Cinema Therapy

It began with a small blip in the algorithm one fine day in 2020, during a global lockdown. In the midst of the usual video recommendations any 14-year-old may get (most of which are too embarrassing to admit now), was a video titled “Therapist reacts to Inside Out.”

Credits : Cinema Therapy
Two men, Jonathan, a licensed therapist who loves movies, and Alan, a professional filmmaker who needs therapy, making a video analysis on a Pixar movie? Sounded interesting, to say the least. As a teen with nothing better to do on a warm august evening, I clicked on the video. My mind was blown, and my life was changed. That click was perhaps one of the best clicks in my life.
I dove into the video understanding them as strangers. By the end of the video, they had become “internet dads” to me, their impact had been so profound.

In that particular video, they discussed toxic positivity which was a topic which spoke deeply to me in an environment where I was always expected to be positive in a relentless and example-setting fashion. While laughing at Bing-Bong’s antics, they speak about calmness, meditation and understanding oneself. In Joy’s journey they find life lessons to discuss without sounding preachy, and being someone that went in without expectations, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they fulfilled a niche in life I never knew I needed.
When Bing-Bong died in the movie, I found myself crying with Joy and Alan over the loss of childhood, and in general. Alan’s unabashed willingness to shed tears in front of an internet audience left me in awe. Their discussion about the need to feel all emotions, not just sadness, not just joy, but everything else, led me to fall in love with psychology.

In Jonathan’s words, “There is a type of joy that is only experienced through grief.”, and my internet dads helped me understand both of those emotions. To this day, I look fondly to that day in august, when I found two strangers who helped me understand myself. In no way is their channel a replacement for real therapy, but if you’re someone who loves movies and overanalyzes the motives behind movie scenes, you can definitely check them out.

Finally, in the words of both Jonathan Decker and Alan Seawright, “Watch movies.”