← The Baffling Behavior Show {Parenting after Trauma}
The Baffling Behavior Show {Parenting after Trauma}
REPLAY: Living with Someone Chronically Dysregulated
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Robin Goble
I finally get to share with you something that I've been working on for a while. Making Sense of Baffling Behaviors is a free audio training for professionals who work with the families of kids with big baffling behaviors. This four part free training is delivered to you again for free right in your podcast app, the one that you're using right now to listen to the Baffling Behavior Show. If you work with high intensity families with a lot of dysregulation and baffling behaviors, you might occasionally, or yeah, maybe even a lot of the time feel overwhelmed or even burned out. Making sense of those baffling behaviors, the kids, the parents, and yes, your own, is the first and most non negotiable step in decreasing burnout, being more effective at your job, and yes, even loving your work again. If you join this training, you'll also get access to a discussion forum that I'm holding over on Facebook and 2 live Q& A sessions with me. This is a pop up audio training, meaning it's time limited. It will start May 5, runs throughout the week and will be available to listen to you until May 12th. That's one week total. I mean there's really no reason not to sign up. It's free, it's offered in a podcast app so you can listen whenever you want. There's no live commitment, just those bonus live Q&As. The link to register is down in the show. Notes robingobel.com bafflingbehaviors Y'all, this is one of my most favorite weeks of the year and I cannot wait to share it with you. Now let's get to that episode that you pressed. Play on. So when your kids behavior is baffling and yours is too sometimes. Yeah, I know. Let's take a break from all the bamboozle here on the Baffling Behavior Show. Hey, hey, hey everybody. Welcome or welcome back to the Baffling Behavior show or the podcast formerly known as Parenting After Trauma. I'm your host, Robin Goble and me and my team, my team and I, I guess my team and I, right, we are finishing up our holiday break. We are definitely back to work, but we always take about 4ish weeks off from putting out a new podcast so that we have a little time and a little space to like wrap up one year and begin another new year. The beginning of the year is always a really busy time here in the business as we are kicking off a new cohort of being with this week. So we have so much to do to get ready for our new students. So we are wrapping up this holiday break from the podcast with a final Replay episode all about living with someone who is chronically dysregulated during this holiday season and these four weeks that we take off from producing a new podcast. I try to choose older podcast episodes that will be supportive or relevant during what can be a time of increased stress or increased dysregulation during this holiday season. And I think especially as we're sort of winding the season up, if you're in the U.S. your kids are going back to school this week, some folks could be having this experience of, oh, my gosh, like, this is it. This is my life. Like living with someone chronically dysregulated is what my life is. And as somebody who can relate to that, there is a relief at times and just being honest with reality that we live with someone who's chronically dysregulated. And it's hard. So this is our final replay episode of this holiday season. And next week, I am going to bring to you an episode where I interview Dr. Tina Payne Bryson. Yep. Dr. Payne Bryson, Co author of books like Whole Brain Child, no Drama, discipline and more. Dr. Payne Bryson is coming out with a new book very, very, very soon, and I had an amazing time connecting with her and interviewing her for the podcast. You are going to love this episode. It will air next Tuesday, January 14th. So until then, here is our last Replay episode. Living with someone chronically dysregulated. I know that the vast majority of y'all listening to this podcast, whether you listen as a parent or whether you listen as a professional, I know that the very vast majority of you live with someone and love someone who sees seems like they're chronically dysregulated. And they might actually be chronically dysregulated. But I also know that living with someone who seems chronically dysregulated, it starts to feel like it's just truth, right? Like they are chronically dysregulated. And the line between seems like they're chronically dysregulated and just straight up are chronically dysregulated can get a little blurry. And I totally get there. I mean, for what it's worth, it is helpful to notice the difference between seems like they're chronically dysregulated and actually is chronically dysregulated. It can be helpful to notice that. But that's not actually what I plan to really talk about today. Even if the person you're thinking of isn't chronically, chronically dysregulated. My guess is that there are periods of constant chronic disregulation. And, y'all, it's exhausting. Absolutely exhausting. Now, real quick, let's pause for a second. If you are the person in your family who is chronically dysregulated, please hear this episode as overflowing with compassion for you. I know that living with somebody chronically dysregulated is second in awfulness only to actually being chronically dysregulated. And some families, maybe you kind of go back and forth. I think that kind of happens in my family, right? That, like, neither of us are immune. Neither of us, meaning me and my husband, are immune from having the experience of kind of being chronically dysregulated, which means one of us is sometimes living with someone chronically dysregulated. So this episode's certainly not criticism of the individual who is more chronically dysregulated, but we're just pausing that experience for a moment and thinking in this episode about the caregiver or the person who is living with that chronically dysregulated person. So, again, if you're the chronically dysregulated person, this episode's not thrown shade. I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise. So we know, right, from listening to the Baffling Behavior show. And if you. This is your first time, welcome, and I invite you to hit play on some of the older episodes. But we know that nervous systems are always trying to match each other, right? That's essentially what neuroception is. And part of our neuroception is seeking out information on the state of the nervous system of the other people were with. And if those folks are dysregulated, our first instinct is to shift into protection mode, shift into dysregulation as well, right? Because it's true that being with somebody who's in protection mode, being with somebody who's dysregulated often is actually dangerous. So we're going to flip into protection mode as well to match them and to, you know, work to keep ourselves safe. That's neuroception. And specifically the between aspect of neuroception. There's an older podcast episode. Well, it's not that old. It was a couple of weeks ago, all about the between aspect of Felt Safety and neuroception. So. So you can scroll back a little bit and find that as part of the Felt Safety series, the between episode, I think it's the third One in the three part felt safety episode, Felt Safety series, part of where we're getting cues of danger or safety from, right, is the state of the nervous system of the person that we're with. So if we spend a lot of time with someone who is chronically dysregulated, chronically in protection mode, it makes a lot of sense that we're going to eventually feel like we're in chronic protection mode ourselves. And while our nervous system, just like everybody else's, is longing to find safety, longing to rest into safety, you know, if you find yourself in protection mode often enough, you're going to kind of start just defaulting protection mode. I mean, that is what's happening with the person you're living with who's chronically dysregulated. They're kind of defaulting to chronic protection mode. Eventually that starts to happen to us as well. Yet my guess is for everybody listening, you very likely might be the person in your home who is tasked with the responsibility of being the most regulated, and that you're being tasked with that responsibility even if you aren't very regulated yourself. There's this expectation, there's this felt responsibility of just continuing to deal with everyone else's dysregulation. And we tend to do one of two things then. One, we kind of disconnect or dissociate from our own dysregulation, or 2, we turn to our own inner resources more than we can turn to CO regulation. Right? There's probably not a great space to turn to for CO regulation if you live with somebody who's chronically dysregulated. So it makes sense that we're turning more to our own inner resources than to CO regulation. Now, turning to our own inner resources, that's not bad. That's what self regulation is. But we were never meant to rely solely on self regulation. Humans aren't. So no matter how old you get, how mature you get, how, you know, strong that self regulation muscle gets, how much CO regulation you've internalized, right? And you can learn all about how self regulation is really just internalized CO regulation if you go back in the podcast archives to episode 43, which is called there's no such thing as Self Regulation. Okay, so you can jump back to that one if that's kind of a new concept for you. Even if we have lots and lots of internalized CO regulation, we have lots and lots of self regulation to turn to and rely on ourselves, it still isn't what we as humans were meant to do always. Just a real quick interruption. If you're loving the podcast, you should go right now to my website. Check out all my free resources. There's webinars, downloadable ebooks, and a huge amount of infographic cheat sheets on so many different topics. Felt safety and boundaries. How to handle lying. What to do if you have a child who seems always dysregulated. How to not flip your lid when your kid is flipping theirs. Steps you can take when your nervous system is fried. What CO regulation really looks like. And y'all, that's not even all. There's more. And my team and I add at this point about one new free resource a month. So you're going to want to check in regularly, see all those free resources and download exactly what you want@robin goble.com freeresources let's go back to the show. I say this with hesitancy as I know that for many of you listening, doing something different isn't possible. Okay, it isn't possible for you to either one, stop dissociating from or disconnecting from your own dysregulation and or it's not possible for you to stop over relying on your own self regulation. And I don't love highlighting parts of your life that might be really hard or impossible to shift or change. But y'all, it's also true that not talking about those things is actually adding more traumatic stress to a situation that's already overflowing with toxic stress. The constant scanning for safety and the constant being surrounded by dysregulation, it's exhausting. And the chronicity of this is eventually going to be experienced in our own nervous system as so much danger that it becomes life threat. And then that's going to push us down the possum pathway. And along with that possum pathway comes feelings of hopelessness. And now y'all, now we've got a feedback loop going. I talked about this in the Felt Safety series as well, right? That as our nervous system starts to have more and more experiences of lack of safety, we are starting to tune into that more and we're neuro ceiving that. And we're kind of neuroceiving our own essentially like our own history of lack of safety that's causing us to feel not safe in this moment. And again, this feedback loop just keeps going and going and going. There's another part of this though that I don't know if I've ever heard anybody else really talk about. There's a rhythm to all Relationships, a rhythm of serve and return. We make energetic serves to someone and we expect to have an energetic return. It's like a relationally energetic game of catch. So imagine an actual game of catch or tossing a balloon back and forth in this nice, gentle serve and return way. That is the kind of hoped for energetic relational rhythm. Now, in an actual game of catch, if you throw too hard, it's hard for the other person to catch. And if you don't even make an attempt to catch it, or it bonks you in the head, or you catch it and refuse to toss it back, well, that becomes a pretty lousy game of catch, right? I mean, just thinking about playing catch like that is irritating. Just thinking about it, to be longing for, like a rhythm of back and forth, serve and return, to be longing for that predictability, and then to not get it, and to not only not get it, but to have it be totally out of your control to try to get. Feels terrible, right? And of course, I'm not actually talking about a real life game of catch. If you're playing a real life game of catch like that, you're probably gonna say, sorry, this isn't fun, and you're gonna walk away from it. That's what's happening in the energetic relational serve and return. When we're in relationship with somebody who's in chronic protection mode and who's chronically dysregulated, that the. The energetic serve and return of relationship feels like the relationship energy is being thrown too hard and you can't catch it. Or it feels like when you toss something their way, they're not attempting to catch it. Right? Or they catch it and they're refusing to throw it back. That's what it feels like to be in relational serve and return with somebody who's chronically dysregulated, and it feels awful. Dr. Bruce Perry's work around strengthening and organizing the brainstem talks a lot about creating experiences that are rhythmic, repetitive, relational, and somatosensory to help heal, organize, strengthen the brainstem. Kids who have vulnerable nervous systems, either early trauma or toxic stress, especially attachment and developmental trauma, they've had their rhythms of relationship disrupted, right? They don't engage in serve and return in the way that we expect. Restoring and reorganizing and regulating these rhythms is a crucial part of working with these kids. In my therapy practice, I focused heavily on experiences and activities that were literally rhythmic, repetitive, relational, somatosensory. And I taught their parents how to support their kids with rhythmic, repetitive, relational, somatosensory experiences. My friend, Marty Smith. Y'all know Marty, right? Marty Smith, occupational therapist. She created an assessment based on Dr. Perry's work to help parents see the aspects of their child that could benefit from some extra support. And many of those recommendations are rhythmic, repetitive, relational, somatosensory. Marty is a pretty constant special guest over in the club, and she has done a couple masterclasses for us. Marty has written a fantastic book called the Connected Therapist, where you can get ideas about rhythmic, repetitive, relational, somatosensory experiences. And Marty has just published, in fact, I didn't really plan this, but now that I think about it, Marty's newest book will be published, Gosh, right before this episode goes live. Her new book is called Sensory Healing After Developmental Trauma, and it's written for professionals. But I think even if you're not a professional, especially if you have some background in beginning to understand regulation and some of Dr. Perry's work, that that book will have a lot of ideas for you and can be really helpful and helping your kids rediscover or discover, really, maybe for the first time time, rhythmic, repetitive, relational experiences, which will then help to create rhythmic, repetitive, relational, serve and return, and relational energetic experiences. I actually do have a podcast series about strengthening the foundation of the brain. It starts back at episode 46. 7. There's six parts to that series. You can also go to my website, go to the free resources page, and you can find all six of those episodes kind of stored together so they're easier to find and to access. So I'm actually getting way off track here. I didn't intend to go this far down this path about rhythmic, repetitive, relational, somatosensory experiences, but that is how I help kids find the serve and return that exists in relationship. And it can be a really great thing to keep in mind when living with somebody who's chronically dysregulated, that part of what's happening for them is that their serve and return has been disrupted. And if we can help them rediscover that with rhythmic, repetitive, relational, somatosensory experiences, that's a fun and playful way that we can practice helping the nervous system shift out of protection mode and shift back into connection mode, y'all, I'll just say again, this is so hard. There is so, so, so much grief in continuing to send a relational serve to someone, someone you love, someone you care about, somebody that you are longing to be in relationship with and not getting that serve sent back to you. There can almost be this sense of Kind of like, where are you? The sense of, like, just searching, longing for that person to be there and to receive your relationship offerings and to send some back to you. It is so unbelievably lonely. And I know that some of you are like me and you. You had a really connected relationship with this person before their nervous system started to really, really, really struggle. And there is so much grief for what has been lost. Right? And that lives side by side with the hope that the ease and the connection and the safety can return. And y'all, I absolutely, of course, believe that there is so much hope. There's so much hope, or I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be behind the microphone. I wouldn't be doing the work that I did. I don't know how I would make it through every single day if there wasn't hope. I believe so much in the hope. But next to that hope, side by side with that hope, is the grief, is the acknowledgment that these experiences are traumatic for us. So I'll put some links down in the show notes about episodes where you can go to have those experiences really seen and validated for you, too. I have an episode called When Parenting Is Traumatic. I have an episode all about the grief in parenting. So I'll make sure that those episodes get linked in the show notes, and you can find them really, really easily. Y'all, I know that living with somebody who's chronically dysregulating is so exhausting, it's demoralizing. We fall onto our own possum pathway ourselves. You might even want to go check out the what to do when youn Nervous System Is Fried episode. If you're finding yourself really stuck on that possum pathway. I get it. I get it. And I told you at the beginning, this probably wasn't going to be a what to do episode, but more of a I see you episode. And I think we kind of need a mixture of both. I know the vast majority of you listening are living with someone chronically dysregulated. And I'm really, really grateful that you press play on this podcast that you come here. And I'm sure there are other places in your life as well to experience portions of a relationship that do feel safe, that do feel connected. And it's pretty wild to think that we can get that through a podcast. But I know because of your emails that we can get that through a podcast. And. And I kept those ideas in mind. I took those ideas and tried to then weave them into the book that I wrote too. Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors that I really wanted as much as possible for the book to be an experience in your life where you can be in relationship with somebody who isn't chronically dysregulated. And I know that these things, I know the podcast, I know the book, even the club. I know these things aren't replacements for actual in real life relationship with the person that you love, right? Offering you that connection and offering you that co regulation. I know they're not a replacement, but it is what I can offer and I'm so grateful that you come here to receive it. You come to the podcast or maybe you've read the book or maybe you're a member of the club. I'm so, so, so grateful. That's where the hope comes from, y'all. That's where. That's where I can see the hope that even when things are hard, you continue to seek out spaces of connection and spaces of co regulation. I'm really honored to be a part of the community that gets to offer that to you. Thank you for tuning in again to another episode of the Baffling Behavior Show. We will be back with you again next week. I hope that you loved that episode of the Baffling Behavior Show. If you did and you're wondering where can I go to learn more or get more support? Or maybe you're a professional and you want to be able to bring this work to your overwhelmed clients. I have got three places for you to go next. Number one, my USA Today best selling book, Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors. A year and a half after publication, Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors continues to exceed our wildest dreams, breaking sales goals and getting feedback that it is changing people's lives. Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook, which I read wherever you buy books online. The second way to get more support is to come and join us over in the club. It's an online community of connection, co regulation, and yes, even a little education. We have over 500 members and you'll gain support from the wisest, most compassionate, most in the trenches with you parents in the world. You'll be able to pick my brain, watch over a hundred different videos and Download the over 50 resources that are uniquely developed just for the club and just for you to bring owls, watchdogs and possums into your family. And if you're a professional, like a therapist or a coach, a teacher, an educator maybe an occupational therapist, a daycare owner, Anyone who supports the parents of kids with big baffling behaviors Hop onto my waiting list for the 2026 cohort of being with. It'll be our fifth cohort of our year long immersion into the neurobiology of big baffling behaviors and the science of connection, safety and co regulation. You'll grow your capacity so that you can hang in the hardest places with families of kids with vulnerable nervous systems and you'll finally get the professional support that you need and deserve to work with the families who keep being told by other professionals that they can't help them anymore. One of my goals is that families never hear that again. We'll be opening applications in the late spring or early summer and we'll be opening those applications only to folks who are on the waiting list. So be sure to add your name to the waiting list over@robingobel.com being with y'all. I'm so grateful to support you and be with you on this journey. Till next week.