Lesson 10 Our Brains and Strong Emotions - N.A.B.B. How Can We Help Our Brains To Deal With Strong Emotions?

Brain Basics! Our amazing brains are constantly at work, thinking, feeling, sensing, sending and receiving messages from our bodies, planning, creating, learning…… Different parts of the brains do different things. The human brain has evolved and changed over millions of years. Some parts are older than others! The two parts of the brain we will be learning about today are the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala.

What is the job of the Amygdala? We actually have two amygdalae, one on each side of our brains. They are small and almond shaped. The job of the amygdala is to keep us safe. It was part of the brains of the very earliest humans. It switches on when we feel that we are in danger or under threat. It gets our bodies ready for fight or flight by sending chemicals into our bloodstream . These chemicals make our hearts pump faster, sending oxygen to our arms and legs- so we are ready to run away or defend ourselves! That’s great if we are being chased by a tiger!

What is the job of the Prefrontal Cortex? The prefrontal cortex is at the front of the brain, just behind the forehead. It does lots of important jobs like: clear and reasonable thinking, deciding, planning, logical thinking and controlling our impulses. Pretty important, wouldn’t you agree?

Strong Emotions We all feel strong emotions sometimes, which is a normal part of life. Sometimes we can get very overwhelmed and upset by certain strong emotions. Can you name any? Anger, rage, fury, stress, panic, anxiety, loneliness, disappointment, emptiness, sadness, frustration, embarrassment, terror, guilt, powerlessness, hurt, rejection…. Can you tell about a time when you felt like this?

Let’s see what’s happening in our brains when we feel overwhelmed by a strong emotion When we feel a strong overwhelming emotion, it means that the amygdala has become very active. Sometimes it becomes too active because it thinks we are in real, immediate danger. It makes us act quickly without giving ourselves much time to think! Perfect….. if we have to run for our lives!!!

Amygdala Hijack! When the amygdala becomes too active, it takes control of the rest our brain. This means that we CANNOT USE our prefrontal cortex! What do you think the consequences of this are ? It means that we can’t use that amazing part of our brains which helps us to respond calmly and reasonably to whatever is happening. As a result, we often end up losing control of ourselves, and doing and saying things which we are sorry about later! Has this ever happened to you?

The Good News – The 90 second rule! The good news is that it only takes 90 seconds for all of the chemicals which are rushing through your body when your amygdala starts to become active, to completely drain out of your body! Of course, our overwhelming emotion usually lasts a lot longer than that! Can you think of why? It’s because we can’t stop thinking about what happened, so our amygdala doesn’t get turned back down! We get all sorts of negative thoughts which keep us feeling overwhelmed!

How can we use the 90 second rule to help us feel calmer? We can take 4 steps to give our brains 90 seconds to allow our amygdala to turn off, and get our Prefrontal Cortex to turn back on. These steps are called N. A. B. B. Let’s find out what they stand for…….

N.A.B.B. N.: NAME the strong emotion. By naming it, you start to switch the prefrontal cortex back on! A.: ACCEPT the strong emotion. It’s happened so don’t fight it now. Just ride the waves of the emotion! B.: BREATHE! Bring your attention to your breath and try to take some deep breaths. Your prefrontal cortex needs oxygen to get going! B.: BODY! Connect to your body as you breathe. This will help you to keep your attention away from negative thoughts which keep your amygdala turned on.

Over to you…..

Have a look! Let’s see other children talking about how they use N.A.B.B. (click image) www.otb.ie/wwb-emotional-regulation

Tools of Resilience End of Lesson 10