This is why anger, sadness and fear are your best friends – Celebrate your emotions

A few days ago I saw a movie, one of those that leaves you thinking for a while. That’s what I did. It was the movie Inside Out (2). It’s about how every person has different emotions, portrayed as characters, inside their head, their ‘head quarters’. They see the world through their persons’ eyes. Their job is to navigate their reactions through handles on a board. In the first movie, there’s joy, sadness, anger, disgust and fear. In the second one, when the protagonist turns into a teenager, anxiety, ennui, envy and embarrassment join them. These are the emotions that are new to us when we get older. The reason why this movie stuck to me was not only because it was really creative and well-made. It was also because it carries deep meanings and messages.

Every single emotion wants the best for you

It’s common that we judge emotions on how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they are. Joy is what we want. Fear makes us weak. Anger makes us a bad person. Sadness makes us uncomfortable to be around and so on. But what’s really happening is that the anger inside you feels mistreated and wants justice. Fear wants to protect you from danger. Anxiety makes you want to predict a certain outcome so that it won’t hurt as much when it actually happens. Envy wants more for you than you have and let’s you know where your dreams lie, and so on. It hit me really hard when anxiety said to fear that ‘you want to protect her from what we see, I want to protect her from what we don’t see’. We interpret anxiety being a bad thing, something we want to get rid of. But really, it’s a coping mechanism, trying to make painful situations less painful when they actually occur. It’s an act of self-love. This little figure inside our head wants the best for us. It just doesn’t know well enough how to get us there.

About one’s sense of self

Initially, they showed that Joy would keep all the joyful moment’s and put them in a lake where they would all connect. There, Riley’s – the protagonist’s – sense of self came from. These memories would be things like she helped someone do something, she gave someone a gift or a smile or a compliment or something similar. Her sense of self would then become: I am a good person. The rest of the ‘bad’ memories the crew in the head quarter would suppress.

Anxiety, who at that point had taken over the head quarter, because she thought she was doing the best for Riley, planted all of her own memories in the lake, creating a new sense of self. That one turned out to be: I’m not good enough. Anxiety hadn’t planned this. But because she made Riley act in a way that would please others so that they would accept her, this was the accidental but ultimate result.

As a certain incident forces the rest of the emotions to wash all the suppressed memories into that lake, a new sense of self grew. It was one where all parts of Riley were part of. The embarrassing, the sad, the angry, the envious, the fearful ones as well. And it was then that Riley accepted who she was. Even if that meant that some people wouldn’t accept her into their group of friends anymore.

Why letting it go is usually best

Another thing that stood out to me, was when the other characters at first admired anxiety more than joy, because she was always thinking ahead and coming up with useful plans. At some point, they accused Joy of being delusional for staying positive, even when they found themselves in a very bad situation. Joy got really mad at them at shouted ‘do you even know how hard it is to always stay positive, when the rest of you always try to drag me down?’. When they then saw how overwhelmed Anxiety was with handling the situations Riley was in, eventually leading her to having a mental break down, they finally appreciated again how calmly Joy took over and fixed the situation by believing in Riley being a good person. From then on, they always put Anxiety into a relaxing chair and gave her a cup of tea when she was overthinking, ergo portraying ‘letting go’ visually. Then, Riley was able to handle stressful situations much better.

From this, I conclude…

… that we might sometimes do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Just because we’re looking out for the best for us and not pleasing someone else, does not mean that we’re not a good person. It only means that we took care of ourselves first. … That all emotions want the best for you, and that we should be thankful for them. They might not always take the best decisions but their goal is to always protect us, soothe us, want better for us, linder our pain and hurt. … That we are made out of all of what we are, not just the best or just the worst parts. Nobody is perfect. But that doesn’t mean that you should supress your ugly parts. … That we should always remember that everyone is fighting the same battles. Other people feel sadness, anger, fear, anxiety too. … That the older we get, the more we learn and the better we are able to handle situations. … That every emotion is worth being celebrated and appreciated.

Thank you for reading, ’til the next time <3