> [!note] New — 2026-03-19 ![[assets/covers/name-it-to-tame-it.jpg]] The practice of naming emotions and narrating distressing experiences in order to regulate them. The mechanism is neurological: putting language to emotional experience recruits the left brain’s linguistic capacity to calm the right brain’s emotional flooding, producing literal change in the brain’s circuitry. ## The neuroscience of naming Research shows that merely assigning a name or label to what we feel ‘literally calms down the activity of the emotional circuitry in the right hemisphere’.[^wbc-p29] This is why journaling and talking about a difficult event can be so powerful for healing: naming is not a secondary commentary on emotion but an active intervention in it. The same mechanism underwrites the value of narrative: telling a story recruits the left brain’s sequential, logical structure and imposes it on what was formless and frightening. ## Telling the story back Children need to be met on their own terms: respecting their desires about how and when to talk, and working with their readiness rather than against it. One approach is to begin the story and invite the child to fill in the details; another is to introduce it during a side-by-side activity, since children are more apt to share when something else is also happening.[^wbc-p28c] The detailed narration the book demonstrates is striking in its specificity: ‘you wanted to wear your red pants, we had waffles with blueberries, and then you brushed your teeth’.[^wbc-p30] Sensory and sequential detail gives the left brain traction on material that previously had none. ## Making the story permanent The culminating example is a father who, with his daughter, ‘wrote and illustrated a book together that told the story and featured her favourite places in her classroom’.[^wbc-p31] I love this idea; and I’m wary of my own enthusiasm. The question is whether I would actually do it in the moment when it is needed, under pressure, rather than in the abstract when it sounds appealing. That gap between loving a technique on the page and deploying it when a child is distressed is exactly where parenting practice either takes root or doesn’t. ## Selected passages > ‘Research shows that merely assigning a name or label to what we feel literally calms down the activity of the emotional circuitry in the right hemisphere.’ > > *The Whole-Brain Child*, p. 29 ## Appearances - *The Whole-Brain Child*, Siegel & Bryson (2011), Ch. 2 ‘Two Brains Are Better Than One’, pp. 28, 29, 30, 31 ## Related [[Neural Integration]] · [[Connect and Redirect]] · [[Neuroplasticity]] [^wbc-p28c]: [[The Whole-Brain Child (2011)]], p. 28 · *‘while something else is happening. Children are much more apt to share’ / ‘we can gently encourage them by beginning the story and asking them to fill in the details’ · [[The Whole-Brain Child - 42.jpg|↗]] [^wbc-p29]: [[The Whole-Brain Child (2011)]], p. 29 · *‘why journaling and talking about a difficult event can be so powerful in helping us heal. In fact, research shows that merely assigning a name or label to what we feel literally calms down the activity of the emotional circuitry in the right hemisphere.’ · [[The Whole-Brain Child - 43.jpg|↗]] [^wbc-p30]: [[The Whole-Brain Child (2011)]], p. 30 · *‘He told her, “I know you’ve been having a hard time going to school since you got sick. Let’s try to remember the day you felt sick at school. First, we got ready for school, didn’t we? Remember, you wanted to wear your red pants, we had waffles with blueberries, and then you brushed your teeth? We got to school and we hugged and said goodbye. You started to paint at the activity table and I waved bye to you. And then what happened after I left?”’ · [[The Whole-Brain Child - 44.jpg|↗]] [^wbc-p31]: [[The Whole-Brain Child (2011)]], p. 31 · *‘They wrote and illustrated a book together that told the story and featured her favorite places in her classroom.’ · [[The Whole-Brain Child - 45.jpg|↗]]