Yellow= Slow Down

Photo Credit Shannon Livingston, Livingston Galleries

Yellow is our emotional brain. You can put your hand on the crown of your head and it represents this part of your brain. The emotional brain is actually more in the center of your brain, but the important thing is that you realize that we’ve physically moved from the thinking brain to the emotional/feeling brain. It is in a different location physically inside your brain.

The emotional brain is obviously where we are feeling our feelings. The most obvious examples would be someone crying, but even laughing is activating the emotional brain. It’s also where we connect with each other most deeply. It’s connected to our hearts, to empathy, to BEING with each other. It’s also about our need to BE with each other, especially during our distressing times. When we can BE with each other in this emotional place, our systems calm and we move back to green. In our culture, we do a lot here to rush past the feelings, ignore, invalidate, shame, to reject, distract, or shut them down because it makes us uncomfortable. We will do what was done to us unconsciously until we’ve figured out a different way of BEING with the feelings. This is our focus over the next 6 months. We’re going to focus on learning to BE with the feelings and move through the storms of life in a different way.

When someone begins to shift out of green, sometimes there is a dramatic and sudden shift. Other times, it is more subtle. You might notice that you’re feeling more squirmy and start to fidget. Maybe you bite your lips or twirl a pen. Maybe you get on your phone and start scrolling through your favorite social media site. Start to notice when you have a subtle shift. Start to notice it in your children.

I call yellow light the fork in the road. You can find a way to regulate yourself a little bit here and then maybe snuggle with your kids when they’re shifting into yellow, rather than focusing on how they’re expressing their yellow. When you can meet the underlying needs, the behaviors can shift. Sometimes they shift on their own and sometimes they need some more support, but it opens the possibility for change. When we can move into connection on yellow, we can support everyone to take that opportunity to BE together and to calm together. When we don’t, we are heading straight into red. It’s much like a yellow light at an intersection. When we see a yellow light, we can speed up (and head right into red) or we can slow down and find a way to connect.

By the way, on yellow, if you have an average IQ of 100, you’ve lost access to about 25 IQ points, so you’re at about a 75. If you remember the movie Forrest Gump, his IQ was in this range. If you’ve wondered why you think a little more slowly when you’re feeling emotional, this is why. Emotional brain isn’t logical. And it’s important that we see the emotional brain for what it actually is. It isn’t something to be avoided, but once we understand it we can connect in a new and different way. It strengthens our relationship in all ways when we can shift right here.