Inside Out as a Tool in Therapy

Thinking outside the box to help explain complex ideas

Dec 27, 2024

Insights into my Week

If you have not yet watched the films Inside out and Inside Out 2, I would highly recommend that you do. They are such a great representation of how emotions can control your thinking, impact how you perceive things and how they influence your behaviours.

In a session last week I spoke with a child who struggles with 'all or nothing thinking'. This type of thinking can also be described as 'black and white thinking', 'dichotomous thinking', 'absolutist thinking', or 'binary thinking'. It is often when we view things through the extremes and as consequence it can lead to anxiety or low mood. Examples of all or nothing thinking can include

Anything over an ‘A’ is good, below that is failure
A job interview has to go perfectly, otherwise it did not go well
I can not finish all my tasks, so I will not do anything
If I eat this snack, my diet is ruined
They either like me a lot, or not at all

In the session with the young person I used the film, Inside Out, as a representation of how their anxiety was preventing them from seeing the full picture. Using films, stories, analogies or even objects to explain the complexities of thinking can be a really useful tool. I wanted to share with you an example of how a conversation like this might sound.

Insights to Take Away

I would first explain ‘all or nothing thinking’ similar to how I have done above, then I would try to use an example of a recent time anxiety or unhelpful thinking was present. Here is how a conversation might sound:

Situation: client is experiencing problems with peers/friendships

Client: “They don’t like me, I should avoid them”

Therapist: “That sounds like a tricky situation, if you think your friends do not like you. What makes you think that they don’t like you?”

Client: “They don’t talk to me and ignore me”

Therapist: “Can you describe how that looked? For example, were you speaking and they physically turned away? Did they talk over you? Did anyone else notice they ignored you?”

Client: “No, nothing like that. I can just tell they don’t like me. I can feel it.”

Therapist: “Let’s investigate that. Do you remember watching the film Inside Out 2, when panic is on the control panel?”

Client: “Yes”

Therapist: “Panic is trying so hard to make sure that Riley does not get hurt and creates lots of situations in her head to try and predict events or even guess what people are thinking. Lets for the moment imagine that your anxiety was making you believe that your friends were ignoring you and they don’t like you. Anxiety does this to try and protect you and wants you to avoid mean people. However like in the film Inside Out, anxiety may have gone too far and made you think things that are not true.

It might be hard but let’s try to pretend another emotion is in charge, like kindness, patience, joy, warmth or even me was, what would they see?”

Client: “That they might not have been ignoring me, it could have ben that I was not talking to them.”

Therapist: “Interesting. And if that were true does that mean that they don’t like you?”

Client: “No. It was anxiety making me think they do not like me"

This is just an example of a conversation, and it may not go as smooth as this!

When I am working with someone, I try to encourage them to notice the flaws in their thinking without pointing it out to them specifically. Pointing it out can lead to people getting defensive or to try and find evidence of why their faulty thinking might be true. I equally try to motivate the client to think of the alternatives so that they get more practice at questioning their own unhelpful beliefs. If they are able to come up with their own alternatives they are more likely to believe it too.

If you notice that you get thought in ‘all or nothing thinking’, try to imagine that another emotion was at the control panel - what would they say?