What Does Vulnerable Nervous System Mean? {EP 122}


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People often ask whether this podcast, Parenting After Trauma, is relevant for them if their child hasn’t experienced trauma. My answer is a resounding YES. This podcast is for anyone who is in relationship with someone with a vulnerable nervous system and big, baffling behaviors.

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My friend and colleague, Marti Smith, author of The Connected Therapist: Relating Through the Senses says all people have vulnerable nervous systems. I tend to agree with her.

All people have vulnerable nervous systems.

And yet definitely, some of us, and some of our kids, certainly have increased vulnerability.

How Do You Know if You are Parenting a Child with a Vulnerable Nervous System?

Are you listening to his podcast?

Then you probably are.

Does the concept of baffling behaviors make sense to you, without any explanation? 

Then you probably are.

What Do I Mean by Vulnerable Nervous System?

A vulnerable nervous system has a bigger shift in an internal state in response to a stressor than we would anticipate or expect.

If we look at Dr. Bruce Perry’s theory of state dependent functioning, and especially his stress reactivity curve in his book What Happened to You? he describes how different amounts of stress elicit a different stress response. In what he describes as a “neurotypical” stress response, there is a linear relationship between the amount of stress and the shift in the internal state. What this means is that the stress response seems like it makes sense. 

Your child is disappointed when they lose a game because it’s disappointing to lose a game.

Your child is grumpy when they can’t have the snack they want or it’s time to turn off the TV.

That response makes sense.

Sensitized Stress Response System

In folks with vulnerable nervous systems, the shift in internal state seems to be much bigger than anticipated, given the amount of stress. Their stress response system is more sensitized. Small stressors evoke big responses.

They may have a harder time receiving co-regulation or offerings of connection or felt-safety. They settle or return to baseline less quickly. They need more scaffolding or supportive boundaries than their same-age peers.

This doesn’t make these kids bad, manipulative or controlling, though it’s not uncommon for folks with vulnerable nervous systems to have manipulative or controlling behavior as an attempt to bring some regulation to their nervous system.

And this applies to adults too! I know adults with very vulnerable nervous systems.

Some Factors that Contribute to Developing a Vulnerable Nervous System:

  • Trauma 
  • Toxic stress
  • Neurodivergence
  • Sensory differences
  • Giftedness
  • ADHD or autistic neurotype
  • Medical trauma
  • Adoption
  • Caregiver with a vulnerable nervous system or insecure attachment
  • Neuroimmune disorders
  • Racism
  • Ableism
  • Sexism
  • Being chronically unseen and misattuned to

Having a nervous system that isn’t neurotypical doesn’t have to cause trauma or toxic stress but it often does because the world isn’t designed to see and honor the uniqueness of folks with neurodivergence. This is why Marti says all people have vulnerable nervous systems. However, this doesn’t minimize the experiences of folks who have experienced trauma, toxic stress, racism, etc.

Without question, some of us have more sensitivity and vulnerability inherent in our own precious uniqueness. This is not good or bad. It just is. 

You may be here because your child had a history of trauma or toxic stress.

Some of you are here for reasons you might not be able to identify at all. You just know things are harder for your child. And therefore, they are harder for you.

How We Can Support a Child with a Vulnerable Nervous System

In the moment of dysregulation, it doesn’t really matter why your child has a vulnerable nervous system. It just matters that they need help.They need you to see their stress response, their Watchdog or Possum reaction, and respond to exactly where they are on Watchdog or Possum pathway- and it doesn’t matter if they have a history of trauma or not.

Of course, in the bigger picture, it can matter very much why your child has a vulnerable nervous system. 

Examples: If they have a neuroimmune disorder, they need treatment. If they have a sensitive sensory system, they need support and accommodations. If they have ADHD, they need accommodations. If they have a history of trauma they might need trauma treatment. If they have an allergy, they need that identified and then avoided. 

So, it’s not that the why doesn’t matter- but in the middle of an attack Watchdog moment, it really doesn’t. All that matters is bringing safety, connection and co-regulation to their nervous system and yours. 

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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How Toxic Shame Heals {EP 121}


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This is part 3 of a three part series on Toxic Shame. In episode 1, we looked at the neurobiology of toxic shame. In episode 2, we explored what toxic shame looks like, including what kinds of behaviors you might observe. In this episode, we explore how toxic shame heals. 

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Can Toxic Shame Heal? 

With 100% certainty, YES, toxic shame can heal. I wouldn’t do the work that I do if it wasn’t true, that we can bring people relief from the felt sense of toxic shame of believing that there is just something horribly, tragically wrong with them at their core. It is absolutely possible to bring healing and to bring a new “knowing” into the nervous system. 

However….

There is No Intervention to Heal Toxic Shame

There is no tool. There is no technique. There is no specific process in which I can teach you how to help somebody heal from toxic shame. There is no intervention.

But there is a map.

Shame has the opportunity to experience a moment of healing- which is just a moment of connecting with the truth of the now- when it is met with presence, safety, and co-regulation.

Experience NOW, What was Needed in the PAST

Remember, toxic shame is a sensation-based memory from the past that really means I am experiencing something intense and confusing, and I am all alone. No one is helping me make sense of what’s happening or riding this wave with me.

We want memory to experience NOW what it needed in the past.

Safety. Presence. Co-regulation.

This is the crux of why parenting with x-ray vision goggles, with a focus on regulation, connection, and felt safety, works! Because we are staying focused on the story from the past and wanting to meet it with the truth of the now.

The truth being, “You’re safe. You’re precious. I see you. I won’t abandon you.”

Memory reconsolidation theory supports this with science. I did a couple of episodes on memory last year. You can find them here and here.

How Do We Access the Sensation-Based Memory?

If the sensation-based memory from the past needs to experience now what was needed in the past, how do we do that?

Remember from part 2 in this series, we learned that our inner systems create a network of protectors that work very, very hard to keep us from re-experiencing toxic shame? Well, the more we increase felt-safety, the more the nervous system grows in the capacity to maybe eventually allow the toxic shame to risk becoming known. 

So, we focus on growing their felt-safety and growing their connection to us.

And we continue to offer:

Presence, Safety, and Co-regulation.

Ultimately, then, as felt-safety and connection grows, perhaps what could happen is their inner system, in its own wisdom, may one day allow some of that toxic shame to be touched and metaphorically brought to the surface so that it can experience something new. 

Instead of the aloneness they are expecting, they may experience what they hope for:

Presence, Safety, and Co-regulation.

And toxic shame needs that only in a moment. It doesn’t need that all of the time. All it needs is micro-moments of healing. I have a previous podcast about the concept of moments of healing called What Our Kids Really Need (and Us, Too): Moments of Healing.

What that will look like for each child and each family is impossible to say. Parenting in this way (the way we talk about on this podcast, the way we practice in The Club, etc.), strengthens your ability to be with your kids in the muck, and it strengthens your intuition in these moments. 

Our Own Shame Gets Touched

One of the hardest parts is that most of us hold pockets (or more) of shame in our own neurobiology, and our own protective system is hard at work wanting to keep us from touching our shame.

It’s really hard for our kids’ shame to come alive without ours becoming touched.

This brings us back to understanding the neurobiology so we can keep that birds-eye view for ourselves and respond with compassion and curiosity, even when we have behavior that surprises or shocks us. We can begin to separate from and heal our own pockets of shame.

Holding the Truth for Our Kids

We are going to be asking ourselves to hold the truth that our kids are good, and precious, and full of infinite worth. We will be holding a truth that they don’t believe about themselves. And this contradiction has the potential to actually make us seem untrustworthy.

We can be with that.

We can have NO agenda to change our kids’ beliefs about themselves while simultaneously believing our own truth, while simultaneously grieving, while simultaneously validating their reality.

It really is possible.

It’s really, really hard.

Waiting with Certainty

Healing toxic shame is not a timeline we can be in control of.

Loving someone with toxic shame requires a constant recommitment to a leap of faith. A leap of faith that meeting their shame with presence, connection, and co-regulation matters. It matters even if we don’t see how it matters.

One of the ‘tools’ I talk about in my book for parenting kids who spend a lot of time on the possum pathway is waiting with certainty.

Joining them in the depth of their possum pathway. Not being afraid. Being with. Waiting with the certainty that their shame will receive the presence, safety, and co-regulation in exactly the right time and pace that is right for them.

This is painful, and exhausting, and worth it. I have seen toxic shame untangle in my clients.

I have watched it untangle in myself and in the people I love.

It is not easy or fast.

But it is possible.  

And yes, the behavior that emerges from toxic shame is not behavior that invites us to parent in a way that they’ll feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure.

That’s exactly why you’re here. That’s exactly why this podcast exists. To strengthen your x-ray vision. To give you the connection and co-regulation you need to keep seeing underneath the behavior.

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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What Toxic Shame Looks Like {EP 120}


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Last week, we looked at the neurobiology of toxic shame because I believe in all of my cells, that understanding the neurobiological, physiological process of toxic shame is a crucial step in us untangling from toxic shame, whether it be our own, or helping our child with theirs. Toxic shame is a very physiological experience that essentially we mislabel as “there’s something wrong with me”-–but that’s actually not true at all. So seeing that and uncoupling the sensation from the label that there’s something terribly wrong with me, is really important.

So, what behaviors might I see in my child or maybe in myself, that could tell me that this person has that felt-sense of toxic shame? It’s not always obvious! It doesn’t necessarily look like what we would very clearly identify as shame.

One of the ways to help conceptualize and understand these behaviors is through the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS), or parts work. 

Protector Parts and Protected Parts

IFS identifies protectors called managers and firefighters that are helping us avoid the intensity of pain that is held by exiled parts. Exiled parts, according to IFS, are our deepest most buried parts that hold enormous amounts of pain. They are typically formed due to trauma – unbearable experiences where we were left all alone, trauma experienced in those earliest and most vulnerable days and months and years of our lives, traumatic experiences where we were left all alone.

Sounds a lot like toxic shame right?

Exiled parts often, especially for folks with significant histories of trauma and disorganized attachment, don’t feel like parts. Exiled parts just feel like all of us. They feel like a truth. A painful truth of “badness” that the rest of us is trying really hard to avoid.

Also sounds like toxic shame, yes?

We can think of toxic shame as an exile. It is a part of us- it isn’t who we are and it isn’t who are kids are- but it doesn’t feel like a part. It feels like a totality.

Folks have described the all encompassing experience of toxic shame as both an absolute nothingness as well as absolute chaos.

What Does Toxic Shame Look Like?

It can look and feel like a collapse on the possum pathway or like an attacking raging watchdog on the watchdog pathway. So this can look like utter despair. It can look like dissociation. It can look like a withdrawal from society, almost like a withdrawal from existence. It can also look like raging, out of control physical and verbal aggression.  Folks have described this like a complete disconnect from reality in a way that is an explosion of energy or a complete disconnect from reality in a way that is a complete absence of energy.

From an IFS perspective, Manager Parts have an alert to alarm level of activation and do a pretty good job of keeping us from experiencing our exiles or toxic shame. These behaviors include things like 

  • people pleasing
  • Anxiety
  • Controlling
  • Lying
  • Being overly rigid
  • checked out, etc.

Firefighter Parts engage behaviors that are more intense when Managers are unable to keep us from touching into toxic shame. These can look more like 

  • physical or verbal aggression 
  • substance abuse 
  • self injury
  • sudden dissociation or collapse. 
  • overeating or 
  • numbing out in front of the tv

(For more examples and and more information on IFS, check out previous podcast guest, Ilyse Kennedy’s book, The Tender Parts.)

Behaviors Can Protect Against Re-experiencing Toxic Shame

What these parts are being protective against is the toxic shame–the toxic shame which holds what the person believes is the truth- that they are damaged, broken, worthless, destined to be all alone or even face annihilation.

What happens if you consider your child’s behaviors- or yours- as a way they are protecting themselves from reexperiencing the toxic shame?

Toxic Shame Can Protect Against Experiencing Grief

We can also look at the toxic shame, itself, as being protective.

It’s protecting the person from the grief of what happened that created the toxic shame. To grieve means it can never be changed. To grieve means accepting something terrible happened to me, and I can never change that. I will never be a little baby who got what they needed. For many, that’s too much.

Toxic shame was created out of what we could call toxic aloneness. The person with a history of toxic shame believes there is no option except to suffer all alone. They do not believe it’s possible to grieve- to feel that level of intensity- and to not be all alone–meaning they don’t believe it’s possible to feel something that intense and not come completely undone. 

There is no felt-sense that anything is possible except all aloneness and annihilation.

So the protective system stays solidly in place. 

Now- there really is a path out. There really is healing possible for toxic shame. Promise. And we’ll look at that next week. 

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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The Neurobiology of Toxic Shame {EP 119}


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I define toxic shame as the difference between a shame state and a shame trait.

Shame State

Shame is the felt-experience that if I did something bad, I am bad. With the shame state, there is the ability to come to understand that we are not our behaviors. 

Shame Trait

Toxic shame is more of a shame trait. There is no distinction between the shame and who I am.

Toxic shame is not about being bad or doing something bad. It’s a mislabel of a chronic physiological state that is experienced by the person as being true all the time.

Toxic shame feels like all of me. It can be so consuming that we might not even know it exists- much like a fish isn’t aware it’s wet.

When we believe something is all of us, there is no possibility to challenge it. There is no room for change.

If we aren’t aware of it, it can feel completely true. A simple truth. Like gravity.

The Attachment Cycle and the Neurobiology of Toxic Shame

When bids for connection are not met, the nervous responds by slamming on the brakes.

Imagine a car with the accelerator smoothly functioning. When we need to be seen and understood by others, our attachment circuits are revved up; we are in a state of seeking connection. And when our need is met, we move forward happily through our lives. But if we are not seen, if our caregivers do not attune to us, and we are met with the experience of feeling invisible or misunderstood, our nervous system responds with a sudden activation of the brake portion of its regulatory circuits. 

Slamming on the brakes creates a distinctive physiological response: heaviness in the chest, nausea in the belly, and downcast or turned-away eyes. We literally shrink into ourselves from a pain that is often beneath our awareness. This nauseating and jolting shift occurs whenever we are ignored or given confusing signals by others and it is experienced as a state of shame. Shame states are common in children whose parents are repeatedly unavailable or who habitually fail to attune to them.

Then what happens is kids keep developing, and their developing cortex starts to label that physiological sensation as “I am bad.” And for these kids, it’s not a temporary thing that is the result of some misattunement with their caregiver or even a bad behavior that’s then followed up with repair and coregulation. It’s a chronic state. 

So their mind can only make sense of this chronic shame state as “I guess I must be very very bad.”

From the point of view of survival, “I am bad” is a safer perspective than “My parents are unreliable and may abandon me at any time.”

How can we help?

Understanding the neurobiology can be helpful to teens and adults in that it doesn’t take away their sense of chronic or toxic shame but it begins to open the possibility of seeing the shame instead of being the shame. And this seeing instead of being is crucial in creating change in the neurobiology

For young kids who don’t have the developmental capacity for this self reflection, we can be the ones who hold that truth. That this sense of shame and the behaviors that emerge feel like a truth. And actually arguing with that truth makes US seem untrustworthy. We can hold in our own minds the separation- that the shame is just a part of them, and it’s a physiological sensation that is an adaptive response but then got mislabeled.  

But actually, helping kids with chronic and toxic shame is less about how we help them and more about how we help us. We’ll talk about how to help dismantle toxic shame in next week’s episode.

For more in depth understanding and discussion of the neurobiology of toxic shame, including how positive experiences and praise can powerfully light up neural networks of toxic shame, listen to the episode or read the transcript.

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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Q&A: How does The Club help families? {EP 118}


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The Club is currently welcoming new members and I know you have questions- questions that ultimately boil down to:

  • Is The Club right for me and my family?
  • How can The Club help?

I also answer very practical questions like:

  • What’s Included in The Club? (so much!)
  • How much direct interaction do I get with Robyn (lots!)
  • Is it easy to quit when I’m ready? (YES!)

Welcome to the Friday Q&A series! I’m answering listener questions every Friday on the podcast.

For all the details about The Club and to join us, head to https://RobynGobbel.com/TheClub

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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