CLEVELAND — Inside Out 2 hit theaters June 14, but it’s a project that Lisa Damour has helped on for four years. In May 2020, Disney’s Pixar called her looking for her help with the sequel.

What You Need To Know

  • Lisa Damour got a call in May 2020 to help work on Inside Out 2 

  • She's been a practicing psychologist for nearly 30 years 

  • She taught people working on the film about adolescent development

“They told me that they were working on Inside Out 2, that the main character Riley would now be a teenager and so we began a four-year conversation about adolescence, girls and anxiety in particular,” she said.

Damour is a psychologist that has practiced for nearly 30 years and primarily works with teenagers.

“For films like this to get it right about what development looks like in teenagers, how emotions change overtime, how intense they become in adolescents, is an extraordinary service to families everywhere,” she said.

She is also a professor at Case Western Reserve University. While working with Pixar, she explained that she helped teach people who were working on the film about adolescent development, which is a path in her career she didn’t think she would take.

“When you’re defending your dissertation in a windowless room in Ann Arbor, you don’t see this coming…and it’s fun,” she said.

Damour explained that this movie helps to normalize negative and uncomfortable emotions, like anxiety and fear.

“The gift of this film is to do some level-setting about what mental health is and mental health is not about feeling good. It’s about having feelings that fit what’s happening and then managing those feelings well,” she said.

Damour expressed that it’s a message everyone needs to hear right now.