I am so excited to welcome Ginger Healy to the BraveBrains blog to share some support for that ever-elusive skill: self-regulation. Ginger has been a friend and colleague for years. She is currently the program director for the Attachment and Trauma Network where she co-anchors the podcast “Regulated & Relational” and speaks across the nation on trauma-informed schools, therapeutic parenting, and community engagement. She also gives great hugs! Dysregulation Dysregulation. The reality is that no...
Understanding the BRAIN -> SENSES -> BEHAVIOR Connection
Everything we feel, think, say, and do is related to the information coming in through our senses, and we have more than you might think. All BEHAVIOR comes from the BRAIN The BRAIN is getting information from EIGHT SENSES Understanding our SENSES will help us understand BEHAVIOR Let’s break this down a little further. Here are some of the BEHAVIORS you might see in the classroom: Fidgeting, wiggling, getting up and wandering around Grumpy, complaining,...
Making Sense of Meltdowns
How learning about sensory processing changed... everything. My brilliant little 4-year-old son was asked to draw a house at preschool and burst into tears. Bursting into tears was a common occurrence for him, as was picky eating, banging into things, difficulty transitioning from one task to the next, slouching posture, and what I came to realize were a whole host of sensory red flags. Sensory processing difficulties occur when the brain has trouble receiving, interpreting,...
Finding Our Way Forward in the Aftermath of Violence
I was feeling grumpy about a minor inconvenience when I heard the tragic news out of Uvalde, Texas. And this on the heels of the horrific hate crime in Buffalo on Saturday... As a mom, I just wanted to pull my babies close and weep for the parents who were learning that they would never get to do that again. As a therapist, I want to have open office hours for all the grief and...