Being a therapist is less like having a job or a role and more like a way of being. It permeates all, and I find the way it comes into how I watch films and TV shows now fascinating. Particularly when I revisit things that I first watched before I trained, I notice that I watch them now in a completely different way – I can’t help but think of underlying patterns, character traits, archetypes. Sometimes I have the thought that I would like to be able to take off my therapist hat and enjoy a movie just for ‘what it is’, but, not really. I love psychological depth, I love thinking about humans and what makes us tick, and I love thinking about the meaning of the stories we tell and the characters within them. And I can’t, even if I wanted to. I’m not actually wearing a hat called ‘therapist’, I am one, it’s part of me now.
Sometimes that cost me a treasured film. That hero I once thought was mega cool, or a love story I once thought was incredible I now see as maybe disturbing, or less a love story and more a tragic misunderstanding of what love even is. But I wouldn’t change it, because whilst there is some strange sadness when a film loses its appeal, there is a much more intense joy when I’m able to appreciate a movie even more than the first time I watched it.
One of those films is Inside Out. I love it, it is truly wonderful. I loved it the first time I watched it and I love it even more now. And whilst I could pick holes in the way they present the make up of a human being, it’s not worth it, because the way they do it is brilliant and ridiculously accessible. Emotions as beings that live within us, core memories impacting us, it’s visually and conceptually brilliant. I really like that all the emotions are needed. I also love the main message: that sadness is required for joy, and that the emotion that might feel the most ‘negative’ or unwanted can often be the most needed. A beautiful message for children and not a bad one for big people too.
It’s pretty accurate too in the way that we treat sadness, for we often make our own sadness feel unworthy, or unwanted. We want to get rid of it. We make our sadness feel like it doesn’t have a place in us. And we can do that on the outside too, albeit with seemingly the best of intentions. Often when I’ve asked people which emotions they are most uncomfortable with both in themselves and others, the most common immediate answer is anger. When I get talking to them though, it becomes clear that it is often sadness that we really struggle to deal with, not just in ourselves but in others too. Notice, the next time someone is sharing their sadness with you, if you feel a desire to cheer them up, or make it light. This could be more about making the situation comfortable for you again than helping the other, it’s rarely helpful.
So we can learn a lot from Inside Out, though I’ve been thinking about what could have been added to it, or maybe even explored in a sequel (I admit that I’m well aware that there is an Inside Out 2 but I haven’t watched it yet, so apologies if Pixar got there first). In the first movie, the character that I would have liked to have seen more of, and would make more of if I could is Anger.
As I said, along with sadness, anger is another emotion that we often struggle with. In the film, it’s depicted as a little red block who can explode fire from the top of his head in a moment. I really liked him, and, as I’ve gotten to know my own anger better, I really like it too.
I would make the next Inside Out film centred around Anger, and I would hope to convey to people that their anger deserves a place and is worth listening to. I would make the story about Anger suffering from not being trusted – he would take control inside, burst up and do something, but he would often be ignored, or squashed, or told he was bad.
Anger would then go on a journey where he would discover he has been suffering from a bad case of mistaken identity. He’s being blamed for all sorts of things. He has these bigger, much louder relatives: Rage, Fury and Wrath and they sometimes get so loud that they completely block out what anger is trying to say in the first place. As well as that there is aggression, cruelty and violence. These are not emotions, but things that people do to each other and themselves. Out in the real world, they get called Anger too.
So our little red friend is getting blamed for everything.
Over time, our hero learns to distinguish between anger and his louder cousins, and learn to listen to listen to Anger, because when he speaks, he often has something worth saying.
It might be a little dark for a kids’ film – by choosing therapy over screenwriting I clearly made a good choice – but the point stands. Let’s give Anger its proper place and not confuse it for other things. If we have witnessed tyranny, or aggression, violence, it can lead us to wanting to expel anger altogether. But those behaviours are not the same thing as anger – and a life without anger wouldn’t be so desirable. There is meaning to anger, it can guide us, it can let us know when a boundary has been crossed, or there is something that matters and needs to be stood up for.
Watch Inside Out again and give that little red guy some attention. He’s great, and so is that film.
And if anger feels frightening or unsafe to you, that makes complete sense. If you struggle to feel angry, or feel that anger is a bad thing, it can be very useful to explore that in therapy, and I’d encourage you to take a fresh look at this emotion.
