Hey, welcome back. Today I really wanted to think about what's the best way to teach teachers about trauma without getting them distracted with all the technical stuff and what's the most important thing for them to understand and learn and I thought that the best way to do it might be to just make a difference between a learning brain versus a brain in survival mode so we'll just call it learning brain versus survival brain and this is the difference. So learning brain is this brain that's open to learning new information and it's completely okay with ambiguity and grace and vagueness and it sees the big picture. It like pulls back and is on the balcony can look over the forest and figure out what's going on. On an emotional level people in learning brain feel calm, peaceful, maybe a little excited about what they're about to learn, maybe a little playful and having fun too and definitely curious and they're not afraid of making mistakes because it's just part of the learning process and so they're not really thinking about themselves and they actually feel a little bit of confidence that if they just apply themselves they might pick up what they're trying to learn. Now survival brain on the other hand is completely different. It's a hyper focused on threat, it doesn't like ambiguity, it wants clear hard facts, it thinks in black and white terms, it doesn't want anything to be great at all and then emotionally you can imagine that survival brain makes people feel panicky, feel like a little obsessive and afraid of getting things wrong and they don't feel calm and open to learning new things. They just want to get things over with and people in survival brain also really don't like making mistakes and they are afraid of looking stupid too so students in survival brain don't want to be picked on, they don't want to raise their hand and ask questions and look stupid and so these people are also filled with doubt about their own ability to learn and stuff and they're afraid that other people can see how stupid they really are. Now it's really important to understand how learning brain and survival brain interact because survival brain always trumps learning brain and it makes sense because survival brain is just trying to save your life and so if it thinks that there's something dangerous happening you better pay attention to it right but the tricky thing is that as survival brain stays on longer and longer it's harder to get out of that and it's harder to really go into a learning brain and the way I think about it is kind of like the myth of Cicifis you know that guy who has to push a rock up a hill and then every day it falls back down and he has to do it over and over again. Well being in learning brain is like being up on the high parts of that mountain you can see the expanse of what's going on but it also takes a lot of work to be up there and at any second if you're not paying attention and make putting effort into it it's so easy to slip back into survival brain again and that rock that Cicifis is trying to push up well that's kind of like stress and the more stress you feel the heavier and bigger that rock gets and it just pushes you back into survival brain quicker. Now the kicker is that for traumatized people stress is a really rigid and intense thing and so with trauma any little stress makes that rock grow way bigger than it normally would and because people with trauma miss perceived ambiguous situations as threatening and stressful that rock just stays big all the time. Now the good news is that the more you control stress while the easier it is to be in learning brain right because that rock is a lot smaller and what I really want to highlight for teachers is that the best way to keep students in learning brain goes back to why I spent so much time talking about attachment. Students best learn when they feel like they're safe and supported by the adults around them. So it's kind of like a baby elephant you know how like on those nature shows the baby elephant is like playing with leaves or exploring a tree or something like that and having a lot of fun and the only reason why they can do that is because there's a whole group of mama elephants around that baby protecting it and looking out for danger. So a kid with trauma or who's stuck in survival brain it's kind of like that baby elephant who doesn't have protective adults around them. They can't play and learn because they're way too focused looking out for threat and danger. So this is why I really believe that the most important thing that schools need to focus on way more important than any kind of techniques or curricula is really whether or not they are creating that environment where students feel like they're surrounded by these big mama elephants who are going to protect them and watch out for them and make them safe and when students have that I bet you'd unlock their curiosity their eagerness to learn and play as a way to learn. So I hope that's helpful let me know if you have any questions in the comments below. Thanks.