11/08/2025
🧠✨ Meet your brain’s four inner characters
(yes: it’s spiritual, mystical, and neuroscientific)
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor describes four distinct modules of the brain that act like “characters,” each with its own lens, its own motivation, its own energy.
When we learn to recognise, honour, and integrate all four, we move toward deeper healing and whole-brain living.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the four characters:
Character 1 (Left-Thinking) – The rational, planning, organising part. It says: “I do, I control, I achieve.”
Character 2 (Left-Emotional) – The protective, fear-reactive, past-focused part. It stores our pain, our survival responses.
Character 3 (Right-Emotional) – The creative, spontaneous, engaged “we” consciousness. It opens to connection and flow.
Character 4 (Right-Thinking) – The expansive, present-moment, transcendent self. It asks: “Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up?”
🛤 Steps to healing yourself (from this model)
Here are key action points (integrating this with ADHD + trauma + relationship lens):
Recognise the character in motion: Pause and ask: Which part of me is speaking right now? Is my 2 (reactive fear) running the show? Or is my 1 (driven organiser) dominating so much I’ve lost connection to 3 or 4?
Allow each voice to be heard: Instead of suppressing Character 2’s pain or shaming Character 1’s drive, give them space. They’re part of your system.
Activate a brain-huddle: Dr. Bolte Taylor offers the “BRAIN Huddle” (Breathe → Recognise → Appreciate → Inquire → Navigate) to bring your characters together in dialogue.
Breathe – ground into your body
Recognise – identify the active character
Appreciate – thank that voice for what it’s trying to do
Inquire – ask what it needs, what it’s afraid of
Navigate – choose which character you’ll lead from in this moment
psychology
