Dr. Tina Payne Bryson presents to Greens Farms Academy students in the Middle School Forum.
Our brains are constantly changing, and understanding how they work can give us powerful tools to navigate emotions, relationships, and challenges.
This year’s Hartwell Visiting Fellow, Dr. Tina Payne Bryson, brought that message to life during her visit to GFA. A psychotherapist, child development expert, and New York Times bestselling author of The Whole-Brain Child, No-Drama Discipline, and The Power of Showing Up, Bryson spent time with students across all divisions, as well as faculty and staff, translating research in attachment, neuroscience, and child development into practical strategies for building connection, resilience, and emotional well-being.
The Power to Change Your Brain
Speaking with Upper School students, Bryson began with a message of possibility: the brain is not fixed.
She introduced students to neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to change through repeated experience—and explained that adolescence is an especially significant period of development. As the adolescent brain becomes more efficient, the connections young people regularly use and reinforce become increasingly strong.
“What you give attention to becomes who your adult brain becomes,” Bryson told students.
To illustrate the idea, she shared the story of a young client who experienced panic attacks. Bryson compared the girl’s anxious thought patterns to repeatedly sledding down the same path on a mountain: the more often she traveled that route, the easier it became to follow. But by learning strategies to challenge anxious thoughts and regulate her body, she could begin creating a new path. With practice, that new route became easier to take.
The lesson extended far beyond anxiety. Whether students are navigating self-doubt, academic pressure, friendships, family challenges, or uncertainty about the future, Bryson emphasized that patterns can change—and that young people have more agency than they may realize.
Feelings Come and Go
Bryson also challenged students to reconsider the way they think about difficult emotions. Using the image of clouds moving across the sky, she explained that feelings are temporary. They may be intense, and some may linger longer than others, but emotions continually shift and change.
Just as important, an uncomfortable emotion does not necessarily mean something is wrong. “You should feel the entire range of human emotions,” Bryson said. Fear in a frightening situation, sadness following a loss, or anxiety before something important are not failures to be eliminated; they are part of a healthy human emotional experience.
Instead of trying to avoid difficult feelings, Bryson encouraged students to notice them, name them, and develop tools for moving through them.
Finding Your Way Back to Green
One of those tools begins with recognizing what is happening in the brain and body. Bryson introduced students to three states of regulation: the “green zone,” where they are calm enough to learn, connect, think, and problem-solve; the “red zone,” characterized by heightened emotion and fight-or-flight responses; and the “blue zone,” when someone may shut down, withdraw, or feel disconnected.
Everyone moves between these states, she explained. The goal isn't to remain perfectly regulated all the time, but to recognize when we have moved out of our “green zone” and know how to find our way back.
Students across all divisions practiced one strategy together: placing a hand on their chest and another on their abdomen while slowing and extending their breath. Bryson explained how simple physiological strategies can help regulate the nervous system when emotions become too intense for thinking alone to be effective.
We Matter to Each Other
But perhaps one of Bryson’s most important messages was that emotional well-being isn't something we build entirely on our own.
“What you do really does matter. The truth is that we matter to each other. You're not alone, and we really can show up for each other,” she told students.
As humans, our nervous systems respond to the people around us. A friend’s panic can make us feel alarmed; in the same way, another person’s calm presence can help us feel safe. Sometimes supporting someone does not require having the perfect advice—simply being there can matter.
For a community built around the idea of “Each for All,” the message felt particularly resonant: how we show up for one another has real power.
Practice Makes the Brain
Across her time with students, teachers, and the broader GFA community, Bryson returned to an idea that was both scientific and hopeful: what we practice matters.
The ways we respond to difficult moments, the thoughts we give our attention, the strategies we practice, and the relationships we nurture all help shape our brains over time.
For young people whose brains are undergoing an extraordinary period of growth and change, that knowledge comes with tremendous possibility.
As Bryson reminded Upper School students, “You have so much more power and agency than you think you do.”
Her visit offered the GFA community more than an understanding of how the brain works. It offered practical tools for what to do with that knowledge—to better understand ourselves, care for one another, and practice the habits that help us grow.