Life Power List 2024: A for Anxiety in Inside Out 2

SINGAPORE – Whenever The Straits Times makes a social media post about someone blowing his or her top in public – a screaming match breaks out at a lift in VivoCity mall, or a scuffle erupts in a queue for Labubu toys – the top-liked comment is likely to be: “So many crazy people in Singapore these days.” 

So what better character to kick off the Life Power List 2024 than Anxiety from the Pixar animation Inside Out 2 released in June, the sequel to 2015’s Inside Out? The main character, teen girl Riley, is introduced to the new emotion voiced by Maya Hawke.

As Inside Out 2 producer Mark Nielsen puts it in the film’s production notes: “Anxiety has been a part of our story from the beginning, but given the impact the last few years has had on all of us – especially teens – it seems like the right time in history to be talking about it.”

Riley’s anxiety speaks directly to the anxieties in Singapore.

Fear of missing out, or Fomo – the emotion that drives Singaporeans towards Labubu toys – is one form of anxiety. Teens worrying that their body shape does not conform to the ideal shown on Instagram is another. 

Anxiety is the most common mental health problem experienced by young people here, according to a survey of 2,600 Singaporeans and permanent residents carried out by the Institute of Mental Health from 2022 to 2023. 

In a report published in ST in September, the survey found that about one in four people aged 15 to 24 reported having severe or extremely severe symptoms of anxiety in the week before the survey. They reported feeling worried, tense and restless most of the time. 

On the bright side, most of those worst afflicted by mental health symptoms sought help, mainly from family and friends. This mirrors Inside Out 2 – now crowned the highest-grossing animated film of all time with earnings of US$1.7 billion (S$2.3 billion) worldwide – where Anxiety spirals out of control.

The same sense of impending catastrophe can be brought on by “doomscrolling”, or mindlessly scrolling through negative articles and posts online.

It is a word that fits the mental state people slip into when reading about the other phrase being heard more here, the “record-setting high temperature”. It is as if the weather wants to make the outside as hot and pressure cooker-like as people’s insides. 

Outside Singapore, things are not much better. Right after the 2024 presidential election in the United States, one of the top Google searches was for the word “kakistocracy”, meaning “to be ruled by the worst”. The Economist magazine made it its word of the year. 

At the film’s conclusion, Riley integrates Anxiety into her suite of emotions, learning to strike a balance between the negative ones that drive her towards progress and the positive emotions that make her stop and be proud of who she is. 

In a nation built on anxiety – since Singapore became independent against its will, it has been drummed into citizens’ heads that only the paranoid survive – it feels wrong to be taught a lesson about mental health from a coming-of-age movie. 

Remember – in the film, Riley has not learnt how to dwell in a perpetual zone of bliss. For the rest of her life, she will teeter between panic and calm, alternating between feeling alone and feeling like she belongs. 

What Inside Out 2 teaches is that the goal is not to eliminate anxiety, but to find a place in which you are comfortable teetering.

As Singapore faces new challenges – from climate change to geopolitical tensions – perhaps people can learn from Riley’s journey, to acknowledge their anxieties and not be controlled by them.