Hi there. My name is Tawni Barlow, and I am the director of student services for the Medical School District. I also am a previous psychologist, and I am a professor at Gonzaga University teaching school psychologist, which is one of my favorite things to do. I would like to talk to you today about regulating yourself and others. This really can be helpful if you are regulating yourself with a significant other, it could be helpful as co workers.

It can be helpful if you are in a teaching position with kids or if you’re a parent and you want to regulate yourself when helping your children. So it’s just really about regulating self and helping others regulate. And when I say regulate, I’m talking about your emotions. So in today’s times, emotions can run high or in situations when you kind of run high. And if something is emotional for you.

So some of the things that tricks or tips that I would say that are out there to regulate yourself is is really looking at it from a human perspective in your brain. So where is your brain at? So when you’re worried or upset, your thinking, part of your brain isn’t engaged. And what that means is all of your blood that’s in your brain is actually starting to engage in your lens. And so the key is how do you re engage your brain?

Which how do you get that blood back into your brain? And so some of the things that people do when they’re trying to regulate themselves as they will think about something that requires them to think. So what I mean by that is even if you have to think about what did I eat for dinner yesterday. So you have to kind of think, OK, this for breakfast for lunch. And it’s engaging your brain to think, which has been bringing blood up here to the front, which says you have more reasoning and thinking power.

So if you have more reasoning and thinking power, you can deal with situations easier. So if your little one is throwing a tantrum or struggling regulating themselves, then if you if you meet them at that time where you’re struggling because of their actions, then you your brains that are talking to each other kind of in this escalated stage. And so it’s much easier to interact with somebody if you have your basically your thinking brain on. And so I would say that when you’re trying to get the blood back to your brain, you can use something like a thinking, a thinking technique like we just talked about.

You could also engage your brain in an activity such as math or reading something again that’s bringing blood back to the front of your brain.

The other thing that you can do is taking a really big deep breath and looking around in your scenario that you’re in. So what do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell and breathing at the same time, all of those things are really engaging this area. Some people will just take a break from the situation.

That’s another thing that you can do. Where you go, watch a movie, read a book, walk outside, and you get your mind off of whatever that situation is. So in today’s day and time, if you can disengage that emotional part of your brain and pause, if you have time to pause, I would tell you to do it. The other thing, the tips that I would offer you is that if you are that if you’re taking that break is to really pre plan. And so pre planning allows you to think about how you would respond to a situation.

So if a coworker a significant other your child, this happens a lot, then you’re able to pre plan what’s happening. So if this happens, then I’m going to do this and that is going to help you in a lot of different scenarios, even with today’s times in society. If you haven’t been engaged with people and you’re going into a situation that makes you nervous, if you kind of have a plan, and the reason why that’s helpful is your brain is already engaged in that, and it your brain pathways have taught you this is what you’re going to do in a situation.

So you respond how you want to versus a reaction, which is where you get into your emotional brain.