15 Quotes from Stutz (2022) on Therapy, Healing, and Vulnerability

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Excerpt: Phil Stutz made Jonah Hill’s life “Immeasurably better” from therapy. Read our quotes from Stutz to get some of the highlights on how.

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Introduction: The Documentary

Stutz is a documentary about Phil Stutz—Jonah Hill’s therapist. Produced by Jonah himself, this documentary flips the traditional roles of therapist interviewing patient on its head and has the patient (Jonah) interviewing the therapist (Phil). It was created because Jonah felt like the tools Phil was offering him in therapy were incredibly useful and were worth sharing with the world.

The reason I enjoyed watching it so much, however, wasn’t for that reason.

What I enjoyed the most was how raw and vulnerable the two of them got in the film. Not only did Jonah open up and share some of his most vulnerable points, but so did Phil. And it was a refreshing reminder that none of us are infallible—not even movie stars or therapists. We each have our own shortcomings and we each have our own journeys forward that are riddled with their fair share of obstacles, challenges, and adversities.

There is no escaping this fate.

But, with the right set of tools, we can certainly approach the challenges of our paths more equipped and better prepared to take them on. This is precisely what Phil aims to do in his practice: equip patients with tools. Tools that can be used immediately to tackle the challenges they’re facing in their lives—not after 20 expensive therapy sessions.

Riding the momentum of Jonah Hill’s mission to make these tools more accessible to a wider audience, I downloaded all of the subtitles from the movie and captured 15 of my favorite quotes for you to enjoy and contemplate in written form. If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend you check Stutz out. It’s equal parts warm as it is deep. Well worth the hour and a half time investment.

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The List: 15 Quotes from Stutz

“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. Unsolicited. And you want your friends just to listen. And you want your therapist to give you advice.”

Jonah Hill, Stutz

“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 won’t be your mood forever.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“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, trite, but it’s actually the truth.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“The driving force in this whole thing [the movie], to me, is your vulnerability. No question about it. If we’re true to that idea and you’re forthcoming with it, we really can’t go wrong. The thing is, if you wanna move forward you can’t move forward without being vulnerable.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“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.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“The [String of Pearls] is 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. I am the person that puts the next pearl on the string. That’s it. Just getting out of bed and doing what you have to do that day and not putting, like, a size value on the effort. They’re all the same size.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“You have three aspects of reality that nobody gets to avoid. Pain, uncertainty, and constant work. Those are things you’re just gonna have to live with, no matter what. What will make you happy is the process. You have to learn how to love the process of dealing with those three things.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“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.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“True confidence is living in uncertainty.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

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Related: Feeling Lost? Phil Stutz Says Don’t Try To Figure It Out. Here’s Why:

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“Before I met you, I’m this, like, wildly insecure kid, and 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.”

Jonah Hill, Stutz

“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 [forgiveness/ letting go/ love] itself. That’s called Active Love.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“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.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“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. 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.’”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“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. 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. That’s the Grateful Flow.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

“You’re not trying to become non attached. You’re trying to move towards non attachment every time you get scared of a loss. For most people, they’ve never been non attached for one second in their whole life. So even the fact that they can move towards that is helpful for them. So the goal is not to become completely non attached. 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.”

Phil Stutz, Stutz

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If you enjoyed this excerpt, you can watch Stutz on Netflix (as of the time of this writing). You can also pick up Phil’s book which outlines 5 tools that’ll help you find courage, creativity, and willpower. Info below:

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