On the outside, Meg LeFauve may look like a calm, cool, and oh-so-professional screenwriter, but on the inside, shes a world class worrier. From an early age, Meg learned to deal with her worries by telling stories, but the idea of becoming a screenwriter in Hollywood was too overwhelming, so she took a detour and became a film producer. Meg was lucky enough to start her career as an executive and producer at Jodie Fosters Egg Pictures, where she spent 10 years learning from the best, and was nominated for an Emmy, a Golden Globe and won a Peabody Awardnone of which allayed her worries. So she decided to face her fear of the blank page and declared herself a screenwriter. As a writer, her fears were indeed realized with beginner drafts and anxious nights, but she also found that joy had entered the equation.Meg set Pixar, the place with the best storytellers in the business, as her beacon, and she got her chance to write with Pete Docter on the first Inside Out, for which she garnered an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay and an Annie Award. She went on to write Pixars The Good Dinosaur, which was nominated for a Golden Globe, and is thrilled to be back for Inside Out 2. She is also grateful to have worked with incredible fellow artists on Marvels Captain Marvel and Cartoon Saloons My Fathers Dragon for Netflix.Meg is currently writing with her husband, Joe Forte, and, after 30 years of navigating the business as individual filmmakers, writing together feels like finally coming home. Meg also finds her joy in travel, collecting weird rocks, and speaking with young artists on her podcast, The Screenwriting Life to lead the next generation of worriers toward their stories.Written by Ryan Bernsten (he/him), Director, Editorial & CopyRYAN:I was extremely touched by this film. I actually saw it two times in one week and I realized this is a perfect film for our Trevor audience to see. I love how you take abstract ideas like how memories form beliefs, which then form a sense of self. Tell me about what youve learned about young peoples sense of self, and what you think a healthy one looks like.MEG:The director, Kelsey Mann, wanted to do a movie about anxiety and how it arrives at that age. Its really that moment when your idea of the world and yourself switches. You become very self-aware and self-conscious. Before this, you lived your life not understanding that other people were looking at you, judging you. You just loved your parents, your parents loved you, and suddenly you became a teenager and all these new emotions arise. As we explored Anxiety the character, we realized that so much of that anxiety is questioning your sense of who you are and shifting from internal to external. And, as a parent, you cant control what your childs sense of self is. Its theirs. Meaning as a parent, sometimes you dont want them to see all those negative things about themselves. But that is a part of growing up. That is a part of knowing yourself, which is so, so important. So we worked really hard to figure out how to communicate that in metaphor with this physical, physical possession of the sense of self. And what I really related to, especially as a woman, is that so much of the external stimulus coming at us from our culture, from our friends, is a need for perfection and its not possible and its not even wanted, in my opinion. Great art comes from failure and imperfection, and your humanity is in there. Your connection to other people is in all of the, shall we say, rougher stuff. And thats what it means to be human. And for me, the most powerful moment in the film is when they all embrace her sense of self. Because you just have to know yourself and love yourself no matter what is coming up, no matter whats happening. So that compassion, that self-compassion as it relates to the sense of self, I think, takes on an incredibly powerful role.I also think theres a deeper question being asked in the film that a lot of people arent talking about, which is, you know, the sense of self as were portraying it, is created from the belief system, which the other writer, Dave Holstein, was very key in helping us figure out how to do that. So what that means is you can ask the question about your own beliefs. Is that true? Youve unconsciously decided who you are or youre deciding who you are. People are telling you who you are. Youve had experiences that you think determine who you are. And sometimes thats true. Sometimes its not true. So it kind of puts the teenager back as it should be, in the drivers seat of themselves and their sense of self, that they have the power.So, for example, thinking, Im not enough. Well, is that true? It may feel that way right now. Youre having that experience. But is that who you are? You have the power to ask those questions. Its a life journey to always be asking yourself, catch yourself with those beliefs and ask, is that true?RYAN:I also love this idea that beliefs are based on memories, but core beliefs sprout from maybe one out of thousands of memories. And some of those memories get sent to the back of mind and forgotten, as we see in the film. We dont actually tell ourselves the whole story.MEG:Listen, Anxiety is fun and she takes up a lot of great discussion around the film. But I agree with you, theres a deeper thing happening in terms of those memories. That memory might have been one moment, right? And it might have just been a moment that doesnt define you, but for some reason your brain maybe because of survival instinct has decided it is you.And I do believe its all about trying to protect you, even unconsciously. It doesnt mean to hurt you with anxiety or which beliefs are being chosen. But always you have the ability to know yourself and ask yourself about it. Okay, that was a memory. That did happen. It was upsetting. I failed that test. But does that mean Im a failure? Does that mean that every test I take will be a failure? Maybe it was that subject. Maybe it was that day. Maybe I had a fight with my mom before the test. Theres a kind of self-knowledge. You know, I went to Greece and we visited the oldest tomb they could find. Across the top of the tomb, it said, Know thyself. Its ancient wisdom and thats the best way to live: know yourself first. And I think theres a lot going on in the world where people dont take the time to know themselves and dont feel brave enough to be self-compassionate. So they put a lot of their stuff on other people.RYAN:I think its a perfect segue. How do you hope that this film, tackling these specific concepts that were talking about, will help young people and adults have better conversations around mental health?MEG:Well, you know, I had a friend who emailed me after seeing the movie with her daughter, and she said in the middle of the movie, her daughter leaned over and said about Anxiety, I feel like that all the time! And my friend didnt know that. So for me, like just lets start at the base level where you can talk about it, right? It might be that your kid says, I never have anxiety. Now you can talk about the fact that other people do and maybe theyre responding to you in a certain way that you dont understand. So to me, its about inclusion and being human. And if we can just talk about our insights without judgment and with compassion, thats a big ripple that can happen. There are adults going to the movie without kids because this is who they are inside too. We all have these emotions. For people to have conversations and have tools to know each other better and have compassion for each other, I think thats incredibly powerful.RYAN:I had a similar experience with people that I went and saw the film with, where we had an hour-long conversation about mental health topics wed never discussed because we had never had the vocabulary that this movie gave us.MEG:I love that.RYAN:Its incredibly powerful. And so you brought up new emotions. Can you tell me how you chose the emotions you did, and what you think we can learn from them?MEG:Well, it was super fun. In terms of choosing them, we had a lot more at the start. We had Guilt and Suspicion and Schadenfreude. We really wanted a cacophony of emotions overwhelming her. But pretty quickly we realized, no, no, we dont need that many. You cant know them well because theres too many to get to know.And so we chose those emotions. And, you know, Kelsey Mann is the director and the creator and so hes choosing the ones that he felt were really incredibly powerful. Its from the research. Its from our Rileys Crew. Its from me being a teenager. Its from watching our kids. So all of that comes together to help us to use these emotions.And also its the ones that we thought would be the most fun.Envy. You know, people think being jealous is bad. And were told, especially as kids, dont be jealous. Well, we think there is no bad emotion. Theyre serving a function for you. So jealousy tells you what you want. And thats incredibly important to know what you want. Maybe you think youre jealous of someone because of her hair. Is it really just her hair now? Maybe I think, I really like her hair, but I really like her confidence. I want to be more confident. It could be I want to be on the lacrosse team. How great to know that! I think that in our culture, it almost feels dangerous for women to know what they want. And I think its really important for girls to start thinking about what they want.Ennui. We have teenagers. For teenagers, Ennui is so fun and dominant, but also important. There are days you should say, you know what? Whatever. Im letting it go. Im not going to do that today. Im going to rest. Im not going to get all worked up about this. Its an important piece of yourself.Embarrassment. Come on. Thats just being a teenager. I love when they had him lay across the console. I thought that was amazing. He was super fun to write to, but I was very embarrassed as a kid. But I love that Embarrassment is about vulnerability. And he has a special connection with Sadness. And Anxiety, you know, at first when we created her, she was a bad guy. She had come into headquarters as a worker and disguised herself so that Joy didnt know Anxiety had arrived and then she took over kind of subversively. She was a monster. (A cute monster because its Pixar.) But she was a monster. And then we realized, no, thats not really quite right about Anxiety, because the truth is she is trying to help. Shes trying to protect you. And I was a very anxious kid.I created this thing in my head long before I even wrote the first movie, where my anxiety would be raging. Maybe I had to go in and pitch in Hollywood, and I would, before the meeting, I would just take some breaths, which is very important to be present. Take breaths, feel your feet, feel your fingers. And then I would say thank you to anxiety because you never want to cut a piece of yourself out. Thats not possible. Theyre just going to get louder, right?Because theyre trying to help you. So I like to say thank you. I know youre trying to protect me. Im going to be okay. So take a seat. And I would imagine a little red chair and Id say, take a seat. Later, I learned to give her a job. Anxiety is good. Shes good at certain things. Give her a job to do. So its really fun that I got to do that in the movie. So every emotion that you have is a part of you. Theres no bad emotion. Thats a lot of judgment to put on yourself. You just have to know its there and have a little self-reflection about whats happening. Why are you feeling that way?RYAN:Yeah, I get a little misty as I was a very anxious child myself. And when I saw that Anxiety tornado, and then in the middle you see her locked on the console. And thats what it feels like. I had never had a visual representation of that feeling. And it just got me so excited that people can come to it and say, this is what anxious people go through.MEG:And whatevers happening, you know that you can get support. And you know, you might need more support. You might need a therapist to talk to you. You might need medication. And its okay to know yourself, know whats going on, and what support you need. I just thought what Kelsey did as a director to create that visual was just stunning, Absolutely beautiful.RYAN:My last question for you. Youve brought up this Rileys Crew project. So, you know, were a mental health organization for young people and we think it is so cool that you actually had a panel of young people to help create this film. Im wondering if you wanted to tell me a little bit about that and let me know. What is one thing you wish everyone knew about how young peoples markets work that they might not understand or think about?MEG:Well, whats interesting is that I love the Rileys crew, and I think that what I was surprised about, to be honest with you, because of my own prejudice against young people or unconscious bias against young people was they took it very seriously. They came very, very prepared. They had notes. They type them up or wrote them up. They cared. They wanted to help. And I just love that about them. And they were brave. And they talked about what they saw and what they liked and what they didnt. And theyre really smart. Theyre really smart and they have something to say. And we need to listen to what they have to say.RYAN:I dont always think we know how to talk about mental health in a way that is fresh and productive. And I think your movie does that. So thank you.MEG:Thank you. And you know, I loved the end of the movie where Joy is called back to the console because ultimately joy is self-compassion and you just have to let yourself off the hook and love wherever you are, you know?RYAN:Words to live by.If you or someone you know is feeling hopeless or suicidal, our trained crisis counselors are available 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386 via chat www.TheTrevorProject.org/Get-Help, or by texting START to 678-678.The post A Conversation With Inside Out 2 Writer Meg LeFauve appeared first on The Trevor Project.