 So you've seen some things in the therapy room that really got you thinking about this stuff as well. Yeah, helping people to learn about things cognitively isn't always the way to do it. They need to feel it more on a felt level and more of a relational level. Yeah, so that sounds like a really important thing to know in terms of working with that client group in therapy. Before I ask you about that and that's very tempting, I want to ask you what you know about brains. Because I know you said to me, John, ask me what I know about brains. Well, it's fascinating because although I was reading about brains, first of all I was reading this book written about brains. I think it's called The Interface of Psychotherapy Neurobiology by a guy called Louis Cosleone or something like that. I was going to bring the book upstairs but I forgot. And he's written quite a lot about it and he helped me to understand where it all began really because he said Freud was the first person. He was really interested about brains. But of course what we know about Freud is he got himself into trouble because he wrote about what he said was children had sexual feelings. And he wrote about the Edocopal complex. So he didn't do psychoanalysts any good really. So he decided he better not go into that area and stir up another hornet's nest. So he kind of put it on the back boiler. So it wasn't until much later on that psychotherapists began to make realizations. Actually people are affected emotionally and that is to do with the brain. It isn't just to do with the emotion. So they began to connect brain with emotion and what happens inside the brain when people become emotionally stimulated. And a guy called I written it down because I've got terrible memory. In the 1970s Paul McClain a neuroscientist presented a theory which I thought was really interesting. Primitive evolutionary structures within the brain called the triune brain. Which means that our brains have three parts. And what he said was and obviously this is now a known fact that we have an earlier reptilian brain which is kind of at the bottom of the brainstorm. And it's the first part of the brain that gets developed. And that part of the brain is responsible for hunger and digestion and breathing and circulation and our temperature and movement. And also our fight and flight responses. So it's our early warning system part of our brain which is important to remember. And then we've got the second part of our brain is the mammalian brain which is important for rage and fear and separation and distress. Caring and nurturing, social bonding, playfulness and our explorative urge. When we get curious we want to go and explore and also lust in adults to sort of mention that one. And lastly our higher brain and our higher brain which is the latest part of the brain which becomes more developed as we get older and older. Is the rational brain what we call the more rational part of our brain. And that's responsible for our creativity and our imagination, our problem solving and how we reason and how we reflect and our self awareness and our kindness, empathy and concern. So that's the three triune brain system. And of course there is a lot, lot more, a lot, lot more about us which helps us to become the people we are and helps us to learn how to respond to the world about us and helps us to know how to regulate ourselves. But there's other aspects of the brain that need to be developed. And our brain's quite a complex system. Do you want me to tell you some more about it? Before we do that I just want to catch what you're saying about regulating and just when you think about emotional regulating, when you think about that with your clients. What do you mean Steph, just so that we've kind of got that clear? Well when I think about emotional regulation, what it is is that we can help ourselves calm ourselves when we're anxious. But somehow we are able to take ourselves from the fight and fight place that we can get into sometimes in the more extreme circumstances to a place where we're calmer and much more grounded. So that's what I think about when I think about emotional regulation. So very often in my therapy room what I will see is people who haven't been able to achieve that in a very effective way. So what I might see instead is that instead of emotionally being able to emotionally regulate, they'll have panic attacks. Or they'll become very, very highly anxious. Or at the other end of the spectrum they'll be depressed because instead of being able to be with how they feel, they'll suppress how they feel. So that's what I mean about emotional regulation. So to move out of that fight or flight response into a more calm place. There was a question in the chat room that might kind of match what we're talking about just now, but I'll ask it then we can see. Do you feel that high cortisol levels affect child development? Absolutely, I absolutely do. Because to understand a little bit about that, when we have a flight or flight response, what happens in our brain is our amygdala sends a message to our hypothalamus, which then releases a message through our pituitary gland down to our adrenaline glands, which then release the cortisol. And what the cortisol does in our bodies is it turns everything else off. So it stops you from thinking clearly. So I don't know whether you've had an experience, for example, like you're just going out the door, you're late from eating and you lose your car keys. What happens? You can't think, oh my God, I can't find my car keys and you're rushing about like a mad thing and you cannot find them. And then when you finally calm yourself down, because most of us can do that, and we sit down, we actually see them sitting on the table in front of us. So what happens when we get like that? What we're doing is producing high levels of cortisol and it shuts down bodily functions, mainly for the reason that what it's doing is telling us to get ready to fight or flight. So it stops our immune system as well. So it stops everything working properly. So in answer to the question, yes, it's very damaging because if a child is in a family where that is always happening to them and there's not anybody around to help them soothe themselves, you know, there's no responsible adult that says it's okay, you know, I'm here, I'll help you soothe yourself. Mommy's going to help you or it's okay, don't worry. That won't turn off. That will just keep being pumped. And in terms of children's development, that's quite damaging because what it can do is it can destroy cells in their brain and it can shrink the hypothalamus as well. So it's very, very destructive. So it doesn't turn off. So if the child's continually stimulated in that way, continually frightened or anxious, the cortisol levels will keep flowing. Wow. And so of course what will happen is they become hypervigilant. And what you might see then is that child will then grow up very hypervigilant and likely be highly anxious. And obviously that has an impact on how they are as adults. So they're likely to, you know, be depressed or have high anxiety or have eating disorders or, you know, issues around being able to cope with life. They'll find another way so they might self-medicate with drugs or alcohol if, for example, I'm talking about extreme circumstances here. And obviously not everyone's going to be like that because some of us access therapy. Some of us have other ways of being able to help ourselves. So if I just catch what the brain needs.