Felt Safety when Nothing Feels Safe {EP 248}

Robyn: Can we hold that tension, and can we do it in a way that isn't gaslighting or toxic positivity and in truly, I think, in order for us to do this work well, and those of us who are leaders in this space, for us to be able to do this work well, in a way that is not harming others. I think we must be holding that tension. So I'd like to think that I, you know, regularly, am connected to this duality of, can we talk about safety. Can we talk about regulation in times of intense dysregulation, or when there is a lack of safety, but it's been really present on my mind in a way that I wanted to then do this episode, because you've maybe noticed I am teaching a webinar on creating felt safety. Well, the week that this episode is going to air, I'm teaching the webinar this week, and it's a webinar that I teach with some frequency. It's a very common webinar that agencies request. So this is a webinar I kind of have down pat. I have a lot of resources that go along with it. I mean, I guess my point really is, this isn't my first rodeo with this particular webinar, and as I've been in this kind of preparation stage to teach this webinar, there's a lot going on in the news. There is a lot going on in the news, and I am watching my peers, my colleagues, my friends, the families that I work with, the professionals that I support. I am watching folks grapple with an increase in a lack of safety in their day to day lives. I am most touched into you know what's happening here, where I live, in the US, but there is challenges, lack of safety, terrible things happening. Terrible things happening all over the globe. 

Robyn: Of course, I'm just most connected to and aware of what's happening right here. And one of the things that I'm always just like so outraged by the injustice of it is when circumstances in life get harder. The hard that's already existed for all the families that I support. It doesn't change. It doesn't get easier. We don't get a reprieve from, you know, the kinds of things that are stressing all folks right now, finances, housing, job instability, right? We don't get a reprieve from any of that. And then the families that I support, right? Those of you listening who are navigating such intense vulnerability in their own families, such intense behaviors, lack of services, being blamed by professionals, none of that stress changes, right? And then we add to it, right? The stress that's happening out in our communities, and I'm always so just like, totally outraged by the injustice of that. It's like, if we're gonna increase stress here, don't you think we should decrease it over here? But the reality is, is it just doesn't work that way. And the families that I work with are already stressed to the max, right? They're already navigating a literal lack of safety in their own home or family. They're already navigating the lack of services right that people are telling them to go get but those services don't actually exist, or they're not accessible, or they're certainly not helping a family's like immediate crisis problem, right? So we already have a real lack of safety, then we add to it, what's kind of happening out in our communities. 

Robyn: And then I'm sitting down and preparing this webinar about how to offer felt safety for our kids, how to invite our kids into safety. And the reality is, y'all kind of a spoiler here is that the ways that we do this aren't terribly bombastic, like we're talking the kind of stuff that we want to focus on when we want to strengthen felt safety or create more invitations into safety. These are very basic kind of boring things, right? And I'm like, Okay, I'm sitting here creating this webinar about how to help families, you know, think about structure, routine, predictability, low hanging fruit, like making sure our kids are hydrated and their blood sugar is relatively stable, right? Like, I'm thinking about those kinds of things and also watching the news, and I'm like, How can I bring these two things together? So of course, of course, if, if you are physically unsafe, physical safety is always the top priority. We're always going to focus on physical safety and finding and seeking and accessing physical safety before we start talking about felt safety, of course, of course, of course. But, but what about those of us who are living with chronic toxic stress? Toxic stress just doesn't seem solvable, like we look into the future and we're like, yep, always gonna be there, right? How do we balance that with also the recognition that felt safety and regulation in the nervous system is so, so important. I know that there are families listening who are living with a sense of danger due to the behaviors of your children that emerge from your child having this vulnerable nervous system, the sensitized stress response system, the history of trauma, you know, the aspects of our unique children that are leaving leading to their vulnerabilities, not to mention, of course, like I've already said, the sense of danger or lack of health safety due to not having the services that your family needs, or the professionals who are denying the severity of your reality. 

Robyn: A lot of you listening have kids whose history is have been impacted by danger, trauma, lack of safety, but a lot of our kids are also experiencing a very real lack of safety from their needs not being met at school, or from not being protected from stress and danger. Right, our kids hold oppressed and marginalized identities, both visible and invisible ones, and they're being bullied or impacted by racism, ableism or their gender or sexual identity, many families in the US are experiencing financial crisis, housing instability, employment instability, families are worried about maintaining their health insurance and paying for services should those. Services actually even exist and be accessible. They're worried about their child's needs not being met at school as those needs are being increasingly unrecognized and funding is decreased and eliminated. I don't want to keep listing the realities of the stressors that all of y'all listening, you know are facing. There's actual, real threats to safety that you listening are experiencing. And I'm not going to keep listening them all. One, I that would take forever. And two, I would never be able to touch on all of them, right? My episode is, are already way too long. My point is, is that in the past couple weeks, right, I've been preparing to teach this webinar all about strategies to support our kids with fault safety when there are real reasons that junior kids are experiencing a tremendous lack of health safety. So I've been asking myself, Is this really what I should be doing right now? Do I move forward with this webinar that I've been preparing for and that folks are already registered for? Do I move forward with this? 

Robyn: Are we talking about something that's kind of foolish? Or am I running the risk of gaslighting, ignoring like the real problem, in lieu of some focusing on something that just feels so much better, right? This kind of toxic positivity. And the truth is, y'all, and I've always thought this, this wasn't a new revelation in the last couple weeks, but the truth is that it could become those things. It could become toxic positivity. We could elect to make things more comfortable and feel better by focusing on, you know, things that can bring us moments of felt safety, and then ignoring all the other things we could do that. I think it's very human for folks to get scared about all the really bad things that they can't fix, and then it can be really enticing just ignore those things and just focus on things that feel a little bit better, right? But it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to look like that, right? We can look for notice and even be deliberate about creating safety, just like we look for goodness without denying what's not good or what's not safe. They can both be here. They can both be true. All of these things can go exist that coexist, right, the good and the bad, the ease and the hardship, the fair and the unfair, the just and the unjust, the safe and the not safe. They can all coexist. It's not just that they can coexist. They do coexist, and so pretending anything different is just being disconnected from reality. Looking for safety isn't ignoring what's not safe. 

Robyn: We can do both, and it's important to do both again, assuming, of course, a basic physical safety does, in fact, exist, the more strength that we can build into the nervous system, the one, the less the lack of felt safety will hurt or damage the nervous system in the long term. And this is, of course, good. Sometimes I meet folks who feel, often subconsciously, that the long term impact of trauma or toxic stress, the long term impact of it in some ways, sort of validates or confirms how awful that trauma or toxic stress was, it can feel in a way like this way of being seen. But the truth is that they don't have to be proportionate. If you make it through something traumatic or really hard without devastating, long term impact. That doesn't mean that it wasn't traumatic or really, really hard, the less long term impact that it can have the better, of course, if life is really hard or overflowing with toxic stress right now, the more you can infuse moments of safety into life right now, the better we can lessen the long term impact of trauma, toxic stress without minimizing how awful or how unjust the experience is or experience is or was.

Robyn: And another important benefit of building strength into the nervous system, even when things are really hard, is that we're more likely to. Able to maintain, then the strength and the power that's what allows us to set boundaries or advocate for ourselves or others or seek solutions. When we can fill our power, feel our power, we can use it. The more vulnerable and the more dysregulated we are, the more that the aggressor has power, right? So anything that we can do to overturn that dynamic is good for us. Anything that we can do to maintain our own sense of self, our own sense of autonomy, our own sense of boundaries, our own sense of regulation, our own sense of power, anything we can do to maintain that is, of course, very, very good in this way. And I talked about this, I don't know, maybe it was probably about a year ago. I talked about this a little bit in this way, regulation or seeking safety, or being aware of small moments of safety, even when things are unsafe or dangerous or bad or awful. Regulation is its own form of resistance, and this is not about toxic positivity. It's about coherence. It's about how both can be true, how we can both be with and acknowledge all the injustices, all the barriers, all the ways our life is unsafe, because that brings coherence, and that's a cue of safety, acknowledging what's real. Being with reality is a cue of safety, even if that reality is bad, and we can acknowledge moments of goodness, safety, connection, delight, playfulness, even that's also coherence. Both are true, and both are true without minimizing the other. 

Robyn: Now of course, y'all, violence in our homes is completely unacceptable. Being failed by our government and systems is completely unacceptable. What we need what the families of kids with extremely vulnerable nervous systems need that doesn't even exist, and when it maybe miraculously does, families don't have the resources that they need to access them. And even if all of that wasn't true, even if those resources existed and they were easy to access and engage in. It can still take generations, generations to heal. And that isn't overwhelming to me, that isn't devastating to me, that's honest. And actually, I find that hopeful healing is possible. It just might take a really long time. We can acknowledge that these things might not even exist. We can acknowledge that if they do exist, they're really hard to access. We can acknowledge that even in the best of circumstances, generations are needed in order to heal. We can acknowledge all that without it being pity sounding right? Without it being kind of like sad and pathetic sounding it doesn't have to leave us stuck. We can acknowledge those truths from connection mode, as opposed to sliding into protection mode. Right? When we do that, we're really just acknowledging what's already true. We're not making something true. We're just acknowledging something that is already true. 

Robyn: Again, that's bringing coherence, and coherence brings safety, and y'all we need all of the safety that we can get, returning to the basics of felt safety, things that can seem so mundane and small compared to big problems. It's not unlike treating any kind of quote, unquote dysfunction right when something's not right in our physical bodies and we're trying to repair it, the basics really matter. I have unfortunately learned way more than I ever hoped to about the long term treatment of neuro immune disorders and autoimmune encephalitis, and the long term treatment plan has always involved both attacking the pathogens, fixing what's wrong and strengthening the immune system, both are needed in a treatment plan, and I think that the same idea applies to felt safety. Of course, we want to deal with the problem. We want to deal with the things that are creating a lack of safety, and change those when possible, but we also need to strengthen the nervous system, and sometimes we actually just have way more power to do that than to actually attack the quote, unquote pathogen. Strengthening the nervous system can seem so inadequate when things are really, really bad. It seems like it's not enough, and y'all, the reality is that it's not it is not enough, but it is both not enough and also necessary necessary. 

Robyn: So obviously I have decided to move forward with this basics of felt safety webinar feels like the right thing to do. These basics can feel like, and it really be like low hanging fruit. And that's wonderful act doing things that feel like low hanging fruit actually, that, in and of itself, brings safety to the nervous system, because we start to feel like we can do things that matter, we start to have some agency and autonomy and power again. So looking for low hanging fruit and doing that is actually great for felt safety, not to mention the things that we're going to talk about in that webinar are also things that will bring safety and again, y'all, these are real basic, not mind blowing ideas, but we could all use reminders right to return to the basics. Again, this webinar is not probably going to have much earth shattering information for you, especially if you've been listening or following me along for any length of time. But I do think the webinar will be a really important reminder and reinforcer about the importance of focusing on the basics and and that matters. So we're moving forward with it. I've also spent years developing all sorts of little resources that accompany the idea of felt safety, so I can, you know, make sure folks get access to those resources. Sometimes, even when I have resources that are really, really accessible, folks don't know that they're there. And if folks don't know they're there, they're not super useful as resources. So another aspect of this is really helping you see, like the resources that are available and how you can use them. 

Robyn: But really, actually the most important part of the webinar and why I've really decided that going forward with it is important and it matters is that it's important that this information, quote, unquote, information, is offered to you relationally. Information itself rarely changes the brain enough for someone to use that information in the most stressful times. If that was true, you wouldn't continue to listen. If that was true, you'd just go to tic tac, you'd learn about something, or you'd read a peer reviewed article. All of us like to learn differently. You'd learn something, you'd implement it. We'd move on with life, right? But it doesn't work that way. We all know all sorts of things and still never actually do them, and that's not because we're pig headed or don't really want to do those things or any sort of like moral judgment we want to apply to it. It's simply because we're not regulated enough to use that information when life is stressful. So when information is delivered relationally, it's more likely to eventually become information that you can use in the future, especially when you're stressed, right? Information doesn't change the brain, but, well, I mean, it does, it does, but it doesn't change it enough that when you're stressed, you'll be able to access it, but relational connection, co regulation, feeling seen and known, those are the things that change the brain enough to make the information useful. And I know that these little one off webinars that I do mean that the information gets delivered to you in this highly relational way. And I know that that matters actually have taught very few webinars outside the club since I started the club. So, I mean, that's been five years, I guess four years, I don't know, long time. I don't teach a lot of webinars to the public like this anymore, but I want to, you know, every year I sort of like, move into the new year and think about, you know, what am I doing that's working? What am I doing that's not working? Am I connecting with the families that I want to connect with? Am I serving families in the way that I want to? Sometimes my own capacity changes, and some years I have more capacity and can offer more, and some years I have less capacity and can't offer more. And as we moved into 2026

Robyn: We decided we're going to take a year and offer a handful of these. You know, short, low cost, but high, highly resourced, right? Like, you'll get a lot with them, webinars, kind of throughout the entire year. Um. So stay tuned. There's going to be more coming your way. And of course, there's, I don't know, like 100 plus videos over in the club. And that's what we're also going to do with these video these webinars that I'm teaching. They're, they're going to be ways that we update content that exists in the club, that has existed in the club for a long time, and it's just due for a little update. So Oh, my word, if you're in the club, please don't pay to register for these webinars. Just go into the club. Y'all the link to log in to the live webinar is there, and then, of course, it's going to go up into the club library, usually by the next day. But I also know that for a lot of reasons, that joining the club might not be what is the right next step for some families. And I'm also experimenting with ways that I can make these kind of basics webinars available to organizations and agencies in a more cost effective way. So in order to see how I can also meet some of those goals, yeah, we're going to be offering these occasional low cost webinars throughout 2026 so creating felt safety is happening this week. I am moving forward with it. It's Thursday, January 15, 8pm Eastern, and if you're hearing this podcast anytime after that, it is a webinar that always lives in the club. And so for what's actually really not that much more. You could come and join the club just for one month, just for one month. 

Robyn: There's no long term, long term commitment in the club. And you can catch the creative Health Safety webinar, get all the resources that go along with it and get a couple more. So I actually think it is a really good, accessible way for y'all to dive a little bit deeper into some of these ideas. Okay, so y'all the bottom line, it matters. It matters the moments that we can pay attention to, notice or even be intentional about, creating cues of safety for ourselves and for our kids, even when it feels like the whole world is on fire, even when it feels like there's so much stress, so much chaos, so many cues of danger, when we can, and I get that, it's really hard, but when we can pay attention to notice or create cues of safety, it matters. It really does matter, and it doesn't change the fact that there are terrible, terrible injustices that are happening, and we still need to use our energy and our resources and mobilize and do something about these injustices. That is true as well, and we will be so much more equipped and able to do that if we tend to and care for our own nervous system, and yes, we can also do that for our kids. All right, y'all so again, next week, I am bringing to you an interview with a really special guest. 

Robyn: I cannot wait to share it with you. And then after that, my intention is to I'm a little nervous to say this out loud, because I haven't actually put everything into motion for this. But after that, my intention is to start a, I think I've mapped out a six part series on parenting kids with vulnerable nervous systems when we ourselves have one, whether that be because we have our own history of trauma or complex trauma, or we have other histories that have led our nervous systems to be very, very vulnerable. I'm going to probably focus most on parenting when you have your own trauma history yourself, just because that is what I'm most intimately familiar and connected with. But the way that I have this series kind of mapped out, this is going to definitely apply, just like you know, everything in the podcast does, it's going to definitely apply to those of you listening who have histories that you wouldn't call traumatic. But you also know have either has either left you with some vulnerability in your nervous system, or that vulnerability is always been a part of your life, and that has created some more challenges, right? So that's my intention. I guess now that I've said it out loud, I've got to do it, right? Right. So I'm going to start this series in a couple of weeks on parenting vulnerable kids, dysregulated kids, when you yourself have your own history of trauma or vulnerability or toxic stress in your own nervous system. All right, y'all I'll be back with you again next week. Bye, bye.