Is Jonah Hill Saving Men?

Some thoughts on the movie "Stutz"

Amanda Stern
December 06, 2022

I never expected I'd travel far enough away from my mental anguish to finally reach the control room.

Of course, I fantasized about getting to a place where my inner life felt less dangerous—I knew it was attainable because I witnessed the ease with which other people left town without panicking or voluntarily walked into crowded spaces without crawling across the beer-soaked bar floor to escape, but I did not know what mysteries I'd find there.

Me, miserable and teenaged

But here I am now, inside the control room of my emotional life, still fiddling with the levers and trying to figure it all out, knowing I will never figure it “all” out, and also knowing there are many more control rooms I will never access.

At least now I know that such a figurative place does exist, and having had a look around, my first impulse is to invite everyone over, show them around, and serve them platters of options, hoping that just one of the many offerings might save them the decades of agony I and many others were not spared.

This impulse is why I believe people who have suffered become therapists and why patients who have been armed with tools that have alleviated their enormous pain want to share what they know with everyone.

When there are tools that help you scale yourself out from the absolute depths of despair, you can’t help but show others how to use them.

Throughout his life, Jonah Hill has suffered from anxiety and body image issues. He sought therapy to find relief, and the cataclysmic alleviation he found from his therapist’s radical approach, ideas and tools, and his belief that others could be helped by them, led him to make a documentary about his therapist, Philip Stutz, entitled Stutz, streaming now from Netflix.

As a child, Phil Stutz was parentified; becoming, at age 12, a sort of therapist to his father, who had, three years earlier, with the rest of the family, descended into grief over the sudden loss of Phil's younger brother Eddie who died at age 3. Life was never the same, for any of them.

Like Hill, suffering is the reason Philip Stutz became a therapist. Like Phil, Hill also suddenly and abruptly lost a brother.

But Philip Stutz is not just any therapist. He’s a buck-the-norms action-oriented therapist whose methods emphasize living with pain and uncertainty–akin to the Japanese technique Morita Therapy and the wise advice proffered by Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet–and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy which teaches how to manage and discredit harmful thoughts.

Add in some Jungian archetypes (The Shadow, The Mother, Rebirth…) Stoicism, a pinch of Buddhism, the holistic understanding of human nature born from the spiritual beliefs of Rudolf Steiner, the prophet of hope and possibility Viktor Frankl, and the forward-facing, death-accepting Ernest Beckman and you’ve arrived at Stutzian Therapy.

Every concept and tool Stutz has created is accompanied in the film (and in his practice and on his website) by stick figures that he has drawn by hand, serving as visual aids to guide patients and viewers through the steps. These drawings are imperfect and shaky, and utterly honest–Stutz has Parkinson’s, and his drawings reveal his truth.

Stutz developed the tools, which I enumerate farther down below, that call upon invisible forces like hope, possibility, wonder and love, to move each of us through our self and society-perpetuated blocks and challenges.

A native New Yorker who was grappling with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Stutz moved to L.A. with hopes that the SoCal climate would help ease his symptoms. His move led him to become the therapist to an elite bastion of Hollywood. Bucking the traditional notions that a therapist should be neutral, Stutz, now 75, realized early on in his training that psychotherapy lacked something patients were seeking—tools.

Of course, any good therapist will help you gain the necessary skills and tools to handle the daily challenges of life, but that takes years—decades, even.

But Stutz has a different take: He believes patients should walk away from their first session with hope. Just a single tool can change your inner state in real-time. A good tool, Stutz says in the film, should "take an experience that’s often unpleasant and turn it into an opportunity."

Stutz believes that this is what a therapist should offer their patients.

I’ve been in therapy for over half my life, and I’ve never encountered a therapist like Stutz. His method–and the framework he’s devised–called “The Tools,” was developed out of frustration and as a necessary corrective to the limitations he saw in the therapeutic process when he was coming up in the 1970s and ’80s.

Talk therapy is a long process; changes are made slowly over the course of decades. But patients want solutions; they often want advice or some external tool that might just get them through the day, week, or month.

This is what traditional talk therapy lacks, and when Stutz felt stymied, he began to offer solutions to patients in real-time during sessions. He’d just make them up—but like all ideas that rise from the unconscious, there was wisdom to be found.

The tools were shaped from each truth he unearthed.

What Stutz aims to offer his patients is a sense of possibility. Plus, he’s hysterically funny—and curses. A lot. Which, if you’ve gotten to know my sense of humor over this past year, is how I roll.

Jonah Hill’s Stutz is not the documentary you think it is; it’s not even the documentary it thinks it is. Twenty-four minutes in, there is a brilliant revelation that deepens the movie and offers the audience a sacred view of therapeutic growth in practice (there are parallels aplenty).

Nor are Jonah Hill and Phil Stutz the men you think might be the ones we need to kick open the door to therapy, offering everyone—especially men—an inside view of the healing power of being vulnerable.

You may wonder why I’m highlighting men here. There’s a good reason:

All of us as a nation are suffering from a massive mental health crisis, but men in particular are suffering from loneliness, lack of friendships, and despite slow, but sure societal changes in gender parity, a resistance to going to therapy.

Women who are in relationships with men are bearing that burden. Many straight men rely on the women in their lives to do their emotional labor, to act as their therapists.

Men tend to resist asking for help. Those who buy into the stereotypical machismo of “weakness” wrongly often assume that suffering on their own is macho, or brave, or just less frightening.

Emotions in particular, seem to terrify these men, particularly the act of feeling emotionally vulnerable. The ability to access and feel emotion is a vulnerable position, and many men cannot bear that discomfort. True, many women also struggle with this, but many boys are discouraged from learning emotional fluency in ways that girls are not.

When we reach the point in childhood of separating from our primary caretaker, girls tend to seek out friendships to replace or extend the emotional connection they had (or wished they had) with their guardian, while boys tend to separate from their feelings.

It’s not that boys and men can’t feel, or lack emotions; it’s that many of them need help. They need to feel safe. We, as a society, have created a myth that emotions are “female” and this just couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s simply that girls are raised to be sensitive to other people’s feelings, while boys were raised to reject seemingly feminine traits like sensitivity.

This leaves them stranded and alienated from their feelings—after all, if being sensitive to other people’s feelings is seen as a threat to masculinity, what would it mean to be sensitive to your own emotions?

This fallacy sets men up to rely on others to do what they can’t—soothe their emotional wounds. This helps no one, and hurts everyone.

The truth is, admitting you need help is a confession of strength.

Men who believe that emotions are female equate emotions with weakness. Yet, facing your emotions requires a fortitude unlike any other—facing your emotions is the hardest thing a person can do.

Avoiding them is the easiest. But chronic avoidance is a form of gutlessness. And will land you in a much worse place.

Avoidant people don’t realize that the strongest people are those who get into the ring with their shadow and fight through their painful emotions, through their concrete resistance and come through the other side; the weakest people are those who pretend they’re too “cool” to fight the necessary inner battles.

People who are full of bluster, who pretend that things are “beneath” them, or that they “don’t need” therapy or help, are the people most afraid to do the hard thing.

Resistance to get help is every man’s “tell.”

I’ve known far too many men who claimed to believe in therapy, who have admitted to having gone to therapy in the past, but who resisted going again when they most needed help because they “didn’t need help.”

This is what I mean when I ask “Is Jonah Hill saving men?”

There is nothing sexier in life than an emotionally available man. And since I’ve dated many men over the course of my life, and my friends have dated many men (and even married some) over the course of their lives, and none of us have yet to counter this rare creature, I can safely say, we are in very short supply.

This documentary details Stutz’s approach, which not so ironically is also vaguely masculine, as it relies more on cognitive tools than on emotions and somatic sensations.

This isn’t a flaw, just an observation.

What Stutz's approach doesn’t emphasize (at least in the film), though, is equally important, and that’s one’s ability to read and sink into somatic cues. One must learn the sense-language of emotions that arise inside one’s body.

Of course, the tools in the film rely on feeling what you imagine, which happens inside the body, but we aren't taken through that process. So, the tools presented will only get you so far, and should, obviously, be considered an excellent starting point.

Again, this is not a criticism; it’s a footnote indicating that to truly overcome and move through pain, one must also learn the unconscious patterns of childhood and be able to access and read the language of the unconscious pulses, snags, and stumbles collapsing under the ribcage, trembling deep in the belly, and plunging down the well below your adam’s apple.

For instance, if I had used these tools in isolation when I was diagnosed with a panic disorder at age 25, it would have helped me immensely, but it wouldn’t have been enough.

Panic disorder is not just a mental illness, it’s a physical experience, one in which the sensations inside your body feel terrifying. Without addressing those somatic expressions, I’d only get halfway there.

The body can tell you WHAT you’re feeling, and diving deep into the unconscious patterns of childhood can help reveal WHY you are the way you are.

Going toward your body is as–if not more–vital to healing than going toward your cognition and re-framing your mindset.

I am a person who needs to understand WHY. Once I know why, I can almost always free that "why thing" blocking my growth.

So, for people with more chronic or extreme mental health conditions, Stutz’s methods and tools are a wonderful starting point, but shouldn’t be the final destination.

Let these tools lead you forward.

That said, this documentary is layered, it’s brave, it’s generous beyond measure, and it’s an act of service and profound love.

Consider that in 2011, Phil Stutz was charging $400 an hour—so we’re getting a lot of amazing advice and insights for the price of a stream.

Let's go!

ASPECTS OF REALITY

First, we need to recognize that there are three aspects of unavoidable reality.

They are:

1) Pain

2) Uncertainty

3) Constant work

In order to grow, Stutz argues that you must accept that there are three aspects of unavoidable reality:

We will always experience pain. We are always in a state of uncertainty, and if we want to move forward, we must participate in our own growth by constantly working on ourselves.

There is a part of us though that doesn’t want us to accept any of these truths. A part of us that doesn’t want us to grow. This part wants to keep us stuck, but we have a choice, we can allow this part of us to win, and we can stay stymied for life, or we can use this part of ourselves to grow.

Stutz calls this part of us …

Everyone is the protagonist of their own story, and like any good story, there must also be an antagonist. Lucky us, we each have our very own antagonist. Some people have referred to this as our “inner critic”; Stutz refers to it as Part X.

Part X, Stutz says, “wants to fuck up your shit.”

Part X is the voice we all hear that tells us we won’t get accepted into a college because we’re too dumb or we’ll get rejected by our crush because we’re ugly.

When anything good comes along that might change you or your situation for the better, that might force you to grow, Part X always shows up, trying to make sure it doesn’t happen.

You can’t get rid of Part X. It’s part of reality. And you can’t get rid of reality.

Part X tends to show up whenever we hit one of those three points of reality. When we come upon pain, it says we deserve it; when we bump into uncertainty, it tries to hold us back. When we try to work and grow, it tries to hold our head underwater.

We need Part X to grow.

Without Part X, there’d be nothing to struggle back against, nothing to defeat.

THE SHADOW

Based on Jung’s Shadow archetype, Stutz’s is not much different.

Everyone has a shadow self. Your shadow is the part of yourself that makes you feel most ashamed, the part that represents every last insecurity and negative trait we fear others will see in us. We spend a not inconsequential amount of time trying to hide our shadow from other people.

(One of the most poignant parts in this movie for me was when Jonah fearlessly shares his Shadow self with the audience.)

But hiding our shadow means keeping ourselves from being who we really are.

Embracing our shadow gives us the courage to be our true self.

This next tool helps one embrace their shadow self.

INNER AUTHORITY

We use this tool whenever we feel anxious about speaking, socializing, or performing in public. You can use this tool before and during the event. You can also use it when you find yourself worrying about something in the future.

1. Imagine yourself onstage.

You’re in front of a small or large audience (your choice).

2. Bond with your shadow

Look over and see your shadow, the part of yourself that you’re afraid other people will see, standing there on the side of the stage. They walk out onto the stage with you. You ignore the audience and just focus on your shadow. Feel an unbreakable bond. You are fearless; you are one.

3. Shout: “LISTEN!”

Together, you and your shadow self turn to the audience and silently command them to listen. Feel the authority that comes when you and your shadow speak with one voice.

SNAPSHOT

Everyone has a snapshot, an image of an experience we imagine renders all our problems conquered.

It can be anything: a piece of real estate, fame, having a certain job, owning a specific car.

It doesn’t matter what's in the image; what matters is that we think getting it will fix us; will make our lives better.

It won't.

This snapshot that doesn’t exist has crippled us.

We believe that there is a state that will absolve us of our low self-esteem, our lack of confidence, that success or fame is the answer, but no state will ever bring you an ideal life.

In life, we will always experience pain, uncertainty, and constant work. An ideal snapshot cannot co-exist with our reality. Our snapshot doesn’t exist because it can’t exist.

We will always be hurt, or suffer, or lose or mourn regardless of what or who we have.

No one is exempt from pain. Not our gurus, not our celebrities, not even our therapists.

REVERSAL OF DESIRE

Many of us fall prey to our comfort zone.

It’s the place we feel most safe, and it’s where we go to hide from life. Some people find their comfort in drinking, or smoking weed, others find it in watching hours of television or having sex with strangers.

It doesn’t matter what it is; what matters is that habitually falling into the comfort zone keeps your life small.

It’s a form of avoidance. We can’t seek or participate in outside opportunities that life offers when we’re hibernating inside our comfort zone.

The comfort zone is a place of immediate gratification.

It gives us what we need in the moment, but robs us of the time we could be spending living our true life in the harder world of pain and uncertainty. When we choose avoidance we choose to waste our life.

The “Reversal of Desire” is a tool to use when you want something, but feel resistance or fear preventing you from taking action.

This can be something you have to do soon—like give a presentation. Or for something you want long-term but just thinking about it makes you uncomfortable.

Face the Pain

First, focus on the pain you’re avoiding. Imagine it as a cloud in front of you. Silently scream, “Bring it On!” Demand the pain. You want to feel the pain, because feeling the pain brings value.

2. Move Toward the Pain

Silently scream, “I LOVE PAIN” as you imagine yourself moving forward into the pain. Move deeply into it until you are one with the pain.

3. Freedom

Feel the cloud of pain spitting you out and closing up behind you. Say to yourself, “Pain sets me free!” As you leave the cloud, feel yourself flying up, higher than the cloud until you’re in a realm of pure light.

This is similar to the Stoic’s art of negative visualization.

Phil Stutz wants everyone to know that happiness is not an accomplishment; it’s a process.

Life is a process.

When we get stuck trying to arrive at happiness (our snapshot) we miss out on the process of living authentically—facing pain, living with uncertainty, and doing constant work.

Learning to live with these three things will make you stronger, and strength is what will bring you the process of happiness.

I encourage every one of you to watch Stutz, and to spread the word.