How The Inside Out Movies Reveal The Cost Of Growing Up
As we grow up, we become increasingly aware of our emotions, often trying to control and subdue them. Society’s hyper-fixation on viewing emotions as “weak” leads us to forget the raw, uninhibited ways we once felt as children. However, as the Inside Out movies illustrate, this suppression does not erase our emotions—it merely distances us from them, leading us to forget what it truly means to feel.
Barely at the point of reaching legality, we’ve already become accustomed to hiding our emotions. The day you turn 18 marks the official transition from childhood to adulthood—a shift that comes with societal expectations of maturity, responsibility, and self-restraint. As graduating high school seniors, many of us are experiencing this change firsthand. As we begin to prepare ourselves for the realities of adulthood, we find ourselves suppressing emotions that once came naturally, trading raw expression for controlled composure.
We learn to suppress emotions based on how we think others perceive us. Societal norms have conditioned us to believe that expressing raw emotions is a sign of immaturity and lack of self-control. Over time, this expectation has shaped how we express ourselves by subtly teaching us to filter or even bury feelings that once came naturally. However, we often overlook the fact that emotions are not signs of weakness but the essence of who we are.
The Inside Out films navigate the struggle between emotional suppression and societal expectations. In the first movie, the main characters are personified versions of our 5 basic emotions: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger, each playing a key role in shaping the main character Riley’s emotions. Young Riley exhibits her feelings vividly—she cries when she’s sad and radiates joy when she’s happy. In Inside Out 2, Riley’s emotional landscape becomes more complex as she enters adolescence. New emotions, namely embarrassment and anxiety, emerge, representing her heightened self-awareness and sensitivity. As Riley prepares to start a hockey camp with new people in a fresh environment, these new emotions take over her brain’s control center, mirroring the way growing up often leads us to prioritize self-consciousness over genuine emotional expression. Anxiety, in particular, attempts to regulate Riley’s emotions, pushing her toward perfectionism, thus making her increasingly fearful of how others perceive her. The result is nothing but chaos. Internal struggles arise as her once-balanced emotions are now at odds with each other.
As children, our emotions feel raw and unfiltered. Joy wasn’t just happiness—it was a burst of uncontrollable energy, like stepping into a pile of snow for the first time. Sadness wasn’t just a feeling of being upset—it was feeling a heavy weight that settled into our shoulders when we lost something precious to us, like a cherished toy. Fear could feel paralyzing and disgust could feel overwhelming. These emotions exist in their purest form, shaping our experiences without the interference of societal pressure.
But as we grow older, we begin to filter how we express our emotions. Our society has pushed us to associate emotional expression with weakness or immaturity, leading us to believe that suppression is a necessity of growing up. As time passes, this external pressure causes us to forget what it felt like to experience emotions freely without judgment—just as Riley forgot in Inside Out 2. Anxiety doesn’t just attempt to control Riley’s emotions and behaviors, it eventually leads her to forget what it was like to express them without fear. What once came naturally now feels distant, as if her ability to feel pure joy and sadness was lost down the drain of the forgotten.
This theme is reinforced by arguably one of the most heartbreaking moments in Inside Out: the loss of Bing Bong, Riley’s imaginary friend and a fan-favorite character. Made of cotton candy and crying candy tears, Bing Bong embodies childhood imagination, pure creativity, and unfiltered emotions that defined Riley’s experiences in her earliest years. His unfortunate disappearance after falling into a void of forgotten things is more than just a sign of Riley’s maturity, it also symbolizes the inevitable loss of untainted innocence and emotional spontaneity. As she grows up, the parts of her that once felt so vivid, that once embraced emotion without hesitation, are gradually left behind.
Everyone has their own Bing Bong. A representative figure of childhood and innocence that disappears with age. I am at the point where my Bing Bong has fully faded away. Somewhere along the way, I started playing pretend, stopped crying freely, and stopped feeling emotions at their full intensity.
Growing up does not have to mean forgetting. While adulthood demands responsibility and emotional regulation, it does not require us to suppress or erase what we once could feel so deeply. Inside Out reminds us that emotions are not meant to be controlled or hidden—they are meant to be understood and embraced. Instead of letting societal expectations force us to forget our most authentic selves, we must learn to integrate our emotions in new ways, allowing ourselves to feel without fear—just as we did when we were children.