Inside Out 2
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As someone who has struggled with anxiety almost all of her life, the best word that comes to mind as I try to describe my experience of Inside Out 2 is ‘exorcism.’
I cried not only in the theater, but also almost immediately started sobbing when I woke up the next morning. An intense emotional hangover. It was glaringly apparent that something about this movie deeply unsettled and simultaneously, healed me.
But let me get this straight, nothing really sad happens in the movie. Honestly, nothing even really dramatic happens in the movie.
But its portrayal of anxiety, and specifically how one’s anxious thoughts can become a belief, hit me very deeply.
For many many years, my sense of self was built almost entirely on the anxious thought, “I’m not cool enough.” Even typing those words now makes me well up.
I spent soooo much of my life believing that “I was not cool enough” in fact, that it was no longer a belief, but instead a deeply engrained truth. A truth that I didn’t question. A truth that I held onto, no matter how much evidence there was otherwise. A truth that I couldn’t shake. It was such a painful way to live, and facilitated a lot of self-loathing and a lot of the tears came from just remembering the way I used to think and feel about myself. How I let my anxiety define the way I viewed myself. It was really really painful. And though I feel much more settled these days, those areas are still tender for me.
The cry also came from a sense of healing. Something about seeing the visual representation of how beliefs get formed, and even the simple act of labeling these as beliefs (and NOT truths), hit me like a ton of bricks.
All of the mean things I used to tell myself, believed of myself…. they were all just thoughts. Things that I conjured up in my mind and heart, and I was the only person in the world that considered it a truth. Inside Out 2 solidified in my mind that my ‘beliefs’ were NOT truths. That they were instead, as obvious as it sounds, beliefs.
And though in many ways, social anxiety has been a historical ‘villian’ in my life, I loved, loved, loved that they didn’t villainize anxiety, and instead gave us the space to empathize with her “I was just trying to protect Riley!”
I joke with myself that if I watch Inside Out 2, three times, I will finally reach enlightenment. So far, I’m two-thirds of the way there, so hope you catch me on the other side :).
