Felt-Safety? What’s That?? {EP 17}

Robyn: So felt safety. What is that? And maybe more importantly, how do we create it or what we're going to learn is offer it. When was the last time you said something like, ‘oh my head knows that this is true, but my heart really doesn't. Or I know it's true, but I don't feel like it's true’. I probably said this recently, like probably this week. Felt safety is a completely subjective experience of safety. Subjective meaning that being safe doesn't necessarily translate to feeling safe. The thinking brain can know they're safe, but the heart, and the feeling, and the body might still not feel safe. Without using any logical thinking brain, the lower and not conscious parts of our brain are asking the question, ‘am I safe or not safe?’ At least every quarter of a second, four times every second, their brain is asking safe, not safe, safe, not safe, safe, not safe. That- that's so fast, I couldn't even begin to say those words in a quarter of a second, right? It's pretty hard for us to even kind of wrap our brains around how fast a quarter of a second is. This- the science, and the researchers, and academics have even been saying that this process is continually happening, meaning like, even faster than every quarter of a second. But I think there's something impressive about saying at least every quarter of a second. That, I feel like that almost hits home, how fast this assessment is made even more than the language like constantly assessing. So I don't know, do what works for you, right?

Robyn: So in addition to this happening so fast, for at least four times every second, right, the brain is also looking three different places to decide safe or not safe. Deb Dana is a therapist, a clinician, and educator, and she has really been at the forefront of taking the complex theory of the polyvagal theory and bringing it into the clinical world, which has been fantastic. And Deb Dana says, ‘the brain is looking three places inside, outside and in between’. And this is actually completely in line with decades old research and theory about the concept of felt safety that the brain is appraising the environment, and the people in the environment, and the inner experience. Alan Shrew has been talking about those three places when assessing felt safety for decades, I think. And then this- I- this concept of neuroception that has emerged from Dr. Porges. His work with the polyvagal theory is helping to bring the science and the neurobiology into the theory. So felt safety is looking for- is being assessed by looking at three different places: inside, outside and in between. And what that means is our inner experience, how hungry we are, if we're tired, what our heart rate is, or our respiration is. So, our inner experience is just one of the places that our brain is assessing for safety. And then the environment is another place that the brain is assessing for felt safety. How safe is the environment that I'm in? When I'm talking with parents, we're thinking about the structure of the environment, and the sensory pieces of the environment. And then in between is about the relational space. The person that I'm with, and the relational energy that exists between the two of us, is that place safe. So three places four times every second, like I said, this is almost impossible for us to really wrap our brains around three places, four times every second, inside, outside, and inbetween.

Robyn Gobbel: Inside, Outside and In-between, the brain is constantly, and I mean constantly, assessing for felt safety and all three of those places and oh yeah, it's also completely subjective based on that person's previous experiences. Felt safety. It's probably the most important part of parenting, or honestly, being in any relationship, but especially parenting kids with a history of trauma. I'm Robyn Gobbel, and this is the Parenting After Trauma podcast, where I take the science of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human, and translate it for parents of kids who've experienced trauma, this is episode 17, all about felt safety. If you've followed this podcast since the beginning, you know it's been through some changes, even in just 17 episodes. I started this podcast as audios from Facebook Lives, but actually have discovered I much more enjoy recording audio podcasts in my studio over being on Facebook Lives, something about being able to be in my PJs, not really having to straighten or clean up my office to be on camera really works for me. My intention, though, remains the same, to get free, accessible support to you as fast as possible. So this podcast isn't fancy, and I do very little editing. You might even hear Cock a Doodle do or the hens singing their, hey, someone laid an egg song, and since today is a snow day, I can't promise that you won't hear the snow blower.    

Robyn: If you love this episode, definitely add Parenting After Trauma to your favorite podcast player and share it with your friends and colleagues. So felt safety. What is that? And maybe more importantly, how do we create it? Or what we're going to learn is offer it. When was the last time you said something like, Oh, my head knows that this is true, but my heart really doesn't. I know it's true, but I don't feel like it's true. I probably said this recently, like probably this week, felt safety is a completely subjective experience of safety. Subjective meaning that being safe doesn't necessarily translate to feeling safe. The thinking brain can know they're safe, but the heart and the feeling and the body might still not feel safe.. Without using any logical thinking brain, the lower and not conscious parts of our brain are asking the question, Am I safe or not safe? At least every quarter of a second, four times every second, their brain is asking, safe, not safe, safe, not safe, safe, not safe. That's so fast I couldn't even begin to say those words in a quarter of a second, right? It's pretty hard for us to even kind of wrap our brains around how fast a quarter of a second is. Thus the science and the researchers and academics have even been saying that this process is continually happening, meaning, like, even faster than every quarter of a second. But I think there's something impressive about saying at least every quarter of a second that I feel like that almost hits home how fast this assessment is made, even more than the language like constantly assessing. So I don't know do what works for you, right?   

Robyn: So in addition to this happening so fast for at least four times every second, right? The brain is also looking three different places to decide safe or not safe. Deb Dana is a therapist, a clinician, an educator, and she has really been at the forefront of taking the complex theory of the poly vagal theory and bringing it into the clinical world, which has been fantastic. And Deb Dana says the brain is looking three places, Inside, outside, and In-between, and this is actually completely in line with decades-old research and theory about the concept of felt safety, that the brain is appraising the environment and the people in the environment and the inner experience. This concept of neuroception that has emerged from Dr. Porges's work with the poly vagal theory is helping to bring the science and the neurobiology into the theory. So felt safety is being assessed by looking at three different places inside, outside, and in-between. And what that means is our inner experience, how hungry we are, if we're tired, what our heart rate is, or our respiration. So our inner experience is just one of the places our brain is assessing for felt safety, and then the environment is another place that the brain is assessing for felt safety. How safe is the environment that I'm in? When I'm talking with parents, we're thinking about the structure of the environment and the sensory pieces of the environment, and then in between is about the relational space the person that I'm with, and the relational energy that exists between the two of us, is that place safe?   

Robyn: So three places four times every second, like I said, this is almost impossible for us to really wrap our brains around three places, four times every second inside, outside and in-between. Okay, so our brains are designed really to be as fast and efficient as possible, as calorically minimal, that's probably not the right words, but our brain wants to use like as few calories as possible to get the necessary job done. So in an attempt to be as efficient as possible and to keep us alive, your brain is always taking our previous experiences and everything we've learned in the past, both consciously and unconsciously, meaning learning like we're aware of and learning we're not aware of so implicit and explicit memory, and it's taking all of that and blending those previous experiences together with what's actually happening in the here and now. Okay, and this is true about all of us. All of our brains are doing this. This is not just true about the brains of people with a history of trauma, but all of our brains are designed to use our previous experiences to best understand what's happening right now and then to predict how we should respond or what's going to happen next. So you can learn a little bit more about this and about how their brain is bringing together streams of the past and the stream of the now to create our own subjective reality, both in a previous blog post and in a previous podcast episode, they're both called, no behavior is maladaptive, and I'll link to those directly in the show notes.   

Robyn: Okay, so let's think about this practically. Okay, so imagine that you're parenting a child who was at one time picked up from school, maybe even by a stranger, put into a car and brought to a new family, never to see their old family again, maybe their bio-family, maybe their previous foster family, right? And so your child has that experience that is their past, and then they now have an experience at school where the new school counselor maybe is coming in to the classroom to meet the class, right? So from your child's perspective, here we have new adult professional clothes at school, right? And so even though you or I would say like there's nothing dangerous about my child meeting a new adult at school, but their previous experience was that, yeah, meeting a new adult, and adult I never seen before, coming to meet me at school was actually terrifying, right? So now your child's brain is, is Danger, danger, danger, danger, right? You know, safe, not safe, safe, not safe is landing squarely on not safe, right? Now again, you and I could agree, like, the school counselor isn't actually dangerous, well, and again, we're assuming that that's true. The school counselor isn't actually dangerous, but the brain took in the now experience, which is the new adult professional clothing at school, and blended it together with their previous experience that was very similar, right?    

Robyn: And this previous experience was scary, dangerous, traumatic, or honestly, even if the previous experience was just exceptionally memorable, right? Could be a really good positive thing, right? Our brain is actually going to give those kinds of experiences just a little more weight in the past experience stream, right? When it's taking these two streams and merging them together, past and present, if the past experience had a lot of emotional energy around it, and especially if it wasn't safe in some way, the brain's gonna kind of give a little bit more preference to what the previous experience was when deciding, like what's going on now with this experience, safe, not safe, safe, not safe, right? So the brain, of course, I mean, when it comes right down to it, is most concerned with keeping us alive, right? So something scary or danger has happened in the past, a brain really wants us to learn from that experience, right? You're going to have be much more likely to have a danger danger reaction, even if the now situation actually isn't dangerous, kind of from you or my subjective assessment or experience of it. So the school counselor scenario is a decent example of how the brain is looking into the environment for felt safety, right?    

Robyn: But what about looking into the internal experience, right? So a child who has a history of intense hunger in the past, right? Maybe even very mild symptoms of hunger could evoke a full blown fight-flight response, or a child who has a history of having a fast beating heart only when something was dangerous, as opposed to having a lot of history and experiences with having like a fast beating heart because of being really playful or having a lot of fun. Kids with trauma histories, especially really chronic, ongoing trauma and toxic stress histories, not only had, you know, more dangerous experiences than kids should have, but that often equates to having less fun or playful or good experiences. And so maybe that child has learned that a fast beating heart means danger, danger, danger. And so now they're at recess and their fast beating heart that's appropriately beating faster because they're exercising or moving their body is felt like danger, danger. Right? Right? And so their brain is again, it's inside, outside, in between. It's checking out the inner world, the inner experience, and that fast beating heart is sending a signal of not safe, right?    

Robyn: And when we think about internal experiences, I mean, they might not have anything to do with the past, right? Could have nothing to do with trauma, all sorts of things happening in the here and now can impact our child's nervous system and how they experience felt safety, and that's true about us too, right? Inflammation or allergies, immune responses, right? So kids with PANS or PANDAS or Lyme disease, or other neuro immune thing. You know, there can be so many things happening a child's internal experience that are contributing to a lack of felt safety. I mean, even just like being hungry or thirsty or tired or not having their own unique sensory needs met. Felt safety is not only about the environment and the relationships, which is what we tend to think about, the felt safety is about this relational experience that parents and caregivers or teachers or adults or who are offering, but felt safety remember is about this internal experience as well. Okay, so we did outside the environment, we did inside, but what about the felt safety that I am kind of appraising for based on the person that I'm with, right? And this one is tricky, right?    

Robyn: So our brain is, you know, considering, appraising, the person that I'm with, is this person safe or not safe? But what is extra-nuanced about this one is that part of how I determine my level of felt safety is the person I'm with level of felt safety, right? So if the person I'm with isn't feeling safe, that is going to have my brain land on not safe, because being with somebody who they themselves, is experiencing a lack of felt safety, and they're even on just like a mild state of fight or flight, but being with people who are even in a mild state of fight-flight is not safe, right? And because of neuroception, and this ability to do this way below conscious awareness, and because of mirror neurons and all sorts of other really cool things, we can assess this like we are appraising the level of felt safety of the person that I'm with, even if they're not demonstrating overt behaviors that are suggesting that they're in a you know, state of fight-flight. So even if we're faking it, even if we're starting as adults, as we're starting to feel annoyed, frustrated, irritated, we're shifting into a state of fight-flight, but we're working really hard not to show, or we're working really hard to kind of fake it. We can't trick neuroception. We can't trick the way that we're assessing felt safety. And this is almost a little bit of a double whammy. The brain assesses this. We could call it like incongruence, like when the what I say is when the insides and the outsides don't match. So if I'm like, if I'm feeling, you know, frustrated or angry or annoyed or in a mild, or, you know, significant state of fight-flight, but I'm trying to pretend I'm not right, and maybe trying to, you know, use a sweet voice, or I'm trying, you know, like I'm overcompensating for how I'm feeling on the inside, that incongruence where the insides and the outsides don't match, that's also experienced for our children as a lack of felt safety.    

Robyn: So it's pretty hard, of course, to control if your child is receiving cues of safety from their own inner experience, right? But we can, of course, help, you know, offer experiences or opportunities where they're, you know, not hungry, where they're getting the hydration that they need, where their sensory needs are being met. And, you know, we can't always ensure that our kids are experiencing felt safety from the environment, but we can do the best that we can to offer structure and routine and predictability, and we can, you know, make accommodations for, you know, sensory needs and sensory preferences. And while we aren't always able to change our own sense of felt safety, our own inner experience, and the felt safety we're offering to kids based because of our own nervous system, that is, unfortunately, the only place where we do have ultimate control over it, right? Like we can't always control a child's inner experience, and we can't always control the environment, and so sometimes all we can do is think about our own selves and our own inner world, while also, of course, just, you know, remaining so compassionate with ourselves that just like our kids can't control their experience and their reactions and their behaviors, we can't always control ours either. Of course, that's true, but it is really, when it comes down to it, the only place where we can truly intervene and have this really significant impact.    

Robyn: Again, again, I you if you've listened to other podcasts, you know that, you know I have nothing but compassion and acceptance and curiosity for parents of kids with a history of trauma that we are all always doing the very best that we can. And our kids absolutely do not need perfect parents. All they need us to do is to just keep trying, right? So, you know, as cliche as it is, what parents and caregivers really need to do them the most again, in addition to, you know, feeding our kids, you know, making sure their sensory needs are met, thinking about structure and environment and all those kinds of things, what we really want to focus on is, how do we widen our own window of tolerance? How do we increase our ability to offer up felt safety to our kids through our own nervous systems, right? Having self-compassion for ourselves, finding ways to engage in our own playfulness, because that's a way that we can really increase our window of tolerance, right? What we want to do is be looking for opportunities to increase our window of tolerance, our experience of felt safety, so we can offer cues of safety to our kids, because we are also feeling safe, right?    

Robyn: And this piece here about felt safety is exactly why I am so so so passionate about translating the science for you, because I really believe and parents tell me this is true, that if you understand what's happening inside your child's brain and your body, and ultimately even your own, if you can understand what's happening in your child's brain in your body, you are more likely to be able to stay regulated. You can make sense of their behaviors. You understand where it's coming from and and more often than not, this helps us grab a pause right? Helps us kind of grab a breath ourselves. It helps us stay in a place of compassion and curiosity, and we can put on those X-ray vision goggles so that we can see through the behavior and into our kids inner worlds, right? And I know sometimes I can feel like understanding the why doesn't do anything to address the behaviors, but if we look at it this way, and we look at it through the lens of how understanding the why gives us a pause, gives us a moment of regulation. Well, then you can see how understanding the why absolutely does address behaviors. Because really one of the number one things we want to do to address behaviors is address felt safety, right? And then understanding the why allows us as parents, caregivers, therapists, professionals, whoever we are in relationship with this child, to stay more regulated. It allows us to see our kids for who they really are, right? And that absolutely is an intervention in and of itself. It might not be enough, but I believe it is a completely crucial non-negotiable piece of this.    

Robyn: So felt safety a subjective experience based on the cues we receive below conscious awareness from our inner experience, the environment and the person that I'm in relationship with, because felt safety is such a complex and nuanced topic, I do also have a deep dive, 90-minute webinar available for instant digital download on my website, you can snag the creating felt safety webinar, and then you'll get a coupon that's equal to the purchase price of the webinar that can go toward the comprehensive, online, self-paced parenting course, parenting after trauma, minding the heart and brain. So if you got the webinar and you loved it, and you said, oh, I want to take Parenting After Trauma, you essentially end up getting the webinar for free, so you can grab the felt safety webinar at RobynGobbel.com/feltsafetywebinar. 

Robyn: And speaking of Parenting After Trauma: Minding The Heart And Brain, it's reopening for registration super soon, in mid-February 2021. I'm still working on my own schedule and like nailing down those dates, but mid-February 2021. is the plan. This is a fully online, self-paced, comprehensive course that will take you past learning and into implementing what you learn. And in addition to over six hours of videos and another hour of audio, there are over 50 worksheets that I've designed myself with the intention of supporting your integration of the material in a way that's going to allow you to actually use what you learn in real life, right? I've had families describe it as the best or most practical course on parenting kids impacted by trauma, while also staying really true to my own commitment of making neuroscience relatable and easy to understand. So if you head over to RobynGobbel.com/parentcourse, you can either register if the registration is open, or you can sign up to be notified the moment registration opens up. If you are loving this podcast, please share. The sooner the whole world understands the neurobiology of being relationally, socially and behaviorally human, the sooner our kids will live in a world that sees them for who they really are, completely amazing and sometimes really struggling. Thanks for tuning in today. I'll see you next time!

Robyn: Okay, so let's think about this practically, okay? So imagine that you're parenting a child who was, at one time picked up from school, maybe even by a stranger, put into a car and brought to a new family, never to see their old family again. Maybe their bio family, maybe their previous foster family, right? And so your child has that experience. That is their past. And then they now have an experience at school, where the new school counselor, maybe, is coming in to the classroom to meet the class, right? So from your child's perspective, here we have new adult, professional clothes at school, right? And so, even though you or I would say, like, there's nothing dangerous about my child meeting a new adult at school. But their previous experience was that, yeah, meeting a new adult, an adult I never seen before, coming to meet me at school was actually terrifying. Right? So now your child's brain is- is Danger, danger, danger, danger, right? You know, it’s asking safe, not safe, safe, not safe is landing squarely on not safe, right? 

Robyn: Now, again, you and I could agree like the school counselor isn't actually dangerous. Well, and again, we're assuming that that's true. The school counselor isn't actually dangerous. But the brain took in the now experience, which is the new adult, professional clothing, at school and blended it together with their previous experience that was very similar, right? And this previous experience was scary, dangerous, traumatic, or honestly, even if the previous experience was just exceptionally memorable, right? Could be a really good positive thing, right? Our brain is actually going to give those kinds of experiences just a little more weight in the past experience stream, right? When it's taking these two streams and merging them together past and present. If- if the past experience had a lot of emotional energy around it, and especially if it wasn't safe in some way, the brain’s are gonna kind of give a little bit more preference to what that previous experience was when deciding, like, what's going on now with this experience safe, not safe, safe, not safe, right? 

Robyn: So the brain of course, I mean, when it comes right down to it is most concerned with keeping us alive, right? So something scary or dangerous happened in the past, a brain really wants us to learn from that experience, right? You're gonna have- be much more likely to have a danger, danger reaction, even if the now situation actually isn't dangerous. Kind of from you, or my’s subjective assessment or experience of it. So the school counselor scenario is a decent example of how the brain is looking into the environments for felt safety, right?

Robyn:  But what about looking into the internal experience, right? So a child who has a history of intense hunger in the past, right? Maybe even very mild symptoms of hunger could evoke a full blown fight, flight response. Or a child who has a history of having a fast beating heart only when something was dangerous, as opposed to having a lot of history and experiences with having like a fast beating heart because of being really playful or having a lot of fun, right? Kids with trauma histories, especially really chronic ongoing trauma and toxic stress histories, not only had you know more dangerous experiences and kids should have. But that often equates to having less fun, or playful, or good experiences. And so maybe that child has learned that a fast beating heart means danger, danger, danger. And so now they're at recess. And their fast beating heart that's appropriately beating faster, because they're exercising or moving their body is felt like danger, danger, right? And so the brain is, again, it's inside, outside, in between, it's checking out the inner world, the inner experience, and that fast beating heart is sending a signal of not safe, right? And- and when we think about internal experiences, I mean, they might not have anything to do with the past, or it could have nothing to do with trauma. All sorts of things happening in the here and now can impact our child's nervous system and how they experience felt safety. And that's true about us too, right? Inflammation, or allergies, immune responses, right. So kids with PANS, or PANDAS, or Lyme- Lyme disease or other neuro immune things, you know, there can be so many things happening, a child's internal experience, that are contributing to a lack of felt safety. I mean, even just like being hungry, or thirsty or tired, or not having their own unique sensory needs met, right? Felt safety is not only about the environment and the relationships, which is what we tend to think about. That felt safety is about this relational experience of parents and caregivers or teachers or adults or who are offering but felt safe to your memories about this internal experience as well. 

Robyn: Okay, so we did outside, like the environment we did inside, but what about the felt safety that I am kind of appraising for based on the person that I'm with, right? And this one is tricky, right? So that- our brain is, you know, considering appraising the person that I'm with? And is this person safe, or not safe. But what is extra nuanced about this one, is that part of how I determine my level of felt safety is the person I'm with’s level of felt safety, right? So if the person I'm with isn't feeling safe, that is going to have my brain land on not safe. Because being with somebody who they themselves is experiencing a lack of felt safety, and they're even in just like a mild state of fight or flight. But being with people who are even in a mild state of fight flight, it's not safe, right? And because of neuroception, and this ability to do this way below conscious awareness and because of mirror neurons and- and all sorts of other really cool things, we can assess this- like we're appraising the level of health safety of the person that I'm with, even if they're not demonstrating overt behaviors that are suggesting that they're in a state of fight flight. So even if we're faking it, even if we're starting as adults, as we're starting to feel annoyed, frustrated, irritated. We're shifting into a state of fight flight. We're working really hard not to show it. We're working really hard to kind of fake it. Right? That- that we can't trick neuroception, we can't trick the way that we're assessing felt safety. And this is almost a little bit of a double whammy, the brain assesses this, we could call it like incongruence. Like when- what I say is when the insides and outsides don't match. So if I'm like, if I'm feeling, you know, frustrated, or angry, or annoyed, or and, and mild or you know, significant state of fight flight, but I'm trying to pretend I'm not, right? And maybe trying to, you know, use a sweet voice or I'm trying, you know, again, I'm overcompensating for how I'm feeling on the inside. That incongruence where the insides and the outsides don't match that's also experienced by our children as lack of felt safety. So it's pretty hard, of course, to control if your child is receiving cues of safety from their own inner experience, right? But we can, of course, help, you know, offer experiences or opportunities where they're, you know, not hungry, where they're getting the hydration that they need, or their sensory needs are being met. And, you know, we can't always ensure that our kids are experiencing felt safety from the environment, but we can do the best that we can to offer structure, routine, and predictability. And we can, you know, make accommodations for you know, some sensory needs and sensory preferences. And while we aren't always able to change our own sense of felt safety, our own inner experience and the felt safety we're offering to kids based- because of our own nervous system, that is unfortunately, the only place where we do have ultimate control over it, right? Like, we can't always control a child's inner experience. And we can't always control the environment. And so sometimes, all we can do is think about our own selves and our own inner world, while also, of course, just, you know, being remaining so compassionate with ourselves that just like our kids can't control their experience, and their reactions, and their behaviors, we can't always control ours either. Of course, that's true. But it is, really, when it comes down to it, the only place where we can truly intervene and have this really significant impact. Again, again, I- you, if you've listened to other podcasts, you know, that, you know, I have nothing but compassion, and acceptance and curiosity for parents of kids with a history of trauma that we are all always doing the very best that we can, and our kids absolutely do not need perfect parents. All they need us to do is to just keep trying, right? So, you know, as cliche as it is, what parents and caregivers really need to do the- the most, again, in addition to you know, feeding our kids, you know, making sure their sensory needs are met, thinking about structure and environment and all those kinds of things. What we really want to focus on is how do we widen our own window of tolerance? How do we increase our ability to offer up felt safety to our kids or our own nervous systems, right? Having self compassion for ourselves, finding ways to engage in our own playfulness. Because that's a way that we can really increase our window of tolerance, right? What we want to do is be looking for opportunities to increase our window of tolerance, our experience of felt safety, so we can offer cues of safety to our kids, because we are also feeling safe, right? 

Robyn: And this piece here about felt safety is exactly why I am so, so, so passionate about translating the science for you. Because I really believe, and parents tell me this is true, that if you understand what's happening inside your child's brain, in your body, and ultimately even your own. If you can understand what's happening your child's brain in your body, you are more likely to be able to stay regulated. You can make sense of their behaviors, you understand where it's coming from. And- and more often than not, this helps us grab a pause, right? Helps us kind of grab a breath ourselves, it helps us stay in a place of compassion and curiosity. And we can put on those x-ray vision goggles so that we can see through the behavior and into our kids inner worlds, right? And I know sometimes it can feel like understanding the why doesn't do anything to address the behaviors. But if we look at it this way, right? And we look at it through the lens of how understanding the why gives us a pause, gives us a moment of regulation. Well- well then you can see how understanding the why absolutely does address behaviors. Because, really, one of the number one things we want to do to address behaviors is address felt safety, right? And then understanding the why allows us as parents, caregivers, therapists, professionals, whoever we are in relationship with this child, to stay more regulated. It allows us to see our kids for who they really are, right? And that absolutely is an intervention in and of itself. It might not be enough, but I believe it is a completely crucial non-negotiable piece of this. 

Robyn: So felt safety a subjective experience, based on the cues we receive below conscious awareness from our inner experience, the environment, and the person I'm in relationship with. Because felt safety is such a complex and nuanced topic. I do I also have a deep dive 90 minute webinar available for instant digital download on my website, you can snag the Creating Felt Safety webinar, and then you'll get a coupon that's equal to the purchase price of the webinar that can go toward the comprehensive online self-paced parenting course, Parenting After Trauma: Minding the Heart and Brain. So if you got the webinar and you loved it and you said oh, I want to take Parenting After Trauma: Minding the Heart and Brain, essentially you end up getting the webinar for free. So you can grab the felt safety webinar at RobynGobbel.com/FeltSafetyWebinar. 

Robyn: And speaking of Parenting After Trauma: Minding the Heart and Brain, it's reopening for registration super soon, mid February 2021. I'm still working on my own schedule and like nailing down those dates, but mid February 2021 is the plan. This is a fully online, self paced, comprehensive course it will take you past learning into implementing what you learned. And in addition to over six hours of videos and another hour of audio, there are over 50 worksheets that I've designed myself that with the intention of supporting your integration of the material in a way that's going to allow you to actually use what you learn in real life, right? I've had families describe it as the best or most practical course on parenting kids impacted by trauma while also staying really true to my own commitment of making the neuroscience relatable and easy to understand. If you head over to RobynGobbel.com/ParentCourse. You can either register if the registration is open, or you can sign up to be notified the moment registration opens up. 

Robyn: If you are loving this podcast, please share. The sooner the whole world understands the neurobiology of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human, the sooner our kids will live in a world that sees them for who they really are: completely amazing, and sometimes really struggling. Thanks for tuning in today. I'll see you next time.