If you’re reading this blog or listening to this podcast, my guess is that this isn’t your first experience with a parenting ‘expert.’
If you read this blog because you’re a therapist, this probably isn’t your first experience learning from a child therapist ‘expert.’
The parents and professionals who come to me, my blog, and my podcast are searching for something new.
Listen on the podcast or keep reading!
Something that Makes Sense & Something That Works.
You may have had a felt sense all along that some of the most mainstream ways we support kids and behaviors just didn’t make sense to you.
Or maybe they did make sense but then they just simply didn’t work.
And one thing led to another and now you’re here, with me! On my blog, or listening to my podcast.
Like You…
Like many of you, I also was searching for something that made more sense and that honestly just worked better. I’ve always had the drive to look for relational approaches–to truly understand what is going on underneath behavior–and have been studying attachment since high school.
Also like many of you, I had plenty of experiences of being trained in more behavioral or even just more mainstream approaches to children and behavior.
They Didn’t Work!
My therapy room was destroyed.
I was hurt. Several times.
Something wasn’t right and I knew it right away.
I suppose it was possible that I just wasn’t a very good therapist– and I probably wasn’t– back in those early days. But still. Something wasn’t right.
What I was equipped with– cognitive approaches, child centered play therapy, behavioral interventions and consequences– was clearly not working for the children I was working with.
Or their parents.
They were parents like you- good parents who tried. If those approaches were going to work, these families wouldn’t have landed in my office.
So I did what I do which is I got a bit obsessive about figuring it out.
The Trampoline that Changed Everything
I got lucky and had an officemate and mentor who kept a trampoline in his office. And who didn’t have a lot of time to coddle my ego and just straight up let me know I was doing it wrong.
I didn’t know what to do different but jumping on a trampoline seemed more fun than getting bit– so I was intrigued.
This led me to Bruce Perry- where I learned the science to justify the trampoline in my office (and ultimately a yoga ball, pogo stick, balance board, and an aerial hammock and swing).
Then I discovered the boarder field of the relational neurosciences- starting with Interpersonal Neurobiology, Polyvagal theory, Memory Reconsolidation Theory, and Affect Regulation Theory.
This literally changed everything for me.
Interpersonal Neurobiology
Interpersonal Neurobiology isn’t techniques or tools. It’s not even a clinical theory. It’s a theory of being human.
It has changed my core fundamental understanding of what it means to be human and therefore has given me a map that I can bring into the office and apply to treatment planning.
More than that– it’s given me a map that I can bring into every aspect of my life.
Behavior is Simply a Clue
Behavior is simply a clue about a person’s autonomic state- felt safety, regulation, and their openness- or seeking- of connection.
The tools, techniques, and clinical theory I was equipped with made assumptions about my client’s state of regulation and brain development based solely on chronological age.
Child-centered play therapy makes the assumption that a five-year-old has the regulation and internalized sense of self that was needed to benefit from symbolic or projective play.
A NeuroDevelopmental Approach
Learning about Interpersonal Neurobiology, and especially Dr. Bruce Perry’s Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics, validated for me was that chronological age is largely irrelevant in the therapy room and that I needed to meet my clients- the kids and the adults- in the correct neurodevelopmental space.
For kids and adults with histories of complex and relational trauma, and for many of my kids with really dysregulated behaviors, I wasn’t meeting them where they were.
I wanted them to have symbolic and metaphor play skills that they simply didn’t have.
Yet.
You may have heard Dr. Perry’s catchy phrase that the order of operations is always regulate, relate, reason.
Regulate first.
When I was a new therapist, I didn’t even know what regulate meant.
I had no idea how the autonomic nervous system was related to therapy.
Turns out…a lot. Like…everything.
Autonomic Nervous System
The autonomic nervous system is underneath everything. Certainly behavior.
We want to believe we have a lot of cognitive control over our behavior but really, we don’t. We can work to develop more conscious awareness and control over our behavior, but even still– most behavior is implicit.
People who experienced trauma, loss, toxic stress while their autonomic nervous system was busy developing have had the regulation of their autonomic nervous system impacted.
Ultimately this means that their behavior is pretty baffling, confusing, and overwhelming.
Right Intervention Wrong Time
Child Center Play Therapy or other approaches that support the client in engaging in projective, metaphor or symbolic play is not a bad treatment approach. It’s an excellent treatment approach and provides the safety and the distance for the child to touch distressing memories in a safe space so they can integrate.
Cognitive therapies or approaches that help kids identify thinking errors and coping skills are not a bad treatment approach. Becoming mindful of our own thoughts and making the previously held implicit beliefs more explicit can be an important step in increasing integration.
These aren’t bad or wrong therapies. They just are often used at the wrong time, especially with children with histories of complex trauma.
Complex trauma in early life impacts the develop of the autonomic nervous system, regulation, and sense of self. It impacts the develop of the neurobiology that is needed to benefit from child-centered play therapy.
Beyond Trauma Informed
Complex trauma has always been my area of expertise but studying the Relational Neurosciences has shifted my understanding of ALL humans.
Regulation, felt-safety, and connection- our autonomic state- is underneath all of our behaviors.
We had to start with regulate.
If we have children or clients who have autonomic nervous system vulnerabilities due to trauma or toxic stress, we may have to start with with therapies and interventions that support the lowest part of the brain. The child may need us to stay with those types of interventions for a while.
This might feel frustrating is your child is seven or 10 or 15- and you want them to have age-appropriate capabilities for impulse control, cause and effect, and self-awareness. You want them to have an age-appropriate ‘pause’ before they act so they can make a choice. They may even demonstrate those skills occasionally.
But children with a history of complex trauma who have a shaky foundation of the brain quickly lose their ability to have relational or logical behaviors when their autonomic nervous system is stressed.
Their foundation collapses.
Dr. Perry’s work and the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics shows us that children with a shaky foundation in the brain (brainstem and autonomic nervous system disorganization and dysregulation) need therapeutic experiences that are based in the here and now (not prompting self-reflection or symbolic play) to promote organization and regulation.
This neurodevelopmental lens also helps us make sense of behaviors as a completely appropriate response given the vulnerabilities in their nervous system, as opposed to a behavior problem that needs punished or a characterological problem.
The problem isn’t the child’s behavior. The problem is the disruption of the energy and arousal that is fueling that behavior.
Strengthen the Foundation
If I don’t want to get hurt in a therapy session, helping the child developing coping skills to calm down before they start hitting and throwing things will only be helpful if the problem is that they don’t have coping skills. But this is almost never the case. The problem is that they aren’t regulated
Coping skills are important. But if the child’s energy and arousal is dysregulated to the point that they are rapidly escalating, continually making “mountains out of molehills” or behaving in head-scratching ways that leave adults feeling baffled and overwhelmed, what that child needs isn’t coping skills. They need increased regulation in their autonomic nervous system, which is in the bottom-most and inside-most part of their brain.
Teaching coping skills to a dysregulated child is like focusing on the decorations when you are earthquake-proofing your house. It’s way more important to strengthen the foundation, not nail picture frames to the wall. If the house collapses, it doesn’t really matter if the picture frames didn’t fall down.
So…how do we do this?
Well, I’m glad you asked!
This is what I’m going to focusing on for the next six weeks on my blog and podcast– strengthening the foundation of the brain. I have some great guests lined up, too, starting with a guest interview next week about the Safe and Sound Protocol.
At the end of this series, you’ll have the opportunity to go deeper and get more practical, more hands on with the material, and of course, waaaay more support by joining us in The Club– because strengthening the foundation of the brain will be our focus in The Club October through the end of the year.
If you’re a professional and you’re curious to learn how I’ve incorporated this bottom-up approach inside a traditional hour-a-week outpatient therapy paradigm, I have something special in store for you this fall, too. Stay tuned 😊
Therapeutic Moments
I’ve come to be a believer in therapeutic moments. So much healing and changing can happen– it must happen– outside the therapeutic hour.
I want to empower you to become your child’s expert, to see behavior for what it truly is, and give you the tools to help regulate and organize your child’s nervous system- because that’s when the behavior you are looking for will begin to emerge.
Listen on the Podcast
This blog is a short summary of a longer episode on The Baffling Behavior Show podcast. Find The Baffling Behavior Show podcast on Apple Podcast, Google, Spotify, or in your favorite podcast app. Or, you can read the entire transcript of the episode by scrolling down and clicking ‘transcript.’
Are you searching for a community of parents who get it?Who offer connection, co-regulation?A community where the moment you show up, you feel seen, known, and not alone? We are waiting for you in The Club! This virtual community for parents of kids impacted by trauma (and the professionals who support them!!) opens for new members every three months!We are waiting for you!
Robyn Gobbel: If you're listening to this podcast, which I guess it kind of goes without saying, my guess is that this isn't your first experience with a parenting quote unquote, expert. Or if you're listening because you're a therapist, this probably isn't your first experience with a child therapist, quote unquote, expert, right? Like the parents and the professionals that I know are searching for something that makes sense, something that actually works. And you may have had a felt sense all along that some of the most mainstream ways that we tend to support kids and behaviors just didn't make sense to you. Or maybe it felt like they didn't make sense, but also they really just weren't working. And one thing led to another and now you're here with me, Robyn Gobbel, on the Parenting After Trauma podcast, where I take the signs of being relationally, socially, and behaviorally human and translate that for parents of kids who have experienced trauma. I'm a psychotherapist with over 15 years of experience working with kids who have experienced trauma and their families. I'm also a self diagnosed brain geek and relationship freak. I study the brain kinda obsessively, and even taught the science of interpersonal neurobiology in a certificate program. I started this podcast on a whim with the intention of getting you free, accessible support as fast as possible. So the podcast isn't fancy and I do very little editing. Sometimes you'll hear a cockadoodledoo in the background and you may have already heard a whole lot of clucking hens. If you love this episode, add Parenting After Trauma to your favorite podcast player and share it with your friends and colleagues.
Robyn: You are definitely going to want to head over to my website and get their free ebook I wrote all about the brilliance of attachment. I took everything from my recent six part series on attachment and had it professionally laid out into a beautiful, free eBook. Watching this series go from words into what feels honestly like a work of art was surprisingly lovel- lovely. I hope you'll love it. RobynGobbel.com/ebook While you're on my website, you're gonna want to check out my calendar of upcoming trainings for both parents and professionals at RobynGobbel.com/trainings.
Robyn: Today's episode is sponsored by The Club, a virtual community of connection, co-regulation, and of course, a little education for parents of kids impacted by trauma and the professionals who support them. Right now in The Club, we are in the middle of a deep dive and body of exploration into attachment. So that finally everything you've learned and know about attachment becomes actually useful in your real life. Club members are telling me they've never explored attachment quite like this. The Club is full of the most a-mazing parents and professionals honestly I've like I've really truly never seen anything like this. The way they bravely show up for one another and themselves has exceeded what even I thought was going to be possible, especially in a virtual community. If you need to feel seen and to be gotten and understood, we would love to have you. And The Club opens for new members approximately every three months. And we'll be opening our doors again in the fall of 2021. If you head over to RobbynGobbel.com/TheClub, you'll be able to add yourself to the waiting list.
Robyn: So here we are, I'm recording podcasts, you're listening. You're hoping this podcast is different than others, which is why you keep finding podcasts to listen to. That you'll finally get the support and answers that actually make sense and make a difference. Like many of you, I've been searching, and I was searching for something that made more sense and that honestly just worked better. I've really always had to drive to look for relational approaches to truly understand what's going on underneath behavior. I've been studying attachment since high school. But I also had plenty of experiences of being trained in more traditional behavioral or just more mainstream approaches to kids and behaviors. And having a very clear experience, that it simply just wasn't working. My therapy room was literally destroyed. I was hurt several times, and not because these kids were bad, but because something I was doing wasn't right. I knew something wasn't right and I knew it right away. I suppose, it’s definitely possible that I just wasn't a very good therapist. And truly, I guess I probably wasn't right. Like back in those very, very early days, I had a lot to learn. But still, even beyond that, something just wasn't right. What I was equipped with cognitive approaches, child centered play therapy, behavioral interventions and consequences, clearly just was not working for the kid I was working with, or their parents. And they were parents, like you good parents, who tried like, really, really tried hard, right? If those approaches were going to work, those families wouldn't have even landed in my office.
Robyn: So I did what I do, which is that I got a little bit obsessive about trying to figure this all out. I got pretty lucky and I had an officemate and first mentor who kept a trampoline in his office. And he didn't have time, honestly, to coddle my ego. And just straight up, let me know where I was doing it wrong. I didn't know what to do different. But jumping on a trampoline certainly seemed a lot more fun than getting like bit and hit. So I was intrigued. This led me to Dr. Bruce Perry, who you may be familiar with, especially if you've been around the podcast for a little bit because I talked about Dr. Perry and the neurosequential model therapeutics a lot. Right? So Dr. Perry is the author of the book Who Was Raised as a Dog which came out, I'm just gonna say a long time ago. And then the most recent What Happened to You book, the book is called, quote unquote, What Happened to You and co-authored with, with Oprah Winfrey. So Dr. Perry, is where I learned the science to justify having a trampoline in my office. And then that led me to explore and discover the greater field of the relational neurosciences, which includes interpersonal neurobiology, and then theories of polyvagal theory, affect regulation theory, attachment theory, memory science theory and more. And, y’all, this literally changed everything for me. Interpersonal neurobiology is sort of my first discovery after Dr. Perry, and interpersonal neurobiology isn't techniques or tools, it's not even a clinical theory. It's a theory of being human. And it changed my core fundamental understanding of what it means to be human. And therefore, it's given me like a map that I can bring into the office and apply to treatment planning. But also it's given me a map that I can bring into every aspect of my relational life.
Robyn: Behavior is simply a clue about a person's autonomic state, their felt safety, their regulation, and their openness or seeking of connection. The tools, and techniques, and clinical theory that I was equipped that was making assumptions about my client's state of regulation, and their brain development based really almost solely on chronologic- chronological age. What I had validated for me, as I really dove into interpersonal neurobiology, of polyvagal theory, the neurosequential model therapeutics and more, was that chronological age was largely irrelevant in the therapy room, and that I needed to meet my clients, the kids and the adults in the correct neurode- neurodevelopmental space. So for kids and adults, too, with histories of complex and relational trauma, and for many kids with really dysregulated behaviors, kind of regardless of why they were really dysregulated I simply just wasn't me. Seeing them where they were, which is why I was getting hit, and bit, and things were being thrown at me, and my room was destroyed and the same for their parents, right? The parents didn't know any better or different, and neither did I. And so I had to figure it out.
Robyn: I wanted these kids to have like symbolic and metaphor play skills that they simply just didn't have. Yet. I wanted them to have cognitive processing skills and be able to utilize coping skills in a manner that they simply just weren't capable of. Yet. You may have heard Dr. Perry's catchy phrase that the order of operations is always regulate, relate, reason. Regulate first. Honestly, y’all, when I was a new therapist, I didn't even know what regulate meant. I had no idea how the autonomic nervous system was related to therapy and hadn't thought about it since like 11th grade AP bio. But it turns out, the autonomic nervous system relates to therapy a lot. Turns out the autonomic nervous system relates to everything a lot. The autonomic nervous system is like underneath everything, it's way more than just our heart rate and respiration, although that's really important too. Our autonomic nervous system is about the energy and arousal that's fueling us, including I mean, kind of, especially behavior.
Robyn: We want to believe we have a lot of cognitive control over our behavior. But honestly, all we really don't. Like me, you/ Like behavior is largely implicit, meaning behavioral impulses happen way outside cognitive awareness, behavioral impulses are happening much faster than we can pause to think about them. Now we can learn to think about behavior, we can learn to slow behavior down enough that we can make changes. Certainly, we can do that once the foundation of our brain is strengthened to the point that we need it to be strengthened so that we can pull on- pull out those cognitive skills. But for all of us, not even just unique to kids with really dysregulated behaviors or kids with complex trauma histories, for all of us behavior is largely implicit. People who have experienced trauma, loss, toxic stress, while their autonomic nervous system was busy developing have had the regulation of their autonomic nervous system impacted. So ultimately, this means their behavior is pretty baffling, confusing, and overwhelming. And the autonomic nervous system is really busy developing, mostly in utero, and in those first months and earliest years of life.
Robyn: So complex trauma has always been my area of expertise, but study- the study in the relational neurosciences has shifted my understanding of all humans, regardless of their history/ Regulation, felt safety, and connection. Our autonomic state is underneath all our behaviors, and we have to start with regulate. If we have kids or clients who have autonomic nervous system vulnerabilities due to trauma or toxic stress, we may have to stay with regulate longer. This neurodevelopmental lens helps us make sense of behaviors as a completely appropriate response, given the vulnerabilities in their nervous system, as opposed to a behavior problem that needs to be punished or even a characterological problem. The problem isn't the child's behavior. The problem is the disruption of the energy and arousal that's fueling the behavior. If I don't want to get hurt in a therapy session, helping the child develop coping skills to calm down before they start hitting and throwing things at me, will only be helpful if the problem is that they don't have those coping skills. But, y'all, that's almost never the case. The problem is that they aren't regulated. Coping skills are absolutely important. But if a child's energy and arousal is dysregulated to the point that they're rapidly escalating, continually making mountains out of molehills, or behaving in head scratching ways that leave the adults feeling baffled and overwhelmed. Uh huh. Were baffled and overwhelmed y'all. Me and you baffled, overwhelmed. You know what that child needs isn't coping skills. They need increased regulation and their autonomic nervous system, which is the bottom most and inside most part of their brain. It's the first part of the brain to develop. It's the foundation for everything. Teaching coping skills to a dysregulated child is a lot like focusing on the decorations when you're earthquake proofing your house. It's way more important to strengthen the foundation, which is the brainstem, autonomic nervous system. Not nail picture frames to the wall. I mean, if the house collapses, it doesn't really matter if the picture frames don't fall off, right?
Robyn: Okay, so how do we do this? Well, I am, of course, I'm very glad that you asked, right? This is what we're going to be focusing on in the next six-ish weeks or so of this podcast: strengthening the foundation of the brain. And I have some really great guests lined up. At the end of the series, you'll then have the opportunity to go deeper and get more practical, more hands on with the material, and of course, way more support by joining us over in The Club, which is going to be opening up just as we wrap up this podcast series on strengthening the foundation of the brain. Now, this is because strengthening the foundation of the brain is going to be our focus in The Club throughout the end of the year. So beginning in October- so that means that the, you know, kind of broad overview, you'll be able to get here on this podcast, we will be going like feet first, diving in. Is feet first and diving deep the same thing? I mean, when you dive you go headfirst. Anyway! We're going to immerse ourselves in strengthening the foundation of the brain in The Club in October, November, December in a way that I can't really do with y'all on a podcast. So in The Club, we'll be getting super practical, we'll be looking at tools, and we’ll- and then we'll be doing the most important part, which is co-regulating one another. So that we're all regulated enough to be with our kids, whether that's our kids in the office, or our kids in our home that we're parenting in a way that we can actually use these tools and techniques.
Robyn: I've come to be a huge believer in therapeutic moments. So much healing and changing can happen. So much healing and changing must happen outside the therapeutic hour. I want to empower parents to become their child's expert. I want to empower you to become your child's expert. And I want to support therapists so that they can support you in becoming their child's expert, so that you can see behavior for what it truly is: simply a reflection of their autonomic state. And then give you the tools that will help you regulate and organize your child's nervous system. Because that's when the behavior you are really looking for will begin to emerge.
Robyn: So today, we are kicking this off. We are kicking off this- I don't know yet, I haven't counted it out, it's going to be a six or seven episode series on strengthening the foundation of the brain. I've got great guests lined up, you aren't gonna want to miss this. So if you haven't already, hit subscribe to the Parenting After Trauma podcast on whatever podcast player you're listening to this podcast on, you're gonna want to go ahead and do that so that you see when new episodes are released. Which by the way, if you haven't noticed, always happen on Tuesday mornings. So yep, go back, go to your podcast player, open it up, hit subscribe.
Robyn: Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being here, for taking the time to listen to this podcast, for being part of a movement that is not only changing the world for our kids, and specifically our kids with big, baffling, dysregulated behaviors. But honestly, y'all, we are changing the world for everyone. We are at the forefront of making an enormous paradigm shift globally. And we're at the forefront of it because we have to be at the forefront of it. Because what's currently available in the mainstream isn't working or helping our kids. So we're at the forefront. We're changing the world not only for our kids, but for all kids. And I tell you what is super exciting to be a part of that movement and to have you on that movement with me. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast, for tuning in, for sharing it with your friends, and your colleagues, with the grandparents, with the next door neighbors, with whoever needs to hear this podcast. I will see you next week.
https://i0.wp.com/robyngobbel.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Wordpress-Featured-Images-23.png?fit=1000%2C1000&ssl=110001000Robyn Gobbelhttps://robyngobbel.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Logo-WP-Header-300x138.pngRobyn Gobbel2021-08-17 07:10:292023-07-27 12:36:45A NeuroDevelopmental Approach: Right Intervention, Right Time {EP 47}
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