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SOOTHE Group
Supporting Ourselves and Others Through Healing and Empowerment
Week 2.3
Estimated time to complete 2.3: 25-35 mins
The three circles
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2.
Detect and respond to threats and losses (e.g., fear, anxiety, anger, disgust and 'shutdown')
The Three-Circle Model, also called the tripartite model of affect regulation, is a model which attempts to capture clusters of emotion in terms of three basic life tasks: seeking resources for survival and reproduction, harm avoidance and threat sensitivity, and settling into states of rest and digest.
Emerging from these three basic life tasks are three types of emotions that evolved primarily to:
1.
Detect and respond to opportunities for seeking resources (e.g., excitement, awe, wonder, joy, pleasure, pride and humour)
3.
Detect and respond to opportunities to rest and digest (e.g., settling, calming, contentment, peaceful, playfulness and social safeness)
This practice will gently introduce you to your three circles.
Visualising your three circles
00:00 / 04:16
Take a look at the three circle diagram to see how each system connects and is related, before moving on to explore how your own three circles look and work.
DRIVE: Excitement, Happiness, Joy
SOOTHING: Calm, Contentment, Peace
THREAT: Anger, Anxiety, Disgust
The document: Three Circles_ThoughtsSensationsBehaviour, may help you to reflect in the next part.
This five minute video will also further explain the three circles. It demonstrates what we are doing with the three circles and how we create balance between them. This will also help with your reflections in the following section.
Click on the video below to watch.
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Reflect...
What are your own thoughts, bodily feelings, and action tendencies associated with each system?
Enter your response in your Reflective Journal and paste it below if you'd like your facilitators to see.
The systems get out of balance, with the threat system often dominating, and the soothing system the most difficult to activate.
We want to strengthen the ability to turn on the soothing system in order to create flexibility among the three systems.
Watch the two videos below and think about which system/s might be the most and least activated. Enter your response in your Reflective Journal and paste your response below if you'd like your facilitators to see. Then click the ? to reveal the answer.
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You might think an active threat system is bad, but sometimes its really helpful!
We need it to seek protection and avoid harm, so, it’s actually really important! Take a look below at some examples of when our threat system is helpful and what thoughts might go through our brain, in an attempt to seek protection and avoid harm.
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"AHHHH! THERE'S A SNAKE! I NEED TO RUN BEFORE IT BITES ME!!!"
"AHHH IT'S ON FIRE!! I NEED TO PUT WATER ON THIS IMMEDIATELY!"
Reflect...
What are examples of times when your threat system has been helpful?
Enter your response in your Reflective Journal and paste it below if you'd like your facilitators to see.
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