Emotional Wellness Month: Taming the Tiger From the Bottom Up

October is Emotional Wellness Month, and we are wrapping it up with something we talk about with families every single week: the body has a say in how we feel.

Emotional wellness has been recognized every October since 2004. The National Center for Emotional Wellness describes it as being aware of, understanding and accepting your feelings, and being able to manage through challenges and change (Awareness Days, 2026).

That second part is where a lot of kids get stuck. And honestly, a lot of adults too.

Toby is trying. It is not working.

In Toby the Tiger Tamer, written by our founder Amy Reamer, LMFT, RPT-S, and illustrated by Kayla Brazier, Toby keeps finding himself in trouble. He promises not to do it again. He tries to do what he is told. It still is not working (Reamer, 2013).

Things only get better once Toby learns what is going on inside his own brain: the tiger, the hippo and the owl.

Amy wrote the book out of her play therapy work with children who had experienced trauma, to help parents, teachers and counselors teach kids about their brains and build self regulation through co regulation (Heart & Mind Therapy, n.d.).

The brain in your hand

Toby's tiger, hippo and owl grew out of two ideas we use in clinical work every day.

The first is Dr. Dan Siegel's hand model of the brain. Make a fist with your thumb tucked inside. Your wrist is the brainstem, your thumb is the emotional, memory holding part of the brain, and your fingers wrapped over the top are the thinking brain (Siegel, 2010). When stress gets big enough, the fingers lift up and we "flip our lid." The thinking brain is no longer in charge (Siegel & Bryson, 2011).

In Toby's world, that is the moment the tiger takes over, the owl (our thinking brain) flies away and the hippo (memory and learning) goes underwater. It is why a child who "knows better" in a calm moment can't seem to reach any of it in a hard one. It is not a lack of effort. The parts of the brain that hold the plan are offline.

Calm, alert, alarm, fear, terror

The second idea comes from Dr. Bruce Perry's Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT). Perry describes an arousal continuum: as a child moves from calm to alert to alarm to fear to terror, the parts of the brain running the show shift from the thinking cortex down to the older, more reactive lower brain (Perry et al., 1995; Perry, 2009).

The brain develops from the bottom up, so it also calms from the bottom up. That is why Perry's sequence is regulate, relate, then reason (Perry & Winfrey, 2021). Lectures, consequences and "what were you thinking?" all ask for the owl. You can't reach the owl until the tiger settles and the child feels connected.

Where the vagus nerve fits in

So what helps the tiger settle? The body is a big part of the answer, and one of the main pathways is the vagus nerve. It is a long, two way communication line connecting the brain with the heart, lungs, gut, throat and the muscles of the face (Schwartz, n.d.), and it plays a major role in calming the body's stress response (Cherland, 2012).

Dr. Stephen Porges' work describes a connection between the face and the heart, where safe interactions with other people help calm our internal state (Porges, 2009). In plain terms: a calm face, a warm voice and a safe person nearby tell the body you are okay right now.

That is co regulation. Before a child can tame their own tiger, they need a grown up whose nervous system is steady enough to lend.

The breath is a back door

Here is something you can use tonight. Slow breathing activates the vagus nerve. In one randomized study, adults who practiced just two minutes of breathing with an exhale longer than the inhale showed increased heart rate variability (a common marker of vagal activity), did not report the rise in stress the control group did, and answered more decision making questions correctly (De Couck et al., 2019).

That study was with adults, but the idea translates easily for kids:

• Smell the flower, blow out the candle. Breathe in through the nose, then a long slow breath out.

• Make the exhale longer than the inhale. That long breath out tells the body to slow down.

• Do it together. Your calm breath is part of the co regulation.

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Regulate first. Think of it as calling the owl back to the branch.

Why this matters

When we understand that big behavior is often a nervous system response and not a character flaw, everything shifts. Shame goes down. Curiosity goes up. Kids stop hearing "try harder" and start learning how.

That is what Toby learns, and it is what we want for every family we work with. Emotional wellness is not about never feeling the tiger. It is about knowing what to do when it shows up.

Toby the Tiger Tamer is available at heartmindrva.com/tobythetigertamer and on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. When you are ready to go deeper, the Tame Your Tiger Workbook is in our shop.

And if your family could use more support, we are here.

References

Awareness Days. (2026). Emotional Wellness Month 2026. https://www.awarenessdays.com/awareness-days-calendar/emotional-wellness-month/

Cherland, E. (2012). [Review of the book The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, self regulation, by S. W. Porges]. Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 21(4), 313. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3490536/

De Couck, M., Caers, R., Musch, L., Fliegauf, J., Giangreco, A., & Gidron, Y. (2019). How breathing can help you make better decisions: Two studies on the effects of breathing patterns on heart rate variability and decision making in business cases. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 139, 1 to 9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2019.02.011

Heart & Mind Therapy. (n.d.). Toby the Tiger Tamer. https://heartmindrva.com/tobythetigertamer

Perry, B. D. (2009). Examining child maltreatment through a neurodevelopmental lens: Clinical applications of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 14(4), 240 to 255. https://doi.org/10.1080/15325020903004350

Perry, B. D., Pollard, R. A., Blakley, T. L., Baker, W. L., & Vigilante, D. (1995). Childhood trauma, the neurobiology of adaptation, and "use dependent" development of the brain: How "states" become "traits." Infant Mental Health Journal, 16(4), 271 to 291.

Perry, B. D., & Winfrey, O. (2021). What happened to you? Conversations on trauma, resilience, and healing. Flatiron Books.

Porges, S. W. (2009). The polyvagal theory: New insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system. Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, 76(Suppl. 2), S86 to S90. https://doi.org/10.3949/ccjm.76.s2.17

Reamer, A. J. (2013). Toby the Tiger Tamer (K. Brazier, Illus.). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781484099889

Schwartz, A. (n.d.). Children, emotional regulation, and polyvagal theory. https://drarielleschwartz.com/children-emotional-regulation-polyvagal-theory-dr-arielle-schwartz/

Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. Bantam Books.

Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2011). The whole brain child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child's developing mind. Delacorte Press.