Earlier this summer Pixar released Inside Out 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the beloved emotions-centered movie from 2010. These delightful cartoons blend storytelling and science to help viewers understand that all feelings exist for a reason, and to explain why it’s important to find ways to feel them all, not just the positive ones.
“A lot of Western thinking pathologizes emotions. It stigmatizes them,” writes Dacher Keltner, psychologist and co-director of the Greater Good Science Center. “The film tells families we need all the emotions.”
Lots of people go to great lengths to repress or ignore heavy feelings. It’s a super common thing to do. Most of the fears people have around emotions that don’t feel good tend to fall into three categories: 1. If I let myself feel this it will harm me and/or people I love, 2. This feeling will prevent me from functioning in life, and perhaps the most paralyzing of all 3. It will never go away.
Ignoring those heavy feelings is a behavioral response that is learned very early on. We are born with all the emotions and none of the skills to manage them, so we look outwardly to our environment and caregivers to understand what parts of us are safe and what parts are dangerous.
For example, iIf a child feeling sad is consistently met with a response of distance rather than comfort from their caregiver, they will put the experience of being sad in the box of things to avoid and do what they can to suppress the feeling.
Throw in cultural messages like “real men don’t cry” and the rise of toxic positivity and we get adults who are experiencing only half of their emotions that exist. The problem is, though: you can’t actually make those difficult emotions disappear.
“Trying to make them go away literally makes them escalate their expression to be taken seriously, and their only option at some point is to explode out of us in maladaptive or uncontrollable behaviors,” child psychologist Dr. Becky Kennedy says.
The explosion of these feelings results in behaviors ranging from self abandonment, to addictions, to aggression, to depression. It turns out, going so far out of our way to avoid causing harm often can create exactly what we were hoping to avoid.
Here’s the hope.
Learning how to feel and regulate emotions is a skill that can be learned at any age.
Start small. Set a timer for ten minutes and allow yourself to contemplate something in life that feels hard right now. While thinking, set an intention to allow whatever emotion that comes up to simply exist. Once that timer goes off, take several deep breaths, drink a glass of water and give yourself a pat on the back for that act of courage.
Just like the protagonist in Inside Out discovers, when you allow yourself to feel and walk through heavy emotions, you will come out the other side lighter.
Action items to help:
- Practice AVP
Acknowledge your feelings
Validate them being there for a reason
Permit them to stay as long as they need to - Watch Inside Out and Inside Out 2
- Check out this Tiktok.
