"INSIDE OUT" GETS IT RIGHT!

I recently saw the movie "Inside Out" with my wife and two of our friends.  The mother of a 9 year old that I treat had recommended that I see the movie.  

The movie is about the feelings that a 11 year old girl named Riley has as she leaves behind her home in Minnesota and moves to San Francisco.  Her feelings are depicted by characters identified as sadness; anger; joy; fear; and disgust. Joy takes charge and attempts to keep Riley feeling happy.  Joy feels that she must contain and limit sadness so sadness doesn't infect the other feelings with sadness. Over the course of the movie it becomes clear to Joy that Riley needs her sad feelings to help her to cope with the move from Minnesota to San Francisco.  When she is able to feel her sadness, Riley is able to share her feelings with her parents about missing Minnesota.  This allows Riley to let go of her missing Minnesota and start to have feelings about San Francisco.  Dacher Keltner and Paul Ekman were hired as consultants for the movie and their piece on the op-ed page of the New York Times on July 5, 2015 indicated that they were disappointed that sadness was portrayed as limited and contained.  However, I think that the movie does a good job portraying what happens when we hold our feelings in and often then we are stuck not being able to let go of our worries and not able to move on.  When we hold our feelings in, our brains interpret this as a problem and then focus on trying to solve this problem.  We are therefore stuck and not able to let go of the worries.

Sadness is important as are all our emotions are.  To deny them or hold them in and not show them requires a lot of work from our brain and this occupies our brain and blocks us from experiencing our feelings and moving on with our life.  

It is also important to note that happiness was not one of the emotions that Riley was experiencing.  So, may be it is possible to feel sadness or any other emotion and still be happy.  What do you think?