If you could have a conversation with one of your emotions like in the movie 'Inside Out,' what would you tell it?

Contestant 1

Dear Peace of Mind, where have you run away to? You haven’t been home in ages and you won’t return my calls. The night you left, you calmly told me: “I’ll only come back if you tidy the house and get rid of your bad influences – I’ll never set foot in this house again otherwise.” I didn’t believe you then, but a month passed, then two months, then a year. I realised that you meant it. It’s a crazy house here without you. I occasionally get to hang out with Joy, but our time together has been increasingly short and marked by my feelings of unease towards Shame, Anger, Sadness, and the Fear Gang. They butt in, drive Joy away and demand my undivided attention. My current lifestyle is not one that can continue. I promise I’ll change from now on, just please come back. I miss – no – I need you.

From all the emotions in Inside Out, I’d choose Anger as the one to talk to. It’s a no-brainer because while it is very easy to vent your feelings out loud, it causes more harm than good.

Picture this, for example: a day like any other day, and I was out with my friends playing football. We were clearly the better team on the field – until my friend missed an easy goal and cost us the game. My teammates were furious.

“Blame your friend the way the others are doing and throw him under the bus,” said Anger.

“No, that’s not the right thing to do,” I replied to Anger. “It’s all right, we can do better next time, and improve as a team,” I told my team out loud.

We won the next game and became champions, where my friend scored the winning goal. “See? My way encouraged him to do better,” I told Anger.

“Yes, you were right,” replied Anger.

“I’m fed up!” is how I would start my conversation with Joy. “What with exams coming up, family gatherings to go to, and all this preparation for my upcoming performances, life is just way too busy right now, and I don’t know what to do! Oh Joy, everyone in my family is stressed out and under pressure, and I’m close to having a breakdown. Still, talking to you makes me feel a little better.” Then, I might ask her: “Joy, would it be possible for you to bring to life the Joy in everyone?” I would ask her this as a favour to me. I would thank her, too. “I’m so glad to have you in my life. You have always been my supporter and my own special friend, how would I ever cope without you?”

Dear Joy, thank you for being inside my brain for the past 14 years. I really hope that you can regain control of the emotion panel, because I am worried that Sadness and Fear are working together to conquer my mind. Sadness reminds me of my sad junior form years when I used negative methods to solve my problems. As for Fear, he made me afraid of going to school to face the bullies. That’s why I hope you can regain control, and make my memories happy ones. I want to solve problems in a positive way. Most importantly, I hope you can try to make me love going to school more.

Hi Joy, I like happy moments – I hate being sad. My maths teacher once made me do 100 pages of corrections, and I was very sad. I remember I kept having to remind myself to remain in a happy and positive mindset. Finally, with my classmates’ support, I finished all my corrections. It was more fun than I expected. They told jokes just to make me laugh. They helped to turn something that could have been a sad event into a happy one. A month after that, one of my classmates had to do 1,000 pages of corrections. With his classmates’ (and my) support, he finished the corrections and was still happy about it. Would you believe that my classmates now ask the maths teacher for corrections?

I would talk to Fear because that is my greatest enemy.

I am always telling myself to stop worrying and be brave, because that would help me to have better and more varied experiences in life. If I talked to Fear, I wouldn’t be nervous about things like public speaking.

Fear stops everyone from doing their best. If there was no fear, then I think I could see myself talking openly. I would take risks without worrying about the consequences. I would be happy most of the time. Imagine a world where you didn’t have to worry about fear. If I could do this, I would want to help other people do the same – and encourage them to let go of their fear, too. Then their lives would be perfect.

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