As child life specialists, we have so many important roles. Two of these important roles include translating medical information and supporting coping tools for our patients. Using a popular movie to help kids and teens cope can assist patients in making information accessible as well as normalizing their experiences. “Inside Out 2” presents a thirteen-year-old girl named Riley who has emotions of joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. As Riley reaches puberty, she starts experiencing additional emotions including anxiety, embarrassment, ennui, and envy. Anxiety takes over and wreaks havoc. The film makes the emotions inside of Riley’s head human like. The movie beautifully weaves in and out of Riley’s internal and external world. “Inside Out 2” provides a way for specialists to build rapport and help patients become more aware of how they are feeling. Here are some ways child life professionals can utilize the movie and its concepts to support socioemotional health with children and families.   

Identifying Emotions 

Years ago, a child life professor introduced me to Dr. Seigel’s idea of “name it to tame it.” Utilizing the characters in “Inside Out 2” makes processing complex emotions accessible because patients can see emotions in a concrete way. One way to utilize these characters is to have pictures or small figures of these emotions and talk with patients how they might feel a mixture of emotions. I often turn to “My Many Colored Days,” a book by Dr. Seuss that relates different feelings to colors, as a way to talk about emotions coexisting. “Inside Out 2” offers another way to present this. It is important for us as professionals to remind patients and families that they can feel different things at the same time. Even when things are difficult, joy can be found. Each of our emotions are a part of us and conceptualizing them as characters helps drive home the point that no emotion is a bad one.   

Expression 

With younger patients, engaging in play around “Inside Out 2” could be helpful. Having figures of the characters could further solidify the concreteness of the film. Quotes from the film could help serve as conversation starters as well as potential journal prompts. Reading the quotes and talking about them could make talking about emotions less intimidating or stigmatized. For example, a child life professional could say “Some kids feel anxiety about what might happen, have you ever felt that way?” It could be helpful to utilize a feelings wheel or chart with older patients about underlying feelings/thoughts behind the main characters. Another consideration could be saying, “Some people express disgust this way. How do you express it?” Patients could have a chart with the emotions that list what a kid with that feeling might feel. For example, a chart of feelings under anger could be frustration and irritability.   

Another idea would be to use “Inside Out 2” as a starting point to teach patients basic neuroscience about why their brains may impact their behavior. I read a suggestion to say to children when they’ve lost control, “I bet it didn’t feel good to lose control.” We can normalize that this happens and still have patients walk away from a procedure or other stressful experience with their dignity intact. Because anxiety is such a strong theme in the movie, this can help patients identify what anxiety feels like to them; the film may even introduce some children to the word anxiety. In one of the scenes in the movie, Riley has a panic attack. In that scene we can see her sweating and the activity inside her brain is anxiety stuck in a “freeze mode.” Riley beautifully takes deep breathes to calm her body and coregulates with the support of friends. As a CCLS, I often teach kids about breathing and having a way to demonstrate that it works to calm our body is a great opportunity.   

Looking at the external actions of the human characters can provide an important reminder that if something feels like a big deal to a kid it is a big deal to that kid. Something that feels small or insignificant to me as an adult can feel life altering to a child. Helping kids feel seen, heard, and valued goes a long way. That’s why we do what we do. A theme that appears in “Inside Out 2” is Riley’s belief that she’s a good a person. This helps form who she is and when that belief wavers, she struggles. Working in the Emergency Department, I think about how kids and families leave our care and what feelings they may have as they leave. Did they have their fears, sadness, and anxiety addressed? Did they get to have moments of joy, and did they feel supported in all their feelings? Is their sense of self intact and potentially strengthened?   

Distraction 

We can also utilize the movie “Inside Out 2” in more diversionary ways. A CCTV show could do a matching game or a themed bingo. A Guess Who game could help identify attributes of different feelings. A child life specialist can, in the words of my mentor “Do the silly!” This means that it is okay and helpful to be playful; in other words, help kids be kids. Patients are first and foremost kids and anything we can do to protect, support, and enhance their childhoods is valuable.   

Utilizing the characters Fear and Anxiety could provide a new take on the Worry Monster activity many of us are familiar with from our practice. Sand is also an intervention I see utilized frequently; the colors of the characters could be utilized to make a piece of sand art. For example, blue could represent sadness and red anger. Emotion collages could help patients connect patients to their current joys and sadness and what they look forward to/have anxiety about in the future. It was a powerful revolution to me as an adult that emotions can coexist. I have seen a facility dog in a therapy setting utilized as a table to motivate a patient to interact with flash cards. She was a soft spot for this patient to engage. Perhaps a simple board game akin to Candy Land could feature the different emotions portrayed in the film.; a specialist could make this themselves, or, even better, get buy-in by working with a patient to co-create it.” The intervention of utilizing loose parts to create a processing tool could mean making a model of the brain and incorporating the emotions.   

Family Support 

In the realm of family centered care, we can also focus on sibling and parent/guardian emotions. I can imagine applying “Inside Out 2” to sibling care in the NICU saying, “Hello! I check in with a lot of families to see how they are doing. How are you feeling? Is there anything I can get for you at this time?” Modeling talking about emotions helps create a space of less judgement and can help lower stigma. Much like I have seen people with pins and stickers supporting various causes, wearing a badge with emotions on it can help build quick rapport and open the door for supportive conversation. “Inside Out 2” presents many fun and helpful opportunities to engage with children and families facing challenging situations.   

Finally, as a child life specialist I can relate to the emotion joy. This is especially true when the character says, “Of course I’m delusional! Do you know how hard it is to stay positive all the time?...Jimminy mother-loving toaster strudel.”