Here’s Dr Joe Oliver’s take of Inside Out 2, from a clinical psychologist and ACT therapist perspective:
As a fan of the first movie and its powerful message about embracing difficult emotions, I was keen to check out how this sequel might tackle adolescence and the challenges of puberty.
As a reminder, in the first Inside Out, 11 year old Riley moved cities after her Dad get a new job. She grappled with feelings of sadness and anger that eventually lead her to run away from home. The movie revolved around the tension between the personified Joy and Sadness, where Sadness is viewed only ever as negative and unhelpful. The movie resolved as Joy came to recognise the value of sadness in altering others when emotionally overwhelmed.
This time Inside Out 2 follows our protagonist, Riley Anderson again as she hits the age of 13 and puberty lands in her life, along with a host of new emotions. In a classic funny, witty and heartfelt way Pixar explores the impact that puberty can have on a young person in the various consequences as the old emotions need to make room for the new ones. The new kids on the block being Envy, Embarrassment, Ennui, Nostalgia and of course Anxiety.
I can see why this move gets psychologist’s so excited. It’s well thought out, is broadly consistent with current psychological theories of emotion and cognition, and importantly, encourages a healthy and realistic view on emotional well being.
The movie explores the key theme of identity which is a crucial developmental stage for a teenager. A core revelation is how important acceptance is, and how self-acceptance means all parts of our character can be included, in a values based way that allows us to make better choices towards a more meaningful existence.
The start of the movie describes Riley as having a sense of self as a “I am good person” resulting from her early childhood memories that was relatively simple and and without too much complexity. The character Joy is largely in control, and although acknowledges now the usefulness of other emotions, such as sadness, works hard to keep other difficult or painful memories out of mind. In the context of a preteen environment, this team is well suited and helps Riley get by with her life. However, the character of Joy is a bit naïve and blind to the massive changes about to arrive in Riley’s life. Of course it turns out that constant focus on positive emotions, whilst driving not to have negative memories is not well suited to the complexities intentions and contradictions of an adolescent life. However, as she enters into puberty and becomes focused on fitting in being accepted and new peer group, lots of other emotions, come to the fore principally Anxiety. This character focuses on wanting to protect Riley from being left out or excluded and works hard to drive Riley to fit in with the group. This is made so much harder by the presence of other emotions, such as Embarrassment and Envy, which pull Riley is all sorts of different directions, as she struggles to fit in, but also be herself.
This results in a lots of different small behaviours in which really does her best to fit in with a new peer group, but at the same time, further and further away from her previous sense of self and she wants to be. The more she tries to fit in paradoxically the less she does and she ends up doing things driven by the anxiety of not fitting in. A belief about herself not being good enough sets the Anxiety character into hyperdrive.
As in the first movie, the character of Joy sees the error of her ways and the consequences of focusing only on positive memories. Eventually, all memories are allowed into awareness and to influence Riley’s identity with the character Joy deliberately breaking the old identity of ‘I am a good person‘ to allow something much more nuanced and complex to form. This more complex identity represents different spectrums and dimensions of Riley’s experience, within which she has both “I am a good person” and “I am selfish”, Or “I need to fit in”, but “I want to be myself”. In lots of ways these represent the real contradictions and complexities of adolescent life and indeed adult life more realistically. An identity based around purely ‘I’m a good person‘ does not allow for all the multifaceted components of a person.
The eventual resolution is not to try and create a positive identity, but rather to sit with the complexity and hold it with a warm and kind compassionate stance. In the movie, this is the point where Riley both opens up to the sadness of her situation and is able to step towards healing key relationships. After this point, you can see her being much more choiceful and how she wants to move forward with her life. The movie does a really nice job of showing a sense of joy that comes from this – which is probably represented by that sense of feeling when we are create a full sense of acceptance towards all parts of ourselves and everyone can coexist and have the place that needing to be excluded. This represents a real sense of self-acceptance. Where all part of the character can be included, but crucially, not acceptance in a passive way, but in a way that allows Riley to do the things that she really cares about, ie bringing her back to her values.
Lots of our upcoming live courses cover some of the key topics shown across these films, here are a few of them:
- Working compassionately with our multiple selves: A compassion focused therapy (CFT) skills workshop
- Compassion-focused therapy for anger: An intermediate level skills workshop
- Introduction to emotion efficacy training (EET): Empowering clients to harness emotions and take valued action
- Internal family systems: flexible selfing and parts work: IFS and ACT to activate psychological flexibility
To explore all upcoming courses visit our ACT therapy training page.
You can also watch Joe’s video summary and review, along with plenty of resources and expert tips on our YouTube channel:
