Inside Out cleverly portrays the basic emotions of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust as beings that live inside 11 year old Riley’s mind and regulate her emotional experience. Riley is forced to move to San Francisco with her family and experiences emotional strain as her inner beings wrestle with how to interpret her new situation (IMDb, 2016).  As Riley is faced with more challenges, she experiences other, more painful emotions, culminating in a crisis when Riley decides to run away. Ultimately, Riley learns the value of feeling/expressing ALL emotions as a way to fully experience the world, to signal when something is wrong, and to ask for help.

This movie is useful for any client (who appreciates animated films) who has difficulty expressing emotions, or who has been taught to believe that one should only express "positive” emotions. Similarly, the film would be a great basis for debate in a counselor education course, where students can debate the role of emotions, thoughts, and environment/ecosystem in a person’s life, and in the counseling process. Processing of the movie would be critical, however, to ensure that clients/students do understand the lessons revealed by the end of the movie, namely, that all emotions serve a purpose, and that appropriate expression of emotions is a good thing.

Reference: IMDb (2016). Inside out: Plot summary. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2096673/plotsummary?ref_=tt_stry_pl