What Actually Changes Sticky Behaviors (Part 2 of 3) {EP 269}

Robyn: The first mechanism is widening that window of tolerance, and so you can kind of see how in most circumstances, that is the mechanism that actually does happen first, right? We widen the window of tolerance prior to being able to make changes in memory networks. It doesn't always have to be true, but it is essentially almost always true. Okay, so that first mechanism is capacity building, widening that window of tolerance. The second mechanism is unlocking and reconsolidating memory networks, which changes what the brain is predicting, and since the brain makes a prediction before a behavioral impulse is even activated. Changing the prediction will change the behavior. It sounds really simple, I suppose. In a way, it is really simple, but it is very, very hard. You know this, because you've been parenting for a really long time, and these behaviors are still sticky, and so one of these mechanisms is not quite clicking into place, and you're a great parent, so one of these mechanisms is just really, really, really hard to get to. Yeah, there's a lot of grief in that, for sure. And understanding this mechanism can be very empowering. So, let's start with that first mechanism: widening the window of tolerance, building capacity, every single offering of co-regulation, of felt safety, of genuine connection, all of the ways that you are working so hard to parent with regulation, connection, and felt safety are adding drops to that felt safety bucket, that's increasing the window of tolerance, that's increasing capacity as safety accumulates in your child's different buckets of felt safety, right, we have the inside, the outside, in the between bucket.

Robyn: As cues of safety increase in those buckets, your child's kind of like neuroceptive baseline begins to shift, and so folks who are anticipating bad things to happen, folks who are stuck in a way in protection mode that begins to shift as the window of tolerance grows, as there are more cues of safety available in those different buckets. I have an entire podcast series all about felt safety, all about those buckets. I'll make sure that gets linked down in the show notes. So, what that means, as more cues of safety are dropped into those felt safety buckets, what that means as the window of tolerance widens, is that those old protective neural nets, they're going to be triggered less often, and with less intensity. There is more space in the nervous system for there to be stress before tipping all the way in. Into dysregulation, which makes things get triggered less often and with less intensity. Now the predictions haven't changed yet. The memory networks haven't changed yet, but because the nervous system now has more capacity to stay in connection mode than tipping into protection mode, those memory networks get activated less frequency and with a less intensity; that's spectacular. That's part of what can begin contributing to kind of loosening up that neural glue that we talked about last episode. We'll talk about neural glue again in just a moment. Just hold that thought for a second, while we're capacity building, while we're widening that window of tolerance, that stress response system is strengthening like a muscle, right? It's building resilience, it's got more capacity to tolerate, navigate, regulate through stress without tipping totally outside the window of tolerance and falling into complete dysregulation, there is so much invisible work that's happening kind of beneath the surface of all these ordinary moments of regulation, connection, and felt safety. Every offering of regulated presence during a hard moment, every repair after a rupture. All of these moments are contributing to widening that window of tolerance, strengthening that stress response system. This is all about capacity building, and y'all, this is a really important piece of change, right? 

Robyn: This mechanism, this widening of the window of tolerance, strengthening of that stress response system, it not only allows the nervous system to tip into intense dysregulation less often, but it's creating the conditions for the second mechanism, which we're going to talk about here in just a moment, without enough capacity, without widening that window of tolerance enough, the space in the nervous system, right, the space inside that window of tolerance is just too narrow for this second mechanism to occur. Okay, so what is that second mechanism? The second mechanism of change is updating memory network predictions through having what we call a disconfirming experience. In order for this to happen, two conditions must be present at the same time in order to change a prediction that's kind of like been running the program for a very, very long time in order to update, change that prediction, that old prediction actually needs to be activated, but it needs to be activated while the child, while your child, while whoever it is, whose brain we're trying to help have this prediction error, that old prediction must be activated while that person remains inside their window of tolerance. Okay, so that means activated enough for the memory network to be touched and then to be labile and reachable, but not so activated that the person is overwhelmed, because when we're overwhelmed, when we're too dysregulated, new information can't be encoded. Now, my mentor, Bonnie Badnock, talks about this beautiful concept of the joint window of tolerance. When you and your child are having an experience together, you're with your child while they are moving closer and closer towards tipping into dysregulation. It is the coming together of your two nervous systems, the creation of a we space between the two of you that creates what Bonnie calls this joint window of tolerance, and so our regulation, in a way, gets sort of like lent to our child's and they can borrow from our capacity, so that they have more space in their nervous system to stay activated, and to stay kind of in that sweet spot of activation, to stay activated without tipping into dysregulation. Now this is a very narrow window.

Robyn: So it is exactly why us as parents, why our, why our regulated presence during the behavior, it matters so, so, so much. It's holding part of the regulatory load, it's keeping the child activation within the range where something new can land when a child expects dysregulation, expects overwhelm, expects aloneness, and instead encounters genuine regulation and genuine presence. The nervous system registers a prediction error, something like I predicted one thing, but something different happened, and this mismatch is the disconfirming experience, and it is specifically relational and must arrive inside that activated state, not after it passes. So this is not about having a calm conversation later, although that's really great too. It's about something new arriving at the exact moment the old prediction is running. It is literally the witnessing energy, the regulated, not calm presence that is the precise antidote, and creates the synaptic changing prediction error. Y'all, this is so exciting to me. It keeps the child's activation from tipping into overwhelm, protecting the window of tolerance. Right, it means that the child is genuinely not alone inside that activated state, and that may be an experience that they're having for the first time while that specific memory network is running. Someone is here is the new experience, the unexpected experience. Someone is here, they are not frightened, they are not leaving, and they're not trying to fix it. And y'all, that's the disconfirming experience, that's what changes the brain, and that is ultimately what can create change in those stickiest behaviors over enough repetitions that neural glue that we talked about last week, the neural glue that is making that memory network so hard to change, over enough experiences, over enough repetitions, that neural glue begins to soften, that sealed state becomes reversible, and the stored prediction starts to update. I know that it is so hard to stay the course when so much change is happening on the inside before you would ever see it on the outside. We've talked about the ice cube analogy before, and it's in my book. If an ice cube at zero degrees Fahrenheit, right, if we want to melt that ice cube and it's starting at zero degrees, it has to warm to 32 degrees before you would see a single drop of water, and y'all, that's a lot. 

Robyn: That's a lot of change. If it started at 31 degrees, there wouldn't be that much change before we actually saw visible change on the outside, but depending on where we're starting, there may be a significant amount of invisible change that has to happen on the inside, and y'all, it is really happening, but there might be a significant amount of change that has to happen on the inside, kind of invisibly, before we would see change on the outside, as we are widening that window of stress tolerance, right, as we are building capacity, as the stress response system is strengthening, that's that ice cube warming from like zero to 32 degrees, and the neural glue that softens through repeated disconfirming experiences that sealed state becoming slowly more revisable, that's also happening in some of those same invisible degrees. Neither will definitely produce visible behavior change on its own, only when enough change has accumulated to kind of pass that tipping point, it is absolutely possible to do this work for months and for years, and for that change to be happening- meaningful change to be happening- but to see absolutely nothing change on the outside, this is totally possible. Y'all, you know this is possible. We can have so much profound change happening on the inside for a very long time before we ever see change on the outside, and it makes a lot of sense that at times we lose sight of that. It makes a lot of sense, and change is happening. It simply can't not happen. So, what does it mean to stay in witnessing energy? What does it mean to be with our kids in their really tough behaviors, the ones that we really, really want to change, but in the moment that those behaviors are happening, to release ourselves of the burden of getting that behavior to change? What does that look like? What does that moment of radical acceptance actually really look like? It definitely does not look like doing nothing. Well, let me take that back.

Robyn: It might feel like that, and I suppose to like an innocent bystander, it might look like that, but it isn't doing nothing. Okay, it is definitely not like approving of the behavior or letting the behavior just slide, right? It's certainly not us pretending or even deciding that it doesn't matter. It definitely isn't about like fake calm that we're trying to portray while we're still exceptionally activated on the inside, right, because neuroception knows the difference, so it's not any of those things, that's not what witnessing energy is. So, what is it? What does it mean to be with our kids in the moment of really, really hard behaviors in a behavior that, yeah, really does need to change? What does it mean to be with our kids in that moment with radical acceptance? 

Robyn: It means releasing the agenda to fix it in that moment. It means staying genuinely present and genuinely regulated, not calm, while the behavior is happening. It means being the nervous system that holds our child's activation within the window, so that both mechanisms can kind of do their thing. It means standing in a place of I see you, I am not frightened, I am not leaving. I can hold this. I've got us, because as hard as that is, that is the antidote. That's the antidote to the overwhelm and aloneness that was happening when the memory was encoded in the first place, and if your child is having extreme experiences of dysregulation in moments where objectively we could look at the situation and go, hmm, that was sort of an overreaction, so. Right, like we can believe that all behavior makes sense, and look at things objectively, and be like, okay, that was a lot. What we know from that is that there was a flooding from the stream of the past. What we know from there is that the original experience left an imprint that included aloneness that included overwhelm. Now, if this is not meant to make anything anybody's fault, right? Sometimes really, really, really hard to things happen, and it's sort of inevitable that what gets encoded is aloneness and overwhelm, of course, it doesn't matter whose fault it is, it only matters that we now have a bit of a map for what is needed now, presence, safety, confidence, that's the disconfirming experience, now of course, when you are facing exceptionally dysregulated behavior, and when you've been facing it over and over and over and over again, and your window of tolerance has collapsed up, and you have a lot of dysregulation living in your memory networks, and one of the memories that you've encoded really solidly is that your child's dysregulation is very, very, very dangerous.

Robyn: Of course, when all these things are true, we don't just wake up one day, listen to a podcast, and go, "Oh, I know, I will release all of my fix-it agenda-driven energy and just shift being with my kid and be in this, you know, witnessing I'm here with you energy. I mean, I wish it was that easy, but it's not been that easy for me. It's definitely not been that easy for me. Right, we are our own humans, and we are our own humans, regardless of whether we're in the parenting role or not or not, we have our own streams of the past. We have our own mental models. We have our own, you know, buckets of safety. We have our own neural glue. When your child's behavior activates your own old predictions, something may be like, I'm failing, this will never change, I can't handle this. Then, like being with your child with fix-it energy, with agenda-driven energy, it's not a choice that you're making, it's your nervous system response. The same neurobiological mechanism is happening for both of you, and what that means is you don't have any more quote-unquote choice in how you respond than your child does, and I hate this part, unfortunately, because we are theoretically the more regulated person in the relationship when we're thinking about us and our kids. It doesn't make it any easier, but it does make it our responsibility to be the ones who do the work to find a way to make that shift, so we need to be thinking about our own capacity building. Building our own capacity is just as important, and y'all probably, when we're looking at it through this lens, more important than building our kids' capacity, right? Building our own is so exceptionally important. We also need opportunities to update our own predictions; we need to find those opportunities, despite the fact that our child is unlikely to be the one that starts to give us those opportunities. 

Robyn: Our child is unlikely the one to, you know, interrupt the regular pattern of events and change, you know, be something that disrupts a prediction, right? It is unlikely that when we're expecting our kids to get more dysregulated that they don't, right? We have to find ways to update and shift our own predictions inside other relationships, this y'all, this, this, this, this, this very piece right here. This is the exact neuroscience that is holding up really everything that I do. Right, it is what is underneath the club. It is what is underneath the immersion program, right? Like, in the immersion program, we create opportunities for professionals to grow their capacity and update their predictions, so that they can stay regulated when their clients are very dysregulated, and this is also exactly the mechanism. Yeah, that we are supporting in the club. Right, there's tons and tons and tons of capacity building in the club, for sure. Lots of opportunities to build capacity, lots of opportunities to understand the neuroscience in a new way that increases capacity. Lots of opportunities to, you know, increase your toolbox, increase your confidence. Lots of opportunities to build your own strengthen your own window of tolerance, so much capacity building opportunities over in the club, but also countless opportunities for predictions to be updated for parents, because parents like kids expect dysregulation to be met with dysregulation, and in the club dysregulation is met with that's welcome here, dysregulation is met with, of course, energy, dysregulation is met with we get it, we're here for you, you can bring all of that here to the club, and we will be with you in it. We will not try to change it. We will not try to fix it. We will not convince you that things aren't as bad as you think they are. We will be with you in it, and we will also help you learn new ways of being with yourself and with your child, of course, we'll do that too, but it's really about offering that prediction error. We will not try to change you, we will just be with you. Your dysregulation is not scary, we can be with it.

Robyn: Now, of course, places like the immersion program, the club, and all these other experiences that I helped to co-create, those aren't the only places to, you know, increase your capacity, widen your window of tolerance, you know, have experiences that can be prediction errors, right, like, of course, there's these are not the only places, and when I created them, I created them with that much intentionality, because after doing so much clinical work for so long, that's what I was seeing be what really mattered over and over and over and over again, those two mechanisms of change, and I really just believed that there was a way to offer these experiences outside the one on one clinical therapy space, and I just have been always felt so called to do that, so called to figure out ways to how can we offer these experiences to people on a much, much bigger scale, but of course, there are many things that don't include the club or the immersion program that can also offer these experiences, so y'all, there's these two mechanisms that are responsible for change in the nervous system, right, capacity building by increasing cues of safety, co-regulation, connection. We're widening that window of tolerance and the disconfirming experience, witnessing presence offered inside the activated state that is providing the opportunity for the memory network to unlock and reconsolidate with new learnings that changes the prediction that changes the behavior, because predictions happen first. Now, of course, talking about capacity building, talking about prediction errors, very, very different than actually building capacity or actually experiencing something new in the face of dysregulation, but I know that for so many of us, myself included, identifying the science increases our own window of tolerance to like risk doing something new, here's what part three is going to look at. How do we as parents get an idea of what our specific child needs? What predictions do they have that are keeping sticky behavior stuck? And also we can ask that question about ourselves. 

Robyn: What specific predictions do we have that are keeping us stuck, and that's exactly what we're going to do in part three. So, if you haven't already hit subscribed to the Baffling Behavior Show in your podcast app, go do that right now, so that when episode three in this three-part series, is published on the podcast next week, that you get it right away. And, of course, y'all, the next time the club is open, we would love to have you, and if you're a professional in this field, consider, please, please, please, please consider joining us over in the Professional Immersion Program that we have at the Bathing Behavior Training Institute. Y'all, parents need more professionals who can be with them in their just. Regulation parents need to have professionals that can help them find tools that really do work, but parents also need professionals to offer them those tools without an agenda or fix it energy, in the same way that parents can learn to be with their kids without agenda and without fix it energy, and y'all, all of you helpers out there in the world, I know that this is so, so, so, so hard. That's exactly what the immersion program is. It's a year-long program, because you need a lot of time to do these things, build capacity, have new experiences. We need a lot of time to do these things, we not need a lot of time to bring this to experience the safety that's needed for those things to happen. So head on over to Robin gobbel.com/immersion, put yourself on the waiting list, because we accept applications only from folks on the waiting list, and periodically we'll send out an email that says, hey, please submit an application, but we only send that email to people on the waiting list. So, if you want to apply for the immersion program, do not wait for me to send you an email about that. Go to the website, put yourself on the waiting list, then you'll get an email that says, hey, we're accepting applications. Both the club and the immersion program are so strategically designed so that we can widen our windows, have new experiences, and then we can experience actual change at the synaptic level, and y'all, I cannot believe that this gets to be my job.

Robyn: All right, I'm already working really hard on part three, so I will plan on being back with you here again next week for part three of this sticky behaviors series on the Baffling Behavior Show. See you next week. Now that this episode's over, you might be wondering. Okay, what next? Where do I go to get more support? Or maybe you're a professional and you're curious about bringing this work to your clients. Well, number one, keep exploring the podcast. You can head to my website, where you can use the search bar to find exactly what you're looking for. And, of course, while you're there, sign up for my free resource hub, get instant access to over 25 free resources. Then, to dive even deeper, grab a copy of the USA Today best-selling book, Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors. In less than three years, y'all, it's sold more than 60,000 copies and holds a 4.8 star rating on Amazon. You can get it in paperback, ebook, or audio, which I read myself. If you want to work with me directly, come join me in the club, an online community that's built on the neuroscience about how your brain and your nervous system strengthen and heal both kids and parents with over 500 members, you'll find support from the wisest, most compassionate in the trenches with you parents in the entire world. I promise, of course. Then you can also pick my brain, explore over 125 videos, and download more than 80 resources that I've developed exclusively for club members. 

Robyn: You can't get them anywhere else. All of them are designed to bring Owls, Watchdogs, and Possums into your family. And if you're professional, consider jumping onto the waiting list for the 2027 cohorts of the Baffling Behavior Training Institute's immersion program for professionals. Our students are immersed in the neuroscience of big baffling behaviors, as well as the connection, co-regulation, and felt safety that brings healing to those nervous systems. You will grow your own capacity to sit with families in their hardest moments and finally feel the professional support that you need to work with families who keep being told things like sorry, I can't help you anymore. We've already begun accepting applications for 2027 only from folks who are on the waiting list, so you gotta go to Robin gobbel.com/immersion to get your name on that waiting list, no matter who you are, or why you're listening, or what your connection is to kids with big baffling behaviors, including maybe your own inner child. I am just so, so glad you found me here on the Baffling Behavior Show. I cannot wait to be with you again next week.