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Emotion Coaching Part 9 - Flooding or Flipping your Lid

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This is part 9 of our Emotion Coaching caregiver series. Jonathan Andrus, School Counselor at Elk Ridge Elementary, describes what happens when children and parents are overwhelmed by emotion and "flip our lid." For more information, visit the Gottman Institute at gottman.com or read "Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child" by Dr. John Gottman.

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Hello White River families. Welcome back. My name is Jonathan Andrus and I'm the school counselor Elk Ridge Elementary. I apologize for missing a week but we're back with part 9 of our Emotion Coaching parenting series. Today we're going to talk about flooding, or flipping your lid. This is something I teach kids from time to time and so I want to let parents know that this exists and how it can help you guys with emotional regulation and your kids and then yourselves. So....let's talk about flipping your lid. The Brain in your Hand model is something Dr. Siegal started in 2010 and it's a great way to teach this. So, we'll do a little bit of brain anatomy science today. So there's three main parts of the brain. The brainstem is kind of like the spinal cord that's going down from your brain, down your neck. That is where all of your automatic functions are housed. So your heart beating, telling yourself to breathe, or blink your eyes. All the things that are just happening without us consciously thinking about it. The brainstem is what's in charge of that. And then in the middle here the thumb that gets kind of curled around here in the center, that's the mid-brain. There's lots of things that are housed there. So the hippocampus or what's important for us is the amygdala is here in the middle and that is where all of our emotions are housed. That is where our brain processes warning signs, the fight, flight or freeze response is here in the middle of the brain. It's where all the emotions and feelings are housed. And then what's curled over top, kind of the cap or the core or the helmet here, is the cortex. And what's in the front here, kind of in our forehead area, is the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that continues to develop even into adulthood, and it's where a lot of logical thought or higher level thinking takes place. Problem solving is housed here. And so what we'll find is, if we're getting upset and feelings are coming, big feelings are coming, I teach this with kids, that center piece, that amygdala is what's processing that. And it's kind of like a heartbeat almost. So as we get more and more upset or have bigger and bigger feelings it's kinda like a thump....thump... and as that continues to grow, eventually we get to the point where we flip our lid. And this is when the cortex, the rational thought, everything that's kind of covered over the top of our brain, that just goes offline. So there's times when we are overly agitated and then problem solving and critical thinking, all of that goes out the window. And all that we're operating with left, is our amygdala, our feelings or emotions. The fight, flight or freeze response. For kids I teach this as almost like the Incredible Hulk. So maybe Bruce Banner is getting a little bit upset, and then as soon as the Hulk comes out {poof} That's us flipping our lid. And, there's times that we do good problem solving when we've flipped our lid, but most the time that is when we are acting without thinking, feeling without thinking, that's where the problems really occur. So as much as we can we want our kids to keep that lid from not flipping, and so even when there's emotions coming and we're almost going to flip our lid, there's lots of things we can do still to calm down. But once we get to this, both in kids and in parents, it's hard to problem solve. So knowing the difference between us being just being a little agitated, and flipping our lid. So the prefrontal cortex is in charge of a lot of things. Body regulation, the ability to control our nervous system, diffusing hormones to either amp us up or down regulate us. The prefrontal cortex makes a lot of decisions in that area. The ability to tune in to someone else, perspective taking, empathy, compassion, putting ourselves in someone else's shoes. As parents and kids we see this. When we've flipped our lid, it's hard to pay attention to our kid, and really listen to them. And for kids it's hard to take someone else's perspective, being flexible in our responses. Our prefrontal cortex is in charge of the pauses that we take. Being able to think through what's the best action to take. Because even kids know, when they're calm they know, I'm a little upset. Someone just cut me in line. I know I'm not supposed to push them, or punch them, because I can think about what's going to happen if I do. That only happens if we're still online here. With the prefrontal cortex, we can predict our consequences, right? The consequences of an action. So being able to think through what's the best step to take, the best action. We can override our fear response and what emotions are telling us to do, because able to talk through. I know I'm nervous right now, but I know I can't run away, I have to take care of this, right? We can override the emotions that are growing inside us. And then all the problem solving we can only if our prefrontal cortex is still online. I think about as parents and as kids we want this to be online as much as possible. So thinking about this in terms of flipping your lid, as parents we can build awareness in this. And then kids, they know they can start feeling when they're about to flip their lid, and how to stop. So always, for more information you can visit gottman.com, or shoot me an email or read his book. I'm more than willing to answer any questions you guys have. I'll be back next week. Take care.

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