Emotion Regulation: 3 Simple Ways to Calm Your Nervous System (Part 2)

Stop being the thermometer that reads the room and start being the thermostat that sets the temperature. In this deep dive, emotional regulation expert Alyssa Blask Campbell (New York Times Bestselling Author and CEO of Seed & Coach) reveals why our reactions are often "learned habits" and how we can regain self-control in high-stress moments. Whether you are navigating a toddler's meltdown, a workplace panic attack, or a heated argument with a partner, understanding your nervous system is the key to changing the outcome.

Find mental health and addiction treatment near you: https://recovery.com/
Learn more about Alyssa’s work at Seed & Sew: https://www.seedandsew.org/

Alyssa explains the science of the Vagus Nerve—the "muscle" of your parasympathetic nervous system—and why TikTok is obsessed with it. You’ll learn why "hiding" your feelings actually fuels anxiety and how "cold exposure" or "humming" can physically reset your body's fight-or-flight response in seconds. We also explore the revolutionary idea that behavior is never the problem; it is merely a symptom of an unmet need.

By the end of this episode, you will have a toolkit of grounding techniques that actually work and the insight to stop "shutting down" when things get hard. Alyssa Blask Campbell, M.Ed., is the author of Tiny Humans, Big Emotions and Bigger Kids, Bigger Feelings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What we're doing is we're living in this land of behavior without going deeper to say what's actually causing that behavior.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

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

SPEAKER_01 0:12

What can you bring to the table to not be the thermometer that like reads the temperature of the room and joins it, but to be the thermostat that sets the temperature of the room?

SPEAKER_04 0:22

What are some grounding techniques that actually work? We are back with Alyssa Blast Campbell, emotional regulation expert. And we're continuing our conversation from the last episode about how we can regulate our own emotions and help the people around us hopefully regulate theirs as well. So in case someone didn't see the last episode, can you just do a quick review and tell us what emotional regulation is?

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Yeah, it's noticing what we're feeling, that reaction, being able to calm and then have access to self-control. So self-awareness, notice the reaction, self-regulation, calm, and regain access to a choice. How do I want to choose to respond? Which is self-control.

SPEAKER_04 1:07

And what does that provide or allow for that reacting doesn't?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

It allows us to choose our words, choose our tone, choose our body language, which then in turn will affect how somebody else responds to you. The only human we're in control of is ourselves. The only person who we can choose our response. However, your response to somebody else affects how they will react because feelings are contagious. So if you come in with this energy, their nervous systems stay in dysregulated, they're going to stay in fight mode with you. But if you come in in a regulated state, it allows them to let their guard down and potentially enter into regulation with you. But your engagement in conversation, in conflict, in relationship matters. And it affects how the other person will react or respond.

SPEAKER_04 2:03

And you've written two books on tiny humans and bigger kids, bigger feelings. But this also applies to engage engaging with other adults as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah, it's so funny. People often say, like, I came for the kids, but I stayed for myself. That's like someone said, hell yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

Yes, yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Yes, ma'am. Uh I think that it's so much easier to come at this, being like, oh, the kids or somebody else around me. And then find ourselves in this than it is to see that I'm the problem. It's me. Or at least part of the problem. Correct. That was a little Taylor Swift reference. Yes. Uh, but that we're a generation.

unknown 2:46

Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

It's fine. Uh, that we are really playing a huge role in relationship, that when we are in relationship with somebody else, what you bring to the table matters and affects how somebody else is going to react or respond to you. Quick story here. Most of the work that we do at Seed and Soach, the company that I founded, is in school systems. So we work in elementary, middle schools, and daycares, childcares. And I was in this elementary school with this kiddo who has experienced a lot of trauma in his life. He's been uh removed from his one parent or caregiver and then placed with his other parent, uh, who he didn't know or have a relationship with. And he's five years old and was in this new placement, was moved to a new town. He'd witnessed and experienced a lot of trauma, domestic violence, uh, physical violence to him, all that. And he's coming into school with a lot.

SPEAKER_04 3:45

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

And in fight or flight mode a lot of the time. And so I walked into this school. He's five years old, he's in kindergarten. And this kid has pulled the fire alarm, he's ripped stuff off the walls, he's thrown things in the classroom. And I'm walking to actually go observe him in his classroom. He's running through the halls with the assistant superintendent who's kind of standing behind him, keeping his body safe and keeping him in school, but not touching him. And he's ripping stuff off the walls and running. And I followed behind them and he found a corner. He always finds a corner. And so he found a corner to kind of hide in in the hallway. And I came over and I sat down against the wall, kind of opposite wall from him. And I just dropped my shoulders back in as quiet of a voice as I could. I said, Hi, buddy. My name's Alyssa. I'm not mad at you. You're not in trouble. And you can take all the time that you need. And I just sat there and focused on calming my body. And he's tightened. He's like looking around, he's scanning the environment. He has has to. He's been trained to do this to keep himself safe. And it about a minute passed, and I said, Do you know what I noticed about you? You are so good at keeping your body safe that when you didn't feel safe in the classroom, you found a place that felt safe for you. Your body is so good at doing that. And he softened a little. And then about a minute later, I said, Take all the time you need. I'm just gonna sit here. You're not in trouble, and I'm not mad at you. And then about another 30, 60 seconds, I pushed my notebook between us and said, Sometimes when I'm feeling scared, I like to draw something or write something. But this is here. If you want to use it, you don't have to. And a little bit later, he like grabbed it, maybe 30 seconds. It wasn't long. He grabbed it and just started like scribbling in it. And then he started drawing in it. And then I said, Oh, can I see what you're drawing? Wow, you really practice drawing. And he like softened and turned toward me. And I started to like slide over next to him and we were connecting. He was opening up to me just with his body language. He hadn't even said anything yet. But he was letting me know it's safe for me to come closer and that he felt safe with us. And then his teacher, who's awesome and well-meaning but big energy, came walking down the hall and was like, Hey buddy, how are we doing over here? And he immediately tensed up. Got it. And it was one of those reminders for me of what we bring matters. The energy we bring, they will respond to. We think about this a lot of times with animals. Yes. But we are also animals. And the energy we bring to each other, the words, but also what we're not saying in words, what we're saying with our body and our tone, it matters and it affects how somebody else responds to us.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

We go up to an animal with our palm open and let them smell us before we pet it. But with people, you're right, it's hey buddy. You know, we're just right at them. So it's a great story. We have looked at Google searches, TikTok, YouTube, trying to find out what questions people are actually going online to ask about emotion regulation so that we can address them with somebody who is knowledgeable and an actual expert, as opposed to having people go down a rabbit hole and get stuck there or learn things that aren't true. We addressed the first five questions in the last episode and the sixth question today uh is what are some grounding techniques that actually work?

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Yeah, using your senses to your advantage. So reminding you what when we're in the moment and we're dysregulated, we're either in the past or we're in the future or a combo of both. We're either triggered by something from the past or we're jumping ahead to the future of like, this is how this is going to play out, or this is what's going to happen, that anxiety of like what's going to happen. We want to come back to the present. We can do this with our senses. Like, okay, I am going to notice five things that I can see in my space that are green. Or I am going to identify one smell in this space. Or what are three things that I can feel right now with my body? As we do that, we come back to the present moment and it takes our brain out of that spiral and into what is real right now and helps calm our nervous system. It's one of my favorite techniques because it then has my brain thinking about okay, what is green in my space? What can I feel? Breathing is our fastest way to regulate our nervous system. And if you can access that in the moment, great. For me, when I especially when I was first starting doing this work, breathing, my mind was still going where I was like taking breaths, but I'm still spiraling. Yeah. And so when I could come back to the first five senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, and name five, four, three, two, one of them, I was using my brain then. So it wasn't spiraling at the same time that I was grounding.

SPEAKER_04 8:59

Just distracting enough.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 9:01

Yeah, not taxing, but distracting. Exactly. What are some things you should not do when dysregulated?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Usually open your damn mouth. That's right. That's right. Uh yeah. Honestly, usually talking in that moment is not helpful unless you're in a space where you're saying, like, I'm dysregulated, I need to vent. And you're in a safe relationship and with a safe person where it's the right space to do that. Another one is when we're in a dysregulated state, we will often look for things we can control. And so for me, this is like, I have a million things on my to-do list, but now I'm organizing the bathroom cabinet.

SPEAKER_04 9:41

I literally did it about two o'clock this morning.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yes. And it's that spiral of like, okay, but what can I control? It feels good in the moment. It is a coping mechanism, which we talked about in our last episode. People can go back and reference the difference between a coping mechanism and a strategy, but a mechanism is going to be temporary relief for the nervous system. We want longer-term relief. So when we're looking at the like, okay, what can I control and the organizing of something or what we're doing here is really just kind of hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock. We're putting it off until later. And so I want to look at, oh, I want to organize the bathroom cabinet. What's actually coming up for me in this moment? What feels out of my control? And can I journal about it? Can I write it down? Can I talk to a friend about it? Can I voice record something? Like what is accessible to me in this moment that I can do to get out the thing that's really happening? And it doesn't have to go to a person. It can be just to you if to a person feels too vulnerable.

SPEAKER_03 10:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Uh, but just to come back to what's at the root of this and address, even if you don't solve, but getting that out and sharing that is so helpful for the spiral.

SPEAKER_04 10:55

I don't know how different the answer to this question will be, but I want to ask it because it was asked in several different ways online. What is the safest way to calm panic in public or at work? Same idea. How do you stop a panic attack discreetly? How do I hide my anxiety symptoms? I put all three of those together.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Sure. Oh, this common theme of how do I hide my feelings? Yes. Yeah. What a world we live in where we feel like we're supposed to hide our feelings. Um, I first want to just acknowledge that. But in all of those, the common thread was no one can see me feeling something hard. And that's a learned habit from childhood. If it wasn't safe for you to feel those hard things with somebody, you've learned that you're not supposed to show them to anybody. It's vulnerable, it's weak, it's out of control. Yeah, you're failing for feeling. And so I want to first start that you're not failing for feeling. That feeling is a part of being a human on planet Earth. You're experiencing an emotion. You're having one right now. This is what you're feeling right now. None of our feelings last forever. So one of the biggest things with anxiety or panic attacks is that when we try to avoid them, it's like quicksand. You're gonna go deeper and deeper. And I lived with anxiety and panic attacks that I didn't realize were anxiety and panic attacks for most of my teen years and into my early 20s. And there's very cool research out of Yale, actually from 2019, on this and what it looks like is actually allowing yourself to feel it, naming. I'm feeling anxious right now. Naming it for yourself actually goes a really long way for the brain. Not I have anxiety, but I'm feeling anxious right now. Because I'm feeling this right now reminds the brain, I won't always feel this way. Oh, it's genius. Say that again. I'm feeling anxious right now. It's the difference between I'm going to feel this way forever and oh, this too shall pass. And so when we're looking at this first, noti when you notice those cues, you're having that panic attack. I'm feeling anxious right now. Then we're gonna come back to the grounding techniques of what can I feel? How can I come back to the present moment? Because anxiety is your future self. Your anxiety is you saying, This is what's going to happen. And we want to come back to your present self. Who's here right now? What's real right now? And we're going to come into okay, where am I? Where am I standing? What can I feel? What can I smell? What's available to me right now? You're gonna focus simply on your internal systems of what's my heart doing? How can I slow it down? I'm gonna drop my shoulders, I'm gonna open up my hands, I'm gonna start to make my breath become slower. I'm gonna make my words become slower. So often what we do is we turn to someone or something that actually speeds us up. So folks who are having an anxiety attack are shown to reach out to somebody who also experiences a lot of anxiety, and they end up in this spiral where now you have two people who are anxious about the other human. And what we want to practice is slowing down in those moments, not speeding up. And slowing down is going to come from those grounding techniques. I actually don't want to focus on how do we do this in secret, but instead, how do we say, I'm feeling anxious right now, or I'm having a panic attack right now. And here's what I need. I need some cold water. Actually, cold is really helpful if you can access like, can you put your hand in cold water? Can you splash cold water in your face? You put your hand in just like ice. That cold exposure is going to help stimulate the vagus nerve, which helps regulate our nervous system uh and calm our body pretty quickly. But we're gonna look at what do we have access to. You're not always gonna have a bucket of ice there. So it's a cold tab. Exactly. What can I access? I really wanna be mindful of the part of the question that came up, though, that is solely focused on how do I do this in secret. Yeah, that's a really good point. And recognizing that maybe that's not the goal to be in isolation. We call it the collaborative emotion processing method for a reason. We're not meant to process emotions alone and in silos and in secret and in silence. Shame breeds in silence and secrecy. Yeah. Anxiety breeds in silence and secrecy.

SPEAKER_04 15:45

Depression.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Depression breeds in silence and secrecy. Stating it and saying, I'm feeling this right now is a huge first step for regulation.

SPEAKER_04 15:58

Excellent. It would also give people around you permission when it's their turn, because we all get, you know, dysregulated to be able to say the same thing and feel safe saying it.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 16:10

So you brought up the vagus nerve. That's the next question from the internet.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Oh, what a great tee up. Thanks, Internet, for following that up.

SPEAKER_04 16:17

Thank you. It's like right there. It was nuts number eight. What is the vagus nerve and why does TikTok love it? That's literally the wording. Oh, that's funny.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Um, it is a huge part of our nervous system and it is going to be responsible for getting you back into a calm state. We look at our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. If we're gonna get nerdy for a second, you just parasympathetic nervous system provides peace and calm. Your sympathetic nervous system is that fight-flight version of us where we're reactive.

SPEAKER_04 16:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Your vagus nerve is most beneficial to you when you are treating it kind of like a muscle where we're going to work it out and not just rely on it in the moment. Like if I have never worked out, I'm not gonna then go over and like lift a heavy weight. I will not be able to do so. The vagus nerve is similar, where the more we practice and strengthen outside of the hard moments, the easier it is to call on it in the hard moments. There are a few ways that you can do this. Humming is actually a really good one. And it'll strengthen it. And then it's a tool you can call on in the moment. It's actually something I use with my kids when they were like babies a lot, when they would be crying and they're tired or they're overstimulated from something. And I would just hum. And my humming would regulate me and then regulate them. And still, when I have a friend who was recently going through a divorce and just a lot of messiness, and she broke down just like sobbing to me at one point recently. And I was like, Can I hug you? She said, Yeah. And while I was hugging her, I just started humming. And it seems so weird to do when people are getting older and they're adults. And we often think of these types of things when kids are little, but it was so effective. And afterward, I was like, I'm sorry for humming. She was like, No, that was so calming. And I just had to get over the weird for myself at first, but humming is a great way to stimulate vegan cold exposure, which we just talked about a little bit. Is really helpful. Uh, and what's gonna happen is your nervous system's gonna react first. And if you can stay in the cold exposure, it's gonna be practice for calming of like, oh, I can do this. I can regulate through this. We'll literally end my showers right now, cold, which is brutal. And I'm never like, you know what I want to do? End of the really cold water. Uh, or put my hand in a bucket of ice uh or ice water, splash cold water on my face, any amount of that, like it doesn't have to be three minutes of the cold plunge um, as TikTok also loves, but it can be 10 seconds of putting your face into some cold water and and um calming that way. It we often think of this from a place of time. Do I have time to practice these things? And where do I get the time to do it? There's a time deficiency. We don't put enough power in the amount of time we have now, and we put too much power in the amount of time we're going to have in the future. Wow. Where we're like, oh, future Alyssa can handle this. This is future Alyssa's problem. And when we practice these things in small moments now, 10 seconds here or there, 30 seconds, here or there, humming, you know, as you're going to the bathroom for a minute or whatever, is really powerful and strengthens these pathways that we have that say, oh, when I feel something hard, I can do this to calm. When we don't put the little moments of time in ahead of time, we end up paying for it down the road in reactive states. Yeah. Where's a lot of time in a reactive state and then a lot of repair that has to happen from that.

SPEAKER_04 20:18

So we'd be saving ourselves time if we the ROI is real good.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

The return on investment here of 30 seconds here often saves you a whole lot of time down the road.

SPEAKER_04 20:27

Do you have a go-to song you hum? I'd probably be humming some heavy metal song.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

It honestly depends on my mood or sometimes the person that I'm with, where different same with like mantras or phrases in the moment where I'm like, I got different mantras for my husband than I do for my mom, than I do for my kids. And it's all for me of like, what is going to remind me that they're not giving me a hard time, they're having a hard time.

SPEAKER_04 20:55

Such a good distinction. They're not giving me a hard time, they're having a hard time.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Yeah, it's so hard to access in the moment when it feels like they're really giving me a hard time. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:03

Oh, yeah, you're doing this to bother me.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

That's right. That's right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Especially for me when it's like defiance or disrespect, where I've like set a boundary with somebody and it feels like they're defying it or they're doing something that feels disrespectful, or they're saying something that feels disrespectful for me to be able to remind myself like they're dysregulated and they're having a hard time right now. It's so often not about us, but it feels so personal.

SPEAKER_04 21:30

Yep. It almost always does, especially when it's somebody you care about.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:34

All right. The ninth most asked question or searched for question on the internet about emotion regulation is how do you calm down without shutting down after a conflict?

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Yeah. It's okay to shut down for a little bit. In fact, for some folks, that shutdown period is your nervous system recharging and saying, Oh, I've been too flooded with information. I need to shut down for a minute. And I can't do more. More right now until I'm more resourced. Okay. Right. So in the first episode, we talked about my husband getting in the shower to escape me in conflict. And really what he needed was a little shutdown period. His turtle shell. A little break. Yeah, his turtle shell to go inside his turtle shell. And so giving permission for that a little bit of maybe what your nervous system is saying is I need a recharge. Yeah. Not a full shutdown, but I need to like plug in and recharge my battery. There, I was with someone I'm close to who is a teenager and went through his first breakup recently. And I had said something, I was like, Oh, what's, you know, how's things going with your girlfriend? He was like, Oh, we broke up. And I was like, Oh, I'm sorry, but do you want to talk about it? And he was like, No, absolutely not. I was like, okay, cool. And we were hanging out for the weekend and I have younger kids. And uh, I had said, I was like, after I put the kids down, do you want to go for a drive and get ice cream and just listen to music and not talk? And he was like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:00

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

And he just needed some shutdown where we weren't gonna talk, we weren't gonna process something. He could just have a minute to eat ice cream, drive around, listen to music. And then the next day we were walking with the kids. We were going on this like walk in the woods, and he would just walk alongside me and I didn't say anything. And he started to open up. He was like, Oh, well, sheep, and I was like, okay, say nothing unless I say nothing, unless I say nothing unless I just let him talk for a little bit. And he just needed time. He needed that little shutdown. So I think first giving ourselves permission to take a break, to tap out and say, I'm not in a place to have this conversation right now, uh, at work, in relationship, and also recognizing that crucial in that is I'm not in a place to do this right now. Here's what I know for myself I'm gonna go do so that I can come back to it. That it's not a, I'm never gonna have this conversation or navigate this conflict because I would rather sleep it under the rug and hope it just goes away and will never exist again. But instead, a I need to be more resourced to have this conversation. Nice. And so what am I going to do in this pause that's going to resource me enough to have this conversation and navigate that conflict?

SPEAKER_04 24:21

And I would think if you and I were in conflict, or if I came, you know, it had nothing to do with you, but I'm sure it's heck making it about you because I'm in that mood. Sure. If you were to say to me, I need a minute so that I can show up for this conversation and for you, I think I'd be much more uh probably respectful, but that's not even the word willing to allow for that, as opposed to like, oh, she's running off. You know, I think that I would receive that as loving, yeah, as respectful because you're trying to be your best self to help me with being that best self.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

And I will say that the thing that can feel really challenging about this is if you are an auditory processor and the person that you're in conflict with is not, if they're my husband who needs space in a turtle shell and to go have time quietly, but I'm an auditory processor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I'm like, no, but I have to get it out. Yep. Yep. I remember saying at one point early on in our relationship, why do we always have to do this your way? Like you want time and space all the time, but I want to talk about it. And we had to come up with some ground rules of okay, what can I do when he's taking space? And for instance, my bestie Francesca, I was like, what topics do you feel okay with me turning to her to vent about so that I could get things out? Okay. I also started journaling, which feels okay. But for me, like the auditory piece is really helpful. So sometimes I'll just record voice notes where it is just all the ways that he sucks, right? And it's just full bird vomit. And it never goes anywhere. It stays in my phone for the most part. Exactly. And but it is just me being able to get it out of my body so that it's not at him and allow him the time for his process of taking space and coming back. And recognizing that for humans who like that space, when you come back to the conflict, the discomfort's also going to come back. That you're not going to come back and be like, okay, I feel super calm having this conversation now. And so recognizing that the goal is to step away and resource yourself enough and create a plan of what am I going to have access to in the moment when we go to have that conflict and it feels uncomfortable again. How can I? Because you're not going to be able to tap out to that of that conversation a million times and have the other person continue to be willing to do this. Right. And so part of it is when I go back into this conflict, what do I have access to in the moment? And sometimes it's boundaries and ground rules going in of when I'm talking, if you interrupt me, it's really hard for my brain to slow down and continue my thought or be able to even hear you in that moment that I feel overwhelmed with that. Sometimes it's can there be a writing portion up front of I'm going to offload my thoughts in this email, this note, this text that give you some foundation of where I'm coming from or what I want to talk about. And maybe some of the conversation I have I was having a chat with a mom the other day who has a little boy who is 11 and he retreats to his room and shuts down and doesn't want to talk about the things. And we realized for him, the auditory part of it back and forth feels really stressful and overwhelming. So they started a notebook back and forth. Oh, nice. Where she'll write and pass it in, and it's in his room then, and then he can write and pass it back. And so they can have a lot of the hard respectful conversations in a way that works for his brain. Nice. And isn't overwhelming for him. And the challenge for her is in the pause and the waiting for a response. And they had to set some ground rules around like, if we're gonna do this, it's not that I'm in a right and a week later you're gonna write something back. Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 28:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

And so we're still in conversation, but we can do this in a way that works for your brain and not just in a way that works for her brain.

SPEAKER_04 28:42

I love that. I I've never heard it, and I can see it working even for me because I'm a writer. So yeah, that would be wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Well, and if we talked about the nine sensory systems in the first episode, that introsphense of like noticing those internal cues. Introspensitive humans can have more challenge with vulnerability because they feel everything on a deeper level. They feel the hunger on a deeper level. They feel I have to go to the bathroom on a deeper level. They notice those internal cues. They're often deeply feeling humans where they feel things big in a way that can feel overwhelming. And vulnerability is a part of that. Or even my son said to me the other day, he's four, and I said something about he had done something kind for his sister, and I acknowledged it. And he said, I don't like when you say things about me that are kind. And I said, Oh, does it feel vulnerable? And I talked about what vulnerable is and what it feels like in our body when something feels vulnerable and that it's a really uncomfortable feeling sometimes, even when it's something good, that it can feel uncomfortable. And he said, Yeah, I don't like that. I was like, Yeah, it's something to practice feeling.

SPEAKER_04 29:57

That's really self-aware. I remember learning at before I had my first child to catch him doing something good. And that's the kind of thing that raised the way I was was not um something that was natural for me. But I like doing it.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Totally. Yeah, yeah. You were really nice to your sister. Pay attention to this, I'll see more of it, right? If I let you know I like this thing, I'll see more of it. And it's still vulnerable to receive that, you know, in the same way that if somebody's like, oh my gosh, you look great today or I like your shirt. And I'm like, I got it on how much sale. Exactly. I have to like justify something like, oh my gosh, I got this on sale and targeted sleep last night. Yeah. Wow, dry shampoo goes a long way, right? Like we can really, it's hard to just take it and say thank you. Right. Right. Yeah. So when we're in conflict, if you're an interceptive, sensitive human, vulnerability is a really challenging feeling to be with.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

So I want to end with your specialty, which is children. And in one of your books, I have so many pages marked and bent over and paper clips. And yeah, it was lots of things I was learning. And I don't even have young children anymore. So I appreciated how applicable it is to any relationship. But you wrote, it's not our child's job to get calm for us, but ours to get calm for them. We need to manage and regulate our feelings so we can help them. And again, it doesn't, I don't think, have to say child's job. It's the other person's job. If somebody's in it, they're in it. And they can come at us or will come at us, however they're gonna. So I'd love to discuss that a bit.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

It's something that really sucks, to be honest, that it's not somebody else's job to calm for us, that it's not their job to get into a space where we say, okay, now I can calm. As long as we're safe in relationship. So it's this is not applicable in all relationships, that there are times where we're working with schools and we recognize it's actually not okay for this kid to get calm in certain relationships or circumstances because their nervous system needs to stay heightened to stay alive. So sad. It's so sad and it's so real. If you're in living with domestic violence and it's not safe for you to get calm when that person's not calm, then this is not applicable there. So recognizing that this isn't true for all relationships, when you're in a safe relationship where it is safe for you to get calm when this person is not calm, this is where we're looking at, okay, what's in your control? Feelings are contagious, including yours. And so if they come into the space stressed and heightened and overwhelmed, what can you bring to the table to not be the thermometer that like reads the temperature of the room and joins it, but to be the thermostat that sets the temperature of the room and recognizing that that is the only thing in your control in that moment, despite my real efforts to control everyone else around me. The only thing that's really in my control is me. And that's very powerful. If you have entered into a room and you've been like fired up and you're on the go, and somebody comes up and they're like, Yeah, and they keep you going, you know that feeling where you're like rising up, versus if you come in and you're venting and you're met with compassion and support and you feel that, oh, I'm I feel calmer leaving conversation with this person or an interaction with this person, you know that the power of that other person is so strong. Your feelings come in and their nervous system is going to react to them, right? And vice versa. But then you have the power to say, what am I gonna bring to this? It's why when a child is melting down, if I go big with their big, we're staying high. Oh, yeah. We're staying dysregulated, we're staying in a place where nothing's coming down and lowering. But if they're heightened, I'm not like, oh, buddy. In fact, my my daughter's a high connection seeker, and which means she looks for connection so much in the world. It can feel like a leaky cup sometimes. My son has lower connection needs where he has more sensory needs where the environment can be overwhelming for him, but his connection needs are lower. If I can pour into him for a minute, two minutes, and just give him my undivided attention, it goes a long way. And she's like, Yeah, let's keep going. And so for her, if she is having a hard time, she's melting down about something, even if I'm the one who caused it. I said no to something she wanted. If I pause and say, I love you so much in the moment when she's having a hard time, I'm calming my body enough and I'm connecting with her in that moment. She starts to soften. For my son, if I did that, any talking is dysregulating for him. He's like, I want you to be near me and to know that we're safe together, but please don't talk to me or touch me. It's my husband getting in the shower, right? Like, just stop talking to me for the love of everything holy. And my daughter is like, validate everything, talk to me. I want to climb inside your lap, maybe inside the womb again, if I could. And like there's not enough touch and talking and validation to fill her up. She loves it. And so for her, I've noticed that in the moment, if I just soften and say, I love you, her go-to mode of dysregulation is defiance. So if I say, like, hey, we can't do X, Y, and Z right now, that's what she's gonna do. And if I can soften and just say, I love you, you really wanted to do that, or you wanted to see what I would do if you did that, instead of reacting, she calms and she's like, correct, nail on the head, and starts to then come back into relationship with me. And so when we look at the power of us in these moments, I think the part of this that is so hard is that it requires us to start to build this skill set instead of relying on the other humans around us to come to a certain state of regulation so that we can start. But that we have to be the ones who say, I can calm me even if no one around me is calm. This is hardest for our neurosceptive-sensitive humans. Our energy readers of the space uh are more likely to exhibit traits of codependency where they are like, no, once that person's calm, I'll be calm. Once that person feels good, I'll feel good. And that makes sense. A lot of our neurosceptive-sensitive humans have been conditioned from childhood to not get calm until other people were calm. Because it wasn't safe. Correct. Even emotionally safe, right? Of like, oh, well, if my parent is anxious, are they going to continue? I need to control their anxiety so that there's homeostasis, so that there's calm in the space and everyone feels okay. And so recognizing this and that we shared seedquiz.com, it'll show you where you fall on that neurosceptive sensitivity scale of very sensitive to not. And so recognizing that and being mindful of that will be really helpful in you seeing, okay, what can I notice about the energy of the space around me? And then what's in my control here?

SPEAKER_04 37:18

As we wrap up, and thank you for going through the internet questions. That was really helpful. One point that you make repeatedly in your books and in this discussion is that there's a way we need to be perceiving and understanding behaviors that we weren't taught to.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

We were taught to respond and react to behaviors. It's why punishments happen, it's why rewards happen. It's we see a behavior on the surface and we reward it with praise or acknowledgement or a raise or a sticker chart or a pizza party. We have so much conditioning around we're gonna reward this good behavior, the thing we want to see more of. And we are going to punish or shame the bad behavior. We're gonna have suspensions, we're gonna have detentions, we're gonna have jail, we're gonna have things where we say, I want you to feel so bad about what you did that you won't do it again. So often, what we're doing is we're living in this land of behavior without going deeper to say, what's actually causing that behavior? I was 15 years old when my parents found cigarettes for the first time in my purse. They came home for the first time. The first time. And I came home and they had like broken them in half and shown me that they'd broken them and thrown them in the garbage. And then fast forward to about six months later when they found Zima. You remember Zima? It's like Mike's hard lemonade vibes, we're not vibes in my bottom dresser drawer. I was like 15 years old, and they're they came in and they're like, Why? My mom was like, Why is there zima in your bottom dresser drawer? And I'm like, I don't know. She was like, somebody else came in and put this there. And I was like, must have. I didn't put it there, right? Like I knew if I told the truth, I would be in trouble. And not once did anyone say, I wonder why she's smoking at 15, or I wonder why she's drinking at 15. Nobody asked, what's causing this? What's the need that's driving the behavior? And had they asked that, that's a game-changing question. Because we can address the need and then we won't be responding to surface behaviors all day long. In the same way that if a baby's crying because they're hungry, you can soothe them and shush them all day long until you feed them. They're not gonna stop crying. You can yell at them, you can do whatever on the surface to the behavior of crying until you feed them and address that need, it's not gonna go away. When we're looking at needs, we have sensory needs, that overstimulation or under stimulation. I need to move my body or I need a break from stimuli, I need food, I need sleep, I need water. And then we have connection needs, that need for inclusion and belonging and validation and repair and to know that we are safe in relationship with each other. And uh if we can look at behavior and get curious about it and say, I wonder where this is coming from. I wonder why they're doing this. I wonder why I am doing this. Then we can look at what's the need that's not being met. And we can address that, and you see the behaviors dissipate.

SPEAKER_04 40:32

Perfect way to wrap up. I really appreciate all of your insights, all of your books, bigger kids, bigger feelings, tiny humans, big emotions. Not selling them, but letting you know where we got some of this information. Um, and I really appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

And thank you so much for having me and for doing this work. It's so crucial that we can have these conversations about being humans on planet Earth. Oh.

SPEAKER_04 40:53

It's a tough gig. It's we could name this episode Things I Wish I'd Learned, in my case, like 50 plus years ago. Wow. So we will be back with another episode diving into another topic and answering your most asked and searched for questions on the internet. Thanks for joining us.