Let me just say that I was waiting for months for Inside Out 2 to premier in theaters, so I was thrilled when it came out a day early in my area.
Five new emotions were introduced as characters: Ennui, Embarrassment, a touch of Nostalgia, Envy, and arguably the star of the show...Anxiety.
Demolition Day came to the mind of Riley, the newly turned 13-year-old main character and these new characters took over the "controls" of her mind, feeling, choices, and actions. I'll leave the plot pretty much alone as far as this blog goes, but I do want to call out a few key points that really stand out to me:
1. Emotions are powerful and can sway us if we let them, but being aware of the complexities of feeling more than one thing and thinking more than one thing at a time can help us to take back the internal steering wheel inside us and point our choices and actions back to our values, and for the Christian to the Holy Spirit's gift of self-control.
2. More than one emotion can exist at a time as can more than one motivation and desire. When we go against our core values and the ways of the Holy Spirit, things can often get complicated and messy. Since we don't need help for emotions and thoughts to be messy as they often naturally feel that way, aligning with God's truth and the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives can offer clarity and a light to our path when things get overwhelming or confusing.
Galatians 5:22 says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.
3. It's interesting that in Inside Out 2, Joy, a fruit of the Spirit, is the one with a helpful and mostly optimistic outlook.
4. Sometimes we feel down, angry, sad, embarrassed, jealous, or anxious, but those are able to be felt, processed, endured, and dealt with appropriately. They give us good information on how our external and internal experiences are affecting us, but we get to decide how to steer our ship.
5. Taking time out to sit in a comfy chair, breathe, sip some tea, and pray or Bible read is a great way to stop the panic of the mental scenes that anxiety tries to forecast in our imaginations. While anxiety is trying to help us by preparing us for what we can't see that could hurt us in some way, it turns out that it's a partly helpful feeling that goes awry when not kept in check and can cause more harm than good to our nervous systems, even to the point of triggering panic attacks, dissociation, and freeze responses when the input either real or imagined is too intense.
Emotions are a part of the human experience, and they aren't bad in and of themselves. However, when they are allowed to direct our paths instead of wisdom, God's Word, our Christian value system, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we can end up in some pretty dark places. It is hard enough to manage the variety and depth of emotions and thoughts as a human, but without steering ourselves back to the solid foundation of the things of God, things only get harder.
Christians can suffer from mental illness and distress, and it does NOT necessarily mean that it is a moral or spiritual failing. It can simply mean that we are human with a human nervous system that is trying to care for us and has been overloaded in some way by the input from our experiences. Knowing this can empower us to both keep our eyes on the Lord and seek mental health care when our emotions are taking over and hurting too much.
