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Changing How We See People- Episode 1
I watch your eyes glance around my office as you take in the polka dot carpet, the aerial yoga hammock hanging from the ceiling, and my purple velvet couch. I mentally note that somewhere along the way I crossed the line from “bright, inviting room full of color” to “a circus exploded in here.” Oh well.
“Have a seat,” I say, pointing to the couch, and we make a trade: one cup of coffee with cream for one worn manila folder.
“I hope it’s okay,” you say, wrapping your hands around the warm mug and not yet meeting my eyes, “but instead of filling out all your forms I just brought in the history I’ve typed up before. I think it covers everything your forms asked for, anyway.”
I glance at the tab on the folder labeled: “Therapy—Robyn.”
“Robyn” has been written over with what looks like a lot of scribbles. I know I’m not your first therapist. I almost never am. It’s heartbreaking to know you’ve been through so many therapists that you have your own intake paperwork locked and loaded. Of course you do. You don’t want to keep trudging through your child’s past, your past, and the near constant letdown of professionals who say they can help but then don’t help.
Despite those continued letdowns, here you are again: in a new therapist’s office. Hope brings people to therapy. Parents and caregivers often feel hopeless, but if they truly were without any hope, they wouldn’t even call me. They wouldn’t come through the door or sit on my couch or make eye contact with me.
Hope brought you here. Hope will bring you back every week.
“Of course it’s okay. In this office, you always get to come exactly as you are.”
I take a breath, slowly exhale, and imagine what it means for you that you’ve told your child’s story to so many professionals that you have it all written out and ready to go. That sounds really painful and also extremely resourceful. It’s so smart not to give away your limited energy whenever possible.
I see you exhale and settle ever-so-slightly-more into the purple couch.
Our eyes connect. We have a moment of meeting. The tiny muscles around your eyes and mouth relax almost imperceptibly. Your shoulders drop just a bit. I feel our energies begin to connect in the space between us. At this moment, you seem to have received my offers of safety.
I remind myself this will continually shift, for you and for me. Felt safety lays the foundation for everything that will unfold in our work together and I can’t take it for granted or assume it is always there.
This is a moment I’ve been in before. A moment of connection with a parent who has done what no parent should have to do: sit on the couch of yet another brand new therapist. A new stranger who receives the most intimate details of her family’s life, her child’s life, her life. It’s completely not fair.
Hello dear listener and welcome! You just met Nat. Nat isn’t a real person, yet she’s every parent I’ve ever known. She’s desperate- yet she keeps trying. There’s hope there- without hope, Nat would never call me- or you- let alone actually come to my office with a tattered manila envelope. It’s really important we always remember that hope is always there when Nat doesn’t seem to be do any of the things you suggest. Or when she’s chronically late or just conveniently forgets the parent only sessions. Or when she is angry at you and tells you her child’s problems are your fault. Even then- Nat still has hope. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t even be there.
No matter how Nat behaves, you can trust that she has hope. You can also trust that her mind is always moving toward healing. Always. This is simply how the mind works. What it needs in order to find it’s innate way toward integration is simply safety. And connection.
Luckily that’s exactly what Nat’s struggling child needs too. It’s lucky because we – us overwhelmed burned out helpers- really only need to learn the science of safety and connection once. We really only need to learn one set of tools. We just have to learn the subtle and not so subtle ways we communicate safety and connection differently to Nat than we do to her child.
We can also teach Nat how to do it. Again, the science is the same and in a way, so are the tools.
I’ve been studying this science and how it applies, not only to my life but the lives of overwhelmed, frustrated, and burned-out parents, for my entire career. I especially love working with parents of kids with the most extreme behaviors. Those children led me to search, at times obsessively and frantically, for why. Why did they behave this way? What I discovered, deep in the emerging field of Interpersonal Neurobiology (Dr. Daniel Siegel) and the now broader field of Relational Neuroscience, doesn’t just explain the most baffling behavior; it explains all human behavior.
When something needs to be fixed, whether it be my coffee pot, my relationship, or my child’s behavior, we need some ideas about how that thing is supposed to work in the first place. Armed with what science tells us, in 2025, about what behavior really is, we now have better ideas about how to change it.
Safety and connection change behavior.
Without question, offering safety and connection to children with overwhelming, bizarre, baffling, and push-away behaviors isn’t easy. Trying to connect with this child is like trying to connect with a cranky opossum.
Or maybe a super scared watchdog.
It isn’t impossible. We now know in 2025 what is happening in the brain that causes people to feel like connection is dangerous. Yet, connection is also needed to survive. Pause and think about that for a moment. Sometimes people have experiences that leads their body to believe that something they need to survive is also dangerous. If something that I needed to survive was also extremely dangerous, I’d act a little bizarre too.
I have told the parents in my office that when it comes to helping kids with big baffling behaviors, especially kids who have been impacted by attachment trauma, mental health is right about inline with where medicine was when they used leeches to heal illness. The research emerging from the field of relational neuroscience means we are beginning to get ideas a little bit better than leeches on how to untangle the way connection and protection have been tied together.
Regretfully, this understanding is coming at a snail’s pace and is very slowly making its way to the people who need it the most: parents and the people who support them—like teachers and therapists.
This shift alone- changing how we see people- has changed everything about how I work and has now become the body of work that I teach. The excerpts that you hear in this episode and the rest of the episodes this week are from my book Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors..
Let’s go back to Nat.
“The next two hours are set aside just for you and me to be together,” I say, as I relax back into my swivel chair. “When you leave here I want to make sure you have a good feel for what it would be like to work with me, so you can decide if you want to. I want to make sure you understand, as much as you want, the approach I take and how important you are in any change that will happen in your family. How does that sound?” “Oh, I already know we want to work with you,” you say. “Our family needs you.”
“It sounds like things are hard and you have hope that working with me will be exactly what your family needs.”
“Yes…things are just so hard. I mean, I knew they would be hard. We had to take all those classes and even write a book report while we were waiting to adopt. Our caseworker made it clear that this would not be easy. But I didn’t know it would be this hard.” I see tears well up in your eyes. “And I didn’t know that it would be this hard to get Sammie the help she needs. I just don’t know how much longer we can take it.”
“I hear those exact words from so many families. I’m glad you are here and you haven’t given up yet. Working with families like yours is really an honor for me, and I will do everything I can to help you. Can you tell me a little more about what’s been happening and what led you to reach out for help?”
We start wherever you need to start. I hear your story, as long or as short as it is.
I’m watching your eyes and your body as you tell me about your child’s “bizarre” behaviors. Lying about teeny tiny things, when she isn’t even in trouble. Playing with much younger kids. Having no idea how to play at all. Aggression that seems to erupt out of nowhere and leaves you feeling like a hostage in your own home. Your child’s complete refusal to do almost anything—sometimes to just respond to your questions. I’m watching your shoulders tense up. You look off into the distance. Your voice gets just a little bit higher and you speak a little bit faster.
You tell me about how your other child is sometimes afraid to leave her bedroom.
You tell me that you and your spouse only talk to each other to criticize how the other one is handling things, but really, neither of you has any idea what to do.
You tell me you’ve tried reward charts. Time-outs. Even spankings, out of desperation. You tell me how you go to therapists and they give you advice that contradicts what the last one said. They tell you it’s your fault. Or that it’s not your fault. Or that you are too strict. Or that you aren’t strict enough.
Then they tell you they can’t help you anymore.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for sharing your story again and for trusting me to hold your story.”
Before we end this first appointment, I tell you I won’t always know the answers, and that sometimes, I’ll be as confused as you are about Sammie’s behaviors. Sometimes, I’ll even be irritated or angry with her behavior. I tell you that my job is to figure out a way to use my own irritation as a clue so that I can stay curious. I tell you that I will stay with you on this journey as long as you want me to, even if I have no idea what to do next. I tell you that I do indeed have some ideas, maybe even some good ideas, about how to help change Sammie’s behavior, but that ultimately, you are Sammie’s best expert—second only to Sammie herself, of course. I tell you I will teach you what I know about the brain and you will teach me what you know about Sammie, and together we will try to make things better.
You decide you’ll come back next week.
I’m so grateful.
Before we go any further, let’s talk about What Behavior Really Is
Many many years ago I sat in the back row of a hotel conference room with my dear friend Marshall Lyles and nearly choked on the lukewarm hotel coffee when I heard author, master therapist, and expert in Interpersonal Neurobiology Bonnie Badenoch say, “No behavior is maladaptive.”
Huh?
Up until that moment, I had used the word maladaptive to describe the challenging, overwhelming, confusing, and baffling behavior of the children who came to my office. The children who had been in other therapist’s offices but who still had behavior that was getting them expelled from school. In kindergarten.
I thought maladaptive was a generous word.
Implicit in the word maladaptive is recognition that these behaviors emerged as protective coping behavior. They were behaviors that at one point the child needed in order to be OK. They were adaptive. And now they weren’t.
I called a colleague later that night and we mulled this over. I respected Dr. Badenoch a lot and figured she knew what she was talking about. But not maladaptive? The fantastical lying? The desk flipping? The poop smearing? Those behaviors seemed pretty darn maladaptive to me.
The next day, I approached Dr. Badenoch on that stage and asked if she did consultations. She said yes. That started a now seven-years-and-still-going-strong relationship of regular training and consultation. Bonnie Badenoch has been my guide. My primary mentor. And now, a friend.
She was right, of course, and now I understand the science that allows Dr. Badenoch to make such a bold, yet such a relieving, statement. No behavior is maladaptive.
In fact, all behavior makes sense.
Hard to believe, right?
But it’s true.
Even the most nonsensical and eye-brow raising behavior makes sense. Even the behavior that causes parents to drop exhausted into bed at night, wondering how they can possibly do this again for one more day, let alone until their child is 18, makes sense.
It really does. All behavior makes sense. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be boundaried or even changed. But if we start with the premise that it makes sense, we tend to approach the behavior with curiosity instead of control.
Curiosity begins the path toward behavior change and must remain our ever-present partner.
Starting with the truth that all behavior makes sense, I then have three core tenets that I stay connected to as I work with families to decode and ultimately change their children’s most baffling and even dangerous behavior.
I’ll briefly introduce these tenets to you below. And yes- these tenets apply to the kids that are prompting their parents to call you- but these tenets also apply to the parents and yup- to you, too.
- Behavior is Just a Clue
Behavior is simply what we see on the outside that helps us know what is happening on the inside. It’s hard not to stay focused on just stopping bad behavior any way we can—but unfortunately that approach keeps us stuck in behavior whack-a-mole. Sometimes we make a behavior go away, but another one just pops up. It keeps us constantly on our toes, constantly hypervigilant, and frankly, pretty irritated and exhausted.
- We All Need Connection to Survive
Children—people—need other people. We all need connections and relationships. Children especially need big people to survive! They need connection for their brain to grow and the brain’s most important goals are to survive and grow.
Nat’s child is definitely making it very hard to give them connection. I’m not always sure why, but I know that even when I’m unsure I can ask myself “What’s up with that?” and stay very curious. Always. If a child is behaving in a way that is rejecting connection, or making other people not want to be in connection with them, something’s not right. We want to try to fix whatever that something is.
- Regulated, Connected Kids who Feel Safe Behave Well.
Really, they do. Not perfect. But like kids. This pop up podcast won’t be long enough for me to teach you all the brain science that allows me to make such a bold statement, so for now, I ask you to just take my word for it. If you’re really interested in all that brain science, you’ll get exactly that inside my year long program, Being With.
It’s normal to be skeptical. Everything we learn in western parenting culture tells us the opposite is true.
There is nothing wrong with Nat’s child. Or Nat. Or you.
Without a doubt, there are some major challenges in Nat’ family. On the surface, it’s easy to see that there are behaviors that really, really need to change.
We can also get below the surface and know with confidence that those behaviors exist because there is a part of Nat’ child that is really, really hurting. I think the amount they are hurting is directly correlated to how bad they are behaving.
I do want children’s behaviors to change but more than that, I want their hurt to be seen, known, honored, welcomed, and healed. As that happens, their behaviors will improve. I’m confident this is true because this is simply how humans work.
The truth is that changing how we see people changes people.
Changing the way we understand what behavior is becomes a tool.
What I see behavior for what it really is- I can stay more grounded, more regulated.
The other person- the one whose behavior is let’s just say uh not so good- has the great luxury of seeing in my eyes the truest reflection of them that they’ve ever seen.
They see a reflection- from me- that they are precious and wonderful and amazing. And yup, sometimes they act bad.
But it’s not because they are bad.
When I change how I see behavior, I stay curious. I resonate with their experiences in the moment without being overcome by it and unable to separate from it or so overwhelmed by it that I withdraw and all resonance stops.
Resonating with my clients- the kids and the grownups- without being overcome and without dissociating from it- is what keeps me out of burn out and compassion fatigue. Its what helps me love my work again.
Now that we have our core non-negotiables in place 1- behavior is just a clue 2- we all need connection to survive and 3- regulated connected kids who feel safe behave well, tomorrow we will look at a clear paradigm- based on regulation, connection, and felt-safety that will allow us conceptualize the children’s behaviors. It actually allows us to conceptualize everyone’s behavior, but We’ll start with kids because for most of us, it’s easiest. For me it’s easiest! I love working with kids because it’s so easy for me to see their behaviors simply as expressions of their struggle.
It’s been harder for me to apply that same science to the adults- and ultimately to myself.
So we’ll start with kids in tomorrow’s episode and then we’ll talk about the grown-ups – both the parents and ourselves – starting on Wednesday and then Thursday. We’ll get to know the wise owl brain, and the heroic watchdog and possum brain. we’ll look at how a playful metaphor, based solidly in science, gives us the opportunity to change how we see people. Then we can choose the right tools from our tool box- increasing our confidence, and decreasing burn-out. With this model, you’ll learn how to make sense of even the most baffling behaviors. Regardless of how you work with parents- in your therapy practice, in your OT clinic, with the parents of your students, or with the parents in your coaching business.
This Week’s Events
There are two live Q&As scheduled this week- Wednesday May 6 @ 2:30pm eastern and Friday May 8 at 10am eastern. They’ll both air live in the Facebook group. There will be lively discussion happening throughout the week in the group as well so come on over, introduce yourself, and let’s talk about how changing how we see people is a powerful intervention. The link to the Facebook group is in the emails you’ve been getting for the Making Sense of Baffling Behavior audio training it’s in the show notes for this episode in your podcast player, as well. Remember- these four episodes will remain in your podcast player for a full 8 days- until the end of the day on Monday May 11.
Join the Facebook group at RobynGobbel.com/FacebookGroup or search making sense of baffling behavior in the FB search bar. You can also click the link to join the group in the emails that you are receiving daily
If you have friends and colleagues who you’d like to get in on this audio training, it’s definitely not too late! Send them to robyngobbel.com/bafflingbehaviors and they’ll be able to get instant access to the podcast and the Facebook group.
Tomorrow’s episode is Owls Watchdog and Possums OH MY. Reframing behaviors using the science of safety. You’ll get a behind the scenes look at how I connect with Nat while she’s angry- even angry at me! You’ll hear how I lean into the intensity and invite us to both stay focused on the real problem- connecting with, co-regulating, and offering safety to their child’s very active watchdog brain. I can’t wait! [/av_textblock]