desert. We want to allow our nonrational images, autobiographical
memories, and vital emotions to play their important roles, but we
also want to integrate them with the parts of ourselves that give
our lives order and structure. When Katie freaked out about being
left at preschool, she was working mostly from her right brain. As
a result, Thomas witnessed an illogical emotional ɻood, where
Katie’s emotional right brain wasn’t working in a coordinated way
with her logical left brain.
Here it’s important to note that it’s not only our children’s
emotional ɻoods that cause problems. An emotional desert, where
feelings and the right brain are ignored or denied, is no healthier
than a flood. We see this response more often in older children. For
example, Dan tells a story of an exchange with a twelve-year-old
girl who came to see him with a scenario many of us have
experienced:
Amanda mentioned a ɹght she’d had with her best friend. I
knew from her mother that this argument had been extremely
painful for Amanda, but as she talked about it, she just
shrugged and stared out the window, saying, “I don’t really
care if we never talk again. She annoys me anyway.” The
expression on her face seemed cold and resigned, but in the
subtle quiver of her lower lips and the gentle opening and
closing of her eyelids, almost like a tremor, I could sense the
right-hemisphere nonverbal signals revealing what we might
call her “real feelings.” Rejection is painful, and at this
moment, Amanda’s way of dealing with that sense of
vulnerability was to “retreat to the left,” running to the arid
(but predictable and controllable) emotional desert of the left
side of her brain.
I had to help her understand that even though it was
painful to think about the conɻict with her friend, she needed