What Every Therapy Client Should Know 01 - Emotions, Nervous System, and the Hand Model of the Brain

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and this is the first video in a series where I share information that I think EVERY therapy client should know. The first 3 videos in this series I call my “TED Talk” -- every single one of my clients will hear this little speech from me eventually. It helps to frame my philosophy about therapy, emotions, and the nervous system and gives us a common vocabulary for our work together.

We talk a lot about emotions in therapy. And we tend to think of emotions as entirely thought driven -- I'm sad or I'm anxious or I'm angry. But we now know that emotions are actually full-body physiological responses. And more and more, I'm starting to view emotions specifically and mental health in general as simply byproducts of our extremely active nervous systems -- or said differently -- a core part of our neurobiology.

Nervous System
Let's talk about our nervous system for a bit. Our nervous system is made up of our brain, our spinal cord, and the trillions of nerves that transmit signals back from all over your body. And one of the main jobs of your nervous system is to constantly answer the question "Am I safe?" -- "Am I okay right now?" If it senses a threat -- like a coiled up snake, it calls up the sympathetic part of the system which activates fight or flight -- our muscles tense, our hearts beat faster, our lungs take in more air, and blood pumps out to our extremities to get ready to run or to hack that snake into pieces. After we figure out that, actually, that was just a garden hose and not a snake, the parasympathetic part of the system takes over which reverses everything -- it relaxes our muscles, slows down our heart rate and our breathing, and returns blood to our central organs to rest and digest. Sometimes all of that can happen without the thought even registering in our brains "Wow -- there a snake -- I'm scared!" That quick response or emotion, is the byproduct of our finely tuned nervous system. Now let's take a moment to talk about the decision making organ -- the brain.

The Hand Model of the Brain
I could show you a diagram of the brain, but it turns out that we have a pretty good brain model attached to us -- our fist. If you make your hand into a fist, tucking in your thumb, it's a pretty good approximation of our brains. Your arm is the spinal cord, the knuckles are the front of the head, and this is the back. Our brain evolved from the inside out, so all of the most primitive, oldest functions are on the inside and the most sophisticated, shiny, new functions are on the outside. You can think of the brain as divided into 3 parts. The palm represents the reptile brain or the brain stem. It's the part of the brain that would keep you alive if you were in a coma. It regulates your breathing, heart rate, temperature, digestion, and sleeping. The thumb represents the mammal brain. It takes care of emotions, most memory, and contains our alarm system. And the fingers are the human brain. This part takes care of cognitions, rational thought, social behavior, language -- the things that make us human. In the very front of the brain -- your front knuckles -- is the prefrontal cortex which deals with planning, decision making, thinking about cause and effect, and organizing.

Flip Your Lid
So, what happens when we experience something frightening? Our mammal brain (or thumb) sounds the alarm and our human brain (or fingers) go offline and we rely almost entirely on our reptile and mammal brains to make sure that we can survive and get to safety. So, what does this mean in practice? It means that, during peak times of fear or anger, we don't have much access to the human brain that helps us to think, plan, and consider cause and effect -- those functions are largely unavailable and we go into full survival mode until we are safe again. As a simplification, we can demonstrate this by Flipping Our Lid and now we can see that the human brain doesn't have contact with the rest of the brain when we are in crisis mode. Those parts of the brain only reconnect — once we feel safe again.

Join me in the second video in this series where I talk about how we are programmed to respond to threats. And let me know what you think. Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!

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Notes on the video:
Emotions aren't thought driven, more physiological. A byproduct of our nervous systems.
Emotions can happen without thought at times.
Brains developed from the inside out, reptile brain (stem), mammal brain (emotion, memory), human brain,
During peak times of fear or anger,
Thanks for the helpful content!