How To Care Less About What Other People Think! {EP 184}

Robyn: As humans So much of what we learn about ourselves is through what other people reflect to us, and that starts the moment we're born, that we come to know who we are by seeing the eyes of someone else reflect to us who we are. What's tricky about that is that other folks reflections are never only about us, they're also about them. So we do indeed come to know who we are through the eyes of the other and as human beings who vary social species, it does matter what other folks think about us, right? So, how do we reconcile that it does matter as well as part of like- part of how we learn about who we are is based on what we see other people reflect to us. Like, how do we make that distinction, while also holding at our core, the truth that we're all perfectly precious and wonderful, us, our kids, right? Like, how do we reconcile both truths. I actually don't have a step-by-step process for that, but I did want to start the episode- an episode about how to not care about what other people think by just saying like we can't disconnect ourselves from our core humanity, and we do care about what other people think, that's perfectly normal, right? How can that be true, while also we have really good internal psychological boundaries so that we don't, you know, get overwhelmed or triggered or take what other folks believe about us to be what's actually true?    

Robyn: Let's back up. Let's back up. Without a question, a surefire way to fall down the Watchdog or the Possum pathway is to believe that other people are judging us right, like the second I feel judgment, which includes maybe like some disdain or some implication of wrongdoing. The second I feel judgment, I am going to fall down either the Watchdog or the Possum pathway. Judgment comes from protection mode. Now I'm not saying judgment is always bad or wrong, righ?, But it is true that judgment comes from protection mode. Think about judgment kind of like having a boundary, right? Like, if I'm judging someone else, there's probably some aspect of that that's trying to have some sort of boundary, like between myself and them. Oftentimes, actually, judgment is about trying to have a boundary internally with myself and the parts of me that remind me of this person that I'm judging right? So regardless judgment- think about it like that. Judgments about putting up a boundary. Boundaries are something that we get the power to do and the desire to do, because we have a little moment of danger-danger, right? We shift into protection mode, right?    

Robyn: So if someone is judging me, that means they're in protection mode. I then am gonna kind of shift into protection mode as well, somewhat because protection mode is contagious, but also implicit in judgment is some feeling or sense of rejection, and that is going to shift us, you know, maybe mildly, maybe extensively, into protection mode. Now, what's important to see here is that it's not other people judging us. That's exactly the problem. I mean, sometimes we get good information from that, right? Sometimes other people's judgment makes us go, oh, I guess that's not a cool thing to do, right? And this is all part of being in kind of a social- being a social species, right? But you and I both know that there's plenty of times other people are judging us, and it really isn't valid maybe what they're thinking, or it certainly isn't valid that we need to shift or change or do anything different, right? The judgment we are experiencing from other people that actually isn't what the core problem here is. The problem becomes, if there's a part of us that believes that person is right, or there's a part of us that's worried that that person is right, or some of us have experiences that have taught us that the safest way to be in the world is if other people only think good things about us, right? And some of us have a tendency to kind of, in a way like relinquish our autonomy to believe what other people think of us over what we think of ourselves.    

Robyn: Okay, so let's think this through again, because that was a lot. The problem isn't exactly what someone else thinks. If someone believed that you had purple hair and you don't. And also, not only do they believe you have purple hair, but they don't like your purple hair that also you don't have. You actually probably wouldn't get too riled up about that. You may even just ignore the whole experience, right? Like when folks believe something about us that we know in our core is just 100% not right. We tend to not get quite as activated about it. In fact, sometimes I might even feel a little bit of compassion for that person because they're kind of confused about reality, right? And that actually is really scary. Now I'm talking about something very physical and very easy to define here, right? Purple hair. Someone thought I had purple hair and I don't have purple hair, there'd be a part of me that's like, Oh, I hope that person's okay. But think about it with less physical or less concrete things, right? When somebody believes something about you that's just 100% not true, and you know that it's 100% not true, you know there is an aspect of, like, huh, what's happening in your reality? Like, where are you getting that information from?   

Robyn: There's a lot of common judgments that I run across in my community, a lot of things that folks talk about, like in the club, or that I hear from folks who are sending me emails or respond to me on social media. Right? I'm going to go through them kind of quickly, and then I'll go through them more slowly, one by one, okay? One very common judgment in some way, shape or form, the judgment of you're a bad parent, okay? And that one is painful, right? We make so much meaning out of what it means to be a quote-unquote good parent, that if someone believes we are a quote-unquote bad parent, that feels horrible. Okay, so that's one common judgment I really notice. A second common judgment I notice a lot, is when it feels like other people think you're just condoning or coddling bad behavior, right? And so folks will judge parents for that, like you're just coddling all of this very bad behavior. Kind of the third common judgment that I see frequently, is folks thinking that you're kind of bonkers and just totally making up or exaggerating all of your kids' problems. And then another common judgment, so this is the fourth one, is that your kid's behavior is all your fault. Yeah I hear that one a lot, so let's explore all of these just a little bit more in depth, and then we are going to look at, well, what do we do about this? How can we not care if someone thinks I'm a bad parent, or that I'm coddling my kid's bad behavior, or that my kid's behavior is all my fault, or that, oh my word, I'm making it up, right? How do we not care about that? Okay, so let's go through these common judgments just a little more thoroughly, then we'll move on to that.    

Robyn: All right. So common judgment number one, you're a bad parent, implicit in that is, good parents have well-behaved kids. Bad parents have badly behaved kids. Good parents are in control of their kids. Good parents have what society considers successful children, whereas bad parents are totally out of control of their kids' behavior. Kids are just doing whatever they want, and bad parents have the kinds of kids that society doesn't consider to be successful. Y'all, there is so much to unpack here. One is just the binary good and bad. And this is a very common experience in Western culture, is for there to be no middle ground, no gray. They think something is either good or either bad, right? There's this binary thing, and then we put a moral judgment on good versus bad, right? It's not like a neutral good or bad. It's like there's a moral judgment that accompanies this idea of good versus bad, and we do this in all sorts of categories, not just with parenting, right? So the number one problem there is this binary, right? It's not binary, right? Like parents, sometimes parent well, and parents sometimes don't parent well, right? There isn't this binary good and this binary bad, and then there certainly isn't a direct correlation between quote-unquote good parents have, quote-unquote, good kids, or this idea that, like, good parents are in control of their kids.    

Robyn: Then, of course, we have to ask ourselves, what does good even mean? Like, what has society told us is a good kid or a successful kid, like, what kinds of behaviors, what kinds of ways of being in the world, and who got to decide that right and why? When did it become good that kids don't use their real voice to tell grown ups about how they're really feeling, and who is that actually really serving? Right? These are- I don't have answers to these questions. I just think they are really important things to ponder. Okay, who gets to decide what's a good parent? Who gets to decide what's a bad parent? How does it get to be that binary, and who is it serving to create such a binary judgment system anyway?    

Robyn: All right, let's look at that second common judgment that you're condoning or coddling bad behavior. That parenting with felt safety, connection and co-regulation in mind is actually just excusing or coddling bad behavior almost every single time I teach, especially if I'm teaching a pretty big audience, meaning there's a lot of folks there who aren't necessarily there because they're familiar with my work and they want to learn very specifically about connection, co-regulation and felt safety, right? That doesn't mean they're opposed to it. It's just that they haven't really thought about it that way before. And I would say every single time somebody raises their hand, especially if I show a video of like examples of co-regulation with older kids. Right? People understand, I think, pretty intuitively, co-regulation of an infant. But then when we start to look at bigger kids, because it doesn't look like immediately putting an end to this quote-unquote, bad behavior, right? Folks always ask, well, aren't you just coddling them? That's a tough one.    

Robyn: In Western culture, again, coddling is really seen as this, like kind of personal failure, right? Like we really believe it's important for everybody to take personal responsibility for everything that they do, and that tends to mean blame, right? And actually, responsibility and blame are not the same thing, right? I can take responsibility for my behavior without it coming into, 'Well, I guess I behaved bad because I am bad,' right? I can have responsibility for my behavior be like, whoo. I was really dysregulated. And then the next step is I've got to do some things to help myself get more regulated so that I don't behave bad anymore, right? That's actually what personal responsibility is. But in our culture, we tend to think that personal responsibility means you kind of stop, you never do it ever again. And oftentimes we think personal responsibility needs to include blame or shame. And there's this other piece in our culture where we tend to believe that we're totally in control of all of our behaviors, right? So if we behave bad, it's because we are bad, right?    

Robyn: So when we start to shift towards a parenting model of co-regulation, and connection, and felt safety. Other folks see that, and it looks like coddling. It looks like condoning bad behavior. I have a whole separate podcast about how understanding does not equal excusing. Like if I understand that someone's challenging behavior is about their dysregulation. That doesn't mean I'm excusing this bad behavior. That means I'm seeing, Oh, this person is struggling. They're not a bad person. They're struggling and somehow, well, let's find a way to help that person. If it's my child, maybe it's my, you know, job to try to help them, it might not be my job to try to help someone, and it also might be that their behavior is so bad that it's unsafe, and we've got to, you know, take some steps to put some boundaries in place so people don't get hurt, right? But understanding that that's true, it's not excusing bad behavior. Understanding that that's true simply means I understand what's driving this behavior. That doesn't mean we excuse it or condone it or coddle it. Okay, I'm gonna do a whole separate episode one day about how coddling is not co-regulation. In fact, coddling tends to- when people use that word, coddling, the kind of behavior that they're describing tends to be a behavior that actually comes from protection mode.     

Robyn: So that third common judgment was other people thinking that you're kind of bonkers or totally making up or exaggerating all your kids problems. Right? Either it can seem like you're concerned about behavior that no one else is concerned about, or nobody else sees, or you're describing your kid's behavior through the lens of the stress response system. And other people are just like, yeah, whatever, your kid is just a pain. Your kid is just bad, right? So they think that you're kind of bonkers, that you're not seeing things correctly. And I see this a lot in kids who part of their stress response is maybe to mask or people please. So when they are in stressful situations, maybe they're at school, or they're, you know, out in public, or they're around other adults, their stress response of masking or people pleasing, you know, has them being in the world in a way that other folks actually really like, right? They find these kids really endearing and wonderful, right? And then you as a parent are like, actually, I'm having a lot of struggles with my kid, or actually, I think my kid is really stressed at school, and their lack of bad behavior is actually still a stress response, right? And people think that that's bananas, right?    

Robyn: I have known parents whose you know, folks in their community, their kids school, therapists even, have overtly accused parents of making their kids problems and behaviors up for some sort of secondary gain. Now it is true that that does happen sometimes, but that happens so rarely, right? That really, as a professional, my default needs to be, I believe you, unless something you know, again, suggests that there's a real, great reason not to. But as a professional, my presence, my stance needs to be, I believe you. If you're listening to this as a professional, let me just offer up to you the idea that it might be one of the most important thing you bring to your clients, trust in them. Trust that the way they're experiencing the world is accurate for them, right? Trust them. Okay?    

Robyn: And then how about that fourth judgment, that your kids behavior is all your fault. I mean, you all hear this one so much, right? And this, again, is directly related to the idea that parents are in control their kids behaviors, and we're responsible for our kids' behaviors. They're our fault. Make no mistake, you absolutely have a lot of impact over your kids' behaviors. That's why you're listening to this podcast. If you didn't have any impact, you wouldn't even be listening to this podcast. You wouldn't have read Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors, nothing, right? Why would you do any of those things if you didn't think you had impact, we have impact but not control. Actually, do you have a podcast called that as well. How you have impact but not control. You have, of course, both positive and negative impact, right? I was recently talking with Being With students about how to respond when parents shame themselves, right? When parents are in their office or working with them, and the parents are saying, I know I'm terrible. It's all my fault. You know? How do we respond to that? Sometimes I do work with parents who are so dysregulated themselves that there is just no ignoring the fact that the parents dysregulation and the parents behavior is indeed having a negative impact on their kid. There's just no denying that, and telling a parent who says, it's my fault, I'm causing this, that they're not is actually only going to make us not very trustworthy.    

Robyn: Now we don't have to use words like fault or blame, because that's not it. Again, we talk about impact like yes, what we do and how we behave and the way we are with our kids absolutely impacts them positively and negatively, and sometimes, yeah, we just can't ignore the fact that, as a parent, my behavior is having a negative impact on my kid. I mean, y'all, my dysregulation and my own behavior has had a negative impact on my kid. For one, I started parenting at the age of 26 if you consider, you know, in utero stages. I mean, I definitely had not figured it all out yet right when I was 26, certainly at age 26 a lot of my own stuff was still really impacting me and how I was in the world, and certainly how I parented in a much more prevalent way, much more significant way, than it is now, 18 years later. Additionally, my little family has had its share of quite significant crises and stressors, some of which I've told you about, like episode 99 and actually that whole series on neuro-immune disorders, 99 was kind of my story about having a family member with a neuro-immune disorder. 98 was when my husband came on and we interviewed him, right? So I've told you about some of my family crises and some of which I would never talk about publicly, right? I mean, do I ever act in a way that will have a long term impact on my child, yes. Do I have deep sadness and regret for that? Yeah, for sure. Do I blame myself for this? Well, sometimes, I guess I do, but I try to be with myself with compassion. I try to see how my husband and I have done generations worth of healing in one generation, and hopefully my kid is gonna have to do a lot less.    

Robyn: Do I wish I could have figured this all out a lot sooner? Yes, while I behave badly for the rest of my life, yes, sometimes, yes. Anyway, that could be a totally different episode for sure, right? How we do generational healing while we're parenting, and how, for a lot of us, we just can't do it quite fast enough for it to not have an impact on our kids. And that's just a reality. I'll have to do another episode on that. But what I want to go back to is this truth that your kids behavior is not your fault. You have impact, not control. You can acknowledge the ways you've impacted your child and how your child struggles without collapsing into shame. That's what responsibility is. But people will believe from now until forever that your kid's behavior is your fault, that you're not strict enough, or you're too strict, that if you just do XYZ. That everything would get better. I mean, everybody thinks they know how to solve your problems, right? And they're usually overly simplistic, or things you've tried before. From now until forever, people are going to think that you're exaggerating how traumatic it is to parent a child with attachment, trauma, vulnerable nervous systems, baffling behaviors, that's not ever going to change. So how do we not care? How do we not care?    

Robyn: Well, number one, we continue to practice strengthening our psychological boundaries. Back in episode 115 I brought you an episode with a guest, Juliane Taylor Shore, and we talked about the concept of psychological boundaries. We actually were talking about that with regards to our kids. How do we have psychological boundaries when our kids have a lot of verbally aggressive behavior, they say awful things to us. How do we strengthen our psychological boundaries around that? We can strengthen our psychological boundaries with regards to other people as well, right? Y'all other people's judgments of you, me, us, is 95 or more percent all about them and very, very, very little to do with what you're actually doing. Okay? All of us experience reality through our own very unique lens. All of us, what we think about things and other people is more about us than it is about them. That's true when you're judging people. It's certainly true when other people are judging you. Strengthening those psychological boundaries is going to help you keep your X ray vision goggles on, right? They help us to see other people's beliefs about us and other people's judgments about us as protection and a projection of their own inner world. If this feels like a new concept to you, I want you to head back to Episode 115.    

Robyn: Actually, I think my most listened to episode, which is really saying something. Folks have really resonated with Juliane's ideas about psychological boundaries, especially when you're in relationship with folks who say things that you simply just cannot control, whether that be your kid, or your mom, or your next door neighbor, or your kid's teacher or whoever. Julianne has a new book called, Setting Boundaries That Stick, that really explore all aspects of boundaries, psychological boundaries is just one of them. And actually, since I outlined this episode- between when I outlined this episode, when I'm recording it today, I have had a conversation with. Sue and Ann over at Therapists Uncensored. Y'all had them on the podcast. What was it, two months ago, when they released their new book? Y'all know the podcast, Therapists Uncensored with Sue Marriott and Ann Kelly. If you don't, you're going to want to check it out. They're phenomenal. Anyway, Sue and Ann just asked me if I wanted to do like a podcast episode swap. So I gave them an episode they're gonna play on Therapists Uncensored. And they gave me an episode I'm gonna play here on the Baffling Behavior Show. And it's an episode with Juliane. Y'all loved her episode about boundaries so much that that's the episode I picked for them to give to me a brand new episode from Juliane. She was on Therapist Uncensored, like years ago, and she was on my podcast, I don't know, a while ago, at least a year ago. So this is a brand new episode of Jules since her book has come out.    

Robyn: I think I'm gonna play that on the podcast next week, but I'd have to go look at the calendar, but I'll play it soon, so that you can get another kind of soiree into the idea of psychological boundaries. Okay, so number one, how do we not care? We strengthen our psychological boundaries.    

Robyn: Number two, keep practicing that self-compassion, y'all, being judged hurts. Judgment hurts. Even when we have strong psychological boundaries, it hurts. It's gonna always hurt, and it's okay to notice and acknowledge that. To talk about noticing and acknowledging before we get to self-compassion is these really crucial steps and trying to stay regulated in the face of somebody else's dysregulation, right? It's okay to notice that somebody's judgment of you hurts and acknowledge that it's true, like don't shame yourself or say something like, This shouldn't bother me. I should have better psychological boundaries. Don't do that. Just notice it. Notice that it's true. Acknowledge that it hurts, and be with that hurt right. If you can be with your hurt, you will feel better. And big bonus, self compassion actually strengthens our psychological boundaries. I have oodles of episodes about self-compassion. I'll put the some links to some in the show notes, but also just go to robyngobbel.com/podcast and put self-compassion into the search bar, and you'll get all my episodes where I talk about self-compassion. Talk about self-compassion a ton in chapter 11. I mean, I talk about compassion from the first word so the last word of Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors, but I talk about it very concretely, specifically in chapter 11.    

Robyn: A third thing we can do to help ourselves not care so much about other people think, is to examine our own triggers and our own mental models. Mental models is something I explored on the podcast in Episode 91 think I talked about it mostly through the lens of your kids and their mental models, but we can think about our own mental models, right? These are like these, implicitly held beliefs that we don't even question that impact how we see the world, right? Really explore that in depth in chapter 10, in Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors. If you are listening and you're a member of the club, know that we have a couple videos about our triggers and mental models in the club, right? We have one called going trigger hunting, right? Y'all, it is so painful for someone to believe that we are not good. It's so painful, but it is extra painful when there's a part of us that believes that too, right? And so it awakens our own shame and awakens our own pain, and it awakens the experiences, the painful experiences, when we learned that that might be true, right, that we are not good. So examining our own triggers and our own mental models and integrating them is really crucial to getting to a place where you care less about what other folks think about you.    

Robyn: So what do we do about people who are regularly hurling judgments at us? I mean, the first thing you got to do is decide if you need to address it, like, is this your best friend or your parents or the person at the grocery store checking out your groceries. If it's your best friend or your parent, once your Owl brain is back, you can follow back up with your loved one and say something like, I know you love me, and I know you care about me. I'm so grateful. When my child is dysregulated, what I need from you is... and then tell them what that is. Maybe it's, when my child is dysregulated, what I need from you is to quietly slip away. What I need from you is to bring me a drink. What I need from you is to make sure you're safe, but then step away and you can go on to say things like, I know you're worried about us. I'm worried too. I've learned a lot about behavior and what's causing these issues, and I feel good about the approach that we're taking. Sometimes it's really, really hard, and I could really use your support. Now, here's the thing, y'all, if your child had a rare medical condition, you wouldn't take your family's opinions on treatment. You would take your doctors. You would try to trust yourself, because you're the one doing the research. And this is not different. Your child has a rare nervous system condition that almost no one understands. On top of that, most folks working with kids are using outdated ideas about behavior and what behavior really is.    

Robyn: So if possible, find people who reflect what you know is true, and not necessarily folks who are committed to thinking that you're always doing it right. In an ideal world, we have folks who can say hard things to us, like, Hmm, I don't know if that was the best idea or Hmm. I'm not sure that's in alignment with your values about how you want to parent, right? We want folks who are brave enough to say things like that, but we also want to be in relationship with folks who believe that parents know their kids better than anyone else does. Right? This is the core of the work that I do, right that I really believe. I know a lot about the neuroscience of behavior, and it's always evolving. So I'm always trying to learn more and keep up with it and update things when I get it wrong, right? But this is my literal job to know about the neuroscience of behavior. You know your child, and together we get to put our noggins together. And I think that's really darn cool.    

Robyn: When I was a young adult, I'm gonna tell you one last little thing, and then I'm gonna sign off, because this episode got a little long. When I was a young adult, like ages 17, 18, and 19, I participated in a youth performing arts activity called Drum and Bugle Corps. If you march Drum and Bugle Corps, or you know what Drum and Bugle Corps is, send me a message! Tell me what you know about drama bugle corps. Tell me if you marched one and when. I marched the Glassman in the late 90s. For those of you who know, Drum and Bugle Corps is, anyway, because of a few dynamics in the activity during the specific years that I marched, it was not uncommon for the drum corps that I marched with to get a lot of criticism, and sometimes it would come very directly at us, and sometimes we would just read it online. This was like the internet was, nothing like it is now, but you could go to like news groups. Is that what they were called? And what our core director taught us how to respond to folks who were critical or rude is something I've taken with me for the rest of my life. And what he taught us, remember, we were 17, 18, 19, years old, what he taught us was to just reply, thank you! You have a very nice drum corps, right? So if somebody was rude to us, like or gave us feedback that we thought was kind of ridiculous, just, you know, extend some gratitude for their thoughts, tell them that what they're doing is great right now. We had to do it authentically, okay, and this was a nuance I didn't understand when I was 17, but this only works when you're not being snide or sarcastic, but to just be like, Thank you, you're doing a great job.    

Robyn: So I try to think about that. Now, do I do that all the time? No, but I do try to think about that when I'm receiving judgment from folks, right? Like, well, thank you for your opinion. You have a very nice drum corps. It's sort of a mantra I have in my mind, you have a very nice drum corps. So maybe that can be something that becomes yours as well. When folks are being judgmental or critical in your mind, you can think, thank you. You have a very nice drum corps. And maybe that will be something that brings you just a little moment of delight, that maybe that'll be a moment where you bring me to mind, or somebody else who believes in your infinite worth, right? Somebody else who holds you in compassion, because that, y'all, that is gonna help you stay in connection mode, that is gonna help you strengthen your psychological boundary. That is going to help you ultimately not take as truth what other people believe about you. Thank you. You have a very nice drum corps.    

Robyn: All right, y'all this episode got long. I've been trying to keep my episodes under 30 minutes, especially for the for the team that is editing and taking care of my podcast, but also I know that y'all are busy and don't always have time to listen to a really long podcast. So this one got a little bit long. I'm super sorry about that. I am going to go and put on my calendar to add in the replay of Julianne Taylor shores episode about boundaries that I just got from therapists uncensored today. Okay, I'm gonna go make a note to get that into the podcast feed for next week so you can follow this episode up with that one. In the meantime, you can head back to Episode 115 and learn all about strengthening your psychological boundaries, which will really help you not care so much about what other people think. Wouldn't that be nice? And we can spend more time in our Owl brains, and we can stay more focused on what does our kid need right now? Regulation, connection, felt safety. Simple as that!    

Robyn: It's not simple, I get that. Not simple at all. But if we can create a boundary between what other people thinking about us and what's actually true, we can return our attention back to what really needs our attention, and that's our child and ourselves and co-regulation, and, connection, and felt safety. All right, y'all, I hope you're enjoying the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast and you have four extra seconds as this episode ends, go into your podcast app and rate or review the Baffling Behavior Show. It is the very, very best way to get more folks to find the Baffling Behavior Show. And the more folks that know about the Baffling Behavior Show, the more folks who understand the science of behavior and the science of the nervous system, and the better that is for our kids and for us, and the less hard we have to work. So rate and review the Baffling Behavior Show. If you've read Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors, and you have a free moment and you want to go rate and review that over on Amazon, that is also the best way to get the Raising Kids With Big Baffling Behaviors into the hands of more folks. I have recently learned we have crossed the 20,000 books sold mark. This is unbelievable. So thank you for everything you're doing to contribute to this shared cause we all have of bringing the science of behavior, and the science of the nervous system to as many folks as possible, I will see y'all here again next week!