If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know I find valuable messages in movies. I saw one this week,  Pixar film Inside Out, that is the on screen adaptation of one of my earlier blog posts: Feeling Substitution: Tit for Tat.

 Feeling Substitution

As a reminder, Feeling Substitution is the process where we replace the emotion we are feeling for an “acceptable” feeling. This is exactly what you see in the new Pixar film Inside Out. The movie takes place in the head of Riley, a little girl who is trying to force joy to take the place of all the sadness, anger, fear and disgust she is feeling about moving to San Francisco from Minnesota.

Inside Out

In the control room of Riley’s brain, Joy is in control, directing all the other emotions, telling them what to do for her. Joy is running the show because Riley has unconsciously gotten the message that she is supposed to be happy.

Joy thinks that the only way to have a happy life is to not have any sadness in it, so in the beginning, Sadness is not allowed to touch anything because she will ruin it by making it sad.   Then Joy and Sadness go on an unexpected journey through Riley’s memories, and discover many of them have more than one emotion attached to them. They realized that it was through feeling her sadness that Riley was able to adjust to her new life.

 Sadness to the Rescue

In the end, Sadness saves the day with the help of Anger, Fear, and Disgust. One feeling is not to be prized over the other – all are needed, along with time, support, and a feeling of being loved in all situations.

Just like in the movie there is no magical way to “be happy” or deal with the pain in our life. It is only as we allow all of our feelings to be present and have the support of our friends that we have a full and satisfying life.

I hope you enjoy the movie and find your own messages.