The Andersen Family
from “Inside Out” Kim Huber ABSN 39 | N480
Meet the Andersens
Riley Andersen:
• Industry vs Inferiority
• Riley is an 11 (almost 12) year old girl who loves hockey. Her family moves from their happy life in Minnesota to San Francisco. This move is a big life change for Riley, and she undergoes a dramatic change as a result.
• Riley’s leading emotion is joy. Riley is defined as a happy, honest goofball who loves hockey. When she moves to San Francisco, she becomes sadder and misses her old life. She even starts crying the first day at her new school because she misses her friends.
• Riley begins losing some of the aspects of her childhood that defined her such as her imaginary friend Bing Bong, deciding not to try out for the local hockey team, and giving her parents attitude, which is something she had never done before. This is a dramatic shift from the happy go-lucky Riley in Minnesota.
• Riley gets progressively more depressed and finally decides to run away from home and take a bus back to Minnesota. She steals money out of her mother’s purse, destroying her previously honest image. It is only after she has boarded the bus and thought about all the happy memories with her family that she decides to return home and embrace her new life.
Jill Andersen:
• Generativity vs Stagnation
• Jill Andersen is Riley’s mom and is about 40 years old. She is focused on getting her family through their cross country move.
• Jill is very warm, understanding, and clearly loves her daughter Riley. When Riley runs away, she realizes very quickly and becomes extremely upset. Jill’s leading emotion is sadness, which means that Jill likely can relate to Riley’s depressive state.
• Jill sometimes gets frustrated with her husband and his oblivious personality. She occasionally fantasizes about her previous fling with a Brazilian helicopter pilot, but ultimately loves her husband and thinks of him as an adorable idiot.
Bill Andersen:
• Generativity vs Stagnation
• Bill Andersen is Riley’s dad and is about 40 years old. His family moved to San Francisco so that he could work for a start up company. He is shown as very stressed with the move and his new job.
• Bill’s leading emotion is anger, which is apparent in the movie with arguments with his wife and his discipline style with Riley. However, he corrects this and apologizes for his inappropriate responses to conflict. Bill’s focus aside from his career is to provide for his family and make sure they are happy.
Family Functions & Dynamics
• Riley’s dad, Bill, is the patriarch of the family and provides for the family’s financial needs. He prefers to deal with the more practical aspects of providing for the family.
• Jill is a stay-at-home mom and uses her warmth and understanding to provide for her family’s emotional needs. She understands the difficulty of the move for Riley and does her best to highlight the happy moments. She also makes efforts to cheer Riley up by taking her out for pizza and finding a new hockey team for Riley to try out for.
• Both parents are supportive of Riley and want her to be happy. They are very enthusiastic about Riley’s hockey team and even show up in face paint to a game, much to Riley’s chagrin.
Duvall’s Family Life Cycle
• The Duvall Family Life Cycle begins with the married couple and follows them through their life raising a family and ultimately ends with the original couple passing away (Lang, 2022).
• The Andersen falls into the “family with school-age children” part of the life cycle. However, they will soon be a family with an adolescent as Riley is turning 12 soon. This means they will be focused on providing guidance to Riley with school involvement but will also be adjusting to a new parentchild relationship with more independence. This begins to show itself with Riley testing boundaries and running away from home. Additionally, the parents will begin to focus on their relationship and career issues. Bill and Jill have started bickering occasionally and Bill is also stressed by his new job. The Andersen family is beginning to slowly adjust to a new family phase.
Strengths
• Support for each other
Outward displays of affection
Celebration of each others’ accomplishments
Ability to have fun and be silly
Comforting each other when upset
Open to talking and admitting fault after conflict
Weaknesses
Jill and Bill show stress and argue in front of Riley
Bill’s discipline practicessending Riley to her room rather than checking in about what is wrong
Toxic positivity: always encourage happiness despite the circumstances
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Communication Practices
Cultural/Religious Traditions
• The Andersens are a white, middle to lower upper socioeconomic class family who have lived in Minnesota up until recently. They do not have a professed religious tradition, but they are very passionate about hockey. Riley says up until this move they would go to the lake every weekend to skate. Moving to Minnesota is a serious disruption to their previous family practices. The Andersens are also getting used to a new San Francisco culture, discussing how odd it is that they put broccoli on pizza and the many cans they now use to sort their garbage.
• The family places a great importance on Riley being happy, which results in them putting pressure on Riley being happy all the time. Jill encourages Riley to “keep smiling” for her dad since he is so stressed at work right now without regard for how Riley might be feeling about her first day at a new school. Bill checks in with Riley and expresses he doesn’t understand where their “happy girl went.”
• When Riley has a difficult first day at school, she is afraid to express that she is upset so she has an outburst at the dinner table. This then results in a miscommunication between the parents on how to handle Riley, causing subsequent conflict between Jill and Bill. It is clear they have not had to deal with many negative emotions coming from Riley before.
• After Riley tries to run away, the family realizes that it is important for her to express how difficult the move from Minnesota has been so she can start her new life in San Francisco. Jill, Bill, and Riley all talk about things that they miss about Minnesota and support each other in their sadness.
• Nonverbally, the family uses affection like hugs to comfort each other when they are upset.
Family Systems Theory
• Family systems theory has four crucial concepts that make up the theory:
1. All parts of the family system are interconnected
2. The family as a whole is more than the individual family members
3. The family system has boundaries or borders between the system and the environment it dwells within
4. Family systems can be broken down into smaller systems within the larger systems.
• Riley is struggling from ineffective coping as a result of her move from Minnesota to San Francisco. However, this ineffective coping does not stop with just Riley. It affects all members of the family, causing conflict and tension amongst and with her parents.
• Riley likely inherited these ineffective coping mechanisms from her parents and has difficulty talking about her emotions with them.
• Riley is only able to feel better and reconnect with her family once she overcomes these inherited ineffective coping mechanisms and talks about her feelings.
Dysfunctional family process related to Riley’s depression and ineffective coping causing difficulties in familial communication and increased familial conflict Interventions
1. Refer for family therapy and other-family oriented resources. Rationale: Evidence based interventions targeting affected family members have been shown to improve health outcomes for all family members (Ventura & Bagley, 2017).
2. Teach reflexive and expressive writing to address emotions. Rationale: Researchers have found coping improvements in self-controlling and positive reappraisal when journaling is used as an intervention (Jenkins et al, 2013).
3. Facilitate participation in mutual help groups. Rationale: Mutual help groups appear to mobilize the same change processes, such as coping, motivation, and self efficacy, which are mobilized by many different types of professionally led groups (Kelly et al, 2013).
Outcomes
1. Participate in a therapy session as a family once a week for a month.
2. Journal daily regarding emotions for a week.
3. Attend a pre-teen mental health support group once a week for a month.
References
Images:
dashthebomber. (n.d.). Inside Out. Swashbucklingsailor. Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://swashbucklingsailor.wordpress.com/tag/inside-out/ Desowitz, B., & Desowitz, B. (2015, June 20). Immersed in Movies: Pete Docter Talks Dinner Scene and Growing Up in “Inside Out.” IndieWire. https://www.indiewire.com/2015/06/immersed-in-movies-pete-docter-talks-dinner-scene-and-growing-up-in-inside-out123263/ Joy. (n.d.). Inside out Wikia. https://insideout.fandom.com/wiki/Joy Milligan, M. (2015, May 29). Clip: “Inside Out Riley’s Memories.” Animation Magazine. https://www.animationmagazine.net/2015/05/clip-inside-out-rileys-memories/ Mrs. Andersen. (n.d.). Disney Wiki. Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Mrs._Andersen
Riley Andersen. (n.d.). Inside out Wikia.
Riley Scores A Hockey Goal — Watch New Clip From “Inside Out”! (n.d.). Riley Scores a Hockey Goal — Watch New Clip from “inside Out”! | inside Out, Movies : Just Jared Jr.. Retrieved October 25, 2022, from https://www.justjaredjr.com/2015/06/02/riley scores a hockey goal watch new clip from inside out/ Sadness. (n.d.). Inside out Wikia. https://insideout.fandom.com/wiki/Sadness Untitled. (2022). Pinimg.com. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d0/5f/be/d05fbe3f4058b3cb3c4833fcb2c454e2.jpg
Resources
Ackley, B.J., Ladwig, G.B., Makic, M.B., Martinez-Kratz., & Zanotti, M. (2020). Nursing diagnosis handbook: An evidence-based guide to planning care. (12th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby, Inc.
Kaakinen, J., Duff-Gedaly, V., Hanson, S. & Coelho, D. (2015). Family health care nursing: theory, practice, and research (5th ed.). F.A. Davis: Philadelphia Lang, D. (2020, May 18). Family development theory. Parenting and Family Diversity Issues.