I saw Inside Out 2 this afternoon and after my movie was over I decided to treat myself to a Wetzel’s Pretzel. This Wetzel’s is in a little open air stand next to the AMC I usually visit and its seating is all outside. As I was enjoying my pretzel, the tables around me cleared and I found myself sitting somewhat alone. Or so I thought. Because the tables immediately next to me were suddenly human-less, the avians decided to come explore. One bird hopped up onto the chair across from me at my table, the other stuck just on the edge of my periphery. I was boxed in, it was like a mob hit waiting to happen. That’s when the bird across from me decide to flap its wings and make for the table. My fist came up and my foot kicked the chair it had been sitting on. I scared the first one off and then I rattled the chair next to me to scare the other. And for the rest of my little treat I was watching my periphery, head bobbing like a pigeon making sure they stayed away.
There is nothing I hate more on the face of this planet than small birds. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re evolved from dinosaurs. Maybe it’s the fact that most of them are sky rats. Maybe it’s the conspiracy that they are all government drones. Whatever the cause, I hate them. There is nothing that puts such aggression into my being than the sight of a bird flying, hopping, or swooping into my vicinity. I wanted to get myself a little treat and I spent half of that experience looking over my shoulder, anxious because of a creature that has no muscular control over its rectum (that’s real science, look it up).
Anxiety
At first I was going to just post a little meme of Anxiety from Inside Out 2 and caption it “Me when a bird lands nearby and I’m trying to eat my pretzel”. However, as I mulled over the right format and word choice I wondered if there was a little more to explore. Anxiety has been a feeling that if not in the driver’s seat has loudly occupied the passenger seat of my brain these past few months. It is a topic especially on my mind today having just seen a movie dedicated to exploring its ins, outs, and quirks.
My anxiety over the birds wasn’t unfounded. They wanted my pretzel and made several attempts to get it. Had I not rattled chairs and moved my fist, that bird would have stolen a bite or two or seven. Had I not discouraged their attempt, they would have kept nearby and kept at it. Reaction wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but spending the rest of my snack paranoid over the impending round two really ruined the joy of getting a pretzel with cheese.
Inside Out 2
I really enjoyed Inside Out 2. The original is one of my favorite Pixar flicks and I was apprehensive of a second helping missing so many members of the original creative and vocal team. I’m happy to say that the movie really worked for me and it brought a lot of the emotions and sense of lostness I’ve felt lately to the big screen in an accessible and meaningful way. I talked in Anxiety Spike about how anxiety feels to me like a perverse Spider-Sense. It takes real experience and it dials potential scenarios and responses to an eleven in an attempt to ward off a second dosage of whatever pain or trauma initiated it. What I really engaged with in this movie was the way that they introduced Anxiety as this protective emotion that genuinely was trying to anticipate Riley’s needs and be helpful. At the same time, however, anxiety ran a little haywire when left unchecked and ended up sequestering all other emotions in an attempt to respond to what might happen rather than finding ways to deal with what was happening.
I didn’t find the writing as sharp this go around Riley’s emotions, but there was such an accurate representation of what it feels like to be anxious that it drew me in just as much as the original did. I felt like I was watching a lot of my thought processes get distilled into their most basic forms and presented in a way that even the kids in the audience could understand what was happening. While Pixar’s best film about anxiety is still The Incredibles, I think that Inside Out is another solid entry into its canon.
Patterning Behavior
Its difficult to think about anxiety when it has the wheel. It is hard to remind yourself that the scenarios it drafts up are just that, scenarios. Yet we pattern our behaviors off of those scenarios when we are not careful. It leads us to do things that are not necessarily consistent with our mannerisms and even our character. In today’s case, it caused me to swing at a bird and kick a chair. Why? Because I was afraid it might take something from me, something that I felt I had earned and that I wanted to savor. Anxiety helped me preserve that pretzel in the moment. The initial response to scare the bird away wasn’t wrong. But anxiety also kept my senses heightened and my head over my shoulder while I scarfed the rest of the pretzel down. I didn’t take the time to savor it and I didn’t enjoy the rest of my time eating it because I let my senses stay dialed to eleven. The instinct wasn’t wrong, but the response was.
How do I respond?
The main theme of Inside Out 2 revolves around identity. Riley is overwhelmed by new emotions and new experiences, uncertain of who she is and how she should respond to all of the new things thrown at her. Anxiety, left unchecked, rewires our brains to ask the question “How would I respond?” rather than “How should I respond?”, it takes us out of the present and places us into potential futures and revisionist pasts. So instead of saying “there’s a delicious pretzel in front of me, I’m going to eat it”, we focus on the image of the bird flapping at us and the notion that it might do it again. We take ourselves out of the experience in a vain attempt to preserve it the way we wanted.
Real Talk
My emotions have felt very scrambled since I got cheated on. If I do not watch myself I will constantly pick apart old scenarios from that relationship or start bricklaying the walls that I think will protect me in the eventual next one. Either way, to entertain either of those actions is to attempt to exercise control over how other people act and how other people feel. I cannot control the fact that what happened happened and even if I had a time machine and tried to prevent it it probably still would have happened, because I can only fix me. The inverse applies toward the future. I can try and do all of those things differently and build some sturdy walls but I can end up isolating myself and again reaching for things beyond my control.
Anxiety isn’t a bad emotion, but it is a bad programmer. It is a tool, not a code that should dictate the functions of our life. Only by taking the time to sit down with our anxieties can we identify what about them is productive and what about them is reductive. I feel that Inside Out 2 did a beautiful job of that, and I think it is a really beneficial movie for kids and adults feeling overwhelmed by the thoughts and feelings inside their heads. As much as I hate them, I also feel like the stupid birds helped me do a good job of that reflection too. Fight or flight isn’t always bad, but letting our anxieties trap us into that binary way of thinking is.
Collin Willis 