Lessons Learned from the Pixar Movie “Inside Out”

Relationship Insights From Pixar’s Inside-Out

Power of Recognizing Emotions of Others

Inside-Out taught us that emotions are our friends not our enemies, that emotions are our guides, to understand the other, but they are not the other person.
Emotions all serve a purpose and they exist to protect us, prepare and to help us enjoy, learn, and take advantage of life.
Pixar’s 5 emotions are- Joy, Fear, Sad, Disgust, Anger (There are more than 5 basic emotions).
They’ve been with us since the beginning. They all serve a purpose and every emotion has something unique to offer that needs to be understood by those around them.
Our partner’s emotions don’t just do battle with us, but they also do battle with with each other.
By learning to recognize the emotions (are they mad, glad, sad, scared, embarrassed or spent) we have already begun to understand our relationships better.
By recognizing the emotion we see we can inquire about the emotion and that will lead us deeper into their core identity issues.

Everyone’s Emotional Make Up Is Different

Don’t just assume that women are more emotional and men are more uncaring. Instead try to figure out what the emotional make up is of the person you’re relating to.
Remain curious, but not convinced. The minute we’re convinced because of our emotions, we stop trying to understand the other person.
Because emotions are powerful, many times we think we’re actually right, simply because we’re having an emotion.
Emotions will always fight for themselves unless we get out of our emotions and try to understand what’s really going on with the other.
In the movie we saw that
- Joy was sure she was always right, despite what others wanted.
- Fear acted out even when he didn’t need to.
- Sadness was always blue, even when times were good.
- Anger would always run the board aggressively, with two hands on the throttle.
- Disgust always had a judgment or evaluation about everything.
Have discussions with your partner about their emotional make up and try to discuss your own use of anger, disgust, fear, sadness and joy in the marriage.

Changes In Life Foster Emotional Growth

The character in the Pixar movie was a young girl named Riley and it was really hard for her to move to a new city. The move threw in her emotions in to chaos.
In our relationships, changes can also take a toll on each of us. They have to be processed over time, not just overnight.
We can be there for friends and family as they need to process the many changes in their life.
We need to allow these others to share and process their emotions with us and look for the deeper and hidden impact on their identity.
Changes are always going to help our emotions to grow deeper and our insights to be broadened if we allow it.

You Can Only Know Joy If You Know Sadness

All emotions inform our spirit.
The risks of life, enable the benefits of joy.
We must know the sad to know the joy. We must know the hard to recognize the easy. We must sense the embarrassment to appreciate the confidence.
There is power in the paradox of our relationships which is why they are so important to us. No where in our existence can we experience more intensely the power of something than we do in our relationships.
That is why we are in families and couples: so that we can experience the pain safely with someone who will shelter us and watch over us when we are going through our darkness.

Rule- Allow people to go to their darker emotions instead of always having a need to pull them out of it. If it goes too long or too deep you can get help, but instead of trying to change their feelings, just understand them. Let them explore them with you. Then they’ll be able to let go of them so much quicker.