Emotion Regulation: How to Respond Instead of React (Part 1)

Stop reacting and start responding. Emotional development expert Alyssa Blask Campbell, M.Ed., explains how to understand and fix your unique nervous system today. Feeling overwhelmed, snappy, or like you're constantly "treading water" just to stay afloat? You’re likely living in a state of nervous system dysregulation. In this episode, New York Times bestselling author Alyssa Blask Campbell, M.Ed., breaks down the science of emotion regulation and why most of us never learned these essential adulting skills in our youth.

Find mental health and addiction treatment near you: https://recovery.com/

Learn more about Alyssa’s work at Seed & Sew: https://www.seedandsew.org/

We dive deep into the crucial difference between "coping mechanisms" that provide temporary dopamine hits—like substance use or impulsive shopping—and "coping strategies" that produce lasting serotonin and oxytocin to truly calm the body. Alyssa introduces the Collaborative Emotion Processing (CEP) method, explaining how our unique sensory systems—including proprioceptive and vestibular senses—dictate how we experience stress and how we must recharge.

Whether you are navigating "sensory mismatches" in your marriage, trying to handle a child’s grocery store meltdown, or recovering from trauma, this conversation provides a roadmap to self-awareness and self-control. Discover insights from her New York Times bestseller, Tiny Humans, Big Emotions , and learn why "microdosing" self-regulation throughout the day is the key to lasting peace.

⏱️ Chapters:

00:00 – Intro: The "Only Way Out is Through" 

10:33 – What is emotion regulation? 

28:09 – How do I know if I'm dysregulated? 

40:19 – Does nervous system reset actually work? 

41:41 – What is the fastest way to calm myself down? 

❓ Questions the Video Answers:

1. What is the difference between emotion regulation and self-control? 
2. How do I know if my nervous system is dysregulated? 
3. Why do I use online shopping or social media to cope with stress? 
4. Does a nervous system reset really work or is it just buzzword hype? 
5. How does childhood trauma affect my adult stress reactions? 
6. What is the fastest way to calm down during a moment of rage? 
7. Why am I so sensitive to small sounds like clicking or chewing? 
8. How can I stop being sarcastic and snippy when I'm stressed? 
9. What are "legacy blessings" and "legacy burdens" in parenting? 
10. How do I handle a sensory mismatch with my partner or child? 
11. Is deep breathing actually effective for regulating emotions? 
12. What is the proprioceptive sense and how does it help with anxiety? 
13. How do I stop "treading water" and start actually healing? 
14. Why can't a dysregulated adult calm a dysregulated child? 
15. What are the best tools for "microdosing" self-regulation? 

#nervoussystem #emotionregulation #parenting

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I had a mantra that I use that now has served me through all of parenting. The only way out of this is through it.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Alyssa Blast Campbell is a New York Times bestselling author and an emotional development expert.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Never in my life have I left the day as a teacher, a parent, an expert, and been like, I was perfect today. Nailed it 100% of the time. Uh you don't have to, you're not going to.

SPEAKER_05 0:20

Does nervous system reset actually work or is it buzzword hype? Joining us today is Alyssa Blast Campbell, an emotion regulation expert.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Yeah. Hello, nice to meet Jack.

SPEAKER_05 0:37

Thank you. Nice to meet you. I am so excited about this conversation because there are all the topics we're going to be covering in this podcast I'm curious about and want to learn. But this one, I have a feeling I really should have already learned and it would help me adult. Sure. And then support the other people in my life who probably also didn't learn it.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Yeah, I also didn't learn these skills until starting in my 20s, and they're ever evolving in my 30s. And I don't think you get to a place where you're like, check, learned them all. We're good here.

SPEAKER_05 1:10

Right. My emotions are regulated. That's all the time. That'd be cool. That would be so nice. Would subscribe. Tell me what did bring you into this field and a little bit about your background.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Sure. So I think what really brought me into this field was my upbringing and my life experiences. But I found myself in my 20s teaching preschool. And I was handed this curriculum, and it was a social emotional curriculum that I was supposed to be teaching. And I realized I couldn't teach what I didn't know. And that the idea of teaching kids to be calm and talk to each other and connect with each other when I was getting frustrated with them and losing my cool with them, I can't teach what I'm not modeling. So it just like sparked this wait, how do we get these tools? And was I supposed to have them in preschool? And led me down a path of figuring out that I had been living with anxiety and really at that point in my life, my early 20s, treading water to stay afloat. I had, when I was 14, experienced trauma that I did not have the tools or a person to turn to to cope with, to navigate. And just found myself turning to coping mechanisms to try and stay alive through it. And didn't really realize I was doing that until I found myself in my 20s really treading water.

SPEAKER_05 2:35

Coping mechanisms and healthy emotion regulation. Talk to me a bit about the difference between those two.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah. We break down the difference between coping mechanisms and coping strategies. So coping mechanisms are things that we turn to that really just mask what we're experiencing right now. My favorite current coping mechanism is Facebook Marketplace. And just like, is it still available? Check, whew, I'm not feeling that hard thing right now. I can get lost in an online shopping cart, like it's nobody's business. And what we're doing is producing something called dopamine in our body. And what that does is temporarily make us feel better. It masks those the adrenaline, the cortisol, the hard emotions and feelings that we might be experiencing. And when that dopamine starts to wear off, when I get off of Facebook Marketplace, you need more and more to keep feeling good, to keep masking. Coping strategies produce something called serotonin or oxytocin in our body. And what that does is it pumps the brakes on the stress hormones and really calms our body. But it takes a little longer to experience that calm. One of my favorite coping strategies is talking to somebody or getting like physical touch, like a hug in the moment. When I get that hug in the moment, or when I'm like word vomiting my experience to somebody and talking through it, calling my best friend or turning to my husband, I don't immediately feel the relief that I feel from Facebook Marketplace. But what it does is it pumps that those breaks and it produces the serotonin or oxytocin. So it has a longer term effect and it actually calms the nervous system. So I can access rational thought again and start to be able to problem solve or have conflict with somebody in a healthy way that I can't do when I'm turning to the coping mechanisms.

SPEAKER_05 4:27

And you gave the example of Facebook Marketplace. And I also am, I have like three million dollars worth of stuff in carts. I'm not gonna buy it, but you know, it's oh yeah, that let's get it in every size. So I understand that, but a lot of mechanisms are way less healthy than they 100%. So can we talk just for a second about addictive behaviors, um, yeah, substance use disorders?

SPEAKER_01 4:49

That's exactly right. So substances, gambling, I mean, even we can look at food, movement, exercise, anything we're doing to stop or pause feeling, to avoid feeling, is where we're looking at coping mechanisms. And the challenge is that when that dopamine starts to wear off, our body naturally just wants more and more and more because it doesn't want to feel that hard thing.

SPEAKER_04 5:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

One thing that we do in our work in helping folks access coping strategies is starting with what is accessible that we can pair. So when I look at this with kids, one like coping mechanism with kids is distraction, where we're like, oh, come look at this shiny object, right? Like, you don't have to feel this thing. Come on over here where this thing's way more fun. This toy, we're shaking a rattle, we're trying to distract them out of their feeling. Another one could be screens where we're like pop on a show or give them a tablet or a phone, and now they've like stopped melting down. We look at how do we pair these things together? I might watch a show with them or turn on a screen while I snuggle up next to them. So I'm getting that hug in while we're getting the show in. And then we can start to pull back on the screen part and lean just into the serotonin, the coping strategy side of things, or even with the distraction, like providing a distraction, but doing so in a way that involves movement, where we play a game with them, where they're moving their body. Movement often produces serotonin for us. We can get to the point where we're doing it obsessively. Yeah. And it's a mechanism. But that serotonin production is what we're looking at. So sometimes we're going to start by pairing them together.

SPEAKER_05 6:34

So we have searched the internet for the most asked questions. So that's the Google searches, it's YouTube, it's TikTok. And I'm going to be asking you the top 10. But before I dive in, I want to ask a general question, which is if there's one thing that you believe would benefit people to really understand about the importance of regulating emotions, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 6:55

That it's not one size fits all. How you regulate is going to be different than how I regulate. And so much of our work is helping people understand how their unique nervous system works, how they work inside. I am a human who is sound sensitive. So sounds for me really add up. If somebody's like clicking their pen, it drives me nuts. Or my mother-in-law, bless her, she's incredible. But for my son's second birthday, she got him this Thomas, the train that turns on. And inevitably in 14 seconds, it's like click, click, click, click, click against a wall. And I want to chuck it out a window. Like I go into this rage feeling because for me, I'm sound sensitive. That adds up for me. I, it turns out, don't like hate everyone around me. I've just heard too many sounds in such a short period of time sometimes. Or there's too many people asking me for something like competing sounds. I'm not visually sensitive. So I can walk into a space, and if there's clutter, there's piles happening all around me, I don't even really notice it. Okay. It doesn't add up for me. It doesn't really drain my nervous system. But for some people, when they walk into a space, if it feels chaotic with stuff around, it's so overwhelming for them. And it does what sounds do to me. And so it brings you to a place where regulation becomes much harder. What we do in our work is help people understand how their unique nervous system works and what they're sensitive to, what drains them, and then what recharges them so that you know how to set yourself up for success of what's going to drain me throughout the day and what tools do I need. Like I realized for myself when we were trying to get out the door for childcare, Thomas, the train could not be a part of my morning. Yeah. So Thomas at the end of the day would go in this cabinet and it would come out after school. I was like, I'm not the mom I want to be in the morning when Thomas is a part of it. And so looking at like how do we resource ourselves? I have earplugs that I wear. I have two kids, and so I have earplugs that I wear from like four to seven PM almost every day that just make everything a little more tolerable. Where the competing sounds aren't as draining. We look at what recharges us. So for me, I'm recharged by proprioceptive input, which is that deep pressure. I could have a massage for like four days and I'm like, I want more. I love like a hug or being close to people. Weighted blankets. Yep, exactly. Weighted blankets, adding weight to my life is really helpful for me. And my husband is not proprioceptive seeking. He's vestibular seeking. What that means is moving the plane of your head so it's like spinning or swinging. He sits in an office chair that has like a swivel that can go back and forth. I get motion sickness with too much of that type of input. So as we figure out what recharges us, we help you build that into your day and then understand in the moment when you are feeling dysregulated, what does your unique nervous system need to feel calm? And that's not a one size fits all. I think that's one of the challenges in the regulation world is we're like, oh, take deep breaths or, you know, have this prescriptive way to regulate. And that's not how our bodies work. We're individuals. And it's not prescriptive across the board. It's uniquely prescriptive.

SPEAKER_05 10:17

Uniquely prescriptive. I look forward to hearing a range of things so that we can all sort of use a grab bag and pick what will work for us. Again, we looked on the internet and found the most asked questions. This is the first, which shouldn't surprise you. What is emotion regulation? Yeah. And it of course asks in simple terms.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Sure. What we're looking at here is the ability to find that pause between reaction. Somebody just said something or did something and I'm triggered. I'm annoyed. I'm frustrated. I have that feeling to notice that, find the pause so that you can choose your response. That's what emotion regulation is. So many of us live in this reactive state where my brother Andrew says something to me that drives me nuts. And now I'm reacting. I'm fighting, I'm going back and forth. Or my version of that is usually sarcasm and snippiness and rude. And I'm not much of a yeller, but I get real sarcastic real fast. And it's a defense mechanism. I'm in, I'm in a reactive state when I can notice, oh, he said that. And this is what it feels like for me. And I can then find the pause to choose my response. Not am I going from a place of defensiveness and reactivity? But what's going to bring me the most peace in this moment? How do I want to respond?

SPEAKER_05 11:32

Respond, don't react. That's a hard one. I say to myself all the time.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah, it's so hard to hone that skill of finding the pause so that you can respond, not react.

SPEAKER_05 11:43

I was surprised that people search for the term emotional regulation or emotion regulation because it isn't language I've used. You know, I would have said, how do I calm myself down? How do I keep from exploding in public? Is that language becoming very common now?

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah, isn't that so cool? Yeah. I did not grow up in a time where emotion regulation was a phrase that was used, which probably explains why I got to my 20s and just started doing that work. I love that this is in the Zeitgeist and that we're talking about it. And it is, it's a new term for a lot of us. And I do think that we are seeing this culture shift. I'm curious to see how it shakes out because we can talk about it all day, but we got to give people tools to figure out what it is and how to do it.

SPEAKER_05 12:28

So, what's the difference between emotion regulation and self-control?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Self-control, we have access to when we have access to our whole brain. So when we are in a regulated state. Okay. In order to access self-control, you have to have tools for self-regulation. And you can't regulate what you're not aware of. So when we're doing this work with folks, we start with self-awareness of what does it feel like in your body when you're having certain emotions? For me, I'll get like clammy, or I'm like, I need to say something right now. It's so hard for me to not say something, not interject, not try and convince somebody of something of mine. When I notice that like urgency, for me, that's one of my signs of like, oh, pump the brakes, Alyssa. And then I can tap into self-regulation. Now, what in this moment will help me calm? And then I can access self-control. That's where I can choose my words, choose my actions, choose my tone. And emotional regulation is the combo of all three. Self-control is that end result of I have choice of what is my tone? Am I going to say I'm fine? Or am I like, yeah, I'm fine. Am I going to be towering over somebody? Or am I going to drop my shoulders back? Is my tone gonna be like this? Or is my tone gonna be like this? And then what words am I gonna choose? Or am I gonna walk away? What's my next step? That choice is self-control. Emotional regulation is the package of all three: self-awareness, self-reg, self-control.

SPEAKER_05 13:54

How does our nervous system influence the way we respond to stress? Both as children and adults.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

How does it not influence it? It is so key because your nervous system is what's telling you should I be experiencing stress or not right now? And so when stress comes in, and stress can show up in a number of different ways. It can be you were just triggered by something. Somebody said something in a certain tone that maybe growing up was like you were in trouble or you were in danger, and your body remembers that. Or stress could be literally, I just have so much going on, and now I'm experiencing stress as we've typically thought of stress. There are so many ways that stress can show up in our lives. Sometimes stress is bright lights. Sometimes stress is clutter on the table. Sometimes stress is Thomas the train, right? And so when we're looking at stress, what we're saying is your body is noticing all these details around you and trying to interpret that information, trying to decide what does this mean to me, for me, about me. And our nervous system is responsible for then saying, okay, do I need to be in a fight mode or a flight mode or freeze or fawn? Or am I in a space where I feel still regulated, calm, safe, and I can continue to engage here and access self-control? The nervous system is largely responsible for how we navigate stress in the day, and that its job is to keep us safe. And so it's constantly scanning the environment for stress, which is frankly also just quite exhausting. It is quite exhausting.

SPEAKER_05 15:38

It is indeed. So you talked about tools, the importance of having them, how they differ from person to person. And you've created the collaborative, co-created, the collaborative emotion processing method. Tell me a bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Yeah. My colleague Lauren Stauble and I co-created the collaborative emotion processing. We call it SEP, CEP for short. And the SEP method looks at five components. One is adult-child interaction. So how do we interact with kids and respond to them and their stress and their meltdowns and their feelings? The other four are about us. So we're looking at self-awareness. What is that my son calls this the volcano? Or like, as it's building before you explode, what does it feel like inside your body? Yeah. So many of us can't name this. If I said, like, what does sadness feel like for you? What does embarrassment feel like for you? What does frustration feel like for you? That's self-awareness. What are you experiencing inside? Then we look at implicit bias. And as we're uncovering implicit biases, we're looking at the things that we learned from our childhood in our social programming. Are there certain emotions that we learned we're supposed to feel or not feel, or spaces that we learned we're supposed to express them or not express them? Are there certain beliefs that we have that now we think are true? In Tiny Human Speak Emotions, my first book I wrote that sometimes I open my mouth and my mom comes out, and like sometimes that's great, right? Sometimes I totally want to pass that thing on. But like sometimes I spend a lot of time, money at therapy trying to not pass that on. And so then what do we do? And my friend Dr. Linetta Willis calls these legacy blessings or legacy burdens. The legacy blessings are those things from our childhood that we want to pass on that we think are, right? That we think are really valuable. For me, one of these is respect. I want, I grew up in a household where respect was really important. I still want to raise respectful, kind humans. I want them to respect themselves and the people around them and their things. What I don't want to bring my legacy burden is obedience or compliance, which was also under the umbrella of respect in my household growing up, but that they're separate things. And I noticed that now as an adult, and those legacy burdens for me, obedience, compliance, are the because I said so response. Right. So like, well, why can't I do this, mom? And if I say because I said so, I'm like, oh, that's my mom coming out. And really being able to pull back and raise kids who can ask why and get curious. And that sometimes I'm like, because I'm exhausted is why. Right. And like I don't have the bandwidth or capacity. Just yesterday, my four-year-old wanted to play with slime. And we had a lot going on in the kitchen. And I know that every time he plays with slime, it ends up on every piece of clothing and everything. And it just feels like you then have slime in your life for weeks. And he wanted to play with it. And I said no. And he was like, why? We're hanging out. And I was like, Yeah, because I don't have the capacity right now to sit down with you and make sure it doesn't end up in everything. And I'm too busy in this moment getting lunch ready and helping your sister to know that I can get it out of your shirt and your clothes. And I know for me it will feel too overwhelming in this moment. And I will not be the mom I want to be. When we're looking at those implicit biases, building awareness of those stories, those narratives is so key. And it requires us asking ourselves, what is that story I'm telling myself in this moment? And for a lot of us, we have a lot of shame stories that exist like, oh, well, I am this thing. I am lazy, or I am incapable of doing science. I was like, I'm not good at science, was a story I had about myself. And it's from my childhood, it's from my experiences. And now I'm like, oh, it turns out I love science. I just didn't have the teachers who taught me science in the way that I learned science. And it took me questioning those implicit biases when things would come up and I'm like, oh, that's not for me. I'm not good at that. Right. Those stories we're telling ourselves become true to us if we don't look at them and ask, is this really still true? Is this something I still believe and want to pass on? And then we have self-care, which has gotten so buzzwordy these days. But for us, this is how do you take care of your unique nervous system? So we were talking about how for all of us it's different. We all have our own little blueprint. And we look at the nine sensory systems here. We think of our first five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. There are four others that are really important for our regulation. I mentioned proprioceptive earlier, that like deep pressure. It lets us know where our body ends and something else begins. So for me, I have low proprioceptive awareness. My bed has not moved for years, but I bump into the side of that sucker all the time, right? Like I always have bruises on my legs. And it's because my proprioceptive sense is low. And so I have a hard time gauging where to turn at what point to do that. And what this looks like in childhood, and then as we get older, is that we'll need more proprioceptive input. Kids, it could be that they're running, they're climbing, they're jumping, they can't stop moving. And they often receive labels around this of who they are as a person. And they're so busy or they just can't stop moving. And we look at correct hyper. And we look at this of, oh, yeah, their body probably needs more perperceptive input. How can we get that throughout the day for them so that they can sit down and eat dinner, so that they can sit down and do their homework, et cetera. And for us as adults, it's looking at how do we get that input in in ways that are going to serve us so that I'm not constantly seeking it out and bumping into things so my body can know where I am, or hugging too height or too tight or pushing too hard. I am a human who will, if there is a person around me, I'm gonna get as close as possible to you. I'm gonna snuggle right up. And that's not for everyone. And so I have to also be able to read the room of okay, if I see somebody pulling back, but my body saying you need more proprietive input. How else can I get that in that moment so that we can be in relationship with each other? So I can be in harmony where your needs are met and so are mine. And might that be grabbing a pillow on the couch and holding it as opposed to me? Exactly. Or even throwing like a blanket on that's going to add a little bit of weight and kind of ground you around. I will often cocoon myself in something where I'm always wearing a blanket and not just because I'm chilly and live in Vermont, but because I love that feeling of like, oh, I'm snuggled up into something. You're essentially wearing one. That's right. That's right. Uh and then we talked about our vestibular sense where my husband sits in that swivel chair, getting that input in throughout the day for folks who are vestibular sensitive. That will make them drained. It can give you motion sickness. You can get like vertigo from that if you're sensitive to that. But if you're seeking it, it's so helpful throughout the day for him to sit in a swivel chair so that then when he comes home to us and kids, he has a little more capacity to navigate the evening of all these humans always talking to him and near him. Then we have our introspive sense that lets us know if we're hungry, if we're tired, if we have to go to the bathroom. And it also can tell us, is my heart beating fast? What is that volcano inside? For some people, they're intrceptive sensitive. So they're really aware of those cues. And for some people, they are not. And this can be, oh, I didn't notice I was hungry and now I'm hangry. It hits me like a ton of bricks. Uh, or as a little kid, we'll see, like, they don't notice they have to go to the bathroom until they have to go to the bathroom right now. Versus our introsptive-sensitive humans, they can notice these things farther in advance. And it can also feel a little overwhelming for them where they're like, oh, I'm getting hungry. And so they'll start to feel like I need a snack now, even though they're not really there yet, but it's starting. And then they can't not pay attention to it. We, our last sense is our neurosceptive sense. And this one comes up a lot in our trauma communities because when we're looking at trauma, when we're looking at high ACES adverse childhood experiences, what we're seeing is a heightened neuroceptive sense. I call this our spidey sense. It keeps us safe. It's the one that reads the energy of the room, that notices the tone of somebody, their body language. It says, Am I safe here? And it is so good at noticing the things outside of the words that people say. And when we have experienced trauma, our neuroceptive sense heightens and says, Oh, what's that? I'm gonna notice it. If you have entered into the room and like people were in conflict and maybe they stopped fighting, but you feel it, that's your neurosceptive sense at work. So when we're looking at self-care, we actually have a questionnaire that's free for anyone to take that can help you see what are you sensitive to, what are you seeking? And it's at seedquiz.com, pretty straightforward. And any age, you can take as many times as you want. So if you've got kids or other people in your life and you want to take it or them with them to understand what drains you, what recharges you, that's the self-care part. What actually does it look like to take care of you throughout the day? From the moment you wake up, honestly, through sleep. As a sound sensitive person, I sleep with a white noise machine because I know my body's gonna pick up on any little noise around me. And I, for instance, my husband is a drummer, which bless him, but you're sensitive, blessing. But he is always tapping the sound in his head, whatever that song is. And when it's like 8:30 in the morning and I've had a good night of sleep and the kids are chilling and everyone's fed, it's okay. I can handle that. When it's six o'clock at night and we're all spent and we're at the dinner table and he has a song in his head and he's tapping it. I want a divorce at that point because I just have less capacity. I don't have any bandwidth left for it. Right. And so when we're looking at the self-care piece, I know that in living with him, there's gonna be tapping in my life. And there are times where I'm like, Zach, and I just have to pause him. And there are times where I'm like, yeah, this is also a part of who he is. And so, what do I need for my body? What do I need to take care of me so that he can exist in the way that he is and as who he is. And that is how we design our self-care plans. It's really looking at how does your unique nervous system work? And then our last one in this set method is scientific knowledge. And this is where we look at all that's happening inside the body. We look at things like mirror neurons and how feelings are contagious. That if I walk into a room and I'm stressed and you can feel it, your body is going to have a stress response too. And so, what does it then look like to pull in that self-care and say, okay, I am having the stress response because this person is stressed, but I'm not five years old anymore. And I am safe to be around this other human who's stressed. Cause so many of us, we carry that where we weren't safe. When somebody else was stressed in our environment, it meant that we needed to either get big or small and either hide or go into fight mode and get big. And we carry that into adulthood. And when we can hone the skill set to say, oh, this isn't my dad or my stepmom or whoever walking in and now I'm not safe. But instead, oh, this is my coworker who had a stressful morning and they're stressed. But I'm safe to get calm. I don't have to carry their stress as my stress. When we can do that part, it is so, so freeing to do, but it requires this all scientific knowledge component of understanding that feelings are contagious and you are going to react to how somebody else around you is feeling. And you get to be in control of how are you going to respond to that initial reaction. You named a free quiz.

SPEAKER_05 28:05

Was it seedseed quiz.com? Correct. Okay. Yeah. The second most asked question on the internet about emotion regulation is how do I know if I'm dysregulated? What are the signs and what do I do?

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:18

That's two of them together.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Totally. It can show up in a number of different ways. For some folks, they're going to start to get like those anxiety feelings where you're like, oh, my heart's racing, or maybe I'm sweating, maybe my shoulders go up to my ears, maybe my voice starts to get louder or faster. Higher. Correct. Where you get bigger. And for some folks, it's the opposite, where you get smaller. This is my husband. I often get bigger. I my heart's racing. I'm going, going, going. I can I can feel silence like it's nobody's business. And the more I feel it, the quieter he gets. In fact, early on in our relationship, at one point we were in conflict and he was like, I just need a minute. And it was in my 20s and I did not know how to give a minute. And so I kept feeling that silence and following him around our apartment. And he he at one point got in the shower because he's like, Where do I escape her? How can I get this minute? He goes quiet and can go into a shutdown. And that's also dysregulation. And so he's saying, like, my body feels so overwhelmed. He learned to get small in life. That that's what kept him safe in the world was not to add to somebody's conflict, not to rouse somebody up more. That was not going to be safe for him in the world. And so he learned to get as quiet and as small as possible. Under the radar. Under the radar. Don't cause anyone any additional stress. And that can show up as, oh, I cannot get my mouth to form a sentence. Or you're like, I have these thoughts. They're coming, but they're not coming out. You're in that like freeze state. Or that feeling of my son calls this being a turtle, where you just want to be inside your shell.

SPEAKER_02 30:04

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

You're like, how can I hide right now? Or Zach, that was getting in the shower.

unknown 30:10

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

And when we're looking at this, it could even be as simple as like, oh, I'm fidgeting, or my body can't sit still. Can be earlier signs of dysregulation. Like maybe you're sitting at a work thing or you're in line for something or you're waiting at the DMV and you start to notice just like the I no longer can keep my body still. Those are early signs of dysregulation. And it's before we're maybe in that explosive state, but where you start to feel it in your body where you can't sit still. Other signs of dysregulation are sarcasm, rude, snippiness, that defensive mode where maybe we're talking to each other. And the whole time that you're telling me something, I'm thinking of my counter argument. I'm not actually listening to what you're saying to understand it. I'm too dysregulated to be in that conversation then. If what I'm really doing is mounting my counterargument, which I'm so good at. And we also look at things like silliness when you're like kind of laughing at something that maybe isn't funny. And somebody else's pain where you're smiling through it or laughing through it can be dysregulation. I had somebody recently who was like, it's so embarrassing, but I just was laughing at this funeral.

SPEAKER_05 31:28

I was just gonna say laughing at funerals there are times. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

And she's like, I'm like trying to hide it. And I was like, you're dysregulated. And that is your body's way of expressing it in that moment. Sometimes dysregulation shows up as people pleasing.

SPEAKER_04 31:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Where you're gonna, I think of this as like the puppy dog that meets you at the door and it's like, I'm so sorry, I got into the trash again. I know I wasn't supposed to, I did it. And what they really are saying is, are we still connected? Am I still lovable? Are we still in relationship? And before they get that yes, they're in this dysregulated state, wondering, really, am I safe in relationship with you? And they try to people please their way back into relationship. Like, what can I do to make sure that we're still connected? Earn correct attention and love. That's right. That's right. Um, and dysregulation can show up as yelling, screaming, kind of what we think of classically, of like I'm fully like in rage mode, melt essentially an adult tantrum or child tantrum, but the tantrum nonetheless, where you are just evolving. If you see somebody in public or you are the person yelling as you are in traffic with somebody else, or uh, you know, screaming at the grocery store, you that's a dysregulated nervous system. Uh what is so tricky is that most of us in childhood, in fact, I haven't met a single person who did experience this, did not experience somebody when we were defiant or disrespectful saying, Oh, you're just dysregulated. We can help you with that. That was not the response. That's not the response. And so when we experience it or we see it in others, that's not what comes up for us first and foremost. We're not like, oh, I'm dysregulated, or they're dysregulated. No, we go right into fight mode. Oh, yeah. And or into that freeze, kind of like get small space. The tricky part about dysregulation is rewriting that script for ourselves of what we're seeing as surface behavior. The yelling, the screaming, the walking away, the shutting down, the freezing, slamming the door, slamming the door, defiance, ignoring the fidgeting, being able to rewrite that script for ourselves of, oh, when I see this, it actually means dysregulation. That defiance, disrespect our dysregulation. That is so often the part that we skip over. And then we can't access the emotional regulation piece because the initial step is saying, Oh, this is what's happening. It's that self-awareness of this is dysregulation. So that we can regulate, so that we can access self-control.

SPEAKER_05 34:13

Yeah. And you can't go from dysregulated to self-control. Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

Yeah. No, you cannot access self-control from a dysregulated state. So if recently I had like had a day at work and I was just like powering through and there were no stopping times, like it I went from one thing to the next. And then I went and I got the kids from school and childcare and brought them home. And I was trying to parent both of them, and they're two totally different humans who have very different needs. My son is like my husband, who is sensory sensitive, gets really overwhelmed by stimuli in his space. And so he likes a quiet, calm, chill environment. And my daughter has never met quiet, calm, or chill. And so she's like, give me background music and talk to me, and I want to be near you. And she adds a lot of stimulation to a space and she likes stimulation. And so we got home and it's like sounds like a nice mismatch. Oh my gosh. It's a sensory mismatch, which we often find in relationships as well. And it's tricky to navigate, it takes intention to navigate. They're coming home and they both have sensory needs and connection needs when they come home from school. And my son needs chill and a little bit of time with me that is just focused on him. And my daughter needs kind of chaos. And she doesn't need one-to-one kind of quiet, calm connection. In fact, she's like, put me in a room of a hundred people. Let's go. I just want to be in this space and in the hustle bustle. And I was navigating all this with a stressed nervous system where I hadn't paused to take care of myself and to regulate. And I'm trying to get dinner going. And my husband walked in about an hour into me being home with the kids, trying to get dinner going. And he was like, hey, what's for dinner? And I was like, nope. Uh-uh. You can ask a lot of questions in this moment. There's a lot of, hey, do you need to tap out? How can I help? What's going on? A lot you could ask. That's not one of them right now. What's for dinner? And I, that's that is my fight mode where I'm like sarcastic, I'm snippy, I'm rude. In that moment, I'm not able to access self-control. I'm not like, you know what? This is going to be best for my marriage for me to be sarcastic, snippy, and rude. Always works. This is not what is going to be most helpful for any of us. But I'm not choosing that in that moment. I'm not like, okay, in this moment, I select fight mode. I'm just going into it. I'm in a reactive state because I'm dysregulated. Now, once I was sarcastic, snippy, and rude, then he was like, oh wow. Okay. Well, what's going on here? And I was like, actually, I just need a minute. Can you just, I don't care what you do in this kitchen, just stand in this kitchen and be in charge of the humans in it. And I'm going to walk away and I'll be back in five minutes. I was like, oh, I needed a break from sound and all the stuff. And I just needed five minutes. And I didn't even care if it was like chaos downstairs at that moment. I just knew I needed to step out of it in order to regulate and access self-control. When we're looking at this work, you're not always going to notice in the moment and regulate and access self-control. Even when you're an expert. Even when you're an expert. And we have to give ourselves grace for that and also look at are there patterns? So if every day I'm losing it at five o'clock when my husband walks in and it's dinner time, then I'm like, okay, I got to put some things in place for myself before I'm exploding as that volcano is building. And so when we're looking at this, of like, how do we do that? What is accessible? We're looking at proactively. How does your nervous system work? What are you going to need throughout the day? For my husband, that spinny chair, for him, the drive home from work. It is most helpful for him if it's either calm or he's listening to music that's regulating for him. It's not helpful if he's like taking a call on the way home from work and continuing that work, but like really decompressing. Right. It's also helpful for him if he comes in, he says hi to us, and he can go change into clothes that are comfortable as a sensory-sensitive human. He's in like work clothes all day. That drains his nervous system. And so he's like, give me some sweats and a t-shirt and like let's go. I need to feel comfy and cozy. My son's like this. Everything's always too something, too itchy, too tight, too hot, too cold. And so is Zach. And so when we're looking at how do we proactively take care of ourselves all day long, it's these micro moments. It's not just, oh, I'm going to get a 20-minute workout in and I'm going to hope that carries me through. It's what are you doing every couple hours or throughout the day that's going to give you these little moments of recharge that add up to a lot at the end of the day. And then in the moment, how are you pulling those in? Right. So when he's flooded, when my husband's flooded, it's most helpful if he can step away. And so if I'm there and I can say, like, walk away, I'll deal with the chaos. He can go into a space, phone free, calm down for five minutes. Deep breathing's good for him. He'll also pop in AirPods, like just like noise canceling, cannot hear the world around me, or I'm going to listen to a song. For me, often a hug or being able to vent about it is helpful. So I'll leave and I'll walk away and like text my best friend or voice message. And I'm like, oh, let me tell you about all the ways that everyone in my life is driving me nuts right now. Like getting that out is really helpful. But for my husband who goes into that shutdown mode, actually trying to talk about it isn't helpful for him in the moment. He needs time and space before he can access that. So when we understand these things about ourselves, it allows us to figure out, okay, in the moment, what am I going to need? What's going to be restorative for me in that moment?

SPEAKER_05 40:05

So you're talking about the things that work in your home for yourself, for your kids, for your husband. The third most asked question on the internet about emotion regulation is does nervous system reset actually work or is it buzzword hype?

SPEAKER_01 40:20

Nervous system reset is just getting back into a regulated state. Yes, it works because it's bringing your body back online, your brain back online. So so often we're operating from our body where we're just like go, go, go, and it's subconscious. Yeah. And it's reactive and it's habit-based. It's how I can drive to work and I don't even think about the drive because I've done it so many times, or how you make your coffee in the morning and I'm not like, okay, what cabinet is the cup in? Where do I get? You can do it from your subconscious, from habit. Our brain loves this. It loves to operate from habit. It takes way less energy for us to do that than it does to pause and think about something new. Nervous system reset is getting our brain back online where we can choose things, which means we have access to our prefrontal cortex, our rational thinking brain that requires energy to do that. It's why nine o'clock PM is often harder than maybe 10 a.m. is, where we're like, okay, I don't have as much capacity to get back online. Nervous system reset is just bringing all of that back online. Not only is it worth the hype, it's crucial for navigating self-control.

SPEAKER_05 41:37

Or then we're gonna get into an example of that because the fourth most asked question is what is the fastest way to reset or to calm myself down?

SPEAKER_01 41:44

It's your breath, which is for me a remarkably annoying answer because it feels so simple and so little. And I actually remember when I first started doing this, where somebody said, like, yeah, we're just gonna practice breathing. And I wanted to like throat punch them. I was like, that is so it feels like such a little thing when I'm exploding. And I mean, everything else feels so big. And unfortunately, the research and experience supports this that when you can breathe, you are going to regulate your nervous system faster than doing almost anything else.

SPEAKER_05 42:21

It works almost every time. And I'm like you, a little annoyed at it. Yeah. Don't tell me to breathe. And then when I find myself doing it, I'm like, oh, it does work.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

If somebody tells me to breathe or tells me to do anything, I'm like over my dead body, will I do that?

SPEAKER_04 42:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

Uh, my husband and son are like, oh, there's a boundary. I'm sure it's for a good reason. I'll follow it. And I've my daughter and I have just like never met a boundary that we were willing to follow without explanation and understanding. And so what I've learned for myself is that in the moment, if I can just blow out, it like triggers for my body, okay, take a deeper breath. Almost like blowing out candles. In the moment, if I'm like, it triggers to me like, that's right. I need to breathe from my belly and take a deep breath. Because for me, that urgency of like, I need to say something right now, that deep breath slows that down. And all of a sudden I notice, like, okay, the urgency is pumping the brakes. And the cool thing about breath is it's accessible everywhere. You don't need to walk away, you don't need headphones, you don't need to move your body in a certain way. You can breathe wherever you are, in whatever situation you're in.

SPEAKER_05 43:31

And even the blowing out, if you were say, you know, in a meeting in a room, I might not want my coworkers to know I am currently so wound up that I gotta do this, but it can be pretty subtle. And with the, you know, taking a deep breath and holding it a minute and getting it out, you can it can be pretty covert.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Also, the idea of like, I don't want my coworkers to know that I'm so wound up is so interesting because they know, because our feelings are contagious that we have. A neurosceptive sense that's reading the energy of the room and it's noticing your facial expression, your body language retreat, your shoulders go up or drop. We are a little allergic to showing and naming and talking about our feelings because we didn't grow up with it. And now we are in a space where we're like, well, I don't want people to know I'm feeling this thing. And like spoiler alert, they do. They know. They see the same carriers. And so I think it's pretty cool to be like, okay. I that something just that was activating for me. Something triggered me with that, or I'm feeling defensive. I just need a minute. Good model is way cooler than I'm gonna pretend I don't need a minute.

SPEAKER_05 44:48

Good point. Thank you. Appreciate the course correction there. I'm open to it. Before we close out this first episode, I wanted to just talk about kids in dysregulation because we can say I need to do some deep breathing, but nothing triggers me faster. And I minor adults now, but I remember when they weren't. It can happen. Talk about contagious, right? The minute they start, you feel it. And it's very difficult. So it in having read your books, which are both on the table, that's what's here. We got to take care of this before we take care of that. But they both have to happen kind of fast, kind of simultaneously almost. So talk to me a bit about how we can help children regulate and the fact that we got to do it first.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

That's right. A dysregulated adult cannot calm a dysregulated child. And so if I come in and I'm dysregulated and I'm coming in like this, their nervous system says, oh, don't let your guard down with her. She's here to fight you. Do not calm. Do not allow yourself to be in a vulnerable state because she's here to fight you. You're not safe. When I come in like this, it tells their nervous system it's safe to calm. And so if I want them to calm down, me asserting dominance, control, power over them is only going to maintain their heightened state and/or raise it. They might get quiet, but they will not get calm. They might get obedient, they might get scared, but they will not get calm. They will not feel safe. And so if what I really want to do is say, I've got this. It's okay for you to calm down because I've got this. You're safe with me. We've got to start with us. It's why the set method is five components and four of them are about us. When we're in the moment, first of all, you're never going to do this 100% of the time. Never in my life have I left the day as a teacher, a parent, an expert, and been like, I was perfect today, nailed it 100% of the time. Uh, you don't have to, you're not going to. What we want to look at here is when they're exploding, when they're melting down. If you can just start with what am I feeling? Start with that self-awareness. We're going to do this outside the moment in order to bring it in the moment. One of the things that I did for myself in building self-awareness was set a series of alarms on my phone. It was like 9 12, 1116, 1218. When that alarm would go off, wherever I was, especially if I was around kids, I would say it out loud. But when that alarm would go off, I would just say, like, okay, what's happening for me right now? Oh, my shoulders are down. I'm focused on work. My heart rate is steady. Like, I'm pretty calm right now. Or, oh wow, I'm feeling tense. Like my heart's going fast. And my I'm gonna drop my shoulders down. I'm gonna open up my hands. I'm just gonna slow my breathing. And I go right back into what I'm doing. 30 seconds max, right? Just notice, calm. And when you practice this outside the moment, then you can bring it into the moment. You are not gonna build a new skill in the moment of dysregulation. You are not. It is not your brain, literally cannot. It's why when kids are dysregulated, when they're having a tantrum or a meltdown, they cannot build a new skill in that moment. They cannot talk to us and access reasoning. And it's why the blue cup instead of the orange cup is this crazy meltdown. And we're like, in what world does this matter? It does not. But in for them right then, it is not rational. They're not like, okay, yeah, that makes sense that this doesn't matter really which cup I get. Can't have that conversation because we have to come back to regulation first. And so for ourselves, if we can practice this self-awareness work outside the moment, so you can do it in the series of alarms. You can do it with every day at a certain time of day, just pausing and doing a one-minute reflective practice. What's coming up for me this morning? What did I notice? How where are the wheels coming off the bus? Right. Like what's been really triggering for me? What do I want to course correct? Just does not have to be a long time. We're not like 20 minutes of meditative practice has to happen. It can be one, three, five minutes that can be really impactful and powerful. I'm a huge fan of microdosing throughout the day, of like little moments of this, the little alarms over one time a day, because the more times you do it, the more repetitions you have, the stronger that pattern becomes in your brain. Microdosing self-regulation. Correct. Sorry. Yes. Microdosing self-regulation. Microdosing these moments of self-awareness of what is happening in my body. And when we can do that, then our brain starts to do it more easily in the moment. So that when our kids lose in their cool, when they're melting down, we can say, oh, I need to say nothing in this moment. Because if I say anything, it's going to be an explosion. I've given birth to two humans. And in both of those birthing processes, I had a mantra that I use that now has served me through all of parenting. It's the only way out of this is through it. And I have found this to be true with every contraction I had and then every grocery store meltdown. The only way out of this is through it. And then I've survived 100% of them so far. If I can pause and say, you really wanted to get that right now, we cannot get that right now. And I'm either putting them in the cart or I'm carrying them or I'm slowing if I have the time and just coming into them. If I can do that in the moment, even 40% of the time, we're going to see lasting results for emotional development. In fact, there's research that says 20% of the time. But for myself, I look at about 50% of being able to do this where I slow down and I regulate myself and I respond with intention to them, which doesn't really matter what the words you say are. It's so much more important than that, is just the act of slowing down, allowing them to feel their emotion, keeping their body safe, and letting them know you're there with them. When I go for 50% of the time because I know they're going to interact with other humans throughout the day that are not going to do this with them. So if I can do a 50%, maybe we ended the day of like they got this 20% of the time throughout the day.

SPEAKER_05 51:12

You're reminding me of a story I read on the internet, which may or may not have been true, of course, but it's a good parable that I just recently stumbled on.

SPEAKER_01 51:20

Not all things on the internet are true.

SPEAKER_05 51:22

I'm finding that. That's why we're bringing in the experts. And it was a grandfather or a father and a child in the grocery store, that exact setting with the tantrum. And a woman is overhearing, we'll say grandfather, saying, George, we're gonna get through this. We always do. We'll be leaving the store soon. And then the tantrum continues and he says, George, five minutes from now, we'll be in the car. This won't matter. And then a third time he said something similar. And in the checkout line, the woman said, I just have to say that watching that was impressive, the way you handled George. And he said, Oh, his name's Kevin. I'm George.

SPEAKER_01 52:01

I'm George. Yeah. So he was just like, uh, this will pass.

SPEAKER_05 52:05

I don't, this will not be public in a moment. And I've been through this before. And I thought that was a really good idea.

SPEAKER_01 52:11

It's so real, but it's so hard for us to do. I opened Tiny Human's Big Emotions with a story about myself in church as a kid where I was three years old and I was crawling under the pews to go sit with my friend Nora. And I got in trouble for it. And that's what so many of us experienced growing up. Wasn't the adult who was like, okay, this too shall pass. No, we got in trouble for it in the moment. We got yelled at and we got shamed or we got punished. And now when the kid is having a meltdown and now for the grocery store, we have all those parts of us inside that are like, this isn't supposed to be happening.

SPEAKER_03 52:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

I learned that this wasn't okay to do. This is shameful behavior embarrassing me. Exactly. And so we go into a reactive state of like, I need to shut this down and we need to make sure this kid knows this is not okay and it's never going to happen again. And it's not a helpful narrative. It's not a helpful bias in the moment, uh, but it is a prevalent one and it makes sense. Just also want to acknowledge that there's not a world in which you're gonna do this work and you're gonna be like, oh, every time my kid melts down, I feel calm and peaceful. I'm not sitting there being like, oh, this is chill for me. An opportunity. Yeah. Oh, look at we get to build emotional regulation skills together. No, who knows inside. I'm like, oh my God, am I going, am I raising a like rude, ungrateful child who feels like every time we go to the grocery store, they're gonna get something? And what those are still going through my head at the time. And so if that's happening for you, you're not failing at this work, you're a human doing this work.

SPEAKER_05 53:47

That is the loveliest thought and way to end this half of this episode. So we will be back next week. We're gonna continue this discussion and learn how to both regulate ourselves and to help the people around us regulate so that we can live a more peaceful and regulated life.