So what happened? How did the simple experience of getting
sick create such an extreme and irrational fear in Katie, and what
was the best way for Thomas to respond? His immediate goal:
come up with a strategy to get Katie to willingly attend school
again. That was his “survive” goal. But he also wanted to turn this
diɽcult experience into an opportunity that would beneɹt Katie in
both the short and the long term. That was his “thrive” goal.
We’ll come back to how Thomas handled the situation, using his
basic knowledge about the brain to turn a survival moment into an
opportunity to help his daughter thrive. Speciɹcally, he understood
what we’re going to show you now: some simple principles about
how the two different sides of the brain work.
LEFT BRAIN, RIGHT BRAIN: AN INTRODUCTION
You probably know that your brain is divided into two
hemispheres. Not only are these two sides of the brain
anatomically separate; they also function very diʃerently. Some
people even say that the two hemispheres have their own distinct
personalities, each side with a “mind of its own.” The scientiɹc
community refers to the way the diʃerent sides of the brain
inɻuence us as left-hemisphere and right-hemisphere modalities.
But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll just go with the common usage and
talk about your left brain and your right brain.
Your left brain loves and desires order. It is logical, literal,
linguistic (it likes words), and linear (it puts things in a sequence or
order). The left brain loves that all four of these words begin with
the letter L. (It also loves lists.)
The right brain, on the other hand, is holistic and nonverbal,
sending and receiving signals that allow us to communicate, such as
facial expressions, eye contact, tone of voice, posture, and gestures.