The missing character in "Inside out"

An insight into a popular representation of the inner working of the Self

The movie “Inside Out” is a lighthearted, funny attempt to explain the interactions between emotions inside an adolescent mind and lived experience. 

The plot centers around Riley, a young girl who is uprooted from her Midwest life and moved to San Francisco. The main characters are her emotions - Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness, which in teenage years are joined by Anxiety, Fear, Envy, Embarrassment etc. The internal world and mind are depicted as a world of their own, with chambers like the “Subconscious” and “Long Term Memory”. The characters (emotions) can't stop being themselves and operate buttons in a kind of control station, basically pulling  the levers on what Riley is thinking, feeling and doing whilst she is dealing with the difficulty of adjusting to a new city and school.

Missing main Character

The following relates to people aged 14 and older. I think there is one main character missing in the whole picture. The real operator of the control station - The Observer. 

The Observer can never be swayed from his position of peace and fearlessness. He has the ultimate say over which Emotion or Thought gets the reign at any given time. One can meet this Observer/Awareness/Inner Wise Man.

How do you meet this Observer?  

If you sit quietly, perhaps close your eyes, and watch all your thoughts and feelings pass by without attaching to them or judging them… Who is it, that’s watching the thoughts? That’s him. You have just met The Observer. The closest to what can be described as “You”. His inner peace is never disturbed by any tribulations on the surface. He is not repressing anything, but can dissolve or inflate the importance and power of any of the minor characters like Joy, Fear, Anger, Sadness, Gratitude or any other. How? Through the method of pure focused, non-attached observation.

When the parent knows how this works, it’s not a bad idea to model to a teenager that you don’t have to be a slave to your thoughts and emotions. They are an incredibly useful tool and part of life, but they are definitely not in charge of You. 

Mind The Programming

Many trendy ideas about wellbeing and therapy will fixate on validating the importance of every feeling and thought that floats up. Multiple surveys, questions are trying to extract from a person how he feels. There is the implicit labeling of all emotions  as  “Mine”. Sometimes a school survey will asks:  “how often do you feel happy or sad?”, if one has anything more than a little bit of sadness that week, it makes one identify Me with “Sad” and “Depressed”  when in reality it is a mix of random temporary somatic blockages (that can be released) and/or beliefs not grounded in truth of what is.

We have created a popular societal narrative around “feeling your emotions”. This is pointing in the right direction, but misses the forest for the trees - it inadvertently  reinforces the difficulty of most of them. 

Just observing and fully accepting the anxiety, anger etc, without judgment, is actually helping you not to feel the sensation of so-called emotions and spinning them into worrisome thoughts, which in turn increase the emotions in a never ending loop. You get personal experience in observing the impermanence of them all, which gives confidence and ability to stop self reinforcing anxious loops. This Observer approach is completely different to denial and pushing emotions away.

Our mind has a way of often tricking us by mislabeling what is actually going on, not realizing how emotions and thoughts entangle, reinforce and feed on each other.

We feel a nasty knot in the midst of our stomach and have just been not noticed by a friend when passing by. Depending on the time of the week and events earlier, it can be interpreted anywhere from “tummy doesn't agree with food and I have not had enough rest” to “No one loves me and my anxiety about being a failure is justified and there is no way out”.

If you are constantly encouraged to feel your emotions, the mind interprets it as (i) take them all seriously and (ii) they are all mine, adding unnecessary weight. This doesn't mean that the feeling isn’t real, it means the story and interpretation that the mind attaches to it is wrong most of the time.

The relationship between emotion and action/consequence does not have to be as automatic as depicted in the movie. There can be a pause in between them, where the Observer can step in. Yes emotions happen. We welcome them all with equanimity, love and acceptance. But they don’t start running the show!

In resources there is a research-based, intro to basic mindfulness and an 1 hour, free mindfulness course for adults. It shows the process of mindful observation. If the parents really get it, they can model this to kids in their own natural way. Less drama at parent level => less drama at child level. The added bonus of raising the level and quality of awareness is that one also learns that happiness, equanimity and other good feelings do not depend on the external and can be self-generated at will (provided you are not in immediate physical pain and danger).

But what if you are angry about some real injustice (which you might do something about)? What if something  impacts you and you potentially need to act? Anger can indeed catalyze a valid response. This is also an instance where the gap between emotion and action becomes necessary. The Observer then has a moment to step in, evaluate the validity of reasons for the emotion of Anger and THEN consciously choose a reaction where perhaps Anger indeed plays a bigger role.

“Emotions can’t quit, genius!”

There is a line in the movie when one of the characters says this.

Yes, emotions can't “quit”. But you can lovingly demote or promote them! You can reduce their working hours and give some of them a long sabbatical, where they come back only once in many years, in an emergency situation.  

Oh, and by the way.. Your arsenal is not limited to the ones in the movie. Some of the other, more powerful characters at your service are Compassion, Excitement, Curiosity, Awe, Agape and Love.

You can be the master of your mind or let it become your master.

Nothing I or anyone says should hold as much value vs observing your own experience and what works.

Thank you for reading.

Anna

Useful resource:

An introduction to basic mindfulness (5 ways to know yourself) by Shinzen Young: https://www.shinzen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FiveWaystoKnowYourself_ver1.6.pdf or his Core 1.5 mindfulness course. Both are excellent . This is research-based, free, no dogma treasure. It breaks down the internal process of what is occurring in one's perception into parts, which opens up insight into impermanence and much more. One can easily learn to increase focus capacity, observe non-permanence, things arising and watching them dissolve.