WV-MI: Inside Out 2
Motivational Interviewing excels with ambivalence, even of feelings.
Our family went to see the movie Inside Out 2 last month. (It become available for streaming this month.) The movie depicts how a set of internal feelings, turned into the characters Joy - Sadness - Anger - Anxiety, to name a few, interact with each other inside the mind and heart of a teen-age girl named Riley.
This movie was right up my alley, and as it portrayed a number of element of Fear of Feelings (Affect Phobia) in a graphic and accessible way.
The film starts with the character/feeling Joy, inside Riley’s head, bundling up any experiences she does not approve of (those that are not happy), putting them a tube, which then shoots the experiences off to a place as far away as possible (so they can be easily ignored or forgotten), and so not interfere with her job, which is to keep Riley happy. Keep moving forward Riley, don’t look back!
There are a number of problems with this strategy, such as developing a false front of being happy on the outside, and these only gets magnified, when the pubescent feelings of being a teenager arrive unannounced (Jealousy - Envy - Anxiety - Rage - Despair) and want to take over Riley’s control center (think of Kirk, Spock, Picard, Deanna Troi, and Captain Janeway on the bridge of the Enterprise all fighting for control).
The solution of cutting off unwanted feelings, memories, experiences, seems like a good and obvious one, and like all things, it works pretty well until it doesn’t. And then what do you do?
Emotion Focused Motivational Interviewing is designed to help address just this situation: ambivalence about feeling our feelings.
Have you ever wanted to not cry, but the tears were coming anyway? And you tightened your neck till it hurt, doing your best to keep them down?
Have you ever been hurt and mad at someone, but instead you pretended you weren’t, even to the point of letting them do the same thing to you all over again?
Have you ever been offered a compliement, and you would have loved to take it in and feel good about your accomplishment, but you are afraid of becoming ‘prideful’, so instead you turn the compliment away and tell them it was nothing?
These are all forms of Affect Phobia. All of us do it, hence the movie. And it works pretty well, until it doesn’t.
I’ll write more on this later, but if you are interested in learning more, we have a workshop coming up that will be a deep dive into the root causes, the effects, and the ways forward out of being afraid of our feelings. Join us if you are able, if the time doesn’t work for you, no worries, it will come up again soon.
The MI Snack for Wed, June 21: A Closer Look at Affirmations
Guest Member of MINT Chef, Robert Enright
In Motivational Interviewing, Affirmation is a way of expressing positive regard by communicating the efforts, successes, strengths, values and traits you notice and admire to your clients in an authentic way. Sometimes this can be effortless while at other times it can be difficult to recognize strengths, especially when we find a person challenging or when we only focus on the problem, becoming ‘deficit detectives’.. Reserve Your Spot Here
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Sky Kershner, LPC, ALPS, LCSW, DMin
Assistant Professor, WVU School of Medicine
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304-550-0000 / www.wv-mi.com / everyday mi