Scaffolding Felt Safety {EP 205}

Robyn: I started off doing physical therapy twice a week, and I'm actually still going to physical therapy, although with much, much, much, much less frequency. And it was right at about the eight-week mark after my injury that my physical therapist cleared me to go back to the gym. Now, y'all, I am not a hardcore gym rat by any means, but I do like to move my body. I usually have some sort of routine in my life where I'm getting some movement in I really, really crave proprioception. So I like to lift weights and do, like, hard impact. And I also am getting a little bit older, and I actually do think quite a bit about, like, my future mobility, my bone health. I travel a decent amount, and when I'm get onto an airplane. I think about how I want to be able to travel independently and hoist my, you know, luggage into the overhead bin if I need to for, I mean, just as long as possible. So although I am not an athlete under any stretch of the imagination, movement is important to me, and getting back to the gym was really important to me, so I was eager to get back to the gym. But also y'all really, really, really scared, the back injury was far and away the most amount of pain I have ever been in ever and I've had a baby without any medication and like they're not even comparable the intensity, the length of time I was in pain with this back injury. I have never had an experience like this before.    

Robyn: Now I recognize that I have so much privilege, I have so much able-body privilege, I have so much mobility privilege. I totally recognize the privilege that accompanies the fact that this injury was so so devastating. So in addition to the pain and how it impacted my ability to do quite literally, everything, I had to take medication that really made my brain not work. And in fact, right about the four week mark, I reached out to my doctor, and I was like, I can't do this anymore. Like, if I have to not move and essentially do best laying flat on my back, I have to have my brain work. Like, I've got to at least be able to keep doing my job. So we did make some adjustments, and she helps my brain work a little bit. But the impact I had in my brain, the loss of my mobility, the chronicity of the pain, took such a huge toll on me. I mean, I was able to at least have some appreciation for how I was being completely flooded with cues of danger. In my internal world between the medication and the pain, I was absolutely flooded with cues of danger. I probably spent a couple months in basically a functional, dissociated haze, which also let me just add in, didn't make me the funnest person to live with, but that's beside the point. We'll do a different episode on that one.    

Robyn: So all this to say, even though I'm not really a gym rat, right, like I don't spend my life thinking about going to the gym, I was eager and anxious to get back to the gym, and I was aware of the fact that I didn't want to hurt myself like that ever again, like for the rest of my life. I do not want to ever experience anything like that. Even with all of the health privileges that I have and all the mobility privileges that I have, I just was very committed to I never want to go through this, ever, ever, ever again. And it actually wasn't even the first time I had had an injury like that, although it had never even been close to being this severe. I mean, again, it's like they're miles and miles away from each other. The times I've hurt my back like this in the past, and the severity of this specific injury. So I knew that the best way to prevent doing something like this again, and I'm very aware of the possibility of doing something like this again, and I'm very aware of the fact that every time I do it, it gets worse. And so the idea that I could do it again, it could be worse. Y'all, I just can't even right. So I know that the best way to prevent doing this again is to get stronger, right, to get back into moving my body.   

Robyn: So why am I doing an episode about this my podcast? Well, there were so many times during my recovery where I noticed that I was so lucky to have felt safety scaffolded in and as a part of that, felt safety scaffolding the glue of human contact in relationship, that really increased my window of tolerance and ended up kind of filling my cues of safety bucket more than the cues of danger bucket, and how absolutely crucial that was for my willingness to keep trying, for my willingness to do something that was not comfortable, that was really, really, really scary. And even though, like, there was a part of my Owl brain that knew the best way to keep me from doing this again is to get stronger, there was certainly another part of me it was like, yes, but all this movement is just increasing the risk that I do something that hurts myself.     

Robyn: So during this whole experience and this whole you know, as I shifted from the recovery where I drastically decreased my activity level to the stage of my recovery where I had to start increasing it, right, I tried to pay really, really, really close attention to all my fears, and then what helps alleviate those fears enough that I was able to try something scary. And there were some aspects of this whole experience that felt really relevant to share with you, as I was kind of I. Comparing and contrasting some of the similarities between my recovery period and what I know kids with vulnerable nervous systems are also going through. I mean, they are also going through a recovery period, right? And we have to want first, decrease all the stress, right? Decrease all the activity. Like I did, I had to decrease all the stress, I mean, the stress in my body to even like move and walk to the next room, right? Drastically pulled back on all the stress, which allowed my body to do some natural healing on its own. And then there came a point where we had to start increasing the stress and the necessity of how pretty strategically we scaffolded, scaffolded in felt safety simultaneously, which allowed me then to keep kind of scaffolding in my injury recovery.    

Robyn: Now I want to be really clear, and I'll say this a few times, I'm not comparing the pain of this injury to the pain of a lifetime of vulnerable nervous system and the pain of you know, attempting to heal and recover from complex trauma. I'm not saying that they're the same, but there's some themes, some pieces, that I could pull out of moving through this kind of recovery period myself, which wasn't about relational experiences, which wasn't about healing from complex trauma. There's some aspects that I could kind of pull out of it and look at, really from like a bird's eye view that I noticed actually had some similarities to the, you know, 1000s of people who have walked beside as they've healed from complex trauma, not to mention my own journey, as well as the journey of the folks in my family. Now I go to a really unique gym experience that's essentially small group personal training. There are about five or six different trainers, and when we show up at the gym, we never know who exactly we're gonna have, although there are some patterns and some predictability, so I can usually guess, but truly you never know. You show up and whoever is working is the person who is your personal trainer that day, small group training, and I'd been going to this gym for about two months before my injury, so not really very long, right? I didn't really know this place that well, but I did know them a bit, right? So I wasn't going into a brand new place with brand new people when I went back to the gym in mid October.    

Robyn: Now, it's also worth noting that actually I injured myself at the gym, though I just happened to be at the gym when I got hurt, it was absolutely like straw that broke the camel's back kind of situation. No pun really intended there. But again, I've hurt myself like this before. Maybe some of you listening have also hurt yourself like this before. I mean, the last time I did it pretty severely, though not this severe by any means, I was just picking a towel up off the floor. So I was just living regular life. I happened to just be at the gym when I had this injury, there wasn't anything like I was remarkable. There was nothing remarkable that I was doing or, you know, at the gym, that is what caused this injury. So I had that part of the history too, right? Like I had some felt safety and going back to a place I knew, but I also was going back to the place where I got hurt. And even though my like logical Owl brain knew nothing about being at the gym, I would have probably hurt myself at that exact moment, regardless of where I was because of just living life, you know, and I knew that, like with my rational Owl brain, but still, right. I was at the gym where I got hurt, and now, you know, I needed to go back to the gym for the place that was going to help me get stronger.    

Robyn: Hands down, the number one, most important piece that has supported me in this recovery and gave me enough safety to go to the gym. I'm 1,000% positive if I just was given the option to go and show up at a regular gym where there was nobody helping me, nobody keeping an eye on me, nobody I was relationally connected to. You, I would have 100% never gone back, never. I would have just been too scared, right? The number one thing about this experience that I have at the gym and what gave me enough felt safety to even imagine going back, is how hard these folks get to know me even before my injury happened. Like I said, I'd been going to this gym for about two months. Even before that my injury had happened, I had been observing the way that this unique gym works, and being like, dang, these people really understand relational neuroscience. I'm not sure if they actually understand relational neuroscience and are like being that deliberate about how they're setting up their program, but these folks intuitively understand relational neuroscience and how relationship is such a key piece of supporting people's stress tolerance. And when you go to the gym, you are very, very, very deliberately stressing your body, like that's the whole point of going there, right?    

Robyn: And so the way that these folks infuse the experience with relational felt safety is just remarkable, and it was noticeable to me even before I had this injury, I mean, there were things that made it so clear that as a team, they work really hard to get to know each of us, like when I showed up for my very first workout, I'd never met any of them. I had went to the workout without knowing any of the folks who were in charge I had onboarded with someone else, and they knew, for example, that I was deaf in one ear. And they were aware of it without being kind of, you know, obnoxious about it. They were just aware that I needed people to be thoughtful about how they talked to me, especially in a location where the music is absolutely just blaring, that was meaningful to me, that somebody had noticed, somebody had decided this piece of me was important, that they had shared this information with their team, and that these folks showed up knowing that this unique part of me was important that really set the tone for my experience on my very first day, when I leave the gym, they often know when I'm planning to come back next we have to sign up to go because there's only so many people who can go to time, so we just sign up in advance, and when I leave, they're often saying to me, I'll see you on Friday, right, or I'll see you on Tuesday, right? Like they know when I'm scheduled to come back, sometimes I don't even remember when I'm scheduled to come back. There are these teeny, tiny, little things that they do that show me, they see me, they know me. They want to know me.   

Robyn: Another piece of this experience is that these trainers are all like really cheerful individuals, and I don't think they're faking it. They genuinely seem like people who love their job and they're happy and their smiles and they're excited to be there. They exude cues of safety in their nervous system through their eyes and their smiles and their tone of voice and their laughter. I mean, just their way of being, it, just blares out cues of safety, cues of safety, cues of safety. Sometimes, in between workouts, they text us, right? They say nice things. They send me a little text. It's like, hey, great workout today, right? And they add, usually, add in something that makes it really clear, this is a personal text. They're not just sending out like generic mass text messages. When I walk in the door, they say hello, even though I'm chronically about 45 seconds late I walk in, warm ups already started. So they're already working. They're already doing their job, and there's still always a pause to say hello. Everybody always says hello when you walk in. You can't walk into that place and not feel seen, not feel important.    

Robyn: And I mean, this is really nice when it comes to like getting my butt out the door every morning, I have a really hard time getting my butt out the door every morning, and the amount of like relational felt safety that exists there is, without question, very, very, very important. I've definitely stuck with this program longer than I expected to, because, frankly, they're just kind and nice and fun to be with. It makes me look forward to going, Oh, a little fun fact here is that, without question, I am absolutely old enough to be their mom, and I know for certain that I am actually older than my primary trainer's mom. But also the gym plays primarily 90s alternative, because most of the folks who come to the gym are my age. That's who the gym is like, kind of targeted and marketed toward, right? And these, frankly kids, right? They know us. They know us, and we matter to them, and it's real, right? Like it doesn't feel like they're kind of faking it because they run a business, and you kind of gotta, you know, make your clients feel a certain way if you want them to keep coming back. It doesn't feel like that at all. Feels like these people genuinely love their job. It feels like they genuinely want to help us. So there's all these pieces that were always lovely, right? And I'm positive kept me engaged in the program.    

Robyn: But when I went back after my injury, these pieces and the importance of these pieces were only elevated, y'all, I'm a chicken. Hey, truly, I'm a chicken. I am not brave. I do not take risks. I particularly do not take risks physically, hey, I will easily say, No, that's too hard. I am a sideline sitter for many, many, many things. I don't really push my body to do super hard things, and I am quite satisfied with that's good enough, truly. So for me to go to the gym was already, in itself, kind of a big deal and also terrifying. I'm not really a person who pushes myself and because of that, I don't really know what my body can take like. I haven't exactly really found that edge of too much, the edge of hard versus too hard, because I really don't push the too hard edge in these kinds of circumstances without question. I do in others. So I definitely push the too hard edge in other aspects of my life, but my body physically working hard, like, this is not where I push my body on the too hard scale. So, yeah, I was really scared, like, was I gonna know what was too much? Were they gonna know what was too much? I mean, I knew these people, but not really. It had only been two months that I go in before I hurt myself, and I didn't know if they were skilled enough trainers to help me recover from a very, very serious injury, right?    

Robyn: I didn't know. Were they good enough to take care of me? Where could they could they make sure that this terrible, terrible, terrible thing never happened to me again? Which, of course, they can it doesn't matter how skilled they are, but like, that's what I wanted. I wanted, like, complete certainty that I wasn't gonna get hurt again. It was so scary. And even though the injury wasn't their fault at all, I still hurt myself there at the actual gym. So that, of course, just added, you know, more feelings to it, and I was noticing some of the similarities between some of the fears I had and what I know some of the fears are in our kids, our kids, we've experienced danger, toxic stress, or a lack of felt safety inside relationship. And if you're new to the approach to the show here, you might not know that before I was podcasting, before the club, before I was an author, before I had my being with program, I was a play therapist. I spent 15 years, you know, with kids on the floor and got to know kids and what they were experiencing and thinking and feeling quite well. And these kids that I worked with are so so, so hurt, so hurt, yeah, like, a million times more hurt than I was, a million, a billion times more hurt than I was.    

Robyn: Plus, I'm an adult who has, simply because of being on the planet for as long as I have been, some sense of this thing I'm going through right now isn't going to last forever, because I've been through a lot of things that even though they felt like they were gonna last forever, they didn't last forever. So I have so many more experiences that just prove up to my nervous system, this terrible thing isn't going to last forever. And even still, there were still times when I was in severe pain that I could really sink into hopelessness. I could really fall into the belief that my body would never, ever, ever work again, and I was just going to be in this amount of pain for always and forever and for the rest of my life. Even though I have a nice, strong Owl brain that knows this won't last forever, I could still fall into this will last forever, right? I was trying to trust my body that I could be okay, and I was trying to trust these people that they could help me be okay, and these people hadn't hurt me. These are people I'd established a good relationship with before I was hurt, but our kids, who are so so so so hurt, so many of them don't know that it could be safe to trust that relationship could feel good and safe and enjoyable and delightful.    

Robyn: They really only know how awful relationship feels, and even being a really in relationship leaves them feeling constantly afraid, just like at first I was constantly afraid at the gym, and when I say just like again, I hope I'm being really clear. I am not comparing the two levels of fear here. I was afraid of hurting my back again, but because it wasn't super duper, super duper severe, like moments of recovering from complex trauma, I was able to be able to step back from it and really, like, kind of analyze what was happening with the scaffolding that helps me feel safe and feel safe enough to risk and if anything, what it did was keep telling me, like, Oh my gosh. Like, I have so many resources. I have so much support. There are so many things in my life that make this recovery really not that scary, and I am still terrified, right? What about tiny little kids, right? Or teenagers, they don't have to be tiny, right? And the risks that they are taking, and essentially a similar thing, right? Their own personal recovery of having been hurt, so, so severely. So I finally get back to the gym. I'm, of course, moving exceptionally slow, exceptionally tenuously. I was so hyper vigilant, and I was kind of skeptical, like, could these people really keep me safe?   

Robyn: But also, they made it clear the moment I walked in, the first time, the moment I walked in, the first time they saw me. They saw me. They were ready for me to come back. They had a plan. They made it really clear that I wasn't a burden, because that is one thing I worry about a lot in my life, is being too much, taking up too many resources, needing too much attention. They made it so clear I wasn't a burden. They had thought about what was going to be best for me, but not only did they have a plan, and they came to our meeting for the first time of the plan, but they also watched me very, very, very closely. They talked to me, they got my feedback, and they made adjustments regularly. So they had a plan, but they adjusted the plan based on what was actually happening. There was energetic serve and return happening. There was resonance in our experience together. Sometimes I'd be in the middle of a rep, and they'd come over and smile and say, I was awesome, and then say, Do you want to consider increasing that weight next time? And I would panic, and my eyes would widen, and then they'd say something like, oh, you definitely don't have to, I mean, definitely listen to your body.    

Robyn: But by the time they had even started suggesting something like increasing, they had already proven up that they knew what they were doing, that they were watching me closely, and they were using their training to know how to help me, which means I was starting to trust them. So we had built some trust before they ever even considered kind of nudging me along, giving me a little push on that growth edge. So one day, I finally trusted them enough to think that if they were suggesting that I go up and wait, I probably could. They weren't gonna hurt me, right? So I tenuously increased weight. A teeny, teeny, tiny bit, and they kept keeping an eye on me, and they kept telling me that I was doing well, and they also kept telling me how to correct my form so that I wouldn't hurt myself again. But they didn't hover. They were there. They were keeping an eye on me. They didn't hover. And then they'd celebrate that I went up one pound. They continued to talk about me to one another, which was really clear. I could tell when I'd come in that they knew what my previous workout had been like, or they knew what my PT had said, and that I'd relate to a different one of the trainers, right? They were talking about me. I was on their mind even when I wasn't there, they held me in mind and y'all, that's attachment, okay? That told me I matter, I exist. This was just more drops in that relational felt safety bucket. Now today, I'm cleared to return to all normal activities, but even today, even this morning at the gym, there was an adjustment that was made for me that I didn't ask for, because they just knew. They just knew where I was in my recovery, and they knew that they needed to adjust something, even though I'm technically recovered.   

Robyn: So all right, we're a half hour in. I've given you a lot of little details about my time at the gym. Why am I doing this? Why am I recording a podcast about this? As I was slowly, slowly, slowly rebuilding my trust and what my body could do, I couldn't help but see the parallels between my injury recovery and the kids that I work with. Your kids and their injury recovery. They are recovering from a serious injury. It's just invisible, and unfortunately, the symptoms are more difficult to deal with. They feel personal. The symptoms are relational. My symptoms were obvious because I couldn't move, but it also did impact me relationally. You're welcome to ask my family about that. And even though I had a very physical manifestation, it was still hard for them to remember that I felt awful, and I was flooded with constant cues of danger, and that was impacting me relationally. And I'm not making excuses for me, but offering up this idea that even though I had a very physical manifestation of this, it was still hard for folks to keep in mind why I was struggling so much relationally. So of course, we are struggling tremendously while our kids are recovering from a very, very, very serious injury.    

Robyn: And I do think it can be helpful to look at it that way, that this is injury recovery, right? Their nervous system has been injured, and my recovery was accompanied by so many privileges that these kids don't have. And I do think it's worth noticing that, number one, I have autonomy. I'm a grown up. I'm in charge, right? I was in charge of my recovery all along the way. I was in charge of choosing my team that was helping me. You know, aside from the ER doctor, I chose every person who helped me, right? I developed a relationship with them. I got to know them. I had autonomy, and when I went to appointments, how I scheduled them, I mean, I was in charge, because I'm a grown up. Okay? So number one, huge privilege I have that kids recovering don't have, is autonomy. Number two, I had a previous good experience, not only at this specific gym, but also just kind of working out in general. Again, I don't really push my body that hard, and so injuries related to working out aren't something I've dealt with. I have a pretty good experience at the gym, and I really like group fitness, and so for the most part, always my you know, my experience with working out has been in a group, so I have always had a very relational, connected experience with working out.    

Robyn: I really like group fitness. So that was privilege number two, I had some previous good experiences. And privilege number three, I have an adult brain that can feel the truth that it's possible for the future to be better. And even still, there were times I was in an absolute panic, convinced I might never return to my normal functioning body again, or would not, you know, or I would always be in chronic back pain. We really understand the impact it has on our kids that they can't really feel the truth that the future can be both different and better. Kids brains are developmentally different, right? First of all, as far as their ability to kind of like time travel into the future, but also a brain with significant history of trauma, toxic stress, is a really hard time believing that the future could be different or better, believing that the future could be different and better kept me out of hopelessness and helplessness and despair, and occasionally I would touch into it, but for I could come out of it. Being able to believe in a future that could be different and better gave me hope, and it gave what I was doing a lot of purpose.    

Robyn: My recovery was completely on my own time timeline. I was in charge of it. I chose when and where I would move my body again. Nobody was pushing me to do anything. I chose who would be with me. I could leave what I wanted to. I could not go when I didn't want to. I had so much power and control that gave me so much safety. I was never forced. I was never coerced. My trainers were never mad at me, right? They never were mad when I was afraid. They weren't mad that I couldn't do what they thought that I should be able to do. They never did anything that suggests that I was a burden or a bother or irritating to them, and in fact, the exact opposite was true. They intuitively made stress more tolerable by increasing relational safety. In my memory networks, I held the knowledge that my body could be pain free, it could work the way that I wanted it to again, and because of this, I had a place I knew I was going. It wasn't just this blind leap of faith. I was going back to something, not carving a brand new path in the unknown. And so so so many of our kids are carving a brand new path into the unknown. Their memory networks only know that it's not safe to trust people, that relationships are scary, that they are at risk of hurting forever because to be in un-co-regulated pain, emotional pain or physical pain, imprints on our nervous system this will last forever when that pain is real re-awoken, that sense of this will last forever is re-awoken. And pain in relationships is always re-awoken. Right? Like pain, relationships are painful. There's no perfect relationship. Relationships are painful.    

Robyn: And so when a current, good, stable, safe relationship has a moment where it reawakens that old relational pain. What also floods to the present moment is the sense that this pain will last forever. And here's the other thing, most of the adults that our kids spend time with, and I include myself in this most of the adults that these kids spend time with, and again, what I'm about to say is not shame or judgment, but most of these adults only have so much patience we run out, right? We want life with them to be easier and more connected. We want them to trust us, because we're trustworthy, and most of us, myself included, take it personally when they don't trust us. So because we spend so much time with these kids, and because it is so hard, we run out of patience, right? We aren't always coming to them with delight and joy and smiles, right? We're frustrated. We're frustrated that it is still this hard, and because of that, it becomes hard to see how unbelievably brave every single one of your kids is, right? Because we are doing life with them, and not just three hours a week at the gym with them, right? It becomes so so hard to hold onto and to see how unbelievably brave these kids are. I was brave to go back to the gym. I understood the benefit. I need to rebuild my strength so I can avoid this injury in the future.    

Robyn: Our kids don't understand that they need to rebuild their relationship strength, because that will actually be the best injury prevention for them in the future, and it makes a lot of sense that they don't believe this. Why would I believe that going to the gym and working my muscles would be what prevented me from hurting myself, which, by the way, I did at the gym using my muscles. I believed it because I have a general idea, a very basic idea. Of how muscles work, and a very basic idea of how injury recovery works, again, very, very basic. It's all I need. I trust the people who told me that information. I have a lot of years of my body working. I've been hurt before and recovered before. Even though never this bad, I still have been hurt before and recovered before. My physical therapist took such good care of me, told me what not to do, and then started to encourage me to return to the gym the moment that he thought it would be fine, nobody forced me to do anything ever I built relationships with these people. I believed they had my best interests at heart. I believe they knew me, saw me, cared about me. I believe they held me in mind. They never, ever, ever did anything more than suggest, make invitations that I do something that would help with growth and when I initially balked, every single time they stayed in attunement with me and said, trust your body. There's no urgency, but also, I know you can do it. It makes so much sense that these things are almost impossible for some of our kids. It is so hard, almost impossible, to go a slow at scaffolding relationship is almost impossible to go as slow as they really, really truly need, and it is almost impossible to do that with the level of attunement that they really, really, really need, right?    

Robyn: And I think that it is helpful to notice this, that the pace of relational scaffolding that they need is so much slower than we could ever reasonably do, and we don't need to feel guilty about this, but sometimes I do think it helps to just have awareness of how much our kids are doing that, quite frankly, is miraculous. Some of the kids that I know have no map for healthy relationship. They don't know it can be different. They think the path only leads to pain, but they keep trying anyway. And the ones who seem like they don't keep trying, the ones who blow up their relationships seemingly in every moment. Well, y'all, it makes sense. It's very painful. It is very painful. And it makes sense. If I thought I had to do something that hurt me as bad as my back hurt, I would do anything in my power to sabotage doing that thing, I would be so so so mad at someone who I thought was forcing me to do something that I thought was only going to lead me back to that level of pain as I was remembering how to move again, to get up off the floor again, I was continuously thinking about how we're asking these kids to do something quite monumental, and then it makes so much sense that some of them are doing it kicking and screaming, literally and figuratively, and it makes so much sense that some of them need more relational, felt safety, scaffolded so slowly, like possibly scaffolded over decades.    

Robyn: If my trainers lived with me, they wouldn't be near as nice to me as they are, in the three hours that I'm at the gym every week, they would not smile every time they saw me. They wouldn't text me to tell me how great I was doing. Because why would they we live together? They wouldn't have infinite patience. We can't always do these things for our kids. It's not possible. It's not reasonable, and I'm not attempting to suggest that, but I think remembering that these things, these ingredients, I think remembering the importance of them, can be grounding for us, and occasionally reorienting back to why our kids are struggling so badly, and that it makes perfect sense, and that the teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny, little, micro moments that really matter in the development of their relational felt safety. Are things like a smile, a gesture that makes it clear that you thought about them when they weren't there, a genuine happiness to see them doing something that makes it clear that you're communicating. I know you, I'm paying attention to you, and I'm adjusting to your needs and following your pace, not mine.    

Robyn: Now, hopefully this goes without saying, but this is not a podcast to make you feel guilty, so please don't end this podcast feeling that way. Right? It. It's a podcast to bring us a sense of an inspiration at what our kids are managing to do every single day y'all just by being alive, by functioning in any way, and by risking it, by risking relationship. And it's a podcast to help us re-anchor back into compassion for them and for us. Now, my trainers know I appreciate them. They know I think that they're doing a good job. I tell them also they see daily progress in me, and most importantly, they don't live with me, right? This makes their job easy. Yours is unbelievably hard, but your kids can rebuild, or maybe build, for the first time, their relational muscle. It might be long after you aren't even parenting them actively anymore, but the experiences that they are having now will matter in 10 years or 20 years, when they decide that they can trust the person in 10 years or 20 years who metaphorically asks if they can go up in weight and lift just one more pound.    

Robyn: I went to the gym four times this week. I cannot believe I can go to the gym four times and still move kind of period, but let alone only two and a half months after coming back from this back injury, this next week, I'm gonna risk going back to the aerial silks gym, and I'm gonna start with that very, very, very slowly, I'm going to meet with my teacher privately so I can re familiarize myself with what it feels like before I have to be on anyone else's timeline, which is inherent in a class. Of course, I need to know in my body that I can safely be on a silk before I ever kind of relinquish the timeline and the pace over to someone else. And honestly, I wasn't sure if I was ever gonna go back. I mean, there's a part of me that's like, Why? Why I don't need to go back to silks. I don't need to climb a silk ever again in my life, right? I'm getting old. Do I really need that skill, but my instructor's a physician. She's highly trained, and I decided that I can trust her to take care of me. It makes sense that you're frustrated and overwhelmed with the very slow progress, because slow progress in your home means dangerous behavior or verbally abusive behavior, right? I get it. I get that being okay with the slow progress that is being made is a monumental ask of you, and you can't always do it, but we talk on this podcast, a lot about 1% and maybe next week, your connection to the reality that the fact that our kids attempt to show up really for a relationship in any way, is like a miracle.    

Robyn: Maybe your connection to that truth will increase just 1% and that isn't just to help your kids, like we're not aiming for that just to help your kids. That will help you. You will feel a lot better if you can kind of orient to that truth even 1% more, then you're orienting to it now, all right, I'm about to say something really ironic, but one of my goals for 2025 with podcasting, is to be more succinct. This was not a succinct episode in any way, shape or form, and I talked about myself a lot, which I try not to do, because that's not what you're here for. And it still felt important. It still felt important to kind of give you this view that I had, and the importance of relational felt safety and scaffolding, relational felt safety in injury recovery and if it helps, even one of you consider the work that you're doing with your kids in a different way. If it helps, even just one of you feel a little bit more energetic in your ability to do this kind of helps even one of you just kind of look at your kid in a slightly different way and remember that this is injury recovery. Then I'll have decided that this, at this stage, very long podcast, was worth it, if you are new to The Baffling Behavior Show. I'm so glad you're here. We are over 200 episodes. I've got four years of archives, I think, is that right? Four years of archives? Yep.    

Robyn: Over on my website, RobynGobbel.com there's a search bar on my podcast page. RobynGobbel.com/podcast, there's a search bar. You can type into that search bar what you're looking for, lying, stealing, aggression, frustration tolerance. Can't handle hearing no, whatever it is that you're looking for, you can put it into that search bar, and if I have a podcast that touches on that topic, it will come up, and then it will tell you the number of the podcast, and then you can come back to your podcast app. You can look for that number. I wish podcasts themselves were more searchable, but they're not. But there's so much in this now, over 200 episodes of very practical tips in a way that in a format, right, a podcast that's accessible and free. So take advantage of that search bar, go look for what you're looking for, then just come back to the podcast and find that episode. We always take a holiday break, so we are only recently coming back from the holidays, and we are getting back in the groove. Y'all episode a week from now until, I don't know when I have no plans to take a podcast break in the near future, so we're back. Tune in next Tuesday. Head to my website if you need support between now and then, I've got oodles and oodles and oodles of free resources. You can go grab yourself a copy of Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors, and I'll be back with you again next week. Bye, bye!