Stories From The Movies
“I Wanted You To Feel That You Belonged To Me” : This brief clip is from the “Martian Child”. David wants Dennis to feel like he belongs. Getting through to him has been difficult. How can Dennis feel that he is loved and wanted when he has been abandoned? David does not give up. So many of us struggle upstream against the feeling-conviction-well-established-experience that we are somehow unlovable! Our relationships with our most significant other have the capacity to heal this. I cry every time I watch this!
“An Attachment Grew” : This clip is from “Life As A House”, one of my favorite movies. Give it a look with your partner. Use it to remind each other of the depth of need you have for each other.
“It’s My Fault” : There is tension and distance between Gus and Karin. Gus has been having a difficult time with his brother Lar’s delusion; expressing intolerance toward Lars. Karin has been disappointed in Gus for this. In this one-minute-thirty—nine-second clip from “Lars and The Real Girl”, Gus opens himself to Karin and crosses the distance. How do you reach across the distance in your relationship? How do you offer and seek comfort? Couple therapy helps you learn to close the inevitable gaps which occur in marriage. If you have not seen it, this is a gentle, beautiful movie about a whole community making a space for someone to heal. The character of the psychiatrist is one of the most likable psychotherapists portrayed in the movies.
“Ben & Katie” : If they slowed down, what would Ben & Katie really want to say? What fears and vulnerable needs might they feel underneath their emotional reactivity? In reactive states, we do not think about or reflect on our experience. Here, Ben & Katie, from a 3-minute clip from “The Story of Us” are in full reactivity.
“I Cried For Her, But She Did Not Come” : We need each other to help bear our feelings and we need to be willing to bear our feelings. This allows our relationship to be a close one and it helps encourage our best strengths. In “Shadowlands”, Jack has learned to turn against his feeling life. There was too much early hurt and loss lived in emotional isolation. But love opens him and he learns to bear both happiness and pain. Healing happens as Jack learns to bear his pain through his connection to his wife, Joy.
“Come Back Johnny” : Sarah and Johnny, from “In America”, struggle with the unbearable loss of their son Frankie and with the danger to Sarah in her current pregnancy. In every beat, need and fear of loss and the ways we protect ourselves ring out. Beautiful characters in a story so beautifully and hopefully told.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s 4 Mantras for Couples. Beautiful!
1) Dr. Edward Tronick, the researcher whose “Still Face Experiment” shows what happens to a baby in disconnection and Dr. Susan Johnson, whose therapeutic model, EFT for Couples, helps therapists help couples with disconnection, together show the parallels in the experience of disconnection at all phases of life. This is a very powerful video you can watch together.
2) Sue Johnson, the co-developer of Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy, discusses the research that shows that therapists can help a couple with specific attachment difficulties. This is a dry explanation with extremely positive implications.
Spock Talks to Uhura about choosing to not feel his Emotion:
“Alfred & Shadow”—A short story about emotions” from the Norwegian Institute of Emotion Focused Therapy
Sudden Recognition of Our Common Humanity and the Empathy and Compassion that Follows.
Trailer for “The Mask You Live In” Toward empathy for and about Men!
Brent Brown on Empathy vs Sympathy. An RSA animated short. Excellent
Brent Brown’s famous TED Talk on Shame. Excellent
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame?language=en
The Invention of Loneliness
http://www.upworthy.com/loneliness-illustrated-so-beautifully-you-will-need-to-tell-someone