What a fantastic film Disney Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’ is. The role of ‘joy’ in trying to ‘gatekeep’ the experiences that the lead character, Riley, has, leads to a complex road of keeping her happy ‘by any means necessary’. Eventually, ‘joy’ realises that by protecting Riley from her experiences generating other emotions, she is actually preventing her from growth and from experiencing the real ‘joy’ that comes from coming through the other side of life’s challenges. A particular focus is upon ‘core memories’ and the perceived need to preserve these as joyful ones because once they have been ‘made sad’ they can never be reversed.
Now, it is true that experiences cannot be relived…however, core memories can be changed…by perspective and also by enough counter-memories to make them smaller in the mind’s eye. OR…to make them significant as learning experiences, in the mind’s eye.
This concept is at the core of Chrysalis Care….transforming lives from the inside out. Creating new memories and building new milestones, so that even though there may be sadness, anger, judgement, anxiety, fear and so on…there can also be joy. The joy of living in a nurturing home, the joy of being safe, the joy of being alive in spite of past experiences, which may have been traumatic. There are lessons for us all in this. For us at Chrysalis Care, Disney Pixar have brought us a timely reminder of the importance of what we do…transforming lives, from the inside out.