Family Movie Night | INSIDE OUT: Patterns Beneath Feelings | Podcast

How a Pixar Movie Unpacks Emotional Safety, Core Memories, and the Power of Presence

Listen to the podcast here:

Inside Out shows us more than animated feelings—it shows how relationships form our emotional architecture.
In Episode 12 of This WILD Journey, Sarah and Bren unpack the subtle but powerful patterns in the film:

• Joy = Toxic positivity, emotional control packaged as love

• Riley = Self-abandonment for approval

• Mom & Dad = Subtle emotional pressure, “happy girl” expectation

• Core Memories = Early impressions that wire self-worth and relationships

💬 Here’s What You’ll Learn:

• How emotional control can be disguised as care

• The danger of performance-based belonging

• How to recognize and untangle emotional enmeshment

• Why core memories form even without obvious trauma

🎁 FREE RESOURCE: Inside Out Family Discussion Guide
Turn your next movie night into a conversation that reshapes emotional safety for life.

💬 Favorite Moments from the Episode:

“If I stay cheerful, I’m easier to love. If I’m low-maintenance, I belong.” — Sarah

“Core memories aren’t just about what happened—they’re also about what didn’t.” — Bren

Catch this episode on YouTube:

Meet your hosts: 

🧠 Sarah McDugal – high-conflict communication strategist guiding protective parents through family court chaos with integrity, clarity, and calm under pressure (no tiptoeing, no legalese, no playing nice with coercive control)

🧬 Bren Wise Mays – neuro-sensory wellness provider translating wild-but-true neuroscience into real-world tools for resolving toxic or traumatic stress (no fluff, no fakery, no bypassing—just real regulation)

Together, we blend somatic support, legal strategy, and zero-BS tools to help you stop spiraling and start thriving.

👉 Hit follow on Spotify and YouTube
👉 Share this episode in your group chat. 

THINGS MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST

"Exposing the PLAYBOOK: the 3-Step Blueprint to Anticipate Your Abuser's Next Move in Family Court"

The $7 Investment That Could Save You Thousands

• What’s Inside:

  ✅ The three biggest myths that can sabotage your case before it even starts.

  ✅ The 3-step strategy to anticipate their next move before they even make it.

  ✅ The exact tactics abusers use to manipulate the system—and how to fight back.

  ✅ Insider tips to protect your sanity and self-care while navigating family court.

• Get it here.

SUPPORT WILD:

• Join the SCOOP for $17/mo (it’s like our Patreon, but with mega-perks!)

• And check out our workshops for quick, bite-size steps to clarity.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

 Welcome back to This WILD Journey.

If you haven't listened to part one of our Inside Out series, hit pause and go catch that first. We unpacked how emotions live in the body, what this film gets exactly right. Today we're flipping the script. I'm interviewing Coach Sarah about what's happening underneath the surface of Inside Out, the invisible relational dynamics that shape identity that many of us never learned to name growing up.

You know, I kind of wanna start with Inside Out because she's not always the hero that most people think she is. At the beginning of the film, Joy acts like her job is to keep Riley happy. We see a lot of this in church communities.

She constantly overrides and minimizes and excludes sadness. It's toxic positivity at its finest, and she sees herself doing this as actually helpful, but in reality, it's what we call emotional control disguised as positivity and kind of packaged as love.

Wow! Can you say that again?

Packaged as positivity and disguised as love.

That line is fire!

You know, Joy isn't trying to hurt anyone. But she is trying to manage everyone's feelings so nothing gets too uncomfortable. And that's what emotional control often looks like in dysfunctional families.

It's not always harsh, it's not always violent, it's not always loud. Sometimes it's that momentary expression that says, uh, let's not go there.

Or a well-meaning, "cheer up! Focus on the positive!" That shuts down the emotions that are real.

And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have positivity. I'm not saying that we shouldn't focus on gratefulness.

I'm not saying that we should just wallow in all of our negative emotions, but it's also important to recognize that emotions simply exist.

They're not good or bad by definition, it's what we do with them.

Right. And a lot of homes. "Don't cry. Don't be a burden. Be strong. Keep the peace."

We're handed the script before we even know how to question it.

Exactly. We get immersed in this mindset before we even have the language. We get immersed in it pre verbally in many families. Kids internalize it fast.

Riley starts to believe that she's in the wrong, just because she feels sad. That her emotions make her a problem. And then that leads to this domino effect of self-doubt and shame and emotional isolation, even in a home that seems loving on the outside.

Let's talk about the parents, because Riley's mom and dad aren't villains.

They clearly love her, but there's still emotional pressure happening. And it's so subtle. Most parents wouldn't recognize it unless they're looking deeper.

Absolutely. I mean, there's this moment where Riley's mom is like, "you're our happy girl!" And it sounds sweet, but it also subconsciously teaches Riley that her sadness isn't just uncomfortable, it's unacceptable.

And it's not just unacceptable for her, but it's something that the people she loves most don't know how to handle.

Her mom can't handle Riley being sad, so Riley's left feeling like she needs to project happiness in order to make her mom feel fine.

This is very close to what is sometimes called emotional enmeshment. Your emotional state is expected to be the regulating baseline for someone else's comfort.

And just a caveat, if you are a protective parent who is in the court system, a lot of my clientele that I work with are protective parents in the court system.

Something that professionals will be watching for is signs of emotional enmeshment where it seems like, to them, that your children are expected to have a certain opinion about the other parent, the abusive parent, in order to keep you happy and to regulate your emotions.

So one of the things we do a lot of work with in my work with clients who are in this kind of situation, is untangling even the appearance of emotional enmeshment.

So that your kids are free to think and feel their own thoughts and feelings of trying to manage your comfort.

So, even in a well-meaning family, a child can learn to self abandon, trade authenticity for approval. They figure it out.

If I stay cheerful, I'm easier to love.

If I'm low maintenance, I belong.

If I show sadness, I might disappoint someone.

That's not resilience. That's an internalized obligation to comply and to keep up appearances.

Yeah, exactly. And over time that pressure shaped how each one of us shows up in relationships as kids, and as teens, and as adults.

It's one of the key ways that performance-based belonging gets wired into the nervous system, and then we have to untangle that later when we are trying to heal.

So let's make this practical. How does this show up in real life beyond the screen?

Okay, so kids who get praised for being easy or strong or really obedient, often grow up afraid to take up any space.

So they stop asking for help. They tend to say sorry and apologize a lot even just for having needs. They tend to over-function and micromanage everything in their environment and around them just to feel safe.

And that is why trauma-informed parenting matters so much... 'cause it doesn't mean that we never mess up.

It means that we start honoring the full emotional range in ourselves and our children, not just the parts that feel tidy or convenient.

And yes, one of my things I say often is you can be angry and that's okay, but you can't be nasty about it.

Like you can be mad, but you don't get to hurt people.

You can be sad. But you don't get to do things that are harmful to others just because of your emotions.

We can honor the full emotional range, and I'm sure there's somebody listening right now and is like, "whoa, wait, what? Uh, mm-hmm. That, that's going to have everything outta control!"

Not necessarily. You can honor how you feel and two things can be true.

"This is how I feel, and I'm choosing to regulate myself so that I don't do harmful things even though I feel this way."

So what's the shift? How do parents move from pressure to presence?

Well, first you stop trying to fix everything. And start being a witness to what you observe.

So you start adding phrases to your parenting vocabulary like, "it's okay to be sad. I'm here."

"You don't have to hide what you feel."

Things like, "you know what? It looks like this makes you feel really angry. It would make me feel angry too!"

"I can understand that this makes you feel mad."

"You don't have to like this right now. That's okay to not like this."

And in the film, in Inside Out, it's this kind of shift that is what leads to change.

Joy lets sadness lead. And that's when Riley reconnects with her parents because it's no longer through forced happiness.

It's through honest emotion.

Such a powerful metaphor! The goal isn't constant happiness. The goal is emotional honesty, the kind that makes real connection possible.

Yes, exactly. And when that becomes the culture in your family, your kids have the freedom to grow up knowing that they don't have to earn being loved by hiding what's hard.

Now, they may still have things that they wanna process privately. That's fine. You're still gonna have kids with different personalities.

Some of are all, it's all out there. Some of 'em really are internal processors. That's also fine.

It isn't about making them... forcing them to process publicly or openly. It's about them knowing that they are loved regardless, no matter what.

I want to pause and talk about core memories. Inside Out gives us this beautiful visual language for how kids form identity. And how moments become internalized.

Yes. I love the core memories in this film.

I remember the first time I saw it and I had to watch the core memory development part more than once to even just wrap my mind about all the layers that they were presenting visually.

Because it was so beautiful and so powerful and so complex in just a kid's movie.

The idea of core memories helps explain why even really young children carried deep impressions that shape their beliefs about the world and about themselves, because those deep core memories are implanted in our identity in the roots of our identity, before we even have language to describe them.

So, many protective parents, many parents who are raising children in an abusive home, they tend to assume...

We tend to subconsciously assume that if there's no yelling, no overt cruelty, no big explosive, violent hostility and conflict then the kids are being shielded from harm and they can help to protect them, as long as they keep it passive on the surface.

But the nervous system is always listening. And kids are making core memories in silence, in the tension that no one talks about. In the eggshells, in the moments they're praised for smiling and being silent instead of speaking up and, and advocating and using their voice.

So you're saying that even without obvious trauma, the body's still storing stress signals? Even in peaceful looking homes, kids might be learning, "I'm only safe if I stay small. I'm only lovable if I'm cheerful. My real feelings are too much".

And those beliefs don't just fade. They become the architecture for adult relationships and boundaries and self-worth.

Exactly, and I love how you phrased that, that they become the architecture for our adult relationships.

I am guessing that we have plenty of people listening right now who are sitting back and just like, "oh my goodness. This explains so much about the architecture of my adult relationships," right? So there's kind of this two layered concept that we can take away from it.

One is untangling that architecture and how it was built, what it means for our own adult relationships.

And the other is laying a different pattern for our children. However old your children are, if they're little, start now. If they're middle, start now. If they're older, start now.

Just start now with yourself and your parenting!

And, and this whole concept is why the behavior alone isn't going to tell us the whole story.

We have to look at the emotional ecosystem that our children are growing up in. What's rewarded? What's shut down? What's safe to express? What do they feel that they have to hide?

That's so powerful. Core memories aren't just shaped by big dramatic events. They're built in the quiet, repeated moments of daily life, and parents have an incredible opportunity to reshape those moments with presence, attunement, and emotional safety.

Yes, and and I actually wanna point out one other thing that we haven't dwelt on too much in this series on Inside Out, but it's really important.

And that is our core memories, this emotional architecture and the internal architecture that is a framework for how we have adult relationships... it isn't just about the things that happened to us.

It's also about the times that nothing did happen. The times that you wanted comfort and it, and it didn't happen. The times that you needed reassurance and you got none.

It's just as much about the void of the good things as it is about the presence of the harmful, traumatic things. And so maybe Bren, maybe we should do some other podcast episodes about that? The stuff that we lack just as much as the stuff that, that we needed?

Um, yeah, yeah, let's do that. So, but that is what our free resource for today is designed to support and. Bren, can you tell us more about that and where people can get it?

Yea! Its called Trauma-Informed Family Movie Night Discussion Guide: Inside Out. Helping kids build emotional through story. And it's packed with age-based questions and practical language and a glossary to help you identify patterns and build connections instead of confusion.

So you could use it around the dinner table or at bedtime when your kids get super chatty.

If you have teens like mine, they start to come alive about 10:30 at night when you're ready to go to bed and now they wanna talk about everything under the sun. You can do a family movie night. You can do it with a youth group or a church group, or with some other parents and get your kids together. Anywhere you wanna open up meaningful conversations.

Yea, because this isn't about just one film. It's about helping your child feel emotionally safe for life. It's about breaking unspoken rules, writing a new story rooted in presence, not And that story begins with you.

And it's free because every child deserves to be seen. And honestly, mama or dad whoever you are, the parent that's listening, you deserve to be seen too.

Thanks for joining us on This WILD Journey, and we'll see you soon for more conversations that go beneath the surface and help you parent with clarity, connection, and courage.

Until then, remember, you don't have to walk This WILD Journey all alone.