The following piece is the fifth of seven articles that examine the Emotional Rooms. In this instalment, John Joseph provides some key background reading about the Red Room – the place where the monster within us resides!

What’s this about?

In the Red Room, experience prompts behavioural responses which in the course of a childhood have done better than other attempts to resolve recurring circumstances. Hence, the experiences from our distant past impose an interpretive reactionary landscape on the present and future.

What is the Red Room?

The human body has a surprisingly small set of responses to a broad array of stressors. The hallmark of the Red Room is the rapid mobilisation and deployment of energy to the bodily systems that generate survival-type responses. The Red Room is the world of extremely limited possibilities. It activates in situations that trigger heightened emotional responses such as fear, anger, anxiety, frustration and disgust and can give rise to the execution of survival-oriented behaviour. Red Room behaviour can be extremely effective when one is confronted with a crucial physical or emotional challenge. 

On the other hand, prolonged or overly intense Red Room reactions may contribute to illnesses that increase your risk of heart disease, obesity, arthritis, depression and accelerating aging (Society for Neuroscience, Primer on the Brain, 2006).

In essence, the Red Room can make you or break you. An overly intense Red Room reaction or overly regular Red Room incidents, or overly anticipating engagement in Red Room events can have a tremendously debilitating effect on the functioning and health of virtually every cell in the body. For some students and teachers, albeit a few, their lives are characterised by brief interludes between Red Room incidents.

By John Joseph

John Joseph has an inspiring story to tell. He left school at the age of 14 to undertake an apprenticeship as a solid plasterer. After 11 years of contributing to the family business, he resumed his formal education, graduating with a Master’s degree in Mathematics and Science Education. 

John taught across all year levels before working in teacher education at the University of South Austrailia. In 1998, he formed his own company, Focus Education Austrailia, and has enjoyed phenomenal success as a presenter, writer and coach. In just nine years John has worked with over 350,000 delegates across 16 countries. He has published six books, three CDRoms and over 100 articles. John’s website attracts over 1 million visitors annually. 

Today, John is affectionately known as the Brain Man. He facilitates workshops each year for about 12,000 school students and speaks at national and international conferences for educators, parents and the corporate world. John has featured in hundreds of newspaper articles for his work with kids, parents and teachers.   

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