20/02/2025
🧠 Dr. Dan Siegel’s Hand Model of the Brain is a simple and effective way to explain brain function and understand how emotions and thinking interact to impact emotional regulation.🧠
Components of this model include:
🤚The Hand: The brain is represented by your hand, with different parts of your hand symbolizing different areas of the brain.
💚The Wrist: The wrist represents the brainstem, which controls functions like heart rate, breathing, and digestion.
🙂The Thumb: The thumb represents the limbic system (the lower brain), the emotional center of the brain. This is where feelings, moods, arousal, and memories are processed.
🦎The Palm: The palm represents the inner brain, known as the ‘survival brain’.
🧠The Fingers: The fingers represent the prefrontal cortex, the higher thinking part of the brain (the upper brain). This is where decision-making, reasoning, and impulse control take place.
😵💫The "Flipped Lid" (Dysregulated Brain): When we are stressed, overwhelmed, or triggered, the brain "flips its lid"—the fingers (prefrontal cortex) flip back, disengaging the higher brain functions. Upper brain and lower brain are no longer connected and talking. This leads to emotional reactivity, lack of impulse control, and difficulty with rational thinking. Essentially, we are unable to think logically, reacting instead with emotion or instinct (operating from the more primitive brain areas).
🌱The Ideal State (Hand Closed): When the fingers are in place, this represents a regulated brain. The prefrontal cortex is engaged, and we can access our upper ‘thinking brain’ to respond logically and with reason.
✨️The Role of Integration: The model emphasizes the importance of integration between different parts of the brain. When all areas of the brain are working together in harmony, we can regulate emotions, make thoughtful decisions, and stay calm under stress.
References:
Dr Dan Siegel: https://drdansiegel.com/hand-model-of-the-brain/
Student Wellbeing Hub: https://studentwellbeinghub.edu.au/resources/hand-model-of-the-brain/
Image reference/source:
Student Wellbeing Hub: studentwellbeinghub.edu.au
