Did you know that your emotions come from your
brain? There's no such thing as a bad emotion. Every emotion like happy, sad, angry or anxious
has an important role to play. Everyone has emotions – kids, teenagers, and adults. Emotions
can help us work out how to respond or behave in different environments and situations.
Sometimes our emotions can get really big they can start to bubble up and up until they
come out quickly in ways that are not very kind or helpful to ourselves and others. We might feel
so frustrated or angry that we react by screaming at someone even though it could get us into
trouble or hurt their feelings. We may feel so overwhelmed with how hard our homework is that we
might throw it away or run into our room crying. By understanding how our brains work we can
begin to understand our emotions. Then we can learn ways to help calm down big emotions and
express them in more helpful and positive ways. The brain can be tough to understand so let's
break it down into three main parts that help guide our emotions. The first part of our brain is
our smart brain, also known as our frontal lobe. Our smart brain helps us with things like reading,
writing, solving problems, thinking clearly and even with how we communicate. The second part of
our brain is our emotional brain. The emotional brain is in charge of the storing and sorting of
emotions and memories. The third part of our brain is the survival brain, also known as our brain
stem. This part of the brain is responsible for our body's basic functions, things like our
breathing, heart rate, movement, sleep and more. It can help our bodies respond quickly in
dangerous situations to help keep us safe. But when we feel really strong emotions our smart
brain can go temporarily offline. This is so our emotional brain can focus on sending messages
to our survival brain to respond as quickly as it can to help keep us safe. This can be really
helpful for keeping us safe when we're in danger like if we came across a bear and our body needed
to respond quickly without having time for the smart brain to think it through. But our brain
can't always tell the difference between danger and when we're just feeling really big emotions
like stress. So while the smart brain turning off can be really helpful in certain situations,
like needing to run away quickly from a bear or an angry dog, it wouldn't be so helpful in times when
we have big emotions. In those times we need our smart brain to help us think clearly like when we
have a test coming up or have to give a speech. A big part of being able to manage our emotions
is learning how to notice when our smart brain is about to switch off and finding out what we
can do to keep the smart brain switched on. Our brain has evolved to help us stay
safe from danger. When our brain is really stressed and thinks we're in danger, it
tries to keep us safe by triggering a response called, 'Fight, flight, freeze'. This is our
brain's natural reaction to danger. For example, if you came across a bear and felt in danger your
smart brain will go temporarily offline and your emotional and survival brains will take charge.
This is because if a bear was about to attack you, you wouldn't need to know what kind of bear it
is, your body just needs to respond quickly to keep you safe. You might try to attack the bear
– that's a fight response. You might try to run away and hide from the bear – that's flight. Or
you might stay perfectly still and try not to move and hope the bear doesn't see you – that's
freeze. We live in a world that's full of stress, so our brain can't always tell the difference
between day-to-day stress and stress because we're in danger. Stuff like homework, fighting
with friends, or public speaking can still trigger our fight, flight, freeze response
– even if we're not in any physical danger. Like if you're feeling stressed because
of a speech you have to do at school, you might feel like yelling or screaming – that's
your fight response. You might want to run off stage and hide – that's your flight response. Or
you might freeze in place and not be able to get the words out – that's your freeze response.
The good news is that there are lots of things we can do to help calm these big feelings
down and keep the smart brain switched on. Tip One: If you can learn how to calm down
your body this can help to calm down your survival brain. You can do this by doing physical
things like taking deep breaths, going for a run, or having a shower. Tip Two: Calming down your
thoughts can help calm down your emotional brain. You can do things like meditation, mindfulness, or
activities that use your five senses. Tip Three: Keep your smart brain switched on.
Do things your smart brain is good at like communicating with a trusted
adult, talking to a counsellor, reading a book, or writing your thoughts
down. Calming yourself down takes practise, so to get really good at managing those big
emotions you have to keep practising.
