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Inside Out 2: Anxiety and Insecurity
131 Plays3 months ago
In this episode, Grant and Fara dive into the animated film Inside Out 2, exploring its creative depiction of emotions and the educational value it offers. They begin by providing a synopsis of the film, followed by an in-depth discussion on how emotions like anxiety and sadness play a crucial role in the protagonist Riley’s conflicts and emotional growth. The conversation also touches on the portrayal of emotional frameworks in the film and how they reflect real-life therapeutic approaches. As always, they wrap up with some thoughtful closing remarks and doorknob comments.
We hope you enjoy it.
In This Episode
[0:00] Introduction
[1:20] Episode Overview
[2:00] Synopsis of Inside Out 2
[5:00] Exploring Emotional Representation and Educational Themes
[12:40] Anxiety's Impact on Riley's Journey
[15:40] Anxiety as a Manifestation of Insecurity
[19:00] Sadness and Emotional Integration
[21:00] Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Depicted in the Film
[23:00] Which Emotion Takes the Lead?
[29:20] Navigating Social Challenges and Stereotypes in Adolescence
[33:10] Linking Gendered Social Dynamics Back to Childhood
[36:15] Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks
Resources and Links
Doorknob Comments
https://www.doorknobcomments.com/
Dr. Fara White
Dr. Grant Brenner
Recommended
Transcript
Negative Self-Talk and Emotional Disconnect
00:00:00
Speaker
There are people who are adults who talk to themselves in horrific ways or keep going, you know, they get stuck in bad memories and then cannot connect that with, to their sadness, right? I think that's a really, really important understanding to have of how our emotions work.
Introduction to Hosts and Podcast Theme
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello, I'm Dr. Farah White. And I'm Dr. Grant Brenner. We're psychiatrists and therapists in private practice in New York. We started this podcast in 2019 to draw attention to a phenomenon called the doorknob comment. Doorknob comments are important things we all say from time to time, just as we're leaving the office, sometimes literally hand on the doorknob. Doorknob comments happen not only during therapy but also in everyday life. The point is that sometimes we aren't sure how to express the deeply meaningful things we're feeling, thinking and experiencing. Maybe we're afraid to bring certain things out into the open or are on the fence about wanting to discuss them. Sometimes we know we've got something we're unsure about sharing and are keeping it to ourselves and sometimes we surprise ourselves by what comes out.
00:01:10
Speaker
Hi, welcome to doorknob comments podcast. I'm Grant Brenner. I'm here with my co-host Farah White. Today we're going to talk about the movie Inside Out 2.
Inside Out 2: Anxiety and Emotional Exploration
00:01:20
Speaker
If you take a minute and go to your TikTok, you'll see there's a lot of discussion of the movie, but also the perennial discussions about what is anxiety, what does it mean? What are signs of anxiety? And for me, what is, for lack of a better term, normal anxiety? And when does anxiety get out of control?
00:01:38
Speaker
I really, I'm glad we're talking about this today because I really enjoyed watching it. And there was a lot that I liked about it, partially as just like an audience member, but also as a psychiatrist and someone in the mental health field, I thought there were was much more good about it than not. um Yeah, maybe we should run through the plot, um spoiler alert, so that we kind of know what we're talking about here.
00:02:06
Speaker
Do you want to give a little synopsis and then I can sure jump in? okay so For those of us who have seen Inside Out, the original movie, which which was quite groundbreaking and fresh. you know It's very hard for a sequel to follow on the original when a big part of the original was having a novel concept.
Riley's Emotional Journey and New Challenges
00:02:26
Speaker
Having said that, so we meet our protagonist again, Riley, and she's a little bit older. In the first movie, she moved from Minnesota and had some trouble adjusting. And the main theme of the first movie as a child, Riley was managing her internal states, and they were represented by these different characters, different emotions that ran a control panel in her head. And the main negotiation in the first movie was with joy and sadness and sadness kind of took over from joy. And then joy and sadness sort of repaired their relationship and then got Riley to a better place in relation to her friends with reasonably supportive parents. So when we meet her in the second movie, she's settled in a bit more. She has a couple of close friends. She's still a child. She's prepubescent. And so at the beginning of the movie, puberty hits.
00:03:22
Speaker
And it throws her emotions out of whack. At the same time, she's about to go into high school, and she gets invited to go to a hockey camp, which is very prestigious by the coach, along with her two younger friends.
Introducing New Emotions and Their Impact
00:03:34
Speaker
At the hockey camp, she meets a group of older girls, this one particular girl.
00:03:39
Speaker
um who she wants to really impress and become a part of that crew, and she goes through a kind of a moral struggle where she ditches her earlier friends, tries to please the new friends. What's happening on the inside is the original crew, joy, sadness, um fear, and... Disgust. Anger, anger. And anger. yeah Joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. These kind of primary emotions. There's a new crew that comes in and they have no notice. It's like management is changing or something like that. It has an HR, corporate quality. and Then the new crew is led by anxiety and accompanied by ennui, envy, and embarrassment. Nostalgia makes a brief cameo but is shoved off for later.
00:04:30
Speaker
And essentially what happens is anxiety is really insecurity. Riley has developed this beautiful sense of self, which has sprouted from her being a good person. But anxiety comes in and just starts messing things up. And she she ends up, you know, kind of betraying her friends a little bit and um ultimately kind of works it out in the end. And her new sense of self develops. And then, you know, I guess I guess Riley's OK from now on in.
Creative Representation of Emotions
00:05:00
Speaker
Well, I think that that's definitely the message creatively. I thought it was really cool how they go, you know, from Riley's life and what's happening on the outside to then cutting to the cast of characters that are the emotions who are really kind of.
00:05:19
Speaker
cute and funny and I think that part was creatively done. That anxiety is drawn to look kind of anxious. Anger is like this kind of like stocky red character and He blows his top a lot. Yeah. And I thought but but he even blows his top a lot, but he's also like, it's very protective. And so I thought that it was a pretty sophisticated way to help kids see and name their emotions and know that that may be controlling them, how they feel about themselves or how they feel about others in a non-threatening way. Like there was a lot of sophisticated psychoeducation, but
00:06:01
Speaker
I don't think it felt like that from watching the movie. yeah When it comes to kind of identifying and naming emotions and developing meta-awareness of emotions, I think the meta-psychology of the movie is quite interesting as a psychoanalyst who studies development and all of these kinds of things. It's a very sophisticated meta-psychology. It goes beyond awareness and naming of emotions. so If you think of the movie as showing a kind of a psychological operating system, and then you imagine that
00:06:32
Speaker
This may be ambitious, but you imagine that younger viewers and and maybe grownups are watching it and kind of thinking, gee, I wonder if I kind of work this way, and maybe it transforms their own inner experience or how they reflect on themselves.
Psychological Models and Emotional Systems
00:06:45
Speaker
What you see is a sophisticated, perhaps in some ways misleading model or operating system.
00:06:52
Speaker
The idea is that there are these primary emotions that each one of them has agency, has will and choice. But one of them is kind of in charge, which is generally supposed to be joy. But beyond that, there's the idea of a sense of self, which is a contemporary psychological model.
00:07:11
Speaker
And so things like consistency and coherence and the positivity versus negativity of sense of self are often correlated with mental health and personality development. So things like childhood trauma may lead to a negative sense of self or commonly discussed conditions like borderline personality disorder,
00:07:31
Speaker
may lead to an unstable or unclear sense of self. and Beyond that, there's memories that are stored. and Really curiously, I'd say the memories float in the bottom of this pool, like deep in Riley's psyche, which is maybe a bit like the brainstem or the emotional hodgepodge of structures that is referred to as the limbic system.
00:07:53
Speaker
and depending on which memories are placed in the pool, these tendrils come up from the bottom of the pool of the unconscious or the subconscious, and they go into a confluence, like wires coming together into a bundle, and then they create the base of the sense of self, the surface of which, kind of like a blossoming flower, is what you see in the control room.
00:08:17
Speaker
And then within this whole internal landscape, there's all these different things like chasms of memories, and they represent disconnections, and and so on. So it's a very complex meta-psychology based on, I think, a multiplicity idea of self.
00:08:33
Speaker
and In addition, they there are areas called personality islands, which are like different interests.
Authenticity vs. Peer Pressure: A Debate
00:08:39
Speaker
so like Her childhood interest in some TV show can get split off as she grows up because she feels embarrassed at liking something that a younger kid would like. and so There's this real moral and personality struggle about whether people are inauthentic in order to fit in and what harm they might do to themselves as a result, or whether they can successfully navigate that in order to remain sort of true enough. And I'm curious if you think Inside Out depicts accurately the way the mind actually works, or is it going to make people's minds work a certain way if they watch it?
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think it is going to tell them a couple of important things. right Is that the way the mind actually works? That's a model that I think is generally well researched and widely accepted. I don't know that everybody needs to subscribe to it in order to benefit. so but But the things that I liked about it, it was more that it helps people understand how their emotions, how their memories, how their sense of self are these different and complex
00:09:57
Speaker
things that interact with each other. There are people who are adults who talk to themselves in horrific ways or keep going, you know, they get stuck in bad memories and then cannot connect that with to their sadness. Right. And I think that's a really, really important understanding to have of how our emotions work. Right. And what they what they tell us about, you know,
00:10:26
Speaker
ourselves and how we interact with the world, right?
Therapeutic Interventions in the Movie
00:10:30
Speaker
Watching the movie as a therapist, there were many, many times during the movie where it was like, oh no, like, I would like to intervene. So to your point, kind of like, how come no one tries to really talk with each other? And where is the character in Riley's mind that can mediate because joy is ostensibly the leader, but joy is not really that self-reflective. Joy makes a mistake early on. Joy takes an emotion that is uncomfortable and chucks it into the back of Riley's mind. It's kind of like bad judgment.
00:11:06
Speaker
And of course, you know, Riley is a kid. So I thought, well, where's the role of the parents as well in in helping kids learn how to reflect? And of course, you know, it's in it's ah it's OK to make mistakes. But as a therapist, like I wish, you know, I could be a character in the movie and I might try to get joy and anxiety to speak with each other a little bit. Or as you were saying, sort of what about sadness and anxiety or these moments like if we could ask Riley OK, there's a point where when Riley meets this older girl and she's really like she has kind of a crush on her and she wants to be like her and she's worried about going to high school and her friends she finds out in the car ride on the way over are going to go to a different high school. She's going to be left alone in the new high school. She has an understandable desire to attach to these older girls. And the older girl says, aren't you that kid who moved from Michigan?
00:11:59
Speaker
And actually, Riley had moved from Minnesota. And Riley has a moment where she doesn't want to correct the girl. And basically, in her head, anxiety is like, don't correct her. She'll reject you. yeah And I was thinking, well, actually, the older girl seemed pretty nice. She wasn't like a real mean girl. And if Riley had said, oh, actually, I'm from Minnesota. But yeah, we love hockey. Like, it probably would have worked out OK. Of course, the movie wouldn't have been as interesting.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah, but I also think that, you know, the things and I was sort of fantasizing like if they do a third movie, would they have things like confidence or instincts or, you know, I don't know really what emotions might be, but and those take some time
Addressing Anxiety's Role and Influence
00:12:43
Speaker
to develop. So when anxiety shows up on the scene,
00:12:48
Speaker
she's allowed to be more powerful because she goes unchecked, right? Like joy and sadness, kind of like no one wants to really, really get in there and kind of hold a mirror up to the anxiety and say like, hey, what do you what are you doing here? Like what's your angle? And I think it's important to be curious about that and then see what are we leading with when we interact with others?
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, because because the old team of joy, sadness, fear, disgust and anger are innocent and immature. And so anxiety on we, her her crew are pseudo sophisticated older teenagers. And anxiety is more conniving and outsmarts joy. And before they can do anything and enjoy presumes a certain kind of, you know, um good intentions. Right. It's a wake up call for joy that that Riley is not so sweet and pure. And so anxiety gets the upper hand and kind of unwisely with some good intention takes over, right? Yeah. And I do think that that's what a lot of not just kids, but also adults, they sort of rely on anxiety instead of
00:14:09
Speaker
confidence or other types of connection. Security. Security. They think, oh, well, anxiety is the reason that I was able to stay up late and write this paper. Anxiety is the reason that I've been successful. Right. But at what cost? And one of the things that happens, and I think it's pretty pivotal to the plot,
00:14:30
Speaker
is you know she sort of rejects and diminishes these other childhood friends in order to make friends and impress these older girls. And there's this talk about, well, these friends are her past, but these other friends are her future. And there's a lot of black and white thinking around it.
00:14:51
Speaker
and a feeling kind of like how there are these two groups of emotions there's that I don't know if you would call it a parallel process right there are these two groups of friends they're in conflict with each other right she can't maintain her connection to her childhood friends and also impress these older girls or she believes that she can't or she believes that it's not important Right. And that um and the royalties are divided. Right. And she doesn't see a way to bring them together. She's afraid that if she introduces her old friends to the new crew, she'll be rejected.
Riley's Internal Conflicts and Insecurity
00:15:27
Speaker
And the lead girl in the new crew is reasonably nice, but some of her friends are a little bit snarky and she overhears them talking about her at some point. And the leader of the group kind of likes her. But one of the other girls in the group is like, she's so lame. Yeah.
00:15:42
Speaker
yeah And that drives her insecurity. i See, I think anxiety was really misnamed, is really insecurity. yeah I think you're and connects with sense of self. That's where I think the meta psychology doesn't quite fit with my understanding of psychology, but, you know, good enough for Hollywood. So I think I think anxiety is really more about insecurity and sense of self was static.
00:16:03
Speaker
Sense of self was not is not a character in the movie, but sense of self really should be a character. Like you're saying, confidence or security could be a character. But again, it wouldn't be a very interesting movie because she would have done the right thing, so to speak. And maybe there was a way for her to introduce the new girls to the to the old girls and have it work out. Right. Well, I think that you know one of my favorite parts was sort of things reach this like fever pitch there's a scrimmage and she feels that she has to perform at all costs so her anxiety takes over decides okay you need to have a hat trick in this game and she starts playing really really aggressively and gets put in the penalty box and sort of starts to have a panic attack.
00:16:53
Speaker
she had gotten physical with like one of the childhood friends who was hurt and people were kind of looking at her and she has this panic attack. And then the childhood friends come over and ask her if she's okay. So that type of interaction I thought was really beautiful. And then there was this moment where she says,
Moral Lessons and Emotional Integration
00:17:13
Speaker
I don't remember exactly how she said it, but she sort of apologized to them and you know, it was this very like, of course, fantasy moment that I think a lot of people wish they could have. But you also have like the the viewer also has compassion for Riley's conflict in that moment.
00:17:34
Speaker
you know I think the redeeming quality and kind of the moral of the movie is that Riley does the right thing. And, you know, ultimately she is true to her family's values, which is to do the right thing by her friends. But in that moment that you're talking about where she panics,
00:17:51
Speaker
Anxiety takes over and anxiety transforms Riley into a bad person. is In psychoanalysis, there's a term called malevolent transformation. you know In her moment of insecurity and fear, her sense of self just collapses.
00:18:08
Speaker
And anxiety becomes frenetic and starts racing around the control panel, trying feverishly to get Riley to win, to gain the acceptance and impress these other girls. But it really backfires. Ultimately, in her own head, I think in that scene, Joy finally intervenes and stops anxiety. But it requires Joy to reach deep inside of herself.
00:18:34
Speaker
yeah and find a strength that she hadn't had before. And there's a moment prior to that where Joy almost gives up hope when they're lost. They're lost and they're trying to retrieve her good sense of self. And Joy, you know, gets crushed under an avalanche of these memories. And for a minute, she's hopeless. I'm trying to remember which of the emotions like pulls her out of it. Is it sadness?
00:18:57
Speaker
I think sadness in the end... The sadness goes back to fight things, right? Right, exactly. So sadness is the one that's kind of like left behind. That I liked because I thought, well, sadness is present everywhere, maybe kind of a pain sometimes. not it's She's not like the most glamorous of the characters.
00:19:23
Speaker
um Well, she's kind of frumpy. Right. And interestingly, joy and sadness have the same basic features. They both have a blue pixie cut. they both have They both have blue eyes. they They appear to be related. Yeah. But but I do think that having sadness be the one to kind of connect, right? Because there's sadness when there's anxiety, there's sadness under anger and sadness under joy, even. Sadness holds the wisdom through, I guess, recognizing what's going on and not needing to sugarcoat it yeah or get distracted by anger. Yeah. And so to me, seeing how it
00:20:12
Speaker
sort of plays out like that. Like none of these emotions really need to be, let's say rejected, right? We need to find a way for them to get integrated. And so I loved that hug at the end where they're all kind of like at peace with each other, because I think that a big part of our job is how do we know what we're feeling? Know that it's not the only feeling.
00:20:36
Speaker
It doesn't own us and it's gonna go away and be replaced by something else. But to like, they always say, and I guess it's like hot phrase in DBT, like two things can be true at at at the same time, right? Three things can be true. Three things, five things can be true. You can have so many feelings that can coexist. And so to be able to be at peace with that is huge.
Therapeutic Approaches and Emotional Education
00:21:07
Speaker
If I had a nickel for every time I spoke with a DBT therapist who said, um and, you know, and said, don't use the word, but, and for me, just as an aside, I think DBT can be very valuable for people who can make use of it. DBT is inherently black and white. There's a kind of a draconian quality. Like you can't use the word, but there's no both and when it comes to, but, and,
00:21:37
Speaker
Maybe, but the reason- I think ultimately, Riley will be better served by psychodynamic therapy. For sure, but I think it's DBT that has broken it down. And I'm glad that you're hearing it where credit is due, but I think DBT is popular because it breaks it down into- It makes it digestible, yeah. That people can, yeah, understand. And I think understanding analytic theory is That's going to be a 19-hour movie. but Right. It would be a 19-hour movie. And I think it would be kind of boring. you know um You're not going over to the dark side, are you? No, no, no. I'm kidding, of course. But I do appreciate what it can give to people. And then, yeah, if we're interested in learning, OK, well, why is this important? Or how does this? Well, I have some critiques of DBT and of psychoanalysis.
00:22:35
Speaker
Right, but i I thought that they were all very well represented, right? I thought there were a lot of really sophisticated theories that were well represented in the movie. We can talk about a couple of things. I mean,
00:22:50
Speaker
What do you think before you move on to your own experiences or things like TikTok and how people talk about anxiety or how we over-identify with pathology? Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's at our peril. Joy does seem to be the boss. Ultimately, Joy is the leader. yeah And the the implicit message is you know like you need to be in touch with Joy in order to be satisfied in some way. And I appreciate that sadness is valued as having this kind of groundedness and acceptance and wisdom. But at the end of the movie, Joy regains her rightful place as
00:23:31
Speaker
I think the the the main person who's in charge, and I get the sense that when Riley grows up, her personality is supposed to have a lot of joy in it as a kind of a compass or a lighthouse or something.
00:23:45
Speaker
And Joy ultimately is the one that stabilizes her sense of self after the, you know, on the dysregulated anxiety has, you know, a chance to wreak havoc. Joy ultimately soothes her sense of self into its new, more mature form. Yeah. I think, and and a lot of people,
00:24:07
Speaker
probably agree that this idea of wanting to feel joyful, pursuing happiness, and letting that sort of direct us is maybe um a more American ideal. american Yeah. And that, you know, for a lot of parts of society, people are interested in family or connections or purpose, and they don't have necessarily the same requirement, or they're interested in safety, right? but um So do you think there's toxic positivity there, or it falls short of that? Potentially. I think that there is privilege, right, in being
Cultural Values and Emotional Privilege
00:24:50
Speaker
physically safe and focusing that much on emotions and particularly at this time in the world. Like it's the most difficult emotions. right, and and being able to pay attention to them and to examine them, I would have liked, I guess, some nod to, well, this is so important, but also, how lucky are we, right? Well, Riley is extremely privileged and fortunate, right? Her family is economically stable. She has
00:25:21
Speaker
both of her parents are kind and loving. You know, they're not perfect, but but they're there for her. And ultimately, I think you have the idea that being raised in a good family has allowed her to make the right choices. You only see her parents at the very beginning and at the very end of the movie pretty much. And they're they're both sort of loving and supportive. They're a little bit, you know, her dad is as usual, you know, media dad is kind of a buffoon who cheers her up and the mom is kind of warmer and more grounded.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah. I think what I, I guess it was important, right? That she's someone who even when the conditions are pretty much ideal, it's hard, right? And she struggles and she suffers. Well, she doesn't have a therapist, but ideal aside from that, she doesn't need one yet. Right. But I think it's pretty close to ideal. So that I just think, okay, we're, we're looking at this,
00:26:16
Speaker
That's inside out three. yeah We're looking at this in the absence of this is all what Riley is going through is normal developmental stuff, but it's hard. In inside out three, like there's a therapist in there with the emotions. But inside out three, Riley would have a self-representation, which is actually who she is in the world. right you know That's really curious that Riley in her own head, there's no Riley.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, not yet. It's developing. It's our developing sense of self, right? And it becomes from this kind of rudimentary glass, it looks like ah almost like a scribble, right? To something that's then like orange and angry to something that's way more integrated and and complex. Her sense of self. j right and and But there's no there's no internal representation of her as her in the world, which is missing from the meta-psychology, but it makes sense as a movie.
00:27:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think it works well for the movie. And I also thought that the other thing that worked was, you know, and I'm sure there are lots of criticisms of Riley as main character, but but I thought that mostly the viewer was supposed to be rooting for her and supposed to be sympathetic towards her and to be able to have compassion for her poor decision making.
00:27:40
Speaker
when she made the poor decisions so that she was so hurt and felt so scared and and sort of semi-rejected by these friends who were going to go to a different high school. She doesn't verbalize that to them. She acts it out in kind of shitty ways, but yeah we're still like sympathetic towards her. And I think that Well, I don't know if everyone was, but you know I could see that. Roger Ebert had a generally positive review of it, but he had a number of critiques. One of them was kind of a cultural critique that jumped out at me. you know I felt fairly sympathetic, though, frankly, you know as a movie viewer, I was just bored out of my head, and I was glad I was sitting in the back row without my family, so I could like do other stuff while I was tracking the movie.
00:28:28
Speaker
Okay. Okay. I don't know. I didn't find it boring maybe because I liked that storyline you know for its importance in to the development. you know I wish that we had a little bit more of of that actually, maybe the friend's perspective or other things.
Educational Potential of the Movie
00:28:49
Speaker
um Right. It'd be interesting to hear what was going on inside of the other characters heads, presumably they have a similar self system. I also think as a kind of a tool for teaching people about emotions could be useful. Like the use of media often, you know, shows these internal struggles and how they resolve and inside out gives this, you know, insider view, but it's a very particular developmental process, right? Puberty and deciding between your old friends and your new friends and wanting to be cool.
00:29:20
Speaker
Right, right. Did you relate to it at all? Yeah, definitely. um And I think, you know, also to this sort of group mentality. And when you're talking about, let's say, girl groups and all the stereotypes,
00:29:36
Speaker
that that people can encounter throughout middle school, high school adjusting, right? In the teenage years, there's like this adjustment to middle school. It's ah an awkward time. And then, you know, people step into high school and it's... High school is terrifying. Terrifying. We we were we were taught that um we should be afraid of being harmed physically. Right. And I grew up in a quote unquote nice area of New Jersey. But this the the idea of physical harm is like, well, there might be a group, right? There might be a group that might target a sort of loner person um that is not safe to be alone, that it's safe. There's a tremendous amount of bullying.
00:30:21
Speaker
People got beat up. um I was bullied a lot, but I didn't get beat up because around that time I so started standing up for myself. There were also gang fights, and I grew up again in you know a fairly affluent part of New Jersey. The kids, I was not part of this group, but they would they would have fights with kids from the neighboring town. It's it's rough, right? It is, and i think because I think it's that rough because people are so insecure.
00:30:49
Speaker
And they are trying to find their way. And if you look at all the sort of literature, Lisa Demore is my favorite person who writes about this, um like ways to navigate, you know, finding, let's say people who are on the outskirts, finding single friends, you know, friends and building that, but that takes confidence.
00:31:12
Speaker
What do you think about the comparison with a movie like Mean Girls, which is very similar, like this nice girl moves from ah far away and she's kind of naive and she's a good person. But the older girls or the popular crowd in that movie, they're they're just sadistic and
Social Hierarchies and Adolescent Growth
00:31:28
Speaker
malevolent. Yeah.
00:31:29
Speaker
because they have to be that way to, you know, they're sadistic in the level of and they're also, multi but they have to be that way to maintain this air of superiority, the fragile sense of self, right that fragile sense of self, or that like to assert their dominance.
00:31:49
Speaker
it took me a long time to sort of be able to have compassion for another person's experience and why it might be hard for them to have another person around, even if that person is trying to be kind or trying to do- I mean like compassion for the mean girl or- Yeah, compassion for the mean girl. I think having compassion for the mean girl and her sort of inability to be vulnerable or to be real. um Being objectified for being beautiful or making assumptions about her character or intelligence because of the way she looks in a patriarchal world. Yeah. All of that, I think is helpful. What it's like to walk down the street, you know. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it's it's helpful to the people that, you know,
00:32:42
Speaker
that that that rejection is not a result of, you know, anything that they said or did or who they are. It's more the result of like, you know, a mean girl is going to be mean. and It's a struggle, I think, to be trying to gain acceptance and trying and trying to navigate a new sort of social strata, right? But it's also a struggle to be part of it.
00:33:11
Speaker
um is that Is it is it at all similar to what it's like to be like a mom with other moms? Yeah, I think that there are always these groups. And with the mom stuff, I think it's very much like people who have insecurity about their own choices, the working mom versus the stay at home mom.
00:33:35
Speaker
or a tradwife or whatever, whatever you want to call it. um The what wife?
Gender Roles and Societal Expectations
00:33:40
Speaker
Tradwife is like something that's been trending like traditional, like, oh, I'm going to like take back and I'm going to like make dinner for my husband all the time. And then people are like, no, I'm a feminist. I'm like never going to make dinner.
00:33:52
Speaker
so um But I think that the people who have a lot of insecurities around their own choices, because maybe it wasn't what they were expected to choose, or it wasn't what they thought they would want, or maybe they don't actually have as much of a choice as they imagined that they would.
00:34:11
Speaker
So those people are the most exquisitely sensitive. So if you ask a stay-at-home mom what she does, but she stays at home, but maybe she got laid off because she works in tech, it's not because, oh, that person stays at home and I go to work.
00:34:30
Speaker
It's because maybe neither of us are completely comfortable in choosing those roles, right? It's it's a conversation that that isn't well developed. It's hard to have. There's a lot of landmines. yeah It depends a lot on whether the person wants to do that. but even But even if they want to do that, there's gender roles. Men don't face the same problems. Generally speaking, there's data that backs that up.
00:34:59
Speaker
it's difficult to talk about if you don't know, you know, where everyone is coming from. Yeah. But, but I think for women, right, this or girls for girls, it starts when they're girls, right? What kind of a girl are you going to be? Are you going to be smart? Are you going to be preppy? Are you going to be glam? Are you going to be some, you know, stylistically, like there's so much development that has to happen in terms of identity and style. The dolls and yeah what do the Disney princesses look like to bring it back to Disney and Pixar? I think by the way that a lot of the characters in Inside Out have pixie haircuts because it's Pixar. I just feel subliminally.
00:35:39
Speaker
oh Maybe, maybe. So it it is it is it is pointing to kind of like, yeah it makes you wonder like, what is Riley going to do when she grows up? What is high school going to be like for Riley? Yeah. And and also, I think it makes us sort of look at our own choices and how we treat other people.
00:36:00
Speaker
um and what motivates that in an important
Emotional Awareness Across Cultures
00:36:04
Speaker
way. So like overall, I think I'm glad that we watched it, that we talked about it, and I'm happy that people are seeing it, um regardless of its imperfections.
00:36:16
Speaker
I hope it does really well at the box office on on behalf of the cinematographic industrial complex okay and um in the service of American cultural imperialism, because in a sense, I think it is very ideological, and I'm being kind of funny. but yeah the whole idea of emotional awareness being important is a very kind of Western privileged idea. yeah And it's in that sense, it's very culturally bound. There's lots of cultures where you'd really
00:36:47
Speaker
aren't raising kids to be aware of their inner states and their feelings. And in a sense, in a culture like that, it could be very disruptive not to be a conformist and not to suppress your feelings right and keep them private. Right. But I would argue that in a culture like ours, right, for people to lack that basic self-reflective function or understanding of emotions when each person in this country has the potential to, let's say, be powerful in a way that could either be, you know, a good thing for humanity or it could be disastrous, right? And so I think about, okay, well, what
00:37:27
Speaker
are we creating in the next generation? And so if just one person who, let's say, comes from a completely different ideological background than, let's say, than we do, but can understand, oh, I'm lashing out because of my anger,
00:37:47
Speaker
but sadness is there too. And you know what, joy is there too. And- That could prevent a lot of military coups. I mean, that's that's a kind of um you know an idealistic position of psychotherapy that perhaps somehow psychotherapeutic perspectives could save the world or at least build a better world. And you said something earlier, there's a parallel process, you know what goes on inside of Riley's head and how it plays out with her friends. That's also a key take-home point is that the external world reflects the internal world, you know, and vice versa. Now, you know, some cultures are more individualistic and some are more communal, you know, from a sociologic perspective. And communal cultures function by de-centering individuality. And, you know, that's that's a much bigger a
Mental Health Portrayals on Social Media
00:38:34
Speaker
topic. And I think sort of ending on a not quite a doorknob comment,
00:38:38
Speaker
But for me, kind of one of the elephants of the room that we didn't talk about today, but could be and will be a good subject for a future conversation, is among this actual age group, how they are actually digesting, navigating, and talking about emotions on platforms like TikTok.
00:38:57
Speaker
which from what I've seen is often extremely misleading in a variety of ways, both just misinformation about what anxiety is and how it works, or black and white views about anxiety that could do real harm to a strong tendency right now, which I think is a good corrective in some ways from stigmatizing mental illness,
00:39:21
Speaker
to over identifying with pathological identities and getting locked into them, which I think can interfere with growth and development yeah and treatment sometimes. i
Closing Remarks and Listener Engagement
00:39:33
Speaker
I do feel like that is that's a doorknob comment that we shouldn't let slide and we should come back to it. um And maybe we can do so um over the next few weeks because I think.
00:39:45
Speaker
You shouldn't let it slide. ah yeah if the If the doorknob is coated with WD-40 or some kind of some kind of slick material, it might be hard to actually get out. But yeah for now, we we will exit the conversation. Thank you. It will continue in the background.
00:40:04
Speaker
So, yeah, folks, please reach out hello at doorknobcomments.com. Please send us feedback. We got some lovely feedback from a listener named True about our discussion of ending therapy, who raised an idea of talking about when therapy ends prematurely. If the therapist moves or something happens to them, they have health problems. So thanks very much for that comment and suggestion and keep them coming. Remember, the Doorknob Comments podcast is not medical advice. If you may be in need of professional assistance, please seek consultation without delay.