The Framework That Works on Everyone in the Room {EP 263}

Robyn: Now I got really lucky, and I did discover this lens when I was still a new ish therapist, but I had been helping kids and families for a couple years before I discovered this lens. And goodness, if I could have started working with this lens, I think my earliest years would have been a little easier, and I think I would have helped families a little bit more this new lens I love, because it actually works. It really helps me make sense of kids really baffling behaviors, and that helps me make a decent enough plan on what things I could do to potentially help All right, so I love this lens because it works, but I also love this lens because it works across the board. It's the only theory I need, whether I'm working with kids or parents, whether I'm teaching professionals, whether I'm relating to my husband or parenting or just kind of navigating the world. It's the only lens that I need, once I really took in and embodied this way of being in the world. I never need to set it down. It's there with me for everything, and I don't need to be continuously reinventing the wheel. Relational neuroscience is a unified theory, essentially the same theory that guided me in my work when I was a play therapist now guides me in the work that I do, supporting parents, and it guides me in the work that I do, supporting other professionals. Ultimately, y'all, like I've said over and over and over again, it guides me in knowing myself really, truly, just the other day, like the other day from when I'm recording this episode, I was in my own therapy session looking at something really, really hard, and I said to my therapist that I'm just so glad that I have the science As a framework I would never, ever be brave enough to do the deep, deep work that I've been privileged to do in therapy. I would never be able to do it without this as my grounding theory. 

Robyn: Now I imagine that's not true for everybody, but what's been true for me is that the theory has been. Sense of it. The theory has helped me make sense of all of these things that I'm working on in therapy, and that gives me hope, right? Like, if I can organize it, I can make sense of what's happening, and I can see the way forward, and I really believe in the way forward, right? I really believe that if I go into this hard place, I will be able to get closer to feeling better. I just really believe it. And I think that without the theory, without this relational neuroscience theory that gives me what feels like a map. I don't know that I would be able to do the hard work. I think I'd be overwhelmed. I think I'd be terrified. I think I wouldn't be able to hold the truth that things can get better. And if you can't hold that truth, if you don't really believe in some way that things can get better. It's impossible to do the hard work, because what's kind of even the point, right? The theory relational neuroscience, is a theory. It like nests into itself, kind of like nesting dolls. We have a framework to make sense of ourselves, and it helps us make sense of parents, right? It's like the nesting doll that goes inside that, and then it helps us, and of course, their parents make sense of their kids, right? It all nests together. I was looking around for a word to help summarize this, and I was Googling and just trying to find a word that could really encompass in one word what it was that I was, you know, trying to convey, and I stumbled across the word fractal, which wasn't a new word to me, although it's not a word I think of very often. It's not really a word that, you know, finds its way into my everyday life, and it's not something I thought about for a while. Fractals are infinitely complex, self-similar patterns that repeat at different scales, created by repeating simple processes. Okay, so that's from Google.

Robyn: Fractals represent dynamic, recursive systems. Now, I love all of this because I think fractal is a pretty cool word, and because Interpersonal Neurobiology recognizes that humans and our relationships with each other are complex and recursive systems. Now recursive systems simply. This is an oversimplification of a recursive system, but a recursive system is one in which the interaction of the system's elements gives rise to what emerges kind of synergistically from all those interactions the system creates the system, right? And humans are complex systems, okay? So, as humans, our experience creates our experience, right? And relationships are complex systems. Our experience in relationships contributes to like the continued creation of that relationship, we have a role in the creation of ourselves and the way we see and experience and make sense of things has a role in the creation of our experiences. So our previous experiences contribute to how we have future experiences. I don't know y'all. I actually just think that's really wild. And also I think the word fractal is a pretty cool word. What this all means is that this relational neuroscience theory, we only have to learn it once, because the science of safety and connection is the same, whether you're working with a dysregulated eight-year-old or you're working with a parent who is absolutely certain there is nothing that you could do that is could be helpful, nothing is working. And this parent wants you to know about all the things that are very bad, all in very, very, very extreme detail. 

Robyn: We can use the same theory, and we can use that theory, right, to make sense of connecting with ourselves, right? It's how we can make sense of what, what we're experiencing maybe like at the end of a really hard session or really hard day, a really hard week, right? We can make sense of it and why it is at the end of this really hard week, we're wishing we had become an accountant, right? Or a barista. That's what I said last week. We can make sense of that all with the same theory. We don't need different theories to apply to all of these different experiences, okay? Same science, same tools, although, of course, the tools are adjusted. Said For context, it looks slightly different with an eight year old than with a parent or caregiver that we're working with or with ourselves or in our relationships, right? So for me, it's that realization that I didn't have to keep learning new frameworks for kids, for parents, for adults, for trauma, right? For attachment, for my own nervous system. I didn't have to keep learning new frameworks. That discovery was one of the most clarifying moments of my career, and it has helped me help clarify this for other folks, right? And so now I have the great privilege of offering this to parents and to caregivers, and although I no longer work directly with kids in my own way, I was offering this framework directly to kids. Now the parents and the professionals that I support get to offer it again in their own way to children. 

Robyn: Obviously, how we present and offer all of this with kids looks way different than how we do it with adults, but it's just sort of like the delivery that's different, the theory, the foundation, the framework. It's the same. If you've read Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors, or if you're in my immersion program, or you're participating in my free audio training making sense of baffling behaviors that is being hosted right now this week. If you're listening on May five, it's happening this week. It's not too late to join us. If you've done any of those things, you've met Nat. Nat, of course, isn't a real person, but at the same time, Nat is every parent I've ever known right? Nat has done all the readings, she's gone to all the workshops. She's learned all the greatest brain science, and she has taken very good notes. But then she comes to me and she says, Okay, this is great, but what do I actually do now? A thing that's really important to notice with my own Owlbrain is that in that moment, Nat isn't asking with her own Owlbrain, all right, she's not asking with curiosity. She's asking with desperation, because nat's kid is doing things that Nat cannot make any sense of, all right, like lying about, things that she's not even in trouble for a regression that seems to come out of nowhere, refusing to cooperate with even the most basic instructions. 

Robyn: Nat has tried everything, just like you, reward charts, timeouts, natural consequences, every single thing that's out there and her kiddo, Sammy, keeps finding new baffling things to do. So in raising kids with big, baffling behavior, or in my making sense of baffling behavior, audio training, Nat comes into my office, and I have a choice. I can respond to the urgency that she's like radiating, you know, this frantic, but tell me what to do. Feeling I can do that by just handing her more tools, another strategy, another script, or I can recognize that nats urgency is in and of itself, information that the frantic need for a fix is a nervous system in protection mode. Now that doesn't mean that we don't need to address the behavior that is still 100% true, but it just means that in that moment, the frantic pursuit of something that will fix everything is coming from protection mode, And that that tells me that what Nat needs first, because, again, she of course, needs tools, but what she needs first before any tools actually going to work, is to feel really seen right, to feel safe, to feel not judged, to feel really connected, to believe that all parts of her get to come into that space and the reality is, and this might not be the right time to mention this to net, but the reality is, is that her kid needs the same thing to be seen and saved and not judged. Right? That doesn't mean we don't have to address boundary work, to change their behavior. All of those things can be true all at the same time. What Nat needs, her kid needs, and so do you meaning you all of the professionals, helpers who support kids and parents in this professional role?

Robyn: So let's talk about what's actually happening in the nervous system when we're seeing this challenging behavior, right? The nervous system has two modes, and this is a huge oversimplification. Again, if you really want to dive into this, you can go to my Podcast, episode 198, All Behavior Makes Sense. You can read about Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors. You can come into the club and get all the neuroscience there. This is a huge oversimplification, but it's useful enough in this moment. So there's one of the modes that is safe. This is connection mode. This is where the Owlbrain is running the show, where we've engaged the Owlpathway. It's regulated, it's connected, it's curious. That doesn't mean calm, right? We have access to things like cause and effect, thinking, age-appropriate social skills, and frustration tolerance, in an age-appropriate way. Again, when the Owlis in charge, we can be in relationship with others, in relationship with ourselves. The Owlisn't passive. The Owlsets limits, holds boundaries, advocates for self, but it does those things from like a grounded, connected to self place. The other mode is the not safe mode, protection mode, when the nervous system detects danger. And for many of the children and the adults that we are so privileged to work with y'all, their detection system is exquisitely exhaustingly sensitive. 

Robyn: Their protection brain, their protection pathway is always on. That protective pathway has two kind of like sub-pathways, the Watchdog pathway and the Possum pathway. That Watchdog pathway is the high activation, high energy, fight, flight, aggression, opposition pathway. The Watchdog isn't bad. The Watchdog is terrified. And when you understand that punching a kid at the playground isn't just aggression or defiance. It's a nervous system that is completely run out of capacity. Used all of its energy and its arms and its legs to try to stay safe. When we can see that aggression that way, it changes everything about how you intervene. Now, of course, we still intervene. We can hit people on the playground. People's bodies have a right to be safe. We don't get to violate that. Kids don't get to violate that. All of that is still true, but when we see it for what it really is, it changes how we intervene. Then there's the Possum pathway, low energy, right? All the energy is drained out, shut down, dissociation, right? There's this maybe nothingness sense to it. Again, the Possum isn't bad. The Possum is terrified. It's a different strategy. It's a different pathway. It's a different pathway back to safety, but it is still a protective pathway that ultimately is seeking safety all behavior, including the behavior of the adults that you work with, is emerging from one of these three places, the Owl, the Watchdog, or the Possum, therefore the single most useful question that you can ask in a challenging moment is whose Owlbrain has flown away right now.

Robyn: When Nat storms into my office telling me that nothing is working right, she's using all-or-nothing language making big, sweeping characterological statements about her kid. She's insisting the behavior is intentional and calculated. What's really happening there? Well, her Owlbrain has flown away, and her Watchdog is totally running the show. We can see this because of the all or nothing thinking right, the judgment that's given to the behavior the way that Curiosity has kind of left the building. But watch our brains running the show, the thing that's so important and that is so often missed in our trainings as helpers and professionals. In that moment, my job is not to teach her, it's not to remind her of everything we've been working on. It's not to gently confront her about the framework and remind her how we really want to see her kids behaviors. No, in that moment, my job is to be the Owl, to offer cues of safety, to let her nervous system. Borrow some regulation for mine. So I match her energy. I come in with warmth and presence. I'm not detached or calm. While staying anchored in my own felt safety. I validate what's real, and I meet her exactly where she is. And from there, something that feels quite magical. It's not magic, but it can feel that way from there, something kind of magical happens as I stay regulated in the face of her dysregulation. I'm not escalating it. I'm not like frequently calm. I'm not faking it. I'm grounded, and I'm with her, and I'm matching her nervous system. Will begin to settle, not because I talked to her into it, but because the nervous systems are contagious. Our brains are designed to co-regulate with each other. This is a tool, and the Owlis the tool, and it works with kids. It works with parents. It works with colleagues and partners, and it works with your own internal experience of yourself. 

Robyn: After a hard session, you can be your own Owland be with your own Watchdog and Possum parts. It really is possible now to be sure, there are moments where my Possum brain convinces me that I'm really, really bad at this job. There are moments when my wash dog brain gets genuinely irritated with a parent with a client who seems to be rejecting everything that I offer. I used to feel a lot of shame about that, especially anytime I would have, like, a negative thought or a feeling about the client who's coming to me. I used to have a lot of shame about that, but the trick with shame is that it means you don't share those thoughts and feelings with anyone, and then nothing can get better, right? I used to kind of feel like I should be this perfect, professional, perfect at the time I was a therapist, right? Like if I was having these reactions, I kind of took that to mean I hadn't done enough of my own work, right? Or maybe that I was just too fragile to work with this caseload. But y'all this is important. What I understand now is that those reactions are normal, inevitable. They are information. The more experienced I get doing this work. It doesn't necessarily mean that I don't have those that I have those experiences less. What it means is that when I have those experiences of like being irritated or frustrated or even judgmental or, you know, wanting to give up.

Robyn: Now, what it means is that when I have those reactions, I recognize them as information. They're trail heads. It makes me want to get really curious my Watchdog and my Possum, they're offering me some real-time data about what's happening for me, certainly, and what might be also happening for my client. It might even be information about what the child that we're talking about could be carrying. Sometimes it's information about parts of my own history that are kind of like reaching up and saying, hey, please tend to me. Please care for me. Please see me. And then if I'm with a client, I of course don't start doing that right there when I'm with the client, but I can make a note of it. And later, right? Later, I can call a colleague or a consultant, right? I or a therapist, right? And I can do some work around, you know, that tender spot that was shown to me. So I really want you to hear me, the shift in myself isn't that I no longer have these kinds of reactions. The shift in myself, and to be sure, I probably have them less often, but the real shift isn't about how often or even how intensely I have those reactions. It's really about my ability to now get curious about them, to see them, to be with them, right, to stay connected to my own self compassion, so that I can stay really present with myself, which then means I can stay really present with my client, my mentor, Bonnie Badenoch. I talk about Bonnie a lot. She writes in her book being a brain wise therapist, she writes, heal what you can, become aware of what's being, awakened and release the idea that you can or should, become a perfect container. And I feel like that's one of the most liberating things that I've ever connected with. 

Robyn: It really is like the anchor in all of my work. It's we talk about that in the immersion program, from day one, we return to it regularly, heal what we can, become aware of what's being awakened and be okay with the reality that you can't, nor should you be a perfect container. So when I stopped trying to be the perfect container, I became much better at it. I was able to be with more. I could contain more. I could hold more in myself and in my clients. I could actually be. Present and human, and the human across from me could feel that and it matters. So here's what I want you to walk away with today. Okay, this is my second episode in two weeks where I'm talking right to the professionals. Okay, let's make it worth it. Here's what I want you to walk away with you. Don't need a different framework for the child and the parent and yourself. You just need one framework. You need to understand it deeply enough that it becomes really intuitive and to understand something really deeply, we have to spend a lot of time with it. We have to immerse ourselves into it regularly, repeatedly, and with people who are also immersed in it. Behavior is information. It's information about the Owl, the Watchdog and the Possum. It's information about whether it's safe or not, connection or protection. What I ground into is the idea that regulated connected people, kids, parents, therapists, professionals, husbands, kids, everyone, regulated, connected, people who feel safe, behave well, and y'all know that's not a checklist. I'm not going okay, regulated, check, connected, check, safe, check, no, no. It's not a checklist. It's an invitation for curiosity, curiosity with our kids, with the parents that we're working with and ourselves. Safety is the treatment. Connection is the treatment. And the most powerful way to offer that is to stay in your own Owlbrain, not by suppressing your reactions, but by getting really curious about them. And y'all That's it. That's the unified theory, the nested theory, the fractal, whatever fun word you want to use. I'm really partial to fractal. It can sound simple, right? One theory, One Ring to rule them all right? It can sound simple. It is simple, and it takes a lifetime to practice it. I will never be done practicing this. I will never be done practicing this. There is no end to this journey.

Robyn: Every bit of that practice makes me better at this work. Every bit of this practice will make you better at this work, more effective, less exhausted, genuinely more joyful in the sessions that used to leave you exhausted, drained, making you want to go work at a coffee shop, or whatever it is that your fantasy gig is. If you left this work and you know you have one, I've never met someone who doesn't have that fantasy gig that they're gonna go to, I know that you love this work, and you really deserve to be able to feel that you love this work. And the families that you work with, they need you to feel that you love this work. Y'all, we're just gonna keep going. We're just gonna keep going and going and going, yes, yes. There's many more places you can go to explore these ideas. I know you're asked. You're gonna ask that everyone always does, where can I read more? Where can I learn more? What books do you recommend? If you're listening to this episode the week of May 4, 2026 you can still come and join me in the Making Sense of Baffling Behaviors. Free audio training for professionals, it's four audio trainings. They're 30 minutes each. They're delivered in a podcast app, but it's a private podcast, meaning you have to subscribe to it. You're not just going to find it by searching in your podcast app. You got to come subscribe to it. Each episode is a full exploration of the same session, but with a focus on the different people involved. So like one episode, we look at a scenario, and then we talk about it through the lens of Sammy, the kiddo. And the other episode, we talk about the same, you know, the same scenario, through the lens of Nat the caregiver. 

Robyn: And then another episode, we look at the same scenario, but through the lens of me, the professional, the helper, we go much deeper into this nested fractal theory than I did here in today's episode. And if you really, really want to immerse yourself in this work, consider applying for the 2027 cohorts of the baffling behavior training Institute's immersion program for professionals, we are going to be opening applications soon, but we only open applications to folks who are on the waiting list. So if it interests you in any way, get on the waiting list, and you can do that at any time. So whenever you're listening to this episode, if the immersion program sounds interesting to you, just go to Robyn gobbel.com/immersion put yourself on the waiting list, and when applications are open, we will notify you of that to all the parents and caregivers who listened to this episode and are still listening and to last week episode two. I just hope that these episodes. Are leaving you feeling some relief that there are professionals out there who want to see you and your child in this way. 80 people come through the immersion program every year. If you're looking for a graduate of the immersion program, someone who could help you, you can go to RobynGobbel.com/directory, now the directory has grown so much that as of the recording of this episode, the directory is very clunky and very hard to search. But also, as of the recording of this episode, we are actively remedying the problem, and we are getting close, we are getting really close to launching a new website which is going to include a new searchable directory is going to be so much easier to search. You're going to be able to search by location. You're going to be able to search by like virtual or in-person, work. You'll be able to search by profession. It's it's so close, it's almost done. So I don't know when it's going to be done. It's not close enough that they've given me a launch day, but y'all, it is close. If you're on my email list, you will absolutely definitely know when my new website goes live, and that will include that new searchable directory next week. Y'all, next week, we're going to be back with another episode from a parent who has been deep in the trenches, and at times, absolutely still is, but also has found a way to be okay, to be the Owl. I can't wait to introduce you to this parrot. So be back here again with me next week on my next episode here of The Baffling Behavior Show. I'll see you then, bye.