Latest / ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women / 169 // ADHD Nervous System Dysregulation, with Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge

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169 // ADHD Nervous System Dysregulation, with Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge · ADHD with Confidence | Overcome Anxiety & Self-Doubt, Christian ADHD Coach, ADHD in Women

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Hey friends, welcome to the ADHD with Confidence podcast. I'm your host,
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Kelsey, and today I'm joined by Dr. Roseanne. She's a board-certified clinician
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with over 30 years of experience and more than 10,000 brain scans on children.
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She's also the founder of the Global Institute of Children's Mental Health and
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the host of the Disregulated Kids podcast. Dr. Roseanne, welcome.
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Hello! I'm so excited for this conversation and talking about all things ADHD.
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Yeah, well, thanks for taking the time to be with us here today.
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I'm excited to talk about your book, The Disregulated Kid.
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But before we get into that, can you just give us a little bit of a history
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on the type of work that you do?
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Yeah, well, for 30 years, I taught kids, teens, adults, families, really how to.
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Really regulate their nervous system and how that if you didn't regulate your
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nervous system first, before you did treatment or you tried to learn or heal
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yourself, because a lot of people came to me with physical,
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ailments, that nothing was going to stick.
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And the reason why I taught that is it's the biology of the nervous system,
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the way the nervous system works.
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So I've had the privilege of helping thousands of people over these years and
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just loved, really spent a lot of time with kids.
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And I love kids because they don't know that they can't get better or something can't be changed.
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They're just so much more willing to change themselves.
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And I just loved that. And when a kid changed in a family, I always worked with the family.
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Like, I never just worked with a kid. It was required to do the resetting had
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to also occur on a family level because otherwise you fall back on the same patterns.
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Absolutely. And that's something I want to get into later that you had mentioned before was.
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How dysregulation can affect the entire family. But I wanted to ask first,
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so I've been hearing a lot lately in different circles within the ADHD community,
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nervous system regulation.
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What's the difference between nervous system regulation and emotional regulation?
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Yeah, well, it really, nervous system is having a moment.
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It's everybody is talking about the nervous system and me being Dr.
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Roseanne, the geek who gets her daily alerts from Google, couldn't be more excited.
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So I'm so glad we're having this conversation. So what is the nervous system,
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right? Our nervous system, it manages our stress response. It does a lot of
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things, but we have something called an autonomic nervous system,
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and it's our stress management system. So.
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We don't have an unlimited capacity in our nervous system, which is why we're
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struggling, and I'll get back to that.
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But our autonomic nervous system has a relaxed state, which is called a parasympathetic state.
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And so I like to think of it in the most deep state of relaxation.
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I call it the hot tub state. You get into a hot tub and you're like,
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oh, that is going into a parasympathetic state. Then we have sympathetic dominant.
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And so when a stressor happens, you're,
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about to miss an important phone call and the phone's ringing and you're running
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to it, your cortisol, everything will jack up your adrenaline and you go into
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a sympathetic dominant state.
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Now, if you're regulated, it goes back down into a calm state.
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What is happening, however, and by the way, at the tippy top of sympathetic
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dominant, we have fight, flight, or freeze. These are biological responses that
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your body perceives as stress, a danger.
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Doesn't matter if it's real or imagined. If your body sees something as a threat,
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it's going to go into fight, flight, or freeze.
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Now, what's really happening is we are constantly adding stress to our stress cup.
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And just like you think about a regular cup, if you keep dripping things in,
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like before we got on, I realized that we weren't using video.
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So I said, hey, Kelsey, do you mind if I turn the lights off?
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Because too much light for me causes my nervous system to overload.
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So it could be an argument you had with your spouse. It could be a boss not
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understanding your ADHD. It could be a snarky kid.
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And all of a sudden, all day, all these stressors build up in your cup.
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And it might not just be all day, too. It might be the days before,
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the weeks before, the months before.
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And you start moving into a constant sympathetic dominant state.
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And when you get overloaded, the cup overflows.
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And so when we talk about what's happening, that is what a dysregulation of the nervous system is.
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And emotional dysregulation is a form of dysregulation. So we have signs of
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understimulation and we have signs of overstimulation.
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Overstimulation would be emotional dysregulation. Okay, so essentially,
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in that state of being dysregulated, we're staying too high in that sympathetic
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nervous system in fight, flight, or freeze. Mm-hmm.
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Yep. And, you know, some people, right, I had something very,
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very stressful happen to me last week, and I am like a stress slayer.
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Like, I am like, you want me there when something bad is happening.
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I am so, I go into a zone, and I am like the problem solver. I don't freak out.
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But I had something really bad happen in the sense that essentially almost,
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I don't even want to say, but essentially somebody tried to extort money from me.
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Okay, we're going to leave it like that. So I'm super, integrity is my highest
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value. And I was like, this is a professional. So like became upset. What happened to me?
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I get digestive unrest and my stomach physically hurt.
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And then I go into a shutdown. But again, this is so rare for me.
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And why did I go into a shutdown? Because I was like, oh, you got to take care
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of your nervous system. You got to get it back online.
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So one person might do that. Another person might have emotional dysregulation
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and start swearing and freaking out. And then you might have times of in-between.
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So everybody's response is unique to themselves. We just don't think about shutdown
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as dysregulation. We only think about those big behaviors.
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You know, with kids or ourselves, big tears, you know, arguing and things like
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that. But that's not true. You can have a range of responses.
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So within that, when you're talking about what it looks like to look dysregulated,
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what are some examples that we could see in our kids or in ourselves that would
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tell us that we are dysregulated? Yeah.
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So when we think about dysregulation and we think about the behaviors of our
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kids, they're not necessarily so different from adults, right?
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It's just that we, as parents, are managing our kids' behavior.
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And let me tell you, we think half the time, or 90% of the time,
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we think our kids are doing things on purpose just to make us mad.
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That's really not the truth. What's happening is kids are increasingly dysregulated because of not.
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Getting stress out of their stress cup and because other people around them
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are dysregulated, including their parents, peers, teachers, we're moving into
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incredibly dysregulated society.
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So what are things you could see from your kid, right? So maybe it is backtalk.
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Maybe it's a quick no.
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All of a sudden, your kid's a no-er. Like, no, no. You know,
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you're like, do you want the blue shirt or the red shirt? And they're like, no.
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You know, like, that's a dysregulated nervous system, right?
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Maybe it's that you or your kid hate relaxation.
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You hate the hot tub. You hate the shavasana in yoga.
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You hate breath work. I guarantee you you're dysregulated.
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If you hate going into a relaxed state, there's something in you is like,
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I don't like that feeling of safety, right?
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Maybe you were somebody that had that, but it can be being really unfocused.
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So, you know, in all these years, I did over 10,000 brain maps.
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50% of the time somebody came to me with ADHD, they didn't have ADHD.
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What they had, because they had a brain scan. So you're able to see what's going
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on in the brain. This isn't just me clinically trying to be like,
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oh, yeah, let me have a conversation with you. No.
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So it's a clinical intake plus a brain map. Please know I no longer do these.
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I've retired from clinical care, so don't contact me because that's usually what happens.
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But what would happen is I would go in and look at the brain and I would see
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extreme overcommunication in the brain, which was a sign of a lot of stress.
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I would see other things, but I didn't see evidence of.
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What ADHD, nor did the history substantiate it. What would happen is they would talk about stress.
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And so when you are in a highly distressed state, in a sympathetic dominant
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state, which could occur from a single bad event,
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but what I've seen happen in these 30 years is it's less likely about a single
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bad event and a whole bunch of triggers that are happening all the time that
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are just constantly just causing us to jack our nervous systems up.
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But when we are seeing this distress, you know, your frontal lobes go offline.
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This is biology. And you lose the ability to think through things,
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take action, you know, working memory, all that stuff.
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Because you're prehistoric cavemen, you're supposed to only go into fight, flight, or freeze.
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You're not supposed to start the dishwasher or finish your homework or whatever
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all the things that you're doing, you're just too activated.
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Now, that is an excuse not to do the dishes, people.
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That is really about, darn it, you know, but like what you're supposed to do
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is regulate yourself and then attempt it.
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And, you know, and especially, and even for kids, but especially for adults,
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when you have a history of failure all the time and people criticizing you for not doing things.
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Why do you even attempt to do things? Like, this is what happens.
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People have shame and they shut down.
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So this is about rethinking what we see as behaviors. Now, that doesn't mean you might not have ADHD.
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It just means that when you're activated, your ADHD is going to be 10x worse.
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So we have to do this. For me, I created this whole regulation first.
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And regulation first is about having to regulate yourself before you go to therapy
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or before you head out the door in the morning or you start a big project at
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work or you do the dishes, whatever you got to do.
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You have to take moments to regulate yourself so your nervous system can help you complete the task.
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So within that, a question that I have when you're saying, so regulate yourself
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first before you go to therapy, before you go to work, before you leave the house.
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I imagine that would also apply in regulating ourselves before we try to help
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our children. So two questions with that.
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The first one is, how do we practice regulation for ourselves?
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And then the second part of that question is, how do we help our kids to regulate?
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Is that something that we model for them?
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Is that something that we leave them to do? Is that something that we actively
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participate in with them?
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Yeah. So let's start with the
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second question because then we'll go to the first. So here's the reality.
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Your kids are regulating off of you. They have essentially a sonar.
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And they are literally picking up, like, look at mom's face expression.
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You know, ooh, mom's tone doesn't sound so nice. You know, and you could think
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about this in your everyday life, whether you're talking to a boss or your partner
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or whatever. I mean, you know, like saying, you know, to somebody like,
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oh, yeah, I really like your bangs, right? And you just got your hair done versus,
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oh my gosh, I really like your bangs. Like, it's totally different,
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right? And we said the same thing, you know?
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So they are picking up off of you, okay? And I don't say this to make anybody feel bad, okay?
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And I don't want to hear that you had a trauma background.
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I don't want to hear any of that because the nervous, and I'm sorry if you do,
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and that's not fair, okay, but you are here for your kids and your kids didn't ask to be born.
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So you got to put your big girl or big boy pants on and you're going to make this happen.
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And the other part of this is your nervous system has no idea if you're stressed
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from something bad or good. It's going to respond in the same way,
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which is shocking to people.
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So let go of the idea that something is holding you back. Is it going to be
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harder for you? Of course.
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You got a trauma background. Is this going to be harder for you if you're neurodiversion
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or you're struggling with mental health? Yes.
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But these things work. They worked with thousands of people with the most extreme
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mental health. People used to fly in from all over the world to come to reset,
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their kid's nervous system, their family nervous system.
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So your kid is picking up on you.
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OK, that is that is a lot. And nobody's asking you to be perfect.
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I talk about being 80 percent awesome.
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OK, it's a B minus. So two out of every 10, you can make a mistake.
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If you're really struggling, you've got to get help.
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So you have to put that oxygen mask on. You cannot assist your child in a dysregulated state.
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You can't yell at your kid to stop yelling.
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You can't do these things. It just doesn't work. You already know it doesn't
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work. I'm just Dr. Roe telling you what you already know.
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But the reason why the missing ingredient in this sauce is the regulation.
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So our kids will learn to regulate first by just absorbing our calm.
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They really do absorb calm.
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Yes, you explicitly teach it because kids are not born regulated despite what
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you think And despite your own memories about yourself being an easy kid,
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because guess what? Even Dr. Rowe was an easy kid.
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Big surprise there, a saucy little Italian girl. So we have to walk them through it.
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But you can't walk them through it when you're irritated and annoyed.
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So your first question is, how do we do this, right? How do we do this?
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So I wanted to make something so simple.
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And so what I did is something called the love pause.
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And the love pause is as simple as it gets, okay? And it is three seconds.
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You're going to pause. You're going to breathe. If you can't breathe,
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we're going to talk about different things you could regulate.
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And then you respond. If you took three seconds before you responded to that
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annoying middle manager at work, for somebody who didn't hold the door open,
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for you and you want to make something snarky or your kid who says something
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snarky. You paused and you just breathed three seconds.
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And you just breathed three seconds.
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And then responded you're going to give the response you want to give
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and you're going to respond from calm not reactivity this is how we start breaking
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this cycle this is not a one-off deal right we are americans we think
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you know the world thinks we are quick everything is overnight and there's like
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a magic wand or a pill for it that's not the way it works,
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and the more we do this, the more we find calm for our nervous system,
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the easier it becomes. It will do it automatically.
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The more you dysregulate, that will be more likely that your nervous system
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will have that response.
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So, you know, that I want to empower you with that. So when you're like,
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oh my gosh, it doesn't work.
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It's because your nervous system just wants to go back to its dysregulated state.
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You've got to pull it back. And it is capable. I saw it thousands of times in
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the most extreme situations.
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So I know these things work, plus the science tells us it works.
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So essentially, we're training ourselves for one response or the other.
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If we're increasingly dysregulated, we respond in that sympathetic nervous system.
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That's right. We're like, freeze, fawn.
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Versus if we practice, and like you said, it's not going to be easy necessarily,
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but practice telling our nervous system you are safe by taking that deep breath and pausing.
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Whereas if you had some catastrophic event happening or something that was life-threatening,
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you probably wouldn't pause for those three seconds.
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That's right. And you know, the thing is, is that I'm a big fan,
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right? So we're telling people, you know, you need to do meditation for 20 minutes
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or half an hour, you need to go for a jog and you need to do a yoga class and a massage.
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These are all amazing things, okay? Dr. Rowe, I go to get a lymphatic massage every other week.
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I couldn't even begin to tell you what my daily practice is.
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I just do things constantly all the time.
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What the mistake we're making is we're not teaching people things that are less
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than two minutes and that they can just integrate into their daily lives.
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This is not about adding more.
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It's about shifting those dysregulation periods into regulation periods.
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But we're actually trying to regulate in moments of calm.
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And so when we regulate in moments of calm, just like I had a lousy week last
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week, I was able to get through, by the way, and deal with these banana people, right?
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So, And that is only because I have practiced regulating all the time,
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right? It was a serious situation where I need to buck up and do things a certain
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way, a very legal way and all this other stuff.
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And I share these things because I like to share extremes, right?
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But if you think about all the things that happen in your day,
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right? Like we're waiting for some major storm to happen where I am.
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And I'm like, oh my gosh, is this going to go out? What's my plan A? What's my plan B?
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I'm not freaking out about it. I thought about it in a calm way and I have a plan B.
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But everyday life, what's happening is that little bit, a worry about a storm
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happen, causes our cup to overflow.
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And this is what we're seeing in our kids. Like, we have words like deeply feeling
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kids and all this other stuff.
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And I'm not saying kids aren't sensitive and sensitivity isn't a bad thing.
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But sensitivity is a bad thing when you dysregulate all the time because you're
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training your nervous system to dysregulate.
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So when parents or people, parents say about their kids, my gosh,
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how do I get my kid to stop this? Like, how do I get them to not dysregulate?
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How do I get myself to not dysregulate? What they're bringing into the table is nothing worked.
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And what I'm saying is nothing worked because you're not adding micro moments
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of regulation throughout your day.
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And so until you do that and you make it so much easier, you're going to just
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be spinning your wheels.
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And that's really where, Kelsey, the focus comes offline, the working memory,
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the lack of executive functioning.
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You know, we always talk so much about attention, but it's really executive
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functioning because you're not completing or starting things that gets us into trouble, right?
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We spend so much energy when we are in that dysregulated state, right?
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It's exhausting, it's tiring, and I can imagine that it wouldn't leave much,
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capacity for executive functioning, which is what we're already dealing with.
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You talked about those micro moments. And I think that's something I want to
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touch on for a second. So you said the love pause, taking those three seconds,
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the awareness, the deep breath, and then you're going to respond.
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What are some other micro moments? Because even so when you were talking about.
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If you go for lymphatic drainage massage or whatever the thing is,
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or you work out, I find it interesting and more helpful to think about micro
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moments because if I do my workout, but my kids interrupt me mid-workout and I snap at them.
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I'm still pretty dysregulated.
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I'm still frustrated and jumpy. Or if I go for a massage, but I get lost on
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the way there and as I leave, somebody cuts me off or whatever it is,
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I'm immediately back into this dysregulated state.
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And then it feels like I've, you know, spent this time and this money trying
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to get out of this and I know further along.
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So I really appreciate that concept of micro moments, making it manageable.
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So can you share what are some other micro moments that would help regulate
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us? And I want to say this. What you said is so important because what you're
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talking about is real life.
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And so you're like, geez, why do I even go for this massage or why am I even
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working out? The reason why it feels so big is because you're waiting for big
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things to try to regulate you, and they only last so long.
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We have to reinforce, right?
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A muscle like, you know, a premier athlete practices every day.
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Why are they practicing every day? So that it's innate in their muscle memory.
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So that they get out on the field and they do whatever they're doing.
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They're not even thinking in the same way.
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Their body is reacting in that response, right? So when I say I'm awesome at
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stress, it's because I literally just go right into a zone.
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And I will start my techniques that bring me down.
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And, you know, I love when people take my blood pressure because,
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like, if it's ever high for whatever reason, I'm like, can you just watch this?
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And I literally can just bring it right down based on just techniques that I do, really breath work.
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So let's people know that I just don't want you to think these things are a
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waste of time. We're doing them incorrectly, okay?
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So what we have to do is we have to really talk about what are the little things
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you can do throughout the day?
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And let's talk about some of the easiest, these are all free things, right?
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So the number one thing you can do to actually pull you into a parasympathetic
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state is diaphragmatic belly breathing, okay?
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That is the quickest way you can regulate yourself, okay?
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And I know people are like, I hate it, it doesn't work. No, it doesn't work
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because when you try to do it, when somebody, you know, cut you off and almost
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had a car accident, you're already at super level 10 activated.
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That's just biology. That is a threat to you, right?
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So I found that about half of
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the people I worked with over these years actually were breathing wrong.
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So the first thing you want to do is if you are breathing into your chest and
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not your belly, and your belly isn't filling up like a balloon,
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you are breathing wrong.
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When you breathe just into your chest, you actually activate your sympathetic
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stress response, which is probably
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why you're like, well, that didn't work because it didn't work, right?
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Right. So you have to breathe in. And I like a four, seven, eight breath.
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That's my favorite. It's easy. And it's just so calming. So you're breathing
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in for four seconds. You're going to fill up your belly. If you're like,
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Roseanne, what are you talking about?
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Just put your hand on your belly and breathe in.
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And it should go out, not in. If you're going in, you're doing it wrong.
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So try to push, imagine something on your belly or take something soft on your
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belly and try to get it to rise. Put your cat on your belly or puppy or a little stuffed animal.
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And then you're going to hold for seven seconds and you're going to exhale longer for eight seconds.
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If 4, 7, 8 is too long, then do, you know, 4, 5, 6. Like do it so you can get
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it to the point where you're good at And you want to do that three times in a row minimum, okay?
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So what I recommend is that people do it as soon as they wake up in the morning. They do that.
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And then they do it at night before they go to bed and then set a timer for
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three other times during the day.
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So you're doing it five times a day. And I want you to really do this for a
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minimum of seven days, but ideally 30 days.
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And you're going to train your nervous system like those high performing athletes
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to be like, oh, I don't have a stressor, go to relax.
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I don't have a stressor, go to relax. Now, if you have a trauma background or
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you're highly in a very, you know, high stress situation, all I'm going to do
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is create more capacity for you. I might not get you out of a sympathetic dominant
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state and you might need more things.
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Right. And we can talk about that. But breath work is the quickest,
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easiest way to do it. My next favorite thing, Kelly, is something called a heart hug.
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It comes out of somatic therapy. It's so awesome. them.
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It makes you feel comforted. And so you take your right hand,
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you put it over your heart, okay?
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Then you take your left hand and you put it on your right shoulder and you press down.
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Ideally, you are standing up or sitting down and your feet are on the ground
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and you just sit there and you hold. If you can add a couple of deep breaths in there, great.
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It's just going to make it work better. I have a lot of people who do this same
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thing before they get out of bed, even though their feet are on the ground. That's okay.
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And it is such a great safety signaler to the nervous system.
26:20
I never have people who aren't like, wow, that was really nice.
26:25
And then other things you can do that are scientifically proven,
26:28
10 minutes of reading, not on a device, but a real book.
26:35
Prayer, especially prayer for others, is very lifting.
26:41
And getting outside and letting the sun on your face, particularly in the morning,
26:47
is a great resetter of the nervous system and your sleep cycle.
26:52
And again, what are you doing when you're outside? You could be doing gentle
26:56
movement. You could do a little Tai Chi. And again, these are moments.
27:00
You don't have to be out there for 30 minutes or an hour. You want to? Great.
27:04
But I think people don't do things that are sustainable.
27:08
So when you're doing things, you want to do stuff that you could do all the
27:12
time. So I'm a big fan of Tai Chi, Kelsey. And.
27:18
I'm a great example of this, right? So I'm doing all these things, all these things.
27:23
And I have very high cortisol levels. And I then have very high insulin levels.
27:30
I have a diabetic profile. It's a very long, long story to also an Epstein-Barr carrier.
27:36
So these things all interact in my system.
27:39
And I was working out like 90 minutes, two hours a day and nothing,
27:43
nothing, not a freaking ounce losing. Okay.
27:47
But I had muscle, right? So I was like, I'm going to change this because clearly
27:53
my insulin levels, which are so high that when a doctor sees me for the first
27:57
time, they go, have you been checked for cancer?
28:00
Like, because it's like they're worried I have a tumor on my adrenals.
28:03
So no, unfortunately, I mean, it's not the case, right? I'm glad it's not.
28:07
So I started changing what I was doing and I started doing Tai Chi.
28:11
So no work, no long workouts. And I would do between two to 15 minutes.
28:19
And I just started doing this and doing this and doing this.
28:23
And lo and behold, I have lost an extraordinary amount of weight because for
28:28
me, it was not about what I was eating.
28:32
I eat like I'm a paleo girl, I fast, I eat like near perfectly,
28:36
like I, that's not my issue.
28:38
Vegetables are my favorite things. I mean, you know what I'm saying?
28:41
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm like, people are like, what are your favorite foods?
28:44
I'm like, radishes, fennel.
28:47
Like they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, yeah, no, no, those are my favorite.
28:52
So it was really about getting my nervous system to pull down this cortisol,
29:00
which was keeping my insulin very high, which was then not allowing me to lose weight.
29:05
When you have very high insulin levels, your body says, you're starving. Let me store this as fat.
29:12
And again, I always give people a window into my door. And this is just my story.
29:15
But high levels of stress, there's going to be an emotional,
29:20
there's going to be a physical effect.
29:21
You cannot live in a sympathetic state, dominant state, without having a physical
29:26
outcome. You just can't.
29:29
And I think we're seeing that. And people realize they're not sleeping.
29:33
You know, other signs that people could see is overeating or undereating, not sleeping.
29:38
You can have joint pain, you know, because your neurotransmitters,
29:42
your cortisol, your immune system, chronic stress can lead to early menopause.
29:50
I don't think people think about those things, you know, and these are things
29:54
that people would come to me and they would always have health issues and mental health issues.
29:59
And they're intricately tied and we know it, but we're not educating people.
30:02
We're not giving anybody anything that's simple.
30:05
So simple, simple things, heart hug, breath, prayer, gentle walking in out,
30:12
you know, getting up and, you know, and here's the thing. I'm not against devices.
30:16
I think devices are amazing.
30:19
But we do need downtime from our devices and that's a big contributor to what's
30:24
happening not just with kids peeps adults.
30:29
Absolutely yeah no and that's i i do appreciate the the simplicity of it because
30:33
it makes it more sustainable it makes it more possible to actually implement
30:38
that and i think especially you.
30:40
With ADHD, something that I struggle with is that consistency over a long period of time.
30:46
But if I'm able to incorporate that, make it a sustainable habit over time,
30:51
that makes it a lot more realistic.
30:53
I wanted to make sure I'm understanding correctly. So when you talk about these
30:57
micro moments of regulation, you're saying that we should do those in a moment
31:03
where we aren't dysregulated.
31:06
Is that correct? Just to essentially practice that?
31:08
Really to practice it and train our nervous system. And when you talk about
31:13
consistency, use your device, use your phone, set your timer.
31:18
Don't try to pretend like your brain can remember.
31:21
We're living, we're constantly interrupted. I don't, I have an extraordinary
31:26
focus on executive functioning.
31:28
I use a timer. So, because we can't just rely on that. And I think sometimes
31:33
people, with my experience, right, and, you know, we have a very neurodivergent
31:38
family, and there's, like, you name it, we got it in our family, you know.
31:43
And so my experience is that, like, there's so much shame about not doing things
31:48
well that you become resistant to things that are so freaking simple that,
31:52
like, makes your life easier.
31:53
You know what I mean? Like, it's sort of like when GPS came out and people were
31:57
like, I'm not going to use it. And I'm like, why would you not use a GPS? Mm-hmm.
32:01
I mean, come on, you know, like, so, so don't be labored by that.
32:06
Think, this is makes my life better. Why don't I do it?
32:09
But the micro moments, you're doing it in calm moments to drain the nervous
32:14
system so that when things are stressful, you are going to use it,
32:19
but you'll be able to snap right in.
32:21
And when you say it doesn't work, it's because your body is like,
32:24
I don't know how to use this. I don't know how to use this.
32:27
But when it knows something, right, just like if you drive and you drive home
32:31
every day, you're not thinking about how to get home.
32:35
You're operating at totally subconscious
32:38
level. So we want to teach the subconscious to do these things.
32:42
And you'd be surprised. I mean, I see it with my own kids. I have a dysregulated,
32:45
you know, kid. That's what this, you know, that's what the dysregulated kid is about.
32:50
And I watch him and he gets irritated more easily than the rest of us.
32:55
And I see him breathing and I never say a damn thing but I'm,
33:00
doing it and then he brings himself down and then he can talk and he can work
33:05
his way through it but you just can't expect somebody it's like asking somebody
33:09
to learn how to swim when they're drowning,
33:12
so we can't expect that we have to teach them how to swim.
33:17
Safely so that when there is a moment boom you know how to swim yeah That's
33:22
exactly what this is. Yeah.
33:25
A question within that. So you had talked about the fact that you were exercising 90 minutes a day.
33:31
Your cortisol levels are really high. You were dysregulated and your body was
33:36
responding with that stress, with not being able to lose weight,
33:39
probably not feeling as good.
33:41
Something like exercise is typically considered as always being good.
33:47
So how do you know when it's too much of a good thing or maybe it's the wrong form of it?
33:52
How would you recommend to somebody to be able to decipher when it's a good
33:57
amount of stress on your body from exercise versus when it's causing those cortisol spikes?
34:04
Well, if you are highly distressed, you know you're distressed.
34:07
You know you're emotionally distressed. You're overreacting.
34:10
You're not sleeping. you're miserable.
34:13
I don't want you to do cortisol jacking activities, okay? So I don't want you
34:18
doing CrossFit and HIIT classes and Zumba.
34:23
You know, I need you to do things that are going to be muscle building,
34:28
but also regulating yourself.
34:31
So you want to bring that activity level down.
34:34
You want to slow it down. That's important. Then you have to look at,
34:39
are you somebody like me who's resistant to losing weight?
34:42
And what's going on in your life? Like, are you in perimenopause?
34:46
Are you in menopause? Is your husband, does your partner have a lot of health
34:51
issues? Like, maybe you have financial.
34:53
Like, what's going on in your ecosystem? Because I think one of the greatest
34:57
problems we have in health care and mental health is they never connect the dots.
35:04
I mean, people would come to me and they'd be like, well, my doctor said this.
35:08
And I was like, your doctor is 100% wrong, 100% all symptoms are related and
35:14
we're going to figure it out.
35:16
And, you know, it was always that case. I have a friend that's like this.
35:21
He's a 5X board certified doctor. And we're always like, we're not that smart.
35:25
But how come we're the smartest people in the room?
35:27
Because we have common sense, you know, like, so think about what's happening
35:32
for you, right? So exercise is great, but you're right.
35:36
You know, why isn't that? In the million years, Kelsey.
35:40
I could not have imagined that Tai Chi would be instrumental in me losing 65 pounds, okay?
35:52
And that I was, that 90 minutes exercise was bad for me. You know,
35:57
I wasn't even, like, doing extreme things. Like, I was walking,
36:02
I was doing this, I was, you know, whatever.
36:05
But all it does was doing was jacking up my cortisol. all.
36:09
And so it really changed things for me. And I think that's just such a great example.
36:14
And like even today, just so you know, like I pull my kids into my exercising
36:20
and I'm like, oh, you're going to be doing, you know, this with me and that.
36:23
And, you know, I have young adult males and they will even do it with me.
36:26
But when my kids were little, we did a lot of things together.
36:30
We did things as a family.
36:32
But you can't ask your kid to do something that you're not willing to do for yourself, you know?
36:39
And exercising, like, for two minutes is pretty awesome, actually.
36:44
It's so amazing. Like, so I do 100 reps of something, and I know that takes me about two minutes.
36:51
And so it doesn't matter where I am.
36:54
I can always squeak in and add it up over time. In fact, I'm exercising.
37:00
I'm never exercising 90 minutes in a day. Never.
37:03
And so it's just, like, reshaped me. It's just, it's a crazy thing, you know?
37:08
And so it's that same way when I get people to change their routine by adding
37:13
in these micro moments people who couldn't sleep or who always bite in somebody's head off.
37:19
Now, you have to regulate and then you have to actually change your freaking
37:22
behavior. And so I think we're a culture of we've got to take a pill for it.
37:26
You still have to change your behavior.
37:29
You can't expect it, right? So we, you know, maybe you're somebody who's a very negative thinker.
37:36
You know, maybe you're somebody who, you know, really gets stuck on things and
37:41
shuts down. So these are things that we have to unwind and change it.
37:46
It just becomes easier to do when you have capacity in your nervous system.
37:51
And people may say, like, well, I've tried, I've tried. Again,
37:54
you didn't have capacity.
37:55
Nervous system is not going to allow you to do these things.
37:59
Or if it does, it's going to be terrible, right?
38:02
And so then people pull away. And this is a big reason why people hate therapy.
38:06
Because they go in dysregulated. You try to learn new things.
38:12
You get more dysregulated. And you're like, I'm not paying that for that, you know.
38:17
But therapy is really valuable when you're in a place where you feel good enough.
38:22
And I think people who've tried it a few times and then really found,
38:27
you know, what was it about that
38:29
therapist? Well, they helped you create capacity to do the work, you know.
38:34
Something that i'm hearing in different areas of what you're talking about is that,
38:39
i think often in society we feel like we need to do more more exercise back in the day more cardio
38:45
or cut more calories more more more more more of everything be more productive
38:49
be more efficient you know technology all the things a lot of times the message has been more,
38:55
what i'm hearing you saying is that sometimes less not more is actually going
39:01
to be what we really need even you know talking about exercise in those smaller,
39:05
increments in a way that works for your body even just i found i think this
39:09
was about a year ago i was burnt out i was exhausted there was a lot going on in my life and,
39:16
i finally allowed myself to believe that rest and decreasing stress could maybe
39:21
help me more with my fitness journey than just the exercise and tracking macros or whatever it was,
39:28
and it was incredible it was the most restful easiest way that I've gotten in
39:33
the best shape of my life by prioritizing rest by prioritizing my sleep by allowing myself to,
39:42
do less and not more and so I think that's something that's.
39:45
Good to work on reframing, rewiring, even when you're talking about these micro moments.
39:51
It doesn't need to be these big monumental changes, but these micro moments
39:56
that can make such a lasting impact in the end.
40:01
I think that's something that I'm taking out of today's episode is that less,
40:05
not more can really be what actually moves the needle.
40:10
A hundred percent. And I think it's shocking to people. You know.
40:15
I had somebody who had just like a horrific trauma background.
40:20
She was literally trafficked, like just horrible, horrible, horrible.
40:25
Her mother tried to kill her. I mean, just like horrible stuff.
40:28
OK, so and so when I have these horrible trauma backgrounds,
40:33
you know, so I had regulated her children and it was quite miraculous what what
40:39
had happened with her kids.
40:40
And what a wonderful mother this person was. What a great lady.
40:43
And like, God, like a miracle, like truly like a miracle. We always would say,
40:49
like, you are a miracle that you went through all those things and you're just such an awesome person.
40:54
But in the inside, she always had the hum, the hum of anxiety, the hum of the worry.
41:01
And so she saw what happened to their kids and she decided, I want to work with you too.
41:05
And so a couple, about three months
41:08
in, she said, I know you told me that you're going to, this will end.
41:14
You will not have this. And I didn't believe you.
41:17
But I knew I had to work on it, right?
41:21
And she was like, it is a miracle when you do these things, like how much it
41:26
can change your life and just the consistency of it.
41:30
And like, just to know what she's changed for herself, you know,
41:35
and all of it, her kids were working on their nervous system.
41:38
So they regulated, but really it wasn't until she really regulated.
41:42
And on the outside, you wouldn't know.
41:44
She really worked hard to pretend.
41:47
The kids are pretty smart. So until she regulated, they weren't capable of regulating
41:55
in the same way. But those micro moments, less is more. And also sleep.
42:01
So when you're dysregulated, what happens? Your sleep sucks.
42:05
And so many important things happen in sleep.
42:08
Your brain needs to power down, to power up.
42:12
You know, your detoxification, 90% of brain detoxification occurs in sleep.
42:17
We need to sleep, people, okay?
42:20
And we need quality sleep.
42:23
And, you know, so all of these systems happen when we're regulating.
42:29
And again, never to dismiss anybody's history. But if you keep playing that
42:33
old CD back there, it's, you know,
42:36
you can say to yourself, this happened to me or I can do these things right
42:43
it doesn't these things can exist together and you don't have to let that play
42:47
out as your script because if you do all it does is just keep you activated,
42:52
so and in little bits will just chip away chip away chip away just like this
42:56
lady was like oh I didn't even think it was ever humanly possible and I'm,
43:02
She is totally regulating and, you know, all the stuff. And she did it.
43:07
She did it initially for her kids.
43:10
But then she realized I need to really just do this for myself,
43:14
you know, because it is possible. And I give her a lot of credit.
43:17
You know, that's a big leap.
43:19
So it doesn't have to be that hard. It doesn't you don't have to have a serious
43:23
issue. And I everybody needs to do this. So I talk about this like brushing your teeth.
43:28
So we brush our teeth to avoid cavities and bad things from happening.
43:33
We have to regulate our nervous system to prevent more mental health issues,
43:39
more dysregulation, and pretty happier, calmer homes and workplaces and all those things.
43:47
That can only happen when we regulate. It's just biology.
43:51
And I think that is a good reminder is I often talk to my audience about what
43:56
is it you're hoping for from something.
43:58
When you're setting goals, you're aspiring to something, what is it that actually
44:02
matters to you when we look at,
44:04
regulating and how much that can improve your own well-being,
44:08
your perspective, your outlook on life, your contentment in life,
44:12
your relationships, your work, all different areas of life.
44:15
I think knowing how incredibly important that is for every area of life can
44:21
help get past some of the hurdles. Like for me, I find I'm not very good at
44:25
the things that are slow.
44:27
And so for me, you know, I, I find like in the past breath work to me felt boring,
44:33
you know, it felt, you know, oh, this is too long.
44:35
But when it's something little like that, four, seven, eight,
44:39
or like you said, four or five, six with your, with your counting or the heart
44:42
hug, maybe I'm still laying in bed or, you know, whatever it is.
44:47
When I understand why they are so incredibly important, it helps get past that.
44:53
This feels boring. This doesn't feel like it's making a difference right now
44:57
to understand that yes, but when you build time upon time upon time,
45:04
it is going to make a difference and it's going to help me to reach those
45:09
milestones, for lack of a better word, in my relationships with my kids or my
45:13
husband or in my work and to not feel the frustration of being stuck in that
45:20
cycle of dysregulation.
45:22
Yeah, and you know what?
45:25
And I'm Dr. Roseanne. Like, I've done a ton of meditation and stuff.
45:28
And, you know, meditating for an hour is boring for me.
45:33
And I remember there's a Buddhist monk center literally just like a quarter
45:38
mile from my office. It's like incredible. And I remember I went to something
45:42
and I was like, OK, I got to meditate for this whole hour.
45:45
And he was like, I just would like everybody to know that meditation is very
45:49
hard for me and I find it very boring.
45:52
And here's what I do when I meditate. And I was like, thank you for saying that.
45:57
You know, like you feel like you're just not good at it.
46:00
But the beauty of this, as you said, Kelsey, this is just micro moments.
46:04
And so if we, anybody can do this, and even if you feel like you have the attention
46:08
span of a flea, like you can do this, right? And that's what those timers are
46:13
about and that's what the reminders are.
46:15
And the more you do it, the more your body will just start doing it automatically
46:19
and stress becomes something you can manage, right? Just like we weren't born walking.
46:25
We weren't born talking. We had to develop these skills, you know?
46:29
Like this is a muscle that needs to be developed and everything else improves because of that.
46:36
And that's why it's so important. And if you are a parent, you're setting an example for others.
46:42
And if you're an employee, you're setting an example for others, right?
46:46
So there's so much should be said by that.
46:50
And I do think it is incredibly important. So where can we go to find out more
46:54
about the work that you do, the book that you wrote, and more about dysregulation?
46:59
Yeah. Well, you can go to drrosann.com, and that's D-R-R-O-S-E-A-N-N.com.
47:07
That's where all my work is. And you can get the book, The Dysregulated Kid. Just search it.
47:13
If you're getting it before it gets released on September 22nd,
47:17
and you're pre-ordering it, you get some incredible resources that you can start using right away.
47:22
Plus you get access to a live implementation that's part of it only for the pre-sale people.
47:29
So there's some great stuff. And you also are interested in bringing me,
47:33
I'm on a world speaking tour, literally in multiple countries.
47:37
You're interested in bringing me to your school or your workplace or your religious
47:41
institution. I'm doing all of those things. You can just go to drroseanne.com
47:45
and, you know, and find me there.
47:48
Amazing. Well, I will link that below in case people want to check that out
47:51
and look at all of the different resources in the book as well.
47:54
Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us here today.
47:58
Yeah, thanks for letting me spread the science of the nervous system and making it easy.