What We Can All Learn From Inside Out #1

As a Psychologist, there is SO MUCH good content from Disney Pixar’s Inside Out (2015).

While the film is filled with wonderful metaphors and incredible story telling, perfectly capturing the wonderful mess that is an adolescent’s internal experience, one of my absolute favourite scenes has got to be the dinner table scene between Riley and her parents.

It is excellent because it is so familiar.

The scene shows how a simple breakdown in communication leads to Riley getting frustrated and ultimately culminates in Dad putting his ‘foot down’ and sending Riley to her room.

This scene is filled with so much gold. It is ultimately a lesson in what not to do from Riley’s Dad. Starting with Dad not being present and thinking about a Hockey Game, then interpreting Riley’s initial rise of frustration as something that is disrespectful and then a masterclass in how discipline and punishment totally miss the point in this situation.

At Toolbox Education, we unpack this scene and slowly work through how Dad could have better regulated his own emotions, noticed the early signs of Riley’s feelings, turned towards Riley with compassion and curiosity rather than being dismissive and punishing. We ultimately learn from this scene about how to be more emotionally in tune with ourselves and our family members to stay more regulated and develop more emotionally close relationships.

Lets be honest though, It is not a great scene for Riley’s Dad.

However, upon rewatching this scene I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before.

Something that was so subtle that I’m sure most people would not have picked up on. I doubt even the script writers realised how psychologically insightful the end of this scene was.

The ultimate beauty of this scene is that it is all wrapped in humour. The punchline of this scene is that Riley’s dad walks away feeling proud of how he successfully put the foot down, with one of his emotions exclaiming ‘Well done gentleman, that could of been a disaster.’ Where Rileys’ Mum’s emotions in the next scenes exhales rather defeatedly ‘Well, that was a disaster.’

But, what happens next?

The icing on the cake of this scene is that with a roll of her eyes and a sense of defeat, Riley’s mum detaches from the situation and goes back to imagining what life would have been like if she took the hand of that Brazilian helicopter pilot and flew off into the sunset.

More humour ensues and the scene ends.

Did you catch it? Did you see what happened there at the end? Underneath the humour, did you notice what Riley’s Mum just did?

Let’s break it down again.

Mum was angry with Dad and the way she dealt with her anger was by detaching herself from the situation by going to this magical place of fantasy of Brazilian helicopter pilots.

She avoided her real emotions, her real anger by wishing her husband would be more like her fantasy helicopter pilot.

What is happening here?

As a psychologist, our role is to often help people turn towards that which is uncomfortable, to help people face their uncomfortable feelings towards people that they love and to ultimately help people be in reality rather than in fantasy.

When people avoid the reality of their feelings and turn away, we call that using a psychological defense.

A psychological defense is an unconscious mechanism that helps individuals avoid certain emotions and the anxiety that is associated with it.

With this knowledge, we can see Riley’s mum using the psychological defense of fantasy. Rather than feeling her anger towards Dad for creating a disaster at the dinner table and using her emotion of anger to have a conversation with Dad explaining why that was a disaster and how to avoid them in the future, in essence use her emotion as a tool for improved communication and a closer relationship, Mum instead has gone to fantasy land.

Before we judge Mum, who hasn’t done this before? Who hasn’t imagined being on holiday while stuck in the office or indulged in wishful thinking about what life would be like if we won the lottery.

So, why the focus on the psychological defense of fantasy?

A short-term strategy to avoid pain, discomfort, anxiety, frustration and the grief of the realisation that your partner is not perfect.

Now, w