10,000 Brain Maps Later: Dr. Roseann Realized the Fix Was Free

Welcome back again. I'm super excited to be back with return guest, Dr. Rosanna Campana-Hodge. Those of you who are regular listeners know exactly who she is, but many of you are new. And so what I'm going to do is go through, give a brief introduction to Dr. Ro, and we'll hop into it. All of you out there with kids, dysregulated kids, anybody who's got any kind of neurological issues, you're going to love this episode. So after a brief introduction, we're going to hop right into it. Dr. Rosanna Campana-Hodge is a leading expert in emotional and behavioral dysregulation with more than 30 years of experience helping families transform chaos into calm. As a creator of Regulation First Parenting and the CALMS Dysregulated Protocol, she bridges clinical science with everyday parenting so families can finally understand what's really driving their child's struggles. She specializes in nervous system dysregulation, the root cause of challenges like ADHD, anxiety, OCD, mood disorders, PANS and PANS, Dr. O gives parents and professionals brain-boosting tools that create lasting change without blame, shame, or guesswork, which is huge. Her bestselling book, which is upcoming soon, which everybody needs to get, listen to, share it, is The Dysregulated Kid. She also has a top 1 percentile podcast, which is Dysregulated Kids. She has helped thousands of families support their children's behavior and emotional wellbeing in practical, hopeful ways. She's been featured— she has all the bells and whistles behind her, featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Parenting Magazine. You name it, she's been there. She's on a mission to bring regulation-first parenting to every home. And so we're super excited to have you on our podcast today, Dr. Rowe.

Well, I love our conversations, whether we're online or offline, they're always my favorite.

So I'm so grateful to be here.

And I love your audience because your audience will contact me and ask questions. So I appreciate that.

And come see you as well.

Well, no, my days of clinical work are over.

They're done.

They're done.

As of now.

As of now, I no longer see people clinically.

Um, I am certifying parents, uh, personal certification in their method, and I'm also certifying professionals and organization in the comms. But I'm no longer seeing people clinically because I gotta get out on the road and stop this dysregulation crisis, and I couldn't be doing both.

So you're choosing the greater good, basically.

I'm choosing the greater good.

Which is costing you a lot and very hard. And it's, it's actually harder to do than it is to— so you're actually sacrificing for the greater good. We were— that's what we were talking about before we started recording, actually, was how hard it is for you to take this on the road and actually share it, like, big time. But I guess the question is, why would you need to share about dysregulated kids? Are kids dysregulated? Like, aren't all the kids happy and healthy right now?

Oh, Dr. Aaron, I wish that was the case. I mean, I think we're just You know, in such a world where parents, adults, people, humans, kids, they're just feeling stress, right? Their nervous system's ability to shift between stress and calm, that's what dysregulation is all about. They just don't do it well. The people are very activated because ultimately everyone wants to know what the reason is, right? It's that our, we have this stress cup. And it doesn't have unlimited capacity and we keep filling our cup and we don't remove stressors and they accumulate. And then we have all the things that people used to come and see me about, which was a lot of mental health issues, but also pants, pandas, medical. And then they come to you for medical and it often is an overwhelmed nervous system that then leads to other things, you know?

Yep.

Well, let me ask a question that just popped in my head real quick. You know, dysregulation, social media, Instagram, all these kind of things. And there's places now that are talking about, you know, kids shouldn't have access to social media before 16. What are your thoughts about that? Is that even going to make a difference? And if— and how do you institute that? Or what are your thoughts about the idea of that? What may be one of the dysregulating factors that's significant enough that politicians are getting involved with it? The idea of like Instagram, social media, like all these kinds of things.

Yeah. I mean, first of all, the media contacts me all the time to talk about device usage. And I actually have a chapter in my book called Device Dysregulation because it is such a big issue, right? There isn't a parent in the world that struggles with their kids about setting boundaries, that isn't concerned about how much time they're spending on their devices. And I think these are valid concerns. I also really clearly want to say devices are not the devil, right? They are part of our life. Unless you're choosing to go off-grid, you're going to have a different form of education. Your kids are going to have to have devices. But the real issue is parents are really struggling with setting boundaries around devices. And when you ask about our legislative government, right? 36 states now have banned device usage at school, and that's something we definitely should talk about. And for the first time, the iPhone is actually putting provisions in place that make it harder for kids to have full access. And then, you know, other countries, Australia, I believe the UK as well, just banned it for kids under 16, social media usage.

Wow.

So I think the bigger question has to be, how are parents navigating this? Because schools are sick and tired of being the place where they, you know, say to kids, you got to put your phone away, you got to put your phone away. I mean, my child goes to a private high school, and his previous school, if you had a phone, it had to remain in your locker. So nobody uses devices at school. So they were used to it. It's no big deal. And if my son needed to contact me, he sent me an email. He would say, mom, I have a quiz on Thursday. He knows he's got to, you know, JC, he's a planner. He's a Virgo. He's got to tell me in advance. So, um, but when we think about this, you know, why are they doing this? Right? Why are we, we are concerned. And ultimately we as parents, I think most parents don't understand this. We, you know, Gen Xers, right? We were, you know, playing Atari in our basement, right? So we didn't have unlimited access to things, right? If you remember, Aaron, when we grew up, we had like reruns in the summer. There was like nothing exciting. Like, I already saw that, right? And then quick, things have really developed since the early 2000s, particularly since the advent of the smartphone.

Yeah.

The smartphone really changed everything. iPads, smaller devices that are more powerful that can get on the internet. So the problem is we were raised one way. We now have kids who have access to devices way too young and wait and are on them too long. So when they approach their child and they're like, get off your device, right? There's a problem already. They haven't set boundaries. Most parents aren't setting boundaries in advance. So then you're asking somebody who's in mid-dopamine hit, right, on a device. Devices are designed— every swipe causes a dopamine hit. Short videos causes hits in the brain, right? And so we know, we know this through research, so we don't have to pontificate. So our kids are moving in this direction where there's a reliance. There's also, boy, is there shortening of attention span.

Fun fact, doing a TED Talk, and TED Talks used to be 18 minutes, Dr. Aaron. Now, what do you think they want you to do for your TED Talk?

10 minutes?

10 minutes. 10 minutes or less because nobody has attention span. So we, there's a, A whole bunch of things happening at the same time, but ultimately schools are trying to set boundaries, the government's trying to help them, but parents need help with setting boundaries around devices because we think we're just going to tell our kids to get off there and they're literally, their brain is locked into this other thing. So, and that's really like an oversimplification, but really honestly, that's the crux of the problem. Kids are designed that those devices are designed to hook them. Parents don't know how to navigate it.

Yeah, and it's really interesting how some of the algorithms work that now, as of recently, the algorithms like you can pick the things you want to follow, but evidently they watch how you slow and they're actually now no longer if you want to you know you follow I want to follow all the good stuff da da da. But you know when you go through things, those things your eyes might wander on a little bit, and they're actually picking it up and actually feeding you more of that, which goes to all this dopamine and it's actually making it more addictive. Not less, which is, you know, kind of scary if you think about it, because you want to pick the right things, look at the right things. But if something pops up and you kind of wait and look at for a little bit, it's measuring that and then feeding you more of that, which is, you know, a little, little bonkers.

And, and, you know, Dr.

Aaron, these social media platforms are supposed to have provisions in place so that our children aren't exposed to sexual items and violence and whatnot. And when they do the research on these things, they find within minutes that the algorithm is showing them these things.

So the, the, what they have in place really isn't protecting our kids enough. And really there's no excuse for that because they can, they can really manage it.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, think about it. You know, I love astrological things. I'm an Aquarian. So every time I open my phone, I'm like, Look, here's all this astrological stuff, you know. And so I get it.

I think it's a hoot, you know, that, that it's there. Um, thankfully I'm not watching inappropriate things, but as soon as your kid watches for one second longer something inappropriate, they're gonna just keep getting it.

Yeah. And that's a problem, especially when you have, you know, my, or, you know, our son and he's a very, he's ADHD, dyslexia, very dopamine driven. And there's been times where he's like, you know, scurried throughout our house looking for devices in the middle of the night. So we've had to lock everything down and take it away and, you know, for his protection, because you don't want him to find something, you know, super bad. And then all of a sudden he's gone off the beaten path. It's kind of, you know, makes, makes parenting even more difficult than it should be.

Yeah. And Aaron, it's good that we're talking about this because what he is experiencing is what I hear all the time. So your parenting situation isn't that unique. Kids will get up in the middle of the night. I mean, I tell this, I tell the story in my book how I couldn't get Max off his device, right? My Max is the dysregulated kid starting in this chapter.

He's not anymore in that level.

And I couldn't get it off him and I just lost my stuff. I lost it. And I said, this, Max?

And I went over my knee. I, I broke it.

It wouldn't break, so I threw it out the window.

He—

we're talking, this is like, I don't know how many years ago, maybe 13, 14 years ago. He still has PTSD over that. He likes to bring it up. And I share this because definitely I didn't like myself at that moment, and I didn't understand how How addictive it was for him.

And by the way, he never got an iPad again.

Just what happened. And he's chosen not to buy one for himself either. So. Oh, that's good.

Making better decisions.

Making better decisions, you know, but our kids, our brains are forming and, you know, and, and the type of, you know, where you're spending your time matters. Passive scrolling is not great. Kids are engaging with other kids. That is okay. It just has to have boundaries around it. You can't be on there for 6 hours or 7 hours. And, that's what most kids are spending. They're spending about 7.25 hours and up every day.

Which is a lot, a lot of time.

A lot.

So, let's switch the conversation around here just a bit. People are asking about magnesium and magnesium. And, I know you got your own proprietary magnesium for regulating the nervous system. And, let's work on the gut. You got gut stuff out there. And, You know, let's get the mold out and all this kind of jazz. All these things dysregulate a kid's nervous system. But from a neurological standpoint, if you remove these things, why doesn't just giving a kid magnesium or removing the mold or whatnot, why doesn't that fix their body's autonomic nervous system? Why does that not by itself fix this dysregulated nervous system?

Yeah.

I mean, first of all, every nervous system is unique, right? So sometimes people will come to you, right, Dr. Hartman, and they'll do magnesium and maybe some breathwork and they're like, I'm a new person. I feel phenomenal, right? And I find in those situations, these are people that probably took pretty good care of themselves and, you know, maybe had some stressors or had hormone issues. And so their baseline was easier to return to, right? And so what you bring to the table in dysregulation and trauma, all these things affects how your body is going to get out of it. So if you've been chronically dysregulated for a long time, which happens quite easy in everyday life, you don't have to have a major event. You could just have a cup— you can have a nervous system that's very sensitive. Maybe you are neurodivergent and you have sensory issues and you feel things more strongly at an emotional level. So when we do things, we can't just do magnesium or repair our gut. We have to actually do things every day to keep pulling stress out of our stress cup. That is the missing ingredient that I see or have seen in 3 decades where, like you, people come from all over the world and they're struggling with their physical and mental health. And it keeps the nervous system activated. So you can't wish it away. You're not going to magic wand it with one thing. You have to pair Actual tools that regulate your nervous system. I love nutrition. I love nutrients. I love brain-based things, right? We both do PEMF. Like, we love all that stuff. But what are you actually doing? Are you doing breathwork? Are you doing positive mantras? Are you changing your behaviors? Or are you doing the same behaviors and then saying, well, the magnesium should fix it? It's just not the way it works. It's a it's a multi-part.

Process.

And I think the people that do regulate and bring the lifestyle in, they would say, yeah, I know that. I do that all the time. You know, the way I can—

let me— why don't you tell me your perspective on this? Because you're the mental health expert, not I, in this situation. But, you know, the way I kind of explain to my patients is you have big T trauma and little t trauma. Big T trauma is the thing we all agree on— sexual abuse, physical abuse. You know, you're in the war. Et cetera, et cetera. But what I'm seeing about is a lot of little t trauma. And little t trauma can be like you've been chronically ill for years, or if you're a kid and you're trying to create a regulated nervous system and you don't have this stable environment, and all of a sudden now your nervous system is acting like a traumatic event happened to it, which rewires everything. And you have to do a lot of different things. Is that a reasonable way of looking at some of this dysregulation as a little t trauma, which— Then requires rewiring, brain rewiring, you know, amygdala retraining, limbic system retraining, all these things to rewire this brain. Is that a reasonable way of thinking? Yeah.

I mean, so first of all, trauma is not the only thing that dysregulates our nervous system. We are so beyond that. You're meeting people who are chronically dysregulated without trauma. Like we've ruled it out. Like sometimes I'm like, are you sure you didn't have it?

Right.

And you know, little t trauma, you know, it could also be like, You know, you you had an unloving parent, or you had a critical parent, or you got kicked out of graduate school. Like you know, there are things that we're not always thinking about. But what's really happening is the nervous system isn't going to know the difference. The nervous systems—I mean, having done over ten thousand brain scans doing QEG brain maps—you couldn't see the difference anymore between somebody who had.

a bunch of little t traumas or even a major trauma with somebody who just was living a chronically stressed life, right?

Never caring for the self, not sleeping, you know, working 20 hours a week or being a caregiver for an elderly parent and a child with autism at the same time and burning the candles at both ends. Once nervous system moves into that sympathetic dominant Right? That chronic activation, it is going to have a hard time coming down. Now, you do have to intentionally and very, very, very specifically pull stress out of that cup to create capacity. The problem is we walk around in these highest levels of stress where we're either in fight, flight, or freeze or near it. And we think, well, I, you know, I'm going to work. Oh, I'm taking my kids to school. I'm I'm I got a job. Whatever it is that you've decided that it's okay, or I'm not.

You know, I'm not. I'm not like my mother.

My mother was a narcissist, or my father was an alcohol. I'm not those things, right? And then we walk around being functional until we're not, until the body says, "No, I'm going to make you sick," or "I'm going to make you depressed." I'm going to do all these things to slow you down so that you take care of yourself. So it's not as clean as there's trauma or not. That nervous system isn't going to know the difference between a good or a bad stressor. It's just going to stay activated. But every single person, every single person that I've ever worked with who actually wanted to reduce their activation in their nervous system was able to. Now, that's a big statement, but these are people that were very purposeful Very intentional and consistent. That's the part of this that everyone thinks there's going to be the thing, right? People would come to me and do neurofeedback or PMF or EFT tapping, and they could get better to a point, but you still have to implement the daily lifestyle things. Why? Because your stress cup's always going to be full. There's going to be stuff, you know.

So I want to, I want to, you know, hit that nail with a hammer or put a pin in it or whatever, whatever the phrase is, you know. I think that's super key because I will routinely see people come in who are looking for, I don't want to say the magic bullet, but the thing that's going to push them over the edge. And you do some pretty cool things. You mentioned some really cool things you do, you know, qEEG and whatever those things, super fancy things, right? And yet the difference is not the cool things you do in your 10,000 brain maps. It's the person being consistent with their plan is what gets their brain healing. Not seeing the fancy person with the cool fancy gadgets that's, you know, you know, on Forbes and all those fancy places. It's, it's the person doing the work.

So, Dr. Aaron, you know, I love my tech. You know, I love neurofeedback. You know, I love PEMF and a bunch of things. And what does that do? It actually creates capacity faster. But ultimately, you have to do the work. You have to regulate yourself. And that is the part that is hard for people. Because it requires consistency. You can't do the same things over and over and expect a different result. And, you know, I think I had said, if I didn't say this, that, you know, everybody has the capacity to regulate. It doesn't matter what you bring to the table. You have to do that work. It might be harder to do it. It might take longer, but I personally have seen some of the most complex cases You know, regulate without tools. So the tools are the things that you use in your daily life and just giving yourself capacity, because without capacity, the frontal lobes, your, your, um, you know, your brain's job manager isn't going to allow you to do the things that you should do. You, it has to be in not a fully parasympathetic state, but it can't be in the highest levels of activation. So, and I know you see this all the time with your patients.

Yeah. Well, it's funny, you know, my wife Becky, and my audience knows who she is, and, you know, she's been getting into painting, you know, recently.

And it's really interesting.

She'll— she monitors her heart rate variability and her heart rate with, with a device. And it's interesting, she'll start painting and you'll see like stress, stress, stress, her heart rate's up. And then all of a sudden it bombs out for like 3 hours. And it's like, what were you doing then? She's like, I was just painting. And she's found something that literally When she does it, her whole nervous system just regulates and calms. Now, you know, it's like something you need to do regularly. So whether you pray, meditate, whatever, for her, it's like she tries to put aside time every day to, to work on something, to work on a project. And it's really been helpful for her to regulate, but it's something she's doing on a daily basis.

Yeah. And so it's not any work, the handiwork, knitting, cross-stitching, you know, I'm super into tai chi. I didn't even get to tell you how much my insulin levels have come down, Dr. Aaron. They're still freakily high. Okay. I don't want to say it publicly because you're going to, you know, Dr. Aaron gets very alarmed for me, but I have had about a 40% drop in my insulin levels. You got to be proud of me. And it's because of tai chi. I'm doing tai chi all day long.

Well, I really, I really enjoy tai chi, particularly for my hypermobile people.

Yeah.

Because these body things that combine bodywork with breathwork and intentionality, but it also helps with connective tissue stabilization, joint stabilization, which it's really interesting. One of the things with my hypermobile patients, when they get a traumatic brain injury or, or, or an activation of the illness, their actually fascia gets looser and they have more issues with their, with atlanto-occipital instability, which is instability with the brain on their skull, C1, C2. It's really funny that that combination, when they're having flares, they actually will be more loose. To the extent that sometimes they'll feel more dislocations of like ribs, even vertebrae in their back. It's really— there's this really close connection with your nervous system and your fascia. And one of the things like tai chi does is actually— and even things like Pilates or qigong, you're doing these things that are actually helping with that mind-body connection, which is, you know, we are complete whole beings and it's the mind-body connection. It's not just you're not a body, you're not a mind.

Yeah. And it's free and easy things. You know, and, you know, for me, I, you know, have this crazy high level of insulin that's very freaks Steve and Dr. Hartman out. But, but, um, but also I said to myself, I don't have time for the big workouts and the big workouts weren't making me lose weight. And then I started just doing these like, okay, I'm going to do 20, 20 reps. Then I did 50. And then I did, now I do 100 of reps of something that's Tai Chi, which actually takes me only 2 to 3 minutes, right? And, and I sometimes do 300 reps. Sometimes I do 100 reps, but I make it throughout the whole day so that I am resetting my nervous system. I, I am, I, you are absolutely right. I'm, you know, in terms of your fascia, but I'm also detoxifying. I'm making all my systems come together. And that's what works for me, right? So last night I felt very anxious and, um, I have a whole candle ritual. And so I, I sat there, I said my prayers, I light my candles.

I have the one for positivity, the energy protection.

I have a whole bunch.

My, you know, you know, Chris, he's like, you're practicing Santeria.

I'm like, no, I'm not, Chris.

Okay. But, um, And it's just something that brings a lot of peace to me and I really like it, right?

So what are those things that you can build in your day that are very easy? Because if we make something too hard, we're just never gonna use it. Yeah.

And, you know, like, so, you know, what are you doing? Oh yeah, I'm getting this PEMF mat. Well, where are you putting it? What are you using it? Are you putting it on? A timer. You know, even my breathwork, I ask my people to do— set a timer for 3 times a day to remind them. You know, until you automatically start doing it, you're just not going to do it.

I've had multiple patients who set a timer. They were doing every 2 hours for 5 minutes, but they'd go off and they would just close their eyes and do it very slow. And it's really interesting how over time, how much that just calmed their systems, down and it was super simple, super basic. You know, that's, you know, every 2 hours or 5 minutes. That's like 5 times, that's 20 minutes. That's really not that much.

No. And in 5-minute increments, you know, I don't care if you got 5 kids, you can find 5 minutes, you know, find 5 minutes. And so I think a lot of times we think, well, I don't have time for that. Right. Or we think the big things are going to do it, you know, my massage every other week, or, you know, I love my IVs. You know, so all these things, they're great, but you still have to do your daily. I mean, I practice breathwork constantly throughout the day. You now already know I do my prayers. I light candles. There's just so many things that I'm doing that are so little that when people say to me, you know, I've been in very stressful situations and I am as cool as a cucumber. You know, I am like Like, bring it on. You want me around when there's stress. And that is because I'm always emptying stress from my stress cup. I still have stress, but my body can handle it.

Let's shift a little bit here. We've talked about stress management, and there's a lot of new theories coming out, new things. And one of the newer ideas that's actually from the '80s, I think actually '82, from Dr. Pavarotti, which was the polyvagal theory. Yeah. And like it's become more popular. So there's individuals in the functional medicine world talking about that and there's head movements and different things to activate your vagal nerve. Um, what are your thoughts about things like that? You know, are these good? You know, what's the controversy? Because there's a lot of these things out there that, that are helpful, but sometimes as well they have some controversy and people might be confused by them.

Yeah. I'm not really sure why there's so much controversy. It's a very common sense approach to say that You know, our body gets to a state of activation very simply, and, and it, it perceives things as threats. I think when you think about like neurodivergent kids, particularly kids with autism, it's almost like you can see it live in action, right? So their nervous system, I can tell you on brain maps, they have very activated brains in the structures and in their brain communication. So their body is very sensitive to their environment. So they perceive things as stress. I think some of the reason why there's a small amount of controversy around polyvagal is that there is an awful lot of people claiming to be a nervous system expert, you know, like, and they're like a business person. They don't have any credentials. So I think that we're getting to this point where people are like, who is this person talking about this? Why are they talking about it?

Yeah.

So I think all information, we're in this place with too much information. You have to be very careful who you're trusting, you know, to get this information, which is why you're here because you have somebody who's very experienced and credentialed. But that being said, all of these exercises that are out there in the world, like I follow Tai Chi with Mom. She's an elderly Asian lady and I love her. Like she just does simple exercises. I don't think she's anything. But a person who's been doing tai chi her whole life, is she certified and credentialed? No. Am I getting a super benefit from it? Yes. So, you know, are you doing things that are simple that you can do that aren't going to harm you and you're following somebody online that's, you know, that you feel good when you do these things? Go for it. You know, um, but if you're looking for health, you're looking for mental health. You better make sure you're seeing somebody who knows what they're talking about because you could be sent down a road that is harmful for you.

Yeah, I think the big thing to your— what you said before is that there's— it's almost like something that's around that no one's talking about, that people are staying like old school originals. But once it becomes popular, yeah, a lot of people hopping on board and like, I'm gonna certify that, I'm gonna do that. And the waters get muddy. Absolutely. People haven't been doing it for decades. They don't— they don't even understand the actual science behind it. They're like, Polyvagal theory. And they're like, do you even know what that means?

Yeah. Yeah. I went to a conference and this lady was like, I'm like, oh, what are you? And she's like, I'm a coach. And I'm like, what are you? And, you know, she's like, I'm a trauma coach. And I was like, oh, do you have a clinical background? And she said, well, you know, Mr., I went, you know, and she started to get all, and I was like, oh no. Okay. And I was like, I don't understand how you could be a trauma coach. Like that is the I mean, I did Sandy Hook, 9/11 work. I've had the privilege of helping people, you know, with trauma of all kinds. Like, that is a tough population. You better have some freaking clinical skills, you know? So there's that side of it where it's swinging on the other end. And again, no, no, no dissing health— functional health coaches are great. They can really help you with lifestyle. But, you know, I think the average person doesn't realize they have to really be careful. about who they're getting help from because they need a cl— they need clinical experience. Like, yeah, Dr. Aaron and I did a lot of work to get where we're going. We had supervision.

Supervision.

You know, like we had people monitoring what we were doing, you know? And, um, and, you know, and, and along the way, remember when you start out, you're like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? No, I always felt good about what I was doing. But, um, but you just have to watch it. So I, I think, listen, anybody who's working on their nervous system and they find Techniques. Breathwork is the quickest way you can reset your nervous system. It's simple, it's free. Almost, I would say 90% of my people feel comfortable doing breathwork. Some people don't feel comfortable doing breathwork because they have a hard time slipping into their body. And so then if you really are that, then I like to do my next best thing, which is somatics. My favorite somatic exercise is a heart hug where you take your, um, Your right hand, you put it over your heart. You take your left hand, you put it on your shoulder and you press down. It creates safety in the nervous system. Um, you can do it seated. You could do it standing. Some people do it before they get out of bed in the morning. There's a variety of other somatic and polyvagal and vagus nerve and all these other activities. You just have to actually use them multiple times a day.

Mm-hmm.

They're not gonna be effective if you don't.

Yeah. I agree with everything you said. That's all great, great information. One thing that you have in your book on the dysregulated kid that actually is really quite interesting is the idea of the dysregulated family. Not just it's the, you have a child come in, Bobby, Susie, whatever has this issue, but sometimes the kid is a symptom of the family. The family is dysregulated. How do you, you know, and people come to see you because they are concerned about their children. It's not like they're not concerned, but There's dysregulation in the family where people have impulse control, anger control, whatever this dysregulation in the family is. How do you, one, figure that out when you're focusing on the child? And then 2, how do you navigate that? Because you have legitimate parents who are concerned for their kids but have their own trauma, their own issues they're bringing in, and don't realize this is setting up the milieu for your child. And how do you figure that out and navigate that? How do you work through that?

Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm going to start with, you can either choose to be in a co-dysregulated cycle where you're in a reactivity cycle with your kid, and we'll go into that, or you can choose to be in a co-regulated cycle. And let me tell you the power that parents have when they regulate themselves and they approach a dysregulated kid in a regulated state, it's dramatic what happens. Their body is designed to be like sonar picking up everything that you're not saying, like all, every nonverbal cue they're picking up from you. And so when we, you know, when I would work with families, right? So just assume you have a kid who's having a hard time. There is no way you're not going to be stressed and anxious and dysregulated about it. That's just biology, right? Now you can either choose to be in that state, a state of constant worry and upset. So you can either choose to be in this dysregulated state, right? And so what happens is when I would work with a family, I would listen and say, you know, parents would say, I'm exhausted, I'm overwhelmed, I'm not sleeping. Right. And so if those things are happening, right, parents often think, Aaron, I don't have time to do that. I don't have time to take care of myself. That is not the case. And let me know, let me tell you, I thought that about myself too. And I, you know, put on so much weight. I was exhausted. I spent years not sleeping because I was worried about my kids. So I understand. And I always say that I walk the walk. Like, I don't just tell you to do things that I'm not doing myself, right? So when we think about families, we have to say, yes, okay, maybe you had a trauma, maybe your own mother and father were awful, maybe you were adopted. Those are all important things. They do not have to be your kid's story, right? I talk a lot about generational emotional wealth. That's actually what my TED Talk's about. And so we focus so much on the wealth we're leaving our kids, right? Like what money? But if we don't have regulated nervous systems, all we do is pass the same baloney and cheese down, right? So you had a hypercritical mother. You're going to repeat that pattern unless you choose to not, and you choose to regulate yourself and you do talk in a different way. That doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen because maybe you are in a different financial situation. It will infiltrate trait into your family, and kids shine a light onto whatever your stuff is, right, Aaron? Like, we have kids and we're like, oh my God, I had no idea. Like, I can't stand— like, I hate volatility. I like peace, right? So, you know, of course I have a super dysregulated kid who's volatile, and, you know, I had to deal with some own— my own stuff about that. Right? And, you know, stuff from my own history in order to be better for him. And, and it— I'm not saying it's easy, but what I'm saying is it's 100% possible. And I think when we work with people who are having such a hard time, they've seen so many doctors, they're struggling with their physical health, maybe their— probably their mental health, hope seems impossible. But when you say it's possible, of course it's possible, right? And again, I've worked with the worst situations. Everyone always thinks my situation is the worst, right? I get it. You know, um, I still remember the worst brain map I ever saw. Thank God they didn't ask me if it was the worst brain map I ever saw. But it was definitely a tough situation on a lot of levels, but we have the ability to change ourselves. Everybody has an ability to regulate. The how that looks is going to be different, and how you get there is going to be different.

So some of the things you developed over your, you know, decades of experience, one is your— that you actually have in your book is your CALMS protocol. How is that different than typical behavioral therapy stuff? How does that— how did your experience go into that? Well, first, what is it? Yeah. And how is that different than what typical stuff someone expect to, um, go through if they went, they saw a counselor or a psychologist.

Yeah. I mean, I think what happened over 30 years is that I realized people were dysregulated when they got to me. And so nothing was gonna work unless I calmed their nervous system down. I had to calm the heck down. Right. And I, I have, I have a thing in my office is like, calm the hell down. Like literally it says it, right? And every once in a while I send it to one of my fun moms like, you need this, you know, as a reminder and stuff like that. So, but again, that's that biology. So that's where my regulation first came, that if we don't regulate first, nothing is going to happen. Attention, learning, healing. And learning is not just in school, people, right? So the problem with parenting techniques is we are focusing on behavior when we have to focus on regulating ourself first and And regulating our child. We keep putting all this elbow grease here and we're so frustrated because our kids now, we talked about some of the things that are filling our cup, right? Um, uh, hypermobility, neurodivergence, um, lights and chemicals at school, um, just devices, just a lot of things, right? And these are things that are there, right? We're not eliminating all of these things. We have to balance it out. So I needed an acronym. That's what CALMS is. CALMS is just an acronym to say, what are the 5 pieces that have to happen? So C is co-regulate. A is avoiding personalizing the kid's behavior. We can't, we can't be like, that kid is disrespectful. Kids are, kids are dysregulated. Kids don't mean to be disrespectful or even lie, right? They're just trying to avoid pain and the body starts working in a different way.

Mm-hmm.

When we've put our elbow grease on the regulation and when we can see it without being pissed off about it, 'cause we're not personalizing it, we see it as clues for the nervous system.

L is looking for root causes because we have to make sense out of what we're seeing.

And when we can see it more objectively, we can. And then M is modeling the behavior you wanna see. It's that modeling coping skills. You can't be like—

Johnny, stop yelling. You know, like, doesn't work like that.

You know, and then S is support and reinforce. I think the level of reinforcement people need, kids, adults, is surprising to people. Like, we always have to do things a lot longer, right?

Even, even in my, you know, you've known me a long time.

I've lost, I've lost 62 pounds. It's taken me 3 years and Um, and when I started tai chi, I didn't lose a pound for well over 6 months. And I was like, I'm not giving up. I'm just gonna keep going. I feel different, but I don't, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not losing. And then all of a sudden it started to kick in, like it started to reshape me. And, um, and guess what? It was a lot easier than going to the gym for 90 minutes to 2 hours. But I kept going, you know, I kept, I knew that it worked and I stuck with it. And I looked at the little signs. What did I really, I wanted to lose 20 pounds yesterday, but that's just the way my body works. Like, I, it's like a miracle if I can lose a pound.

So you have to, you know, see things in a positive way.

You have to stick with it. And comms is just a different way of looking at parenting. It doesn't mean we don't discipline our kid. It doesn't mean they're not getting in trouble or we're using those great, you know, gentle parenting strategies. But what it does mean is none of that stuff is gonna work all, and you're gonna keep spinning your wheels if you don't do the basics, which is really about regulating and seeing the behavior for what it is. It's just signs of dysregulation. just becomes a lot easier. You don't get so pissed off at your kid's behavior.

Yeah, that's— I feel like I've gotten more dysregulated as my son's gotten older. He's actually at a camp for 2 weeks in the woods in North Carolina. Um, no screens, no nothing, bunch of boys. Um, and we're hoping he comes back super regulated, um, out from nature exposure.

So, well, his way, the way that he regulates, I mean, I love him and he's a, he's an action kid. He likes to, He likes to be running and, you know, doing stuff. He's got to stay busy, but his way that he's going to regulate his body is just going to be at a different developmental trajectory, right?

It doesn't mean he won't get there. He'll just get there at a different place at a different time.

And that's okay. You know, because, and that's why you're giving your kids a different path for education and the same for mine.

We've had to 100% individualize every one of our 3 kids. educational experience to meet their needs. The one-size-fits-all did not work for any of them.

So, no, absolutely. And that's okay. It's not a failure. It brings, you know, I remember when we had to start homeschooling and my, my youngest isn't homeschooled. I remember feeling like, okay, we're only doing this for a few months. And then, you know, it, it's where we ended up, you know? And, uh, you know, sometimes we come to things in pain. And they bring balance to you. Yeah.

So, um, I feel like we could keep on talking for hours. Um, I wanna respect your time. So, you know, where can people first learn more about you, hear more about you and your book, get your book? And, you know, since you're not seeing patients in the clinic anymore, like how can, 'cause I, you've created an ecosystem, you're creating educational stuff. 'Cause ultimately people need, it's, people don't need to see an expert to be told what to do. They need to have the supports to do what they gotta do.

Yeah.

Which is what you're, that's, that's literally what you're doing. So, Tell us about that real quick.

So I created The Dysregulated Kid, which is the parenting playbook for helping your child find calm. And the reason why I did it is I wanted to create something that had simple science in a way that's super accessible and actionable. And I have a parent guide that is a step-by-step guide for a parent to regulate themselves, and then one to help You with your child. So everything in the book is free. There's nothing in here that can't be achieved. It doesn't matter if your kid has ADHD or PANS/PANDAS or you have a trauma background. That is irrelevant in this book. This is the science on how to regulate yourself. And I made it as easy as brushing your teeth, right? Why do you brush your teeth? To avoid cavities and abscesses and root canals. It's the same thing with regulating your nervous system. It prevents major mental health and physical issues. And if you have those things, it's going to be part of your treatment plan. So no matter whether you get the book or you become— get certified by me, um, or you're listening to my podcast, all roads lead to the same thing. You've gotta regulate yourself. And you asked where you can find me. You could just search Dr. Roseanne anywhere, and that's R-O-S-E-A-N-N, no E at the end. And my book, The Dysregulated Kid, is available everywhere. Well, thank you for that.

We'll put the information in show notes below, and we put this out on social media. All the stuff you gave us, we'll be sharing as well. So thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. As always, a great conversation. And thanks, everybody. Talk to everybody soon. Thank you. Okay. All right.