Empathy is at the Heart of the Matter in Inside Out
Here at Essential Partners, we love to talk about movies. Ask anyone on staff, and you’d get recommendations from epic sci-fi (me) to sweeping romantic tales (okay, also me). But we’re not in the movie promotion business. Whelp, I’m taking exception in the case of Inside Out, Pixar’s new film about the voices inside our heads. The film follows the adventures of five voices inside the mind of an eleven-year-old girl named Riley. We meet Riley and her emotions just as she’s moving across the country with her parents and struggling to adjust to a new city, school, and slew of potential embarrassments (hey, it is middle school).
Who are the voices in our heads? I’ll break it down for you using myself and the prospect of writing this blog:
Joy
I love movies and I love Essential Partners’ friends and I just know they’re going to love this film I can’t wait to tell them about it yay yay yay!
Sadness
Why does it even matter? You’re too thick-headed to capture the animated magic and the story of a tug-of-war going on in our brains every moment.
Disgust
Ew. Why would you tell everyone that you spent your Sunday seeing a kid’s movie? So embarrassing! Shouldn’t you just lie and tell everyone you watched a documentary about the opportunity gap?
Anger
Why am I even writing this when there are so many more pressing issues going on in the world? Seeing a stupid movie isn’t going to solve anyone’s problems, and it’s not like anyone will read your dumb blog anyway!
Fear
Will I get in trouble? What if people don’t like it? I’ll lose respect and get fired and live a life of ignominy and shame!
And that’s just about writing a blog. Imagine those voices as distinct characters juggling for command of an emotional control board that regulates the way you engage with the world. As we do our work of promoting mutual understanding and more constructive communication, how can we take the science of Inside Out to our work from “outside in?”
1. We’re an orchestra being led by multiple conductors at once.
The idea that we’re each comprised of each of us comprises different “parts” is at the heart of family therapy, which serves as the foundation of Essential Partners approach to dialogue and communicating across difference. We’re often called in when emotionally reactive responses have created situations where people feel unable to listen or to be heard. We think of getting being “overtaken” by anger, or “overcome by” disgust, suggesting a lack of control, of being beholden to our biology. But if you look “inside out,” we’re defined as much by a flare of anger as we are a spurt of sentimentality or connection; these individual parts can be engaged, diffused, or in some cases, as the film explores, denied, perhaps providing momentary relief, but ultimately leaving a hole in our emotional world. The film explores such an instance, when the two eternally sparring emotions, Joy and Sadness, find themselves expelled from Riley’s emotional control center when, adrift in her new environment, she detaches from her “core memories,” losing her sense of self (beautifully realized as a physical rupture across the landscape of her mind).
2. Our richest experiences occur when we embrace emotional complexity and cultivate empathy.
In her review of the film for Boston.com, Rachel Rackza writes, “Joy, optimistic, assertive, effervescent, is continuously frustrated by slow, non-committal, persistently bummed Sadness, on more than one occasion resolving to leave her behind for the sake of returning to Riley’s aid.” To return to Riley, these two emotions must bridge the emotional gulfs that separate them and be curious about one another’s strengths and challenges, understanding that their combination has cultivated Riley’s richest memories. Rackza summarizes: “only by developing empathy and compassion—specifically the kind found through experience, even the sad kind—that provides Joy the direction they need to find their way back to Headquarters.”
Of course, we’re not all blessed to have Joy driving the train back to our emotional center, but we all have the capacity to understand something important about those different emotional selves. They are all trying their best, trying to celebrate us, advocate for us, and protect us. Even when they don’t help the situation, we can see them for what they are and love them for their effort, even as we try to teach them better ways to express themselves.
3. The goal isn’t to take the emotion out of a difficult situation, it’s to make space for difference – different emotions, different people, different views – to be heard.
Research overwhelmingly shows that we can’t take emotions out of a difficult situation, and repressing them is no long-term solution. We strive to foster conversations that honor that reality, and actually work “outside-in” by encouraging curiosity about the deeper “why” of feelings, beliefs, or values. Just as with our distinct emotional selves, we can find ways to cultivate compassion towards "the other," across our differences. Even though we may not find a “solution,” it’s how we find our way back to ourselves, and to the world we share - be that inside or out.
What did you think of the film? Join the conversation!