Is Understanding Behavior Just Excusing It? {EP 109}

So today, what I want to talk about is the difference between understanding behavior and excusing behavior. And I thought this helped- this episode, this topic might especially be helpful for those of you who could use some kind of organization around this idea when talking to other folks in your life who aren't as convinced about why it's so important to look underneath and understand the behavior. Obviously, one of my passions in life is understanding behavior. I'm a little bit obsessive about it, in some ways. And you know, people's behavior is, at times, extremely confusing. It's perplexing. I mean, it's baffling, right? There's, there's these moments where it's like, what is happening here, and sometimes it's bad. And one of the ways that I regulate through all of the confusion and all of the bad yucky feelings, is to try to figure out the why it would be really easy for me to stay stuck in- and I think I spent some time in my life staying stuck in feelings of resentment, even maybe contempt, shame and blame about other folks’ behaviors and also about my own. And it- that's just a hard place to hang out. Like those are hard feelings to spend a lot of time with. And I regulate through those hard feelings and move and shift them by getting underneath and understanding what's driving the behavior and trying to figure out the why. And I do this so intensely, and so implicitly, that sometimes I'm startled or surprised by folks who are not only just not terribly interested in understanding behavior, but actually they think it's not helpful or necessary. Like I can hear folks immediately make accusations about how understanding behavior is just excusing it. And I really wanted to take some time in today's episode to unpack that statement, and to unpack that fear. Because there's a lot of fear underneath that belief, you know? And get curious, like, what does excusing behavior even mean? And why is that so bad or so scary?

So before we explore that, let's actually identify really clearly like why I want to understand behavior. For me, understanding behavior has two really important goals. Number one, if we understand the behavior, we can probably take better steps at figuring out how to solve that behavior if we need to. Now if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know that I'm actually not that interested in changing somebody else's behavior. But what I am interested in doing is seeing if I can support that person, support their nervous system, support their experience in the world, so that their inner experience in the world and the way that their nervous system is interacting with the world feels better. And one of the ways that we measure that, you know, if somebody's feeling better or not, is their behavior, the behavior is the clue. So again, I'm not overly interested in changing somebody else's behavior. That doesn't really feel like it's my business. But I am interested in what are things that I can do to help people experience more regulation, connection, and felt safety in the world. And one of the ways we can track somebody's experience of regulation, connection, and felt safety, is their observable behavior. So when I understand the behavior, or when I can stay curious about wanting to understand the behavior, because sometimes I have absolutely no idea what's happening. But if I can stay curious, I'm gonna get a lot closer to figuring out, what could I do, or what does this person need, that would help them experience more regulation, experience more connection to themselves and to others, and experience more felt safety. That's what I'm interested in. And then when folks have those experiences of more regulation, more connection, more felt safety, almost always what we do see is a change in their behavior. So that's my first goal, is if I can understand behavior and what's going on underneath it, I'm actually going to get much better ideas about what can I do to help it. 

And then the second big reason is understanding behavior invites in compassion. It moves me into a place of compassion, it moves me into that part of my nervous system that I call connection. Right? As opposed to protection. You know, it keeps me in a more open and available part of my nervous system, which is better for me. And it's better for my people, it's better for the people I'm with, it's better for my husband, it’s better for my kid, it's better for my clients, it's better for my students. The more I can stay in that open available connection part of that- my nervous system. One of the ways I can do that, is by staying really open to what's driving this behavior. How can I stay in this place of curiosity, and compassion? And that place of the nervous system, that connection pathway of the nervous system is the part of the nervous system that invites in what interpersonal neurobiology calls integration. And integration, according to interpersonal neurobiology, is the path towards changing and shifting that nervous system and then changing and shifting ultimately, behavior. 

Alright, so those are my two big important goals. I want to stay in a place of compassion, connection, and curiosity. It's better for me, it's better for the- other people. And that staying in that place of curiosity about behavior gives me way better ideas about what can I do to help support this person so that their behavior is more in line with, like, who they are as a person, and- and who they want to be in the world. I have noticed, though, that there are a lot of folks who seem to believe there's a connection between understanding behavior and excusing it, or ignoring it, or having really bad boundaries with it. And I also think that some folks are afraid of understanding behavior. Because understanding behavior challenges belief that upholds a lot of power based hierarchies, that would be threatened if we question them. And that belief is this idea, that I think is false, this idea that we have almost total control over our behaviors. Right? Now, there are a lot of infrastructures, a lot of institutions in the world that are really based on that belief we have total control of our behavior. Therefore, if you have bad behavior, you're bad. And if you have good behavior, you're good. But actually if we look at behavior science, and we look at what behavior really is, that's not true at all, that we have almost total control over our behavior. And that is a very threatening idea to these powerful institutions that are based on the idea that we have almost total control over our behavior. 

Wanting to understand behavior means that there's more of an explanation for the behavior than simply just as humans are bad and need to be punished in order to have the self restraint to be good. And that idea that left to their own devices at their core humans are bad, and need to be punished so they don't act bad and hurt other people. That really is the belief that's at the core of a lot of punitive consequence-based, behavior management ideas. Whereas the core of behavior science based on relational neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology, is that connection is a biological imperative. We need connection with one another to grow and survive. Connection’s our default. And if connection’s our default, then it makes a lot of sense to consider that actually behaving in ways that hurt other people, that's not our default. It does happen. And we can explore why that happens. Without question, humans are capable of very hurtful, harmful behavior. But I don't think that's our default. 

The idea that explanations are just excuses for behavior. This- this emerges from somebody's nervous system that is stuck in protection mode. A nervous system in connection mode, is by default, open, and curious, and compassionate. Whereas a nervous system stuck in protection mode, is going to move towards a more rigid belief that understanding behavior is just excusing behavior, and excusing behavior is bad because it allows people to just be lazy and hurt other people. That's a belief that emerges from the nervous system stuck in protection mode. And, although I believe that we are all longing to rest into connection, and into the part of our nervous system that emerges when we're feeling safe that I call connection mode. It's also quite the privilege to experience enough felt safety to rest into safety and connection. 

So my theory and the theory that's underneath, you know, every episode in this podcast and- and everything that I teach, and everything that happens in The Club, and everything that I teach my students in Being With. My theory, based on relational neuroscience, and specifically in this moment, I'll be talking about theory that's emerged from Dr. Porges’ polyvagal theory. My theory says that connection is a biological imperative. Dr. Porges writes that. That we are all always seeking the most nourishing connections that we can imagine. Dr. Bonnie Badenoch writes that. That all of us are trying to find, again, the most nourishing connections that we can imagine. I think that caveat is really important when we think about some of the kids that y'all are parenting that have had really challenging, connection based experiences, especially early in life can- when- when connection was tied together with danger. That some of our kids have a hard time believing in connection that is safe. But that we're always seeking the most nourishing connections that we can imagine. And that we need connection to survive. Literally like our brains organize and develop inside connection. Why would that be true about our brains if connection wasn't our default, as humans? Our default isn't to hurt other humans, or to be selfish, or be in power and control. Our default is connection. We hurt other humans or move to wanting to be empowered and in control when we aren't feeling safe when we move into protection mode. It just makes absolutely no sense in any way for human behavior to default to behaviors that don't invite connection, right? I mean, like, we literally need connection for our brains to grow and we kind of need our brains to grow in order to survive, procreate continue our species, those kinds of things. Certainly, when we aren't safe, behaviors default to behaviors of protection. So humans do have selfish behaviors. We get protective of our resources. And yeah, we don't act in a very connecting or cooperative ways if we're not feeling safe, if our nervous system has tipped into, you know what I call protection mode. 

There's a theory called social baseline theory that says that connection is literally our default. Our brains expect connection, it is our default, it's our expectation in the world. And when we can't find it, we flip into protection mode. And when we flip into protection mode, what we want in order to feel safe, again, is connection. The default mode of human beings is to have behaviors that invite connection. We don't need to be punished to have behaviors that are appropriate for human relationships, appropriate for connection that don't hurt other people. We don't need to be punished for that. We need to be safe. 

Punishment keeps our relationships and a power over, power under dynamic. Folks who aren't experiencing safety often end up looking for safety by looking to move into like a power over position over other people. And then this perpetuates that lack of felt safety, because hurting another person, physically, or emotionally, or energetically might invite in this kind of false sense of safety. Like I'm in power, right? And that's safe. But it isn't safety through connection. It's safety through protection. And safety through connection is what humans are longing for. When we can't get it, we'll get safety through power, which sends, then, this feedback loop to the nervous system that there isn't safety through connection. And then that keeps us stuck in protection mode. And then we have behaviors that are based out of protecting ourselves, protecting our resources, right? That's when we see the behaviors that are bringing you to listen to this podcast, right? Behaviors that are stuck in protection mode. And when we're stuck in protection mode, we're going to be reluctant to explore what's underneath the behavior. Being in protection mode means we tend to get a lot more black and white, we tend to get a lot more rigid, we are preoccupied with what we can see as opposed to all the things that are happening in every unfolding moment that we can't see. 

The idea that we are largely driven by implicit impulses, and that we don't actually have that much control over our behaviors in a moment to moment basis is terrifying for some folks. And because we are so focused on behavior, that thing we can see, we feel very, very vulnerable turning our attention to the implicit. Turning our attention to things that we can't see, everything that's happening outside our conscious awareness. We really are uncomfortable with the idea of how much happens, how much is responsible for our behavior that we have so little conscious control over. Being willing to be present with the implicit, with something that we can't see, or objectify, or quantify requires a felt sense of safety. So for folks who are stuck in protection mode, it doesn't feel possible to have any impact or influence on the implicit, right? On the things we can't see. So then we default to the idea that attempting to see beneath behavior means we just have to accept bad behavior and have no boundaries and no control. And then again, now we're stuck in a power under position, this feeling of having no power. 

Here's the thing, behavior actually is driven largely by behavioral impulses. Behavior is just what we can see on the outside that gives us some information that helps us maybe understand what's happening on the inside. I mean behavior is blinking. Behavior is brushing your teeth. Behavior are the hand gestures that I'm making as I'm recording this podcast episode. And, yes, behavior is hitting. Behavior is spitting. Behavior is all of these negative things. But we tend to imply negative when we use the word behavior. That's just not actually true. That's not what behavior really is. Behavior isn't just things that are negative, behavior are things that we can see. And behavior is largely the result of behavioral impulses that are implicit. Meaning the neuronal firings that are responsible for the end behavior start long before the actual observable behavior happens. And long before, we can pay a lot of conscious attention to what's happening. But ignoring that behavior is largely driven by implicit behavioral impulses doesn't make it any less true. Ignoring something that's true, just means that we're missing a really important opportunity to make the changes that we're really longing to make. 

So let me give you an example from my own life. I talked last year on the podcast about my husband's struggle with Lyme disease and a neuroimmune disorder. I did a three part series, including interviewing my husband about his experience of having this neuro immune disorder, which has many symptoms, including behavioral symptoms. And for years, years, like we suspect that my husband's had Lyme disease for 30 years, probably. For years, he- we treated the symptoms that we could see. And in some ways, I don't even think we knew that being more curious was an option. Like he had symptoms, we made meaning out of them. And we treated that meaning. Until finally, it became really clear that what we were doing to treat those symptoms wasn't helping at all. And we were kind of forced to get a lot more curious about what is really going on here. And Lyme disease or PANS, or PANDAS, or other diseases that have really tricky symptoms. This is very common, right? That we're treating the symptoms that we can see, we're treating the behavior without really getting as curious as we should be getting about what's driving the behavior. So what that meant in my family is we spent 30 years treating something with little to no success, and only started to see any real shift or change in troubling symptoms when we were able to get really curious about but what's actually driving these behaviors? 

It's an example of how we treat what we're comfortable with. We treat what we know. I mean, I'm a therapist. So when I see behavior based symptoms that look like mental health, we treat mental health symptoms, right? And they ended up being mental health symptoms with a very physical etiology. And we had to get comfortable treating what we didn't know. We had to get comfortable looking outside what we thought we knew. And when we did that, actually then became so much more successful at helping the nervous system feel more regulated, feel more safe, feel more connected, and yeah, what happens after that? Behaviors improve. But we're not ever going to solve the right problem, if we aren't using the right treatment.

So another example, today in The Club, somebody asked a question about stealing. And I responded with well, stealing is the behavior, like we've got to look- like what's driving the behavior could be so many different things, and based on what it is, is how we're going to approach this behavior that isn't okay, right? Like stealing is a very clear boundary violation. And other people in the family, and other people in the community deserve to have the boundary. Right? That keeps themselves protected. Right? So yes, stealing is a behavior that we want to see how we can, you know, quote, unquote, solve. But we can't just look at the stealing, we have to look at what's underneath it. So stealing can be a behavior that's around like pleasure seeking, and reward seeking, really like dopamine circuitry kind of stuff. Stealing can be really about lots of impulsivity, like I see I take, right? Not a lot of pause, right? Stealing- it can be about power dynamics in a relationship, right? Like some of our kids steal to- and violate other people's boundaries to put themselves in like a power over position in a relationship. Right? Stealing can be about k- having very, very, very poor sense of self, poor sense of boundaries, poor sense of like, I am me, you are you and we're separate, like, what's yours isn't mine. And having really blurred boundaries around like I’m me and you’re you is very common in folks who have had early trauma or early attachment trauma experiences. And stealing can be about a lack of trust, that their needs are going to be met, right? So that's about felt safety. And then that gets combined with like this kind of high level of arousal, that leaves their brain in a place where it can only focus on the right now. So taking, stealing, instead of on the future. Which is like, I could ask for this, I could make a plan for this. If I take this without asking, that's going to hurt my relationship, or you know, all of all the other byproducts of stealing that aren't just the immediate, but I want that so I'm going to take it right now. If I want to stay in a power over position and use my power to change somebody else's behavior, then yeah, I can totally disregard what's driving the behavior, and find a way to, you know, change your behaviors through punishment for your control, and, and the behavior might actually even change. But it's not going to change without great cost. If we're really invested in helping people feel better, helping people feel better in their nervous system, feel better, with themselves, feel more safe, feel more connected, feel more human. And not just being in a position of having enough power to force somebody else's behavior to change, then what happens is we're relieved to learn that understanding behavior invites in the brain states of curiosity and compassion. And then we're super excited to know that compassion is the hallmark of a nervous system that is open to change. We actually know what changes neural networks, and it's a nervous system that's in connection mode. Curiosity and compassion, it's literally a part of the formula for creating the circumstances that invite true change in the brain. So if a child is stealing, because they don't believe their needs will get met by someone else. It's actually a nervous system, state of compassion and connection that is going to allow their memory networks to reconsolidate. And then shift into the truth that they can trust the grownups to meet their needs. 

If we want to create the possibility for memory networks to change, we've got to bring compassion, curiosity, and connection. That is the formula for inviting in the possibility for neural networks to unlock, reconsolidate. That's a whole lot of sciencey mumbo jumbo. Maybe you know all that language, and you're like, oh, yeah, that makes total sense. Maybe you don't know that language at all and all you need to hear me say is, it allows the brain to change and then ultimately, the behavior to change in a way that's congruent with authentic brain change. As opposed to just based out of fear, and power, and control. 

So in addition to being able to finally solve the real problem, and create the brain environment that offers up the potential for real true brain change, I'm gonna give you one more reason why understanding behavior is so powerful. Compassion, which emerges from understanding the behavior, actually allows us to set way better boundaries. Boundaries that are much more likely to be respected. Boundaries that are much more likely that we'll be able to enforce. Now without question, we have a lot of confusion over what the word boundaries actually means. Boundaries aren't about being in a power up position that then gives me the ability to control and manipulate someone else's behavior. That's not what a boundary is. But what is- what- what is a boundary, right? 

So here's what we're gonna do, we're actually going to spend the entire month of February exploring boundaries. Particularly how we can have boundaries with kids with very dysregulated behaviors. Okay? So because we're going to do a whole month on that, for now, all I'm gonna say is that compassionate boundaries are much stronger and much more powerful than punishment and power over attempts to manipulate somebody else's behavior. Compassionate boundaries allow connected relationships to flourish in safety. So understanding behavior leads to compassion, which leads to the ability to have compassionate boundaries. Okay? 

All right, y’all, let's summarize this really quickly. We are so much more likely to actually change behavior that needs to be changed in a way that doesn't leave us in protection mode by using power, when we can understand what the behavior really is. Understanding behavior that allows us to stay in compassion and connection mode, which also is what contributes to real, true good change in the nervous system. Understanding behavior promotes compassionate boundaries. It doesn't promote excusing behavior. Compassionate boundaries don't leave us in a state of like helplessness where we feel like we can't do anything so we just give up. And we let it all slide because I have no power and I can't do anything. That's not where compassionate boundaries lead us. Compassionate boundaries help us move out of a power over or power under dynamic. Power over and power under dynamics keep us really stuck in nervous system state of protection. And if we can move out of that power over or power under place, we can invite in felt safety and, yes, ultimately integration. 

So next week, we're kicking off a month long series on the exploration of boundaries, boundaries with connection, and boundaries with kids with very dysregulated behaviors that we just can't end our relationship with, right? Like, so often, when people talk about boundaries, there's this kind of like, ultimate boundary of just ending the relationship. Like if I don't like the way somebody's treating me, ultimately, my power and the way I can enforce my boundaries is to say, “these are my boundaries and comply with them or we're not going to be in relationship any longer”. That's obviously really not possible with our kids. Right? We can't control their behavior, and sometimes their behavior absolutely violates the boundaries that we have for ourselves and the boundaries for how we expect other people to interact with us. So when that's true, what do we do? That's what we're going to explore next month, as we talk all about boundaries. 

I'm really excited for this. I’m already putting, like a lot of thought, and processing, and planning, and notetaking into this series. I think it's going to be awesome. That's gonna start next week. So in the meantime, if you loved this episode, if you thought it was helpful, if you love the podcast, if you think the podcast is helpful, I'd love for you to share it. Share it with your friends, with your colleagues, with the people who are helping your kids just share, share, share. Your next door neighbor, whoever you can get to l- listen to the podcast, go ahead and do that. If you love the podcast, I'd also love for you to rate and review the podcast. I mean, if you don't love the podcast, and yeah, go ahead. You don't have to share it with anybody. Don't re- don't review it. [laughs] But if you love it, right? Go ahead and do those things. It actually does help other people find the podcast. So think about the moment you found the podcast, and the breath of relief that that gave you. I mean, people write me and they say, oh my gosh, everything changed and I found your podcast. So when you share about the podcast and you rate it, and you review it, it gives the opportunity for more folks to find the podcast and more folks to experience that. That's exactly what we're hoping for. Alright y'all, thank you again for everything. Everything you do for yourself, everything you do for your kids. You're amazing. I will see you next week.