Reading a recent NPR article about how how Inuit parents teach kids to control their anger, I was surprised by the similarities with BWRT.
Jean Briggs, a Harvard graduate, travelled to the arctic tundra to live with the Inuit community for 17 months. One of the things that most intrigued her was, across the board, all the moms mention one golden rule: Don’t shout or yell at small children. Inuits wait for them to calm down to a relaxed state. And then they get to telling stories to create new neural pathways through which their children can truly understand their world.
As one Inuit mother put it, “With little kids, you often think they’re pushing your buttons, but that’s not what’s going on. They’re upset about something, and you have to figure out what it is.”
For thousands of years, the Inuit have relied on an ancient tool with an ingenious twist: “We use storytelling to discipline.”
For example, how do you teach kids to stay away from the ocean, where they could easily drown? Instead of yelling, “Don’t go near the water!” Jaw says Inuit parents take a pre-emptive approach and tell kids a special story about what’s inside the water. “It’s the sea monster,” Jaw says, with a giant pouch on its back just for little kids.
With BWRT we are also telling the client a tiny part of a story (at times just an image), that when said at the right time in the right way will land between the decision and the action. So even if the decision would normally be detrimental, it now filters thought the new positive story and a new positive action will take place.
The Inuits seem to tell the story with calm intensity, claiming that the tone and demeanor is of the utmost importance. This is very close to BWRT where the tone is urgent intensity, so the mind accepts it as something important that needs its full attention.
The article goes on to say, “When you try to control or change your emotions in the moment, that’s a really hard thing to do,” says Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychologist at Northeastern University who studies how emotions work.
But if you practice having a different response or a different emotion at times when you’re not angry, you’ll have a better chance of managing your anger in those hot-button moments, Feldman Barrett says.
“That practice is essentially helping to rewire your brain to be able to make a different emotion [besides anger] much more easily,” she says.
This emotional practice may be even more important for children, says psychologist Markham, because kids’ brains are still developing the circuitry needed for self-control.
BWRT is excellent at precisely pinpointing the right part of the brain function to plant the new story to elicit a new emotional response. The story carries all the new information in neurons that fire between the decision to the action to fire the newly desired response.
BWRT online is perhaps the fastest therapy in these Covid days when people are stuck at home. BWRT clients can choose how they want to feel in little stories and this would work great for PTSD treatment, trauma treatment and the anxiety treatment that is greatly needed in these troubling times.
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