Putting a Face to an Emotion: Inside out 2 and the Personification of Emotions
By: Adrianna Beck, LMHC, MS, BS, CASAC-T, KAP
As a therapist, one of the hardest things for a client to understand is emotions. They are ambiguous. They are uncomfortable at times. They have no face. They are just felt. So then the question becomes, how do we work with emotions that we can’t see but certainly can feel?
Inside Out as a movie franchise allows us to see inside our minds. The chaos, the fun, and the ridiculous come to life through Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Fear. They all have faces with which their emotion is portrayed. But they also mingle with one another, creating a family of emotions that listen to and fight with one another to create Riley. Inside Out 2 shows the process of emotional growth through puberty. Enter Anxiety, Envy, Ennui, and Embarrassment. We see again how these emotions interact with one another but ultimately, this movie focuses on how Anxiety operates.
Anxiety is a wiry orange emotion that comes into Riley’s mind with an air of authority. She immediately gets to work by controlling Riley and planning a million scenarios to keep Riley safe. It goes smoothly at first, but then as the story progresses, it becomes more and more tough for Anxiety to keep up.
As I sat in the theater, I realized how interesting it was to see the emotions intermingling and responding to the overpowering nature of Anxiety. It made me think of so many conversations I have had with my own clients where I have compared anxiety to a very small person with a big voice. I saw that on the screen, a small orange person with a very big voice controlling Riley and influencing her to do things she might have never done before. The movie put a face to an emotion.
There is a technique within therapy where you sit with a client and ask them to draw or describe what their emotions might look like if they were standing in the room. Asking questions about the shape of the emotion, the color of the emotion, the size of the emotion, and so forth, to personify an otherwise ambiguous “thing”. I have had some clients describe anger as a deep red spikey ball that sometimes rolls into them releasing frustration within the client. I have had happiness be described as a glowing being shrouded in gold that gives off a comforting warmth. The descriptions are never the same and always so eye-opening from a therapeutic standpoint.
Every time I have done this exercise with a client I am amazed and intrigued by their view of their own emotions. From a therapist's perspective, it is a learning moment where I can understand my clients on a deeper level. Inside Out capitalizes on this method and expands on it to create a world of personified emotions with their own styles and personalities. By giving them a form, human or otherwise, I think this provides an opportunity for clinicians to humanize emotions. Making emotions something we can see in our mind or on paper as a drawing, somehow gives us a way to separate the person from the emotion. It allows us to know, understand, and talk to our emotions. Giving life to an otherwise lifeless concept.
In my own mind, I think of emotions like people, so Inside Out has always resonated with me. So to be able to connect that to the work I do every day is so interesting. Living beside our emotions and creating space between us and them is key to living in balance. Letting our emotions intermingle and collaborate allows us to understand how we can feel sad, angry and confused all at once. Inside Out shows this intermingling in such a great way that it should be used as a therapeutic tool.
So......how do you personify your own emotions?
If you would like to better understand your own emotions, connect with Adrianna Beck, for emotion-focused therapy today by visiting her bio here