How Can the Club Help Me? {EP 197}

Robyn: So for those of you who are make decisions like that, and need some more felt safety before making the decision to jump into The Club. That's who this episode is for. I wanted to make this a bonus episode so it didn't kind of take up one of the regular weekly episodes that you all wait for. There'll be another one of those regularly scheduled on Tuesday the eighth. So again, The Club is open from Tuesday, October 1 through Tuesday, October 8, 2024, for new members, we open periodically, because I like to have moments, weeks, I guess days, weeks where we had to pause The Club's regularly scheduled programming and really focus on welcoming these new members in, and then we kind of closed that process down and return to our primary purpose, which is creating connection, co-regulation, safety for Everybody who is a member of The Club. I actually may be changing this process in the future. We may be shifting to a different way we welcome new members, but for now, that's what we do that's felt like for the most part, has always worked the best. So let's start with just what even is The Club.    

Robyn: I describe The Club as an online, virtual membership community, and it's for parents of kids with vulnerable nervous systems and big, baffling behaviors. Definitely, a lot of families in The Club have kids who have been adopted, and definitely, maybe most of the families in The Club have experienced some kind of trauma or toxic stress, which could be something like abuse or neglect or adoption loss, but toxic stress includes other kinds of hard childhood experiences, divorce, medical trauma, the ongoing experience, really, of just being different in a world that doesn't make a lot of space for being different, and kind of the chronicity of those micro and sometimes big traumas really add up, and can create some of that vulnerability. I mean, some families in The Club of kids with, you know, some neuro-divergence, some folks have. Of kids with other nervous system vulnerabilities, like a neuro-immune disorder.    

Robyn: What is super cool about The Club is actually this, you know, diversity in our backgrounds, that all of us have kids who have vulnerability in their nervous system for maybe different reasons. But what we're coming together to share is this intense and unique but common to us experience of parenting kids with these vulnerable nervous systems and these really baffling behaviors and behaviors that aren't just baffling, behaviors that are unsafe and raging, they're pulling out our own Watchdog brains, their behaviors that seem to invite us to collapse into our own Possum brains, right? And then we move into a space of compassion fatigue or blocked care or burnout. One of the things parents in The Club talk about is how they are experiencing this way of finally being seen and not only by me and my team, but by each other like it's their first experience being in community with parents like them, parents who are parenting, children like they are also parenting. Because I know you all know that this can be a very lonely, isolating, confusing journey, and the parents in The Club feel so different than the other parents in their immediate community, and the kinds of struggles that the parents and The Club are having feel so different than than your average, typical parenting family difficulty. So in The Club, that sense of isolation or that sense of my family is very different, really just starts to fade away. There's this almost instant experience of, Oh, everybody here gets it. What's happening in my family isn't weird. This is the kind of stuff that's happening for other families too.   

Robyn: So that brings me to talk about how The Club actually helps, because The Club, of course, isn't therapy. I used to be a therapist. I do not practice or work as a therapist currently, but I have history and experiences being a therapist. The Club isn't therapy, and The Club doesn't see or work with your kids, right? The Club is a community for parents. So how does that help? Well, definitely, The Club, first off, offers a lot of very practical support, like there's an enormous on demand video library with well over 100 videos that can be watched at any time. Lots of them are masterclasses, not all of them, but lots of them are. They're available 24 hours a day, you know, cover topics like lying, which actually we're gonna redo the lying master class this month, October. It is gonna air live on October 4. So it's one of my first master classes. It just needs to be updated as all things based on brain science too. So we are tackling lying this month in The Club, and topics like manipulation, topics like attachment, strengthening the brain, compassion, fatigue, parenting when our partner is not on board. Let's see what else supporting siblings. I mean, there's a lot. There's so many topics that you really just need to go to, RobynGobbel.com/theclub. Scroll down a bit and see, I would say most of the topics are probably listed there. It's possible we've fallen behind because there's just a lot of them.    

Robyn: We also have what I call mini-courses, like groupings of courses, or groupings of videos, groupings of classes into these courses. So we, for example, have a mini course on changing behavior, and that brings you through everything you need to know about Owl, Watchdog, and Possum brains, how to grow the Owl brain, how to calm the Watchdog and Possum brain, right? We have several different kinds of mini-courses. The video library is searchable by keyword, and all of our videos, or I'll just say, the vast majority of them, have a handout, a transcript that can be downloaded, and most come with a certificate of completion. So if that helps you, it's not a CE, but it's just a certificate of completion. If that helps you in any way, you can get that as well. I mean, if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you know that one of my passions, one of the things I'm most focused on, is taking the neuroscience and making it make sense and be relevant for you and just your regular everyday life, right? Like this complex information neuroscience not useful to you if it isn't applicable to what you need, right? So that's a huge emphasis of what I do in The Club, and is definitely a theme of most of the master classes, taking the start neuroscience, making it applicable and making it useful.    

Robyn: But then what we have is this really, really active forum so that members can process their own unique situation, like take the information we learned in these master classes, or in the, 'Ask Anything Sessions,' right? And make them really relevant for themselves, right? They get to kind of figure out, how does this information relate to my situation? Or, or they can ask like, hey, we tried this, but it's not working. So what do we do here instead? Right? And there's just so much conversation in the forum because, of course, a masterclass. You know, when I get up and teach something, I'm mostly teaching theory, and I'm teaching it through the lens of what I've known has worked for folks, but it still isn't unique for your situation. So that's what we get to do. Or I guess the wording would be, still not tailored. So that's what we get to do in the forum, and that's what we get to do in our putting it into practice sessions, and that's what we get to do in our 'Ask Anythings.'    

Robyn: In the forum, me and my team are highly, highly involved. I'd say we respond to almost every single post, or at least the posts that's appropriate for us to respond to you. I mean, some posts are really clearly just for parents, right? And it's parents coming together, supporting one another, and, you know, I create the space for that, but I don't need to, like butt into that all the time, right? I mean, there's just such a richness in the community. There's these truly rock star parents who have been in the trenches for so long, and sometimes they have the inner resources to kind of show up and help each other, to give help. And that's actually one of my favorite things about The Club. And one of the things about The Club that's really by design is that giving, giving support, feeling useful, feeling regulated, giving compassion to others, in many ways, is as important to you, shifting the brain, growing the Owl brain, growing the window of tolerance, it can be as important as receiving all of those things. The expectation of our club members is always like, receive what you need to and offer what you can, and that shifts all the time. Like that must shift hourly or daily for you so you come to The Club to receive what you need to and offer what you can. That doesn't necessarily mean active participation. We have a lot of folks who participate in The Club kind of passively, but, you know, we have a good enough mix of both people who participate really actively that there's so much for folks to get.   

Robyn: So of course, The Club has a lot of other features. There's an overabundance of downloadable resources, worksheets, infographics, fridge sheets, coloring sheets, so many resources. We have these sessions I call, 'Ask Anything,' which happens, usually about once every other month. We have another process where you can submit a question to the Ask Anything process, and I'll respond with an audio or video. We have these connect and co-regulate sessions where members come together, live on Zoom and go into breakout rooms just to be with one another. We're actually also offering professionally led, psycho-educational groups for siblings of dysregulated kids, and we are in a pattern of offering those every month right now, I do technically consider them a bonus of The Club, because I'm pretty picky about who runs those groups, and so those groups really depend on those folks being available, so I technically consider those bonuses of The Club, but we are in a pattern right now of offering them essentially monthly.    

Robyn: I assume that you can relate to the truth that most of our members don't just need more information. They need help applying that information, applying it to their very unique and baffling situation. And they need help, of course, staying regulated enough to be able to even use those tools, right? Which is, then what brings me to this question of what's unique about The Club, like, why is The Club different? Because there are many, many wonderful parenting communities you can go to. In The Club, we don't just talk about parenting tools. The Club has been very thoughtfully and even strategically designed to help strengthen your Owl brain. So when I created The Club, I had the benefit of taking, you know, like over 15 years of clinical practice my work as a therapist, or in therapists like roles, right? And I could reflect on that, I could see what had been helpful to the hundreds or even thousands of parents I'd supported over the course of my career, right? And then I could take also just my really in depth education about relational neuroscience and in how I've moved from learning about relational neuroscience, into teaching relational neuroscience and living relational neuroscience. So being really immersed in the science, while also having these experiences working so closely with parents, deep, deep, deep in the trenches, right? I've been able to get a pretty good sense of what actually helps them, right? So I took all of that and thought about how I could be very deliberate, very strategic when creating The Club. Now, again, The Club is not therapy. I'm not a therapist. I've a history of working as a therapist, and I love to teach and train a support therapist, but I'm not currently doing therapy, and I'm definitely not giving therapy in The Club. But there's so many aspects of what makes therapy work that aren't unique to therapy. So I took those pieces and, again, very strategically, very deliberately, used them to create the structure of The Club. So if we use The Club language, I'd say The Club is designed to strengthen your Owl brain, and the part of your nervous system that has strong boundaries can stay regulated even when things are really, really, really hard.   

Robyn: In my work, previously as an outpatient therapist, I saw clients in a pretty typical once-a-week, one hour a week, pattern, and what I found was the parents, they were bringing their child to me, or we were doing family therapy, in most cases, but parents were also getting a ton of co-regulation, for me that seems to help support them stay more regulated with their kids in the days in between our weekly appointments, like the time that they spent with me was allowing them to be more understanding and compassionate, not just towards their kids' behaviors, but towards themselves. So many times, parents would come in and they would be really dysregulated immediately. And why are they? I don't understand. Things are terrible. You know, feel lots of Watchdog or sometimes, you know, Possum energy. And then through a few moments of being together, you know, the co-regulation helped their Owl brain come back online to the point where it got to the point where they didn't really need me to give them information, new information, right? What they needed was my co-regulation so that they could come back into their Owl brain and access all the brilliance that's already stored in their brilliant parenting brain, right? And then this allowed them to be so much more curious, so much more compassionate with themselves, right? It decreased their compassion fatigue and their burnout. They were feeling better, less baffled, more able to handle these really bizarre, baffling behaviors and here's a real kicker, is that the parents that I saw were feeling better, and it wasn't dependent upon their child's behavior actually getting better, which that's super important, because we need to find a way to feel better, even if our kids behaviors don't ever change, right? Because we can't control anybody else's behavior.   

Robyn: So anyway, I took all of those experiences of how supporting parents in that experience, right, by meeting with them once a week, and I thought, okay, how can I create an experience for folks that's not therapy, but offers some of those really important pieces, right? Actually offers them maybe even more. For example, one of the things that was always so stressful and kind of confusing to me about therapy is that the calendar dictated when we got that next dose of co-regulation right, like when Wednesdays at 2pm approach. That's when my clients got to, you know, get to together with me and get their co-regulation needs met. But in The Club, The Club is designed in a way where folks can come and go and get their needs met, get their co-regulation that they need right, get the connection that they need. They don't have to wait for their next appointment, and they can go and come whenever they want. Want to, right? They can come in the middle of the night.    

Robyn: Now, of course, a club is asynchronous, so that means The Club is a place where people show up and maybe ask a question, and then you might not get instant feedback, especially, you know, if it's in the middle of the night in the US, right? But during the daytime, we're really getting to the point in The Club. In the daytime, US area, we're really getting to the point where we have pretty active members. And even if a response isn't instant, it tends to happen pretty quickly. But also eventually club members start to internalize one another. So even before they're responded to in the forum, they feel more connected. They feel some co-regulation simply by having gone to the forum. And if you need some information about how regulation gets internalized and then therefore becomes accessible, even when that person's not with us, scroll back just two episodes just last week, I guess it was I did that episode about how self-regulation doesn't really exist, and in that episode, I talk about the science of the internalization of co-regulation.    

Robyn: And so I use that science and applied it to what's happening in The Club. I used it to design The Club. Then what happens is parents with stronger regulatory circuits, right? Their regulatory circuits are getting bigger and stronger, metaphorically, can handle more chaos, can handle the baffling, out of control behavior better, right? And then. So of course, number one, that's good. It's good to be able to handle things more effectively. But also, two, they just simply feel better. They're less stressed, they're less burned out, they're maybe not collapsing to compassion fatigue so quickly. So when I created The Club, I took everything I knew about relational neuroscience, both from my learning, head brain knowledge of studying the science, but also from my practical, real life in the room, working with humans knowledge and being a human in the world knowledge, right? And from that, I created The Club manifesto, which really is our anchor, right of how we grow, heal and change inside The Club.    

Robyn: So you can read The Club manifesto on the website, RobynGobbel.com/theclub. And if you read the manifesto, you might be like, Okay, great. That sounds nice in theory. But what I'd love to convey it's just really impossible to convey in words like this, is that it doesn't just sound nice in theory, there is something that happens when folks show up in a space, when they know that everybody else in that space feels the same way about humans, that everyone in that space believes humans are always doing the very best that they can, that we're all overflowing with infinite worth, and that we can set compassionate boundaries when needed, when we all in The Club believe these things about ourselves and each other, and when you know you're surrounded by people, when you can look into other people's eyes, metaphorically even, because we're sometimes just in a forum, but when you can surround yourself with those people and know that they believe that everything, everyone in The Club, is overflowing with infinite worth, and that that includes you, that changes you. So I said again, you know, this is a very deliberate, very strategic aspect that I went in, into the creation of The Club and the forum and the live events, and the way I show up in The Club, and then that translates to how club members show up and support one another.   

Robyn: Okay, so I want to go over a couple very practical questions I get about The Club, and then we'll start to wrap up. So one question I get a lot is people just wanting some reassurance that it's easy to leave The Club, right? I think most of us have had experiences where we've signed up for something and it was really hard to stop the recurring payment. So yes, The Club is a monthly recurring membership, and when you sign up, it becomes something that automatically renews every month. But The Club, I promise you, is not hard for you to end when you're ready. Okay, we make it really easy for you to step away when you're ready. I'm actually super proud of that part of The Club that nobody ever feels like they've been kind of trapped or we've taken your money without permission. You're actually going to get an email every month that says, Hey, your membership's about to renew, and you're warned about that. And if you're ready to step away from The Club and you don't want your membership to renew, it gives you this reminder with a button to click so it's super easy to. To decide you're ready to step away from The Club and stop that monthly payment. I have a pinned course in the pinned posts in the forum that gives you the instructions on how to end your membership. It's actually very simple. It's just a couple clicks, right? So I have that pinned post, but it's also, I think, probably pretty intuitive about how to leave The Club. But you'll also be getting to know us very much. You'll get to know me. You'll definitely be getting to know my assistant, Katie, and so if you're ever like, I can't remember how to end this, you'll just send a message to Katie and she will help you. I never, ever want The Clubs who create more stress for you.    

Robyn: Okay, and so number one, that means I know sometimes you're gonna just feel like I can't, I can't even access what's in The Club anymore, so I'm not gonna pay for it. I'm gonna step away. Of course, I don't want to be more stressed for you, but also I just want to make it really, really easy for you to end your time with us and not make that something that's stressful to you, and then you can just come back when you're ready if you want to right. The Club is, you know, pretty able to just come and go. The Club happens inside the Robyn Gobbel Clubhouse, and that's just fancy language for this online platform that hosts both The Club and my training program for professionals, Being With, so it's hosted in a platform called Mighty Networks. You can get to The Club right in your browser or through an app. There's an app for both iPhone and Android. I'm an Android user, and I think the app works as good as I could expect an app that I don't have my own professional development team managing.   

Robyn: So the app works pretty great for both iOS and Android, you can log right into The Club, get right into the forum, right into the video library, whatever you're looking for on, really, whatever device you're on, and you don't have to use any other social media app. Everything happens in The Club, okay? And again, you just would type it into your browser the URL, or you would open up the app. Something else that's, I think, pretty cool about The Club, and something I really like when I join a program, is that The Club has its own private podcast feed. So it's not like its own podcast. I don't get on and podcast and create podcast episodes separate, just for club members, but what I do is I have this private podcast feed only for club members, that contains all the things that get recorded in The Club, so the master classes, the, 'Putting It Into Practices,' the, 'Ask Anythings,' those audio recordings. Oh, and the, 'Ask Robyn Anything,' so that people can submit a question, the audio recordings from those experiences get popped into this private podcast feed, which means you can access the audios, not the videos, of course, because it's a podcast, but you can access the audios right in your regular podcast app. So if you use a podcast, like the podcast app you're listening in right now.    

Robyn: Now, the very cool thing about podcasts is just how easy they are to access, right? Like podcasts just run in the background on your phone, you can do other things while you're listening. It's just podcasts are really easy to access, whereas y'all kind of know the challenges with video on your phone, right? That some videos don't run in the background, so you can't toggle away from the video and keep the video running. Your phone can't power down, right, or go to and go to sleep mode, or whatever you call it, I don't even know, right? So podcasts save your spot like there's just so many things that can make listening- and podcasts you don't have to log in, right? It can make it so much easier. So we have a private podcast feed, anything that's recorded in The Club gets popped into that. A lot of people want to know, how much direct interaction do they get with me? And the simplest answer, really is just a lot. My guess is I respond to probably at least 80%, but it's actually probably more, of what's happening in the forum.    

Robyn: I do have two coaches who also support me a bit in the forum, but it is mostly me in the forum, and I run basically all of the live events. Sometimes I bring in a guest speaker for a masterclass. Laura runs one of the Connect and Co-regulate sessions every month, which just means that we get to have two instead of one. I don't have a much, or really any personal or private interaction with folks in The Club. But you can interact with me as much as you want in the forum. I mean, you could get in there and post and ask me a question every single day. I mean, you really could get as much direct interaction with me as you wanted. It's just going to all happen in a public setting. The Club is for everyone in your family. So when you join, you have the option of requesting a separate login for your spouse or a parenting partner. And we're pretty flexible about whatever your definition of parenting partner is. So somebody in your life who regularly supports you and parenting your children, and you'd really like to have access to The Club that's a parenting partner. So that person gets their own access. They get their own login, like they don't have to use yours.    

Robyn: We also welcome professionals in The Club. The Club is a membership for parents. So our programming is for parents. The programming is not directly for professionals. We have a lot of professionals in the field who are parents, and a lot of professionals who are parents of kids with big, baffling behaviors. So we have a separate forum for parents who also identify as professionals. We have a separate extra bonus video library that has a little bit of professional content in it. You can read about that over on the website. Okay, I think here's what we'll wind down with. Is just this one last little reflection. You know that folks occasionally do ask me, which is, why? Why do I do this? Why do I do The Club? And I think if you're in The Club and you're listening and you're in The Club, the answer to that question is probably completely obvious. You all know that I adore you. I adore my club members. I end every live meeting with The Club with a thought that's something like, I cannot believe this is my job. This is what I do. I get to be with these people and create this space and this experience for these people to be with each other and to be with and witness their true and authentic, vulnerable selves, you know, like, I cannot believe this is my job, and every person on my team feels the same way, whether that be like my coaching team, who directly interacts with clients, or my admin team, they feel the exact same way around you, and that's important to me in my business.    

Robyn: So I do The Club because I love it and because it is offering me this opportunity to impact parents in a way that I think is good for them all over the world. Because members tell me that it's not just impacting how they are with their kids, but it's impacting their relationships. It's impacting how they are in the world. It's impacting how they show up for an IEP meeting. It's impacting their relationships in all ways, in a good way, and that's why I do The Club. So if you're listening to this Q and A, and it is sometime between October 1st and October 8th, 2024 The Club is open now for new members. If you're listening to this episode at a different time, just check out. RobynGobbel.com/theclub and it'll let you know if The Club is open now, and if it's not, then it'll tell you when it'll be open next. And you can put yourself on a waiting list. If you have any specific questions about The Club, my team is ready and eager to help you answer your questions. I have so much information about The Club over on the website, I have like, a video run-through of the actual club platform. You know, I really have prioritized making sure that you join The Club with your eyes wide open. I want you to have all your questions answered. I want The Club to not have any mystery to it. So you can reach out, if you get my emails, you can hit reply to one of them. You can go to RobynGobbel.com and just look for how to send my team an email over there. And we would love to hear from you, and love to share with you why we think The Club is so amazing.    

Robyn: All right, y'all RobynGobbel.com/theclub, and if The Club isn't what's next for your family's journey, or doesn't feel like what your family needs, then I'm just gonna see you back here on the podcast on Tuesday, and we're gonna keep doing our Tuesday podcast, and maybe you're gonna get my emails and download my free resources. And I love having that relationship with you. You as well. All right, y'all I'll be with you soon!