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Disney Pixar’s Inside Out 1 and Inside Out 2 films use concepts from Voice Dialogue and the Psychology of Selves in how they portray the films’ characters as having inner emotions who are characters in their own right. Discover how this way of understanding the human personality can help you and your children more easily handle the various life stages we all go through.

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In the first Inside Out film, eleven-year-old Riley is controlled mainly by Joy (which is her ‘primary self’ in Voice Dialogue terms) who doesn’t want Sadness to have any input, nor Anger, Fear or Disgust to have much say either (which are her ‘disowned selves’).

And her parents are all in support of Joy being her main self, as many parents are because we don’t want to see our children suffering.

During the film Riley’s selves discover that it can’t be only one of them who has all the say – Joy in Riley’s case – and that all the emotions have their rightful place within her psyche.

In fact, when Riley’s various emotions are not honoured, and Joy tries to be primary and actively keeps Sadness away from the ‘control centre’ (the ‘Aware Ego’ in Voice Dialogue), Riley becomes depressed and loses her ability to feel.

Hopefully these films are the beginning for this knowledge about how our personality works to become more mainstream. If people get it, it will help with all kinds of problems and issues we all struggle with in our lives.

Especially now with children and teens being encouraged to cement an ‘identity’ at an age where developmentally we are meant to be exploring identity and trying on various ‘hats’ before out brain reaches full maturity in our mid to late 20s.

Even then, self-exploration is an ongoing journey as we expand our sense of who we are when we reach various milestones.

Major milestones include becoming parents, when for many women our nurturing mother self is also birthed and becomes primary, and for men who find their protective father self and the qualities that adds to him as a person.

Other times when we need to unearth or develop new aspects of ourselves are when we move up in our career or change career; when we try a new sport or activity; when we commit to a relationship and need to see things from our partner’s perspective as well as our own and even change our behaviours and patterns that are keeping us stuck or damaging our relationship.

To learn more about the selves that make up who you are, here are some reading suggestions:

• This page is an introduction to Voice Dialogue and how it can help you to understand yourself and those close to you.
• This article is about how to honour the unique personality of your child/children.
• This article is about how your selves affect your relationships, including who you are attracted to.

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