One of neuroscience's most popular phrases leaves out something important.
“Name it to tame it.” is a phrase made popular by Dr. Dan Siegel*.
*He was a big fan of Mr. Rogers (a tv character who wanted to help children talk about difficult feelings..): "Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable.
*i met Dan at a UCSD School of Medicine conference years ago, where I was giving a talk on ‘bridging hearts and minds’ and he was the keynote speaker. I still have the photo somewhere!
It’s a phrase to describe the power of naming our experiences. Our ability to do this is tied to self-regulation... The more granularity and nuance we have, the better we get at regulating our emotions.
Putting language to an internal experience can change not just our relationship to it, but our actual brain activity.
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But.. something I think can get overlooked when we teach this phrase…
What happens if the name we have access to isn't quite right?
Or if the only words someone has available are just not enough…
‘anxious’, ‘dysregulated’, ‘triggered’, ‘flight’.
This is where naming a feeling might actually disconnect someone (and the words they’re trying to share with us) from the experience we're trying to help them understand.
This is why I care so much about ‘regulatory vocabulary.’
A richer map gives us more open spaces to really explore:
- My attention is narrowing in on ___
- I can feel something in me wanting to move but I don't actually want to move.
- I want connection, but I'm also really scared of what it will lead to.
- My body feels heavy and exhausted, but my mind is super fast and active.
- I dont’ really want to "calm down." I want a different kind of energy.
Having these more open, flexible spaces gives a person more of a spectrum.
And a richer, more flexible spectrum, gives us more choices.
This is where teaching nervous system science can be incredibly empowering.
Instead of trying to figure out the “correct” category, acronym or label for a state.
We can tap into becoming powerful observers and pattern-recognition beings…
And that can help bridge the science with something gives us agency: our own embodied wisdom. That we can tune into, without having to turn to an outside source.
With deep appreciation for the embodied agency you are exploring for yourself and others…
(the this socio-vibrational world thanks you)
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P.S. I teach this more deeply inside Teach the Nervous System, including how I think about “Name It to Tame It,” regulatory vocabulary and the multidimensional state map I use instead of narrowing nervous system ideas into a few familiar categories.
If you've learned the common nervous-system language and have a feeling there's a more expansive universe underneath it…
there is.
→ Go deeper inside Teach the Nervous System
