At the climax of Pixar's “Inside Out 2,” Riley, a newly adolescent with anthropomorphic emotions, is so overwhelmed by anxiety that she suffers a panic attack.
At the theater, I whispered to my friend that I had forgotten to bring my panic attack medication. Although I said this as a joke, my entire body choreography changed at the sight of an anxious anime teenager. My muscles were tense. I pressed my right palm firmly against my chest and took a few deep yoga breaths, trying to block the onset of the familiar attack.
These depictions of how quickly anxiety can take hold were overwhelming. I saw my own experience reflected in Riley's experience. 'Inside Out 2' felt personal to me in a way that was both cathartic and devastating. This is a movie that really understands how my anxiety disorder upends my daily life.
'Inside Out 2' picks up when Riley enters high school two years after the 2015 film 'Inside Out'. With puberty comes new emotions centered around anxiety. Anxiety, a manic orange fairy voiced by Maya Hawke, stirs up old emotions and inadvertently wreaks havoc on Riley's belief system and self-esteem as she tries to manage the stress of a weekend hockey camp.
In the “Inside Out” movies, when an emotion takes over, the control panel in Riley's mind changes to the color of that emotion. But the grip of anxiety is even more absolute. She creates a stronghold in Riley's imagination and forces the mind walkers to describe negative hypothetical scenarios for Riley's future. Soon Riley's main inner belief is that she is inadequate. Emotion hears “I’m not enough” like a low, rumbling refrain in her mind.
I know very well that anxiety rules the imagination. My mind is always writing a script for the next worst day of my life. You have already embraced all possibilities of failure. And my anxiety's merciless demands for perfection often turn my thoughts into a constant call of self-criticism and anxiety.
But — anxiety is not the villain of this movie.
In fact, I empathize with and amaze the orange personification of my worst enemy. In a later scene in the film, Anxiety is completely out of control. She turned into a raging whirlwind, but she also found herself crying, frozen in the eye of the storm.
I know what it means to feel like you're moving at two different speeds. When my body becomes paralyzed with fear while my thoughts ping-pong in all directions, or when my body shakes and fidgets restlessly as my mind drifts into slow-moving quicksand. , concerns steadily decreasing.
“I don’t know how to stop being anxious,” a despondent Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, says in one scene in the film. “Maybe that’s what happens when you grow up. You feel less joy.”
Joey's words broke me. For years, my therapist warned me not to allow anxiety to steal my capacity for joy. I am notorious for being deflated by virtual losses and accidents. There are times when the smallest thing, like Riley in the penalty box during a hockey game, causes me to hyperventilate in the office bathroom or retreat into myself.
I wondered if Joy's words meant that happiness is much further away for adults with chronic anxiety disorder. If Riley is experiencing anxiety for the first time around this particular situation, what does that mean for someone like me, for whom anxiety in some form has been a loud and loyal companion for almost as long as I can remember?
Riley gets an ending where her anxiety is delicately dragged aside. Joy regains control of her anxiety and comforts her. Later, during a stressful moment, her Anxiety approached her to tell her her concerns and Joy sat her down in her cozy armchair and thanked her with a cup of tea.
I never heard a word about anxiety as a child, and I wasn't even diagnosed with an anxiety disorder until I was in my 20s. So while watching “Inside Out 2,” I wondered if the film was speaking primarily to older audiences—teenagers and adults who are already stuck in the realm of anxiety and who have experienced adulthood as a time of more worry than joy.
Perhaps “Inside Out 2” is giving kids a glimpse into the future, not as a prophecy of doom, but as a path to understanding emotions that are becoming more recognizable and prevalent among people of all ages.
Perhaps the bottom line is that when young “Inside Out” fans inevitably get caught up in one of those brutal storms of anxious thoughts, they can summon clear images of the turmoil in their minds as if it were a bright, colorful Pixar movie. Then they will be able to recognize her orange person who is giving her that scary news and gently guide her to her seat.