Content note: This episode discusses trauma, parenting stress, and nervous system overwhelm. There are no graphic details, but please take care while listening.

Parenting a child with a vulnerable nervous system can stir up your own trauma in ways that feel surprising, intense, and deeply unsettling. In this episode, we slow everything down and make sense of why this kind of parenting can feel so much harder when you have your own trauma history.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why parenting a dysregulated child uniquely activates trauma for caregivers
  • How attachment, memory networks, and a narrowed window of tolerance collide in everyday parenting moments
  • Why understanding your nervous system is just as important as understanding your child’s

Resources Mentioned on the Podcast

Listen on the Podcast

This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on The Baffling Behavior Show podcast.

Find The Baffling Behavior Show podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app.

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

Robyn

Author of National Best Selling Book (including audiobook) Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors: Brain-Body-Sensory Strategies that Really Work


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Content warning: This episode includes discussion of severe trauma, abuse (including sexual abuse), dissociation, and suicidal ideation. Please take care while listening and pause if needed.

In today’s episode, Robyn is joined by therapist, author, and adoptive parent Sally Maslansky to explore dissociative identity disorder through the lens of interpersonal neurobiology, attachment, and compassion. Together, they unpack how even the most confusing and baffling behaviors- ours and our children’s – can be understood as brilliant adaptations rooted in survival.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

  • Why dissociative identity disorder can be understood as a brilliant adaptation to overwhelming early trauma
  • How making sense of our own histories (especially implicit memory and attachment wounds) changes the way we parent and repair ruptures with our kids.
  • What it looks like, in real life, to heal through connection, compassion, and feeling truly felt– and how these experiences invite our attachment systems to move toward security

Resources Mentioned on the Podcast

Listen on the Podcast

This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on The Baffling Behavior Show podcast.

Find The Baffling Behavior Show podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app.

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

Robyn

Author of National Best Selling Book (including audiobook) Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors: Brain-Body-Sensory Strategies that Really Work


Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify

Should we be talking about felt safety when so much is genuinely unsafe?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this hard and honest question that so many parents are holding: when danger, injustice, and unmet needs are real and ongoing, does focusing on felt safety miss the point? Or can it actually be part of resistance, coherence, and long-term protection for our nervous systems?

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why focusing on felt safety is not the same as ignoring real danger, injustice, or systemic failure- and how both truths can coexist
  • How strengthening the nervous system can reduce long-term harm without minimizing how hard, unfair, or traumatic things are
  • Why regulation and moments of safety, connection, and coherence are not toxic positivity- but a necessary foundation for advocacy, boundaries, and resilience

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

Listen on the Podcast

This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on The Baffling Behavior Show podcast.

Find The Baffling Behavior Show podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app.

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

Robyn

Author of National Best Selling Book (including audiobook) Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors: Brain-Body-Sensory Strategies that Really Work