The Emotional Healing of Inside Out 2

My eyes were welling and my sobs were coming out in gasps.

It was the scene in Inside Out 2 where Riley is having a panic attack. Anxiety has taken over the control board of her mind in an effort to protect her, but has become paralyzed with all the potential bad future scenarios. As Riley freaks out, Joy hugs the small statue that represents her sense of self, and then gradually, all of the emotions: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Sadness, Ennui, Embarrassment, Envy, and even Anxiety, embrace Riley together and she calms down.

I’m pretty sure this moment healed a little piece of something in me.

Everything Belongs

It’s me, hi. I’m the problem it’s me.

As someone who identifies as an Enneagram 6, Anxiety has been a lifelong companion. Like Riley trying to figure out her new social group as she heads into high school, we 6s seek security, usually in the form of others. We are almost always on the lookout for threats, and at our most dysfunctional we catastrophize over every possible thing that could go wrong.

I have never really seen my Anxiety as a valuable asset functioning in conjunction with other parts of my emotional makeup. Part of this is definitely due to the fact that for most of my life I grew up emotionally unhealthy and unbalanced.

I’m guessing many of us have a similar story: due to societal messages, toxic aspects of religious upbringings, family dynamics, etc, many of us grew up with emotional limps that we’ve only started to grapple with in adulthood.

Growing up, I heard Bible verses like “Do not worry about your life” or “Be anxious for nothing” taught as decontextualized commands to obey which my brain refused to listen to, therefore that made me anxious AND a sinner (a fun double whammy).

The American evangelicalism of my youth was also great at teaching spiritual bypassing, which is the use of spiritual explanations to dismiss or avoid complicated emotions or psychological issues:

There was also this overall sense that emotions had moral values, some were good and you wanted to experience them, and some were bad or even sinful and you wanted to avoid them. Which is why I didn’t learn to accept feelings like anger until I went to therapy in my 30s.

We see this kind of thinking in the film as well when Joy kicks memories Riley has of uncomfortable moments or emotions to the back of the brain, thinking this will be better off for her sense of self, when in the end it only sets her up for failure when she proves to be a complicated mess.

On the other end of the spectrum were the messages of toxic, stoic masculinity floating around in my childhood and adolescence. I was always too sensitive to really adopt the “boys don’t cry or feel emotions” message, but that just made me feel like less of a man, not tough enough to hack it.

It’s only been in the last 7 years or so by going to therapy and learning about actual healthy emotional theory and development from wise spiritual leaders and professionals, that I’ve begun to embrace an integrated sense of self, to recognize as Catholic teacher Richard Rohr puts it, “everything belongs”. Still, the wounds and dysfunctions linger, so when that hug scene showed up in Inside Out 2, it touched on a healing that I still long to fully experience.

Saint and Sinner

Another thing the film portrays well about emotional health is the recognition we are each complicated messes—simultaneously sinners and saints (as Luther put it). Joy works to develop a sense of self in Riley that believes “I’m a good person”, but accomplishes this by relegating all of Riley’s less than stellar moments to the back of her mind. When Anxiety takes over, the new sense of self she creates in Riley believes “I’m not good enough!” This doesn’t help Riley either because it pushes her to the breaking point of having a panic attack.

I’ve faced similar extremes throughout my life. Growing up in evangelicalism, and especially during my timed in the Reformed tradition, I was sold this idea that, at my core, I am a wicked, miserable sinner who can do nothing truly good on my own apart from God working in me. During my phase of deconstruction, I quickly fled this idea but was confronted with more progressive views of the human condition that said we were essentially good and decent. I’ve since come to think that the truth lies somewhere in the simultaneous, messy middle. Humans do wonderful things and terrible things. I am capable of great good and absolute petty selfishness at the same time.

In the film, we see this portrayed toward the end when Joy lets all of Riley’s less than stellar moments have their place in her mind along with the good ones. Riley develops a new, morphing sense of self that is able to acknowledge the complexity of “I’m kind” and “I’m selfish” and “I’m brave” and “I’m scared” all at the same time. Anxiety and Embarrassment and Envy and Ennui all learn to functions as assets of the team along with Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear.

Inside Out 2 presents a more healthy, integrated view of our emotions than most of us have probably grown up with, and one that I still long to fully feel. A state in which my anxiety functions as an asset rather than driving me into a ditch. A state in which I don’t have to feel ashamed of certain emotions, but I can empathetically listen to all of my feelings as helpful signals and guides to what’s going on in my heart and mind.

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