Parenting in Chronic Protection Mode {EP 235}

Robyn: So that's what I did last week. This week, we're gonna look at a portion of that episode from Deb that started right around 20 ish minutes in, where Deb and I really talked about, you know, if we're gonna think about safety cues of safety, cues of danger, and what that means for the nervous system. How are we helping parents who are chronically neuro-receiving danger because they're living in a state of such chaos because of the behaviors of the child that they're parenting who has such dysregulation in their nervous system. So how do we help that parent? What do we do with that? What do we do with helping somebody whose external relationships, you know, who's their life, their environment, what's happening in their real life? Is hard, it's chaotic, it's it's dangerous, and we can't change that. So what do we do? Where's the hope in that situation? That's what we're going to talk about in today's episode.   

Robyn: If you're logging into The Baffling Behavior Show for the first time, or first couple times, I'm so glad you're here. This is a podcast where, together you and I explore the science of being relationally, socially and behaviorally human. This podcast is in its fourth year. I started in December of 2020. 2021 was my first full year, and I think of it as this collaboration between me and you. I've had so much privilege and accessibility to deep dive study this really intense science and to see how it helps us make sense of kids with histories of complex trauma and kids with nervous system disabilities and these really vulnerable nervous systems, sensitized stress response systems. I've had so much capacity and accessibility to really deep dive the science, while also, of course, working in the trenches with families who are parenting kids who have really intense, vulnerable nervous systems and these big, baffling behaviors. I've had so much privilege to be able to do that that I've love then being able to offer you, those of you who are truly in the trenches, right, like every moment of your life is about parenting kids, and you're listening to this show, trying to do it in a way that's really going to help your kids and help yourself.   

Robyn: So I think about it, how we kind of come together. You bring what you know about your kid, I bring what I know about the nervous system, and together, we try to make it useful so that's actually meaningful in your life. Science isn't terribly useful if it's not meaningful to you. So polyvagal theory, here's a quick little summary. Is a theory of the nervous system, and it helps us understand why people do what they do. Polyvagal theory helps us make sense of people's behaviors, and it helps us bring compassion to folks whose behaviors are hard to understand. Polyvagal theory helps us understand why some people get essentially kind of stuck in patterns of defensiveness, so in patterns of fight-flight behavior and patterns of collapse behavior. Polyvagal theory helps us understand why folks get stuck in protection mode and then have protection behaviors. So for me, polyvagal theory first brought a compassion to folks who are struggling, including myself. And from there, polyvagal theory has brought me so much hope, and I think it's the hope that keeps me so connected to polyvagal theory and really anchored into using polyvagal theory to help us understand what's happening in the nervous system, the hope then opens up ideas about how we might be able to help. Okay, so two episodes ago, I interviewed Deb Dana, and right around minute 20 ish is when we started talking about parents who are chronically experiencing cues of danger.  

Robyn: Dr Porges, the theorist behind polyvagal theory offers us this phenomenon called neuroception. And neuroception is our minds and bodies kind of like, I think of it as like the spidey sense. It's way out of conscious awareness. Our neuroception is continuously scanning for cues of safety, danger and life threat, and then, based on what our neuroception is experiencing, the nervous system then makes a decision about resting into connection mode, where with safety or shifting into protection mode to prepare for some defensive behavior, to prepare to face threat, and again, moving into protection mode. The whole intention of that is to return to connection mode, right? We will respond to danger with the intention of rediscovering safety. And it's neuroception that is scanning for cues of safety, danger and life threat. And then, you know, making the decision about connection versus protection. Polyvagal theory talks about how, when cues of safety outweigh cues of danger, our ventral vagal pathway engages, and our ventral vagal pathway. Here in the on The Baffling Behavior Show is the Owl brain, or the Owl pathway. So when you hear ventral vagus, we are talking about Owl. When you hear Owl, know that we're talking about the ventral vagus, the Owl pathway. The ventral vagal pathway is the pathway of safety and connection. If we wanted to really oversimplify everything, we would say the Owl pathway, the ventral vagal pathway. That's really what we're aiming for. And the reality is is actually we don't have to aim for it, because we're really quite longing to rest in our ventral vagal pathway. We're really longing for our Owl brain to be in charge when there is enough safety, okay, so that maybe sort of seems simple enough, except for that those of us who live in chronic danger, our neuroception is flooded with cues of danger because there's chaos and danger, and the people we live with are flooded with cues of danger, and our neuroception reads that it's dangerous too. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I live in chaos, I live surrounded by cues of danger, where's the hope there? How do we have any hope of neuroceiving safety, which would then allow us to rest into that ventral vagal pathway, or allow us our Owl brain to be in charge? How do we have any hope of that when we live in a place of chronic danger?   

Robyn: So this, what I'm going to describe, is maybe going to feel a little tricky for me to describe without visuals, and when we're in a podcast, of course, we can't use visuals. So I'm going to try to, like, draw the picture in your mind for you. I wish I could show you a picture if you are an immersion program student. We're going to use the visual of the scale with cues of danger and cues of safety. So you could actually go into the immersion program and look at some of that imagery. And if you're a member of the club, I can get that imagery up into the club forum as well. Okay, so for the rest of us, imagine neuroception as like a scale, and one side is safe. And one of those, like old school scales, right where, you know, there's two sides to it, and they balance. On one side of that scale is how we're measuring safety. On other side of the scale is how we're measuring danger. And if the scale has more cues of safety than cues of danger, it's going to tip that way, right. It'll tip to safety. If the scale is more cues of danger than cues of safety, it will tip towards danger right whichever side has more, we're going to tip that way. On each side of the scale are three buckets. There's a bucket called inside, there's a bucket called outside, and there's a bucket called between, and these exist on both sides. Both sides has these three buckets. Cues of safety and cues of danger can be categorized into those three buckets. So we can have cues of safety that come from the inside, that come from the outside and come from the between, and we can have cues of danger that come from the inside and from the outside and from the between. And this is all polyvagal theory.   

Robyn: Inside is our own inner world, accused of safety or danger from what's happening inside our bodies. Outside, I think of as the environment, like what's happening in the environment that we're, in between is relationally, what is happening in the relational space with the person that I'm with, cues of safety, cues of danger. Now for so many of you listening, your skills are tipped towards danger, and in those three buckets, there's a lot of danger cues. There's a lot of danger coming from your environment. There's a lot of danger in the relational space between you and your child, and therefore there's also a lot of danger internally, because your body has been in chronic defense, defensive mode, right? You've been in chronic fight-flight, and ultimately, being in a state of chronic flight, flight leaves an overabundance of cues of danger internally as well. Now I actually have an entire podcast series. It's a three part series all about inside, outside, in between. I'll make sure it's all in the show notes as well as the numbers of those episodes, so you can easily find them. But if this is all new to you and you want to explore even further, those are like half hour episodes at least each so half hour all about inside, half hour all about outside, half hour all about between.   

Robyn: If we can't decrease the cues of danger, right? So go back to the scale metaphor, if there's an overabundance of cues of danger on the scale, and so the scales tip towards danger if we cannot decrease those cues of danger, and you might not be able to, because we can't control what's happening outside of us. We can't control what's happening with our child, and a lot of times, we can't control what's happening in our environment. If we can't control those cues of danger, if we can't decrease those cues of danger, our option then becomes to increase cues of safety. How do we increase cues of safety when we are so flooded by cues of danger on the outside. Well, I'm gonna give you a few ideas. Now, if you are in the Club, if you're a Club member, I want you to go to the resource library, and I want you to look for the work. It's kind of like a workbook. It's a multi page document. It's called inviting more felt safety into the stream of the now, and it is stored in the resource library under the Growing The Parent Owl Brain or window of tolerance section. So what I'm about to talk about really dovetails with overlaps with that resource. So press pause. Go to the club. Grab that resource if you haven't already. If you're not in the club, no problem. I want you to just pull out a piece of paper or later, you know, when you're finished listening to this episode, grab yourself a piece of paper and divide it up in. To like three columns. So maybe draw two lines, make three columns. We're wanting a space for inside, a space for outside, and a space for between.   

Robyn: Now, the first thing that's helpful is to really identify what in your life already exists in those columns. Now we're talking about safety here, not about danger. That's a different exercise. Talking about safety here, what already exists in your life, in the safety category, in the inside, in the outside, in the in-between. Again, if you're in the club, you can go and you can download that packet, and it gives you a lot of prompts and a lot of ideas and a lot of suggestions, and it's this pretty little document that you can fill in, but you don't need that. You can just take out a regular old piece of paper and really take some time to ponder, like, what cues of safety exist in my life now, in the inside and the outside, in the between. And if you're not sure what kinds of things fit in those categories, and you're not in the club. Then, then, yes, when you're done with this episode, go to my felt safety series. Listen to each of the episodes about inside, outside, between, and I have, I do have a free felt safety infographic. You can go to my website, and you can grab that as well. You don't have to be in the club for that. Just a free resource, all about field safety. RobynGobbel.com/freeresources. Again, all of these links will be in the show notes. So the first part of this exercise is what cues of safety already exist.   

Robyn: Then the next part of this exercise is, what could you add? Where could you intentionally add in cues of safety in the inside, outside, in between. And y'all, these don't have to be like big, impressive things, for example, for me, cues of safety for me would include, you know, getting into the sun, moving my body, and it is really easy in the state of my life to not prioritize either of those things. So I have access to the outdoors, and I have access to the I have access to the sun in the summertime. I do live in one of the least sunny places in the United States, but it's August, and so I currently do have access to the sun. So I can look at how like, Yeah, I do have access to those things. They are cues of safety for me that I am not accessing as much as I as I could. And prioritizing accessing those things feels doable. For me, I do feel like I could find five extra minutes, three times a day, get up, walk away from my desk, walk outside, move my body, touch the grass, literally touch the grass, not the metaphorical thing that people are saying that I've actually only recently heard about touching grass. Y'all, I'm getting so old, I could literally put my feet in the grass, and I could stay stand in the sunshine, and I could do this for a few minutes, a few times a day. That is accessible to me. It doesn't cost money, and even though it feels like I don't have time for that, I do. I do have time for that. So I could put that into cues of safety from the outside, and it is something that I could make sure I do every day. And not only that, I also can prioritize paying attention. So maybe you are already get outside every day and move your body and see the sunshine. Maybe what you can add is being more deliberate about paying attention to it, because cues of safety kind of get supercharged. We get actually more cues of safety from them, when we're noticing with deliberateness, when we're really paying attention. Think about the relationship category, the between category. And I know that not all of us have access to safe connected relationships. So it could be safe connected relationships with people, but research is very clear, relationships with pets, relationships with nature, we can have relationships with all sorts of experiences that aren't necessarily other humans. That count those are cues of safety from the between. But here's actually what's super exciting to me about cues of safety from the between. Eventually, as we experience cues of safety in the in between, space relation.

Robyn: Finally, if we experience those with some repetition, eventually, we internalize our relationships. We internalize our relationships with that person, with that pet, with that experience of nature, we internalize it, meaning we build like a neural network of that experience inside our own neurobiology, and this happens because of our resonant circuitry and mirror neurons and all this cool stuff. So what starts as between cues of safety eventually becomes cues of safety in the inside bucket, cues of safety relationally in the between bucket eventually become internalized, and they become cues of safety on the inside, these are cues of safety, then that are with us always, even if we're not with that person, or we're not able to be in nature, we're not with our pet, they live inside of us. This is one of the primary anchor points of our professional immersion program, the program that I have that trains professionals to work with parents of the most dysregulated kids, because it would otherwise be so easy for us to fall into hopelessness, right, to look at the families we work with and say, oh my gosh, there's so much chaos here. There's so much out of control behavior. There's so much danger. How could I ever help this parent feel safe? Yeah, I get that that feels intense. It feels like a lot what we're doing in those situations, when we're working with families, where it really does feel like, I don't know that we can make a whole lot of shifts in what's happening here, right? What we do is think about then, how do I help the parents nervous system shift. How do I bring my relationship as the professional to the parent so that they're experiencing cues of safety from me that's on the between, that's in the between bucket that goes on the safety side of the scale. Eventually, those cues of safety also become cues of safety in the inside bucket. Now we're just adding more drops of safety, more keys of safety, to that safety side of the scale.   

Robyn: Y'all. This is practically like magic to me. This is so exciting to me that as professionals, as helpers, and then this is, of course, true for parents, too. Simply by being with people, by offering our safety, by offering our co-regulation, we are increasing the accused of safety from the between space, and ultimately it increases accused of safety in that other person's inside experience too. And of course, the professionals that I'm training are also, you know, helping parents, in a very practical way, increase safety in their home, of course, of course, of course, of course. But there is a limit that we can do to control things that are outside our control, like other people. So then we return back to what can I control? Right? What can I control is being with people or pets or nature or having experiences of safety. Now I'm getting that cue of safety from the outside, and eventually I internalize that experience, and it lives inside of me and becomes cues of safety from the inside. And that brings us back to the hope of polyvagal theory. For the professionals that I train, we focus then on, how can you stay regulated in the face of your client's dysregulation, because if you could stay regulated, you're giving your client safety, and eventually your client will internalize that safety and that safety that now lives in their cues of safety bucket and that your client will have all the time, which actually is also true about parenting, that when we stay regulated, even if our children don't seem to be impacted by the safety we're offering them, we talked about that last episode, even if our children don't seem to be impacted by the safety that we're offering them, they are being impacted. It is increasing the cues of safety in there between buckets, and eventually it will increase cues of safety in their inside buckets too. It's just an extremely slow process, extremely slow process.   

Robyn: So y'all when this podcast episode ends, which it's about to I want you to literally make a list, what are your inside outside, between cues of safety, and again, if you're a Club member, you can go to the resource library. You can go to Growing The Parents Owl Brain section, and go to that document, that workbook, all about inviting more felt safety into the stream of the now you can get that packet, and that packet can help you, but you don't need the pack. Like it, you can just make a list, noticing the cues that already exist that matters, and then looking at how you could increase those cues that matters too. And being with people who offer safety, or being with pets or plants or nature or whatever those are the between cues that you'll eventually internalize, and then they become cues of safety that are with you always. And what I want to end this episode with is remembering what Deb said, what Deb Dana said two weeks ago. Our nervous system is longing for safety, and it knows the way, if we can open up those pathways. If you haven't heard that episode with Deb, go back. It was two episodes ago. Listen to that. I have a few more episodes planned where we're gonna deep dive into some of the things that Deb and I talked about. I was so excited and so inspired by Deb, and during that interview with her, I just wanted to pause her constantly be like, oh, let's talk about this. Oh, let's talk about that. But that just wasn't practical, so I'm doing it this way instead.  

Robyn: If you have just discovered The Baffling Behavior Show, podcast, welcome. I'm so glad that you're here. Head to my website, if you're new here, and explore all the resources over there. I've got free resources. I've got, of course, the podcast. Over on my website, there's a search bar for the podcast, so you can think of a topic that you're wondering if I addressed on the podcast. You can go to RobynGobbel.com/podcast use the search bar see if I've done an episode about it. You can get information about my book over on my website, Raising Kids With Big, Baffling Behaviors, and where you can buy that. You can get information about the club, which is my parenting community that's exists online and is a way that parents are increasing their cues of safety. All of that's over at RobynGobbel.com be sure to subscribe to The Baffling Behavior Show so that you know when an episode is released and I will be back with you again next week, right here on the podcast. Bye!