Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by our friend Dr. Sulman Mirza (@thekicksshrink) to discuss his favorite holiday movie "Gremlins." This campy 1984 thriller comedy horror follows the Peltzer family as they unwittingly adopt (?steal) the mogwai Gizmo at Christmastime. As a father and child & adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Mirza shares his interpretation of this movie as an allegory for parenthood. We also explore themes of trauma, gender roles, and consumerism. We hope you enjoy!

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[00:10] Unknown Speaker: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fieri, a psychiatrist. And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker. And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows. Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends. There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts. And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like with a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better. So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn and your DSM five, and enjoy. Welcome back to another episode of Analyze Scripts. We are really excited to be joined again by one of our favorite guests. Don't tell the others. Maybe Solman Mirza, who is a triple board certified physician in Adult psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry and addiction medicine. Just in case you didn't catch our last episode that he was on, I'll share a little bit about him. He works with the largest healthcare system in North Virginia as the staff psychiatrist for an adolescent partial hospitalization program. He sees children and adolescents as outpatients there as well. He also has his own private practice, Luku Psych, where he sees adult outpatient patients with a focus on ADHD, autism, substance abuse issues, as well as being Blue Duns County's first Loudon, I was like, we're in the Northeast here. The first certified provider of bravado, the FDA approved intranasal eschetamine product for treatment resistant major depressive disorder. Dr. Mirza is also a certified provider in the National Basketball Players Association Mental Health and Wellness Program for the Washington Wizards. Begrudgingly realizing that the only way he was going to make it into the NBA was by being a doctor, which is super cool. That's a tough realization. Way to spin, know, way to find positive reframe. Yeah. And then, in addition to his clinical work, Dr. Mirza has a growing social media presence, which is how we found hiM. You can find him at the Kicks shrink with a following over 85,000 across TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, with an accompanying podcast as well, where he creates educational, entertaining videos and content with the goal of breaking down mental health stigma, combating mental health misinformation, which we also agree is really important, and rehabilitating the often negative image of psychiatry and psychiatrist. Often in movies, which we see really frequently. Yes. So he interviews leaders in the field, all while hoping to make viewers laugh and learn something, but also really like sneakers. Yeah. I'm curious, are you hoping for a special sneaker gift this holiday season. Well, it was my birthday recently, and I know. Birthday. Thank you. It's been like a month. Plus now it kind of flew under the radar because I was, like, bugging my wife. I was like, where's my gift? Where's my gift? And she's been like, along the way. She's like, sending me Instagram posts of this Pakistani artist who does custom artwork on Air Force ones. So she's like, oh, if you were to get a shoe like this, what kind of artwork would you like on there? Theoretically. Theoretically. And I was like, I'm still wondering because I haven't gotten it yet. And now it's like six weeks, seven weeks later, I'm like, what's happening here? So it's going to be like some Pakistani truck art on these Air Force Ones. I'm kind of excited for that. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, I love that. Do you have a big sneaker collection? Oh, Porsche. Do I have a sneaker closet? I have a sneaker wall in my basement. It's like over 100 pairs of sneakers. So people come down to the basement and they're like, whoa. And I have to tell them. I was like, I have some more hidden away in another closet, so don't worry. Do you actually wear them or are they for display only? No, I try to rotate through them. I try to spice up and wear a different pair every day or so. Cool. But I have my go to. I go to on a regular. And I bet you have a way of keeping them really clean. Yeah. So I've got the cases for them. So they come in the clearish display cases. Like a Beanie baby. Yeah. Container store has these boxes, essentially. So they sell them by the six pack, essentially, of them. So you end up spending just as much on the storage as you do on sometimes the shoes. I love the container store. Yeah. It's trouble. They have containers for everything, every shape, every size. Every now and then I go through these fantasies of just organizing my whole house. Right. Like a place for everything. And I have this fantasy, like, the rest of my family members will just do it and they won't. Of course, they won't make a good point about the Beanie babies, but I think we also used to store, like, furbies in those glass containers as well, which leads us to our movie today. Yes. So we're talking about the 1984 movie Gremlins, which was a smash hit at the time. It still is. It's like one of those classic movies, but totally. Every time I watch this. I think about furbies, which came after Gremlins, but I always wonder, how did that fly? Because they look identical. And I think they actually even came out with a gizmo. Furby at one point. That's, like, super hard to get now. Yeah, they were creepy. Esop. Furby's were creepy. Yeah. One of my friend's fathers, when we were eight years old, got really annoyed at her furbies for not being turned off, and he threw them all over the balcony. Down. Obviously, that was probably. He maybe had something else going on issue. But I remember she was devastated. So what I think about when I think of Furby's hope she therapy today, but I don't know. Talk about a core memory. Yeah, I'll say there's some issues going on there. I think that explains plenty of stuff there, but. So, Sullivan, give us your hot take on this movie. Why do you like it so much? What made you want to revisit it? Yeah, so Gremlins is one of my know, I remember way back when we had. When I was growing up, me and my sister in upstate New York and Summertime, our parents weren't big on doing stuff, so they're like, you guys just stay in the. Just, like, do nothing. They're like, here's some math books and some books to read and stuff. And then we'd be like, me and my sister hanging out. Be like, let's just watch some movies. And so we'd go through the whole VHS tapes that we had at home, and my dad would always tape stuff off the TV, so we'd have to fast forward through the commercials and blah, blah, blah. For the people who remember VHS tapes. Do you remember the rewinding machine? Did you have one of those, or did you do it by. We just rewounded in the VCR itself. So after a movie, you have to be like, all right, guys, let's wait around for another five or ten minutes to rewind this movie. But Gremlins Two was always in the rotation. Gremlins Two, which is, like, the worst of the movies. It's very cheesy and crappy, but I always kind of liked it for whatever reason, that was our rotation. Mighty Ducks Two was in our rotation, and Star wars was in our rotation. Sequel, not the original. It was very bizarre. But for whatever reason, that was the one that was there. And then I remember watching Gremlins one. I loved Gremlins Two, but I remember watching Gremlins one later and being like, oh, my God, this is so much better. And fantastic. And it's amazing. And then I watched it again a few years ago, and I was like, oh, I have a different appreciation for it now. And then I watched it again over the weekend. I was like, oh, another different appreciation and interpretation viewing on it. The other thing, too with it is when people always ask me, like, oh, what's your favorite Christmas movie? It's always, like, the time of year. We're getting there. Right? I don't celebrate Christmas. I'm a Muslim. We don't celebrate it. Kind of growing up. So for me, it was always like, my favorite Christmas movies are Gremlins, Die Hard, and Home Alone. Right? Yeah, Home Alone is universal. We all like that one. But that was, like, my thing. So I always appreciate it as, like, a non Christmas Christmas mOvie, I guess. Yeah. And there's a lot of controversy about diehard, whether it's a Christmas movie or not. I hear this in the ether. It's a Christmas movie. Yeah. I think we can agree. So what do you love about this movie? I liked it because one of the things I always like about movies is the practical effects. So this is, like I said, 1984, and I was two years old at the time, so I don't remember when it came out, obviously. But I love the class, the practical effects of it. I love that you created these creatures who are iconic. Right. What is it, 30 years, 40 years later? 40 years later. Oh, my God. 40 years later that we're still talking about them, that people are still clamoring for, like, a Gremlins three. I think there was just, like, a cartoon series on Max that just came out in the last year. Gizmo was super cute. Oh, my God. The cutest picture that's out there. I guess there's probably a lot of Shih tzus out there named Gizmo. Yeah, my cousin had one, and now I get it. Yeah. So that was, like, the appeal of it, and it was a great kind of send up of a lot of these classic kind of Christmas stories, too. Like a very obvious kind of send up of, like, it's a wonderful life. And just like, that dark kind of humor that's in there that was always appealing to me. And then more recently, I think we're talking before the idea of, oh, this is kind of like a metaphor for parenting and getting into adulthood and all that stuff. So say more about that. Yeah. When I watched it again over the weekend, and I watched it with my eldest son, my only son, but I have four kids. Right. So this was like, let me just watch it again. I always kind of originally thought of it as just a basic kind of horror movie, but like a comedy horror movie. Not a comedy horror, but a horror comedy, right? Yeah. And then nothing more. I thought it was a very superficial, pop, kind of culturish movie. And there it is. When I watched it again with the kid, right. I was like, oh, this is hitting different because it's a story of parenting. IT's a story of the ideas of what we're supposed to do, the rules that are there. And then what happens when you break the rules of parenting? You have the old grandfather in the beginning, and it's very kind of straightforward as a grandfather who's very wise. And these are the rules of here's your new baby, right? Here's Gizmo being the baby and a child. And he's like, this is what you're supposed to do. Again, the three rules are like, don't feed them after midnight. Don't get them wet and keep them out of sunlight or else they'll die, right? And we see this when you become a new parent, right, and have gone through it the four times, it's like everyone kind of telling you this is what you're supposed to do. And your own parents, right? The grandparents of the child telling you, these are the rules. These are the things you're supposed to do. Funny enough, sorry to interrupt, but our rules are the direct opposite. Feed them whenever they want, get them outside, except your parents maybe, who say, stay inside all summer and make sure you bathe them. Yeah. So it was interesting from that point of view. I hadn't thought about that before. And then as kind of this journey through, like, we're going to be cute and cuddly. Gizmo is fantastic. And we love him. And he sings these songs. He's like cooing and it's, know, he's so super nice. He's like, better than the dog, right? We think he's going to replace the dog, right? So it's like a new baby, a new child in the household. And then we get into adolescence, right? We get into adolescence, or even the terrible twos or whatever you want to say, where it's like, now we've broken the rules and now they are these gremlins, these terrible monsters who are just destroying everything. So that was what really struck me upon this more recent viewing. It was like, oh, this is what it's kind of like an allegory for. Wow, I never thought of that, but I can totally see that now. And I'm just thinking now about this scene where the mom, Lynn, I think was her name, is trapped in the house with the Gremlins who are trying to hurt her, and she kills them one by one in these very graphic, violent ways. And as she keeps doing it, you see this pleasure in her face that she's doing that. And I thought that was a really interesting depiction of her finding this sadistic joy in killing these creatures, given her role as the stay at home mom who doesn't really have a say and has all this husband who's off all the time with these wild inventions that don't really work. Terrible invention. And she's just like, yeah. She's just, like, stuck at home alone. I don't know. I thought that was interesting. Yeah. And it's interesting, too, because Billy, the main character, he's portrayed as, like, the perfect all American boy. He's, like, living at home, being there, works at a bank, has a dog, and he's hanging out with Mom. They're getting ready for the holidays together, super supportive, while dad is again, out being a terrible inventor on these road trips and absent all the time. And then again, all this stuff happens to him and the world. Kingston Falls gets burned to the ground. That felt like a little neglectful, just like with his even dismissing of the instructions when he kind of, I guess, stole his totally, and then laughing about it, like, oh, well, I think you got to do these three things. I was like, wow, you remembered them. I was impressed that he could then tell his son how to kind of do it. But then if you think about it in kind of, like, not the context of a movie, it's like you've got this bizarre creature that is not a dog or a kitten or a bird or a toy or a toy, and you're like, leaving it with your son, giving these random instructions that seem ridiculous, and then you're going off again, and it's like, well, right. Any danger? Oh, I probably shouldn't do this. Oh, this is a bad idea. It's like, there's none of that. I don't know. I think we see that, though, and I think stereotypically we see that with the busy working dad, who's not really physically or emotionally present, but will shower the children with gifts as sort of like a token of their affection, but then isn't even around to appreciate the children with the gift. And I think even beyond that, I would imagine a lot of parents feel that this time of year, at the holidays, there's just so much pressure and chaos and busyness. And it's like, does anyone sit in front of the tree and just be together? Right? It was always the competition of who's going to get the biggest gift, the best, and, like. And then even then, when he gives the gift or he gives Gizmo to his son, to Billy, he's like, I need to find a way that I can make more of these. And this is going to replace the dog. This is going to be like the pet of America. And he uses his last name, right? The Pendleton or something, like pet. And it's just like, he's so. I don't know. It's just like, that's really only where his brain goes. It's like if we think about just priorities, it's like his priority is to almost a little bit of self importance versus, like, financial gain. Like, he wants to be celebrated. He wants to be known. He wants to be important. Famous. Famous. I was just going to say. And even within the home, right? So all the stuff is in the home, and the orange juice maker doesn't work, the coffee machine doesn't work, and the phone thing doesn't work. And it's funny in a way, it was kind of mean and self granditizing. Like you're saying, it's like, even when the mom picks up the phone and talks on the regular phone and he's asking, he's like, well, you're using the device, right? You're using the thing, right? You can tell that he's always still just like, even if this terrible thing, nothing works. He's like, we're still going to use it. And she goes along with it. She totally plays into it. And I think that scene you're talking about in particular, we don't even hear him say that dialogue. We just hear her response where she's making an excuse like, oh, no. I was out on the porch. I couldn't get to it or something. But we saw her try to use it, and it failed three times. And that is so interesting to me that everyone has this almost, like, shared delusion. It's too strong of a word. But we're all, like, boosting his ego up and his image up, even though none of his stuff works. And I can't imagine it's lucrative. I kept wondering, how do they afford their travel? It's upstate New York, so upstate New York is, like, extremely cheap. So there you go. Yeah. So then we meet. We saw the little boy who's, like, Billy's friend, who's in my favorite movie ever, Goonies or the Goonies, which I was just like a pleasant surprise of. So did more movie question, did the same director directed both of those, right? Or there's the same something that brought him over. I know, like Spielberg, Steven Spielberg produced both of them. At least I think I know he was a producer for Gremlins. I can't remember if he did Goonies. I think I want to say he did Goonies, but he was a producer at least for it probably. Yeah. Because he really liked. And then Goonies is where he kind of like blew up on. Yeah. So you had shared a little fun fact also before we got rolling, which I think the viewers would love to hear about the rating of the. Oh, yeah. So, so Gremlins was rated PG and I was kind of like doing a little reading on it and I saw that there was so many families that were going into the movie expecting cute Little Gizmo. I think the advertisement was around Gizmo and how this was going to be like a Christmas movie and a family movie. And finally it came out in the middle of summer. I think it was like that. And Ghostbusters came out on the same weekend and it held its own. This was like one of the top three or four grossing movies of the year with Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which we'll get to in a like. So this came out and then everyone was like, oh, this is going to be a fun little movie, family movie, right? Oh, my. This devolves into this terrible mess of horror and gore and violence. And families were like walking out because they're like, oh, my, can'T. My children can't see this movie. So that was happening. Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom came out that year, I think, as well. It was rated PG as well. And of course, we all remember Indiana Jones's Temple of Doom with Galima and the guy ripping everyone's heart out and eating monkey brains and all that fun stuff. And we're like, oh, my God, what is going on? So those movies, it led to the formation of the PG 13 rating because people were like, we need to find something that's in between PG and R to kind of have this there. So I think it was important historically from that point of view as well, too. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's definitely not like a PG film. And I think that I saw online that they toned it down a lot, actually. Mom was supposed to die and there was supposed to be a shot of her head rolling down the stairs and all of this other stuff. And they were like, no, it needs to be more marketable for a wider audience. And so thinking of it even then, in that context, it's like it was a horror movie that they kind of made more globally. It will just be seen. But that's really interesting. The things you learn on. She kind of, for me, came out of nowhere with just, like, this really tragic story that I was not expecting at all. Yeah, Phoebe Cates again, who, for a lot of guys in the 80s, turned them from boys into men. But, yeah, she has these two scenes, right? Like, these two major scenes in the movie, the one where they're walking and then the other part where they're randomly just spills her beans about her father and how had this tragic thing happen to him and why she hates Christmas, which I thought was really interesting from a point of view from us in the mental health field, right? Like, when we're with patients, clients, and when we're around this time of year and we're like, well, Merry Christmas, or have a good Thanksgiving, or have happy holidays, and we say it very cheerfully and we assume that everybody loves the holidays and this really great for them. It's like the best time of the year. And it's like, not always. It can be really painful time of year for enough people, right? They're very difficult times of year. Sometimes there's a lot of family trauma that's there, and then they're forced to be around other family members or they're potential abusers or again, there's other memories associated with the holidays. And so when we thrust upon our idea of, like, it's the holidays and you should be happy and just get the Christmas spirit, we can't do that. So it was something that I've changed over the course of my years has been like, well, when I asked people, I was like, well, how are the holidays for you? How is this time of year for you? So you have an idea of how to approach it or how to kind of sign off or even just talk and process about it with them. That's a really helpful point. Even just like, if you're not in the mental health field, like, asking, what are your plans? And I think even in that way, you can get a little bit of an, oh, well, my plans are you're like, okay, you seem a little bit more happy. You're like, oh, I'm not really sure even in the little kind of subtext can give you a clue. But, man, I mean, there's a lot of substance use this time of year. It's really hard, I think, especially with all the family gatherings. I think we all assume holidays are a time for family gatherings, but a lot of people don't have big families or any family to go to, so there's a lot of loneliness or they might be housebound. And there is a lot of substance use this time of year. Yeah, we see so much drinking just because it's, like, normalized or encouraged a lot of times, too. So we have a lot of issues with that. I was working with a patient recently who we've been working with her on their alcohol use and getting it down, and they've kind of reintroduced drinking a bit, right. And I was like, okay, cool, we'll keep an eye on it. And it becomes the whole thing of like, well, it becomes special occasions, right. On special occasions, we'll have a drink or two, and then it's like, we're getting to holidays time, right, where it's a lot of special occasions. And then does every little thing, every family gathering become, like a special occasion? And then I was going to start that. I tell them, I was like, let's keep an eye on how often those special occasions are occurring. And if it's like, is Friday becoming a special occasion? Is coming home from work a special occasion? Now, let's just keep an eye on that as a whole. And I think the same could translate to food as well, either. Overeating, undereating people's relationships with their bodies, with other people's bodies, especially if you grow up in a family with sort of that toxic food culture. Same thing. I think we see a lot of this stuff around the holidays. Eating disorders, too. Right? So whenever I have patients, clients with eating disorders, again, it's like Thanksgiving is seen as like, oh, my God. It's like this culture of celebrating food in Turkey and all that fun stuff. Overeating. Yeah. It's like gluttony is very much like, this is what the plan is. We're going to eat too much and we're going to pass out and go to sleep. And the comments of, like, the normalization of the comments of like, oh, well, I'm going to skip all of the meals except Thanksgiving dinner. And it's like, okay, well, then of course you're going to overeat. And it's encouraging people to eat as you normally would throughout the day. And it's a way to help you keep a little bit more regulated. But it's so hard. It's a hard time of year. But that scene with Billy and Kate walking home in the snow, where she know. Starting to talk about her negative feelings about the Christmas time of year. And she mentions, like, well, it's the know. It's the time of year where there's the most suicides. I thought it was important to point out that that's actually not true. I think that's a common misconception and it makes sense. Right. For all the reasons we're talking about, all the stress and everything. But the CDC actually consistently reports that the time of year with the highest suicide rate is between April and June, which a lot of people wouldn't think. I think we often think it's like between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day. But there's some thought that perhaps there is something to that. Increased light exposure, people getting outside. I think there's some thought that there might be a correlation with the increase in manic episodes that happen during the springtime. Again, more impulsive, taking more risks and things like that. But the suicide rate is actually the lowest in the winter. So I wanted to hear both of your thoughts about that and your thoughts about this movie sort of portraying it incorrectly. Portia, you can go. I mean, I can see why it's common. I think we think of the winter, we think of seasonal depression, and especially in certain parts of the country, like the Northeast, where there's more seasons, it's like dark. We have less of that vitamin D. We can be more isolated, which I think, again, is why we might think that there'd be more death by suicide. But I think what's interesting, too, is there's also, and I don't know if this is related at all, but I'm just thinking of the crime rates, how they kind of spike in the summer, too, and it's just like the heat or you're out more, you're exposed more to things, maybe to more like. I don't know if that has anything to do with it. But that's just what that made me think of. I was a little bit surprised when you were saying that, that it's higher in April, June versus the winter. I think I was kind of like before I was kind of working under that assumption that it was also higher during the winter, not necessarily just based on gremlins. Maybe it's a left, maybe a lefty mark, who knows? But yeah, there's that aspect. I think it is just interesting that when we do kind of, like, research and stuff and see what are the statistics, what are the kind of evidence of when these things happen. When I work with kiddos, I reference a lot of the work of Dr. Tyler Black a lot, who's done so much kind of research into suicides and suicide rates with children adolescents. The highest suicide rates are always Monday through Friday and then highest during the school months. And they always take a dip during the school years. And I think the takeaway is that school drives a lot of suicides for children and adolescents. So it's that aspect, that other part of it that I always kind of bring up and say, so it was interesting. I think I hear that from a lot of. Yeah, and I hear that from a lot of my friends who are child and adolescent psychiatrists, that the summers tend to be a little slower, and then it's, like, quiet. As soon as you get to that first parent teacher conference, it's know everyone wants to come. And like, Portia, you were saying in the, like, I do PHP partial hospitalization work in the summer, it's, like, barren, right? I'm always like, everyone's like, they're encouraging you take your vacations during the summer. You want to take extra week off, take an extra week off. It's really quiet. And then end of September, October starts, and it's like, PHP is full. It is full until June. Yeah, that's really interesting. And gosh, what a commentary on how stressed kids are by, like, that sucks. Yeah. So when people discuss, it's funny because you get into the debates about people who will be like, oh, it's social media, and it's like, Instagram's fault and TikTok's fault that kids are suicidal. We didn't have this when we were growing up. I was like, yes, of course you did. But nobody talked about it. But I was like, you can access TikTok and Instagram during the summer, right? You have plenty of that stuff during the summertime. Might even access it. You can have it on the weekends, right? You can get it on Saturdays and Sundays, right? But data is dramatic. It is like, significant differences that occur between school days and school months. That's really interesting. It's sad. That makes me sad. I think it's hard for scheduling. This is just like a me problem, not a patient problem, but it's like, we'll meal you if you're in a group dynamic drops so drastically in the summer. And same with, I have all of these openings, but I'll see someone monthly. And then all of a sudden, September hits, and it's like, we need every week, and it also needs to be after soccer, and it also needs to be before we have tutoring. And it's just like. But then if you think about it, it's like, okay, now the kids are in school all day, and then they have an after school activity, and then they have sat prep, and then they have this, and it's like, well, maybe that's why they're stressed. They're kind of being pulled in a million directions and maybe feeling like a failure, and it's just poor case. One of the greatest interventions I do is tell people to do less. I was like, is there one thing that you can drop? And they're like, oh, my God. It made a huge difference. Oh, 100%. And it is like, I think I try to keep that in mind as a parent myself, not to over schedule, but it's hard because there's so many activities going on, and you don't want your kid to feel left out or you want them to participate. But then it's kind of just like the holiday season, too. It just gets to be too much. We all just need to take a deep breath and sit down. You need to chill. Yeah, yeah. As Taylor Swift says, you need to calm down. So talk about trauma with finding her dad deceased for days with a smell, and he was dressed as Santa. I mean, what a obvious reason to not like Christmas anymore. Yeah. So that was like this terrible story that, again, comes out of nowhere. That was one of the kind of the criticisms of the movie as well. I could imagine all the families going to see the movie and then being like, oh, my God, dad is trying to be Santa Claus and come down the chimney. And he gets stuck and he dies. And then they start being like, oh, what is this weird smell? And then doom. There's dad in the chimney, and that is a smell. I don't know if you ever rotated through forensic pathology. Solman I did, because I'm just a morbidly curious person, I guess. THat's a distinct smell. All the true crime shows say that. And it is true. There is the smell of death that's there. That is not fun for anybody. But also, why wasn't anyone looking for him for days? I can't remember. I think they were, but everyone was like, they just, oh, they were. I mean, nobody could find them, right? Because they're like the work, I think they called like work, and they're like, he's not here or something. Okay, that makes sense, actually. No one would think to look in the chimney. No one thinks to look in the chimney. Hot take. If you can't find someone, check your chimney. I think maybe this is why chimneys are much narrower now. But no, this is a very obvious trauma. And for some reason, I don't know why, but I knew that there was a twist of something that happened with dad. And for some reason I was thinking that it was like an assault or abuse that occurred to her. And then it was like, oh, yeah, it was the dad gets stuck in the chimney. So I remember there was like a trauma that occurred. The thing that we're talking about before is that there is these moments that occur, right? These associations that occur again, we see so many times with sexual abuse, incest kind of situations that occur, like it's the creepy uncle or the aunt or somebody like that. And again, what are you supposed to do in family kind of gatherings when they get invited and whether parents may know or not know, they still. Or they kind of decide to not do anything about it or let's not talk about it. I think a really good kind of reference for this was that Indian movie that came out many years ago. I can't remember the name of it. It was like some wedding. Monsoon wedding. I think it was right. And I don't remember. I don't know if you guys watch or not, but that was kind of the premise is like, the uncle had assaulted one of the girls as a child and everyone was like, we're not going to talk about it. Let's just leave it alone. And then she couldn't take it anymore and then had a big fit at him. And the family members are like, why are you yelling at him? Why are you still talking about this? It happened like, 2030 years ago. Why are you bringing this up right now? But this happens all the time. All the time, all the time. So many times, right? And then people are just supposed to just pretend like nothing happened, right? Keep the peace, just go along with it. And it's like, gosh, not only was this person traumatized and violated in such a major way, now we're all perpetuating it by telling them, don't talk about it, just suppress. We're retraumatizing them. It's so awful. So then when bringing it back to Phoebe, Kate's character, we see every year, like, oh, Christmas stories and families and Christmas cards and dad being sit on Santa's lap. And it's this. All the stuff that goes along with Christmas time. And how else can you. Well, like, where you're supposed to be with your family and Santa's this wonderful character and he's popping down chimneys and dropping off presents with kids and it's like oh my God. Can you also like Santa? If you really think about it, it's kind of creepy. Like this old man, stranger, you don't know, like you sit on his lap and ask for things and then he just comes in your house. Are you good? Are you noding your. When you're. Sees you when you're sleeping? It's like kind of creepy. Very creepy. Kind of creepy. I think too, in my work as a reproductive psychiatrist, I see a lot of grief around the holidays, at least in our American culture. From a know religious standpoint, with all the focus on the baby, baby Jesus and family and growing your family and gatherings, there's a lot of grief for women who've lost children or want one so badly. And I think that applies to whatever your family system or structure is. If there's been tragic loss or even untragic loss, like, loss is hard no matter what, but especially this time of year, the first holiday after someone died, or now we're doing things differently. It's just hard. And I don't think we leave enough space in all of our busy schedules to just allow ourselves to feel that or to even kind of accept that other people have different experiences. Right. Still get into the Christmas spirit and still have your pumpkin spice lattes and continue on. Yeah, like, go sing a carol. It'll make everything better. Yeah. You see Billy do that a little bit until she shares her story. But she's really kind of like pushing her to be like, well, what do you mean? And it's the best time of the year. And why that's weird. And then she kind of like, whether she wanted to or not, I would imagine, felt inclined to be like, well, this is why. And I think a lot of people also, it's like when they are being pushed or encouraged kind of forcefully to get into the spirit, it does really feel kind of like non consensual. And oftentimes you're kind of forced to share something that maybe you don't want to or you're not ready to. Or some people like, again, I do sadly see the same example you mentioned about there being some sort of abuse or violation in the past and having to see that extended family member. And often it might be this type of situation coming up that finally leads to someone disclosing it for the first time to, like, parents and how unfortunately, some parents might be upset. Like, why'd you have to tell me now you've ruined Christmas. Ruining the holiday. Christmas. Yeah, exactly. It's like, holy moly, come on. Yeah, I do think, though it is possible, even when the holidays are hard, it is possible that maybe they won't always be hard. And I like to encourage my patients when they're at that point to. Also, something I use is thinking about, like grief and love can be like two sides of the same coin. And sometimes when you've experienced a lot of loss or grief around a certain time of year, a certain anniversary, whether it's holidays or otherwise, when you can make room to sit with it and accept it and let yourself just process it, how you process it, you can also open yourself up to feeling that love for that person or for other people, or you can appreciate life in a different way sometimes if you can just allow yourself to hold on to all of those complicated, big emotions. Yeah. Also with trauma. Talking about that a little bit, too. There is also the community trauma that occurs, right. Which we don't get much of in the first movie, but it gets referenced to a little bit in the second. Gremlins or Gremlins, too. So you have this small, idyllic postcard town that gets totally destroyed and ravaged by the Gremlins. Right. Theater gets blown up, everything else, people get killed and all these things occur. And you see what happens to a little bit in the second movie. Not too much, right. They moved to New York City. Right? That's where the main setting is. And they're like, we had to get away from there. We had to get out of that place. Right. We had to run away from there. And it is that aspect. We have to remember that communities, places we live are like people as well. They can have a trauma occur to them that doesn't go away. I think we see it with things like New York City and 911. Right. That's, again, we never forget kind of thing. Right. That's never going to be forgotten. So when tragedies occur to areas, that's a thing that we have to kind of remember. And collectively, society wise, community wise, have to remember, too. It makes me think of towns who experience school shootings. I was just thinking like, sandy hook holiday time or like. And it's like there's so many families with a huge loss and what do the holidays look like? And that almost like too, just like survivors guilt, like, your kid is alive and it's very complicated. And I think you're right. That community aspect is totally not to be forgotten either. So I was thinking that either of you two could kind of talk a little bit about delusions or hallucinations with just like we see that scene where Billy's at the police station and telling them that this is going to happen, all these terrible things. And he shows them Gizmo like, he's super cute and they don't believe him because it Sounds. Right. Like, not true. Unbelievable. Yeah. So what is a delusion? If a patient told you this, what might you ask them? What are some other questions or assessment tools that you could use? Yeah. So delusion is a fixed false belief. Right. That's kind of the boilerplate definition of it. So fixed in regards to no matter what you do, no matter what you say, there's no way that you can change that person's mind. And then false is that it's obviously false. It's not true. And these are, I do mostly child adolescent work, but I have some adults and I have, I would say, like, one patient, I would say that has delusional disorder. And there are some of, like, I want to say, the hardest but most challenging kind of patients to work with. I would agree. Again, it's fixed. Right. That belief is not going to go away. And there's a recent kind of discussion on Twitter that was coming up about how do you approach a delusional patient? And there was this old school of thought, I want to say maybe where you kind of challenge it. And then I think that really has fallen away to be like, you kind of go along with it. You say, like, okay. And then we try not to put too much stock in it into that fixed false belief. Right. Like, you don't want to go along with it too much. Okay, well, this is a thought. Let's kind of see what else is going on or how else we can help out and try not to challenge it or fight it either, or kind of convince the other person that, no, this is wrong. So that's like, what's it called, the aspect or definition of what a delusion would be, bringing it to the movie. And it's important to keep it in the cultural context. We saw this with the movie side effects, that there was a man who identified as Haitian who was in the ER, who I guess this was more of a hallucination, but thought he saw a deceased relative and they were like, oh, he's got to be hospitalized. And then it's like, oh, no, actually in that culture, that's accepted. So it's important to have that framework, and that's hard because I don't understand every single culture in the world. Right. So if I'm in the New York City er, it's a lot. So it's kind of that something that's going to be totally bizarre ish. And then there's that, like your family, that people doesn't believe. People around them are less like, no, this is new and this is different, and this is not okay. This is not normalish. So that's what a delusion is from the movie point of view, kind of bringing it back to the parenting. There's again, like this delusion where people around when you have this baby, right? They're like, this is going to be a perfect child and nothing could ever go wrong with them. What are you talking about? That they're going to grow up and become terrible teens or terrible adolescents or adults, right? They're going to be perfect little kids just like you, little gizmo, forever. And then we know that that doesn't happen because there are terrible people out there. People do terrible things. So people make mistakes. People make mistakes even if they're not terrible at their core. But some people are having antisocial personality disorder. Yeah. And I think we saw this, too with our recent episode on American Horror Story. Delicate. That if it hadn't actually been happening, these people would be delusional. And yet it is happening because we're in this fantastical story. But you even see how people react to it, like how the police officers in this movie reacted. And it's not really in a supportive way and how you just have to be so careful. Because I think if we're talking about people with clinical delusions or a delusional disorder, I think, at least in my experience, it's very hard to get people with these disorders into psychiatric treatment. Usually it's other providers. I'm thinking of delusional parasitosis, which is where you think you have an infection or a parasite or a skin. A lot of times it's skin rashes, bedbugs, things like that. So these people show up to the dermatologist over and over, the pathologist over and over. And, I mean, it can get pretty severe in terms of. I've seen people who've taken their own samples, like cut off some of their skin to bring or traps the bugs in a container, and there's nothing in it. But to try to get someone like that into psychiatric treatment is incredibly hard. And we don't have great medications for it. Maybe an antipsychotic, but it's tricky. Another thing is like MRIs, right? Because they'll be like, I'm convinced I have a tumor in my brain, or they have the whole body scans, right? So they get a lot of imaging, they're convinced something is there. And every time it's coming up, like it's normal. Nothing is there. Or even right. There's pseudosyesis, which is a delusional belief that you're pregnant when you're not. I saw a case of that in my training, which was fascinating. And it's just fascinating to me that our brains can do this. Yeah, we see this. I was going to say we see this in Parkinson's. Right. One of the more common delusions in Parkinson's is, like, the spouse is cheating on. And again, there's no evidence to this that's there, but it's like a unique kind of, like, Parkinsonian delusion. Yeah. And then, of course, we think about erotomanic delusions, which we've talked about a lot on our podcast, specifically with the show you, which we love. But, Portia, like, you'll appreciate this. I remember one time I had a patient, an elderly man, who had a neurotomanic disillusion about Taylor Swift and would listen to the radio all day long in his hospital room, waiting for her song to come on. And it would come on a lot, and he would be like, that's my girl. She's sending me a message. That's my girl. For real. And he was in the hospital for a totally non psychiatric reason. But when the team picked this up, they asked us to consult. I was on the consult team at the time, and we were like, well, he's not hurting anyone. He's not stalking her. We can't really change it. Yeah, there's an aspect of, like, we have to go along with it. We have to kind of keep an eye on it until it becomes problematic. Right. Until it crosses over into be like, oh, it's a problem. Right. And again, one thing we all want to keep emphasizing is that people with psychiatric conditions are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of violence. But at some point, I think, especially with more erotomanic or violent delusions targeted toward a specific person, that's when your red flags go up, and you have to be really careful in your assessment. I know. So poor Billy, seeking some help, and just really, his dad's not there. The cops aren't helping him save the day, the vet or the school teacher. God, that was so graphic. Yeah, it was a good movie. I have not seen it before, ever. So I enjoyed, thought. I didn't know what to expect. I think I thought it was going to be weirder. It was pretty weird, but I thought it was like, funny. It is funny. Yeah, it is pretty funny. And now, like Katrita says, which I thought was a good word, it's like, know. I wasn't scared watching it. It was great. Like the scene, they spent a lot of time when the gremlins are at the bar and they're just, like, doing all this stupid ****, right? They're, like, drinking, they're smoking. One of them has, like, a gun, like, just randomly shooting the other grandma's. And it's like, oh, this is all not, like, ideal teenage behavior, but not, ideally, not shooting each other. But this is what teenagers sometimes, right? Unfortunately, this is the idea. This is what teens do. They do stupid ****, right? They just get together and they act stupid around each other. They drink, and they make poor decisions, and things happen. And that was the thing, again, on this recent reviewing, I was like, oh, my goodness, I didn't see this before. I know. It's so interesting to me when you can rewatch movies as you grow up and take different things from them based on your own personal experience. And I always wonder, the people who made Gremlins, was that their goal, or is it just like an interesting coincidence? No, I don't think we'll know. I don't know. Well, someone, thank you so much for joining us today and for recommending holiday favorite holiday classic. Can you let us know where we can find you and follow you and join your TikTok Instagram? Follow Kick Shrink on, like, what's it called? Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. I'm trying to put a lot more effort into the YouTubing nowadays because that's where the money is trying to retire from know, but it's fun, too. And then Twitter is my old high school nickname, Sol Money, S-U-L money that I've had like that. I like that. Well, again, thank you so much for joining us, and we can't wait to see those cool sneakers whenever you get them. Thank you guys for having me. And you can find us, as always, at analyze Scripts podcast on TikTok Instagram, and now on YouTube as well. And we will see you next week for a new episode. Take care. All right, bye. This podcast and its contents are a copyright of analyzed scripts, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited unless you want to share it with your friends and rate, review, and subscribe. That's fine. All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings, or products is intended or should be inferred this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

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