The Neurobiology of “The Moment” –
First, it is important to understand why our brains cannot solve problems, have complex thoughts, be reflective or use our language centers very well or at all, in the moment.
Dan Siegel created the “hand model of the brain,” which visually shows how the prefrontal cortex (just behind your forehead) helps keep our emotional centers in check.
– Hold up your hand, fold your thumb across your palm. Your thumb represents your emotional centers, also called your limbic system.
– Now fold your fingers down over your thumb. This is your prefrontal cortex, or PFC. Your PFC is in charge of problem-solving, making good decisions, having understanding, reflective capacity and cognition.
When our PFC is connected to your emotional centers, you can make good decisions about what to do when we experience big emotions. Even if something is frustrating or difficult you can still think through and reflect on meaning and what might be needed.
– To take it one step further, when your PFC and limbic system are talking to each other, anxiety and anger can be motivating, action-oriented forces to help you make positive change when you sense something wrong with the world.
– To show what happens when your emotions are too intense, when we are really overwhelmed, over stimulated or are experiencing a trauma trigger – flip your fingers back up. This is called “flipping your lid.” Now, your PFC is not connected to your limbic system. You are acting with raw emotion.
Your limbic system is really good at protecting you, but it is not a thinking part of your brain.
It does not know the difference between the threat posed by a tiger about to eat you, and the threat posed by too many new things happening all at once, a reminder of a past trauma event/experience, or broccoli for dinner when you were planning on macaroni cheese.
It is now left with the most primitive part of the brain, right at the back, available for decisions, and this part only has fight flight, freeze and please and appease, our most basic stress responses available to it. The choice of which one(s) we take is outside of our conscious control. Our threat response system is now in control and making choices for us.
We might not only feel really unrecognisable to ourselves, we might look really unrecognisable to others too, as we appear angry, fearful, frozen, collapsing, incredibly distressed and often behaving in ways that may seem really out of context or unreasonable/mismatched to the situation and out of character.
Our brains got super stressed and reacted. It’s important to remember we didn’t choose that!
When this part of our brains and nervous systems takes over, you don’t have capacity to make good choices, reflect, dialogue with people or respond in the ways we would usually.
All we can do is fight, flight, freeze or please and appease, often cycling through them all.
Learning to notice when we are beginning to “flip your lid”, by knowing what our triggers are and also learning to sense the changes in our bodies, thoughts and feelings, can help us to start developing ways of managing, doing things differently and communicating our needs and feelings to others. This in time can help to reduce meltdowns and trauma trigger responses.