How to Stop the Polyvagal Response From Happening in Its Tracks

In this week's episode, we explore the fascinating world of the human brain and its impact on stress management, parenting, and relationships. We had the privilege of inviting Dr. Alison Roy, a licensed clinical psychologist, and a bona fide brain enthusiast. I first heard Dr. Roy speak during the pandemic, and her insights on the brain, trauma, stress, and parenting were truly impactful.

In our conversation, Dr. Roy sheds light on the science behind our reactions to stress and provides practical advice on how to maintain control and leverage our executive function skills—the skills governed by the pre-frontal cortex, a term you've probably heard me mention quite often. The aim? To improve and maintain our relationships, make parenting a bit easier, and in general, navigate life with a better understanding of our own minds.

I urge you to listen to this episode, even if you're not a parent or caregiver. Much of the advice that Dr. Roy shares is universally applicable, and her passion for educating others about the brain is truly infectious. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I relished being a part of it.

Here are some relevant resources related to the conversation:

Dan Siegel’s Books

https://drdansiegel.com/books/

Hand Model of the Brain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-m2YcdMdFw

Polyvagal theory in practice

https://ct.counseling.org/2016/06/polyvagal-theory-practice/

YouTube Video of Dr. Stephen Porges explaining the polyvagal theory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec3AUMDjtKQ

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

https://www.thoughtco.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4582571

Dr. Alison Roy’s website

www.dralisonroy.com

Slides from Dr. Roy's Presentation

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Pk9stUBGV0L0X4ES6Csb5_BXTjbGndfZ

Beyond BookSmart

https://www.beyondbooksmart.com/

Contact us!

Reach out to us at podcast@beyondbooksmart.com

IG/FB/TikTok @beyondbooksmartcoaching

Transcript

Hannah Choi 00:04

Hi everyone and welcome to Focus Forward, an executive function Podcast where we explore the challenges and celebrate the wins you'll experience as you change your life by working on improving your executive function skills. I'm your host, Hannah Choi.

Hannah Choi 00:18

Yay, I am so excited to bring you today's show. As a parent and an official member of the brain nerd club, I am totally geeking out about my guest, Dr. Allison Roy. Allison is a licensed clinical psychologist, and she loves the brain and teaching people about it even more than I do. I first heard her speak during the pandemic, and her presentations on the brain and trauma and stress and parenting were just exactly what I needed at that time. And I still use what I learned from her even today, when I had the opportunity to see her speak again recently, I knew I had to get her on Focus Forward so you all could listen and learn from her, too. In our conversation about stress and how our brains are impacted by it, Allison shared some really practical things that we can do to manage that stress and stay in our thinking brains, you know that prefrontal cortex, you've heard me mention, oh, a billion times. This way, we can use our executive function skills to improve and maintain our relationships with the people in our families, and make parenting a little easier. If you're not a parent, or a caregiver of kiddos, I encourage you to listen anyway, especially to the first part, most of the advice that Allison shares really does apply to all of us. I truly hope you enjoy this conversation, as much as I enjoyed being a part of it. Now on to the show.

Hannah Choi 01:55

Hi, Alison, thank you so much for coming today, to talk with me about the brain, and parenting and executive function skills. I am just going to share with the listeners a little bit about how I met you. I during the pandemic you gave some presentations, virtual presentations through our public school system. And I'm not kidding when I say that those presentations and the way that you presented it made just like a massive difference for me and my family during the pandemic and actually get emotional when I think about it. Because like that was such a difficult time. But learning, learning about the brain and learning about what some actual, like real things that I could do that would make a difference made such a difference. And it also really informed my coaching. And it just informed my, my I already really loved the brain. So it just like reinforced that. So thank you so much for that. Yeah. And then we were reconnected recently when you spoke again, at our for our parent presentation. And again in our school systems, which was excellent. And so thank you so much for coming on the podcast,

Dr. Alison Roy 03:09

Of course, I'm really excited to be here. And it's so fun to be able to do stuff virtually. When you're not, you know, I'm in New Hampshire. And it's not always, you know, right down the road. So it's nice to be able to connect to different places and areas of the world. It's one thing that pandemic gave us.

Hannah Choi 03:26

Yes, yes. Yep. And it's amazing. You can still have such an impact on someone's life even virtually so. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so would you introduce yourselves to listeners and explain a little bit about your background?

Dr. Alison Roy 03:43

Yeah, so my name is Dr. Alison Roy. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist in the state of New Hampshire. I'm located in Exeter, New Hampshire, which is right on the seacoast area of New Hampshire. And I've been a psychologist for about two decades now. And I've practiced all over the world, I've had really cool opportunity to live in Europe and live in Asia and learn a lot and see a lot and experience a lot as a psychologist but also as a mom and as a family. So to my kids were born overseas. And so it's been a really fun adventure to kind of just see the world and learn a lot about human brains everywhere. As Hannah said, I'm a total brain nerd. I love understanding the neuro psychology or neurobiology of what's going on. When we're having real life experiences. It's validating to know that there's really things happening in our brain as to why we're feeling or thinking or doing in that moment. I specialize actually in post traumatic stress disorder and trauma. And that's how I got called upon quite a bit during the pandemic because we were all kind of going through something it was the first time we could really say that we were had a global trauma or stressful event and so a lot of districts, school districts did right by the parents. In our district and invited experts in to talk about why this was really hard. And it continues to be hard. We're all still healing from those couple of years. So I'm excited to come on today and talk about what that might look like in your own home. And hopefully it's validating and acknowledges, you know, some of what you experience every day. And and yeah, we'll do a little little brain learning together, too.

Hannah Choi 05:22

Cool. Thank you. Yeah, that validation piece was really important. For me when you gave that presentation, it made me feel better about like, why am I feeling this way? Oh, okay. It made a lot more sense. And I felt like, yeah, and then I felt like I could forgive myself a little bit, which, which felt really good.

Dr. Alison Roy 05:40

So good. Good. Like I said, so I'm a parent, too so I get it. I get it. I have three little guys. So yeah,

Hannah Choi 05:46

Yes, yes, you do get it. Yeah. So I would love for you to kind of just maybe even just do the same presentation that you did before. Because even though I knew a lot of what you shared, just hearing it, there's something about the way that you present all the information that just makes it really accessible and understandable. So would you share with our listeners, what you've taught, so many people about the brain and stress and how to manage it all.

Dr. Alison Roy 06:18

iI would love to. It's my favorite thing, to talk about the brain, I'm gonna pull up some slides, just mostly, as I was, you know, we were chatting before we got on today and started recording, I really just need help staying on track, actually, so. So it's helpful for me to have some slides to look at, so that I stay focused.

Hannah Choi 06:39

So I will, before you start, I just want to say that I will share these graphics in the show notes for anyone who's listening. So you can look along if you'd like.

Dr. Alison Roy 06:49

Absolutely, yeah, there's not gonna be there's gonna be three slides, I think three or four, maybe that will be good to kind of check out so. But I'll do my best to make it feel like you're looking at something even if you're just listening to us today. So so let's talk about this human brain of ours, and what happens when we experience stressful events. And these stressful events can come in a variety of ways. So certainly, you'll hear me talk about, alright, this is really what we're going to talk about today is that fight, flight, or freeze reaction that we have. And so we think about this a lot when we think about life threatening situations. So I always use the universally scary situation for all of us of being chased by a bear because I feel like I don't know if there's a human on this planet that would find that to be intimidating. So if you're being chased by a bear, you want this system to kick in and save your life. However, which is great, right, we have this great human system to do that, for us to to save our lives. However, your human brain does that reaction that fight flight or freeze reaction for many different reasons. And it could be that in a singular moment, you've something alerts your brain, and we're going to talk about how that would all the things that happen in that millisecond in your brain allows your brain to think, Oh, this is a life or death situation, when it's not actually and you have that reaction, your brain can also be pushed into that fight flight or freeze mode very gradually. So I call it the slow build or the fast punch. So it can happen in a fast punch type of way, like being chased by a bear or having a in the moment reaction. Or it could be that slow build, where you're you've had a stressful week. And just one more thing happens and you feel like you kind of fly off the handle or go into that fight flight or freeze mode. So again, this this part of our brain is is really amazing. And we want it to work because it saves our lives, it just can be a little frustrating when it's a really active system that fight flight or freeze systems activating a lot or too much. And we're being pushed into this red brain zone that we're going to talk about in a minute. So let's talk about these three zones. If you're a listen to this podcast regularly, you know a lot about that green zone up there, that executive functioning zone, that frontal lobe, that's where all of our beautiful executive functions are housed. And we only have access to our whole, all the colors of the brain, when we're at rest and digest. We call it rest and digest when we're at rest, when we're not stressed or not thinking of a million things or running around or doing a bunch of errands or you know have a project do at work and all the all the things are happening. So when we're when we're at rest, we have access to our full brain. So in other words, you don't need to have a diagnosis of ADHD in order to have the frontal lobe part of your brain be impacted and have a difficult time with some error executive functions. Because stress stress interferes with your ability to really access those at their full potential. So that's the green part of the brain as the first part of the brain that comes offline when we start to become stressed unfortunately. So the next part of the brain next part down is called the kind of the blue brain or the emotional brain. This part of the brain is all All about feeling, not about rational thoughts. So I like to call this part of the brain, the toddler section of the brain, about a toddler, right? They're all about big, big emotions, zero rational or logical thoughts. So that's really what the Blue Brain is all about, and needs the green brain in order to have that more rational or logical thought process. So when that green brain comes off line, you're left with a lot of emotions. And those emotions dictate your fight flight or freeze mode. And as you can probably imagine, if you're not connected to ration or logic, and you start to have an experience that might be overwhelming that emotion can overwhelm you and send you into that fight flight or freeze mode pretty easily. And then there's the red brain, the red brain is our survival brain, our reptilian brain, you've probably heard it called these things. Its sole job and purpose is to keep us alive. And so again, really cool part of the brain, really frustrating when it's in the driver's seat too much. And so what that part of the brain is engineered to do is be in control of our heart rate, our respiration, our blood pressure, our sleep wake cycles in our satiation queues, whether we're hungry or thirsty. And that's it. So as you can probably imagine, you've heard this used before, right? Like I can't even think about tomorrow, I just have to get through today. This is the kind of language we use when we're in that red brain, or we're just not hungry. Because we're just so focused or so stressed on getting through that part of the day.

Dr. Alison Roy 11:33

And so the red brain, when it takes over really only wants you to focus on those kind of survival functions, it doesn't want you to focus on doing math or being organized, or quite frankly, having empathy or compassion for others. So you can see how when you think about how you are as a human, when you're really stressed, we're not our best selves. And so we when we get pushed down into that red brain, that's the reason why that happens. So let's take a deeper look at how that happens. It's not something that we have control over, and nor do we want to have control over it. Because again, we want this to be the most instant automatic function that we have, because it's survival based. And so again, if a bear pops out of the woods, when you're hiking, you want to not think at all about your pot, you know, what you could do to get away you want your body to kind of react naturally. And hopefully, you freeze, right running away, or fighting a bear is not the option that your body wants you. And we're going to learn that we can go either way fight or flight or freeze, and that we all have the ability to go either way it as I'm talking a minute, I'm going to talk about those two kind of options, and what they look like in real life. And you can think about yourself or your spouse or partner your own children and kind of think about where they might fall, because some of us tend to have an automatic stress response of either fight or flight or freeze. But we have the ability to go either way. And sometimes it's dependent on the stimulus or what's happening in our environment that pushes us into that red brain. Okay, so when our amygdala, which is a very tiny structure is a tiny but mighty, very tiny structure in our brain that is working constantly. It works about three to 10 times a second, if you've never experienced any traumatic event, if you have any sort of traumatic event in your history, or you're just having a really stressful week, your amygdala is hyperactive hypersensitive, so it can be up to a scanning the room that you're in up to 100 times a second, so very, very active. So it's, it's like a smoke alarm or smoke detector. So its job is to scan your environment and decide if anything in that environment is scary, upsetting, worrisome, overwhelming, uncertain, even, like exciting. So even really positive over like big emotions can cause this amygdala to react. And the amygdala gets all its information to make this decision from your five senses. So it's use very, very connected to your five senses, meaning it uses smell, it uses temperature, sense of touch, temperature, sensing, Sight, Sound, so I like to give the example of one time I was I was talking about this with I work a lot with educators. I was sitting in a room with educated with a group of educators. And we all I'm, I'm quite literally talking about this slide and the smell of gas started coming into the room. And so you can see all the rooms kind of gets a little wide eyed and let's start looking around. That's your amygdala kind of going, um, something's going on here and like smell the gas and I know that means that this could potentially be a bad situation. So again, it's are five senses that tip off the amygdala. And have it kind of sound the alarm for lack of better words in our brain. And a cascade of actions and reactions happen very quickly. So again, this activates very quickly, you can think about when you get really upset, I was talking the other day about, when I get really upset, or my kids get really upset, we're a family of Door-slammers. So we'll kind of stomp off and slam the door. And of course, if you had rational, logical thought happening, you would know not to slam the door. But in that moment, that's the way your body's releasing that reaction. So that this cascade of actions and reactions start happening. So the amygdala says, "Oops, something's going on". It shuts down the green brain, and most of the Blue Brain, it kind of stops, I've seen the brain scans is stopped sending neuronal activity there. So those areas of the brain, when you look at like an fMRI or an MRI, you can see that the areas of the brain where there's neuronal activity happening, it's all colored, it's all lit up. And when this happens, it goes completely dark. So we kind of shoot go right down into this red brain. Because our brain is saying, I need to survive, right now I need to spend all my energy, all my neuronal activity, just within this red brain of focus in this very moment on survival. So green brain and Blue Brain mostly kind of shut down activity. Also, our left side of our brain goes completely offline as well. And the left side of the brain is where all the else so if you've ever read anything I learned with Dan Siegel at all, he's a great, he's a great person to look up and kind of explore a little bit, the whole brain child is his book. It's one of his books, he has many by great parenting books. But he talks about all the ELLs are all housed on the left side of the brain language, linear logic, all these beautiful ELLs while you lose them all when you go into the stress mode. And so you lose your words, you can't put good sentences together, you can't have a good linear sense of time. So you're kind of mental timeline gets all messed up. And so, so all of this is, believe it or not, all of this has happening in that moment, when you start to become stressed. Your memory processes also shifts. So the way we remember things shifts very much to our five senses. And that's where we get kind of trauma triggers from as our brain latches on to those five senses. In that moment, it doesn't remember things with language, because the language centers aren't accessible. And we lose our words, like I said, we lose our ability to have language in that moment, and certainly, this is one of my favorites, ways of looking at all this beautiful executive functions. So all of what you're seeing on this screen is all of the executive functions list. So impulse control, be able to take turns focus, concentrate, attend, have perspective, taking have empathy, all of that is, is beautiful, and a beautiful part of our human brain will all of it goes out the window when we start to go down into this read brain. And so as you can probably imagine, as an adult, you know, you know this, we have a fully developed frontal lobe by about 25 ish. And so we have the best frontal lobe we could possibly have. So when we lose a lot of this in a stressful moment, we still have more capacity than a child does. Because a kiddo doesn't have that fully developed frontal lobe yet. And so when they go into stress brain, we really see some big reactions with very little logic or rational thinking. And they tend to go on much longer, think epic temper tantrums, because they don't have this ability to access any sort of frontal lobe functions. Okay, so last little part I'll talk about today. And maybe one more slide. But this this is, so this is not my image. But you can see that the website that's on there, they have some great information as well around mental health and just they have these graphics that they produce, to be able to help people be able to talk about this stuff more, they just want to promote people talking about it, which is great. And so what I like about this is it shows in real life, and I'm going to talk about this what it looks like when we're having that red brain reaction that fight flight or freeze reaction. And this is based on the polyvagal theory of the stress response system. And that's Porges' theory. And again, if you Google polyvagal theory, you'll come up with lots of really fascinating information. There's volumes and volumes written about it. And it's my favorite way of kind of thinking about or talking about the stress response because I feel like to me when the first time I learned this, it was so incredibly validating because it just made the neuroscience make sense for real light. Yeah. So let's look at this for a second. So In the middle, this, the person you see in the middle is at rest and digest, meaning there is no alarm bells going off with the amygdala, all parts of the brain are online. And she's quite literally at rest and digest, which means she looks happy or relaxed. She looks happy. Yeah, this is what we want to be at, right? This is where I would hope we would spend most of our time. So you know, she's able to have a heart rate, that's nice and even blood pressure's in good shape, respiratory systems in good shape. And she's quite literally able to digest her food, actually heard a really interesting NPR story, just coming out of the pandemic. So probably late last year, when they were talking, they're interviewing primary care doctors who said they were prescribing and acids or digestive aids at like a very high rate. And it's makes sense because we spent so much time being stressed our digestive systems, one of the first systems that will be implicated in that. So we can't digest our food if we're not if everything else isn't at rest. And so it is going to see if you have heartburn, indigestion, belly aches, tummy aches, and we hear this a lot from our kids when they're stressed. It makes perfect sense because the digestive system gets very complicated.

Hannah Choi 21:17

I remember when I was in graduate school, I had really bad acid reflux. And now I know.

Dr. Alison Roy 21:23

Yes. Oh, absolutely. And terrible sleep patterns. Probably. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The two biggest disrupted system. So yeah, yep. And they're always my biggest red flag. So I always when a family comes to me, I do a lot of work. So I have a private practice as well. I do a lot of work with adolescents and young people and their families, I do a lot of family work. And that's one of the things I asked first about what are your sleep patterns, like what are eating patterns like, because often I can find a lot of clues within there, that the family system might be stressed. So if we're not at rest and digest, and we've seen over the past several years with what we've all been through, with a pandemic, and everything that has brought with it, that this window of rest and digest should be about here, and it's been it's shrunk, it's a little bit smaller for all of us, because we've just spent so much time being stressed. The beautiful part about the human brain, which you probably also know if you're a brain geek, like me is the human brain has neuroplasticity. So just because it's shrunk over the past couple of years doesn't mean we can't expand it as well. So that's good. That's a really great part. Yeah, it's a really beautiful part, you just have to work on it. And we're going to talk about so I'm on the left hand side, you see what looks like this same character in the middle who's at rest and digest has now been pushed into what we call hyper arousal, which is fight or flight. So you can see her kind of running away from the situation, which is a lot of our reactions. When we get really stressed either we physically run away, or we feel like I don't know if you've ever had that feeling where your body feels so agitated, like you just want to get out of the situation. Or yeah, yes. Or it comes out in aggression of some kind. Not all of us don't slam doors, like maybe my family does, but you feel like your fists might be clenching up, you feel your body tense up. So that is because in that hyper arousal fight or flight mode, we're producing so much adrenaline and cortisol, that our body to quite literally get ready to run away or fight something off. Our body doesn't really know what to do with that. And that produces certain symptoms, like irritability, anger, frustration, crying, again, stopping slamming doors, yelling, screaming, crying tantruming. So any of those over the top kind of emotional reactions, that's hyper arousal. Now I'm sure there's some of you out there going right now. Oh, yeah, no, that's me. I definitely do that. Just hyper aroused, stressed person. So if that resonates with you, that is real, and there's a reason why that's happening. So, or if that resonates for your kiddos, if you have a kiddo that becomes very overly emotional when they're upset as well, that that hyper arousal reaction. Now on the other side of the screen is our character kind of curled in a ball, head down, looking pretty sad or withdrawn. This is hypo arousal or freeze mode. So freeze doesn't always mean quite literally freeze, it means your body is shutting down in order to survive by reserving all of its resources. So your blood pressure is going to drop very, very low, your heart rates going to actually slow down, your breathing is going to slow down because your body's preparing to survive in a very different way. And so that's what we're seeing here and this looks very similar to depression. It looks like we don't want to engage with others, we want to kind of shut the world out, we want to just kind of go to sleep or sleeping in too much sleeping is often a sign of a stress response. So shutting down in that way, or I do see, especially some of my high achieving adolescents that I work with. And also we do this as adults a lot is what we call fawning or robotic compliance, where we're just like, everything's fine. I'm totally fine, everything's fine as one of our legs is quite literally on fire. So. So we do that, too. We try to avoid the stress and pretend like it's not happening, but then it almost always bubbles over in some way. So this is a polyvagal theory. So check it out, get some more information about it. I do really like it. And it makes sense to me. Okay, last slide. Like I promised, I just wanted to highlight. Again, if you're having some sort of stress in your life, some overwhelming stress in your life, there's systems that are most impacted by stress, our sleep, eating and digestion. So if you start to see disruptions in any of those areas, so sleep, having a hard time staying asleep, falling asleep, having nighttime disturbances, like nightmares, or night terrors, or sleeping too much. Usually, it's to avoid that might be a sign of stress eating, we either eat too much, because we're trying to sell suit or make ourselves feel better with food, or we're not eating enough because we're not attending to those social social cues that you didn't get the eating cues, association cues. Also, I just read a really interesting study about "hangriness". I don't know if anyone gets hangry. Yeah, I do. And so my kiddos, well, there's a good reason for that our cortisol levels are inversely related to how full or hungry we are. So we get really hungry. Our cortisol levels skyrocket. And so it's all about glucose and cortisol levels. And so there's a real again, a real reason why we get hangry.

Hannah Choi 27:04

That's also validating, to hear Yeah, right.

Dr. Alison Roy 27:08

Not crazy. There's reason why I get hangry. So bring snacks always bring snacks, and then digestion. And so if you have a kiddo, or yourself who's got some tummy troubles going on, you just always feel like you've got an upset stomach, even we feel this in very small amounts, if we're going to give a presentation or we have something that we're quite anxious or nervous for, right, we get that butterflies in our stomach. So all of this just kind of combined, is I find it validating. It makes me feel like okay, there's real stuff going on, when we start to become really stressed and go into that stress mode. So, yeah,

Hannah Choi 27:44

Great, thank you. I feel like something that I just have noticed in my life. And just everything that I hear from people is I feel like people talk sort of peripherally about sleep and make sure you sleep enough, make sure you eat enough, make sure you know, you're exercising or whatever. But but it almost feels like it's just like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know. But it's true. You really do need to, it's that conversation. I feel like needs to be taken more seriously. Or something. We need to change the message somehow this is not just Yeah, yeah, thing like, need to, like really address it.

Dr. Alison Roy 28:25

Yeah. And if you think about if you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs another really great accessible thing to Google will really resonate with a lot of listeners, I bet. But Maslow's hierarchy of needs is all about how do you achieve your full greatness, essentially, and you have to start the bottom part of the triangle, the bottom part of that triangle, the first step to achieving greatness is taking care of the most basic of needs. And if you don't do that, you can't move up the ladder. And so there is very good solid research decades and decades of research around sleep and eating and just the basic needs needing to be taken care of because our brain needs rest in order to have that ability to have neuroplasticity and grow and change.

Hannah Choi 29:10

Yeah, yeah. Yep. Great. So how is so how does so can you give some examples of like in someone's household, like how this kind of stress might impact everybody? Yeah, parents down to kids.

Dr. Alison Roy 29:26

Yeah. Yeah. So I always think about, you know, I, so I, I work a lot with the director of psychiatry at Dartmouth, and he and I have become really good friends and I have a really tough situation I'm working through I often call him and I did that for one of the families I was working with. I said, I just need some help. I need some strategies on what to do next. And he's said, sounds like you've got a polyvagal storm happening in that family. And I loved that concept of that image of that poly vagal reaction. I was just describing fight flight or freeze, if you're all having it individually as a family, you're all going to be having it as a family unit. And because our brains do play off each other. So there's lots of really good research out there about mirror neurons, which are also part of our frontal lobe. And our mirror neurons talk to other human brains, especially ones that we're very connected to. So our family members, all of our mirror neurons are very, very connected. And so when we start to get stressed, meaning us as parents, our kids brains are going to automatically respond to that. And it's crazy, if you were to, if you were to spend a lot of time being stressed as parents, and you looked at your cortisol levels, and even though your kids are experiencing that stressor, maybe it's a stressor at work, or you know, it's adult stuff that your kids aren't necessarily aware of, but there's cortisol levels are going to rise to meet yours. So our brains are very interconnected in that way and can play off each other stress wise. So it is important, we as parents are guilty of not taking care of ourselves very well sometimes. But if I can, yeah, it's hard if I can get you to buy into doing some self care for for you, but also for your kiddos, because the more you stay regulated, the more likely they're also going to be regulated. And you won't get caught up in that polyvagal storm.

Hannah Choi 31:26

Yeah, I remember that so much. Especially when my kids were younger. I I just remember thinking like, oh, yeah, this is we're all we're all like feeding off of each other right now. Nobody is helping anybody right now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember one particular moment, right after my son was born. So now. So at this point, I have like, maybe like a month old baby, and then a three year old and then me. And then my husband was working from home. And he came up from his basement office, and the three of us were sitting on the couch crying. He was like, oh, no, what happened? And I knew what happened. Yeah. We all I'm sure needed a snack.

Dr. Alison Roy 32:09

Yeah, and probably a nap. So yeah, we started there, or you're probably tired, or you're probably hungry. So

Hannah Choi 32:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have a strategy that we teach our clients that you maybe you've even heard of, because I don't think we came up with it. HALT stands for like hungry, angry or anxious, Lonely or Tired. And it's such a good thing to check in, check in on.

Dr. Alison Roy 32:32

Yeah, and one of the, one of the ways so we've we've already talked about a couple of the ways to stop this polyvagal response from happening in his tracks, is to, you know, figure out basic needs or there's some sort of basic need, because if you're hungry, if you're tired, you will trigger that red brain response. Whether even if like your amygdala picks up on nothing else in the environment. Unfortunately, your amygdala also picks up on internal cues. So even if you're thinking about something that's stressful, your amygdala will also pick up on that. So even if the environment around you is as calm as can be. So um, so yeah, we always talk about that strategy. But also, you know, if you're like, Okay, well know that they've gotten enough sleep. And we don't need a snack right now, we just had a snack connection, human connection. So let's fix that loneliness, like you just said, is actually the number one way to decrease that red brain response. Because if you remember the Blue Brain, you've got partial Blue Brain online, when you're even when you're in that red brain response. And that that Blue Brain is looking for MI loved. And if you're able to connect with someone, and it doesn't have to be very long research shows it has to be even 30 seconds of connection. So a hug, can can calm that red brain or at least bring a little bit more of the blue and green brain back online.

Hannah Choi 33:56

I remember learning about that. Like she called it a 20-second hug in the book "Burnout". Yeah, yeah. And as one way to, like close that stress loop. And so the other day, my son had a really stressful morning before school, and, and he was really having a hard time. And I was like, You need a 20-second hug. Come here. Yeah, I was like, Mom, I don't have time for a 20-second Hug. Dude, you need it. So, I scooped him up. I'm like, Just relax into me for 20 seconds. I think we lasted maybe 10 seconds.

Dr. Alison Roy 34:30

I think that's funny. So two thoughts about that. One is parents always asked me but what if they're not wanting a hug in that moment, and I and I get that I've been there. I don't have teenagers yet. But I can imagine with teenagers that's particularly hard. So sometimes I say to him, I said, Do you need a hug to my own kids? And they'll say no. And sometimes I'll say, well, I need one. And that's not untrue. Actually, there's a lot of times where we're having some sort of stress response together and I could use a hug as well. And that'll Almost always loops almost always get them so. But the other thing I wanted to say about that is I taught from the book "Burnout" for several years. And I love that book. I love that. It speaks our language, right of like the brain's response to burnout. And someone came back to me and said, you know, you talked about the 20-second Hug. And my husband and I have now decided when we get an argument, we're going to stop and do a 20-second hug and then continue the argument. And she said, It works every time to do that's awesome. It's super awkward because it's, if you actually time 20 seconds, it's a long time to be so funny. I was like, That's a great story. I love it.

Hannah Choi 35:41

I love that. Yeah. It's funny. That's, that's, that's great advice. And I actually learned that a long time ago when my daughter was one I was at I was in a mom's group and someone in the moms' group brought an astrologist to the moms' group. And she just did like little mini readings on all of our kids. And she told me, she said, you're Yeah, it was very cool. She said, Your daughter is not going to be a hugger. But she's going to need hugs. So you're gonna have to tell her that you need a hug in order to get her to get the hugs that she needs. So I've always used that for her.

Dr. Alison Roy 36:21

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And 'cause some people aren't naturally that way. Yeah.

Hannah Choi 36:25

Yeah. And that reminds me of the article that we talked a little bit about the last time you presented that, or in the New York Times article, where the teacher I think, asked, "Do you need to be hugged, heard or helped?" And, and I love that, and I love that she said that she finds that most people just want to be hugged. Which which shows, yeah, you do need that physical touch.

Dr. Alison Roy 36:50

Right? Yeah. So most people in that I think what happens when we become stressed is or when we see a loved one being stressed. So as a parent, especially I find this when our kiddos are stressed or upset or frustrated, or whatever that big powerful emotion is. It's hard for us to tolerate that distress because we love them. And we don't want to see them hurting. And also, it's upsetting to us. So we start to have reaction that we don't like, either. So it's really hard to watch that. And so what we typically end up doing, I think I talked about this is trying to fix, because our heap, that's what our human brain does, our human brains are problem solving machines. And so they like to be able to solve the problem and move on. But as we know, most problems aren't solvable. And so when we need come up against something that's not solvable, or that's uncertain, or doesn't have any answer, it does send that secondary brain red brain reaction. And so, as parents, it's hard to pull it back and go to that. Do you need a hug? Do you need to be heard? Or do you need to be helped? Because we jumped to the helped part. And a lot of the times when we're upset, we're not ready to be helped. And I think I said this too, when we were talking earlier is that men, dads, tend to go to help even quicker, like that male kind of response. I'm sorry, that's your male brain. I'm sorry. Yeah. They are the problem-solvers. And so really helping just us as parents learn. Asking that question first helps to slow things down. To give that hug to hear them out to validate validation doesn't mean you agree, you can say I'm sorry, you're sad. Sounds like you're sad, anything like that, even if you think it's ridiculous at their side, and this will be up here and that internal dialogue, right, this is crazy. I can't believe I'm validating the side of this right now. Yeah, they need to be heard. And then you can get to that problem solving piece if they're when they're ready for it and you allow those first two steps to happen. Usually, then they're on board for Okay, let's move forward. How do we do that?

Hannah Choi 38:58

And the easiest way to do that, I imagine is if you are regulated yourself, and yeah, accessing that your frontal lobe and your executive function skills, you need that perspective taking and cognitive flexibility, right, empathy.

Dr. Alison Roy 39:13

Yeah, so it's always okay to take a minute. I talked sometimes about the show "Bluey". When I talked to parents, and I don't know if you're, we're a big Bluey fan in our house and

Hannah Choi 39:24

My kids are too old.

Dr. Alison Roy 39:26

Yeah, oh, that's too bad. You should watch it anyways. Um, yeah, it's totally entertaining his parents, but there's an episode where the mom and the two there's two little girls and the well, they're all dogs, but they are, you know, it's after school very clearly. And the kids are like, oh, oh, and mom's making snacks. And she's looking a little stressed and the dad comes home and she's like, I need a minute. And he's like, yep, yep, no problem. And so she goes and takes 20 minutes. And chaos ensues while she's gone, but adorable chaos. But you know, it's always okay to take that time to say, I just need a minute to be able to then come back and as long as you come back around and are fully engaged. Yeah, so, and Dan Siegel talks about that as well, in his book, Parenting From the Inside Out, he does a really great job of talking about engaged, sometimes you're ready to engage, you come home from work, you walk in the door, let's do it, I want to play Legos. And I want to get down on the floor, and I want to engage, and I'm gonna see all the things you did at school today. There are other times we come in the door. Likely, it's those times when our red brains already been activated before we come in that door. And we're just not ready to go down that path with our kids. Yep. And it's okay to say I just need 10 minutes, set a timer, and I'll be right there with you, and then just loop back around with them. And that that repair that coming back around can be just as powerful if not more

Hannah Choi 40:48

And such good role modeling for your kids. That it's showing them it's okay to do that. Yeah. So I have

Dr. Alison Roy 40:55

Impulse control. Yeah, our new society is on demand. And so have prolong that reward. It's super, super beneficial for their frontal lobe. So yeah,

Hannah Choi 41:09

I have a friend who has shared with me that it's, she finds it very difficult to take that pause, she, she immediately reacts, she, like immediately yells or immediately wants to fix something. And it's really difficult for her to just breathe and stop. And so do you have any recommendations for parents who might feel that way?

Dr. Alison Roy 41:30

Yeah, so some of us are naturally chemically made that way, well, we're just more reactive. So I would say in the moment to try to take a breath to try to remind yourself to that pause, remember hug, heard or helped, right. So just in that moment, trying to remember those steps. So that's something there's also a lot to regulating when we're not dysregulated. So working in regulation to try to ease off that irritability when we're not in the moment. So that's always something I try to recommend to parents get that regular, regular diet of regulatory moments, and they don't need to, I don't need to be big. And I think that was something I needed to hear, especially during the pandemic is, you know, like I said, three to five minutes, if it's a regulatory activity that you enjoy, whether it's taking a walk, or getting some fresh air, getting sunshine, or listening to a good song or podcast, you don't need a ton of time. And it can be less 30 seconds or less if you're just doing that physical connection. So just trying to weave those in throughout your day, to kind of keep that irritability level a little bit lower

Hannah Choi 42:37

The baseline, get the baseline lower.

Dr. Alison Roy 42:39

The baseline, right? We want to keep in that tolerance there. And then the last thing I will say is, it's okay, if that's your natural personality, or if you're in it right now, you know, meaning like maybe all three of your kids are under the age of five, and you're spending a lot of time in that zone. Because what can be even more powerful is if you have that snap reaction, the moment is being able to come back around and say, I'm sorry, I wasn't my best self. And here's how we how can we do better next time and making it about the week? It's about the pair? It's about that dyad a parent child, how can we do better next time. And that is, it's so so powerful, the repair. And it's also a really good role modeling of accountability, I just read a really good article about, we want our kids to be accountable. And accountability isn't something that's naturally kind of within us fully, we have to have that modeled and demonstrated for us. And the parent apology is so powerful and modeling accountability. And then the last piece, I'll say about that, yeah, that was I was cool article for me to read. I thought, Oh, this is really cool that we want our kids to be accountable, we have to demonstrate that. And the last thing I'll say about that is is changing the way we talk about apologies and this is something I've been pretty. Ever since learning this I've really helped my kids kind of understand this and as a family understand this is when we apologize, it's we don't have to say it's okay. There are times when it's okay, and we can say that's okay. There are times when it's not okay. And so it's better to say thank you for apologizing, because it makes it more about the weight of the apology and appreciating that than it is about the action that caused

Hannah Choi 44:22

Right, right, right. Something that I remember from your presentation, during the pandemic, you talked about how repetition like repetitive behaviors can be really calming to the brain. Can you share a little bit about that?

Dr. Alison Roy 44:40

Yeah, so rep got repetitive, rhythmic? Any sort of anything like that? Can be it resonates with that bottom part, that red part of our brain, and that's something that we are wired for as humans from the get go. So when we're in utero, we're being regulated by our moms, right, there's nothing that we can do to regulate ourselves. So we're being regulated by, certainly her body temperature, her way of feeding us, but also her body movements, or rhythmic movements and her heartbeat. And so we are pre programmed to have that resonate with the most primal part of our brain. And so the brain scans that they've done just show when we do these repetitive rhythmic movements, how it engages and lights up that bottom part of the brain shows us or demonstrates to us that that's really that's the language of that part of the brain. So if we want to regulate that part of the brain, so that's why swinging. So you see kids that are, you know, have those swings at school. So swinging, walking or running is so helpful. So they'll actually there's been studies done where kids with speech and language delays, they'll put them on a treadmill and have them do their like activities on a treadmill and how much more productive they are, because it's just regulating that caught in that red part of their brain and the left side. Yeah, so really cool. Drumming. So anything like that, if you can think of rhythmic and repetitive, anything, those two words are really, really regulating coloring. So even this motion of coloring, these things really do work. So again, giving science so what we're told, right, there's like these coloring books, these adult coloring books and yoga and walking and running. And, you know, why are why are these things helpful? Well, there's a real reason why they're helpful. Because it does resonate with that part of our brain.

Hannah Choi 46:44

Right? I love that. It really, truly does. And I've said this before, so many times on the podcast and all of my clients, I'm sure I'm like, yeah, yeah. But to learn to learn about what's going on in your brain, just helps so much understand, like, why I'm so like, why am I supposed to do these things to help myself? And just knowing that why really, for me, always motivates, motivates my, like, just motivates me in doing those things. Yeah, yeah. So as soon as like, as soon as I learned about how it never even occurred to me, but like, you have to practice your, whatever self regulation strategies you use, you have to practice them so that so that they're easily accessible when it's time to use them. And yes, and it didn't occur to me like, well, we practice walking, so that walking is easily accessible to us when we need it. Or we practice anything like anything that we need to come easily to us. So learning that about, about whatever self regulation strategies that we need to use, yeah, let's practice them. So I just like drive around doing that square breathing. And, yes, and then it just comes so much more easily to me, when I'm in a moment where I'm like, Okay, well, yeah, you know how to do this.

Dr. Alison Roy 48:07

I always say, practice and have any tools that you might need to regulate, like, I'll go back to the coloring have a coloring book and crayons. Yeah, whatever it is in a designated place, because you go, last thing you want to do is be stressed when you're trying to find your regulation.

Hannah Choi 48:20

Where's my coloring book?

Dr. Alison Roy 48:22

Yeah, that is and you talk about practice square breathing, just to go and we'll do one more geeky brain thing but neuronal development is, you know, it's a, if you don't use it, you lose it. So if you don't use parts of your brain that actually will, your brain will prune that area of your brain. And so we definitely want the brain pruning what we want it to prune and not pruning other things. But neurons, we say "neurons that fire together wire together". So the more we use in neuronal pathway, like square breathing, the more wired it becomes, the more quick and accessible. This is why we practice tying our shoes, we practice riding our bikes, you know, as kids, there's lots of examples of that neuronal development of creating that pathway that's quite clunky at first, and then the more you use, it becomes lightning fast, because it's well oiled machine. And so you want that to be true for your coping skills or regulatory skills as well.

Hannah Choi 49:18

Yeah, I give both my kids play instruments and I, they're so tired of me hearing hearing me talk about executive function skills, and the brain. But I do remind them like, you, when you first got that piece of music, you looked at it and thought, Oh, my brain, like I don't know how to do this. And now you can play it without even looking at the music. And that's such a good evidence that that it is yes, we do get better when we practice and it's so worth it to put effort into the things that we do.

Dr. Alison Roy 49:47

Yeah, music is part of that rhythmic repetitive. That's why so many of us are regulated by music of some kind.

Hannah Choi 49:55

Yeah, yeah. So you have anything else that you that's that you want to share with parents who might be struggling in the moment.

Dr. Alison Roy 50:05

Yeah, I think the last thing I'll end on and this is just something I love talking about, because for me as a parent, I think it changed. The way I parented when I learned this is all about temper tantrums, and where they fit into this profile. So I think I mentioned temper tantrums are red brain reactions. So when we're having one of those temper tantrums, our kids are having one of those temper tantrums because we have we have them as adults. We don't ever stop having temper tantrums. That's a big myth, no, we always have them. But it does look different depending on how much frontal lobe we have. But when our kids are having those temper tantrums, when I was an early parent I was always told to ignore leave them alone, have them leave the room. And what that actually does is create this secondary panic response. Because in that moment, our red brain is looking for hugged helped or you know, heard. And so I always give the example of the first time I learned this about a temper tantrum not to ignore but to actually engage. I tried it. I called I called my colleague after this is all over and said, Oh my gosh, it actually worked does not magic, it actually worked. So my youngest, he was about two, maybe two and a half at the time. And his name is Finnegan and he is fiery Finnegan Riley, and he fits that name perfectly as a fiery Irishman. And he wanted a popsicle. I was like, Oh yeah, sure, buddy. Go ahead and and went into the freezer, and we only had orange popsicles and full blown meltdown. And in that moment, his brain viewed that as a life or death situation. I'm laughing because as adults are like this, isn't it? Yeah. So I was I saying to myself and my in my head, right internal dialogue. This is crazy. But on the outside, I said, Oh, buddy, I know it's so hard when you only only have orange popsicles and you want a red one. I'm sorry, you're sad? How can we help this to go better, I got down, I just sat down on the floor next to him. And just kept kind of saying those things over and over again. And he eventually crawled in my lap and was he was still sad. But was able to then calm down. And you know, when I before I did it, I thought isn't that giving in to the temper tantrum? reinforcing it right? This is what we're always afraid of as parents is reinforcing it. And no giving into the temper tantrum or reinforcing it would be driving to the store and getting that red popsicle. In that moment. All I was doing was giving his red brain what it needed to be able to get that logic and rational thought what little he has

Dr. Alison Roy 50:26

Whatever he has

Dr. Alison Roy 52:40

To come back online. Oh, okay, I'm, I'm this is, you know, there's still popsicles just not the color I wanted. And how can we move forward? So yeah, it's not perfect. It's not a perfect science. But, you know, learning that I think, to me really changed the way I parented.

Hannah Choi 53:05

Yeah. And it is so hard to because we're also probably pretty, if we're not, maybe we're just in our emotional brain, but we're probably also a little bit down in our red brain. So it's hard. We have to, like, get ourselves out of there to be able to do that instead of just yelling it or just slamming the door and leaving the room. Right? Yes.

Dr. Alison Roy 53:26

Yeah. And I found that reaction to be calming for me to to be like deep breath. Yeah, how crazy this is. Yeah, get on the floor. Right. Right. It's really hard. Yes. You saying it to yourself to man, this is really hard.

Hannah Choi 53:41

I'm having a hard time. I'm having a hard time. Yeah, yeah. I remember putting my daughter in. She wouldn't she was tantruming for so long. And I was just losing my mind. So I ended up filling the tub. And I put her in clothed in the tub. And she stopped

Dr. Alison Roy 54:02

Yeah, cuz her amygdala needed something temperature wise. Yep. Yeah,

Hannah Choi 54:07

yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Alison Roy 54:09

Do the best. We do the best that we can we do

Hannah Choi 54:12

That's right. That is right. Sometimes they go in the tub clothed. At least I made the water warm. At least I didn't wasn't like you're getting cold.

Hannah Choi 54:26

All right. Well, thank you so much, Alison. This is just I mean, we know both of us could probably keep talking about this all day. But forever as I Yeah, people probably have places to go or they have like regulating activities to go practice.

Dr. Alison Roy 54:41

I hope so. Go practice your regulating activities!

Hannah Choi 54:44

I hope so too. And can you share with our listeners where they can find you and maybe some of your favorite resources that people might want to check us?

Dr. Alison Roy 54:53

Of course I have a website that I'm super terrible at updating but it does have some good resources on it. Hi, it's Dr. Alison roy.com. All one word, Dr.AlisonRoy.com. And then within that website, there's lots of different links to stuff including my YouTube channel, which is where I save a lot of the good resources that I find is even a playlist for parents and educators. So check that out. Certainly. And, yeah, that's, that's hopefully some resources for you.

Hannah Choi 55:25

Great, thank you so much. And that's our show for today. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen, I hope you learned something new about your brain. And if you weren't a brain nerd like me and Alison already, hopefully, we've convinced you to join the official club. We'd love to have you. Be sure to check out the show notes for links to some of the topics we cover today. And you can find the links to the slides that Alison referenced. If you know anyone who might be feeling the stress of parenting. Wait a second, I think that's all parents. Please share this episode with them. You can reach out to me at podcast at beyond booksmart.com I would love to hear from you. Please subscribe to focus forward on Apple and Google podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. If you listen on Apple podcasts or Spotify give us a boost by giving us that five star rating. You can sign up for our newsletter at beyond booksmart.com/podcast and we'll let you know when new episodes drop and we'll share information related to the topic. Thanks for listening!