Page 35 - The Changing Chances Strength Based Approach to Control Centre Skills (Executive Function Skills) MASTER 2020

Why are some people more resilient and better at regulating

their energy and emotions than others?

It can just be the way we are born – just as some people are taller and others are
shorter; some people need glasses and others don’t: our brains can be different too.

It can be because we have had lots of positive, confidence-building experiences:
people can be more resilient and good at staying in control of their feelings because they’ve had
lots of positive experiences and good support from adults and friends during their life.

We call these good yellow positive experiences. They help us to cope better when bad things
come our way. They also help us to go into situations feeling positive and
confident – it’s as if we are wearing yellow sunglasses to look at the world
– life seems bright and happy.

Other people have lots of stressful experiences and this can result in them becoming
more vulnerable.

When something bad happens, stress
chemicals are released into our body.
We call these ‘blue stress chemicals’;
they can make us feel pretty emotional.

These chemicals are actually our body’s
clever way of giving us
extra energy to ‘fight or
flight’. We call these
‘Stress Responses’.

These stress responses were a great thing thousands of years ago when we were being chased by
mammoths. They’re even a pretty helpful thing now if we are in real danger and need to escape,
such as if we are in a building and there’s a fire.

But they aren’t very helpful in most situations nowadays. Most problems are better sorted by
facing them calmly and thinking things through.

When someone gives us help or when a problem we have is solved, the stress chemicals in our
body go down and we feel calm again.

If we don’t get the right help or another bad thing happens too soon, the stress chemicals stay
high. If it keeps happening, the stress chemicals stay too high, all of the time. This may make us
feel on ‘high alert’ – even when there isn’t any real danger. We may then react more easily, even
to little things that aren’t so important.

It’s a bit like the water in a boiling kettle getting cooler. If we keep pressing the ‘on’
button, the boiling water never gets cool.

When someone has stress chemicals that get too high in a bad way, we call
this ‘red stress balloon’. It’s as if we have a balloon inside which keeps having
air blown into it - more and more. In the end, it POPS!!

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