Stress Response System {EP 94}

The stress response system, y'all, is foundational to understanding our kids' big baffling behaviors, regardless of the origin of those big baffling behaviors, so maybe you're parenting a child with a history of complex trauma or developmental trauma, maybe you're parenting a kiddo who has some neurodivergence, they're gifted, they have some sensory processing differences, they have a neuroimmune disorder, there are all sorts of reasons that kids and grown-ups do develop a sensitized stress response system, which is what we are going to cover here in today's episode. If you listen to this podcast, or you've read my book, or you're in the club, or you're just downloading the free resources from the free resource hub, you are hearing me talk about the stress response systems, so having us all understand exactly what I'm talking about when I talk about the stress response system feels really important. 

I have learned so much about the stress response system from studying Dr. Bruce Perry's work. Dr. Perry didn't originate the concept of the stress response system, but the research that he has published so prolifically on supporting kids who have very sensitized stress response system is how I've come to know about the stress response system the most, so I'll be referencing Dr. Perry throughout this podcast, if you're not familiar with Dr. Bruce Perry, he's the author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, and he co-authored What Happened to You with Oprah Winfrey. Dr. Perry has developed and created the neurosequential model of therapeutics. He is one of our leading international researchers in childhood trauma and the stress response system. 

So, if we're going to talk about the stress response system, let's get a good working definition of stress here. This definition of stress I have taken from Dr. Perry's work. Dr. Perry writes that stress is simply a demand on one or more of the body's physiological systems. Stress is a demand. Okay, and it isn't inherently good or bad. We think about stress a lot through this sort of negative framework, but stress isn't inherently good or bad, it's just a thing. Some everyday life stressors that we can't ever escape from are things like getting hungry. Being hungry stresses us, and that's great, because that stress sends a message that says, hey, find food, exercising, something that's good for us is stressful. It impacts the stress response system. Things like even mild attachment ruptures, mild misattunement activates the stress response system. They are stressors that require a response. Stressors are normal, they're a part of life. We couldn't ever escape them, and stress and our stress response system helps us notice when something is off, when something has gone awry, when something needs. Some attention to kind of, to kind of bring our body or our system back into balance. 

Now, I think probably most folks would agree that stress is uncomfortable. Again, there's a reason for that, right? The uncomfortableness of stress prompts us to do something about it, that is the entire intention of having a stress response system, but distress isn't bad, it's information, and stress is totally unavoidable, and this really kind of just big part of being human, right. So, what, what we can look at then is the difference between stress that is actually helpful or even facilitates growth for us and in our nervous system versus stress that is damaging or hurtful, Dr. Perry distinguishes between two different patterns of stress, he talks about stress that is one predictable, reliable, and controllable, and that's the kind of stressors that prompt growth strength in the nervous system, and then he also describes stressors that are unpredictable, extreme, and prolonged. Those are the kind of stressors that create damage that cause harm in the stress response system in the nervous system. 

Dr. Perry's research is on early childhood development, and largely on, not exclusively on, but largely on the experience of stressors, and how that impacts the developing brain, and the developing nervous system, and the developing stress response system. We know that babies have stress, and we know that stress isn't bad for them. We know that babies who experience stress that's predictable, reliable, and controllable grow in their stress response system. It is strengthening to their stress response system, whereas babies who have stress that we would call unpredictable, extreme, and prolonged, that damages the health and development of their stress response system. 

Okay, what is the stress response system? Well, it's basically what the body does after the stressor, like in response to it. So we're not going to dive super deep into this, but the stress response system is the hormones and the chemical response to a stressor. The stress response system includes the behaviors that we have as a stress response, so for example, fight or flight behaviors, they're a stress response. This is just one example, just one, or all sorts of stress responses, and oftentimes when we're thinking about stress responses, we're thinking about the observable behavior, the behavior that we can see. What is so helpful when looking at how to help kids with vulnerable nervous systems, big baffling behaviors, these sensitized stress response systems is looking not only at the behaviors that you can see, right? So, like, a fight-flight behavior might be punching or running. Those are the behaviors when we're working with kids with such intensity in their nervous system. 

It is helpful to look beyond the behaviors at what's happening inside, what is occurring inside the stress response system, and what, for example, is contributing to the stress response system being so sensitized in almost all the kids that I've worked with in my career, who have come, you know, come to me, whose families have come to me for support around their behavioral challenges. I mean, I would say all of them had sensitized stress response systems, but I do try to not say things like always. Most of them sensitized stress response systems leads to these behaviors that sort of leave us scratching our heads, going like, I don't know what to do here. 

So, the stress response system is beginning to be shaped and developed early, early, early, like still in utero, and then is really being nurtured and cultivated in those first few months of life. This happens a lot through the attachment cycle, right? The baby has a stressor, a baby expresses that stressor often through fussing or crying, and ideally the baby has a caregiver who responds to their stressed nervous system, who responds to the baby's stressed nervous system and supports that stress in a predictable. Control and reliable and controllable manner. The groundwork for how our nervous system navigates stressors throughout life is laid in those earliest couple months of life. In fact, Dr. Perry talks about how the first two months are the most crucial. Those earliest, earliest experiences have tremendous impact on our developing nervous system, and how our nervous system later navigates just regular everyday life stressors. I mean, y'all, life is stressful. Life is stressful for us grown-ups, certainly stressful for kids, right? I mean, stress is at times it feels kind of constant, but that's probably not true, but you know, stress is about being frustrated, being disappointed, you know, not getting what we want, not getting to do what we want. There are all sorts of things in life unfolds that are quite stressful, our children, your children, if you're here listening to the Baffling Behavior Show, I almost can guarantee that your child likely has a sensitized stress response system. They maybe have what we would call like a very low frustration tolerance. There's this sense that, like, they can't handle anything, have huge explosive reactions to really, really small stressors. Well, that's all about having a sensitized stress response system. Think about your stress response system like a muscle, and think about how we would grow and strengthen a muscle. Right, we've got to stress the muscle kind of in that sweet spot, right, like not too much or not too little. We've got to stress that muscle in order to prompt growth. 

A long time, it feels like a long time ago at this point. I used to run half marathons, and I am not an exceptionally talented runner, but I could finish them, and prepping for that half marathon, right? Like training for the half marathon was a pretty deliberate, intentional act of predictable, gradual, and intentional stress, right? Like, over the weeks I'd run more miles, I'd have longer runs, right, and so I was careful or intentional about not over training and not under training, right, like over training, running too much, or I mean kind of, I guess, if you were like not training at all and you just were like, "I'm gonna go run a half marathon”, and you had no training, and you went out and run 13 miles. I mean, that would be so much stress on the body that it's not prompting growth, right? In a similar, but maybe less extreme manner, let's say I decided I wanted to run a half marathon, and every day for the next four months I ran one mile every day, so I am doing something, but again, it's still, it's not enough stress, right, for me to stress my muscles to facilitate growth, so that eventually I could run 13 miles without hurting myself. 

Overtraining has a similar impact, so if I decided, oh, and for four months from now I want to run a half marathon, so every day from now until then I'm going to run 10 miles, I again, I would hurt myself, right, like I would over train, over stress, and hurt myself, so too much stress leads to injury, whereas not enough stress means there's not going to be enough growth in the system, which will eventually lead to injury too, because there hasn't been the opportunity to really build capacity. 

The stress response system is about having experiences of stress that are well, what Dr. Perry says is predictable, moderate, and controllable. These experiences of stress are titrated, that they're not overwhelming, that they are met with presence and co-regulation at least some of the time, and when developing infants receive co-regulation and support when their nervous system is stressed. They develop a healthy, resilient stress response system. They can experience stressors and have a stress response that kind of matches that stressor and regulate through the stressor, eventually, and move on. 

So, for example, a 12 year old can come to dinner, realize that what they're having for dinner isn't their favorite, feel that disappointment, because, man, no one likes to sit down to dinner and have it be something you don't really like. Like, so they can feel that disappointment, and maybe even say something like, I was really hoping that we were having cheeseburgers tonight, right? Have a stress response, and then maybe get some co-regulation through it, or not. Maybe they're relying on their own kind of built-in circuitry of regulation at this point by age 12, and move on, right? They have a stress response. The stress response does its job, and then they move on. That is an example of a resilient stress response system. But I know, of course, some of you have 12 year olds, or had a 12 year old once who, if they came to dinner and what they were having for dinner was something that wasn't their favorite, that could lead to a chair being thrown. 

Right, so it is a stressor, and that's a really important thing to think about when we're shifting our lens to viewing behaviors through the lens of the stress response system. Is that our kids are responding to a stressor? It's just that, generally speaking, when we're feeling super overwhelmed by their behaviors, what's happening is they're having a huge stress response to what we would kind of objectively call a mild stressor. So, what's a sensitized stress response system? Then, well, a sensitized stress response system is a stress response system that is overactive. It's kind of the like mountain out of the molehill phenomenon, you know, tiny stressor, huge, huge, huge response. This is the result of stress that was experienced as unpredictable, extreme, or prolonged sometimes, man. 

Let's just actually say many times folks with sensitized stress response systems actually have, like, their default nervous system setting set to protection mode. They neuroceive danger first. They assume danger is kind of like protection mode, danger, danger responses in a way, again, like the default, the default mode. Folks with sensitized stress response system, of course, have very impaired regulatory circuits, so the amount of dysregulation that occurs in response to the stressor feels quite disproportionate, and it's also more challenging for that nervous system to return to regulation. 

Now, if you all have been listening to other podcasts, you know that I am talking about the watchdog pathway and the possum pathway, right. These watchdog and the possum are the parts of us that are responding to stressors, and if you're listening to this show, you almost certainly have a kid who has a very overactive watchdog or possum, a watchdog brain that jumps straight to attack mode, or a possum brain that you know goes straight to shut down mode, even in the face of stressors or inconveniences that, again, the rest of us would kind of objectively look at and say, well, yeah, I get that, that's stressful, but it's not that stressful. Now I'm just gonna pause for one second and remind you, all behavior does make sense, so when I'm saying it doesn't seem like it matches the stressor, I'm really thinking about it from the kind of the outside looking in, like we're looking at this kid who didn't get, you know, their favorite dinner, and now they're throwing chairs. We can kind of objectively speak from the outside looking in, like, whoa, huge stress response, tiny stressor, but also remember that we know neurobiologically that the stress response matches the inner experience, so the extreme stress response matches what the child's inner experience is, so in that way it actually isn't a mismatch, and if this feels like new information you haven't really heard before, I want you to check out my podcast episode called All Behavior Makes Sense. I will make sure that gets linked in the show notes. It is episode 190 something. 

Okay, so if we turn our attention back for a minute to Dr. Bruce Perry's work and his research does indicate that the experiences in a child's first two months of life have a disproportionately enormous impact on long-term health, meaning disproportionate, like it's these two months, and it impacts like everything about this developing child's future. I want you to hear that not as overwhelming or as hopeless. If you know you're parenting a child who had a hard two months, you know, first two months of life, I don't want you to hear that as hopeless. There's so much we. Do to heal and strengthen the stress response system, so I don't want you to hear that little statistic or Dr. Perry's research as overwhelming or hopeless. I want you to hopefully hear it as helping you make sense of what is happening for your kiddo, and maybe also actually even for yourself, developing infants need predictable stress, followed by repair and co-regulation, and this is extremely crucial. Long before they would ever have memories of the stress that they're experiencing, simply because we don't have recall of an early experience doesn't mean that that experience isn't stored in our memory networks and hasn't impacted the development of our stress response system, so it might be helpful or useful to just consider this. 

Consider what were the first two months of your child's experience like. What were the first two months, maybe, of your experience like? And also remember that this isn't only about quote unquote bad parenting. Plenty of parents are doing a great job and parenting in absolutely the best way we could ask them to, but because of some things that are happening for the infant, or because of some things that are happening between the infant and the parent and their relationship, that things are a little tricky, and that the infant's not receiving the co-regulation that they really need for brain and nervous system development, but again, it's not for lack of trying. Sometimes there's just things that get in the way of the parent and the infant kind of syncing up in a way that allows the infant to really receive the co-regulation that the parent is offering. Okay, so let's shift to talking about trauma and toxic stress for a moment. Dr. Steven Porges says that trauma is anything that disrupts our capacity to feel safe, and I prefer to use that definition of trauma. I don't like to get into dialogs about what trauma is more or less impactful or valid. Trauma is unique to the person who experiences it, and Dr. Porges says it is anything that disrupts the capacity to feel safe, so trauma can be the big things that we often think of: abuse, neglect, significant loss, medical trauma, adoption, institutional care, a global pandemic. Dr. Perry goes on to talk about toxic stress, not just about trauma per se, but toxic stress, and again, his definition of toxic stress is stress that is extreme, unpredictable, and prolonged. So, yeah, trauma can be the big things, the things we usually think of, but trauma can also be some of the quote unquote small things. 

Now, again, I'm not attempting to quantify or make one bigger or smaller than the other, but it's true that as humans, when we think about trauma, we think about these big, big, big events, but less intense and more frequent overwhelms to the nervous system can absolutely still have a traumatic impact. Now the reality is that being misattuned to, being missed, falling out of connection can be experienced as a tiny little disruption in the nervous system. These disruptions aren't bad, right? We're actually supposed to experience missed attunements, fall out of connection with one another, because it's actually the repair that is the real primary building block of secure attachment, strengthening the stress response system, all that good stuff, but a lot of the kids that I've had the deep privilege of working with have experienced what I would call like traumas of being repeatedly not seen and known. This happens, of course, in more classic examples of abuse or neglect. I've worked with a lot of kids who were experienced orphanage care. I've worked with a lot of kids who experienced some pretty profound neglect in their earliest days, months, years. 

So there again, it's kind of easy to map over that, like the trauma of not being seen or known, but. But the more and more and more we understand about the stress response system and the development of the stress response system and the attachment system, the more we're understanding that micro moments of being unseen or not known can accumulate and contribute to trauma or toxic stress in the nervous system. This is especially true for folks who hold marginalized identities, right? Folks who, you know, hold marginalized identities related to race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and neurodivergence. Holding a marginalized identity is by definition having experiences of being unseen or unknown, and when those experiences accumulate, that is trauma and toxic stress. 

Dr. Perry wrote a quote in his book, "What Happened to You, that I just think is so perfectly stated, I don't want to attempt to summarize it. I'm just going to read you this quote. I'm pretty sure it's on page 220 of what happened to you. Dr. Perry writes, if you don't recognize the built-in biases in yourself and the structural biases in your systems, biases regarding race, gender, sexual orientation. You can't truly be trauma-informed. Marginalized peoples, excluded, minimized, shamed are traumatized peoples because, as we've discussed, humans are fundamentally relational creatures. To be excluded or dehumanized in an organization, community, or society that you're a part of results in prolonged uncontrollable stress that is sensitizing. Marginalization is a fundamental trauma. In his words, what Dr. Perry is reminding us is that humans are relational and being excluded, being unseen, even when it isn't overt or even explicitly intentional by others, is damaging to the stress response system. 

Okay, so how do we recognize a sensitized stress response? Well, you probably know how to do that, which is why you're listening to this podcast. Generally speaking, I just think about like big, big, big reactions to what again we'd objectively say smaller stress stressors. It feels like there's a mismatch, and I don't use that word to mismatch with any kind of judgment, because I know that they actually do match internally, but from the outside looking in, there looks like there's a mismatch, there's poor frustration tolerance, maybe impulsivity, aggression, shutting down behaviors, right, these are big stress responses to a stressor, it's just that if they're troubling us, it's probably that that stress response system is sensitized, so what do we do? How do we support a sensitized stress response system? The path forward is essentially always the same kind of regardless of what quote unquote caused the sensitized stress response system, and the reality is, is that some of you listening don't know the origins of your child's sensitized stress response system. It feels like they're just that way, and you are probably right about that. Like, there isn't always this identifiable cause. If we can identify the cause, great, because we can do some things to support that, right? Like, if I know there's a neuroimmune disorder, I can treat that. If I know there's a history of trauma, I can offer treatment for that trauma, right? But we just sometimes don't know. Sometimes we just know our kid has a sensitized stress response system because we see it and experience it, and we just don't know why. But regardless of the why, the path forward is co-regulation, connection, presence, and felt safety. 

Typically, the first step in strengthening the stress response system is actually to rest, sort of like if you hurt yourself, the first thing you do is rest, you'd stop using your broken arm, or you'd stop walking on your broken ankle, right. The first thing you do is rest, and then eventually you would start to reintroduce the stressors. Eventually, you would start to strengthen that stress response again. What I have seen to be so common, and this makes so much sense, so common in parents of kids with really sensitized stress response system. It's just this really intense frustration about how developmentally my kids should be able to handle this, right? Like, my eight year old should be able to handle this, or my 12 year old, or whatever, and I get that and. It is justifiably frustrating, and there is righteous grief under that, and there is also the reality that they simply can't; their stress response system isn't yet resilient enough to handle doing that homework or eating something that's not their favorite thing, or you know, working on homework after they've had a long day at school, their stress response systems just simply not strong enough yet, and we can't punish, we can't shame, we can't criticize, we can't hold better boundaries in a way that will increase, you know, strengthen their stress response system, but we can be very deliberate about strengthening their stress response system, kind of in general. 

This entire podcast is about strengthening kids' stress response system and our own too, right? Like, we talk a lot about our own burned out or overstressed stress response system. So, I'll direct you to a few very key places, but again, kind of overall, all the episodes on this podcast are about strengthening the stress response system. I have a podcast series about strengthening the foundation of the brain that's based on Dr. Bruce Perry's work and how he looks at how experiences that are rhythmic, repetitive, relational, and somatosensory are supportive of strengthening the stress response system. Co-regulation strengthens the stress response system. There comes a point when we can be intentional about strengthening the stress response system, kind of raising the bar. And I have an episode all about that. I also have master classes in the club about all these things, we actually have a whole, like, maybe six videos all about strengthening the foundation of the brain, rhythmic, repetitive, relational, somatosensory experiences, doing that kind of brainstem, lower brain work to help kids strengthen their stress response system. 

I have a masterclass, all about, you know, literally, I think it's called strengthening the stress response system, you know, kind of what are the next steps after we've quote unquote rested, or we've, you know, removed demands or lowered demands. How do we know when it's time to move forward and start that strengthening process again? I have a short podcast about looking at specific behaviors like baby talk, regression, lying, and stealing through the lens of the stress response system. And then I have an expanded masterclass on that over in the club. I'll make sure that podcast gets linked down in the show notes. And how we can look at these very specific behaviors through the lens of having a sensitized stress response system, much of how the very first step is doing exactly what we're doing here right now, which is changing how we see our kids, changing how we see their behaviors, shifting our understanding about what their behaviors mean, and so that we can shift our language from things like my kids, dramatic, manipulative, bratty, their behavior is regressive, they're just liars or sealers, right? We can kind of shift our language away from that to they have a sensitized stress response system, and y'all, that is not the same as overlooking these behaviors. We're not ignoring the behaviors or deciding that they're okay. We're just shifting the way we see the behaviors, because that's going to help us figure out ways to support our child in a way that actually could be useful, and shifting our lens also supports our own nervous system, right? 

Like when we see our behaviors through the lens of the stress response system, we tend to feel a little bit more regulated, and yeah, that's an intervention too, because it's good for me to feel a little bit more regulated, but also I tend to respond to my child just a little bit better if I'm a little bit more regulated, so y'all, there was a lot. This is a dense episode. I'm going to make sure that some of the resources that I talked about in this episode, or some of the other podcast episodes that I have, get linked down in the show notes. You heard me talk quite a bit in this episode about the club, which is the community that I have for parents of kids with big baffling behaviors, and inside the club we do all sorts of things. We have a lot of community and a lot of co-regulation with parents, but we also have a lot of opportunities to just learn more about what's happening for our kids, and we can dive even deeper than what we can in a podcast kind of setting. 

So, if it feels like the what you're learning on this podcast is like really helping you, and also that you would like a little bit more support, or you'd like to dive a little bit deeper, just sort of tuck that away. Remember that that always is an option. For you, should you feel like you ever need a little bit more support, a club is a month to month experience, so there's no long term commitment. You could come check us out, you could come and, you know, do as much as you can in a month and get all the resources you can, and and that's it. And then you could leave the club, so there's no long term commitment to come and experience what's happening in the club, and being in for a month might be all you need, or being in for six months might be what you need, but you get, I guess, my point really is that you get to choose, y'all, I know that these deep dives into understanding the neuroscience isn't, or it doesn't feel like it's instantly kind of moving the needle on helping you help your kids and their behaviors, and it is having these shifts in how we see our kids' behaviors are actually crucial. I mean, they're really non-negotiable, the way they, it changes our brains, the way that it helps us identify strategies and interventions that might actually be helpful, because we'll be addressing what the real problem is. When we think about what's happening inside our kids and their nervous systems, we are, without question, growing our own owl brain, so that we have a stronger stress response system. We have fewer mountains out of mole hills, and over time, then the way that we are with our kids will start to strengthen their stress response system as well. Y'all, as always, I am so grateful that you've tuned in to another episode of the Baffling Behavior Show. You are out in the world doing something super important. You might be here listening because the stress that you're experiencing in your life is in your home and it's with your child, and even still, what you are doing by listening to this podcast, and what you are doing by approaching what's happening with your child and their behavioral challenges slightly different. It matters. It matters more than in just your family. It matters more than in just your child. And I also know a lot of you here are listening for other reasons, maybe you're listening professionally, but the truth is, is that even if you are here listening, you know, because you have a kid who's struggling, you do other things besides just parent, and parents are telling me all the time that the things that they've learned here has shifted how they show up in other relationships as well. So, thank you. Thank you for tuning in again, and I'll be back with you again next week.