'Inside Out' helped me better understand my children. 'Inside Out 2 ...

I was apprehensive about a sequel to Pixar’s 2015 film “Inside Out,” which I consider to be a near-perfect movie, given Pixar’s track record with sequels. The follow-ups to the studio’s most beloved films have been good enough at best (“The Incredibles 2,” “Finding Dory”) and straight-up bad at worst (”Cars 2″).

“Inside Out,” which won the Academy Award for best animated feature in 2016, has felt so singular for so long that trying to match the same magic and emotional resonance of it seemed like a project doomed to fail. So I was relieved and delighted to discover that “Inside Out 2″ feels like a natural progression of the story established in the original movie. And I was startled to find that while “Inside Out” helped me better understand my children, “Inside Out 2″ helped me to better understand myself.

“Inside Out,” which opens Friday, features five personified emotions who live in the head of a young girl named Riley. When Riley’s family relocates from Minnesota to the Bay Area and Riley’s inner world is turned upside down, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust had to learn the importance of each emotion in helping Riley recover from the move and start a new life in her new city.

“Inside Out 2″ picks up where “Inside Out” left off. Riley is thriving in the Bay Area and has grown into a kind 12-year-old who excels in school and hockey. The external events of the film take place over a few days at Riley’s hockey camp, which begins the same day an alarm goes off inside Riley’s brain announcing the arrival of puberty, accompanied by a new group of emotions — Embarrassment, Envy, Ennui and Anxiety.

The first third of the movie is full of well-constructed jokes about the personalities of the new emotions — Ennui never looks up from her phone and Embarrassment is a giant, bright-pink blob. Anxiety quickly becomes the focus of Riley’s new brain dashboard, and at first appears to be helpful in helping Riley navigate the early teen years. But when the old emotions question Anxiety’s harried and dictatorial methods, they are bottled up (thereby becoming bottled emotions) and booted out of HQ, along with Riley’s previously established sense of self.

Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust and Joy have to journey through the mind to find Riley’s discarded sense of self. The journey feels familiar to the plot points from the first film, but the creators were wise enough to shorten the amount of time spent in various parts of the mind — stream of consciousness, the vault and a “sar-chasm” — and add new and very funny jokes to avoid too much repetition.

For the first hour of the movie, my 9-year-old and I were charmed, entertained and dazzled by the animation. But I wasn’t yet brought to the same emotional depths as I was during the original film.

To be fair, it’s hard to top Bing Bong.

In a sequence in the middle of the original “Inside Out,” Joy and Sadness, who have been stranded in Riley’s mind, are trying to return to their emotional headquarters. They encounter Riley’s old imaginary friend, Bing Bong — part elephant, part cat and part dolphin with a fluffy cotton candy-like body. Bing Bong escorts Joy and Sadness through various parts of Riley’s mind.

Eventually Joy and Bing Bong find themselves at the bottom of the Memory Dump where memories that are no longer needed fade away. They try to rocket out of the dump, but fail to ascend after many tries. On the final attempt, Bing Bong sacrifices himself by jumping off the rocket, allowing Joy to escape while he fades away in the dump of forgotten memories. I have yet to watch this scene without crying. I can’t talk about this scene without crying. I’m crying now while I’m typing.

At the time of the film’s release, I had a 3-year-old who was right at the peak of her pretend play era. Watching the demise of Bing Bong was a warning of things to come as she would age, go off to school and replace the trappings of her toddler imagination with the thoughts and concerns of an older kid. ”Inside Out” prepared me for the inevitable, and I’ve thought of the scene often as she’s aged.

I assumed the big emotional scene of “Inside Out 2,” if there was one, would be another moment that would cause me to reflect on the rapidly passing childhoods of my children. But instead, the big moment of “Inside Out 2″ forced me to look inward and reflect on my own mental health.

While the core five emotions are away from headquarters, Anxiety has taken control of Riley’s mind, attempting to create a sense of self that best prepares Riley for the future. Her projections are all worst-case scenarios, and every move Riley makes is an attempt to avoid those scenarios. She begins to form new anxiety-based beliefs, which in turn form a new sense of self.

And the moment that reveals what that anxiety-driven sense of self is for Riley is the moment that took my breath away. And then made me cry. I’m crying now just thinking about it.

Because this isn’t just a movie for and about kids.

I, more often than not, let anxiety dictate how I operate and determine my worth. And I, too, have moments where anxiety overrides my brain to disastrous effect. Both Riley’s interior, wherein Anxiety has become a whirlwind force no other emotion can penetrate, and her exterior where Riley is wide-eyed, shaking and short of breath, felt a little too close to my lived experience, as I’m sure it will for any anxiety-prone viewer.

In all the years I’ve had anxiety, since I was roughly Riley’s age, I’ve never seen it depicted so accurately or effectively. Watching the climatic sequence felt like looking in on my own brain, and really understanding, for the first time, how it works when it’s not working well.

It’s not a spoiler to say that this movie has a satisfying resolution as all emotions are eventually restored to their proper place in Riley’s brain. It’s a cathartic resolution to watch, and one I’ll absolutely think about and use as a guide to bring me back down to earth the next time I can feel my anxiety getting away from me.

I asked my daughter if she understood what the movie was about, and she said she did, in the simplest terms. She did add, however, that she doesn’t know what anxiety really means. And I think that’s OK. The best children’s movies are the ones that speak to kids in every phase of their growing years — and speak to their parents as well.