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3 important lessons from Anxiety in Inside Out 2

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

November 2024 has left me feeling especially tender and anxious. So before I go into our analysis this week, I first want to remind our readers of a few Lit Think details.

First, Sarah and I established from the beginning that diversity is important to us in the media we analyze.

We value and believe the stories of women.

And more than anything, we are high school English teachers who love everything literature can do. We created Lit Think to help us celebrate exactly that.

Now that we’ve established all that, let’s get to lit-thinking! Our focus today: 3 lessons we can learn from Anxiety in Inside Out 2.

Lesson 1: Anxiety is normal

Just as we’re all hard-wired for Joy and Sadness, so also Anxiety serves a natural purpose in our brains and bodies. It helps us anticipate unexpected scenarios, and it harkens back to basic survival instincts of our early ancestors.

In the article “The Upside of Anxiety,” New York Times author Christina Caron writes:

A certain degree of anxiety can help people anticipate obstacles, remain cautious and stay organized, said Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical psychologist in Boston and the author of “How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety.”

Even when Anxiety first arrives in Riley’s brain during Inside Out 2, they’re not immediately a problem. Sure, she’s high energy and immediately sabotages the very framework of Riley’s identity. But she does try so hard to make a good first impression.

Lesson 2: Anxiety needs to be acknowledged

This is where Anxiety goes wrong. She thinks the best thing she can do for Riley is hide as much as possible of herself and only present as cool and collected at all times.

Fear’s response is one of my favorite moments in the film:

I love the way Emma Nagoski, author of Come As You Are, puts it:

“The good news is that stress is not the problem. The problem is that the strategies that deal with stressors have almost no relationship to the strategies that deal with the physiological reactions our bodies have to those stressors. To be “well” is not to live in a state of perpetual safety and calm, but to move fluidly from a state of adversity, risk, adventure, or excitement, back to safety and calm, and out again. Stress is not bad for you; being stuck is bad for you.”

So Riley’s Joy, our protagonist of both Inside Out films, must find her way back to Headquarters and help Riley break the cycle of self-doubt once again.

(By the way, if you want to learn more about Emily Nagoski’s work around stress, I highly recommend this podcast episode and this worksheet.)

Lesson 3: Anxiety can be overwhelming

We talk all the time at Lit Think about the importance of media that breaks down barriers. This is why Sarah and I so deeply love Ted Lasso (another great piece in how it addresses anxiety).

And it’s why the anxiety attack in Inside Out 2 brought me to tears.

As a person who’s still recovering from postpartum anxiety, there’s so much this scene gets right. Anxiety herself doesn’t understand how quickly she escalates. The emotion is literally out of control. And Anxiety doesn’t know how to let go of the controls without help.

If you’ve ever found yourself stuck like Riley or me, I want to end the blog today with a few quick resources to help address anxiety (ones you can easily share with your students too):

• Try some Star Breathing to begin or end a class period.

• Practice the 3-3-3 Rule.

• Watch a cute animals video (or check out some of these other great options from NPR).

To end today, here’s one of my favorite Inside-Out-adjacent quotes from Brianna Wiest:

Your anger? It’s telling you where you feel powerless.

Your anxiety? It’s telling you that something in your life is off balance.

Your fear? It’s telling you what you care about.

Your apathy? It’s telling you where you’re overextended and burnt out.

Your feelings aren’t random, they are messengers. And if you want to get anywhere, you need to be able to let them speak to you, and tell you what you really need.

Be gentle with yourselves this week, dear readers. And keep on lit-thinking.

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