Wow, do I wish Inside Out and Inside Out 2 were released when I was younger. What an emotional vocabulary I would have had! I mean, not just joy, fear, and sadness, but also disgust, ennui, and anxiety! These movies are great for helping people learn to notice and name their emotions and to understand that ALL emotions are necessary for us to function.

As children get older, their emotions become more complex, as is the case for Riley (age 13) in Inside Out 2. As adults, we can probably all remember times when our emotions seemed to be on a roller coaster and were very difficult to understand, let alone talk about. With all of the changes that happen as we enter adolescence, across both our bodies and our brains, our sense of self can start to feel a bit unstable. (Spoiler Alert- I will talk about some big plot points here!)

Experiences in life help to shape not only how we view the rest of the world, but also how we view ourselves, otherwise known as our sense of self. At the beginning of Inside Out 2, Joy attempts to protect Riley’s sense of self by ejecting memories of unpleasant experiences, such as missed shots in hockey or poor grades on schoolwork. This attempt at protection is somewhat similar to what we, as caregivers, can be tempted to do for our kids— make things easier by handling difficulties for them.

The concept of removing difficulties a child may experience reminds me of the saying “prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.” When we prepare the road for children, they learn to travel on smooth surfaces without obstacles, challenges, or inconveniences. This leaves them unprepared for the bumps that will inevitably come up in life. Therefore, when a bump does happen, they often feel incapable of handling it. In the movie, Joy’s actions gave Riley a temporary boost in her sense of self (“I am a good person”); however, this also meant she forgot the lessons learned from handling difficult situations in the past.

Enter Anxiety, the newest central character in Inside Out 2, a frenetic orange creature who tries to guide Riley through stressful situations such as navigating friendships, managing her desire to fit in, and discovering her values and sense of self. Initially, Anxiety seems effective in helping Riley do or say the “right” things to fit in with a new crowd. Anxiety introduces herself saying, “My job is to protect [Riley] from the scary stuff she can’t see. I plan for the future.” (Any parents out there ever had that same thought?) Over time, however, Anxiety leads Riley to act in ways that don’t align with her true self. Anxiety drives Riley to exhaustion in her pursuit of perfection in hockey, exacerbated by the absence of her memories of making mistakes and being okay. Without those memories, there is nothing to contradict Anxiety when she tells Riley she must be perfect or face rejection.

Riley goes against her own self-interest, not realizing (or, rather, not remembering) that mistakes are okay and don’t lead to rejection. When she has to pick between her old friends and their shared interests or fitting in with her new potential friends, Anxiety (and Ennui) prompts Riley to mock her old interests and dismiss her old friends to avoid rejection by the new friends. In that moment, Anxiety is relieved because Riley did the “safe” thing for her future, but Riley feels conflicted because her actions go against her sense of self as a good person and friend. Ultimately these experiences culminate in a panic attack and the belief that she is not good enough. Anxiety’s response: “I’m sorry, I was just trying to protect her.”

The message for us watching the movie? Riley can handle disappointment and mistakes because she already has, and they have not made her any less of a good person; instead, they have made her resilient and brave. We all need to experience difficulties so we can learn that we can handle them, integrating these experiences into our sense of self as capable beings. Without experiencing challenges, we never get to discover our true capabilities. Anger wisely notes in the movie, “Joy, you’ve made a lot of mistakes, and you’ll make a whole lot more in the future. But if you let that stop you, we might as well lie down and give up.”

As caregivers, we have to let our kids experience hard things because they (and we) need to learn that they can do it! Let them experience the fact that mistakes are not the end of the world: a grade is just a grade, and a game is just a game.