*** SPOILERS COMING! ***
Inside Out 2 has taken the world by storm! People everywhere are singing its praises, including me. This movie was simple, yet so profound. It portrayed the struggles of a budding teenager and her new social and emotional struggles introduced at such a delicate time. It gave those of us who face anxiety a way to show the world what we experience internally, and validate the emotional storm that is a panic attack. The movie also showed simple techniques to help when we face anxiety. Let's take a deeper look.
The Teenager's Struggles: Cognitive Development
Being a teenager is hard enough. Your body is changing, your hormones are increasing to jump start these changes, and your brain is going through major reconstruction.
When you first enter adolescence, your brain develops unevenly, especially in your prefrontal cortex (the very front of your brain responsible for decision-making). From 10-15 years old, your psychosocial maturity decreases; you can't suppress your need for arousal seeking. At the same time, your capacity for taking in information dramatically increases. So, you are overwhelmed all the time by the amount of stimuli you're taking in, and yet you want more. You have the ability to make sound decisions (with the amount of information you can take in), but sometimes it's hard because you're emotionally aroused or seeking arousal.
With all of this, you are also able to better retrieve memories at this age. So you're remembering every little thing coming your way (like that time you fell down the stairs in your middle school from top to bottom on your butt... yeah, that was me), and processing it more deeply than just an event that happened.
The Teenager's Struggles: Social-Emotional Development
Not that this is bad enough, but now we get into the social-emotional development alongside this fast-paced cognitive growth.
As an adolescent, your relationship with your peers becomes the focus. You are totally consumed by what everyone else thinks and what everyone else is doing. Why does this all happen?
At this time, your ability to perspective-take develops. You're able to see things from others' points of view, including how people think of you. You also grow a "personal fable": the need to be unique, known, and accepted within different networks of people, and how your gifts/talents/skills serve the greater world and can get you places.
This huge jump in self-reflection (because of your advanced cognitive capacity; yep, it goes back to neuroscience!) can change a teenager's self-conception, self-esteem, and make them start questioning who they are at their core. What kind of person am I? What am I good at? Am I good enough? There are contradictions in my actions/behavior, so who is the REAL me? How do other people see me? Is it in a positive way? Will I be accepted?
Inside Out 2: It's Demolition Day!
At the beginning of the movie, we see the original emotions sound asleep, and then all of a sudden, the puberty button sounds the alarm! After they think they've dealt with the button (Joy literally throws it away), the construction crew comes in and demolishes headquarters. This includes "fixing" the console. As each of the emotions tries to use the console again, Riley overreacts, as they each note, "I barely touched it." The movie beautifully shows the development of the brain, highlighting the major reconstruction it undergoes at this age, and then the shift in its ability to take in more information, becoming overwhelming at times.
Inside Out 2: Who Am I?
The biggest question this movie asks is Who am I? At the beginning of the movie, we see that Joy is able to toss memories that she does not Riley to remember or to shape her as a person. We later find out that Joy has literally thrown out a MOUNTAIN of memories, just to protect Riley's inner essence. At the end of the movie, all of these memories come flooding back (referencing a teenager's better ability to recall), and from this, she begins to question who she is as a person, the beginning of every adolescent's journey to self-discovery.
Inside Out 2: Anxiety and Riley's Social Pressures
Not only does she struggle cognitively, Riley also faces social pressure. This is where Anxiety comes into play. Anxiety helps Riley see the problems that COULD happen, including how others perceive her, what she needs to do to be accepted in high school (especially now that her best friends are going to a different school), and how this will impact her for the rest of her high school career and her life. So Riley makes choices to "help" her not be socially ostracized and make the high school hockey team, including making mean choices towards her best friends.
Inside Out 2: Anxiety
This movie beautifully portrays a panic attack from the inside. When Riley is in the penalty box for hurting one of her best friends during the scrimmage, Riley's mind begins to race about what this means for her high school hockey career and her social scene. We see Anxiety racing around the console, pressing buttons in a flurry as Riley begins to feel her heart race, her skin itch, and we can see a sense of dread in her eyes. Eventually, Joy enters Anxiety's storm, and we see Anxiety, frozen at the controls. Joy can't talk reasonably with Anxiety, she just calmly tells Anxiety to let Riley go.
For me, this was an incredible representation of a panic attack. I feel frozen, unable to make any move that could help you out of it. My heart beats uncontrollably, I feel a sense of wanting to get out of my own skin, and my mind won't stop racing. I feel clutched by my anxiety.
Inside Out 2: Skills to Help with Anxiety
Inside Out 2 also gives tools for handling such moments. One more subtle method was Riley's deep breathing and noticing her senses. After her panic attack, she gets back on the ice, and takes a deep breath, feeling the warm sun on her through the window, listening to the ice skates along the ice. We see inside her mind that this calls Joy to the console. This subtle scene shows us that through mindfulness, we can call upon our own joy to help us during such trying times.
Does this always work? No. However, with practice, it does get better over time.
Another subtle skill introduced is your circles of control. At the end of the movie, Riley is anxiously waiting to hear if she got on the hockey team. We see Anxiety starting to panic, but then Joy comes over. She places Anxiety in her "special chair," and talks about how Riley and them have no control over whether or not Riley gets onto the hockey team. Then Joy asks Anxiety what is something Riley does have control over. Anxiety responds that Riley has a Spanish test tomorrow and that she needs to study.
I personally have been using Prep and Reflect's planner Powerful & Productive almost everyday, and I've noticed a huge difference in my levels of anxiety. The first thing I do every morning is a brain dump in the circles of power, noting what I have power over and what I don't have power over. This helps me sort in my brain what I can do in the moment or over the course of the day, and what I can acknowledge, but ultimately let go.
Like I said before, overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I laughed, I cried, and I loved watching it. I especially loved how scientifically accurate this movie is, from the science of brain development to the social-emotional difficulties of a budding adolescent to the scientifically proven coping mechanisms Riley chooses to use. I highly recommend Inside Out 2!
