Can We Befriend Anxiety?

Does it deserve the sympathy, as shown in Inside-Out 2?

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

What we see in the movie, Inside-Out 2, is that anxiety is having anxiety around saving the girl. Is it even logical? Even though I loved the film because it was the most fun you can have with emotions, I still feel that the portrayal of anxiety was very human and not as much of an emotion.

Anxiety is the most escalated form of fear, and fear was already there in the film as a character. Anxiety should be someone with confidence and arrogance.

They wanted to show that ‘anxiety is your friend, only then you can deal with it’, and show it in a positive and sympathetic light. However, at the same time, anxiety is not your friend, even when you try. You need calmness to take over whenever anxiety strikes. You can not deal with it without the help of other emotions. So, do we need to befriend it?

Befriending Emotions

So far in all my years on this planet, I have befriended most of the emotions, and tried to sympathise with anxiety too. However, as closely as I went with anxiety, it just moved me to an even darker place. It is your mind taking control of you through your worst fears, and trying to befriend it would mean allowing it to take the best of you.