The #1 Ingredient of Self-Regulation {EP 215}

Robyn: So we shifted the language we were using to really describe the kids and the families that the podcast and all my resources and materials and programmings and offering support, and that's when we landed on the Baffling Behavior Show. So all that's to say, regardless of why your kid and maybe you, you know, has some baffling behaviors you are so, so welcome here, and I'm thrilled that you're here. There's some really fun things percolating here, behind the scenes at the business. One thing I can share for sure is one change that we are planning to make and experimenting with is opening the club more often. So in fact, the day that this episode is airing, we are opening the club again, even though we were pretty recently open for new members, and we're planning to experiment with more frequent openings throughout this calendar year. The dates aren't set in stone. We just know we're going to do it a little more frequently.   

Robyn: We hope that this meets all needs, but we also think that it's going to better meet the needs of my club members. I think that having more frequent openings, but fewer members coming in at one time is ultimately going to serve the needs of my current club members so much better. So we're gonna experiment with this, see what happens. We also have some other really fun things planned for the club this year, like this month, for example, April. We're gonna be doing a 15-day, daily self-compassion practice. So if you are listening and you're already a Club member. You know that our resource library has just exploded lately, and we've got more plans for that. Y'all. We're just going to keep growing and growing and growing. And to be honest with you, this is probably the part of my life that is bringing me the most joy. Joy right now, I have some other fun stuff planned to keep supporting professionals and a lot of different kinds of various things in store that we're just not quite ready to reveal. But y'all, we are working so hard behind the scenes to be able to keep reaching more and more folks, so that one day you'll have to do less and less work. One day the burden to be the trauma-informed person in your life, or the nervous system-informed person in your kid's life. One day you won't be the only one like you'll look around and the teachers and the babysitters and the sports coaches and the Sunday school teachers and the next-door neighbors and the grandmas right, more and more and more and more people are going to be aware of what behavior really is, and that means they're going to be more equipped to support you. So, oh, really fun, really fun things in store.    

Robyn: Okay, I kind of blabbered on a little longer than I expected too about that. Which, if you know me, you know, I sort of have a tendency to do that. So sorry about that. Today, we are going to talk about co-regulation versus self-regulation. We talk a lot about how co-regulation is a crucial ingredient for self-regulation, right, and that self-regulation really only emerges from co-regulation. But also, as I look back on my podcast archives, we've really never explored super in depth what self-regulation really even is, besides emphasizing that it's internalized co-regulation. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about the ingredients of self-regulation. I turn to Dr. Dan Siegel for my baseline here. Dr. Siegel is one of my primary mentors. His work has impacted my life, my personal life, my professional life, profoundly. Interpersonal Neurobiology sits at the foundation of all the work that I do, and Dr. Siegel really what it comes down to, for me is his belief in the goodness of humanity, and that has changed everything about the work that I do and the way that I am and the world you're you might be familiar with Dr. Siegel. He's the author of things like Whole Brain Child, no drama discipline.    

Robyn: He's really the creator of an entirely new field of study, interpersonal neurobiology. And Dr Siegel defines self-regulation as the ability to both monitor and modify states of energy and arousal and activation. Okay, monitor and modify. So what that means is self-regulation is having the capacity to both notice levels of arousal, notice the energy and activation in the body that is connected to regulation and dysregulation, notice those things, and then be able to do some things to change that, to both monitor and modify, notice and change. Now y'all noticing and changing, right? These are Owl brain skills. Right, the part of my mind, my the part of my mind that is self-reflective, that can use, like my mind's eye to kind of turn its eyes like back on myself, scan my own nervous system, my own body, my own brain for what's happening inside me, make sense of it and then do something about it, those are pretty intense, actually, pretty advanced Owl brain skills, right? And maybe you've never really thought about it like that, but self-regulation requires being able to turn our mind's eye back on ourselves, right? Really notice and pay attention. Make sense of and then do something about what's happening for us, really is a remarkable and exceptionally complex skill. It takes a lot of complex brain development to eventually be able to have the capacity to both monitor and modify.   

Robyn: Now, when I think about monitoring and modifying, noticing and changing and how to support the development of those skills in kids and in the developing brain, I started thinking back to my. My work as a therapist when I was in the office seeing clients, which I no longer do, but back when I was a practicing therapist, right? I had an approach to treatment planning that really looked at the development of regulation, and kind of saw the development of the nervous system through that lens, and utilize that information for treatment planning and so, and this is very, very, very broad, and no, no one goes through treatment planning and through this, you know goals of a treatment plan in a perfectly sequential way, but ultimately from a broad perspective, I looked at treatment planning through this lens of how kind of the first stage for my clients, and I've always seen highly, highly dysregulated clients, kids who had extremely dysregulated nervous systems, like they were in their Watchdog or their Possum brain almost constantly. And if they weren't in a stronger Possum brain almost constantly, they were in their Watchdog or their Possum brain almost constantly in my office.    

Robyn: Okay, so those kids, those kids who spent very, very, very little time in their Owl brain, and they had very fragile Owls that flew away very frequently. Right for those kids, the first stage of human planning was almost exclusively relying on co-regulation. These kids had such a limited access to their Owl brain, such a limited access to any kind of self-reflective capacity. They weren't thinking about themselves. They weren't reflecting on themselves. They weren't noticing themselves. They just were themselves, right? There was no again that kind of like imagine this, this way we we notice and observe and reflect on our own experience, right? And if you just pause it for a moment and think about that part of your mind, the part of your mind that's even able to pause in this moment and notice how you're listening to this podcast, you know, notice what your state of your nervous system is in this moment, right? There's this self-reflective part of ourselves, right? And a lot of the kids that I was working with, they didn't come to the therapy office with that part of themselves. And many of them have very, very, very little access to that part of themselves in or out of the office, right? They had such immature regulatory circuits, those building blocks that support their Owl brain and skills like being self-reflective and monitoring and modifying those those things just weren't there yet. Okay, we weren't leaning into those skills. We were we were growing those parts of the brain.    

Robyn: And if you can imagine for a moment, you know being self-reflective is an important part of therapy, right? And a lot of kids were coming to therapy without that capacity, so we had to grow that okay? So with those kids, my therapeutic work with them was highly, highly, highly, what we would call experiential. It was very in the moment. It was very here and now. We weren't I wasn't asking them how their day was. I wasn't asking them to notice what was happening in their body. They weren't really doing like symbolic or projective play. They were just in the moment it was. It felt like very toddler in preschool, like play, even though a lot of times these kids were much older and much bigger, right? We were tossing balls back and forth, or balloons back and forth, or, you know, we were doing sensory play, or we were dancing, or we were blowing cotton balls back and forth. I was trained in therapy, which is a highly experiential form of a play therapy that's very, very dyadic and very based on in-the-moment experiences. So I really leaned into that part of my training with these kids. We were very focused on what Dr Bruce Perry refers to as experiences that are rhythmic, repetitive, relational and somatosensory.    

Robyn: Okay? We were together. We were playing, right? And these kids had limited capacity to be in a dyadic, mutual, back-and-forth, play-based relationship. So that's where we started from, and that was the beginning of treatment planning. And for the most part, I wasn't even trying to engage their reflective self, and we were just together. I really, mostly just kind of followed them. So even though a lot of the experiences we were having were what I would call therapist-led, like I was offering up the experiences or the activities, right? I was choosing the experiences or the activities a lot of time, not always, but a lot of time, I was still following their energetic lead, like I was still following what they were bringing into the office or into the experience from an energetic perspective. And so that was the first stage. Really, really, really, just following them. Okay. Then the next stage was about me starting to really deliberately and intentionally shift the level of activation and arousal both up and down. Okay? So we went from just being with and following and joining and co-regulating whatever it was that the child was bringing in to the office, right? We started with that and then moved on to me being kind of deliberate, sometimes strategic, you know, with regards to increasing and decreasing arousal and activation, where we would start to kind of experiment with the edges of that child's regulation, the edges of their window of tolerance. And we would, you know, work to bring arousal down before it got totally outside the window of tolerance, although we, of course, were not always successful at that, but playing around with the up and down of energy and arousal and exploring the edges of the window of tolerance, that was kind of the next stage of work together.    

Robyn: Okay, then after that, I'd start to bring some explicit awareness to it. I start to bring some language to it. I'd start to bring out my own Owl brain, narrating what was happening, talking about the ups and the downs, the sensations. Sometimes I talk about my own sensations, like, whoa. My heart is really starting to increase here. Huh, feel like I need to take a break, break and take a really big breath here, my Watchdog brain is getting really active. Or I need my Watchdog take a breath so that my Owl brain can make sure it feels safe enough to stick around right? Like I start to really, kind of narrate those ideas. And I start, what starts to you, you know, really begin to introduce sensation, language, emotion language, right? We would do this all very playfully, right? I would really lean into Owl, Watchdog and Possum language. And I also, back then, was using a lot of color-based language. I was really bringing my experience with like Leah Kuypers zones of regulation program as well as the alert program, right? And so we were using some of the color language, like red zone, yellow zone, green zone, blue zone, if you're familiar with that language. I was using that a lot back then as well. I mean, such a really crucial, crucial piece of this eventual development of monitoring and modifying. Remember, that's what we're aiming for here, with being very strategic and sequential and building the parts of the brain that were required to reach the capacity to monitor and modify right?    

Robyn: So really crucial part of that is using non-judgmental language to describe energy and arousal and even behaviors. So we used Watchdog and Possum language, and we use, you know, red and blue and green and yellow language, because those words are supposed to be non-judgmental. They're just descriptive words, they're not good or bad, right? Because, you know, watchdogs and possums aren't better or worse than owls, right? We're just learning to notice and be with right? Ultimately, what I would talk about with kids is we only want our Watchdogs to get as activated as they need to be for the situation, right? That actually is also a part of self-regulation, right? And in a crucial part of that is having non-judgmental language and non-judgmental approaches to these different parts of ourself. It's this practice of becoming more and more and more aware of our own states and our own shifting of our states. And through that, we are growing more and more and more of what Dr. Siegel calls the hub of the mind. Right the hub of the mind, the ability to notice and see what's happening in your own experience, and ability to notice and see different sensations arising and falling, different feelings arising and falling, different states of self coming and going, right. Being able to notice and being with those parts is is a function of what Dr. Siegel would call the hub of the mind, and essentially what I bring into what is the Owl Brain, right?    

Robyn: Growing that Owl brain, growing the hub of the mind, growing the capacity to see, to notice, to become aware. That's crucial. Can't really shift something if you aren't noticing that it needs shifting. So for example, in an ideal world, my Owl brain starts to notice when I'm getting stressed, my Owl brain helps me make the choice to shift my state, which could be as simple as taking a quick break grabbing a drink. It can mean taking a bigger break from what I doing and maybe going for a walk. It could mean not actually taking a break, but just pausing to take a breath.  

Robyn: Noticing that I'm starting to feel stressed and then continue to go right. Keep doing what I'm doing right. Sometimes, the only way out of stress is through it right. We can't always pause. We can't always step away from what's stressful, but being mindfully aware of the stress and making a choice about how to move through it is completely different than just mindlessly pushing through something, not even realizing how stressed you are until you explode, right?   

Robyn: So I don't do that all the time. That's my hope, is that I can monitor and modify my level of energy and arousal, right? And that's what I'm hoping to develop in kids as well, right, their eventual ability to sometimes be able to monitor and modify so as we would move through this kind of sequential treatment planning, which, of course, never goes in actual order, we shift in and out of these steps, right, sometimes in one session, Sometimes over the course of a, you know, treatment experience weeks or months, right? But as we would move through being with energy and arousal, and then me kind of strategically shifting states and energy and arousal, and then adding is starting to add in language and building awareness and really growing that Owl brain. Eventually, kids and I would start playing games where we were very deliberately exploring these different states, it would start to really develop and expand sensation and feelings language and vocabulary, so that we had the words to really explore and describe these different states right again, we would make sure we stayed very non-judgmental and compassionate and curious towards these different states, different energy states, our Watchdog and our Possum, or whatever language we were using, right? We would give so much gratitude to our watchdog brain for keeping us safe, and we promised the watchdog that was okay to rest so only needed to work as hard as it really needed, but we started to approach it very directly, very explicitly. We start to bring in the owl brain. We'd start to bring in that self-reflection.    

Robyn: Now, if you're listening and you are thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, my child will not self-reflect the second I started to talk about our Owls or Watchdogs or Possums. Second I talked to help, try to help them notice their own experience. You know, their owl brain flies away. And, yeah, I get that right, like, I get that completely. I get that completely. And what that means is that their Owl brain is still not quite strong enough to be able to pause and notice. The truth is, is that Watchdog and Possum energy, or dysregulated energy, is uncomfortable, and it not only is it uncomfortable, but we've all learned that it's bad, And bad behaviors come from dysregulated energy, and then we get in trouble. So there's all sorts of reasons why it is very, very, very hard to pause and notice Watchdog and Possum energy. And when we pause and give attention to Watchdog and Possum energy, it can become too overwhelming, and then dysregulation increases even more, right? So all that means is we still have a ways to go and really growing the Owl brain, really growing the building blocks of developing the capacity to both monitor and modify so that it's not a behavior problem if your child's refusing to monitor and modify it's a developmental lag, right? They're still really, really, really developing the nervous system and the brain integration to be able to have that self-reflective capacity and tolerate being uncomfortable, which is also an Owl brain skill.    

Robyn: Okay, so when kids can do that, when they are starting to be able to monitor, modify, and we're learning about sensations and language or feelings, that means sensations and feelings, and we also start to learn about the kinds of thoughts that come from the Watchdog and the Possum, right? Because that's another great way to notice that your Watchdog and Possum is getting really active. I actually tend to be pretty thought-dominant. Meaning, if I'm going to notice a cue or a clue that I'm starting to get dysregulated, I actually really notice my thoughts. First I start to notice my thoughts that are getting all or nothing language. I get overwhelmed. Thoughts things like this will never get better. This is too much. I can't do this right? Of course, there are sensations and feelings that go along with those thoughts, but I tend to be thought-dominant. I kind of my doorway in is through thoughts and cognition, and then from there, I can slow down and recognize sensations and feelings. We all tend to have our own unique kind of doorway and one's not really better than the other, okay, so recognizing the Watchdog and the Possum thoughts has been really crucial for me personally, because those are my first cure clue to notice, and that helps me notice soon enough that I can use those monitor and modify skills that I have.    

Robyn: So if you're a member of the club, we do have actually a Watchdog and Possum and Owl brain thoughts worksheet or handout. So check out the resource library, because that's that's over in there. Okay, so back to kind of how this would unfold when I was actively working with kids in the room. So we, yeah, we'd get to the stage now that we're really very overtly working on monitor and modifying right? We would play freeze tag or freeze dance, and we'd freeze and like Watchdog or Possum poses, right? And we'd giggle and we were silly, and we would notice in our body what, what our body did when we were in our Watchdog or our Possum brain. Okay? And so we're getting more and more familiar with our Watchdog and our Possum. And then we'd sort through different ideas for coping skills and think about what ones really help our Watchdog and our Possum. We'd make music playlists, for example. We'd explore different sensory coping skills. We'd play with lycra and movement and trampolines, right? We really got to know our bodies. And a lot of times, because of where kids would come to me and their level of dysregulation, a lot of times, we'd already done a lot of this work, we just hadn't been really naming it or articulating it. So I already maybe knew that lycra supports their body regulation, or jumping supports their body regulation. So I kind of already made me know those things by the time we get to the stage. Now we can start to really talk about it. Notice it. We like, Oh, does your body need 20 jumps on the trampoline or 100 jumps on the trampoline? And how do you know that that's the answer, right? Those are always for increasing capacity for monitoring and modifying, okay? This is actually this experience of learning what the cues and clues are of our Watchdog and Possum, and then learning what coping skills, what things help our Watchdog and our Possum feel better, and noticing those things, right? That's the experience that my team and I tried to recreate as much as we ever could with our all about me workbook. Mean there's so much in a workbook that can't create this process, because it's a very dyadic, mutual, co-regulating process to explore these things with kids, right? And a workbook is a different experience. But this was the these were the ideas that we took into for creating this workbook, and we wanted to offer the workbook and create it because I know that a lot of y'all don't have access to really amazing therapeutic support, and so we created this workbook very strategically to help kids get to know their Owl and their Watchdog and their Possum, get to know the cues and the clues. Get to know the types of experiences that help support their Owl, Watchdog and Possum. I mean, of course, a workbook doesn't offer those beginning stage, stages of treatment, right? That experiential co-regulation. That's not something a workbook offers, but the workbook does help kids begin that monitor and modify process.    

Robyn: It gives kids playful and non-shaming language for all of their wonderful parts, right? Because we must de-shame them. Must de-shame these parts in order to be able to monitor them, right? You're not going to notice a part of yourself if you're consumed with shame about it. So kids really need to learn to see their Watchdog and their Possum parts in new ways, with gratitude and compassion, which also, by the way, grows the Owl brain. So there's just all sorts of goodness happening, right? Then kids can learn new ways to support their Watchdog and their Possum parts, right, and then to be proud of how unique that they are. Now, when we do this work with kids, whether we we're doing it in a workbook, or whether we're doing it like in the office and different kinds of ways, or in your family, in your play with it, I mean, however we're doing this work with kids to get to know and notice their Owl, Watchdog and their Possum and know what their owl and their watchdog and their possum really need. Right? Anytime we're doing this work, we have to make sure we're not expecting that doing this work with kids means now they can do it right. Right? Do kids have all of these brand new skills the moment they complete the work? Of course, not. Of course not. Their Owl brain is still quite fragile, right? They use their Owl brain to think about all these things, but then they, you know, experience some stressors, and their Owl flies away because their Owl brain is still very, very fragile, and they're getting too dysregulated too fast, and can't use all that brilliant info that their Owl brain knows. 

Robyn: Wait what y’all, that's true for me and you too, my Watchdog takes over, right? My Watchdog blames and shames other people and myself. And my Watchdog refuses to use any skills. My Watchdog thinks the skills are dumb, right? Ah, it doesn't want to use them. That's the same way with our kids, right? This isn't because we're bad. It's because back off and attack Watchdogs blame and shame. It's their literal job. They're doing exactly what they're supposed to do. But even if our kids have really fragile Owl brains and have Watchdogs and Possums that take over quickly, it doesn't mean we don't still support the Owl brain when the Owl brain is back, so when the Owl brain is around. Yes, teach Owl brain skills, teach them to monitor and modify, but then be realistic about their capacity to use those skills, about their ability to monitor and modify as they start to get dysregulated, we need the Owl brain to be able to monitor and modify so the sweet spot of dysregulation, is like the "What's Up" Watchdog, or the "La La Land" Possum. It's just kind of the first stage where the Owl is still around. So dysregulation is starting, and we're starting to move to the protective pathway. The Owl brain is still accessible. We need that space to be able to monitor and modify. And as kids develop regulatory circuits, largely through co regulation that part of their brain, the "What's Up" watchdog, or the "La La Land" Possum, gets bigger and stronger, and they can spend more time in that part of their nervous system. Before you know, full blown Watchdog takes over, full blown Possum takes over.    

Robyn: Some kids have a lot of skills, but their Owl brain still is just flying away too quickly. They can't remember to use them. They can't even remember that they have them and even acknowledging that they're dysregulated is too much, right? So when we notice that, what we know is they're just far down the Watchdog or the Possum pathway. They're not being bad or difficult or refusing. They're just far down the Watchdog or the Possum pathway. Okay? So this is when we stop trying to snag the Owl brain, and we shift in to co-regulation. And by by stop trying to snag the Owl brain, I mean, stop trying to snag the Owl brain with the Owl brain interventions. Okay, instead, we want to bring connection, felt-safety and regulation to the Watchdog and the Possum so that the owl feels safer to return, if that makes sense, okay. And so we work even though our kids have Owl brain skills, we understand that the Owl is too far away and we cannot prompt those skills. So we focus on co-regulation, and we trust that every time we do that, that we are strengthening the Owl brain, making it a little bit more likely that the Owl brain is going to be able to stick around just a little bit longer in the future.  

Robyn: Once kids owl brains grow enough to be able to monitor and modify, then my work as a therapist could shift to become more of what we tend to think therapy looks like, which is, you know, projective or symbolic play, you know, play that looks like therapy, play that looks like kids are, you know, processing something hard right now, as I say this, I'm not, I am not insinuating that I think therapy looks a certain way. I do not, but a lot of folks do, and it makes sense that they do. And so I'm kind of just like leaning into that, that we tend to think therapy looks like going in and tackling the hard stuff, whether it be through talking about it or through playing about it, right? So once we really strengthen their Owl brain, grow their capacity to monitor and modify, grow their capacity for their Owl brain to stick around, even if their Watchdog or their Possum is getting slightly activated, that's when therapy can maybe begin to shift and look a little bit more like what we would think therapy looks like projective or symbolic play, maybe cognitive or narrative therapy, right? Whether kids are talking about it, reflecting on things like really, using our Owl brain skills right.   

Robyn: Now, sometimes I would still use a lot of these ways that we were supporting regulation, right? So use those things as we get to this, like new stage of therapy. So for example, you know, I'd have kids kind of stand on their head or jump on the trampoline while they were maybe drawing parts of their trauma narrative, right? Or we'd pick out music to play in the background, right? We would use all these things that we now knew, helps their window of tolerance be a bit bigger, helps really support their Owl brain so that they could do the really hard, hard work of therapy. So y'all why this episode, especially for I know that so many of you have kids who's really aren't at the stage of monitoring, modifying yet. Well, I want you to keep your eyes peeled for opportunities to playfully teach monitor and modifying. If you know that noticing and then doing something deliberate to change is what self regulation is, you can keep your eyes peeled to talk about when you notice your own level of activation, and do something to change it, right? So we can bring these experiences more out into the open, and that's good for us, and that's good for our kids, right? And if you can remember that simply because kids starts to develop these skills, right? Maybe you start to teach them skills for monitoring and modifying, right? You're going to remember, because of this episode, that just because they have the skills doesn't mean they'll be able to use them the same way I just because I have. Lot of skills I don't always use them, right? So again, keep your eyes peeled for opportunities to teach monitor and modify. And also keep your eyes peeled for examples, for moments where you can see your child is monitoring and modifying. Okay, now that you know what to look for, you might be able to see this skill more often, or more frequently than you think is even there. And that is super encouraging. Okay? It helps us see the way that our kids brain is continuing to integrate. And it's always, always, always good to notice these moments, because a lot of moments are really hard. And so if we can notice these small things that let us know, oh, change is happening, that brings us hope, that reminds us we're on the right path that keeps our own Owl brains going and willing to keep doing the really, really, really hard stuff. 

Robyn: So I know we talk so much about co-regulation here on The Baffling Behavior Show it is crucial. We cannot skip to teaching skills and focusing on monitoring and modifying and expecting our kids to be able to do it. Co-regulation is still kind of king, right? But co-regulation, when we build that foundation, grows the Owl brain and that self-reflective capacity so that we can monitor and modify. That's self-regulation, okay? And we can work on both, and we need to work on both, okay? So I hope this felt helpful, and I hope this felt clear, and I hope this felt like maybe we filled in some gaps, because I know we do talk mostly about co-regulation, y'all. I think I've told you on the podcast that we're in the middle of some major home renovations because we had a huge kitchen flood, and so I recorded this episode when they were on a lunch break, and I can tell they're coming back for lunch now, so I'm going to take that as my cue to say this episode is winding down. Y'all you know, be sure to check out the free resources on my website. Be sure to scroll back through the podcast and and see you know those 200 plus episodes that are available to support you, and if you need some additional support, we would love, love, love to have you over in the club. Even if the club isn't open. When you hear this episode, it might be open soon, because we're going to be opening the club more frequently. All right, y'all, the pounding is really going I don't know if you can hear it, but man, is it loud, so I'm gonna say goodbye. I'll be with you next week!