What "How to Train Your Dragon" Teaches Us About Our Emotions

You know those painful emotions we try to push away? The grief, the shame, the anxiety we fight every day? What if they're not our enemies? What if, like the dragons in How to Train Your Dragon, they're vital parts of us that are profoundly misunderstood?

The War That Consumes Everything

In the movie, generations have been spent fighting dragons. Life became only about control and survival - almost no room for building, creating, joy, or anything else that makes life meaningful.

Then Hiccup (the main character) discovers something fundamental: the dragons aren't evil. They're responding to their own circumstances. When he finally stops trying to kill the dragon and approaches with curiosity instead, everything changes.

Your Internal War

This is what happens with painful emotions. We treat them like threats to eliminate.

But emotions aren't problems to solve or eliminate. They're information, responses, protective mechanisms. They're an inherent part of being human.

Yet we're constantly at war with them. And like in the Viking village, this war consumes everything:

• How much energy goes into avoiding or fighting what we feel?

• What do we miss because we're afraid of difficult emotions?

• How small has life become trying to feel safe all the time?

• What matters to us that gets neglected while we're busy fighting ourselves?

For many of us, our whole lives revolve around this internal war, leaving little room for what gives life meaning — connection, creativity, purpose, growth.

Why Fighting Makes It Worse

Here's what psychology has shown: fighting emotions doesn't work. It makes things worse.

Push away grief? It follows us like a shadow. Suppress shame? It grows in the darkness. Run from fear? It chases us into smaller spaces. Fight anxiety? It amplifies, because fighting itself signals danger.

Emotions aren't attacking us. They're either natural reactions to life's challenges, or protective mechanisms that developed when we faced something we couldn't handle at the time. These aren't defects - they're coherent responses to real experiences.

When we attack our emotions, they fight back. They intensify. It's like the Vikings and dragons—the more they fought, the fiercer both sides became.

What Our Emotions Are Actually Doing

Our emotions have functions. They're doing jobs:

• Anxiety tries to keep us safe, scanning for danger. It learned this job when danger was real and constant.

• Shame tries to prevent rejection, keeping us small and hidden. It learned this when being visible meant being hurt.

• Grief expresses love that has nowhere to go—the ache of loss, the weight of caring deeply about what's gone.

• Anger protects our boundaries, saying "this matters" or "I won't be hurt again."

• Numbness protects us from emotional overwhelm, shutting down when everything feels too big.

They're like the misunderstood dragons. They seem threatening, but they're actually trying to help.

What Actually Changes Things

Remember the turning point? Hiccup stops trying to kill Toothless. He approaches with curiosity instead of weapons. He tries to understand instead of destroy.

He discovers dragons have reasons for what they do, and they respond to how they're treated. When approached with understanding, they soften and become allies.

Toothless was never the problem. The relationship to Toothless was the problem.

Emotions aren't the problem. Our relationship to our emotions is the problem.

Instead of: "this emotion is dangerous and must be eliminated"
Try: "this emotion makes sense and has a reason for being here. What is it trying to do? What might it be protecting me from?"

When we stop attacking, emotions don't have to defend themselves. They can soften. When we understand what job they're doing, we can appreciate how they've been trying to help—even if clumsily or in costly ways.

And the enormous energy we were spending on internal war becomes available for actually living.

Ending the War

Just like the Vikings in Hiccup’s village, when we stop fighting, everything shifts. Life stops being about controlling our emotions and starts being about what actually matters—connecting, creating, pursuing what we care about, growing, experiencing joy.

We can feel grief AND connect deeply. We can carry anxiety AND take meaningful risks. We can experience shame AND show up authentically. We can feel anger AND set boundaries while preserving connection.

The emotions don't disappear, but they stop being the enemy. They become information, companions, allies.

The dragons were never the problem. Fighting the dragons was the problem.

Our emotions were never the problem. Fighting our emotions is the problem.

When we stop fighting and start understanding, we get our lives back.

And who knows—we might even fly.