When we think of teenagers experiencing anxiety, we’re likely to think about it as a mental health concern. But Inside Out 2 shows that anxiety is a normal feeling and can have a positive purpose – so long as it doesn’t take over. The film is a sequel to the enormously successful Pixar animation Inside Out (2015), which tells the story of 11-year-old Riley, who has to navigate moving to a new city while her emotions – personified as Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust – struggle to maintain balance within her mind.
In Inside Out 2, we return to Riley’s life in San Francisco, where she has made new best friends and is rocking it on the ice hockey rink. Her core emotions are now a well-functioning team. All is going well.
Until the puberty alarm goes off. As with Inside Out, the sequel has a lot of fun with imagining our internal processes visually. Puberty throws a literal wrecking ball into Riley’s mental headquarters as the builders arrive to do some remodelling.
This is a neat way of showing that puberty not only brings psychological, physical and hormonal changes, but also influences brain development . In the film, this reconstruction makes room for new personified emotions: Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy and Ennui. In reality, we don’t suddenly develop extra emotions in our teenage years but our emotional experiences are more intense and less stable than in adulthood.
The new emotional characters help Riley to navigate the challenges of teenage life. Most.
