to block your evolution.
It wants to block your potential.
It wants to fuck up your shit.
So Part X would be the villain
in the story of being a person.
The tools are what the hero on the journey can use to fight the villain.
Yes. Part X is the voice of impossibility.
Whatever it is you think you need to do, it's gonna tell you that's impossible.
"Give up."
It gives you a very specific dossier about who you are, what you're capable of.
And it creates this, like, primal fear in human beings.
What does your Part X say to you?
It makes me feel like I'm wasting time.
It tells me I've invented all this stuff,
and the stuff is great, I'm very confident, but it'll never--
It won't spread deeply enough into the culture.
[Jonah] So how can people get rid of Part X?
You can't.
You can defeat him temporarily, but he's always gonna keep coming back.
That's why you have three aspects of reality that nobody gets to avoid.
Pain, uncertainty,
and constant work.
So those are things you're just gonna have to live with,
no matter what.
If it did work like that, if you could banish Part X,
then there'd be no further progress.
So if this is a story, the main character needs Part X, needs the villain,
because if the main character doesn't have to overcome a villain,
there's no story.
-[Stutz] Right. -There's no growth.
There's no change. There's no bravery. There's no courageousness.
We need the negativity of Part X, or else we don't grow.
[Stutz] Yeah, that's correct.
It doesn't mean you can't, um, work very hard at a goal.
It doesn't mean you can't succeed.
But if you wanna be happy-- 'Cause that won't make you happy.
What will make you happy is the process.
You have to learn how to love the process of dealing with those three things.
That's where the tools come in.
When it appears, you can identify it,
and then, you can use a tool on it to nullify it.
If you can teach someone to do that, they can change their whole life.
Because the highest creative expression for a human being
is to be able to create something new right in the face of adversity,
and the worse the adversity, the greater the opportunity.
[melancholic music ends]
Finding out that he'd died was like…
It was like discovering a new world.
And I said, "Wow, that could happen to me? I'm just a kid."
That was one of the biggest effects it had on me,
besides the fact that my parents collapsed.
They couldn't quite function as parents emotionally.
They just couldn't do it.
[Jonah] Do you…
Can you blame them?
No, I've never blamed them for that.
Thank God.
Yeah.
It changed my whole life, because everything had a double meaning.
If I'd go to play softball or something and I had a time to be back for dinner,
if I was like--
I swear, if I was one minute late, they would just go nuts.
Childhood was over.
Everything was serious. You didn't want to fuck it up.
His death became this giant weight that I had to carry around,
but nobody would admit the fucking weight was there.
I'll never forget this. A friend of mine, he was badly hurt.
I went with my father to visit him in the hospital,
and on the way out, my father turns around, and he says,
"That's the only profession."
Meaning, "If you do anything else but become a doctor,
you're persona non grata over here."
"I love you, but if you don't become a doctor,
I'll never respect you."
He and my mother were both atheists, so they had nothing to fall back on.
It was a fight against death, and if I didn't join the fight,
the whole family was gonna fall apart.
Right, so you had a responsibility to satiate their nerves and anxiety.
You became their therapist.
That's right. That's exactly right.
So they had nothing in terms of, uh…
[Jonah] Faith?
Yeah, in terms of that would support them in having any faith.
They only had one thing that could lead to faith,
and that was me.
You see how these things get passed down.
And I… I tried my best.
Total failure, obviously. [chuckles]
I… I… I guess I did do one thing.
I became a doctor.
So, um…
So at least maybe something constructive came out of it.
Beginning to see patients was like a joke for me.
It was just a change of venue. I had done it so much.
And I wasn't bad at it, even when I was 12.
[Jonah] Hmm.
[Stutz] Yeah.
Hey, are we gonna continue these sessions a few times a week
where I'm the patient? [chuckles]
[laughs]
It'd be nice if you answered more of these questions.
In fact, it would be nice if you answered even one of them.
Um…
We talked about my brother. Can we talk about yours?
It must have stirred up something in you.
[Jonah] Well…
Hmm.
No, I-- No, we're not gonna get into that, um…
[Stutz] Okay.
I think I should take a break. What time-- Oh, shit. Huh.
[Jonah] Yeah.
Yeah.
Dude, that was amazing.
I feel fried.
Yeah, you know, I told you to ask easier questions. It's on you.
[Jonah laughs]
Do you want my notes on your directing or acting?
[Jonah laughs] Save it for my session.
[piano music plays]
[piano music continues]
[exhales deeply]
[laughs] What is taking so long, dude?
[door opens]
[door closes]
Watch the tracks.
[Stutz] You're in this too?
-[clattering] -[Jonah] Yeah. Oh, shit. [chuckles]
[Stutz chuckles]
-How are you? -[Jonah] Good to see ya.
I'm gonna use a tool first. Is that okay?
Yeah, absolutely.
[Jonah inhales, exhales]
[Jonah exhales]
Okay. [inhales]
[Jonah exhales deeply]
I feel like making this movie is very complicated for a lot of reasons.
You're my therapist,
and if I was having trouble with something,
you'd be who I would talk to about it.
[Stutz] Mm-hmm.
[Jonah] But then when that feeling comes up about this movie,
I'm hesitant, and I stop it,
because this film is about you,
and I feel like I have to pretend everything is great
even when it's not.
I've…
been lying to you in our private therapy sessions
about how the movie's going.
So I've essentially
been paying you to lie to you,
and that left me feeling more and more alone.
[Stutz] Hmm.
I'm trying to land these massive ideas.
-[Stutz] Right. -And these--
And also tell the story of your life, but I just feel stuck.
And I just keep asking myself, like,
"Was this a fucking terrible idea
for a patient to make a movie about his therapist?" [laughs]
Like I laugh about it, you know?
But what I got to was like, why am I, like, hiding
behind perfection?
Why am I hiding behind a facade instead of letting you in on it?
Which felt like the only choice to me.
It is.
How can I make a movie where I'm talking about people
being vulnerable and working on their problems
and not be vulnerable myself?
It doesn't feel fair.
-And so… -Hmm.
…if the choice is to be fair and honest,
then I should acknowledge that, like,
we've been shooting for two years,
and we're wearing the same clothes every day,
pretending it's one session,
but it's been years.
And we're on a green screen.
We're not in your office.
And I'm literally wearing a wig right now
to make it look like it was eight months ago when I had this haircut,
and I literally have, like,
a shaved head.
I, like…
I don't know.
It just feels… weird and false.
I want to let the audience in on the filmmaking process, and you,
so they don't feel like we're just lying to them about shit.
And I'm lying to you and lying to everyone else that it's going well,
and that sucks.
We're probably gonna be watching this scene,
and there's gonna be stuff we shot eight months ago, 14 months ago.
Like… [scoffs]
It's just hard to know what is what at this point.
But ultimately, I just came to the truth, which is just letting you in on it.
Does that feel fucked-up?
It feels like the only choice you have, to be honest.
If you want to stay with the truth of me and what we're trying to do,
then you have to let yourself fuck it up.
If you could do it perfectly,
it would contradict everything that we're doing here.
So I'm thrilled that you--
I kind of suspected this anyway, because we're getting--
First of all, we're getting so many days, you know, so I said--
[both laugh]
I said, "This is probably the greatest documentary ever made
or the worst," and it's probably both.
[laughs]
But listen, it has to eventually get intimate,
and once things get intimate,
you don't know what the fuck is gonna happen.
If I've trained you properly,
you can just see that is not something to avoid.
The failure would be not rolling with it and not using it to go deeper.
The driving force in this whole thing, to me, is your vulnerability.
[splutters] No question about it.
If we're true to that idea and you're forthcoming with it,
we really can't go wrong, because--
-But this movie is about you. -[Stutz] No, no, not at all.
To me, this is just one more thing.
My life doesn't depend on it.
Your life-- Okay, maybe your life depends on it.
-[both laugh] -[Stutz] Just teasing.
My mind says I want to aggressively and honestly talk about two things.
One is my relationship with you,
and the second thing is the actual power of these tools.
So how do I go deeper? Like, how do I--
-There's only one way. -Huh?
You.
The thing is, if you wanna move forward…
[splutters] …you can't move forward without being vulnerable.
And the reason is everybody needs help in moving forward.
Failure, weakness, vulnerability is like a, um…
It's like a connector. It connects you to the rest of the world.
Because what you're doing is,
you're giving out this signal to the world,
"I need you because I can't do this by myself."
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I think what would be a good idea,
maybe I should show you some of the movie,
and we can kind of figure out how we wanna complete it.
And, like, for us to be in that together if you're down for that?
I am, yeah. I'm really touched.
Um, frankly, I'm relieved also.
So yes, it would be great. It'll be great. It'll be like an experiment.
Yeah. All right, cool.
Okay, I'm down.
[laughs]
I love you, dude.
Cut. [laughs]
Oh, you guys were filming?
[laughs]
[Jonah] Why do you think I'm making a doc on you?
I think it's… it's my ideas.
I… I think my ideas had an effect on you,
and I think you wanted to expose other people to the ideas.
You want to do some Parkinson's drugs?
-[laughs] -[both laugh on laptop]
[Jonah] I kicked the stuff years ago, man.
[piano music plays]
[Jonah] So we had to build a fake set of your office on the green screen
to make it seem like we've been here this whole time.
-[Stutz] It's nicer than my real office. -[Jonah laughs] Yeah.
Part X. And then, so when you're watching the movie…
-Like, a view of-- [laughs] -We never had insurance for that.
[Jonah] We've ripped the Band-Aid off.
We've told you where I'm at and the truth of it.
Where do we go from here?
It feels to me like we have to stay very grounded
and, at the same time, reach for the stars.
I'm not sure how to do both of those at the same time.
But anything that's real and that's profound
has to have two, not one, because it's a vibratory thing.
[Jonah] Ooh!
Two people can create a field, and a field is invisible,
but that's the force in the universe that makes things happen.
You can see that in your personal relationships.
You can see it in the global events that are happening now.
What we're doing here
is giving ourselves over to something that we can't fully understand.
But whatever it is out there, whatever it is up there,
it wants to have a connection to everybody.
[Jonah laughs]
[Stutz] The shame, embarrassment,
is actually the glue that holds the universe together.
It's in that experience that you're forced to connect to somebody else.
Anyway, things won't be perfect.
In a filming sense or an artistic sense, something might not work out,
but in its impossibility, something's gonna happen.
This is my real hair, by the way.
[laughs]
What? What's the matter? Wait, what's the matter?
What you have to say is, "I'm gonna do the best I can now."
"I'll go to the next thing and do the best I can there."
And it sounds trite and superficial, but believe me, it's not.
Great, so you're saying the worse it is, the better we did?
-[Stutz] Yes. -Great.
Isn't that how Hollywood works in general?
-[Jonah laughs] -I always thought. I don't know.
All right, well, then let's just keep going.
[melancholic music plays]
[Stutz] If you have the tools, we can turn this around.
So we have to keep going.
Keep going.
It seems stupid. Isn't that, like, simplistic?
It is, but we want to say, "I'm the one who puts the next pearl on the string."
That's all. Nothing else.
That's called the String of Pearls.
That's probably the most important thing, motivationally, you could teach yourself.
You just draw a string of pearls.
There's a line then a circle, line then a circle.
Each one of those circles equals one action.
But here's the thing.
Every action has the same value.
This is a matter of identity. "Who am I?"
"I'm not great. I'm not shit. I don't want to look at myself and think…"
I look at myself just in terms of the habits with which I take action.
If there's a failure or a big success, by the way, either way,
you're gonna keep going.
I am the person that puts the next pearl on the string. That's it.
So essentially getting out of bed in the morning is a string of pearls.
-Just getting out of bed… -Yes.
…and doing what you have to do that day
and not putting, like, a size value on the effort.
-[Stutz] That's right. -They're all the same size.
The beautiful thing about you, even though you're an asshole,
is that you never stop.
You have that. You have a taste for uncertainty.
The first session we had, you said that true confidence is living in uncertainty.
Yeah, and moving forward.
The winner is not the one who always makes the best decisions or looks the best.
The winner is the one who works that cycle.
In other words, who's willing to take a risk,
will interact with some degree of faith, and then eats the consequences.
If the consequences are bad, then you gotta work the cycle again.
That's as good as it gets.
Now, here's the thing.
In every one of these little circles, there's a little darker circle,
much smaller, and the darker circle is a turd.
It's kind of funny in a way, but what it says is every effort you make…
Let's say now. We're trying to do this film.
However this comes out, it's not gonna come out perfectly.
So there's gonna be a turd in it.
It's like I don't know if this is good, so I don't have to worry about that.
I have to worry about forward motion, putting the next pearl on the string.
I'll tell you, my life philosophy has turned into the opposite of that.
So instead of a turd inside of a pearl,
there's a pearl around every turd.
Because when something bad happens, I go, like, "There's a lot to be learned
and a lot of good around this event."
That's fantastic. I'm gonna steal that one.
Well, I'll sue you.
[laughs] I love you. I don't care.
Good. I'll see you in court.
[both laugh]
If this whole movie ends
in, like, a ten-year, bitter lawsuit between the two of us…
It's very intimate. It's cool.
[upbeat music plays]
[Jonah] So meeting you and starting our process
was out of desperation to get happier.
It's hard to say. It's just I had no… healthy self-esteem.
Right.
Having grown up overweight
was something, um, that sounds like not a big deal
or like, "Poor you," or whatever.
But for me personally,
it intensely fucked me up.
You explained to me the idea of a Shadow.
It's the version of yourself that you want to hide from the world the most.
And this is what I pictured that day. Me at 14.
When I met you, I was 33, maybe.
I had an incredible amount of success,
was in really great shape, physically.
All things that should have rendered this idea of myself nonexistent…
Mm-hmm.
…but what you explained to me was that this is how I saw myself,
and I was denying myself
because I felt so much shame about…
-[Stutz] Right. -…that this was me.
I thought, if I got successful, they wouldn't see that.
And then I did, and then all people did was just say more of that,
and it hurt.
And then I still felt like this person,
and that… still resides in me in a way that comes up.
So inherently, at my core, I'm still this unlovable person,
but the work is, like, inching towards
not only accepting but, like, bringing this--
-That it's great to be this person. -Yes.
But that's still very hard.
Yeah, it'll be hard for the rest of your life.
[piano music plays]
[Stutz] Everybody has a Shadow. Everybody's Shadow is a bit different,
but on the other hand, everybody's Shadow is the same,
because it's the part of themselves they're ashamed of.
The first thing you want to do is find your Shadow.
You have to be able to see this thing to focus on it
and to know how to work with it.
[splutters] You need a visual.
So close your eyes.
Now visualize a time in your life
when you felt inferior, embarrassed, rejected, despondent,
that you're ashamed of it.
It's the part of you that you wish you were not,
but you are, and not only that, you can't get rid of it.
To me, it's a 14-year-old boy who's very overweight and has acne
and feels very undesirable to the world.
Okay. The question is, "What do you do with that image in the present?"
That's something from the past, right?
Talk to your Shadow and ask him how does he feel about you.
How you've dealt with him, how you've treated him.
And see what he answers.
He says, "You've denied my existence,
and you felt shame at my mere existence."
Ask him how he feels about that.
Unbelievably hurt, angry, and upset.
Now, listen very carefully.
The Shadow needs attention,
but he needs the attention not from the world.
He doesn't need an Academy Award.
The only being whose attention matters to your Shadow is you.
I want you to ask your Shadow, what can you do
to make up for
the fact that you didn't pay attention to him for such a long time?
[piano music plays]
[inhales, exhales]
He says to include him in my life
and share my life with him and celebrate him.
And be proud of me.
Meaning in, like, a social setting or a work setting or a romantic setting,
where you're not acknowledging this person,
and it's not only okay that they exist, but they are a beautiful part of you.
[Stutz] All right. Open your eyes.
This is a tool that will hopefully make your relationship with your Shadow better.
This is good for shyness.
It's good if you have to make a public presentation.
It's even good if you have to confront your spouse. It doesn't really matter.
Or you're going on a date.
Or anything that's, like, high-stakes or high-pressure,
where you feel you have to be your, quote-unquote, unflawed, best self.
Yeah. Our goal is not to give a good performance.
Our goal is to use this tool and then tolerate whatever happens.
Yeah, because if I'm content with my true self,
then other people's opinions just affect me way, way less.
So you understand what we're talking about,
it's not how this looks or if it looks good or bad.
It's the process of constantly relating to it that matters.
If you don't pay him respect, or attention is the best word for it,
he'll make you do things that are actually destructive.
So it's both a tool that will make you feel better in the moment,
and it's also a philosophy about, "Where am I going as a human being?"
And the idea of being in sync with the Shadow,
it's a sense of wholeness.
Wholeness means I don't need anything else.
"I'm whole the way I am." And that's very freeing.
Whoops. Sorry.
Please don't kick my Shadow.
Very good. I'm sorry.
-Did he hurt you? -[Stutz laughs]
Did the weird man hurt you?
See, I love him now. I have to take care of him.
-You can come home with me. -[laughs]
[piano music plays]
I met you five years ago, and I had no confidence as a human being.
-I just didn't invest in myself. -Right.
And, like, understand how to like myself.
I just worked to achieve this thing,
which is your idea of the Snapshot.
[Stutz] That's correct.
So this is also called the Realm of Illusion.
Again, it's a classic Part X thing.
It means that you are looking for a perfect experience.
So it could be the perfect wife, the perfect amount of money in the bank,
the perfect movie.
It doesn't matter. Whatever it is, it doesn't exist.
It's just an image in your own mind. Think about this.
What is the nature of a snapshot?
It has no movement, right? It's still.
And it has no depth.
But in this case, you've taken this Snapshot,
and you've crippled yourself with it.
You fantasize.
People tell themselves, if they can enter that perfect world,
then magic will happen.
But you can't forget
there are three aspects of reality.
The pain will never go away. Uncertainty will never go away.
And there's no getting away from the need for constant work.
Everybody has to live like that, no matter what.
Before I met you, I'm this, like, wildly insecure kid,
and then, uh, I think
success and awards will absolve me of the pain of life.
So I work so hard to get to that Snapshot,
and because of my privilege and luck,
I got to go into that Snapshot relatively early,
and when it didn't cure any of that stuff,
it made me beyond depressed.
Yes.
At the same time, the media kept kind of like being really brutal
about my weight.
It was just kind of free game for anyone to sort of… hit my sore spot.
It made me so defensive.
Like almost anticipating someone saying something mean.
And I'd be so angry.
[Stutz] Mm-hmm.
It kept me from feeling any sense of, like,
able to grow past negative feelings about myself
and made me more ashamed of my Shadow.
And it wasn't until more recently, my thirties, when I met you,
that's when I learned to take steps towards locking that out
or forming my own opinion of self.
Does that make sense?
-You know? -[chews]
Here, wait, let's-- Are you chewing on something?
Yeah.
-[laughs] -[man talks indistinctly]
We're making a movie, dude!
[both laugh]
You should've told me that before you invited me.
He's fucking eating chocolate! You have any calls you wanna take?
[laughs] I do, but let's see how this goes.
[laughing] Um…
Sorry, I'm checking my notes real quick.
[Stutz] That's just--
I just wrote down about I banged your mother. Just cross it out.
[laughs]
The irony of the banging your mom joke is my mom is coming here tomorrow,
and we literally are gonna do a session with you, me, and my mom.
-Get the fuck out. -[Jonah] I'm not even kidding.
Well, don't tell her I…
-No, I'm gonna tell her. -[Stutz laughs]
Um…
-[Jonah] Okay. -Hi.
-Hi, guys. -I like that color on you.
-Thank you. -You look nice.
Thank you.
This is my mom, Sharon.
-Sharon, hi. I'm Phil. -Nice to meet you.
Great to meet you.
Yeah, so I don't know.
I was thinking about my first experience with therapy.
We were at a nutritionist's office,
and we were arguing so much that the nutritionist said,
-"You guys should go see a therapist." -100% correct.
The doctor was like, "Jonah should lose weight,"
and so you were like, as a mom, "Shit, I should listen to the doctor
and take him to a nutritionist."
To be perfectly honest, I would say I didn't need him to tell me.
I maybe might have thought that you should lose some weight.
And I kinda don't want to go to the past, but you have to go to the past sometimes,
because my mother specifically was extremely small, and so was my sister,
and I was always talked to about, "You're big like your dad."
"You're the bigger one. You need to lose weight."
And I think it gave me so much anxiety
when either I didn't look that way or my kids didn't look that way
that, I feel like, instead of thinking about what I was doing,
I was just doing what I thought was right.
-[Stutz] Mm-hmm. -If that makes sense.
Yeah, I'm not like trying attack you or anything like that.
So you see me being an overweight kid,
and I feel that, and the doctor feels that,
and society has its own constructs why that's defective or wrong.
So, I'm like, "I am not good."
"I am bad."
"I don't look correct for the world."
And you have to be the person
that is attempting to correct that, for whatever those reasons are.
Right.
It immediately put you in the position of being adversarial.
Of like, "This is the person that doesn't… accept me."
It's the idea that the woman figure will not accept how you look.
I do not place blame on you,
because I also now understand, and have already understood for a while,
how much you felt like me in your family.
[Stutz] Hmm.
[Jonah] I just want to let you know how it affected my life.
Right.
Because for me, sometimes it's easier to have conversations like this
in this form for whatever reason than it--
Thank you, Jonah. I appreciate that.
[Sharon and Jonah laugh]
I want to say thank you, because you've never articulated it
as "the female figure in your life not accepting the way that you look,"
and I never thought of it that way.
I tried to just fix it
without even thinking about how me telling you to do this would affect you.
Just so we get this straight, it's not this or that.
That's not the point.
No matter how clear the past is for you,
for you, the question is, what's going on now between the two of you,
and what do you need?
-Did you ever think about that? -I do, sometimes.
Uh-huh.
And can you tell us what you think?
Um…
-You can speak honestly. -[Sharon] I know. I'm thinking.
I would like a little bit more consistency.
Sometimes, I feel like Jonah comes to me,
but I am his mother, when he needs to talk to me.
And when he's, like, super happy, it's like I'm in no-man's-land somewhere.
I'm not in his mind or relevant. I don't know.
I just like time with Jonah,
because I think we have a real relationship.
We've been through a lot, and I think our relationship is deep,
but sometimes I get anxious.
When I'm like-- If I think that he's not gonna either like what I say or…
I don't know. It's hard to articulate, but…
Articulate that.
I'm trying.
I find myself holding back from being exactly myself
because I don't want him to think a certain way about me.
[Stutz] Did you know that?
[inhales deeply]
I didn't know that.
But sometimes I react poorly
when I feel you're not listening to others and eating up the air or space.
Right, I know.
But I think it's cool for me to hear, like, notes on what I could do better
or what she needs to make the relationship better
in this context, honestly, 'cause I won't feel as defensive.
-You mean if there's a third party here? -[Jonah] Yeah.
Speaking of, Phil mentioned something yesterday.
He said you guys were together intimately.
[laughs]
-Wanna address that? -[Sharon] He's joking.
No, he said that. We have it on film.
He wouldn't forget, trust me. [laughs]
There you go.
-There you go. -Dude, fuck.
I think this could be a good time to wrap now.
[laughs]
-I think it's time. -All right.
Um, well, one thing before we do, actually. Not a joke.
Like, did you ever have-- Not like this, literally,
but did you ever have this kind of emotionally open conversation
with your mom ever?
No, not even close.
If she was around now, would you?
Now? Yeah.
Yeah.
[piano music plays]
You gotta understand, my mother was from a different planet.
Her father, he was, uh, a psychopath.
So he would come in and beat the shit out of his wife
and also the youngest one but never touched my mother,
and that was the worst torture for her of all.
So I think, by the time she was eight, nine years old,
she wouldn't say a word to him.
1932, the height of the Depression, he just ups and leaves.
He doesn't say anything, doesn't tell them he's leaving.
In the middle of the night, he books. He's gone.
Forty years later, he tried to, um, contact my mother,
but my mother is hard-core. Forget it. I don't think she answered the letter.
She had this thing with men, for obvious reasons.
Every night at dinner, she'd give a tirade about men.
"Men are this, men are that." I couldn't really disagree with her.
My poor father had to be the cheerleader for this.
-[Jonah] What would he do? -He'd say, "Yeah, she's right."
-[Jonah laughs] -"Men are terrible."
It didn't occur to me until I was about 13, 14. "Shit, I'm a man. Hmm."
But she couldn't get over that, even 50 years later.
-Couldn't get over it. -[Jonah] She's stuck in the Maze.
She's stuck in the Maze for 40 years, 50 years, yeah.
["Lovesick Blues" by Mason Ramsey plays]
The Maze always involves other people.
It's the product of Part X,
because Part X wants fairness.
A classic example
is when somebody only wants to think and talk about another person.
What you're telling yourself is,
"I'll move past this once they make up for whatever it is,
being angry at me, cheating."
It doesn't matter what.
You feel they've mistreated you,
and your quest for fairness puts your life on hold.
Time is fleeting, and we don't have time for that bullshit.
[Jonah] I feel like I spent my whole fucking life in the Maze.
Being stuck on not being paid back for something I was viewing as unfair
wasted hours, days, months, years of my life that I can't get back.
So how could she have gotten out of the Maze?
[Stutz] Here's the thing. The average person wants to get paid back.
They want everything to be fair. They want everything to be balanced.
But you're not gonna get it from them.
The way you feel you're getting paid,
the way you feel things are being rebalanced,
is to get your satisfaction from the exercise itself.
That's called Active Love.
["Lovesick Blues" by Mason Ramsey continues]
So close your eyes
and imagine you're surrounded by a universe completely made out of love.
I know it sounds nuts, but just shut the fuck up.
Do what I tell you.
-[laughs] -Don't prejudge it and see what happens.
Let me try to define it.
It's just… It's a world that's almost dense with loving energy.
Feel yourself taking in all the love in the universe,
and gently, but firmly, place all of it in your heart.
Right at that moment, you're the principal leader of love
in the whole universe.
What you do is you want to see the person you're angry at,
that you hate, that you despise,
and you send all this love you've concentrated
towards the other person.
You hold nothing back. You give everything.
You feel, not just see,
you feel your love enter the other person's body.
It's very important.
For a minute, you become one.
At that point, you feel like, "If I can become one with this bastard,
I can become one with anybody."
And that's the sense of prowess, almost of mastery.
People say, "Well, you're asking me to love somebody I hate."
It's not a way to forgive somebody. It's not for the other person.
It's to make you feel whole and then free you from the Maze.
Then you can move forward.
So do you wanna be right, or do you wanna create something?
That's what it always comes down to.
Life is moving forward.
If you want to waste your time playing games over here, you can,
but you can't get those days, hours back.
When she got older, she became a community organizer,
and she was awesome.
If you asked her, "What was your job?" she would say, "Organizing rent strikes."
"That's what I do for a living." She wasn't scared of anybody.
In fact, the mayor of New York sees my mother and says, "Wait a minute."
"I will not proceed with this negotiation until Rosalie Stutz leaves."
[laughs] And they had to make her leave.
He was scared to death of her.
[Jonah] She turned her tragedy with men into a superpower
of not being scared of them and getting great good done.
Yeah, she did.
[Jonah] How do you think that affects you,
having your mom hate men and you being a man?
Um…
I can feel everybody waiting for the answer,
but I don't know if I know exactly the answer.
I know one thing for sure. [chuckles]
It made me insecure around women. I mean, that's a no-brainer.
[piano music plays]
It was like there was no pathway inside me
that could step to a woman and feel safe.
I guess that's the best way to say it.
[Jonah] Because you think your mom's reaction to you
was to, like, cut you down,
and so you couldn't see a way with women where you could feel safe?
Yeah. It wasn't even on my list of expectations.
The way she would make me feel is, "You have no right to even be doing this."
I overcame it a little bit, but not--
I didn't overcome it emotionally so much as I did just behaviorally.
Do you think it made it hard to trust women, like, overall?
Not-- Well, is it… Now?
It's not that much of an issue now.
I'll tell you one thing, I'd be a much better partner now
than I was years ago.
Although that's a very low bar.
[chuckling] That's a very low bar.
[Jonah] Where do you stand personally on romantic relationships?
You mean am I in one, you mean?
[Jonah] Yeah, are you in one?
No, I'm not in one. Um…
[Jonah] Did you ever override that wall that was built by your mom
and get close in the way you were scared to with a woman?
Um…
I would say,
yeah, once.
But I… for various reasons, I can't get into the specifics of it.
[Jonah] Was this a long time ago? Was this, like, in recent years?
Um…
It's been on and off for 40 years.
[chuckles] As crazy as that might sound.
[Jonah] And what prevents it from being constant?
I'll just say it in general terms.
She has other family stuff that, uh,
goes… takes her in completely the opposite direction.
And also my health, you know.
I got the, um…
When I got the Parkinson's, it had a double effect on me.
It's funny. You know, today I hardly…
Wow, that's really good.
[Jonah] Yeah, you're not even shaking at all.
Would you be willing to follow me around? Because you seem to be helping.
[both chuckle]
I'd give you off-- You just have to stay with me every day
till about 7:00, 8:00 at night, then you're free--
[Jonah] Don't go on a fucking comedy routine right now.
-Stay on track, bro. -Thank you.
-[Jonah] I know what you're doing. -Thank you.
Uh…
[Jonah] So the illness and her family stuff.
Yeah.
[Jonah] I can't relate to having Parkinson's,
but do you ever think that can be a crutch
to not just make a decision that would be scary emotionally?
Uh, yes, 100%.
I think that crazy part of me--
It takes whatever is happening and uses it to prove its point.
[Jonah] But that's your Part X preventing you from making that decision.
Yeah. Yeah.
[Jonah] You know, I think my big fear with, uh, romantic relationships,
what I'm learning is, is, like, the only way
for them to succeed is for you to be completely vulnerable.
Yeah.
[Jonah] And humans are so fucked-up,
and we just talk ourselves out of happiness so often
that maybe it's worth trying to push you to at least think about it.
Well, you've definitely succeeded in that.
I can't tell you, in the last, let's say, three minutes,
how many jokes I've had to repress.
[Jonah] I get it.
I have the same disease, which is avoid emotion by making jokes.
Yeah.
[laughs]
[Jonah] Can I ask a random question, and you can just tell me to fuck off?
Yeah.
[Jonah] Do you think…
you will call her
or have some sort of new insight on that relationship?
It… it feels like it, yeah.
Do you mean that, or are you just placating to me?
Um…
No. I… I mean…
It… it feels like a source of energy
that might help me make a decision like this.
Um…
[Jonah] Yeah, I mean, I guess I don't feel anything except love for you.
I just want…
I… I want you to… be happy.
No, I feel it. I feel that.
See, the thing with me that's not typical is the illness stuff.
So I think, now that I'm talking about it,
I think, unconsciously,
I was linking a woman, like a relationship, and being cured.
[Jonah] But there's no cure for Parkinson's.
Yes. That's correct.
But most people aren't sick like that. Um…
And I've been sick for a long, uh, time.
[piano music plays]
I grew up in Manhattan, so I was used to going out at night.
By the time I was 21, 22, we would go out at least one out of every two nights.
It was Friday. I was supposed to meet these two women at some bar downtown.
I said, "Great, I'll be down there in an hour."
And I had been taking a nap.
I went back to sleep. I said, "Let me just continue this nap for 20 minutes,
then I'll take a cab downtown."
I woke up Monday morning.
And I said, "I am really fucked. Something is terribly wrong."
Complete exhaustion. Like an exhaustion so deep…
Let me put it this way.
If I had to go to the cleaners, right across the street from my house,
I would have to think, "Okay, can I do this or not?"
"Do I have the… the strength to do it?"
But this was not me. I was, like, a very hyperactive person.
So then I went to a neurologist.
In one meeting, he told me, "Oh, you have cervical stenosis,
you need immediate surgery, and you have Parkinson's disease."
[Jonah] What did it feel like that day?
Um…
[piano music continues]
See, this is my real Shadow coming out
when you're gonna see what my handwriting looks like.
[Jonah] Why?
Because it's barely legible.
I don't even like looking at it.
I used to be very good with my hands.
I was very good at basketball, but anything, I was dexterous.
Now,
well, it speaks for itself. [chuckles]
But what I try to do when I get that fear,
I try to see my Shadow right at that moment.
"He looks cachectic." You know what that means?
-Emaciated? -[Stutz] Yeah, emaciated.
-Yeah. -[Stutz] That's how my Shadow looks now.
It's like I'll fall apart.
[Jonah] Do you think medical issues can lead to a lonelier existence?
-Yes. [splutters] Yes. -[Jonah] Why?
It was, literally, for a while there, I was afraid to go outside.
[Jonah] Did you ever think about having kids?
Yeah, all the time, but now… it's too late now.
I… and I wouldn't want to have a kid now.
[Jonah] Hmm. Why not?
I'm still so weak.
If I have to get out of this chair, I have to think about it.
There'll be so many moments
where I wasn't actually capable of being part of the thing.
-[Jonah] Hmm. -I don't think it'd be a great idea.
[Jonah] That fucking sucks, man.
[chuckles] Yeah.
Yeah.
[splutters] But if that hadn't happened,
the last bit of information I've been developing,
I wouldn't have gotten.
It's like every time I get pushed down and crushed,
I seem to get more information.
[melancholic music plays]
Parkinson's has made me aware of time. Like, really aware of it.
My sense of mission, my sense of this is what I'm supposed to do,
that got much stronger in me.
If I don't do that, I start to think about,
"Oh, shit, this happened to me."
"What a drag." You know, it makes life harder.
Then you go into this whole pity party thing.
It's a complete waste of time.
[Jonah] Do you ever get in that zone? The pity party zone?
Yeah, I get in it all the time,
but I'm very fast at getting out of it.
[Jonah] In putting the movie together,
I started using your drawings to display the tools,
and they are a bit shaky,
and I wanted to know if it was okay with you if I did that?
Oh, it would be great. Definitely do it.
And if it's shaky, it's even better.
Because the whole premise of this is we're not gonna win every time,
we certainly can't be perfect, we can't control it,
but we have an unstoppable will to go forward.
And this reminds you of it.
Each card has a little bit of a different approach
to basically the same goal,
which is, "Schmuck, take action, no matter how frightened you are."
[tense music plays]
[Jonah] That reminds me of Radical Acceptance, which is a big one
and really helps me work through a lot.
That's right. That's exactly right.
Here's the thing. Every event has something in it that you can learn from.
When something goes wrong,
anybody can say, "Well, it's not that bad. I'll recover from it tomorrow."
That's not good enough.
You have to create a reflex to squeeze the juice out.
Squeezing the juice means finding something meaningful.
It's trying to find the state of not getting into a lot of negativity
but actually training yourself to say, "What am I gonna do about it now?"
I gotta do some push-ups.
Is there anything that's, you know, strong enough to support my weight?
-[Jonah] You wanna do push-ups? -Yeah. I'm getting stiff.
You can do it on the dolly if you want. The push-ups.
[Jonah] Careful, Phil.
I've never done this in front of this many people.
Even if I do, like, ten of these… This is good for this.
-Can I take this home? -[all laugh]
It's the most expensive push-up--
[Stutz] You're not allowed to make judgements.
You're not allowed to tell yourself anything negative.
It doesn't mean you're stupid.
It doesn't mean there isn't something negative there.
You're not allowed to go through that. It goes against what we're doing.
Number two, obviously, you want to find something that's positive about it.
Dude, you're crushing it.
Well, when you do 100 of these a day, you get stronger. [chuckles]
-You do 100 of those a day? -Probably.
Yeah, because every time I stiffen up, I can't move like I should.
Yeah, now it's a lot looser,
but, you know, I get like this, I can't move either of them.
So I discovered this.
Maybe this'll spread the word if you guys don't cut it out of the film.
So squeezing the juice out of the lemon
means you have not only the will to do this,
but you have some faith in it.
There's something there that's valuable.
And what happens is
everything starts to become more meaningful.
You don't get to the world of meaning through big things.
You get it through small things.
I feel better.
-I feel loose now. -I do that for my mind.
-Oh. -Sorry. [chuckles]
[Stutz] You need to look at all events as having value.
If you can do that, then you're in a zone of tremendous opportunity.
That's all I have to say on that.
-[Jonah laughs] -[Stutz chuckles]
[Jonah] You fucking dropped the mic. That was amazing.
That's one of the best. That's a Stutz greatest hit.
-Yeah, it is one of the best. -[Jonah] I had to use that last night.
Oh yeah? How did it work out?
[Jonah] So I had an anxiety attack, and I couldn't sleep.
And instead of having more anxiety
about how I'm not getting enough sleep for the next day's work,
I used Radical Acceptance and was able to actually use that time
to come up with more new ideas for the shoot today.
Yeah, well, you did a good job.
Don't fuck this up now.
[Stutz chuckles]
Did I say anything about Cain and Abel?
Maybe not.
[Jonah] You went to high school with them?
[both laugh]
["Lovesick Blues" by Mason Ramsey plays]
[Stutz] I actually remember… I think I was nine. It wasn't like today
where you just hop on a plane. It was a big deal.
And it was-- You couldn't see shit. It was one of those overcast days.
My father was talking to me about some of this stuff… [chuckles]
…and he said, "Don't worry."
"We'll get above this, and the sun will be out."
[splutters] I just couldn't believe it.
I thought, "What, are you crazy?"
This-- How could the sun still be up there
when it's so dense, and I'm seeing all these clouds?
And then, I remember the exact moment
the sun broke through the cloud, and I was so amazed.
It's like the whole model of the universe became different because…
The importance of it was
I was no longer judging the nature of reality
by my experiences in the last five minutes.
The sun is always up there.
The cloud is always over here, blocking the sun.
If you can't break through, you think it's a very bad day.
In fact, you think it's a very bad life.
Every thought you have is gonna affect your mood.
Every thought you have is gonna be either positive or negative.
So the Grateful Flow wants to choose the positives.
[upbeat music plays]
Part X wants you to have the negative flow,
so it'll create the cloud up there
so you can't see the sun.
You forget that it's actually sunny up there.
The question becomes, "How do you penetrate the cloud?"
And the answer is, "With gratefulness."
It gives you the sensation, the feeling,
that there's always something up there positive
even if you can't see it at all.
But you have to have a mechanism. That's where the tool comes in.
The Grateful Flow is not the things you're grateful for.
The Grateful Flow is the process of creating these things.
So close your eyes.
Now, what you want to do is you say two or three, at most four,
things you're grateful for.
The smaller the thing, the better,
because it forces you to concentrate gratefulness.
You wanna do it nice and slow. You want to feel the gratefulness.
I'm grateful for my nephews.
I'm grateful for surfing.
I'm grateful…
for my dog.
I'm grateful for you.
[Stutz] Okay, now, keep naming things, but don't say them out loud.
Just keep creating that stream of gratefulness.
Good.
The next thing you do is you feel
that you're going to create another grateful thought, but you don't.
You block it. So all you feel is the force that would create a grateful thought,
and as it gets stronger and stronger, you feel taken over by it.
[upbeat music continues]
That's the Grateful Flow. That was excellent. Did you feel anything?
I felt everything kind of just… slow down.
And I felt a warmth.
-[Stutz] Mm-hmm. -Like in a sense of comfort.
[Stutz] That's pretty good.
The key is not saying the same things over and over that you're grateful for.
You wanna make it a creative act.
When you have to dig and work on it to find these things,
that process itself will change your mood.
The classic time to use it is when your thoughts are out of control.
The worst thing to do is argue with them.
'Cause its effect on you is terrible, and it does nothing for you.
But gratefulness is not just, "I'm lucky somebody helped me," or whatever.
Gratefulness is the state you want to be in
as often as you possibly can be in it, because it's the state that connects you…
It's the state that breaks through the cloud.
And once you're up there, you're in a different world.
What Part X does is to say you shouldn't be grateful.
It says, "You got screwed."
"You're a victim. You didn't get enough."
"Why should you be grateful for what you have?"
That's the devil talking. That's classic Part X.
[upbeat music ends]
I don't talk to you about your Parkinson's a ton.
And I wonder what part of it is my fear of just not wanting to acknowledge
my own fears around that stuff.
Yeah. I mean, my advice to you is assume that you're probably underestimating me,
um, because I continue every day to make adjustments,
and a lot of them are very helpful.
I don't know. I'm funny, you know?
That's not the kind of thing that I think about a lot.
I think about the future,
but mostly, my biggest fear is not getting enough done before I die.
-Hmm. -'Cause I got so much--
The stuff we talked about here is maybe, I don't know, 10% of it.
A sliver, yeah.
Yeah, I think death in itself is a really…
[exhales] It's a complex subject for everybody.
For me, I am…
very scared to lose you particularly.
Not that that's on my mind all the time,
but, like, you are the person I go to for life advice
and for a sense of comfort that there is ways through things.
And at the same time,
you… the only time I've had massive experience with death,
you were the person that got me through that as well.
-You're talking about your brother? -Yeah. Yeah.
And when he passed away unexpectedly
a few years ago,
and before I made this movie, I didn't know
that you had lost your brother.
You told a story about where you were that day.
-Oh yeah. -You knew the spot where you were.
You went to school that day and all those things and…
I spend a lot of my life avoiding thinking about that day,
and I went to your office that morning.
It was definitely the most intense day in my life.
It's definitely, like, the most shook-up I've ever been.
One of the things I remember was, that day, you said, "Give me your phone,"
and you took a picture of me.
And I, like, wondered why you did that?
It is very rare in life that you get a chance to record something
at the climactic, you know, most important moment.
And then you come back to it.
Whether it's in a week or a year, it doesn't matter.
You… you have, um, a… There's a time gap.
And in that time gap,
you actually experience the forces of healing, of recovery.
Yeah, I… I haven't looked at this picture
in four years.
Mm-hmm.
But I, like, printed it out,
because I wanted to show you and look at it.
[Stutz inhales]
You haven't looked at it for four years?
[Jonah] No.
In a good way…
it's like it's… I look stripped of everything fake.
[Stutz] Mm-hmm.
And there is an oddly serene look on my face.
-[Stutz] There is. -Which is, like, so bizarre.
But maybe because it, like, demolished…
everything that didn't matter.
[Stutz] It demolished everything you thought you needed but you don't need.
That's the picture of somebody who's gone through hell
and came out the other side
and is really okay,
in a very nondramatic way, which I like.
That's a picture of victory, even though it might not look like it.
[piano music plays]
Loss Processing is a tool that allows you to process loss, right?
And most people are very bad at it.
Not only are they bad when there's a loss and they get depressed or bereft,
but before there's a loss, they're just worrying about a loss.
The goal of this is to get what's called the potency of nonattachment.
That means I can pursue something, but I'm willing not to have it.
I still wanna pursue it. I want to pursue it really hard.
But I'm also willing to lose.
The first thing I want you to do is pick out something
that you feel you've become too attached to.
It could be a person, a job, something small. It doesn't matter.
But something where you're loath to let go of it.
You're afraid, if you let go of it, something terrible's gonna happen.
-You have it? -Mm-hmm.
[Stutz] Okay.
Now imagine you're grasping this thing.
And if it's not a material thing, it doesn't matter.
Just imagine you're grasping it,
like you're grasping onto a branch on a tree.
It's scary. You're afraid to let go.
But you let go anyway.
And when you let go, you start to fall.
It's not a bad sensation though.
The falling is actually kind of slow and gentle, to your surprise,
but you're dropping down.
And you say, "I'm willing to lose everything."
And you have to say it silently,
but you want to really feel the, uh, intent behind that.
And the moment you say that,
you hit the surface of a sun that was down there below you,
and your body burns up.
Now, at that point, you have lost everything,
because the instrument of possession is your physical body.
So if your physical body's burnt up, you're just one sunbeam
amongst all these other sunbeams.
You're radiating outward in all directions,
and what you're radiating is a very loving,
giving, outflowing sensation.
And then you look around,
and you see, all around you, an infinite number of other suns,
just like the one you're inside of, all of which are radiating outwards.
And then you hear the suns, all of them, saying in unison,
"We are everywhere."
This world is called a sun world.
All you can do is give. You can't take.
You can't grasp. You can't hold on to anything.
It's just impossible.
Now you can open your eyes.
How'd it feel?
[Jonah] Great.
-You don't wanna say anything else? -Yeah, I do.
Which is, I'm very good at nonattachment
to, like, a job or an identity or a beef with someone.
I can get there and use the tools to get there.
When it comes to things like a romantic relationship
or a family member that I love,
the idea of losing those things,
I struggle with that concept.
Think about it like this. You're not trying to become nonattached.
You're trying to move towards nonattachment
every time you get scared of a loss.
For most people,
they've never been nonattached for one second in their whole life.
So even the fact that they can move towards that
is… is helpful for them.
If you're human, it's not possible.
It wouldn't even be good if you were totally nonattached.
That makes a lot of sense.
So the goal is not to become completely nonattached.
No.
It's work towards no one person, place, or thing leaving you
can completely take away your whole existence
and your sense of wholeness.
That's correct.
I don't wanna leave anything in the shadows,
because I don't want it to become this, like, thing that eats at me.
And even your fears, I think, when you say them,
or your pain, when you say it, does set you free in a lot of ways.
[Stutz] Yeah, it does.
[Jonah] And I use Loss Processing, and it really helps.
I wanna be like a monk and be like, "These tools just help it all dissolve,"
but I still feel that pain every day.
-You know? -Yeah.
[Jonah] I still miss my brother.
[Stutz] Yeah, you will for a very long time.
But let me put it this way.
Death is not a permanent condition.
You can… you can be afraid of death, that's fine,
as long as you feel something after death.
And that's rebirth.
The idea that rebirth is possible from the very worst,
the dregs of the world, dregs of experience,
and you can make something cyclically come alive again.
That's the closest a human being can get to God.
[Jonah] Hmm.
Yeah, I understand it's just a reality and that life just does go on.
But there's very few people on that list that I just don't want to fucking lose so…
I don't want to lose you either.
What do I do? [chuckles]
I think we should get married.
-I want a prenup. -[Jonah laughs]
[melancholic music plays]
[paper swishing]
Oh, yeah, here we go, some of the good ones.
These are so sick.
[Stutz] Yeah, this…
[Jonah] One of the things that this movie is accomplishing for me
while I'm making it
is that I used to think that the people I look up to
are absolved of the problems that I have.
[laughs] I'm sorry.
I understand. I under--
[Jonah] It's absurd. I know. It really is absurd. It's not…
[splutters]
-You're laughing 'cause it's absurd. -Yeah.
Right. And I think it's good for people to see
that you, for me, are someone who's created these things,
and I think it's important that people who we look up to
aren't exempt from all the problems that we ourselves have.
You are still in the struggle and in the fight of being a human
just like everybody else is.
Your whole thing is that you're never exempt from the pain
or the uncertainty or the constant work.
And I think there's something beautiful about seeing your vulnerability,
for me, that dissects
that there will never be anyone that has it all figured out.
Yeah.
That's the secret of life.
-As far as I'm concerned. -Is what?
[Stutz] Accepting that you won't figure it out ever.
Nobody else will figure it out.
Happiness depends on how you accept that
and what you do about it.
But first is accept it, because if you don't accept it,
you have this thing in your mind that I can get over it
or under it and eliminate it, and you can't.
Hmm.
This is such a great moment right now.
Could you guys stay just like this, and I'm gonna go home and go to sleep?
When I get back here in the morning, I want to find you just…
-Would that be reasonable? -[Jonah] Yeah.
Are you tired?
-Yeah, I'm kind of tired. -[Jonah] All right, go lay down.
[loud thud]
What do you see when you close your eyes?
I see an ocean.
And it's a beautiful beach, and the waves are--
They're not huge waves. They're just perfectly formed waves.
And they're running up and down my body now.
[Jonah] Is the water warm or cold?
Warm.
[waves lapping]
You know what my mother said when my brother, um, went into the hospital?
She said, "He went… he… he entered it as an infant,"
or, you know, he was three,
"but three months later," I think it was three months later when he died,
"he was a grown man."
Um…
So something… He was transformed.
It made me feel so, um, sad, but also,
uh…
Also in awe, I guess.
-[Jonah] Can you see him now? -[exhales] What?
[Jonah] You see him now?
Yeah, I mean, it's… He… he's not particularly--
I feel that that is my brother, but, you know, he feels like…
He feels like he's your age, actually.
He says… [inhales]
…he didn't give me enough advance warning about his death.
He's saying…
He's saying it didn't bother him that much. He… he knew about it.
I don't see how he could have… told me.
Maybe. I don't know.
I swear, I know this is impossible, but I'm having this feeling
as if I'm flying.
[wind blowing]
[Jonah] How does it feel?
Great.
[melancholic music plays]
Can I, uh, sit up?
[Jonah] You're flying through the air?
Well, I'm… I'm hoping that'll stop when my feet…
[both laugh]
[splutters] Are you insured for that?
-[Jonah laughs] Yeah, you wanna sit up? -Yeah.
[Jonah] Yeah, sit up. Of course.
-This is a nice room. -[Jonah laughs]
Wow.
This is the real challenge for me every day, is to get out of bed.
Maybe it's just an attempt to gain control over me or…
I'm not sure. Why did you?
[Jonah] All those reasons.
-Should somebody grab your medicine? -Yeah.
I like the background the way it is,
because a lot of people have dreams
where they… they have… they discover another bedroom in their house,
or sometimes they'll discover, like, a whole huge thing.
What it really means in the dream world is you're becoming more conscious.
Your view of the universe is expanding.
So people have dreams that there's a room in their house that's not there,
and it means their mind is expanding or they're growing?
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
That's crazy.
…won't recover. I say, "Do what the fuck I tell you."
"Do exactly what I tell you. I guarantee you'll feel better."
[Jonah] Wait, I have an idea.
Yeah, go ahead.
[Jonah] Since we already shot the opening of the movie,
this might be for the end of the movie,
if we're saying why I made this movie now, after all we've been through.
Oh.
That's good.
See if you can… just really fast,
see if you can say the beginning, and then, right after that, say the end.
Hmm.
I'm making this movie
because I want to give therapy and the tools I've learned in therapy
to as many people as possible
through a film.
I made this movie
because I love Phil…
because I love the life these tools allowed for me to have.
[Stutz] Hmm.
And it doesn't matter what people think about the movie.
It just matters that we finished it.
Together.
Yeah, I feel closer to you now than when we started,
which I think is a great sign.
It's also great luck for me, you know, at age 74.
I love you.
I still wish you would stop dumping so much shit on me.
[Jonah laughs]
["Lovesick Blues" by Mason Ramsey plays]
♪ The last long day she said goodbye ♪
♪ Well, Lord, I thought I would cry ♪
♪ She'll do me, she'll do you She's got that kind of loving ♪
♪ Lord, I love to hear her When she calls me sweet daddy ♪
♪ Such a beautiful dream… ♪
[Jonah] When we shot, like, months ago,
you had mentioned a relationship that was kind of on and off for a long time,
and then you mentioned to me briefly in a phone call
how you had reached out to that person,
and I wanna ask you about it but only if you wanna talk about it.
[laughs]
It's so amazing.
This is-- She's the closest person in the world to me.
Mostly, when we were younger, not wanting to be in a relationship,
mostly it was me.
I didn't have the will to make it work.
Now I do.
-Did you reach out after our conversation? -Yeah, it actually… it helped me. Yeah.
-Our conversation made me a bit ashamed. -[Jonah] In what way?
That I was doing something, like, without full commitment,
like in a half-assed way.
So that was very helpful.
Who do you think's more scared of trying it out for real between you two?
You or her?
Oh, me, 100%.
You think you'll be able to let down some walls
and put some fears aside to try, or you want to?
[splutters] Yeah, I'm going to. Yeah.
What would be the hopeful outcome?
The hopeful outcome is it works out.
That would be the hopeful outcome.
["Lovesick Blues" by Mason Ramsey continues]
♪ I've grown so used to you somehow ♪
♪ Well, Lord, I thought I would cry ♪
♪ Such a beautiful dream ♪
♪ I've grown so used to you somehow ♪
♪ Daddy, such a beautiful dream ♪
♪ I hate to think it's all over ♪
♪ I've lost my heart it seems ♪
♪ Such a beautiful dream ♪
["Lovesick Blues" by Mason Ramsey ends]