Why Sticky Behaviors Stay Stuck (Part 1 of 3) {EP 268}

Robyn: Today, we are going to start a three-part series about sticky behaviors, behaviors that it feels like no matter what you do, they just keep popping up. Today, in episode one, we're getting into why sticky behaviors stay stuck. Next week, we'll talk about what actually unsticks them, and then in part three we're gonna start doing the detective work to figure out what your specific child's nervous system needs. Now, y'all, these are going to be three pretty neuroscience-heavy episodes, because that's what I'm spending a lot of time exploring right now, and actually one of the tools that helps me really embody the neuroscience and craft it into something that is actually helpful to you. One of my primary tools for doing that is to write about it, and then record it. So, part of me making this podcast series is a way that's helpful for me to really really get connected to this science, so that then I can help you make use of it, and also so I can teach it to other professionals, so that there are more folks out there who are helping families like yours be able to actually use this science in a way that's beneficial to your unique family, parenting a kiddo with a lot of vulnerability in their nervous system, for whatever reason, for whatever reason, it's so hard, right, y'all, it's exhausting, it's vulnerable for us, because we really have to be open to experimenting with new ways of seeing things and new ways of parenting, that's super, super vulnerable, and we cannot escape the judgment from the outside world that comes in because of what they're observing our parenting to be and what they're observing our kids' behaviors to be, and all of the correlation they're making about the two. 

Robyn: This is exhausting work, and those sticky behaviors, those ones that just seem like they will not shift, are creating so much pain and exhaustion. For us, I totally get that it's really feeling like you've tried everything, and no matter what, this same behavior keeps coming back. So, I want to be really clear up front, especially if you're a new listener. I get how painful and exhausting this is. I get how, of course, the core of your being, the thing you want most is to get that behavior to change, and I also get that there's a part of you that's sometimes probably really loud that's like, listen, lady, I don't care about the why, I don't care about the why, I just want it to stop, and y'all, I get that, and the science is still the science, and the science is showing us that the thing that we all instinctually want to do the most, get this behavior to stop, right, that very thing is also very likely the thing that's keeping that behavior really locked into place. Now I really, really don't want you to hear that as like hopeless or demoralizing, or, and certainly not blaming. I mean, if you've been listening to me for a while, you know, yeah, that's not what we do here. This is not a blame-shame place. It's about actually kind of learning something new that we can see something, how something works. We can even take responsibility for our role in it without that shifting into shame or blame. And for a lot of us, that's a really new way of being with ourselves, taking responsibility without taking on any kind of shame or blame. It's just kind of being with reality. So that's what we're going to do today, just be with reality, be with the reality that these sticky behaviors are so overwhelming at times, so inferiority, infuriating at times, the behaviors that were like, my gosh, I would do anything, anything, anything to make this stop, and that energy that we're bringing to those stickiest behaviors is almost certainly contributing to how sticky they are. 

Robyn: This does not make it your fault, it just makes you like perfectly, beautifully, amazingly human, and if we can kind of see some of these patterns, we might be able to take some steps toward doing something a little bit different, not all the time, but maybe just some of the time, and that some of the time is going to help not only our nervous system, but also our kids, and may help decrease the stickiness of these behaviors. So, what makes a behavior sticky? Why do behaviors kind of get stuck? Y'all, again, bear with me. We're going to dive into neuroscience here. The brain is a prediction machine. I mean, it's its number one job is really to keep us alive, right? And one of the primary ways that it tackles that job and trying to keep us alive is by attempting to predict the future as if our life depends on it, and it does. Our lives actually do depend on our ability to predict the future, and the way memory processing works is our brain is taking all of our previous experiences and using that in an attempt to make the best prediction about what's about to happen next, and we actually are making that prediction before the thing that's happening in our world even happens, okay, so we're trying to predict what happens next before the thing even happens, if that makes sense, and so we're doing that based on all of our previous experiences. We're really like relying on our memories to help us anticipate what's about to happen next, and in order to anticipate that, well, we have to be anticipating it before the thing that even happens that we're trying to anticipate- well, what's gonna happen next after that thing, right? We're anticipating what's gonna happen next before that thing has even happened. 

Robyn: We're just guessing, guessing, guessing all over the place. And yeah, sure, a lot of times we're right, that's why memory works that way. And also a lot of times we're wrong, a lot of times we're wrong, and we're reacting to something that didn't happen yet, and actually maybe wasn't going to happen, so it makes a lot of sense that we're seeing. In behaviors that just seem to happen on repeat, right, because our kids are taking all of their memory networks to predict what's about to happen next, and they're reacting to that. There are these two streams of information feeding into every unfolding moment, and roughly somewhere around 80% of how we are experiencing what's happening right now is actually related to all of our previous experiences. Only about 20% of how we're relating to what's happening right now is actually based on what's happening right now? About 80% of it is coming in from what I would call the stream of the past. So our kids, I mean, this is about all people, right? But this episode is about raising kids with big baffling behaviors. So our kids, they're not choosing not to respond. Respond to an experience with, like, logic and reasoning, right? They're not choosing to disregard the reality that, say, for example, they're safe now, and they don't have to have so much protection energy continuously on board. They're not choosing that right. It's coming from their experience in the stream of the past, right? That 80% stream carries everything the nervous system has learned about how the world works. It doesn't feel like memory, okay? That 80% stream. stream, for the most part, is full of what we would call implicit memory, which means it doesn't feel like memory, it just feels true, and we never really even pause to consider, is it actually true, and we're again, we're all doing this all the time, we're just specifically talking about our kids here now, certainly over time, new implicit mental models can form. 

Robyn: So, let's say that you're listening, and you're parenting a child with a history of neglect, and because of those experiences of not having their needs met, your child has developed some mental models that sound like I can't trust anyone else to meet my needs, I have to depend on myself to meet my needs, so that implicit memory gets sticky and really starts to kind of spearhead what's leading these behaviors, leading the way your child interacts with and experiences the world and interprets things right is through this belief of I can't trust anybody to meet my needs, I have to take care of everything myself. Now, maybe you've also been parenting this child for like a very long time, and you're thinking to yourself, well, my kiddo has had so many experiences to kind of unlearn that truth, right? Like, why aren't they developing new memories? Well, the reality is actually, is that they are developing these new memories, and also that when your kiddo is mostly regulated, when their window of tolerance is pretty wide, when their stress response system is at rest, when they're mostly in their kind of owl brain, those newer memory networks, the things that they have learned about the world in recent years, instead of what they learned about the world like early, early, early on in life, when they are mostly in their owl brain, those newer memory networks, those newer mental models do start to lead the way, and there are many, many experiences. If we paused and looked at it for a second, there are many, many experiences. 

Robyn Gobbel  14:10

I'm certain where your child is behaving in a way that is kind of congruent with a newer mental model of I can depend on other people to keep me safe, but what happens is, as the nervous system gets more dysregulated, as stress increases, as the window of tolerance closes up, those oldest, very well-worn, strong, sticky neural networks are vulnerable to being activated again, and then bam, that old behavior that's included in that old sticky memory network that might sound something like I can't trust others to meet my needs, that's just one example, y'all, that old memory network is running the out, and that old behavior is front and center again. Part of what makes these memory networks that contain these sticky behaviors so sticky is something that Dr. Dan Siegel calls neural glue. One thing we know about brains and neurons is that neurons that fire together wire together. We know that neural connections strengthen through repeated co-activation, which then makes them even more likely to be activated in the future. And we know this from Donald Hebb's work in the late 1940s And then the phrase neurons that fire together, wire together, was actually coined by Carla Shatz, a neuroscientist, in 1992 Neural glue is a way of describing the quality of that wiring together, so some neural glue is really flexible, and that state that neural network can take in new information, it can update, it can revise. Some neural glue is really inflexible. The state activates, runs its program, and then closes back down. New information just like bounces off of it, so the more overwhelming and alone an experience is, the more inflexible the neural glue becomes. 

Robyn: So, when neural glue is inflexible, the state can be triggered, but not revised, so if there is a belief of I'm all alone, I can't depend on anybody to take care of me. I must take care of myself. I mean, we can kind of assume that the experiences that led to that belief were experiences of overwhelm and aloneness, and the more overwhelming and the more alone in experiences, the more inflexible that neural glue is, which means that later experiences of not being alone during overwhelm, of having somebody else be able to tend to us and keep us safe. Those later, newer experiences aren't able to update that sticky neural network that's holding those beliefs. I'm all alone, nobody will keep me safe, I have to do it all myself. It's very tricky to update those beliefs when neural glue is inflexible, so even if a kiddo has had so many more experiences of not being alone, of being safe, of having someone take care of them, if their neural glue around the belief that they're all alone and nobody will take care of them. If that neural glue is really inflexible, these newer experiences aren't impacting that belief. The neural network's not able to take in this new information, and when neural glue is really inflexible, again that state can be triggered and not revised, so the behavior ends up looking identical almost every single time, especially if that memory network is activated in a time when the window of tolerance has been really closed up, so the behavior is looking identical over and over and over again, because it's the same sealed state running the program, and that's not about a kiddo being stubborn or refusing to trust in relationship, it's none of those things. It's about extremely inflexible neural glue doing exactly what it was built to do, because developing those beliefs were so crucial way back then, so crucial. And so the brain went, "Oh my gosh, this is so important. I must find a way to make sure that I believe this forever and ever and ever, so that I can stay alive. And then that neural glue is extremely inflexible, right? 

Robyn: And then we see these behaviors that feel really outdated, like feel like they were maybe useful to a child a long time ago, but they're just not useful anymore, so that's a portion of the science about why sticky behaviors can feel so sticky. It's the part that we're really looking at today, and in this, in this series. So now let's shift our attention to why the. More, we want that behavior to change, the more unlikely it is to change. Now, remember, I'm not blaming you for desperately wanting this behavior to change. Of course, you do, and the fact that it's not changing isn't your fault, even if there is a way that your response is kind of contributing to the neural glue continuing to be inflexible, that can be true. It can be true that we're contributing to something and we're impacting something, and it is not our fault. Okay, I'm just going to say that over and over and over again, of course, you want this behavior to change, and of course, you're never going to like step away from that desire, and even if what we're going to talk about next is something that feels like you could do part of the time, like even if it feels like you could approach that behavior or be with your child when they're in that state slightly differently, even if that does end up feeling possible to you, you're certainly not going to be able to do it all the time, and that's not the need or the expectation. Okay, so just being super clear about all of that, we've talked about neuroception before. Neuroception is this phenomenon that was coined by Dr. Steve Porges to describe the mechanism behind how a nervous system is determining whether it's safe or not. Okay, so neuroception is a phenomenon in our nervous system that is constantly scanning for information that can help us determine if the if we're safe or not safe, and it's reading 11 million bits of data per second, approximately, and reading of those 11 million bits of data is almost the almost none of it is done consciously. 

Robyn: Okay, the vast, vast, vast majority of those 11 million bits are being scanned and made sense of completely unconsciously, so the nervous system is responding to information to stimulus to things that are happening without knowing it's responding to those things. What that means here in this moment is that our nervous systems aren't fooled by somebody being with us in a way that looks calm on the outside, but actually is coming from a nervous system, from a body that is actually quite activated, actually still quite dysregulated, and that person has worked towards being in a calm way, but the internal world is still quite activated. Okay, when your child is dysregulated in protection mode, behaviors are emerging from one of these old states that has a lot of inflexible neural glue right when you're with your child when they're in that state and your own nervous system is really organized around really focused on getting that behavior to stop, and again, of course, you are both things can be true. It can be totally true that, of course, we want that behavior to stop, and we might be able to be with our kids in a different way. Okay, both of those things can be true. So, of course, you want the behavior to stop when a nervous system is organized around that experience. I want something to stop. I want something to change. Right, the child's nervous system. The child, the child's neuroception is going to be able to neuroceive that state, that activated urgent fix-it state. It reads that state from the caregiver as a cue of danger, and the danger, the cue of danger from the parent's nervous system unintentionally, of course, unintentionally confirms the exact prediction the behavior was already protecting against. Okay, let's put that into, like, the real world for a second. 

Robyn: The specific prediction that the behavior was already working to protect against is, of course, varies every single person. This is different. Here's a couple examples, so again, very unintentionally, the adults, the caregiver, us, the grown-up, who's responding with, of course, some fix-it energy. I want this behavior to change energy, could be confirming a relational prediction: something like adults around me aren't safe or regulated, because even though you're working so hard to appear safe and regulated, neuroception knows. Okay, and that can be then unintentionally confirm that relational prediction. Another prediction can sound something like Something is wrong with me, I'm bad, and if we are moving towards our kids energetically with, like, fix it, change it, you need to be different energy, we are again unintentionally confirming that prediction that something is wrong, bad needs to be changed. So, let's say you're with your kiddo, and you know that they are lying, and you're trying really hard to be cool and calm and collected about it, because you know that, like, freaking out of them is potentially going to just confirm the belief about that's leading to the lying in the first place, right? Like things are unsafe or something like that. So you're trying really hard to be safe and connected and calm, but still in your nervous system you're in protection mode, right? You have the sense of I need this behavior to change that nervous system energy is going to get read by our kids as something like that, could sound like this relationship isn't safe after all, or it could sound something like, huh, I really am someone who can't be trusted, and then because those relationship predictions get kind of reconfirmed, the very behavior that we are so desperate to change. Those are the behaviors that are the stickiest, become the most difficult to change, because our urgency around getting them to change, unfortunately, confirms. what they think is true based on their own implicit memory, right, based on their mental models. 

Robyn: Now, some of these behaviors are the stickiest of all, when the memories that have contributed to these behaviors, when those memories were created, like when the experience that created that memory happened in a situation where the child was both overwhelmed and alone. Okay, so those two specific conditions, overwhelmed and alone can really contribute to stickiness. Okay, the hippocampus gets overwhelmed at the moment of encoding in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is connected to memory processing, and when the hippocampus can't do its job, it can't attach what we would call a temporal tag, which helps the experience get tagged with a moment in time, so when the memory of that experience comes back up again, there's also this sense of, oh, that thing happened in the past, but when an experience happens simultaneously with overwhelm and aloneness. The hippocampus has a harder time giving it that tag, so when that memory gets reactivated by something similar happening in the here and now, the memory gets activated, but it feels like just now. It doesn't feel like, oh, in the past I learned that when I'm overwhelmed, nobody's there to help me, and I'm all alone. It doesn't feel like that. It just feels true. I'm alone. Okay, it just feels true. Those two conditions together, the overwhelm and the aloneness, forge extremely inflexible neural glue states that get sealed under overwhelm and aloneness are often the hardest to change. It's the hardest to like soften that neural glue, so that the network could become more flexible and take in new information. Fix it energy from a caregiver, perfectly normal. It's of course we're responding with I want this to change. I want to fix it. Fix it energy recreates both encoding conditions simultaneously. 

Robyn: What's happening is that. Caregiver or the parents activated urgency pushes toward overwhelm and threatening to push the child's activation beyond the window of tolerance where new information could land, and then the agenda-driven quality of the fix-it energy means that the child is still fundamentally alone. The parent or the caregiver is there, but that fix-it energy has shifted their nervous system into a state where the child is no longer neuroceiving availability of connection. So, what they're neuroceiving is aloneness, right? I'm overwhelmed, and I'm alone. And, of course, you are not doing either intentionally. You are not intentionally contributing to overwhelm, and the last thing you are trying to do is to recreate the sense of aloneness, but when our nervous system is really entrenched in change-it, fix-it energy, which mine is y'all all the time too, not all the time, but a lot. Okay, this is hard for me too, right? When we are having this experience that's driven by like fix it, change it energy, even if we're not overtly demonstrating that, though oftentimes we are, we are recreating the experience that led to the inflexibility of that neural glue in the first place, and this is why those behaviors can really feel immune to all other interventions, right, like safety, connection, co-regulation, the bajillions of experiences that have contradicted being overwhelmed and alone. Right, your child has had so many experiences that have contradicted overwhelm and all alone, and because of the inflexibility of the neural glue, they're not able to take it in because of this. When aloneness is part of a memory network, and it almost always is if the memory network is connected by inflexible neural glue. If aloneness is part of that memory network, it is actually crucial that the memory network, when touched, when we re-awoken, experiences being witness, witnessing presence, not fix-it energy, not I need this to change energy, and, man, y'all like finding a place to be present with both truths, right? This truth, that of course, you want this behavior to change, of course, of course, of course, and actually the way that we make the biggest impact on its ability to change is when we release ourselves from the burden of being the one who fixes or changes it. 

Robyn: We release ourselves with that burden, and instead we find a way to just be with what's happening, witness what's happening with no agenda in that specific moment for it to change, and y'all, this is so hard. Y'all, this is the kind of being witness that we are asking therapists to do, and it is so much easier. It's still really hard, so much easier for therapists to bring this energy to their clients, because one, they don't live with their clients, they're not responsible for their well-being. There's so many reasons it's easier for a therapist to bring this energy to a client. Okay. Also, y'all, I am so aware of the reality that there aren't enough therapists to help you. There aren't enough therapists to help you, which is why I'm so committed to trying to decode the things that therapists are trained to do, to decode them in a way that you might be able to do them some time, because if we just wait for you to find the right therapist who can do this with your kid, we may be going to be waiting for like eternity, and these are really unreasonable expectations to make of parents. Find a way to witness this behavior in your child that is causing significant pain and harm. Find a way to be with that part of your child and pause the fix-it, change-it energy, while also, of course, still really wanting to fix it and change it. Asking a parent to do this is such a big and, frankly, really unfair ask. And y'all, I get that, and there are. Aren't enough helpers who are able to do this with your kid and with your family, so because of that I've just been working so hard to kind of break down the barriers between the ways of being that therapists and helpers are really learning that can support their clients. I really want to make that something that's accessible for y'all, because we just can't wait. The therapists are there, are so many therapists and so many helpers out there doing really great work, and that doesn't change the fact that there's not near enough of them. 

Robyn: So somehow we have to find a way in the middle of all of these barriers, right? All of the things that make it so unreasonable to ask a parent to be with their child in this way. We have to find a way for both to be true. It's an unreasonable ask, and we're asking it anyway. It's an unreasonable thing to expect a parent to do, and we're going to offer you this information, so that your nervous system could maybe be able to do it occasionally. So we are at a, of course, at a place where we're going to wrap up this episode, because of how long it's how long this episode has already gotten, but we're not done. Okay, and I know this can maybe feel like kind of a hard place to end, but we're not done. We're gonna come back next week and look at the next piece of this, the fact that fix it energy is keeping these behaviors stuck is not a value statement or judgment or verdict on you as a parent. It's just basic neurobiology, and because it is neurobiology, there is a path through it. Okay, that path exists. It's really tricky. It's really tricky, tricky. We are going to look for ways to release that fix-it energy and look at what we can do instead, what we can do instead that will help soften that neural glue, so that ultimately, eventually, that neural network could get activated and be open to receiving new information. We are looking for that neural network to get activated, the neural network that expects to be all alone and overwhelmed, and we're looking for that neural network to get activated, but for the neural glue to be flexible enough that it can take in something new, which is that they're not alone. 

Robyn: So next week we're going to look at these specific mechanisms that allow for change to happen, and then in two weeks from now, in part three, I'm going to talk with you about how can we take what we now understand about why these behaviors are so sticky, and then we'll take what we know about what supports change, and I'll help you put those together in a way that could now become useful for your unique child. Now, of course, I don't know you and your unique child, but we'll be able to put this. Yeah, I'll be able to help you kind of put it together and think of things in a way that will help it become even more applicable to your unique child, and then can, of course, really help you with creating that map, creating the map of how we support your child's nervous system, and y'all, not in changing, but in being flexible enough to take in new true information that is going to allow their nervous system to be with a truth that they are experiencing, which is that I don't know, maybe it's that they are safe, that they're cared for, that they're good, that the world is safe, all of our kids have different expectations that are kind of running their behaviors, and of course we want their brain to be able to take in this new accurate information, so it can update their expectations and make it possible for them to expect what is true safety connection co-regulation, because expecting safety connection co-regulation feels so much better than expecting the opposite, and when we can feel that much better, then that's when our real true. Selves get to emerge, and I know how much y'all are just longing to see your child's real true self more often than you do, and I know you also really want their behaviors to change, and we can be with both truths, because when our child's real true core selves have the safety to be seen, of course. 

Robyn: Their behaviors will change, of course, because their real true core self moves in the world expecting connection and wanting connection, and if that was true for your child, expecting connection and wanting connection, expecting safety and wanting safety, expecting co-regulation and wanting co-regulation. If your child really believed those truths in their core, their behaviors would change. Okay, so we're gonna hold all of that together. It's hard, it's hard. We're gonna hold all of that together and move through this three-part series together. This was a dense, intense episode, and I actually thought I was gonna cover this all in one episode. Then I actually started writing it, and I'm like, "Woo, this is not a one-episode topic, this is a multi-episode topic. And so here we are, good grief, at 40 minutes, and there's still so much to explore. Okay, so be sure to come back next week. In fact, if you haven't already, hit subscribe to the Baffling Behavior Show in your podcast player, so that you can be sure to tune in next week when part two airs on Tuesday. Baffling Behavior Show episodes always come out on Tuesday. In the meantime, make sure you're following me on social media, sign up to get my emails, because then we can stay connected throughout the week in between podcast episodes, and if you'd like to stay even more connected to me, then head to RobynGobbel.com/theclub and put your name on the list to be notified of when the next time the club opens, and the club is a community for parents of kids with big baffling behaviors. 

Robyn: If you're listening as a professional and you're like, oh my gosh, I want to be able to do this kind of work with kids and families, then what you want to do is head to RobynGobbel.com/immersion and put yourself on the waiting list to apply for the 2027 cohorts of the Baffling Behavior Training Institute's Professional Immersion Program, where you will be immersed not only in the science but also in the experience of what creates more flexibility and that neural glue, so that you can be with dysregulated clients in a way that promotes their neural glue to become more flexible, and as our parent clients have neural glue that becomes more flexible, they'll be able to be with their child in a way that promotes their child's neural glue becoming more flexible. All right, y'all. This is an intense episode. I need to take a breath myself. I'll be back with y'all again next week.