EP 288: How to Stay Regulated...NOT Calm!!!

2:15 So when your kids' behavior is baffling and yours is too, sometimes, yeah. I know. Let's take a break from all the man boozle. Here on the baffling behavior. We're gonna start today's podcast with a question. I'm pulling it right out of the guided journal, chapter 12. Does it seem possible to hang on to your owl brain by one sharp talon to let your righteous anger arise without letting your watchdog completely take over?

2:55 Or does that feel impossible? What do you notice in your thoughts and feelings right now? Just asking yourself that question. That might be one of my most favorite lines from the guided journal, uh, hanging on to your obel brain by one sharp talon, mostly because there's a little inside joke in that line.

3:23 But I have parents use this kind of metaphor. Like, I was hanging on to it as it was like trying to, you know, fly away with me. And you know, I've had people say they kind of imagine the whole like Winnie the Pooh holding on to the balloon kind of image with the uh you know, hanging on to that owl brain by just the tiniest little part of it.

3:53 And I love in general when the grown-ups start talking about their own owl watchdog and possum. But what I especially love about this imagery is that there's an implicit pause there. There is a moment of noticing, and it is in that moment of noticing where so many things have the possibility of shifting and changing.

4:22 That's what we're gonna talk about today. We are gonna talk about how regulated does not mean calm, and how can you stay regulated, but not calm, especially if calm is wildly inappropriate. And y'all, sometimes it is. So welcome, or maybe this is another welcome back to another episode here on the Baffling Behavior Show.

4:50 I am your host, Robin Gobel. Here on The Baffling Behavior Show, we take the science of being relationally, socially, behaviorally human and try to make sense of it, try to make meaning out of it and try to apply it to our actual real lives with our actual children who need support and are showing us that they need support because of these baffling behaviors.

5:15 A lot of you listening have kids with sensitized stress response systems, vulnerable nervous systems, um, histories maybe of complex trauma, reactive attachment disorder, or uh experiences in their brain that are we would call neurodivergent, autistic or ADHD, sensory differences, or maybe your kid has a history of pans or pandas.

5:41 There are so many reasons that you could have a child with baffling behaviors and a vulnerable nervous system. And whatever that reason is, even if you can't figure out what that reason is, I'm super, super glad that you're here. Okay, y'all. We're gonna talk about owls and watchdogs and possums today.

5:59 And so um, if you're not familiar with that metaphor, you might want to go back to episode, I'm gonna have to look and see what number it is. I'll put it down in the show notes. Episode something called Focus on the Nervous System to Change Behavior. It's at robanggobel.com slash changebehavior that talks all about owls, watchdogs, and possums.

6:21 You can also watch a free webinar right on my website at robingobel.com slash webinar and download an accompanying free ebook to learn all about owls, watchdogs, and possums. In today's episode, we are gonna throw back all the way to one of my very first episodes. I think again, it was somewhere in the 30s.

6:43 This was a long time ago, y'all, like in 2021. And I interviewed my friend and colleague, Lisa Dion, who is the founder of the Synergetic Play Therapy Institute and the creator of Synergetic Play Therapy. Lisa is a trailblazer in integrating interpersonal neurobiology, relational neuroscience, and all the complexities that are connected into those theories with play therapy with kids.

7:15 She was one of my first guests on the podcast. Again, I think this must have been 2021. And Lisa talks about how regulated does not mean calm. In fact, she says that calm isn't actually what we're aiming for. She says, calm isn't the point. Connected to self is the point. And I have found this idea to be in many ways kind of non-negotiable for the parents of the kids that I work with, especially because in recent years, I don't know, decades, decade, there's certainly been an emphasis in just kind of the general parenting world of staying more calm.

8:09 And I think that that pendulum has really swung to a very odd place where parents are working so hard because they believe this is the what the right thing to do is because that they believe that's what they've been told to do. Parents are working to stay calm during situations in which calm makes absolutely no sense.

8:28 And what that means is in order to appear calm, they are often kind of like disconnecting from their own authentic experience and trying to pretend to be something that they're not. And this is so hard on parents' nervous systems. It's also actually hard on our kids' nervous systems because it's very confusing to be with somebody whose insides and outsides don't match.

8:55 That's the language that I've always used, even in the therapy room when I was working with parents in the therapy room. The insides and outsides don't match. It makes a lot of sense that we're trying this. And I think it's good for us to know that this is actually very hard on our nervous system and very hard on our kids.

9:12 It's actually um, you know, cues of danger to be with somebody who's insides and outsides don't match. So, you know, I gave you that little snippet from chapter 12 at the beginning of the episode. In chapter 12 of raising kids with big baffling behaviors, the uh my original book, um, Nat, the mom that we're following through the book, comes into my office and is celebrating a way that she responded to her kiddo, who in the book we call Sammy.

9:46 And Nat says that Sammy got in trouble for throwing rocks at cars. Okay, big, big deal. And Nat was celebrating because she, when she heard about this, she could imagine how quickly her owl brain could fly away. Like she could feel hot. And then she had a moment where she was actually able to kind of feel that hotness, feel the mad, and not have her owl brain fly completely away.

10:21 And she was able to connect with Sammy about this very serious thing that had happened in an authentic way. She was able to be clear that she was upset, that this was very serious behavior, right? But she wasn't dysregulated. She didn't get disconnected from herself. She was able to be with her anger in this really honest, authentic way and express it in an honest, authentic way, but that wasn't scary.

10:53 The reality is that when something like that is happening, throwing rocks at cars, like cars that are driving, but throwing rocks at any kind of car would not be cool. Responding in a calm way would be weird. It would almost certainly be dishonest because it's hard to imagine how calm would be the reaction, right?

11:16 So it would almost certainly be dishonest. It would be strange, and it runs the risk of kind of communicating to Sammy or to your kid, you know, when you have this calm reaction to a really big deal problem, that actually, yeah, this isn't any big deal. And that that's not what we want to communicate.

11:36 Like, we need kids to get some feedback about, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is super duper serious and cannot happen and cannot happen again. And we can absolutely do that in a way that's not dysregulated and doesn't conflate the seriousness of the behavior with like who they are as a person. When we get dysregulated and we express our anger in a dysregulated way, we tend to kind of conflate um behavior with who people are.

12:11 And it becomes expressed in a way that's like, you're bad. You did this bad thing and you're bad. It can feel really blamey, it can feel really shamey. And I listen, I'm not passing any judgment right now because I have certainly expressed my mad from that place too, without question. And what I'm trying to do is just kind of highlight the difference here.

12:33 Like we can be mad and regulated, we can be intense and regulated and express that. And what we express in that is like, whoa, this is serious. It can't happen again. We have to deal with this problem. I'm not happy about it. All of those things can be expressed without blaming or shaming kids. We don't have to blame or shame for kids to understand, like, holy smokes, this is a really bad thing, and I probably shouldn't do it again.

13:00 Right. So being regulated, again, it doesn't have to mean calm. It can mean something like, oh, I can be really mad and still not say things that are hurtful. It can even mean I can feel something bad or even very bad and still be okay. These are extremely important experiences for us to have, and extremely important experiences for us to teach our kids.

13:31 All right. And so in the book, then you know, Nat was celebrating so much. Like I hung on to my owl brain. It was just barely, right? But it was like I jumped up and grabbed its tail and talon just before it was out of reach, and how completely exciting that is. It's so worth celebrating. So let's talk about the four-step technique, the four-step process that in the book I am talking about with Nat, but that I have talked about with, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of parents over the years.

14:06 And I would say I articulated this process after just decades of tracking both myself, working with parents, and also developing a bigger understanding of the neuroscience involved. Like what is the mechanism underneath this process that is what's supporting that space in the in the nervous system, right?

14:33 Of both regulated but not necessarily calm. Okay. Now the four-step process is number one, notice. Number two, acknowledge without judgment. Number three, some experience of self-compassion. And number four, some experience of regrounding in the here and now, releasing tension, something like that. So I'm gonna walk through the four steps.

15:02 Also, um, we do have a masterclass over in the club called How Do I Stay Calm? And it's uh is one of the more popular, um, for lack of better words, uh club masterclasses. It gives some pretty concrete things to do. And yeah, the four-step process: notice, acknowledge, self-compassion, you know, reconnect with yourself in some way, grounding, breathing, something like that.

15:29 So, number one, we're gonna notice what's happening for us. And some of us are gonna notice thoughts first. Some of us are gonna notice feelings first, some of us are gonna notice sensations first, some of us might even notice our behaviors first, like that our fists are clenching or our shoulders are getting really tight.

15:47 Okay, it doesn't matter. We a lot of us tend to have one we would notice first and would be kind of our common like pathway in. Noticing the thought, a feeling, a sensation or behavior, the very first moment you can start to notice that you are getting really activated. And experiment with being able to see the feeling or see the experience of getting activated as opposed to being that experience and kind of like being totally taken over by it.

16:21 We really want to strengthen what's called our witnessing mind, which is kind of uh all wrapped into that owl brain metaphor. So again, maybe you're gonna notice like uh like that your jaw clenches or a dropping sensation in your stomach, or maybe a thought like, I'm ruining my child, or my child will never learn how to behave, something like that.

16:45 You might also notice more of like a possum pathway experience, like you feel flat or far away, or almost like you're watching yourself in a movie. You start to get kind of disconnected from self. What we're doing here, and I'm not gonna get too brainy and too jargony, but what we are trying to do here with this noticing is really keep some parts of the brain online.

17:13 Um, some parts of the brain still firing. The insula, the interior cingulate, these are parts of the brain that are involved with kind of reading what's happening in the body. And the insula, the anterior cingulate cortex, it are connected to that middle prefrontal cortex. And if we can keep those parts of the brain firing, if we can keep electricity running through those parts of the brain, as we are also starting to get activated, that is that's just exactly what we're aiming for.

17:48 We want to see if we can have both going. Okay. So that's where that noticing part comes in. And in a way, it's the noticing that is what we're kind of um that's the step where we're working really hard to essentially like grab onto that owl brain, right? Like reach for that talent, try to keep those higher parts of the brain, the parts of the brain that are able to reflect on and notice self.

18:18 We want to keep those parts of the brain engaged in the moment. Okay, so first we notice. Then the next beat is one that is, I think tends to be hardest for folks and one that gets skipped the easiest, which is hang with the noticing for another beat. I would call it like acknowledging that it's happening without any judgment.

18:41 Okay, so we're noticing, oh my gosh, I'm starting to get hot. And then then the next beat, there is just a moment where we're like, yeah, that's happening. Okay, we are just allowing it to be what is true. We're not trying to solve it, change it, fix it, talk ourselves out of it, shame ourselves for it, nothing except we're just it's true.

19:04 It's a thing that's happening. Again, we are working hard to keep those higher parts of the brain running while we're also having an experience, you know, that is the activation that's happening, right? We're trying to keep both parts of the brain running at the same time. Okay, we want to try to step away from judgment words.

19:27 Shoulds, for example, are judgment words, right? Like I should be able to stay more calm, I shouldn't be feeling this way, I know why my kid is having um this behavior, and so I shouldn't feel this way about it. Nuh-uh. We're gonna try to eliminate shoulds. Okay. So in this noticing moment in particular, this is just a being with what's really true in this moment.

21:08 Even acknowledging this, like, I'm really mad. Okay. So first you notice it, then just like, yeah, I'm really mad about this. Okay. All of that's keeping the owl engaged while also maintaining the intensity that matches the seriousness of the situation. And we can do both, and both actually are quite helpful.

21:33 When we notice what's happening in our body and we let that be true, I'm using those parts of the owl brain that are trying to completely fly away. This is how I'm getting the owl brain to stick around. And eventually it's how I'm getting kind of the owl and the watchdog to hang out together, right? We don't have to always have an owl like bolt away because the watchdog starts to get activated.

22:00 Okay. And that's actually really what we're aiming for the most. We're not aiming for that watchdog to never get activated. We're aiming for the watchdog's activation to not make the owl fly away so quickly. Okay. We're aiming for that in our ourselves and in our kids. Okay, so we've got notice and we've got acknowledge.

22:16 And then what I think is helpful to come next is a moment of self-compassion. Something that's just with the heart. Right. And it could be something you say to yourself, it could be a gesture you offer to yourself, it could be a hand on the chest, it could be a compassionate voice that's just like, oh, this is so hard.

22:38 Think of it like accompanying yourself, keeping yourself company, being there, being with yourself. Oh my gosh, this is just so hard. It's hard to work this hard to stay regulated. It's hard to parent a child with such a vulnerable nervous system. This is so hard. It's hard to get calls from the school that say your kid is throwing rocks at cars.

23:07 Okay. It's all hard. And we can be with that in the moment and like accompany ourselves. If you can find that sensation in your body and send a moment of compassion to it, the sensation of I am getting really hot about this, or I'm about to lose it, or whatever the language is for you. Find that sensation and send even that sensation very directly, the noticing, the acknowledging, and the compassion.

23:43 And then from there, I'm gonna do something that is very deliberate about keeping me connected to what's happening in the here and now. So for some of us, that's a breath. For some of us, that's like releasing the tension in our fists. For some of us, that's noticing our feet on the floor. For some of us, that's noticing something else that's happening in the here and now, like a sound that you're hearing.

24:06 And the intention here is to bring your brain really connected to right here, right now. Because of course we know that the more um activated the get, the more we are like kind of flying into the future in a way, right? We're future tripping. It feels like this is an a problem that will be here forever.

24:25 I'll never solve this problem, nothing will ever get better, right? We start to go to those kinds of places. And we want to try to stay really connected to right here, right now. Like in this moment, I'm real mad. But in this moment, my kid isn't actively throwing rocks, and so I don't actually need to have all the energy coursing through my body that would then prompt me to like run to my child and get them to stop doing something dangerous, right?

24:49 I don't need that at this moment because right now I'm just hearing about this thing that's bad, not actively responding to this thing. Okay, so notice, acknowledge, be with yourself, have some self-compassion, and then find a way to return to the here and now, like a breath, a release, grounding, something like that.

25:10 And then, y'all, here's what I want you to know this takes an unbelievable amount of practice. And it will take an unbelievable amount of practice from now until forever. And this will never get to be something that you get to stop practicing. Well, I guess I'll say it has never gotten to be something that I get to stop practicing.

25:29 I must actively practice this. And I go through periods of life where I'm better at it than others. And I go through periods of life where I'm more actively practicing than others. And I go through periods of life when I have more capacity to practice it. I mean, it's just constantly ebbing and flowing.

25:46 And it takes a lot of practice. You start practicing it by like reflecting back on a time when your owl totally flew away. Right. So, you know, maybe later in that day or at night, you kind of like run like that mental movie of this thing that happened and you totally lost it, had a huge watchdog or possum reaction.

26:07 And you can reflect on it and go through those steps in your mind, in your memory. You can almost run it like this like mental movie, and you can run what actually happened, and then you can like rewind it in your mind, and then use your imagination to notice and then to acknowledge and then to self-compassion, send self-compassion, and then to ground.

26:33 Okay. So you're doing it all in your memory because you know, at this, at this stage, it's just impossible to do it in the moment. Okay. So you're doing it later. Then what I see next is then people can, you know, after some practicing, and kind of move on to the next stage. Your watchdog or your opossum totally takes over.

26:57 And you now can realize it's happening, but you're still only realizing it like after it happened. And so you're realizing it much sooner. So maybe in the next few moments instead of, you know, hours or days later. Okay. So you're still not noticing it in the moment, but you're noticing it sooner. Then the next stage, and the stages, you go through the stages because you've been practicing, not just because time marches on, but because you're actively practicing, going through this process in your mind.

27:30 Okay. The next stage is you're you notice in the moment, oh, I'm getting really activated here, but then you can't stop it. Okay, so you notice it's happening, but you cannot stop it. This is the stage where people get the most frustrated, and I think sometimes um can move into shame or collapse or like give up energy because it almost can feel like you're sliding back.

27:55 Like I can notice it's happening, but I but I can't stop it. And I've actually even had people tell me, like, I sort of preferred it before when I didn't even notice it was happening because now I notice it's happening and I can't do anything about it, and that feels really awful. What I want to tell you about this stage is that if you keep practicing, you'll keep moving through it.

28:15 You are not going to get stuck there. You have to keep practicing. It's just a stage of the journey, and it makes a lot of sense, right? That now you're activating kind of that insula and that anterior cingulate just enough that you can notice, but not enough that all of those upper brain, um, uh upper brain places.

28:38 Y'all, I'm like totally losing the word right now, but like that middle prefrontal cortex, all these things are involved with kind of holding on to the owl brain, right? You can notice what's happening, but you still can't totally harness the owl brain. Okay, so you still flip. Then you keep practicing, keep practicing, you keep practicing.

28:54 And the next next stage is you notice, and after you notice, you get like a beat or two, and then you flip out anyway. That's a bummer, but it is progress. And then you keep practicing and you get to the next stage, which is where you like notice, and you pause, and you can feel like that whisper of compassion, and then you freak out anyway.

29:17 Right? And it's like, oh my gosh, I'm getting so close. And then you practice and you practice and you practice, and then you get to stage six, which is you can notice, you can acknowledge, you can access that compassion, you can take a breath, and then you can make a different choice, and then you can move forward with being regulated, though not necessarily calm, unless calm is really totally appropriate, then by all means, be calm.

29:46 So just know, y'all, just know that this is a very um lengthy process with a lot of different stages. And when you notice yourself getting frustrated because it's taking a long time, or maybe sometimes you even notice that you've like kind of fallen back at the stage you're in. That's normal, y'all. That's just being human.

30:04 I mean, all of us, once we start to like kind of get the hang of something, or when we just start kind of focusing on something else, we kind of stop giving attention to, you know, things, right? And so it could be that things start to get a little bit easy in your life, and therefore you kind of stop practicing this process.

30:21 You're not needing it as much, but then all of a sudden you really need it and you're like, whoops, I kind of forgot to be practicing that, and I can tell because I'm a little rusty at it. And so I'll just know that that's just normal. That's just part of being human. You're gonna have, you know, moments where you have an experience where you're like, ooh, I should be practicing that again.

30:40 Notice, acknowledge, compassion, get reconnected to the here and now. And then from there, your owl brain can make a choice. And it can choose to be mad and regulated. It can choose to be scared and regulated. Nat could say, I am feeling very mad about this and also scared. This is super dangerous behavior.

31:08 We are gonna have to talk about this, but I'm gonna wait a few minutes until my owl brain is totally back. Now, this doesn't mean your kid isn't gonna get wildly dysregulated still, right? These weren't steps to control their reaction. These are steps to control ours. Because, yeah, it is very possible that then that will impact our kids' experience and may impact their regulation and may prevent them from escalating.

31:37 But actually, the steps are so important for you, for us, for the grown-ups, because the more capable we get of being regulated but not calm, of having activation without getting totally dysregulated, the better for our nervous system it is. Because the reality is, is there's gonna be lots of reasons for you to get activated from now until probably forever.

32:00 And the more we can have activation without becoming totally dysregulated, the better that is for us. The better that is for our nervous system, the better that is for our health, the better, it's just better for everything. So it can be possible to hold on to our owl brains by just one sharp talon. And yeah, you're probably feeling like, oh, I I want to be able to do this better for my kid, but I want you to feel like the only motivation you need is because you deserve it.

32:36 Because you deserve it. And if that's feeling hard, that's that makes sense. In fact, I shouldn't have said, you know, that I need you to, right? I shouldn't have come at you with what feels like my agenda. What I long for you is for you to be able to experience activation and intensity without becoming totally dysregulated because you deserve that.

33:00 And because the reality is, is your life is gonna continue to give you lots of reasons to be activated. Now, y'all, if you're in the club, you can head into the library and check out the how do I stay calm, um, how do I stay calm master class. And also, we are gonna be working on a this is slightly different, I guess, but we are gonna be working on going quote unquote trigger hunting in early November.

33:25 Um, we're gonna do a workshop all about that. There are so many resources, right? If you're listening to this and you're in the club, there's so many resources about how to work on this process of staying regulated but not calm. And I also think finding somebody to kind of practice it with can be really helpful.

33:49 And if you have somebody in your life to practice with, awesome. And if you don't have somebody in life to practice with and you're in the club, like let's get you buddied up. Like, let's find somebody to practice this with. In fact, you know what? Here's what I'm gonna say. Um, I'm gonna make sure somebody somewhere writes this down.

34:11 Let's put on the calendar, y'all. If you're in the club, let's put on the calendar like uh a practice session in early November, like before we really get into those holidays, the holiday season. Let's get on the calendar, um, a practice session. We haven't written the calendar for November yet. So I'm externally processing right now, right out loud.

34:32 Hopefully, someone on my team hears this and will remind me that I told you all I would do this. Also, if you're in the club, remind me I told you all we would do this. We'll put it on the calendar, we'll practice together, and then that will also create for us like a uh like an audio recording that we can practice and use like over time so we can continue to practice those four steps.

34:55 And of course, practicing them with people who are also working hard to hold on to their owl brains is ideal. That is the perfect scenario to really practice these things with. So, yeah, let's do this in the club. Let's do a practice session on these four steps in early November, and then we'll still do that trigger hunting workshop so that we can really also because the noticing gets easier when we are more aware of the types of things that really activate our nervous system.

35:30 Okay, cool. So also if you're not in the club, this um episode is airing on October 13th. This is um the last day of an open enrollment period for the club. So if you're not in the club and you want to hop in, come and do that today. We are open until the end of the day, October 13th, and we would absolutely love, love, love to have you.

35:52 Next week, y'all. I already have next week's episode all uh ready for you. It is um uh an episode with my dear friend and colleague Rose up here. Rose is uh my co-leader in the immersion program, and we recorded an episode about um how to utilize support people in your life. And we recorded an episode very um deliberately to be something you could give the episode to someone.

36:22 So the support people in your life that you're turning to to support you in um, you know, what's happening for you in your family, whether that be direct support with your children or not, maybe just support for you. Um, we just had an amazing time recording this episode. And again, we we recorded it with intentionality that if you wanted to, you could actually ask somebody to listen to this episode, and it would be helpful to them to know how to support you.

36:49 So that episode's already done. It's waiting for you. It will air next Tuesday. So I will be back with y'all again next week on another episode of The Baffling Behavior Show. But y'all, you don't have to wait till next week to hang out with me. Come and join me in the club. All right, y'all. Till next week.