Page 21 - FS-Grizzly Bear

PARENT NOTES
THE GRIZZLY BEAR STORY
TOPIC: Learning that your thinking determines your emotions and behaviors. Stinky Thinking (telling yourself irrational things that really don’t make sense) will lead to “Not OK” (too intense or inappropriate) emotions and “Thumbs Down” (not in your best self- interest) behaviors. If your thinking is Good (rational and do make sense), then you will be able to evaluate options when confronted with a “threatening” situation because your emotions are “OK” and your behaviors are “Thumbs Up.”
A “threatening” situation or as it is in the story, a “grizzly bear” situation, is any situation that typically evokes a strong negative emotion. These strong negative emotions can range from anger to fear or guilt to sadness. When confronted with one of these situations, we usually react in our typical imprinted style of “fight or flight.” These two options may have been all that was needed in an environment that was less sophisticated. When the physically strong ruled and confrontations with wild animals were common but in today’s society, “grizzly bears” usually don’t involve an attacking tribe or a saber tooth tiger. It will involve conflicts with coworkers, traffic tickets and sales presentations.
Success in dealing with the varieties of life situations will depend on your ability to override your evolutionarily designed predisposition to engage in either a fight or flight. This is not to say that those two reactions are not occasionally appropriate but the ability to hold our emotions and behaviors at bay until we can rationally assess the situation is a learned skill.
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