Trauma, Memory, & Behavior: Part 2 {EP 91}


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Last week, we explored the different components of memory, how traumatic experiences can impact memory processing, and then, how the impact of memory processing can lead to some baffling behaviors. In this week’s episode, we are going to dive deeper into understanding a specific type of implicit memory called Mental Models.

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Implicit Memory 

You may remember that implicit memories are those unconscious memories that we don’t notice or think about. These can be the sensory data that doesn’t get integrated due to a traumatic event, memories from before around age 3, or rote or procedural memories, such as how to brush our teeth. We certainly aren’t having the feeling of remembering when our implicit memory is activated and online.

The vast majority of lives are done out of implicit memory, despite us not being aware of it. The purpose of memory is to help us predict what is going to happen next. 

Mental Models

A Mental Model is a specific kind of implicit memory that creates generalizations about how we expect the world to work, including relationships, and even our general sense of how safe or not the world is.

We develop Mental Models from having repeated experiences.

For example, I have a Mental Model that restaurant servers are hardworking people who want me to have a good time and want to take good care of me. So, I will interpret my experience at a restaurant through the lens of that Mental Model. It impacts how I treat them, as well as how I interpret how they are treating me — all without me consciously thinking about this mental model I have about service professionals. So when service is slow, I’m assuming people are doing the best that they can. If a service professional is rude, I assume that they’re just having a bad day. And because of my mental model, I’m more likely to respond with compassion and kindness.

Mental Models Develop Inside Relationship

Our Mental Models about ourselves, what we can expect in our relationships, and our sense of safety in the world are, generally speaking, developed inside the attachment experiences and relational experiences that kids have with their grownups or their caregivers, specifically, in that first year of life.

Mental Models Impact Behavior

There are many reasons a child may have experienced challenges in the first year of life that caused them to develop Mental Models that are impacting the big behaviors you now see. Some examples include early abuse and neglect, a chaotic environment, neurodivergence, sensitive sensory system, vulnerable nervous system, or a neuroimmune condition.

Last year, I did a series on Attachment in which I talked a lot about the different Mental Models that are developed when babies have experiences of secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment. You can find that series HERE, and the beautiful accompanying ebook HERE.

Am I Safe, Seen, Soothed, and Secure?

When babies have enough experiences of feeling safe, seen, soothed and secure (Bryson and Siegel), they develop Mental Models that sound like the following:  

  • People are good, and they’ll take care of me.
  • I’m a good baby, and I’m worthy of being taken good care of. 
  • I am not bad when I’m in distress. 
  • I can be in distress, and I can vocalize that distress. But that doesn’t mean I’m a bad baby.
  • The world is not perfect, but generally a safe and predictable place. 
  • When things aren’t going well, or I don’t feel safe, there are people out there who will soothe me and protect me and take care of me. 

When babies don’t have enough experiences of feeling  safe, seen, soothed and secure, they develop Mental Models that sound like the following: 

  • People are unpredictable–sometimes they take care of me and sometimes they don’t. I have no idea what to expect. 
  • When I’m in distress, it’s because I’m bad. 
  • The world is not generally a safe or predictable place, so I have to be in charge of my own safety.. 
  • People are mean and they hurt me, even when I’m already in pain.

Can We Change Mental Models?

The way we change Mental Models is the way Mental Models are created in the first place: we have a lot of experiences.

If a child has a Mental Model that their caregiver is unpredictable and unreliable, they need lots of experiences of predictability and reliability.

Mental Models are very tricky to change, can take a very long time, and tend to re-emerge during times of great vulnerability and stress. But they are not impossible to change! Sometimes lots of change is happening even before we see a behavioral shift, and sometimes all we can hope for is that enough regulation and resiliency has developed in their nervous systems that our children can notice when an old Mental Model has taken over.

If we can understand what some of the Mental Models are that are driving our kids’ big, baffling behaviors, that can regulate us.

Brainstorming what our kids’ Mental Models are can give us ideas about how to help them. 

Discovering Mental Models

  • Think about your child’s earliest experiences, and make some guesses about what they learned about the world, themselves and relationships. 
  • How does that help me understand or interpret their behavior in or in a different or new way? 
  • How can I use that knowledge to stay more compassionate and boundaried in how I respond to that child? 
  • Is there a way I can respond to their behavior that changes their belief about themself, relationships, and their sense of safety in the world?

Listen on the Podcast

This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on the Parenting after Trauma podcast.

Find the Parenting after Trauma podcast on Apple Podcast, Google, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app.

Or, you can read the entire transcript of the episode by scrolling down and clicking ‘transcript.’

Robyn

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Trauma, Memory, & Behavior: Part 1 {EP 90}


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You know trauma impacts behavior, but there’s a fascinating link between trauma and memory that will give you an even greater understanding of what’s shaping your child’s confusing behaviors. I created a video series and ebook containing helpful graphics about this. You can access those HERE.

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Three Components of Memory Processing

There is a complex process of:

Encoding: Having an experience that activates a neural pattern

Storage: The likelihood that the neural pattern could be activated again in the future

Retrieval: Activation of a neural pattern that is SIMILAR but not identical to the neural pattern activated in the past

Something that happened in the past helps create my experience in the now and then impacts how I’m going to behave in the future. 

When we have an experience, there is a firing of a specific neural pattern in the brain. The same neural pattern never fires again twice but SIMILAR neural patterns are fired for similar experiences. 

Implicit and Explicit Memory

The brain is encoding 11 million bits of information in every moment! Of those 11 million bits, we are only consciously aware of between 6 and 50!!! 6-50 versus 11 million!!! That ratio is hard to comprehend!

Those bits of data that are outside our conscious awareness make up implicit memory (feelings, sensations, behavioral impulses, perceptions), and those that are within our conscious awareness make up explicit memory (knowledge and facts, the felt-sense of remembering, has a timestamp). All of these bits of information come together to form a neural pattern or “memory ball” (metaphor from Inside Out movie). Not every experience makes it into long term storage with the ability to retrieve-that would be debilitating!

Linking It All Together (or not!)

A part of the brain called the hippocampus connects implicit and explicit data to form a memory with a timestamp that gives you the felt-sense that it is something that happened in the past.

A memory network is awoken when something happens in the now that is similar to something that happened in the past. When implicit data from the past gets awakened in the now, we know that it’s from the past because it’s connected to some explicit data in the memory network. It FEELS like the past. But implicit and explicit data don’t always get connected…

Trauma Creates a Disruption in Memory Networks

During a traumatic experience, the hippocampus gets turned off to help us react quickly and survive. The hippocampus is involved in helping the implicit and explicit data find each other in a memory network, so after a traumatic experience there is a chance that those pieces of data don’t find each other.

When implicit data from a traumatic memory in the PAST (hunger, pain, loneliness) wasn’t integrated and is later activated by a similar experience in the present, the brain believes what is happening NOW is dangerous. This, of course, evokes behaviors that look like an overreaction (tantrum, lying, aggression, control, etc.) but are actually responses to life-threatening sensations from the past. 

All Behavior Makes Sense

Understanding that these behaviors are the perfect sized reaction to a brain that believes what happened in the past is happening now helps parents stay more regulated and respond to the real problem: the terror that was awakened from the past. “Ugh, it’s so hard to wait five more minutes for dinner. It feels like you’ll never eat again and that is terrifying.”

Changing How We See Our Kids Changes Our Kids

When we see our kids as humans doing the best they can in the moment and having a reaction that makes perfect sense based on what’s happening in their neurobiology, we stay more regulated. Then we are more likely to respond with compassion, empathy, and boundaries. Our children begin to see themselves the same way- as humans who are struggling, who are sometimes swept away with emotion, and that their behaviors don’t mean they are a bad person, just a struggling person.

When our kids believe they are struggling kids and not bad kids, their behaviors start to change to match their beliefs. This is exactly what we want.

Listen on the Podcast

This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on the Parenting after Trauma podcast.

Find the Parenting after Trauma podcast on Apple Podcast, Google, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app.

Or, you can read the entire transcript of the episode by scrolling down and clicking ‘transcript.’

eBook Download- F R E E

This podcast is based on a previous video series and ebook I created. Access the video series and ebook HERE.

Robyn

Would you like to explore a complete paradigm-shift on how we see behavior? You can watch my F R E E 45(ish) minute-long masterclass on What Behavior Really Is and How to Change It.

Just let me know where to send the links!

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Impossible {EP 89}


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Laura Strohm, LCSW is a therapist, colleague and dear friend. If you are in The Club or Being With, you already know Laura is my right hand everything. She plays a big role in The Club, an online community for parents of children with big, baffling behaviors, and is the lead small group coach in Being With, an immersive training for therapists based in the science of relationship.

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Last month, Laura made a post in The Club forum. It was so profound, I asked if she would come on the podcast and talk about it. Her post was about impossible questions, impossible situations, and impossible decisions. You know, the kind of decisions and circumstances that those of you who are parenting kids with histories of trauma, kids with big, baffling behaviors, kids with vulnerable nervous systems, are facing constantly. Laura’s words resonated so deeply for me and also for everybody in The Club, I really wanted to share this with as many humans as possible. 

Here are her words:

Impossible questions. 
Impossible situations. 
Impossible decisions. 

Sometimes I sit and think about The Club and this Forum and am overwhelmed simultaneously by gratitude and grief. One of the very special things about The Club, is that is creates a space for persons to come together who can connect over uniquely intense experiences that occur in their everyday life. 

One of these experiences is how often everyone here is faced with these utterly impossible questions, situations, and decisions. The ones that feel like no matter what you do or say it will be full of burden. 

These are experiences, everyone MAY encounter at SOME point in their lives. However… here…. we are much more likely to encounter them. Maybe even on the regular.

An example would be: having to put your loved one in a hospital or facility because they were in imminent threat of harm. You know this is what had to be done to keep them safe since your job is to keep them safe…. Yet… they may not see it that way. No matter how much you explain. So you are met with anger and threats of what they will do if you don’t take them out… how much they hate you or say you hate them…. or… the pleading… The pleading to PLEASE let them go home. The promises of how they have changed, everything has changed, if only you would give them a chance. 

All aspects of this scenario are heart wrenching and so incredibly more complex than it seems. I’m sure I don’t have to list all the reasons why out to you. And so many other examples that could go here.

Impossible questions. 
Impossible situations. 
Impossible decisions. 

And you may be alone in facing these impossibilities day to day…

But… you also aren’t….

I have no tips, suggestions, or answers for these impossibilities, but what I have come to say, with great gratitude and also grief, is one of the things that makes The Club SO special and unique, is that you are not alone.

None of us can solve your crisis in the moment, but it is without a doubt that we can all share in the understanding of what it feels like to be faced with Impossible questions. Impossible situations. Impossible decisions. Even if we don’t have the energy to post about it that day, or ever, you can hold the thought and connection in your mind. A lot like I did while wanting to make this post but not sure when or if I ever would.

In here, we all face the impossibility of each day together, and (maybe worn down and wore out) we survive each day of impossibility together. Each of these days inches, impossibility, slowly forward toward, possibility. It’s still not fun, it still hurts, but we make it through what we thought was impossible. 

This unspoken (in the moment) connection brought me a bit of solace, in an otherwise heart wrenching experience, during one of these impossible moments, and my hope is, it will do that for you too.

Grief and Gratitude

My conversation with Laura led to a profound and vulnerable discussion of what it really feels like to be in these impossible moments and how being connected to others who really get it, can anchor us back into wholeness, back into felt-safety, back into connection to self. From there we are able to access regulated grief and even a bit of spaciousness, acceptance, and gratitude.

To hear the conversation, head over to the Parenting After Trauma Podcast with Robyn Gobbel.

Listen on the Podcast

This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on the Parenting after Trauma podcast.

Find the Parenting after Trauma podcast on Apple Podcast, Google, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app.

Or, you can read the entire transcript of the episode by scrolling down and clicking ‘transcript.’

Robyn

Would you like to explore a complete paradigm-shift on how we see behavior? You can watch my F R E E 45(ish) minute-long masterclass on What Behavior Really Is and How to Change It.

Just let me know where to send the links!

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How to Parent a Bottomless Pit of Needs {EP 88}


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Sometimes it feels like our kids have a hole in the bottom of their heart.  No matter how much love and attention is put in, it seems like it’s never ever enough.  

These kids cannot hold onto the feeling of presence and connection.  When it’s there, it’s great.  When it’s not, it’s like it was never there to begin with and they’ll never get it again.  They don’t have a string that connects them to all the moments of connection they’ve had in the past and all the moments they will have in the future.  

Keep reading or listen on the podcast!

Whining is a Sign of Stress

Whining, crying, and clingy behavior is behavior that signals the nervous system is stressed.  The whiny behavior is code for “I need more connection.”  The challenge, of course, is that oftentimes we don’t want to connect with someone who is whining.  It’s annoying!

Step One

Recognize that their behavior is signaling “I need connection.”  

Step Two

Focus on your own regulation.  When you’re dysregulated, your presence isn’t going to meet your child’s need, so the bottomless pit really is bottomless.  

Next- Scaffold Connection

Once you see the need and regulate yourself, now you look at how to scaffold your child’s need for connection.

Do you simply need to increase the amount of connection you have with your child, while you are regulated?

Or- does your child need help taking in that connection so their need is met and they are no longer experiencing it as bottomless?

Connection is tricky because it’s not really something you can see.  But, it can be felt and one way to fill the bottomless pit is to bring attention to it.

Scripts, Activities, and Rituals

For scripts, activities, and rituals that can help fill your child’s need for connection, listen to the podcast or read the full transcript below!

Listen on the Podcast

This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on the Parenting after Trauma podcast.

Find the Parenting after Trauma podcast on Apple Podcast, Google, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app.

Or, you can read the entire transcript of the episode by scrolling down and clicking ‘transcript.’

Robyn

Would you like to explore a complete paradigm-shift on how we see behavior? You can watch my F R E E 45(ish) minute-long masterclass on What Behavior Really Is and How to Change It.

Just let me know where to send the links!

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Creating Brave Spaces with Selma Bacevac {EP 87}


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Selma Bacevac is a psychotherapist, author, and coach who specializes in helping Balkan women and parents heal from trauma and anxiety.  Selma has expertise in attachment and parent-child relationships.  We met due to our previous shared interest in working with adoptive families. In the past couple years, Selma has followed her passion to focus on serving Balkan families.  

Selma’s family fled Bosnia due to war and ethnic genocide during the early 1990s.  She now lives and practices in Florida. Prior to his death in the summer of 2020, Selma’s father inspired her to take her focus on attachment and the parent/child relationship and bring those ideas to Balkan families.  

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Brave Space

Selma emphasizes developing brave spaces with her clients.  Beyond safety, brave spaces are spaces in relationship where we can welcome difference and connection at the same time.  In the parent/child relationship, a brave space invites the child to have their own voice.

Brave spaces recognize that we are all searching for the same thing: to be seen and to experience connection.  Brave spaces can still be scary, but bravery invites presence. Selma works with parents to create and step into these brave spaces with their children, but also with their own parents.  

It’s not individuals who need to be fixed- it’s the relationship.

Relational ruptures can invite strength after repair, both in the relationship, and in the brain.

Adem and the Magic Fenjer

Selma was inspired to write her children’s book, Adem and the Magic Fenjer, when looking for ways to help her son understand their family’s history.  Selma was six years-old when the war broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  She lived through the siege of Sarajevo and escaped through the Tunnel of Hope when she was nine years-old.  

Selma reflected on how the book has created the opportunity for not just the son to know her family’s story, but for every reader to get to know her family’s story. 

Adem and the Magic Fenjer is a children’s book especially for the families who became refugees in the Bosnian war but will resonate with any family who has experienced war, displacement, and living in the diaspora.  

Seeing Refugees

Selma emphasized that there are a lot of refugees in the world- 64 million!  Refugees have had their mental health impacted due to living in constant survival mode. Their needs are important and deserve to be seen and met. Refugees are highlighted in the immediacy of a war, but then are quickly forgotten about. Selma is passionate about helping the world maintain a focus on the needs of refugees.

Wars breakout because we don’t feel safe.  We can bring safety to the world by strengthening parent/child relationships.  

Connect more with Selma

https://www.balkanmamatherapy.com/

Selma has an amazing Instagram Account.  Follow it! https://www.instagram.com/balkanmamatherapy/

Adem and Magic Fenjer

Listen on the Podcast

This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on the Parenting after Trauma podcast.

Find the Parenting after Trauma podcast on Apple Podcast, Google, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app.

Or, you can read the entire transcript of the episode by scrolling down and clicking ‘transcript.’

Robyn

Would you like to explore a complete paradigm-shift on how we see behavior? You can watch my F R E E 45(ish) minute-long masterclass on What Behavior Really Is and How to Change It.

Just let me know where to send the links!

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