A heartfelt look at the medical, psychological and holistic reality of the effect of stress on the human body and mind.A heartfelt look at the medical, psychological and holistic reality of the effect of stress on the human body and mind.A heartfelt look at the medical, psychological and holistic reality of the effect of stress on the human body and mind.
- Awards
- 3 wins & 2 nominations
Photos
James Kacey
- Pretty Boy
- (as Giuseppe Penasso)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Featured review
An effective "empathy machine"
Caught up in the minute-to-minute hurdles of modern life -- like George Jetson on his out-of-control treadmill or Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock -- managing a multitude of maddening minutiae of everyday life: heavy traffic, communications and miscommunications, the paradox of arriving everywhere on time in a sea of unpredictable delays. There is a tendency to beset small setbacks with undue importance; to forget mountains in the face of molehills. How can we temper the effects of these stressors that we tend to over-magnify and over-inflate with unnecessary and needless drama?
"Destressed" illustrates the value of taking a consciously motivated, broader perspective of our lives, and reaping the stress-reducing benefits of empathy and empathetic behavior for ourselves, while helping others in the process. Professors Frans de Waal and Daniel Batson, among others, have put forth the idea that empathy is one of the most valuable skills of individual, social and evolutionary development. Through the process of "walking in somebody else's shoes" we can be moved to take a greater perspective on our lives and be moved to offer help when and where we can. By lending a helping hand and acting we not only help another person, but we help ourselves as well. We gain perspective. We gain a greater sense of self-esteem. We de-stress.
Roger Ebert remarked, "Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live someone else's life for a while. I can walk in someone else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief. This is a liberalizing influence on me. It gives me a broader mind. It helps me to join my family of men and women on this planet. It helps me to identify with them, so I'm not just stuck being myself, day after day." (Rodger Ebert, Hollywood Walk Remarks, 2005]
"Destressed" is an effective empathy machine.
Those of us with a history that placed us in the in the aftermath of 9- 11 in the New York city metropolitan area might remember the strangely calm turn the city took in the last months of 2001 and well into 2012. The city known for a hard-boiled attitude and gruff demeanor lost its angry edge for a while. People were more courteous, friendlier. There weren't any battles for position as traffic merged into or out of tunnels. Spiteful horn-honking quieted down, people looked at each other in the eyes and shared a common sense of tragedy and loss. We were taken out of our own selves and shared a communal sense of empathy for the victims of senseless violence, and we were all victims to some degree. We came out to help and gave up thoughts of our own trivial struggles to lend a hand for the greater good. If you were there, you remember how lives were changed.
Unfortunately old habits die hard, and after the passage of time, people were honking their horns, rude and self-centered again. Some of us were found to be affected with long-term anxiety disorders: depression, anxiety... stress. We went back to our self-centered paradigms, back to projecting all the imperfections in this world onto a lost button, lost cell-phone signals or traffic congestion. We returned to focusing on problems that, when viewed from a grander and more altruistic perspective, are not very important problems at all, as real as they may seem to us in the rush of anxiety. Yet we have no shortage of real problems. War wounded veterans, Katrina, Sandy, earthquakes, tsunamis, school-shootings, cancer, street violence the list is, sadly, too long.
There's a lot of humanity in "Destressed" – Garry Pastore brings us an important message and his personal story that deserves to be seen and heard. It's a good work, and a movie that needs to find the eyes and ears of as many people as possible, people who are struggling with the same issues of the modern world, minor stressors and who might collectively and individually benefit from the message that this film delivers.
"Destressed" illustrates the value of taking a consciously motivated, broader perspective of our lives, and reaping the stress-reducing benefits of empathy and empathetic behavior for ourselves, while helping others in the process. Professors Frans de Waal and Daniel Batson, among others, have put forth the idea that empathy is one of the most valuable skills of individual, social and evolutionary development. Through the process of "walking in somebody else's shoes" we can be moved to take a greater perspective on our lives and be moved to offer help when and where we can. By lending a helping hand and acting we not only help another person, but we help ourselves as well. We gain perspective. We gain a greater sense of self-esteem. We de-stress.
Roger Ebert remarked, "Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live someone else's life for a while. I can walk in someone else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief. This is a liberalizing influence on me. It gives me a broader mind. It helps me to join my family of men and women on this planet. It helps me to identify with them, so I'm not just stuck being myself, day after day." (Rodger Ebert, Hollywood Walk Remarks, 2005]
"Destressed" is an effective empathy machine.
Those of us with a history that placed us in the in the aftermath of 9- 11 in the New York city metropolitan area might remember the strangely calm turn the city took in the last months of 2001 and well into 2012. The city known for a hard-boiled attitude and gruff demeanor lost its angry edge for a while. People were more courteous, friendlier. There weren't any battles for position as traffic merged into or out of tunnels. Spiteful horn-honking quieted down, people looked at each other in the eyes and shared a common sense of tragedy and loss. We were taken out of our own selves and shared a communal sense of empathy for the victims of senseless violence, and we were all victims to some degree. We came out to help and gave up thoughts of our own trivial struggles to lend a hand for the greater good. If you were there, you remember how lives were changed.
Unfortunately old habits die hard, and after the passage of time, people were honking their horns, rude and self-centered again. Some of us were found to be affected with long-term anxiety disorders: depression, anxiety... stress. We went back to our self-centered paradigms, back to projecting all the imperfections in this world onto a lost button, lost cell-phone signals or traffic congestion. We returned to focusing on problems that, when viewed from a grander and more altruistic perspective, are not very important problems at all, as real as they may seem to us in the rush of anxiety. Yet we have no shortage of real problems. War wounded veterans, Katrina, Sandy, earthquakes, tsunamis, school-shootings, cancer, street violence the list is, sadly, too long.
There's a lot of humanity in "Destressed" – Garry Pastore brings us an important message and his personal story that deserves to be seen and heard. It's a good work, and a movie that needs to find the eyes and ears of as many people as possible, people who are struggling with the same issues of the modern world, minor stressors and who might collectively and individually benefit from the message that this film delivers.
helpful•10
- ljburton
- Apr 13, 2014
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Filming locations
- Zion National Park, Utah, USA(exterior scenes)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $200,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 20 minutes
- Color
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content