Look. I know you're tired. I know you've been running on fumes and spite and whatever's left in the coffee pot, and the LAST thing you want is some book blogger telling you to Do the Inner Work. But I need you to hear me out, because a Pixar movie about eMoTiOnAl DaMaGe and two therapy besties named Jessica Tomich Sorci, LMFT,PMH-C and Rebecca Geshuri, LMFT,PMH-C (yes I included the letters after their names because I’m a GIRL’S GIRL and they earned it damn you) have apparently been in a secret conspiracy to make you cry twice — once in the theater, and once on your therapist's couch — and I think it's time we talked about it.

"Wait, back the EFFFF up Zee. What even is 'This and That'?" I’m so glad I pretended like you asked. It’s a series I’ve been thinking about almost forever (I’m autistic, my brain either does time as “what is time” or “at 2:34pm on the day I lost my first tooth” and there is no in between) about two separate pieces of media and how I think you should consume them like PB&J, like red wine and blue cheese, like grilled cheese and tomato soup. Because yeah, they’re good separate. But together they are GOOD SOUP. (Yes, that was a Harrow the Ninth Chapter 25th reference, sorry NOT SORRY AT ALL EVEN A LITTLE BIT.)

If you don’t get that reference, I’m going to assume that you will never read Harrow the Ninth because you read my stuff and you read Gideon and didn’t like it. Fine, that’s ok, I don’t get you but I still love you. Spoiler: Harrow makes soup with her bone marrow and uses necromancy to explode someone from the inside out (see above fan art by @naomistares on Tumblr.) Gross but my GOD the cinema! So the analogy is, food so good it will FUCK YOU UP. Damn I’m weird. But you're here so I must assume, gentle reader, that so are youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...

Anyway back to the matter at hand, Inside Out, the Pixar movie, is about a little girl’s named Riley’s feelings, each as its own character in her head. Each of these feelings – aptly named Joy, Disgust, Sadness, Anger, and Fear, have their own feelings and motivations about her move to a different city. New school, new sports, new friends, and the loss of her old ones. And Miss Joy decides to suppress all of the others – especially Sadness - because Riley needs to act happy for her parents, who are also having a tough time. Moving sux.

And it all goes to complete SHIT, as literally everyone could have seen coming. I cried in 2015 over an imaginary elephant.

Which brings me to the book that made me rewatch all of this with my jaw on the floor. When Good Moms Feel Bad is based on this therapy called Internal Family Systems (aka IFS) which basically means your brain is made up of subpersonalities, or "parts," each with its own unique motives. Which is EXACTLY what Inside Out is about. If you’re not a parent, don’t let me lose you here. This is for everyone who has ever been told they needed “self-care” and responded with, “how-the-fuck-do-you-expect-me-to-do-a-spa-day-when-the-world-is-burning?!”

I HATE self-care culture. I detest self-help books. I am a working mother who does this weird book social media thing as a hobby – no, I don’t make money off of this and any money everyone’s ever paid me to do it (and MORE) has gone straight to one of the charities for all of the people currently being shat upon by the world: trans people, Palestinians, immigrants, the list goes on.*

When a therapist or friend or especially an internet blogger insert irony here tells me to get in some self-care, it annoys me. Because doing a face mask does not relieve me of my concern that my 13 year old son may be steered into a red pill pipeline on YouTube. Getting a massage won’t take away my deep and unabiding horror at the genocide my government is funding in Gaza. Picking up a new hobby won’t relieve me of my fear that I’m not doing enough to protect my immigrant friends from being thrown into bedless cells and have their children separated from them to do god knows what with by a masked police force. I have LEGITIMATE feelings and stress that a bath bomb simply will not fix. And nobody has once convinced me that the self-care craze isn’t just another attempt to get me to spend more money on shit I don’t need. Like eyebrow gel. So when a therapy book actually gave me something useful, I was suspicious. I checked for a catch. Reader, there was a catch, but we'll get there.

When Good Moms Feel Bad is the first thing I’ve ever read that gave me some legitimate coping tools that I can use instead of trying to convince me to buy something (spoiler: when I looked up the author’s website, there is a ‘Mom Parts Community’ you can join for the low low price of $29/mo. But hey, even people with good advice have to pay to eat under capitalism, amiright?) I listened to the audiobook for free on Netgalley, but I liked it so much I purchased the book so I can have access to the workbook included.

What are these coping skills, and what do they have to do with Inside Out? WELL. Essentially, every emotion you have is there for reasons. Fear of failure protected you as a child, because your parents would love you more if you met their high expectations. Irritation is an alert to show you your boundaries have been crossed, because when it’s happened before you were in DANGER. Your Inner Critic picks you apart in order to put you back together in a better way, but sometimes it gets stuck in the telling you you’re a shitty person loop. Every shitty feeling has a goal. But how do you keep them from conflicting and eating you alive? It’s actually pretty simple. You Mom them.

New skills? You don’t need them. Expensive seminars? Nope. You already have the experience you need for this from being a mom. So you take each part of yourself, and thank it. And then tell it what you would tell a child who was acting out. Validate, then correct. Mother thyself. “Thank you, Inner Critic, for making me a better person. But please remember, we don’t say critical things to hurt people. We say them in a caring and compassionate way.” Or “thank you, Irritation, for trying to keep me safe, but right now I’m only touched out, I’m not in danger. I’m NOT in danger, you can rest.” Am I telling you to speak to the voices in your head? Yes. Yes I am. Turns out the voices in your head just want to be parented. Which is either deeply healing or deeply horrifying depending on how your own childhood went. Moving on!

I picture those Inside Out style cartoon characters in my head, and I get down on their level and hug them. This is me literally caring for the inner parts of myself. If Joy had just hugged Sadness and said, “you’re right to be sad, this is a sad time! Let me be here with you while you’re sad” then Riley would have never had an emotional collapse (I won’t spoil it for you – seriously you’re missing out if you haven’t seen that movie – seen and consumed critically!) and, well, we wouldn’t have a movie. Something my son and I constantly tell each other as we pick apart movies we watch. (Because critical media consumption is a skill you have to practice with your kids, they can't just learn from being told.)

I would recommend you watch the movie then read the book. Why? I’m not a huge non-fic girlie and I need to entertain myself by finding constant parallels in my non-fic with something that is fun. If you love a self help book, good for you! But I’m a recovering fiction addict and I need to be entertained when I engage in critical thought, ok? “Thank you Inner Critic for the self-deprecating humor, I honestly love that about myself, but you are smart and read critically no matter the genre, so please stop apologizing!”

 * If you read this far, you're already one of my people. Subscribe for $5/month — less than a bath bomb, more useful than a bath bomb, and 100% of proceeds go to humans currently being failed by the world. Big 5 publishing hates us. Let's keep going anyway.