Stoplight ABCs: Behavior

In this episode, Stoplight trainer Sarah Ganger continues with the building blocks for emotional intelligence, discussing Behavior.

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Transcript

Welcome back to The Stoplight Approach Podcast, where brain science is made simple. I am your host, Sarah Ganger. In the first two episodes, we reviewed the very basics of The Stoplight Approach. If you haven’t listened to those yet, I would encourage you to stop here and listen to those first. They will be helpful for understanding what we are discussing today.

As we mentioned last time, The Stoplight Approach draws on the work of Dr. Daniel Goleman and his book Emotional Intelligence. We talked about the first area of emotional intelligence, the A of Awareness, in the previous episode. Today, we will be discussing the second area of emotional intelligence, which is self-regulation. Using the ABCs of The Stoplight Approach, we use the letter B for Behaviour to help us remember self-regulation.

It would be helpful first to define self-regulation. Self means “me” or “you”. “Self” refers to myself, to yourself, to an individual person. “Regulation” is the ability to control, or to regulate, emotions, thoughts and actions. So self-regulation is an individual person’s ability to control his or her own emotions, thoughts and actions.

The reason that The Stoplight Approach uses a “B” for Behaviour to remember self-regulation is because behaviour is the part of regulation that you can see. A person’s ability to self-regulate is seen in that person’s behaviour. For example, a person who is very skilled in the area of self-regulation will appear level-headed and calm in the midst of a stressful situation. The calm behaviour of the person in the middle of stress is what lets you know that they have high self-regulation skills.

In the same way, the behaviour of a person who has fewer self-regulation skills can also be seen. This person may react in any number of emotional ways in a stressful situation. Their behaviour could appear angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, panicked, helpless or controlling, just to name a few.

So, The Stoplight Approach uses “B” for Behaviour to remember self-regulation because behaviour is what you see. Behaviour is what gives you a clue about a person’s level of self-regulation, including your own.

Looking at Behaviour in the context of Red Brain, Yellow Brain, Green Brain is very insightful. It can give understanding into what a person would find helpful in each of those brain states.

Let’s take Red Brain as an example. In the previous episode, we discussed how the main task of the brain stem, or the Red Brain, is to keep your body alive and safe. As a result, what the Red Brain needs more than anything is to feel safe. Becoming AWARE of what Red Brain feels like in our bodies and looks like in our relationships was our focus of the last episode. This AWARENESS can help us as we work on building skills to regulate or BEHAVE in certain ways while we are in Red Brain. More than anything, the Red Brain needs to feel safe. This means that when the Red Brain is triggered, when we become AWARE of those Red Brain sensations in our body, what our Red Brain needs to experience CALMING. By CALMING, I mean any activity that will send the message to the Red Brain, “It is okay. I am safe. I appreciate you alerting me, but everything is okay. You can calm down now.” One of the most simple calming techniques is deep breathing. It is simple, but it is not easy. Especially in Red Brain. Red Brain automatically sends a signal to your lungs to take quicker and more shallow breaths. So taking deep, slow breaths while in a Red Brain state is more challenging than it sounds. But doing so can let your Red Brain know that it is safe and it is okay for it to calm down. Other CALMING activities include things that are rhythmic, like bouncing up and down or hopping from one foot to the other, dancing or singing. Doing one of these CALMING activities while in Red Brain can help grow self-regulation and enable us to access safer responses and healthier behaviours while in Red Brain.

Self-regulation is also necessary for our Yellow Brain. In the previous episode, we discussed how one of the main tasks of the limbic system, or the Yellow Brain, is to send alerts about different needs that your body has or different emotions that you are experiencing. As a result, what the Yellow Brain needs more than anything is to experience CONNECTION. The Yellow Brain needs to feel seen, heard and valued. The Yellow Brain needs to know the alerts that it is sending are being understood and attended to. As we have said before, the Yellow Brain can also be the trickiest to understand because it sends alerts in response to such a wide variety of human experiences. Becoming AWARE of what Yellow Brain feels like in our bodies and looks like in our relationships was the focus of the last episode. This AWARENESS is so important as we work on building skills to regulate or BEHAVE in certain ways while we are in Yellow Brain. Helping the Yellow Brain to experience connection might look like noticing an emotion or feeling in your body and being curious about it. Asking yourself simple questions like “when was the last time I ate or had a drink of water or got up to move around?” “what might this feeling of tension or fluttery feeling in my stomach be trying to let me know?” For many people who are used to staying busy and quickly moving from one activity to the next, this practice of pausing to notice and be curious can be very challenging at first. But developing this practice will go a long way in helping your Yellow Brain feel CONNECTED – seen, heard, understood and attended to.

The Green Brain is where self-regulation skills can be learned and can grow and flourish. Being in a Green Brain state is a great time to practice some of these behaviours that can be helpful during Red Brain and Yellow Brain moments. It is beneficial to use Green Brain moments to brainstorm and figure out what practices are calming and connecting for you. Green Brain moments are also the perfect time to practice and nurture calming habits such as deep breathing and connecting habits such as curiosity and checking in with your body and so that those practices are easier to access and draw from when times of Red Brain and Yellow Brain happen.

As always, I would like to end our episode today with a simple practice that you can take with you into your week. If you did the practice from the previous episode and still have the Stoplight that you drew for that episode’s exercise, please get it out now. If you don’t have it, no worries, please get out a sheet of paper or the page of a journal and draw a stoplight. The top circle should be labelled or coloured Red. The middle circle should be labelled or coloured Yellow. The bottom circle should be labelled or coloured Green. 

Looking at your Stoplight, please recall a time in the past few days that you were in a Red Brain state, a Yellow Brain state or a Green Brain state. Remembering the situation where you were in Red Brain, try to imagine what rhythmic activity might have helped you – Deep breathing? hopping from one foot to another? Singing? In the Red circle, write down the activity that you think might have helped you in that Red Brain moment. Remembering the situation where you were in Yellow Brain, try to imagine what connecting activity might have helped you – meeting your body’s need for a snack, a drink or a rest? Being curious about an emotion or feeling and asking, “what is my brain trying to let me know?” In the Yellow circle, write down something you think might have helped you that Yellow Brain moment. Remembering a time when you were in Green Brain, write down a calming or connecting activity that you could practice in a Green Brain moment to make it easier to access during the Yellow and Red Brain moments. Now that you have filled in your Stoplight, I would encourage you to practice the calming and connecting activities that you wrote down. Practice them while you are in Green Brain to help your brain to get ready to use them in Yellow and Red Brain moments. And then try to reach for these practices when you feel your body going toward Yellow or Red Brain. Like any new skill, these calming and connecting activities take time to learn and a lot of practice to implement. I encourage you to be patient and kind to yourself in this process.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Stoplight Approach Podcast. Please share, subscribe, rate and review this episode, as it will help other people find us. The Stoplight Approach offers many resources to help families, schools, churches and other groups to grow in their understanding of the brain and relationships. Please visit www.thestoplightapproach.org to learn more.