10 August 2015

The wise lessons to be learnt by children and adults from “Inside Out”.

I recently went to see the children’s Pixar animation film “Inside Out” after hearing great things about it from colleagues and clients. And it certainly did not disappoint. I was moved and impressed by the movie and the way that it was able to communicate complex psychological theories about emotions in such a clever and simple way. The movie is set within the mind of an 11 year old girl, Riley. Within the control centre of her mind the emotions of Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger and Fear are personified by characters that rule what emotions Riley feels in response to the events that occur in her life. The control centre is surrounded by islands that represent core aspects of Riley’s personality, and shelves of stored memories that represent the brain. The fact that the emotions inhabit the control centre is in itself an interesting statement. So often we might feel that logic and reason should control our actions, yet it is emotions that drive many of our choices in life.

At the beginning of the movie Joy, a sparkly pixie-like character, rules the control centre and bosses the other emotions around in the pursuit of creating as much joy as possible for Riley. Joy expresses contempt and irritation with Sadness, a sullen blue character that over-apologises and puts herself down. Joy even tries to ‘emotionally supress’ sadness by drawing a circle on the ground and telling sadness to not interfere in the running of Riley’s mind. Despite Sadness’s apparent submissiveness, it proves impossible for her to follow these instructions and she cannot help but pop out of her circle to influence Riley’s mind. This is an important lesson that reflects current scientific research that supressing emotions can actually sometimes lead to anxiety and depression.

Over the course of the movie, Joy starts to recognise the value of Sadness. Sadness is actually a part of some of the most meaningful and important memories in Riley’s life, and through feeling sadness true happiness can be felt. The lesson here is that sadness and other difficult emotions should be embraced rather than avoided, as this leads to greater well-being.  This lesson is comes from the mindfulness-based therapies and approaches to happiness, which suggest that all emotions must be accepted as part of our lives, and all emotions have value.

Sadness is also important in creating deep connection through sharing the emotion of sadness with others. Sadness enables us to validate others emotions and help them move through their own emotions. An important lesson for parents in the movie was demonstrated when Bing Bong, Riley’s old imaginary friend, was feeling sad about having lost his cart and about the loss of his relationship with Riley. Joy tried to make Bing Bong laugh and feel joy to overcome his sadness, which did not help Bing Bong process his emotion and actually seemed to make him sadder and disconnected from her. This is similar to parents trying to ‘fix’ their child’s emotions rather than validating them and sitting with them. Bing Bong was only able to feel better after Sadness sat and connected with him and acknowledged the sadness of the situation, which, through making him feel validated, helped him through the emotion of sadness. The important lesson here is that it is helpful to allow others, and yourself, to feel negative emotions and to validate them as understandable.

Another message for parents is not to tell children what to feel. In the movie Riley’s parents ask her to be their “happy girl”, which makes it difficult for Riley to accept her own negative emotions and makes her disconnect from her parents. It is actually only through accepting and expressing her sadness, fear and anger to her parents that Riley reconnects with them and feels a true sense of happiness through this connection towards the end of the movie. This lesson demonstrates that through accepting our negative emotions we can actually move closer to our values, which are what often give us a greater sense of happiness than joy alone.

There are many more layers of wisdom to this movie that are both thought provoking and deeply moving. I would highly recommend this movie for both children and adults as it encourages us to reflect on the inner workings of our minds and the functions of emotions in our lives.

Dr Rani Simpson, Clinical Psychologist