There’s no doubt the pandemic has had an impact on many facets of our lives, not the least of which are mental health and behaviour patterns. That was in part the focus of a presentation by the Humboldt Chapter of the Saskatchewan Association of Social Workers at the Bella Vista on Tuesday Night. The session drew helping professionals and members of the public to find out more about helping youngsters to regulate behaviour, and helping adults to achieve a healthy balance. 

Connie Herman of the Saskatchewan Prevention Institute facilitated the presentation and discussion. Herman has researched behaviour in children and has committed herself to sharing tactics for managing stress and regulating behaviour with clients and audiences. She said one of the first impacts of the pandemic was to disconnect people from each other. It also made it challenging to provide services and resources, so much of the Institute’s resources had to move online. However, it has made many resources immediately accessible to those who need them  wherever they are. 

The topics for the evening shifted from the meaning of stress to exploring stressors and discussing strategies for dealing with triggers. To do that, Herman laid the groundwork for understanding how the brain works in a novel and simple metaphor that both adults and children can grasp. She explains why that knowledge is so important.

“I think it’s because it gives us a chance to understand what’s going on beneath the surface for ourselves and for our kids. It gives us an opportunity to see why they might be reacting like this. What stressors might they be having in their lives that are causing them to behave the way they are.”

The premise, taken from the book “My Curious Brain,” is that we operate with three brains - the dinosaur brain, the monkey brain, and the owl brain. The dinosaur brain represents the brain stem, the seat of most basic responses like fight, flight or freeze. The monkey brain, the limbic system, is the regulator of emotions. Finally, the owl brain is the neocortex that houses our most sophisticated mental processes to help interpret the world around us.

“If a child is working from the dinosaur part of their brain, then it means they’re working from a space of fear or there’s too much stress in their lives. So we can work to reduce those stressors and connect with them. After that, they can access other parts of their brain - the monkey brain and the owl brain. We’re able to reason with them at that point when they are calmed down.”

The goal for both children and adults is to achieve a kind of balance between energy and tension. Another useful metaphor Herman uses is that of “cup fillers and cup spillers.” It’s a way of viewing the interplay between things that reward and nurture us and things that provide stress and put us in a negative headspace.

“We all have stressors in our lives. Taking a look at what our own unique stressors are helps us to re-evaluate what we might need to adjust in our lives - what we may need to do more or less of in our lives. It gives us a direction for things we want to reduce and to add lives.”

It’s about creating a strategy to include those enriching things that “fill us up”, while recognizing and navigating around those energy-drainers. Those things will be different for each individual. 

“What is a cup-filler for me might actually be a cup spiller for somebody else,” Herman notes. “When we start to understand our own self-regulation and stressors, and the things we do for self-care, we need to understand it can be different for everybody else, and we need to be respectful.”

The session was part of Social Work Week in the province. Attendees received a print copy of the resource, “My Curious Brain,” written by Brent McKee and Britton Houdek with illustrations by Jackie Madarash. The book is distributed by the Saskatchewan Prevention Institute. The online issue and many other resources are available at the Saskatchewan Prevention Institute website.