insideout

“Thirteen years of work wrapped up with what some might call our masterpiece.”
―Joy


The Sense of Self is an object installed inside Headquarters in the film Inside Out 2.

History

The Sense of Self is built from the Memories contained in the Belief System. When activated, it says its main belief.

If a new Sense of Self is created, the Belief System will light up and will send a wave of light through the strings to the holder, causing a new Sense of Self to grow. In a event where the Sense of Self is blocked from growing, the white holder will blink white until the new one can grow.

It first appeared when Grace dropped her coins during a presentation. Disgust didn't want to help Grace but then Riley's Sense of Self appeared, which helps Riley make good choices, so she went to help her.

The Sense of Self continued to grow until Anxiety showed up and tried to change Riley by ripping the Sense of Self off the holder and sending it to the Back of the Mind.

Slowly but surely, Anxiety used her own memories to build a new Sense of Self and Belief System. On the last day of camp, Envy panicked, because they needed a completed Sense of Self. Anxiety picked a few memories off the shelf and threw them into the pool of memories and formed her new Sense of Self. The new one said, "I'm not good enough." With this anxious belief, Riley tried to score three goals at hockey, pushed herself too far, injured Grace, and got a penalty. Anxiety panicked and caused an anxiety attack.

Emotions aren't able to have control on what belief is created from a memory. An example is Anxiety trying to make Riley better, but ended up making Riley feel not good enough. The Sense of Self is able to override an emotions action depending on the beliefs. Another example is Anxiety making Riley go to the other team, which she hesitated to do due to her Sense of Self. If it is unplugged, then it is unable to override any emotion's actions.

If no Sense of Self is present when a string is plucked in the Belief System, then a small part of it grows. Otherwise, the wave of light will travel through every string in the Sense of Self and says its main belief before going back down.

When the Belief System was flooded with the bad memories, it made new beliefs and the holder flashed with the white light. Joy noticed this and completely removed the old Sense of Self, causing the new one to grow. When activated, many new beliefs could be heard and the Sense of Self shifted shape and color depending on the emotion and belief.

Beliefs

Riley's old Sense of Self included the beliefs:

"New Riley's" Sense of Self included the beliefs:

Riley's newly formed Sense of Self included the beliefs:

Notes and Trivia

Gallery