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Kousha Navidar: You're listening to All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar, in for Alison Stewart. As we mentioned before the break in the last segment, the sequel to Disney and Pixar's Oscar-winning 2015 film Inside Out returns to the mind of 13-year-old Riley Andersen, just in time for puberty. In Inside Out 2, Riley's five core emotions are represented as characters in her head. You might be familiar with them, joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. These five catch us up with Riley and her friends as they go to hockey camp the summer before high school.

However, new challenges come up for Riley as she makes new friends, tries to impress the high school hockey coach while sometimes making poor choices, and attempts to reconcile who she is with who she wants to be in this next phase of her life. This requires Riley to figure out how to manage new emotions like envy, embarrassment, ennui or boredom, and anxiety who thinks she knows what's best for Riley's future. In this installment of our Mental Health Monday series on All Of It, we hear about the psychology of Inside Out 2, which is in theaters today. Joining us to discuss is Dr. Lisa Damour, she was one of the consulting psychologists working on the film. Lisa, welcome to All Of It.

Dr. Lisa Damour: Thank you so much for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Also joining us to discuss is one of the film's writers, Dave Holstein. Dave, welcome to All Of It.

Dave Holstein: A privilege to be here.

Kousha Navidar: It's a privilege to have you both. I'm very excited for this conversation. Listeners, we still have our phones open. Have you seen Inside Out 2? What did you think about how the film handled anxiety, or if you're the parent to a tween or teenager on the cusp of puberty, what's been hard or changed for the better? How has your relationship shifted?

Call or text us. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC, or if you're on Instagram, if you're on X, you can hit us up, DM us. We're @allofitwnyc. Really looking forward to those calls. Dave, let's get started with you. Inside Out follows a young girl named Riley, like I mentioned, and the characters who live at the headquarters inside of Riley's mind. Can you explain the concept behind the original film for those who haven't seen it and tell us what goes on inside headquarters?

Dave Holstein: Well, it's very important to know that it is not the brain but the mind. It is a metaphysical place where you can watch an 11-year-old girl, in the case of the first movie, navigate a big traumatic moment in her life, which was moving across the country and watch her emotions, which were the original five, joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear, and how that plays out and how she learns how I would say joy learns the power of sadness throughout the film.

Kousha Navidar: In Inside Out, what major developments have occurred in Riley's life and where do we meet her in Inside Out 2?

Dave Holstein: Well, this takes place two years later, she's 13, and she is heading into high school, the summer before high school. She learns a couple of things, which I won't spoil, that affect her emotionally and they make a three-day hockey camp feel like it could affect the rest of her life. That's our entry point to introducing anxiety and the other emotions you mentioned into her life.

Kousha Navidar: Lisa, we meet Riley at an important, like Dave is saying, what feels like it could impact the rest of her life, a very important phase of her life. What are the unique changes that are starting to happen inside of the mind of a preteen and a teenage girl at this moment where we meet her?

Dr. Lisa Damour: Well, so a couple of things are happening. One is that the mind has become quite a bit more sophisticated. This is what happens around 13 or 14, sort of grows in leaps and bounds. What gets introduced is what we technically call abstraction. Basically, what it means is it's the ability to see things from other people's perspectives, to spin situations around and imagine them from very different views. That allows for the arrival of subconscious emotions, emotions like embarrassment, where you think, well, "I feel so bad about what the person thinks about me" or envy, "Why does that person have something that I want for myself?" Or anxiety like, "What could possibly go wrong?" That's one thing.

Then the other thing is, emotions are put on steroids. This is illustrated so beautifully in the film, where suddenly Riley seems to be overreacting to everything. There's a very funny scene where the old emotions are working with the upgraded console that has the puberty button in full effect and Riley lashes out at her mother, and they all turn on anger. He's like, "I barely touched it."

It really captures what I think is very often a very vivid experience in family life where you put a kid to bed one night, and they're easygoing, and the next day, you wake up and you've got a teenager, and they are feeling things very, very strongly. Inside Out 2 did an amazing job of capturing both of these events that do start right around 13, where emotions become more complicated, and they are also way more intense.

Kousha Navidar: That concept of abstraction I find so interesting. For you, I understand that Inside Out, a big part of writing this movie is making sure that everything is at least grounded in what is real and true and scientifically proven with how the mind works. This idea of abstraction, what did you want to make sure, Lisa, that the movie, the writing of it got correct, and how it actually shows up for people as they grow older?

Dr. Lisa Damour: Well, I want to give really-- Credit goes to the writers. They really are the ones who did the thinking, did the research, and put it on the screen. My job, and then also Dr. Dacher Keltner, who's at UC Berkeley was the other consultant psychologist who was just to review and guide along the way. My role was really to try to help, especially with the depiction of anxiety. That's an area where I've done a lot of work.

One of the things that got captured very beautifully in the film is that anxiety is complicated. She's not all good. She's not all bad. That's how we think about anxiety as clinicians, that it can get out of control, and it is also an important part of how we keep ourselves safe and keep ourselves on track. For anxiety to have this big uptick around 13, 14 is what we see in the literature, and it fits with this ability to start to imagine scenarios, imagine possibilities, which arrives with abstraction. It also then has to be kept in check.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, have you seen Inside Out 2? What did you think about how the film handled anxiety? If you're the parent to a tween or a teenager right on the cusp of puberty, feel like as I think Lisa, you mentioned that anger can just do a little tap and it's a huge explosion, what's been hard for you or what's changed for the better? How's your relationship shifted?

Give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-9692. We're here with Dr. Lisa Damour, who's a film consultant, a psychologist, and author, and Dave Holstein, who's a writer of the new movie Inside Out 2, which is in theaters now. We're here we got our phones open, give us a call. We're at 212-433-9692. Let's get into some calls. We've got Beth from Brooklyn. Hey, Beth, welcome to the show.

Beth: Hi. Thank you. I was just telling the screener that I'm a health education teacher in Brooklyn, New York City public schools, kindergarten through fifth grade. I always start in the year with social-emotional learning. I use Inside Out clips from that to identify our emotions and do comprehensive health education around being able to identify them and match feelings to feel like emotions and then actions as well. I can't wait to see the sequel and then plan my upper-grade units around that as well.

I just wanted to give a shout-out to the directors and filmmakers and writers because it's been a huge tool to help education, which is a mandate in New York state requirements. I'm very proud to do that work at my school, especially since COVID. Our kids are struggling as we know. I'm also leading The Anxious Gederation. These tools really help us as teachers, so thank you.

Kousha Navidar: Beth, thank you so much for that call. Let's go to Nicole in West Orange, New Jersey. Hey, Nicole, welcome to the show.

Nicole: Hey, thanks. We saw the movie Friday night with my 2 12-year-old daughters. They've already been talking about the emotions in the first Inside Out movie a lot. They resonate with them. When the puberty button was hit in the movie, spoiler, and the anxiety entered the room, it was definitely a great conversation piece for us. On the way home, I asked them to tell me what of the emotions resonate with them, and they were telling me the ones that they think about often.

Then I asked them to tell me what I appeared to be showing. They said anxiety and joy, which I feel is perfect for motherhood and where I am in my life. My daughter said, "Well, you always seem to be thinking ahead of what needs to happen and what could go wrong." Like the guest said, it's good and bad and I just appreciate the conversation because we've definitely had I think elevated anxiety after COVID and during COVID, and this movie is just a great conversation piece. It also was a relief as a mom because dealing with my four teenage children, and their emotional rollercoasters, like they actually have it from the mom's point of view in the movie at one point, and her emotions inside her head and it just comforting. I appreciate it.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, Nicole, thank you so much. It's very interesting to hear you and some other folks out there commenting on anxiety as such a important part of the movie for them. Dave, for you, I'd love to talk about anxiety as a character a little bit. Like all the other characters, anxiety is personified as a character inside of headquarters. Let's listen to a clip. This is anxiety, introducing herself to joy, disgust, anger, fear, and sadness. Here it is

Speaker 6: Orange. Who made the console Orange?

Speaker 7: Do I look orange?

Speaker 8: I didn't touch it.

Speaker 9: Orange is not my color.

Speaker 8: Not me.

Speaker 9: Hello everybody. Oh my gosh. I am just such a huge fan of yours and now here I am meeting you face-to-face. How can I help? I can take notes, get coffee, manage your calendar, walk your dog, carry your things, watch you sleep.

Speaker 10: Wow, you have a lot of energy. Maybe you could just stay in one place.

Speaker 9: Anything. Just call my name and I am here for you.

Speaker 10: Love that. What was your name again?

Speaker 9: Oh, I'm sorry. I can get ahead of myself. I'm anxiety. I'm one of Riley's new emotions and we are just super jazzed to be here. Where can I put my stuff?

Speaker 10: What do you mean "We"?

Kousha Navidar: That was anxiety introducing herself to all of the other emotions in Inside Out 2, which is now in theaters. Dave, she is of course anxious, but tell us about her personality a little bit, and specifically what is it that she really wants for Riley?

Dave Holstein: Well, it's a great question because in a movie where you're personifying concepts, it's always a trap in writing to work backwards from concept and not forwards from character. You have to always write from what does a character want. When anxiety clicked, for me, it was about something that really existed to help Joy, that wanted to think of all these different ways that they could help Joy, but maybe wasn't doing it in the right way or was trying too hard but meant well. It's a very hard thing in a Pixar movie to create an antagonist that you can defeat.

There's something about anxiety as an antagonist that you need to live with. When we were writing this, we were in that post-COVID world where the experience we were all having, I think, to speak for the world, was that we'd all had this COVID experience where COVID was this enemy we couldn't defeat and had to live with. The more I was writing about anxiety, the more that felt parallel that there is something about anxiety that we can't defeat it we have to learn how to manage it, and we have to learn how to live with it. Out of that came this character that was Joy's number one fan, for better or worse.

Kousha Navidar: Let's go to Tina in Nassau County. Hey Tina, welcome to the show.

Tina: Hi, how are you? I appreciate the show as well. I saw the movie on Friday with my son. I have three children and my middle one is 15 full-fledged puberty. At the button, the writers, they really did do a good job. It informed me. I was telling your screeners on what my daughter, it just remind me what she's going through. Because as parents, we can forget that time when we were going through that.

I like that, like you said, they barely touched the button. My husband and I are always very conscious, okay, she's going through this time and I'm always saying, where's that sweet baby I had like two years ago? I also wanted to say I really liked how at the-- I don't want to tell the movie, but how anxiety, yes, the psychologist Dr. Damour and how you need it, but how to keep it at bay. I get ideas from listening to things like Focus on the Family where it says, I'll pay my daughter, sometimes she takes it, not to study for an exam because she's a straight-A student, she's a straight-A student and she's always thinking about something she missed.

I like the way the movie navigated and informed the adults very-- I cried at Pixar movies, but it was excellent in informing parents on what's going on, reminding us of what's going on during this very critical time of development.

Kousha Navidar: Tina, thank you so much for that call. I think, Lisa, it's important-- well, Lisa and Dave, of course, both of you to talk about gender and anxiety in this movie as well. In the new film, Riley is starting to grow up, become a young woman. Lisa, for you, what are some of the key differences in how you've seen anxiety manifest itself in teenage girls compared to boys? What specific approaches are most effective in addressing anxiety in young women?

Dr. Lisa Damour: When we look at the research, girls are much more likely than boys to suffer from anxiety disorders. This is almost entirely a function of socialization, like what we teach young people. The bottom line is that girls as a group are taught to internalize distress, to collapse in on themselves with anxiety or depression. Whereas boys as a group are taught to express distress outwardly, to get themselves in trouble, to be hard on other people. We see higher rates in girls. Also to what this caller mentioned, we also see a lot of perfectionism in girls. That's a theme that is brought up really, really thoughtfully in the film with really good ideas about how to address perfectionism.

In terms of helping the management of anxiety, what we know is that, first of all, it's helpful if you do appreciate that there is such a thing. We're talking about this as healthy anxiety. Anxiety is useful if it's alerting us to real potential threats. We only consider it to be unhealthy if it shows up when nothing's wrong or it's way out of proportion to the threat. To help manage this, what we talk about, clinically, but people can also do this in their kitchens, is not overestimating threats and not underestimating the ability to manage them.

If a kid says, "I'm going to fail out of school." We can say, "Are you going to fail out of school or maybe not get exactly the grade you were hoping for."

Then we can also say, "What could you do to try to improve things for yourself? What choices do you have?" We have lots of techniques at work. There's something else at work here that I just want to mention in terms of all of your college talking about getting these conversations going, feelings are abstract. That's what Dave was saying. That they're concepts that are ideas. For Pixar to put in front of us these memorable personified versions of feelings means that families can talk about feelings in a new way and talk about envy and talk about embarrassment, talk about ennui. As soon as you talk about a feeling, the feeling actually comes down to size.

As soon as a kid says, "I feel anxious," they feel less anxious, "I feel sad," they feel less sad. There's a huge gift in these films in terms of just making much more available a language to talk about feelings in a way that we desperately need right now.

Kousha Navidar: Can you talk a little bit about that healthy versus unhealthy anxiety? I think on the unhealthy side, it can even lead to suppressing emotions. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Lisa Damour: Well, sometimes when people are overwhelmed by anxiety, they will then retreat and try not to have feelings. They may turn to a lot of distraction. Sometimes they'll turn to substances as a way to try to bring their anxiety under control. The goal here is not to get rid of anxiety. The goal here is to have anxiety at levels that are helpful. If it gets to a place that is unhelpful, to cope with it in ways that are healthy. Whether it's through breathing techniques or questioning one's own thinking, or finding ways to relax the body, that is what we want.

I don't want people to be so frightened of anxiety. It is very much a part of our lives. It's a part of healthy functioning. I do think the pandemic really rocked us. To Dave's point, really having to come to terms with anxiety, where it lives in our life, how we make sense of it, and how we make sure that it doesn't spin out of control.

Kousha Navidar: That's a really interesting point about finding the nuance and the sense of the where are the full spectrum of emotions, how do we show this all in a positive light? Dave, Lisa, how did you two and the rest of your team work together to make sure that you were showing that full-spectrum? Did it start with Dave, you going and writing and showing something to the consultants, or was there a brainstorming that happened together at the beginning? Can you talk us through that process a little bit? Dave, let's throw that to you.

Dave Holstein: All of the above. It's such a process of iterating and iterating and iterating at Pixar. I would write something, I would bring it into a small group, we'd bring it into a big group, we'd call Lisa. We wanted to make sure we got everything right. The process at Pixar, because there are so many people working on the film and everybody is contributing actively, and there's moms, there's dads, there's all sorts of different voices and the conversation. My job is to pluck ideas from that stream of conversation as they go by and try to make them into scenes and then try to make sure those scenes work on that dramatic level and make you care.

Also getting it right because Lisa's right and your callers are right, that the movie is a great tool. It's a great tool to be able to give a pain a name, to give an emotion a name, and talk about it.

Kousha Navidar: I want to be sure to bring up some of the joyful moments of the film, poking fun, which is a great part of Inside Out 1 as well. The film primarily focuses on the internal aspects of puberty, but there are external markers of growing up as well. Dave, what were some of the visual cues of teenage development that you all wanted to highlight or poke fun at in the film?

Dave Holstein: We didn't want to take any low-hanging fruit. There's certainly a lot of films, even at Pixar, that have addressed the physical journey of puberty. We really wanted to, at every point, make sure we were doing it within the Inside Out universe, within the mind, within those changes. Like showing what a sarcasm would actually visually look like was something that we could do that no other film could do. We were really focused on that rather than, say, the pimples and the big changes. That's where we started to have a lot of fun.

Kousha Navidar: I'm looking at the clock here. We're wrapping up, but I think one thing that I have heard as well from all of these callers who are all adults is, I think, Lisa, you actually mentioned this, is being able to gain a vocabulary for a way to have these kinds of conversations. I know that, for me, I saw Inside Out 1 as an adult, but it's still really resonated with me. Lisa, for you, I'm wondering, how are you finding adults able to connect to this story so well? What about it to you do you think resonates so much for the adult crowd?

Dr. Lisa Damour: I think the piece, and one of your colleagues mentioned this, about being reassured that their kid is functioning normally, even if their kid is having very strong overreactions. I think we're so anxious about teenagers as we should be right now, especially in the wake of the pandemic, that we've a bit lost the thread about what's typical and expectable in adolescence. It's actually very expectable that their feelings are really, really intense at times.

Also, I think a lot of parents are going to feel great reassurance that they're not alone in what they're experiencing in terms of feeling like they missed their little kid, or they wonder why this happened overnight, or feeling rejected personally. It's very isolating to be the parent of a teenager. Your kid is changing. Your relationship is changing. You're not sure if it's all okay. For Pixar to put up on the big screen what we see in so many homes in the course of typical development that is challenging, but healthy and expectable, is a real service to families.

Kousha Navidar: Inside Out 2 is in theaters now. I've been speaking with psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour, who consulted on the film, and one of the film's writers, Dave Holstein. Thank you both so much for hanging out with us. Really appreciate it.

Dave Holstein: Thanks for having us.

Dr. Lisa Damour: Thanks for having us.

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