Inside Out 2: Working with the Rogue Emotions of the Teenage Brain
By Heather Jenkin, Lecturer on the Foundation Degree (FdA) in Integrative Counselling Tutor on the Post Qualifying Diploma in Counselling Young People
‘A rogue Emotion has taken over Headquarters!’ This is how the character, Joy, in Disney’s new animated film Inside Out 2 encapsulates the inherent emotional turmoil children and young people can experience when the puberty button has been activated, like it has for the film’s 13-year-old character Riley. 
The film’s new character, Anxiety, sends Riley into a state of disarray, suddenly undermining the ‘13-year-old masterpiece’ that Joy, together with the characters Anger, Sadness and Disgust, have helped develop through the acceptance and integration achieved in the first film.
Like so many young people, Riley’s teenage brain is in a state of flux; as Susan and Rogol (2004) point out, ‘puberty is one of the most profound biological transitions in the life span.’ Intense emotions emerge for teenagers, such as increased embarrassment, boredom, and nostalgia for the child they once were and as the film illustrates, anxiety is in the driving seat, attempting to lock the childhood emotions away in a vault and take over Riley’s whole mindset.
This predicament has been neuroscientifically proven. The ability to accurately assess the emotion in a face diminishes between the ages of 11 and 16. Young people begin to use a different part of their brain (the amygdala) which Nicky Morgan (2002) describes ‘the home of the gut instinct’, as opposed to the prefrontal cortex, ‘the home of the executive functioning.’ This huge biological shift can be terrifying and confusing for children and young people. As Morgan explains, ‘teenagers get it wrong and seem to be using the wrong part of their brain while they get it wrong’; intense reactions, paranoia, misinterpretations of social situations, and their own sense of identity can all be rooted in this predicament.
Over the 20 years that I have worked therapeutically with this age group, I have seen how young teenagers’ mental health can quickly spiral into clinical anxiety, OCD, self-harm, suicidal ideation and addiction in a desperate attempt to extinguish these painful feelings. I have observed this to be exacerbated for some neurodivergent children. Some children with alexithymia (read my blog on this here) find it much harder to verbalise and recognise their emotions and for others, the co-morbid chances of developing anxiety linked to conditions such as ADHD and ASD are heightened.
The countless children and young people I have worked with over the years have taught me to adopt a whole-brain approach when working with this age group. As such, I have written the Iron Mill’s Post Qualifying Diploma in Counselling Young People (8-18 years) to encapsulate working with the child’s nervous system, their emotional/limbic brain and finally with their neocortical thinking brain.
Vital tools such as child-focussed polyvagal tools to help children regulate their nervous system and create a day-to-day tool kit to calm their internal surveillance system. From my experience of being a mother to a teenager, I find myself regularly frequenting our local tennis club with my son in order to help him stay regulated and manage his anxieties. I know that the advice of engaging your child in Bruce Perry’s (2018) 6 R’s definitely work to regulate the nervous system; tennis for my son is rewarding, rhythmic, rewarding, relational with his attachment figure and repetitive. I see his natural teenage anxiety begin to take a back seat.
In supporting the teenager’s emotional brain, I have found externalising the emotion to be incredibly powerful; just as Riley is not her anxiety, having the character personified helps Riley mentalize that this is an emotion and not her. Young people over the years have named their anxiety, given it a colour, created it and have used psychodrama to try and gain some control over it.
I teach students and supervisees the value of the creative arts therapy. This approach is essential in assisting the child’s natural language of play. The creative arts provide a natural ticket into the portal of the child’s unconscious thoughts and feelings and the use of play and creativity releases oxytocin and endorphins which serve as a natural extinguisher to the hormone cortisol, which is associated with anxiety. (Sunderland, 2001)
The third part of the brain, the neocortex, deserves much attention. Symptoms such as OCD and anxiety can be treated through mindfulness-based third wave CBT. One of the most poignant moments for me in Inside Out 2 was when all the emotions stopped fighting against each other and gathered in acceptance, supporting Riley through her panic attack. I teach the value of acceptance using a humanistic framework, as well as gently bringing curiosity to our dialectical behavioural therapy-informed ‘internal wise mind’.
Finally, the teenage years provide a huge opportunity for growth; neural pathways are pruned, ready for new permanent rewiring. (Morgan, 2017) The more we can help teenagers adopt healthy ways to accept and manage their intense emotions, the more these strategies will hopefully stay with them for life. And you never know, I might play at Wimbledon next year!
Written July 2024
References:
Bruce D. Perry and Steve Graner (2018) The Neurosequential Model in Education: Introduction to the NME Series: Trainer's Guide (NME Training Guide)
Dana, Deb (2018) Polyvagal theory in therapy, W. W. Norton & Company
Morgan, N (2017) Blame My Brain: the Amazing Teenage Brain Revealed, Walker Books
Porges, S (2017) The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe, W. W. Norton & Company.
Sunderland, M (2001) Using Story Telling as a Therapeutic Tool with Children, Taylor & Francis LTD
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