EP 291: Show Me the Science! When your partner (or anyone else!) wants science- not a metaphor

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 bathboozle here on the baffling behavior show.

2:32 Hey, hey, everybody. Welcome. Maybe this is a welcome back to another episode here on the Baffling Behavior Show. So happy to be with y'all again today. This episode is for those of you who have someone in your life who is really on your team, like really wants to understand and support you and support your kid, but also is like, I need some science that sort of backs up what you're saying here.

3:01 Um, completely reasonable and valid need and hope for some folks, depending on how they process information and all that kind of good stuff. So let's talk exactly about that, right? Like maybe you've had the experience of being so excited and telling somebody, maybe it's your partner or your kid's teacher, or maybe your parents or siblings about what you're learning.

3:27 And it's like, oh my gosh, I've finally found something that I think helps explain my kids' behaviors in a way that is actually gonna be helpful in the long run, right? Because that's that's really the point. I mean, who cares if it explains anything if it doesn't actually help you? So, you know, find it finally finding something that feels like it explains what's happening for your kid, and then is gonna give you some support and making some decisions about okay, so what are we gonna do next?

3:53 And that feels so exciting and so relieving. And then you go and you tell like your person about it, and there's just a little maybe a little bit of an eyebrow raise, right? Like, uh okay, or hmm, sure, but like what does the science say, or what does the research say, or what does the peer-reviewed research say, or is this evidence-based, right?

4:20 And that question, that curiosity can quickly, I think, shift our nervous systems into protection mode. That is reasonable. That makes a lot of sense. Um, if nothing else, it probably, even though it's a completely reasonable response for somebody to have completely, it is probably gonna land as maybe a little bit misattuned because you are having this like hope, this enthusiasm of like, oh my gosh, this is feeling so relieving to me.

4:56 And then to want to share that with somebody you really care about and to feel really like met and seen and known by them. So just at the very least, there's probably just a little bit of your own, you know, experience that's like, oh, you know, a little disappointment, a little cue of danger. Um, and then for a whole host of other reasons, it could actually, you know, shift us even more into protection mode.

5:21 So that's really the first thing to just notice and track is, you know, is this person's, you know, request or inquiry for more or different kind of information. How is that landing in my nervous system? And how do I need to tend to my nervous system first? Always, always, always do that, right? I mean, again, this in so many ways, it's like one framework that we just get to use in all the places.

5:50 So just like with your kids, the first thing you want to know is just or notice is did this shift me into protection mode? And if so, like, well, of course it did. There's nothing to be upset about or like shaming yourself about or judging yourself about. Nobody's doing anything wrong, right? We're all just constantly shifting in and out of protection mode and connection mode based on, you know, our best assessment essentially of what this moment means and what the next right thing to do is.

6:23 So it's okay to shift into protection mode. We just want to notice that and then try to hold on to our owl brain. And let me just say from experience that the science can get a little bit complicated. And we need our owl brains to be able to offer the science to somebody in a way that feels just like information as opposed to an attempt to like convince somebody.

6:52 Convincing comes from protection mode, and and frankly, it's really hard to convince somebody of anything if you're coming from protection mode. So we're just gonna notice that first. And then we are going to validate, right? Again, like same framework. We're just applying it to lots of different places.

7:09 So we're gonna validate that. They're like, yeah, this is a simplified, um, this is a simplified understanding of relational neuroscience, of understanding the the neurobiology of behavior. It's very, very simplified, right? I mean, I I essentially co-developed the whole I will watch talk possum metaphor with the kids in my play therapy office.

7:32 Now it layers on top of the science beautifully, which was one of my like biggest aha moments about it. It was like, oh my gosh, what these kids are telling me about their nervous system or about their experience in the world. Like, wow, it really matches up with the theory, right? That's one of the things that got me so excited about using this metaphor or using metaphors because we use more than just I'll wash up pasta metaphors, right?

8:01 Like, like the streams that come together to create the river of reality. That's obviously a metaphor too. Now, if you don't know what I mean by that, just hold a second because we are gonna get to that. And it's it's easier to hold on to a metaphor than a lot of science for a lot of people, not for everybody.

8:23 It's easier to hold on to a metaphor than all the science when we're starting to get stressed and activated and overwhelmed. And there is something about the owl washdog possum metaphor that holds uh, helps us hold on to the owl part of our brain, not just the thinking part of our brain, but the relational connected parts of our brains and nervous systems and bodies too.

8:48 Um, I think that comes from having a metaphor that invites care, right? Like there's an important part of the owl, watchdog possum metaphor that's about the owl caring for watchdogs and possums, and then us caring for our own owls or watchdogs and possums. And that's a really important part of the metaphor, and it also does help us hold on to our owl brain.

9:17 That's why I tend to stay in metaphor. But also, y'all, I really get the show me the science question because that's absolutely me. Um, I very much have found felt safety in the science of relationship, in the science of behavior. Uh, I think some of this is temperament, some of this is my own history.

9:43 That deep diving into the science has felt very regulating to me. And once I've understood the science, it has felt so much easier to stay anchored into it. It keeps me in connection mode and it helps me stay trusting of what's happening in this exact moment, which is actually really, really important for then responding to kids with really big baffling behaviors.

10:18 I mean, part of my origin story, I mean, I have several different aspects of, you know, my origin story and how I've come to this place I am today. But one of them is being at a conference, sitting in the very back row and hearing who eventually became my primary uh mentor, Bonnie Baddenok. She said, all behavior makes sense, or no behavior is maladaptive, actually, is what she said.

10:43 No behavior is maladaptive. And I was like, uh, that's kind of bonkers. Um, but I there was a part of me that just still really trusted her. And I really wanted to understand the science. And so you might have a partner or a friend or a parent or somebody in that you're in a relationship with who is just like that, like sitting in the back row of the conference and and wants to understand the science of what has led to what can feel like a pretty outrageous idea.

11:21 And I thought no behavior is maladaptive was an outrageous idea, right? Like y'all listening, I don't like y'all are my people, right? Like you and your kids are the people that I was spending every like practically every moment of my life with. And to hear someone say no behavior isn't maladaptive was almost like kind of insulting sounding.

11:43 But there was something that maintained my trust in this, in this woman in Bonnie Badinack, which was important. Otherwise, I think I probably would have just disregarded it. But I really trusted Bonnie and I trusted that she understood the science. And that piqued my curiosity and gave me enough safety to then explore something that felt a little bit impossible.

12:09 Right. And so if that person who's skeptical, if that person's in your life, just kind of know that like that's actually sort of where I started as well, skeptical and wanted the science to understand. I also knew that the ideas were pretty radical. And if I was going to support parents, I needed to really understand where these ideas were coming from, like what they were really, really grounded in.

12:36 So let's talk about how you might approach this person, this person who is curious and wants to understand and wants to help you, but is also like, yeah, this is kind of off-sounding. Show me the science, right? And actually, you could just hand this episode right to them and ask them to start right now.

13:00 What am I? I'm almost at minute 11. I'm not sure. But you can look, look right now, see where the podcast is, and note that down, and you can start the podcast right here for somebody who's saying, oh, I need the science. Now, I'm not a neuroscientist. I do not do like brain surgery, for example. And so there is a point at which the science is satisfying enough for me for then my goal, which is to help families with really big out of, you know, with kids with really big out of control behaviors.

13:40 So with that in mind, one of the most important things to know and understand and stay connected to about the brain is that number one, the brain's job, primary job, is to keep us alive. Um, our brain really wants us to be in safe connected relationships. Um, those goals are pretty kind of neck and neck, but you know, safe connected relationships are completely impossible if you're not alive.

14:07 So if one goal was gonna like win out over the other, it is indeed to keep us alive. And one of the main ways the brain works to keep us alive is it doesn't respond to what's happening, it's predicting what's about to happen next and responding to that. So all of us have brains that are responding to things that haven't happened yet by making our best guess about what is gonna happen next.

14:37 And our brain is making that best guess, not with a whole lot of, you know, explicit conscious thought and reasoning, right? That would be way too slow. Our brain is making a best guess about what's about to happen next using millions of bits of implicit data and our memory networks and all of these things that are happening quickly outside conscious awareness is kind of putting it all together to make the best guess about what's gonna happen next and how do I respond to that in the way that's going to keep me the safest.

15:15 Okay. Then part of how our brain is making sense of what's about to happen next is there, the our brain is asking the question constantly of am I safe or am I not safe? Am I safe or am I not safe? And it's asking this question like way below conscious awareness. There's really good um science that backs up this phenomenon about how the brain is uh taking in stimuli from our, you know, externally from our environment and from our relationships, from everything that's happening outside of us.

17:03 But our brain is also reading everything that's happening inside of us. It's kind of running all of that through a program that knows all of our history and is making sense out of what's happening right now based on all of our history. It's working really, really, really fast. And it's deciding based on everything that's happened in my past and what seems to be happening right now.

17:30 Am I safe or am I not safe? Do I need to move in a diff into a defensive stance in my nervous system in order to become safe or am I safe right now? And therefore, I don't need to shift into a defensive state in my nervous system. Now, the present, what's happening right now, and all of our experiences in the past, we're combining those two things and then making our own assessment about what's actually happening right now.

18:11 So, in so many ways, we are all living in our own very unique subjective reality. None of us are having the same experience in reality, even if we are sharing reality, okay, because we're pulling in everything that's happening right now, but we're combining that with everything that's happened in the past.

18:29 And it's not an even ratio. It's like 20% of what is about what's happening right now, but the other 80% is about our history. And we could look at the six layers of our neocortex to understand how these things are coming together to create the subjective experience and reality. But again, I think that the science is there and you can go look for it.

18:56 And you know, understanding the metaphor or what the science really means for parenting is much, much, much more helpful. Now, I do have an older episode that I called All Behavior Makes Sense. And I have an infographic um about all behavior makes sense as well. Um, I think it's episode 198, but I'll double check that and I'll make sure it gets in the show notes.

19:23 So I'm not rehashing all of that science here. I'm just giving you a really broad, really broad overview. So we have the stream of the now, we have the stream of the past. These two things come together, create our own subjective reality. It's deciding safe or not safe. And really, it's most interested in predicting what's about to happen next, which means it's responding to what it thinks is gonna happen next before it actually even happens.

19:49 And in brains and bodies and nervous systems that have very sensitized stress response systems, which is probably every single one of you listening here, because that's such a big piece of what's happening in big baffling behaviors, is this very sensitized stress response system, right? Then the past it probably contains a lot of trauma or toxic stress.

20:16 And this can be true, even if, you know, you look at your kiddo and you're like, well, they haven't really experienced anything I would call trauma. And that might be absolutely true. And if you have a kid with really big baffling behaviors and a sensitized stress response system, that means that they've been living in the world with a very sensitized stress response system for probably a pretty long time.

20:42 That in and of itself can create like the accumulation of toxic stress. And then as you know, there's a bigger and bigger history of toxic stress, what happens is that in that uh that, you know, 20% of the now and 80% of the past come together to create subjective reality. Well, when the past has a lot of toxic stress or trauma in it, it impacts memory integration.

21:14 And the result of the impact on that memory integration is that the past can, in a way, like flood the now. And instead of the body feeling like, oh, I'm remembering this thing that happened in the past, when memory integration has been impacted, this thing that happened in the past doesn't feel like it happened in the past.

21:38 It feels like it's happening right now. And then the stress response system, what's which is already sensitized, is responding to that. Okay, and so all these things come together to help us see how all behavior does indeed make sense. Actually, just like Bonnie Badnock told me, no behavior is maladaptive.

22:02 Now, that does not mean that the behavior doesn't have a very negative impact on you or on your child or on other people, right? We are not excusing behavior by saying it makes sense. What we are doing is making meaning out of where the behavior has really come from and making more accurate meaning about where that behavior has really come from.

22:34 And what's important about that, well, it's not to give an excuse, it's to get better ideas about what to do to help that person. We, generally speaking, have been focused on the behavior as it comes out, like as it's expressed or at the impact of it. We actually have to go way upstream and look at not only the moment that that neuron fired that ultimately creates a behavior, you know, in the future, which is like a micro moment, but it's still in the future.

23:09 We're not just looking at that moment, but we're actually looking at what has led to that moment. So we're actually going even more upstream than just like when that neuron fires. But that's what I'm really thinking about is the state of the nervous system when that neuron fires. Now, I wish we could just focus on the behavior we can observe and use behavior management techniques because that would be infinitely easier.

23:31 But I also know if you're listening to this podcast, you have tried that and it's not working. And so, as much as I wish we could do that, it's not working. So we are just shifting our attention to further upstream on what comes before the actual behavior is expressed when that neuron is fired, and even actually before that, like what creates the conditions that the neuron fires from.

24:04 Now, again, you could go back to All Behavior Makes Sense podcast episode. It gets even more in-depth in here. The book, I think raising kids with big baffling behaviors does a decent job of straddling both science and making it useful, applicable, you know, using the metaphor. But the book is also really well cited.

24:22 Like there's a lot of things you could go check out from, you know, the references at the end, like the bibliography section. So the things that are based in science are pretty well identified, I think, in that book. And then there are some things which are an extrapolation of the science. And I've worked hard to make sure that that is well identified as well.

24:48 So, y'all, if all behavior makes sense, then somebody who's saying, Show me the science to back this up, that makes sense for them. Right? Some people, like me, really regulate by gathering the data, by gathering the facts, gathering the science. It has helped me feel safe enough to open up to a different approach, to what is actually kind of a more relational approach and is certainly a counterculture approach.

25:17 And I think it takes a lot of guts to be willing to consider making a shift. And for a lot of folks, the science can give them the safety about, you know, to help them be able to kind of make that shift. For some folks, the, you know, the show me the science, that's emerging really from protection mode.

25:42 And for some folks, especially when they're still in protection mode, there can be a bit of a, it's almost like a, I don't know, it's like kind of being sent down the wrong rabbit hole, right? Like for some folks, they're gonna say, show me the science, but then you do, and it's still not gonna feel like enough.

26:02 That typically means for me that that person is pretty connected to protection mode. For some folks, this science about what it means to be relationally, socially, and behaviorally human, it would mean dismantling their entire worldview. And y'all, that's vulnerable. That's risky, that's overwhelming.

26:26 It makes a lot of sense that some folks would really push back on that. And it also makes perfect sense that if we're gonna start to do something wildly different than what's done before, that people want some reason for that, right? Like they want a little bit or maybe a lot of data. It's also okay to tell someone it makes perfect sense you want the science.

26:53 Here's some of the science that I have that I could offer you, right? And maybe give them this episode or the all behavior makes sense episode or the all behavior makes sense infographic. And then, you know, maybe even say, like this book here is well cited. Here are the references. And then you don't have to take on the responsibility of finding the science, right?

27:17 If somebody really does want to understand, the giving them these things, you know, is a great place for them to get started. It's not starting from scratch, right? There's no need for that. But you don't have to do it for them. Okay. So don't take that burden on yourself. Not when I'm working with parents, like especially over in the club, about how to connect with folks who are feeling skeptical.

27:45 You know, again, we kind of go back to the same shared framework, start with attunement, start with assurance, like we're on the same team here. And so I might say something like, you know, me and you, we both want the same thing. This behavior, it's not acceptable. It's hurting my child or someone else.

28:03 And I want it to change as well. And I also know we have been trying to change it with, you know, pretty traditional behavior management techniques, and it's not working. And so I went looking for a different alternative. This is what I've discovered. This is what the science is that backs it up, right?

28:30 So stay on the same page, attune, resonate, be clear. I want the same thing. A lot of folks who are skeptical are worried we're just excusing behavior or we're gonna be um permissive or passive. There's a lot of valid concern for that right now. Um, and I do think in some ways, you know, watching pendulum swings, watching pendulums swing, it makes sense.

28:58 People are concerned that we're shifting into something that's more permissive, because I think some people are doing that. And that's not what we're doing at all here. We are looking at what's happening. Why is this behavior happening? We are staying connected to our belief that all behavior makes sense and that this person is perfectly imperfect, just like everyone else, right?

29:22 And so, if all of that's true, then this behavior can't be because they're just bad or because they don't want to do something, right? There's gotta be a different explanation for it. Okay. So, my hope then is that this episode gives you some talking points. Maybe you want to just go and give like the middle section of it to somebody.

29:45 Maybe you want to send them the All Behavior Makes Sense podcast. Um, maybe you want to send them the All Behavior Makes Sense infographic, which is available over in the club and in the free resource hub. Um, oh, also, y'all listening, if you're in the club, we have that masterclass about parenting when your partner's not on board.

30:07 And that masterclass applies more than just to, you know, your partner. I think it's a really helpful masterclass for connecting with anybody who you're in a relationship with, who you care about, and who has an impact on your kid, connecting with anybody who feels like they're not quote unquote on board.

30:28 So, club members, we have that over in the um club library. We also have that all behavior makes sense infographic. If you can't find it, you know, just reach out to Katie Walsh, you know, and Katie will help you, you know, find exactly what what you need, um, what you need in the club. So, y'all, it makes perfect sense.

30:48 Somebody wants the science. Okay. Attune to that, connect with it, validate that that makes perfect sense. Of course they want that. Reassure them that y'all are on the same team. You both want the same thing to happen, which is for this behavior that's hurting the child or hurting other people, for that behavior to shift and change, and then offer the truth, which is we've been trying traditional, you know, behavior-based approaches to trying to shift or change this behavior.

31:28 Because almost I don't think I've ever met somebody who was hasn't at some point tried those things with their kid. Even if you came to parenting wanting to parent a little bit differently, and then you got a kid who has really big baffling behaviors, it's just so dysregulating that everyone at some point tries typical traditional behavior management techniques.

31:53 And so, you know, offer that up to this person who's saying, Show me the science. Like, like we both want the same thing, and we have been working so hard to get this behavior change through more traditional behavior management, and it's not working. And so I'm wondering if you might be willing to connect with me about this new information and this new science and this new approach that I've been learning about.

32:23 Now I know this podcast episode makes this all sound very easy. Like just approach this person like this, and then, you know, they'll come into connection with you and say, Oh, please tell me all about it. Now, that absolutely could very possibly happen. But just again, like everything else on this podcast, um, very rarely does, you know, a new piece of information change everything for you.

32:46 So if you need more than just information, if you need more than what is available here on the podcast, just know that that more exists. You can come into the club. You can come in for a short time, you can come in for a long time. And most people do come in for a long time because, you know, by the time few folks reach the club, there is this kind of sense that this is a long game, right?

33:10 You can also find a professional to support you through this lens change. If you go to robingobel.com slash directory, a list of professionals who have um come through the immersion program are is located there. And you can find somebody to help you and your family um do this individually. And I know a lot of folks do both.

33:32 They have somebody who helps them individually and they have the support of the club, which is their, you know, 24-7. Um, so there are a lot of different places you could turn to to get some support for your family. Now, actually, let me back up. There's not a lot of places. I know there's not a lot, y'all know there's not a lot.

33:55 This is one place that I have been able to contribute to offering you a place where you can turn to the club or um, and or you know, working with somebody who has been trained in the immersion program. And I wish there was more options and I wish there were more resources. And we're doing our best to create those.

34:17 And until then, you know, or while we're doing that, these are the two places that I can offer you as a supportive place, the club andor a professional who has been through and graduated from the immersion program. So robanggobel.com slash the club, robingoeble.com slash directory for a professional who's or a practitioner who has graduated from the immersion program.

34:43 So, y'all show me the science. That's a reasonable question. Also, you don't have to have a neuroscience degree to be able to answer that question. You can offer what you've heard here in this podcast episode, and then you can, you know, also support folks in going to look for the science themselves.

35:04 Okay, so I hope this episode was helpful with regard to this very specific, tricky moment in your life of somebody who is saying, I really want to be on board with you, but I really need a lot more science in order to do that. And y'all, I will be back here with you again next week for another episode of The Baffling Behavior Show.

35:29 Bye, y'all.