Meet The Characters: They Live in Your Brain!
We just released the Four Characters Go! video (https://youtu.be/VUpjBXiQOdY), so it is a great time to learn a bit more about the characters in Danni Dragonfly.
They are not just cute; they are informative!
Each character represents different functions of our brain when we respond to challenges, which can help us both understand why we make the choices we do and be more mindful about those choices.
We often think of decisions we make as “good” versus “bad,” but to our brains, decisions are not inherently good or bad; they are long-term or short-term.
Tony Ant
Tony represents the brain's role in making long-term decisions – the things we don’t really feel like doing, but we do them because they will benefit us later. These are things like going to the doctor, studying for the test, or putting money in the bank. Tony also holds the tools of a healthy brain, which help us make those long-term decisions and foster mental health (we covered those in the previous post).
Gordy Grasshopper
Gordy represents the limbic system, which is the emotional part of the brain responsible for making short-term decisions. Gordy doesn’t care if we put money in the bank or study for a test- he wants to eat junk food and watch videos. The limbic system is where we get a lot of neurochemicals, which we say are like text messages to our brains that tell us what to do. When we are in danger, Gordy receives messages saying, “Look out!” and he goes into fight–flight–freeze mode to save us. When we work really hard towards a goal and finally succeed, Gordy gets a message that says, “Wow! That felt really good! It was worth all of that effort!” We like to say that represents the fact that “self-esteem isn’t a gift–it is a neurochemical response we rob people of when we don’t let them struggle toward success.”
Glo Glowworm
Glo represents the amygdala. Her job is to always be on the lookout for threats. We will come back time and again in this blog to the statement, “The main job of the brain is to help us survive.” That is why Glo is always on the lookout. When Glo sees a threat, she goes on red alert, switches control of the brain from Tony to Gordy so that he can save us.
Danni Dragonfly
Danni has many jobs, but a very important one is to know when to override the red-alert response and say, “No, we’ve got this. We don’t need to go into fight, flight, or freeze.” There are many reasons that Glo may go red alert when we don’t need her to, and I will write about those reasons in future posts. Danni is also in charge of helping us with thoughtful decision-making and awareness.
Now that you know the characters a bit, here are a few other songs that help describe them on our Spotify channel:
