Self-Regulation Tools with Rachel Votaw Ochoa, LMFT

We all find ourselves surprised by how ANGRY our kids can make us.  Nothing can trigger our nervous systems quite like those moments where our kids push our buttons.  Maybe your patience disappears, your heart starts racing, or you find yourself caught in a cycle of parenting stress and reactive parenting.  You are not alone, friend.

In this episode of Sustainable Parenting, I’m joined by my old camp friend, and trauma-informed marriage and family therapist Rachael Votaw Ochoa, LMFT (of the Apricot Oak Podcast), to talk about practical self-regulation tools that can help when parenting triggers show up. Together, we explore how our bodies signal stress, why it can be so hard to stay calm in the moment, and simple ways to reconnect with ourselves before reacting.

Rachel shares easy, accessible strategies including breathwork, body awareness, and emotion labeling that can support calm parenting and parenting without yelling. These tools can help you move from reacting on autopilot to responding with greater intention, even during difficult parenting challenges.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How to recognize the body's early signs of stress and dysregulation
• A simple breathing technique to help calm your nervous system
• Why body awareness is an important part of gentle parenting
• How labeling emotions can reduce overwhelm and create space for choice
• Small daily practices that can help you become a dependable calm presence for your family

If parenting burnout and dysregulation, parenting stress, or parenting triggers have been making it harder to show up the way you'd like, this conversation offers simple tools and encouraging reminders you can begin using today.

🎧 Tune in for a thoughtful conversation about self-regulation, calm confident parenting, and finding more ease and connection in your parenting journey.

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Transcript

Meet Rachel Vota Achoa

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today, I'm so excited to introduce our guest, Rachel Vota Achoa. Rachel is a trauma-informed marriage and family therapist, podcast host at Apricot Oak, and someone who is deeply passionate about helping people move from surviving to truly flourishing. Rachel, we're so excited to have you here today to give us some insight into self-regulation tools when we get triggered.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Thank you so much, Flora. I love having this time with you. I'm so glad to be here with you today.

The Parenting Approach Behind The Show

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Hey friend, welcome back to the Sustainable Parenting Podcast, where we bridge the gap between overly gentle parenting and overly harsh discipline so that you finally have the joy and ease you've been missing. I'm your host, Flora McCormick, licensed therapist, parenting coach, and I'm so glad you're here.

Spot The Body’s Stress Signals

SPEAKER_01 0:49

So often when we're triggered or we're just in like a heightened state of stress, which the world today we are talking a lot about it, is like fight or flight responses. When we're in heightened states of stress, we're feeling flooded in our body of adrenaline or cortisol buildup or just tense. Noticing where in your body are you feeling this tension? Because every person is different. And beginning to notice, it's easy to notice, or hopefully it's easier to notice when you're in that heightened state of stress. Where is it? Is it in your jaw? Is your heart pounding? Do you feel like your fists are starting to ball up? Do you feel like your legs have adrenaline in them and you want to run away? Do you feel your stomach tightening? Do you feel your breath becoming shallow? Or do you feel like you're holding your breath altogether? Those are all really important bodily signals to inform you to take a step back, to stop and pause. One important tool that we talk about over and over again in the field right now. It's becoming more related and focused on how do we heal trauma? How do we decompress a tense state through the body? As Bessel Vanderkoelk's book, the body keeps the score, our body holds all the tension and the stress. And it is actually through the body that we can begin to really create more integration, calm it down, be able to think. Because when we're in that heightened state of triggered stress, we are not thinking straight. We are full of adrenaline. We are reacting instead of being the parent we intend and want to be for our kids and in our family.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Oh, okay. Listening to the body, it's like, yeah, I can picture for me. I get really tunnel vision. I notice I'm like looking down. I'm not kind of, I'm not just up looking and taking in everything. I get this tunnel vision, this not really listening when I'm triggered. And it sounds like you're saying, so notice it. And then how do we solve it? What's the like in the moment solution? Because when I hear the word trauma, I always think like five to ten years of therapy to recover from it. How do I, I don't know. How do I solve that? How do I get into my deep wounds and my daddy issues? And like, ah, I gotta still somehow get them to bed tonight. I love that.

Break The Loop With Breath

SPEAKER_01 3:10

I think thank you for bringing that up because I think that's a true and fair thought. I think many people would have. So just noticing when you're stressed and tense and you're reactive, I think we've become such a dysregulated society and culture that here we are talking about the breath because what happens in a state of stress? Well, our breath immediately becomes dysregulated. When our breath is dysregulated, we're actually activating our stress response in our nervous system, the sympathetic arousal. It creates even more of a cycle or feedback loop of stress. And then that stress produces more stress. And it's just a cycle you don't want to get on. And if you do get on it, which we all do, it's made there to it's there to protect us and to help us survive a threat. But how do we break that cycle? Immediately through a breath. As you beautifully said in in your episode with me, you said it's so accessible, it's right there. And I'm gonna pull from Dr. Amon's breath work because I love it. And I've tried a lot of different breathing techniques myself and with my clients. And I love his long exhale. So anytime that we make our exhale longer than the inhale, or we're doing diaphragmatic breathing, we are helping the body access the branch of the nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system, which is just what they call the rest and digest part or calming part of our nervous system. So it's just accessing science. It's so easy that we have this amazing tool at just as a constant resource. So you inhale for four seconds. So you just count in your head, inhale for the count of four, hold for a second before you exhale, make the exhale for a count of eight, then hold for a second, and then do it again. Do the six to ten times, breathing in for four, hold a second, exhale for eight, hold for a second. Do that six to ten times. Do it in the car if you're in traffic, do it while you're washing dishes, do it anytime where you're feeling just tense in your body. This is going to break that cycle of these stress hormones being pumped into your body. And if you feel like yawning after, or some people might feel like a lump in their throat, even like they want to cry. Those are all natural responses of you actually, you're doing a great job accessing that calming part of your nervous system. That this can break and interrupt a panic attack. This can improve and reduce anxiety. This can create change in your body as you're wanting to be a parent that's not going to be yelling at your kids. It's just a tool you can use across the board. This is really a powerful tool.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

I love it so much because it's so simple. I think we always get more complex in our brain, right? Like, okay, I need to come up with my like super complex mantra and heal the wounds or whatever. And you're saying, just notice it. Notice it's there, notice it's about something from your past, and and then be very neck down. Like find the way in your body to calm that reaction with breath. So simple, so doable.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

I love it. And so helpful. And like as in all things, when we practice tools when we're calm and regulated, then our body actually learns how to use it and we become more familiar with it when we're in a state of stress or you know, we're just feeling tense, then we practice it. It's easier for our bodies to get on board with it because it's already been trained up. You can practice that, get good at it, and then it'll come more natural when you're really needing it. Totally.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

And I feel like this is one of those things like you could go a whole day intending to take some breaths, and you put your head on the pillow and you're like, I never once took a breath today. But that it's okay. Start somewhere. Maybe the next day you take one breath, and then maybe over time the next week, you find yourself having taken two breaths in the day. And then it's okay. Just start wherever you start, and this is a muscle that can grow.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Even if you breathe one time, it's like you just gave more oxygen to all your brain and your body, and that's healing.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yes, yes, yes. I love that so much.

Add A Hand-To-Heart Check-In

SPEAKER_00 7:25

And and you were talking something about like hand on your chest or belly, like tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

I will have clients do this sometimes. I'll invite them to, you know, have these points of check-in with themselves, like touching your hand to your chest and just acknowledging like you could engage with the breath or not, but just acknowledging like you're checking in, you're noticing, like, how am I? You know, for me personally, on a personal note, like at the end of the school day, going from school and transitioning into the home, that is those two three hours are really hard times for my day. They're just a little crunchier. I have less energy, less ability to be, I guess, like as patient as I want to be, and and I have less to give. And so sometimes just like noticing my breath, you could put your hand on your abdomen, put your hand on your chest, just acknowledging what you want to be like when you go into the house after a long day of school and work. Um so it's just a point of touching base with literally like your body, you're connecting to your body, and that is creating integration. And integration makes us much better and more healed up than trauma leads to that disintegration. So we want integration with ourselves so we can be our best.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Absolutely. So connecting self-love, self-affirmation with that, like, hey, I'm here with you self. We're here together.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

There's so much, I think there really is power to that connection because if we're not connected to ourselves, it's harder to be connected with others. And so I in my podcast, Apricotok, we talk, I talk a lot about like our attachment and our connection to others and to self. And if you are a person of faith, if you believe in God or a higher power, like all of those are affected by our relationship to ourself.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

I love it.

Why Parents Must Refill First

SPEAKER_00 9:29

And it's really just prioritizing. If you want things to go well with your family, you are like the lifeblood of the family, and saying, Hey, you can't always give from an empty cup. I love that reminder. I think it it really isn't about adding something to a to-do list. It's like I hear you just giving a little call to action to moms, especially of remembering that they matter and self-love, self-care, just any amount of saying, Hey, I want to do something for me so that I can keep showing up as best as I can or put a little more intention.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

I think sometimes we think, oh, well, our kids are the most important part or they're the priority. And so that's part of the inner work, too. Of like you taught me the phrase of like, we are not responsible for our kids to be happy all the time. And that there's a little bit of letting go of how we're gonna parent with that. And so, too, is like the mindset, like it is well worth and needed to prioritize my health and well-being to be the parent I want to be. Yeah, absolutely.

The 24-Hour Reframe Challenge

SPEAKER_00 10:38

So if you could give an overwhelmed parent some sort of challenge for the next 24 hours, something they could actually just do today to be calmer and less reactive, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

If if your kid triggers you today, and let's say the emotion, I'm just for example, it's anger that comes out. You may have this reactive statement like, I'm so angry. But instead of labeling I am this way, I want you to reframe it and state, I feel angry because my child is behaving in a disrespectful way, or I feel stressed because I have three deadlines due in three days. It's labeling the emotion, it's also not putting an entire blanket label over yourself of I am angry. No, you're not angry, you're feeling angry because of the circumstance. And when you label it and put it at to the side and you label it over something that it's connected to, oh my gosh, the brain loves that. It allows for room to get distance from it. It also like the brain's able to detach a little and understand like this is not like a life-altering threat. And you're able to make room and space for more other feelings, but just to you get like a way of getting some distance from it. And I would say try that because that can be very self-regulating. Life can be hard, emotions can be entangling and difficult to move through, but labeling can help. Breathing can also help, and it can be a gift to yourself and to your body.

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yes, thank you so much, Rachel.

Where To Find Rachel Plus Teaser

SPEAKER_00 12:19

So I know you do therapy work. How could people follow up with you if they're like, I want to dive deeper into how I can work on my regulation or some of the trauma past that's impacting me? How can they connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 12:32

You can find me on my podcast, Apricot Oak Podcast. It's on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. But you can find a lot of tools and great information about managing, healing, restoring trauma from your past on the Apricot Oak Podcast mostly. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Thank you so much for your tips today. So grateful for this wonderful insight and reminder of basics and also unique perspective on naming feelings differently. And joining the next episode as I'll be interviewing Julia Shaw as she reflects on the inspiration for her first book, The Grumpy Wumpus. Julia's 18-month daughter was one who would flip a switch and have major meltdowns, and every time she tried using typical strategies, it didn't land. So she had to discover new ways to respond to big emotions. And this book is her way of sharing validation to parents in the same position and the resource to have a different conversation with your kid about those big emotion moments. Listeners, if you need parenting advice, talk to my mom. Sustainable Parenting with Flora McCormick.