Co-Regulation Is a Physiological Capacity, and Parents Run Out of It with Jenny Hale

All right. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Energy Economics Podcast for parents and parents, um, and stepparents, parents, stepparents, people with kids talking about neurodiversity. I'm really excited to be able to welcome onto the show, show Jenny Hale, who created the Hale Method, has an honors degree in psychology and has decades of experience. in coaching, training, and mentorship. And she helps people really have the relationship that they want in communities and families, not just in a romantic sense either, not just in a parental sense. She's identified fastest ways to break through limiting patterns and achieve previously unimaginable results without doing years of therapy, which is pretty impressive. Um, so Jenny, tell us about that. Let's start there. How do you do that?

Oh, great to be here, Chris. Um, wow. Um, how do I do that, uh, in a nutshell? So, um, I had to figure this out for myself, um, because in my childhood, in my family of origin, I had a very stressful environment, and therefore I didn't learn a lot of these skills. I was actually dissociated and numbed, uh, through most of my childhood, which means I wasn't getting the visceral feedback from my surroundings that would have allowed me to develop the emotional intelligence skills and empathy and everything else that you should be able to develop on the fly as your brain develops. Uh, and as a result of not having those skills and having everything pushed down like that, I ended up in burnout Uh, in my 30s, and I had no choice at that point. Like, my body was giving out. I could not keep going. I had to learn how to function, uh, in a sustainable way. So, uh, I was kind of in the deep end because I was in the middle of a burnout. I still had a stressful life and I still had a lot to deal with, uh, and I didn't have time to do 10 years of psychoanalysis or 5 years of cognitive behavior therapy or whatever else. Uh, so I had my, my background of the theoretical knowledge from having my degree in psychology. So I understood in principle how the system was supposed to work and the developmental levels and what I was supposed to be able to do. Uh, and here I was in this crisis state where, um, as a result of the burnout, some of the initial exploration that I did, I had reached the point of Not dissociating anymore, not being numb anymore, suddenly feeling everything. And there was so much of it, it was like, I just have to deal with this. So I went to whatever I could do inside my own system, what I had control of, and also figuring out how I could communicate with my subconscious, who I knew was controlling the whole thing. How could I get the right information to my subconscious so that it would— manage my system the right way so that I could then, you know, function and develop all of these emotional intelligence skills. So it was really like a— it was a sink or swim thing, and I flailed around. But as I figured things out and I started sharing those things with other people that I knew, it turned out that those things are very helpful for other people as well. And so bringing this incredibly practical approach of like, this, this mind-body system is a system. It's a vehicle. I have certain levers that I can pull, and certain things are not in my direct control, but if I put the right inputs in, I can then have this other part do a whole bunch of the work. So, um, it's a very, uh— There's no kind of dogma. There's no grand, uh, you know, theory I'm trying to prove or anything like that. It's uber practical. And I think that's what makes it cut through, is that instead of looking at things in terms of, you know, this is a pathology, this is a system, this is a coping strategy, um, I basically go, okay, in order to be functional and in order to have the experience of life we want to have and the relationships we want to have, We need a certain set of skills to be able to drive our own system effectively. Like, the way I think about it is this, you know, imagine if we related to driving in the same way that we relate to emotional skills at the moment.

Ah, yeah.

Right? So if we never told anybody how a car works or what the, what the big round thing is for or what the pedals do or where the mirrors are, We didn't tell them any of that. We just stuck them in the car and then we put the car in motion at speed and they had to just kind of figure it out. It would be a mess. It would be chaos.

Mm-hmm.

But that's what we do with people when it comes to emotional skills and interpersonal skills. There's no structured breakdown of like, here's the skill and here are the like steps you can take to build the subparts of the skill up and then have the skill. And the thing is, if you're a neurotypical kid, you have the ability to kind of absorb by osmosis from the people around you as they are doing it, all of these really abstract skills and rules and norms. You just— neurotypical kids soak up a lot of this stuff. Um, but for a neurodivergent child, particularly one who is on the autism spectrum, If it's not made explicit, it's really hard to figure out what the heck is going on and what exactly am I supposed to do.

Yeah, I talk about something called social indoctrination trauma. Is this similar? There's like this trauma of being forced to figure it out.

Yeah, I would— I'm— this is not even a trauma. Like, this is This is a purely practical thing, right? This is what we know about neurodivergent kids, and particularly kids on the autism spectrum, is that usually they're incredibly intelligent, highly motivated, even gifted. They usually have a lot of high functioning in a lot of different ways. However, In a lot of cases, what they need in order to be able to master something in the first place is a very clear and explicit set of step-by-step instructions in a lot more detail than a neurotypical kid would need.

Mm-hmm.

So a neurotypical kid, like the parents might say, you, you're way too worked up here, you know, you need to calm down. Let's do something together to calm down. And the neurotypical kid will be, well, they'll just take that in and they'll make a connection in their brain. And then next time they're feeling like that, the memory will come up and they will remember the kind of feel of the thing. And then bit by bit, by remembering the feel of the thing, they will somehow come to figure out how to replicate that inside themselves without the help of the adult. Whereas the neurodivergent kid, when you go, you're getting a bit worked up, you need to calm down, will usually go, but how? But how? What do you mean? What am I supposed to do? And they get even more worked up because now not only have they got the original upset, but now they've got the frustration of somebody is demanding that they do something without telling them how.

Yes. Are you familiar with that in your life? Like, is that a you thing? Have you had that experience?

I, well, see, it was different for me. I'm, I'm pretty sure that I'm neurodivergent, not that I've ever gone and, and gone through the testing because I, I don't, there's no upside for me on that. It's not like I'm going to get any benefit from it or any, you know, support or treatment. So I haven't, I haven't bothered. But for me in my childhood, I was completely masked. Because I was dissociated and numb and just going through the motions of behaving the way I was supposed to behave with a little half smile on my face. Because if I looked in any way distressed, my mother's reaction was so overwhelming that it was better just not to show any distress, um, than to trigger her anxious, interfering, overwhelming attention onto me. Um, But I, you know, I've raised 3 children of my own, and I became aware as they were like coming up through— when my first daughter was maybe a year and a half old or, or so, um, I became aware that, uh, it's not as straightforward as it kind of seems, that kids don't just pick this stuff up. So she was—

Hmm.

Um, she was trying to put together some, you know, the big Lego blocks, the Duplo blocks that are much bigger. She's trying to put them together and they wouldn't go. And, and then she threw herself on the floor and said, I'm tired. And I was like, it's 9 AM. It's not likely that you're tired right now. So why would you say I'm tired? And When I'm thinking about it, she spends a couple of days a week with my mother. And my mother's approach whenever somebody shows a negative emotion is to find like an excuse for it and then distract or divert them. So in the afternoon when she was probably getting tired, if she showed frustration, my mother would go, oh, you're getting tired. We'll stop doing this activity now and we'll go do something more relaxing and more fun. And so she'd made this connection in her mind that this sensation that she's having equals tired. And I said to her, like, you were trying to put the blocks together and they weren't going, right? And she just said, so probably what you're feeling is frustrated. And I realized in that moment that it's not just a given. People don't just understand what their emotions are. They need it. They need to learn it. They need to be given the right language and they need to be taught where to look for the cues and they need to, be taught the kind of reality testing that I'd just modeled for her of, I think I'm tired, but it's 9 in the morning and it's probably— I'm probably not tired because I had plenty of sleep last night. So what else might it be? Am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Am I— Yeah. So as adults, we have to do this, you know, like I'm feeling crappy at 9 in the morning. I'm doing exactly this kind of thing of, wait a minute, how much sleep did I have last night? Have I eaten breakfast? You know, what's going on at a physiological level that's making me feel like this? But that's a learned skill.

Right.

It's not something that we just figure out on the fly without any help or support from the adults around us, particularly if we're neurodivergent.

Yeah. So when is it— I'm hearing, I'm hearing something interesting, which is she said she was tired and there's that There's the situation with your mom, right? And you mentioned burnout for yourself earlier.

Mm-hmm.

This might be something that we come back to in more depth because I definitely want to have a, I think, another conversation about neurodivergent theory with you. But how How would you approach teaching her, is it tired, is it hungry, or am I burnt out? Like, because burnout can be confused with other things.

It can. At 18 months of age, it's not likely.

Probably not burnout.

Yeah. But, um, if I'm with a— working with a client who's, you know, in their 30s, um, then, you know, we'll, we'll definitely go through that. And I, I have noticed that Um, people do tend to identify as having anxiety or having depression, and even doctors can tell them they have depression and put them on SSRIs when what's actually going on is burnout.

Yeah.

Um, and in fact, that happened to me with my burnout. The first doctor that I went to said I was depressed, um, didn't try to put me on SSRIs because they were a very advanced, um, enlightened doctor. But that would have been most GPs' next response is, oh, you're depressed, let's give you some SSRIs.

Right. And those are more effects than a cause, right? Depression or any of that is an effect of something else.

Yeah. It's the same as my daughter going, oh, this— I'm tired, right? When we've had the experience of feeling a certain way and people have told us that we're anxious or they've told us that we seem depressed, We, we link that sensation with that label, and it may actually be a wrong association because those people might not have burnout in their vocabulary.

Yeah, right. So what resources do you think parents need in order to better provide for neurodivergent kids?

Well, I mean, number one, all parents, regardless of what type of kid you have, um, the number one thing that your child needs from you in the first 7 years of their life as their brain is developing is they need co-regulation.

Mm-hmm.

So they need you to hold the space and help them to regulate their emotions because their brain is not developed enough to do it on their own until they're about 7. So when little kids are having big emotions, they need the big people to come and help them, hold the space for them, reassure them that everything's okay. And the best way to do that is for the big person's nervous system to be in a calm state.

Hmm.

Because if you are all wound up and anxious and agitated and your child is having a meltdown and you're trying to settle your child, particularly with a neurodivergent kid, they pick up on the state of your nervous system and they pick up on a mismatch between the state of your nervous system and what you're saying and doing. And it makes them even more anxious and upset. So the number one skill you need as a parent, regardless of whether your child is neurotypical or neurodivergent, is the ability to regulate your own emotions.

I like that.

If I was issuing like parenting licenses, that would be the core skill. It's like, you're not allowed to reproduce until you can regulate your own emotions.

Not allowed. Yeah, not allowed.

Because otherwise you're just going to traumatize your kids. You're going to send them into adulthood unable to manage their own emotions. And then we're going to have like another gen— it's just going to be a generational thing where people who don't know how to do it raise kids who don't know how to do it, who grow up to become parents who don't know how to do it, and so on and so on and so on.

Yeah.

Yep.

And that's just perpetuating trauma, even if it's whatever kind of trauma, right?

I mean, the most loving and well-intentioned parents who do everything they possibly can, can still create lasting trauma in their children simply by not providing enough co-regulation in those early years.

Yeah, I can see that for sure. What do you see then as limitations or potential roadblocks or problems with neurodivergence, whether as a parent or as a child? things that might get in the way of that regulation just by the inherent nature of it.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things is that if you have a neurodivergent child, you've probably got at least one neurodivergent parent in that family as well. Um, so then the effect is even more magnified. Um, as a neurodivergent parent, you most likely didn't get your emotional needs met in childhood. Because the way our culture is set up and the way pressure that's put on parents, it's almost impossible for parents to actually show up in a state where they, where they are regulated because there's so much pressure on them. And neurodivergent kids are more sensitive and react more intensely to more things, so they need more co-regulation than neurotypical kids. So you have parents who are chronically under-resourced, and as a neurodivergent parent, they might be even more under-resourced because the world itself is way more stressful and demanding for them than it would be for a neurotypical parent. So you have a— all parents are under-resourced, neurodivergent parents are even more under-resourced with all children, but with neurodivergent children, the need is higher.

Mm-hmm.

So it is a situation where like all of the factors are lining up to make it way more difficult to just meet that fundamental need for co-regulation. Right.

So that co-regulation or the mental capacity to provide it almost becomes a scarce resource in that.

Yeah. I would, I wouldn't say it's a mental capacity. It's a physiological capacity.

I like that.

Yeah.

That's good.

Yeah.

I look at a lot of the time, I don't know if you've heard of it, you probably have the science out of Harvard and Princeton that describes the physiological response, but they measure it with IQ called bandwidth tax. It talks about what happens to our mental state when there's too much cognitive stress, whether it's a simple decision that we make or whatever, it actually lowers the IQ and then the phys— physiology follows. So this just reminded me of that. I often refer to mental capacity as that being the keystone, right? Like if we have more bandwidth, then regulation is easier. If we don't, then the whole physiological machine crashes, right?

Yeah. But it's also true the other way around. If your physiology is dysregulated, then you have less bandwidth.

It's true. It's true.

So we need to— As your autonomic system When your autonomic nervous system goes into an alert state looking for threats or a fight or flight state, that literally the blood flow to your prefrontal cortex is reduced. So literally your bandwidth to have any analytical thought is reduced.

And then that, so one way that I know that I'm in burnout or entering burnout is I notice that decisions that I thought were wonderful were horrible. And it tells me that my in-the-moment judgment is gone, which is a sign of lower bandwidth, right? I don't want to get hung up. Like, that's a topic we could just talk about. But I'm curious, in your experience, what you've seen, what you've experienced, what your kids have experienced, what that juxtaposition, right, of the physiological state and the Uh, way that society is shaped and how parenting is right now, what that creates, um, for those neurodivergent individuals in terms of like, okay, they need to be aware of their inner state, like we're talking about. There's societal expectations, there's the ways that people communicate. And some— sometimes, and more often for neurodivergent people, those— that inner state doesn't always match up with those expectations. So what are the common judgments or the common misconceptions that you've run into when it comes to a neurodiverse mind, somebody perceiving that other individual?

Uh, so one of the things that I've really, uh, got clear about in this whole process, going through my own process and—

You're saying you got— you had fear? Oh, you got clear.

What I've got clear about, yeah, what I've really got clear about is that If you have the privilege to have had adequate co-regulation in those years when your brain was developing, Mm-hmm. and your emotional system is working more or less within the normal bounds that, you know, healthy functioning, then it is simply not possible for you to imagine the intensity of the emotional experiences that are going on for people whose system is not in that state, whether it's not in that state because of neurodivergence or it's not in that state because, uh, that the developmental trauma has meant that they haven't like reached that level yet and they're still feeling everything as intensely as a 2-year-old feels it. I went through this myself, like when I, uh, had the burnout and I did a few things, I started to feel stuff. It was just like mind-bogglingly It was so intense, like, I, I lost my edges. Like, my actual sense of being a separate person was, was completely dissolved in the intensity of the emotional stuff that was going on. Um, and I had— I was fortunate that I had the academic training, so I understood conceptually, like, a model for what was probably going on.

A model.

And I'd done, uh, personal development work enough to know that I am not my thoughts and I am not my feelings. So no matter how insane the thoughts got, and they got very insane, and no matter how intense the feelings got, it felt like it was— they were going to stop my heart sometimes. I had enough life experience and education to know that all I needed to do was stay present, hold this, and look for the other ways to maneuver. Like, where, where can I push something or urge something to shift this a little bit?

Mm-hmm.

In the middle of like a howling gale, you know, huge intensity. Um, and what I understood in that moment was this is what it feels like when the 2-year-old is melting down, right? But they don't have a fully developed adult brain. They don't have a map. They don't have a conceptual model that they've are understood academically. They haven't done the personal development training to know that they're not their thoughts and they're not their feelings and that this too shall pass. They don't have any of the tools I had. They have to deal with that intensity with a brain that's only partly developed. And if, honestly, if I could give every parent and every teacher just that experience, just for a few minutes, so that they understood what the child is actually feeling and that what the behavior the child is doing is not an overblown, overdramatic bid for attention. It is literally, they're trying to find some way to relieve some of that intensity, to find their edges and get a grip and not feel like they're being like literally obliterated by the emotions.

Yeah.

The number of people that I've worked with as adults that when we get like scratch the surface a little and get under, under there just a little bit. Um, but they have this belief that their own emotions are too much, and if they feel their emotions, it will obliterate them. Like, they have, uh, a phobia of their own emotions because they, they— it feels as though the intensity of that emotion, the losing of their edges and the pounding of the heart, it feels like they're going to die. They have, yeah, fight-or-flight response as though their life is in danger when they're having these intense emotions. And so they have developed all of these strategies to keep those emotions suppressed and at bay and avoid triggers and all kinds of things because of this underlying feeling that the emotions might kill them.

Hmm.

And that is actually rational when you understand how intense that Yeah. It is rational to have that fear because without the intellectual framework that I had and the personal development work that I had done, I would have been in the same boat myself. Am I losing my mind or am I dying? Like, it's one of those two things.

For me, that's resolved as— not resolved, completed, but it's expressed as Not only am I too much, but I will hurt people if I get too emotional. And that's where I wonder about the limitations and judgments that you've seen, because there's a lot of, like, if you take a person who can't conceptualize an experience or has a limited perspective on it, and then you take somebody who's having a very intense experience that nobody else has ever had, The person, person A, the first person I mentioned, is going to try to rationalize this experience that they can't rationalize. And in my experience, that actually, that can cause harm, right? Because that person is drawing conclusions based on whatever knowledge or perspective they have. And it creates, it almost perpetuates that story of I'm too much, I'm going to hurt other people. You know, um, so what do we need to keep in mind, especially when we're dealing with kids, aside from the fact that their brains aren't developed or this is an intense thing, to reconcile that perspective difference?

Yeah, I think, you know, this is, uh, one of the big, you know, flaws that we have as human beings is that we tend to assume that other people are experiencing life from the same kind of basic set of experiences that we are, right? So if I was lying on the floor of the supermarket kicking my feet on the ground and screaming—

Grow up, Jenny.

Yeah, like today, right?

Yeah.

Um, that would be me either, you know, having— in a psychiatric state and needing to be hospitalized, or that would be me exaggerating something for dramatic effect. Strategically, right? Because I have the capacity to regulate my emotions. I have the capacity to manage my state internally so that my external behavior stays within the parameters of what's socially acceptable most of the time. Uh, so for me to allow my behavior to go outside of those parameters would be a deliberate choice on my part. And if I—

Some people can't regulate.

Some people, some people can and some people can't. Right now, if you have the privilege of having grown up always having been able to in your memory, then you are particularly prone to this error. You are particularly prone to misjudging the people who do experience, consciously experience these very intense emotions. And I remember when I was numb, being really annoyed about these people who would get so dramatic. because they would get attention and they would get what they wanted. And here was me, like, in just as much pain, but not showing it and not getting the attention and not getting my needs met. And it was so infuriating. But again, it wasn't— I didn't have empathy for them in their situation because I could not imagine how intense that was until I had unpacked my own dissociation and my own suppression and actually really consciously experienced how intense it was. The intensity was there for me under the surface, but I was not consciously aware of it.

Yeah, I completely believe that. I know a lot of neurodivergent people who won't even look, right?

Yeah.

Do you— if we were to take, say, the major countries, you know, like England, Australia, United States, Canada, And we were to look at the treat— like an average, in your experience, neurodivergent individual, how big of a problem do you think this is? Like, I was going to get all technical, like what percent of the people that they interact with would you say has this issue? But like, is what you're talking about like something that you find happens 80% of the time? Not that often? Often? In terms of this judgment.

Um, I would say that the vast majority of people are not equipped with enough knowledge to understand what the experience is like for somebody who is significantly different from them. And this is neurotypical people and neurodivergent people. I mean, one of the most judgmental groups about the behavior of neurodivergent people is other neurodivergent people. who have a different presentation of the neurodivergence.

Yeah.

So it's not even like when you find your tribe of neurodivergent people, then you get the understanding.

No, no, no.

You just have a wider variety of judgments being placed upon you.

You do. You do indeed. Um, so what can we do as a, as a like global group of people on one planet who have to live with this Like that realization, what you were just describing about neurodivergent people and others and about this impossibility to relate to the pain, the nervous system overload, right? Um, and how that is just one instance of a greater pattern of people relating to people. That combination is one of the first heuristics that made me recognize the nature of the trauma of being neurodivergent in this world. And as we've been talking and as I've expanded on that, it's not just neurodivergence, obviously, but it's a, it's a judgment based on perspective sort of situation. What can we do to heal that? I mean, it's easy to say just consider other perspectives, but it's also easy to say shut up and don't scream when you're overloaded. So like, yeah. Yeah.

I think the easiest way to really like hone this in is to take my original point of your core skill as a parent is co-regulation of your child's big emotions in those early years and expand that to say actually the core skill that you need as a human being is co-regulation. We as adults should be co-regulating each other all the time, routinely and And because we haven't necessarily absorbed those skills, because we've been in a world that wasn't co-regulating us and we've had no one to teach it to us, um, we often have to learn those skills from first principles when we want to go do it as an adult. So I have broken that down for people into a very simple way to think of it. So step 1, when you're dealing with somebody who is in any way experiencing big emotion, behaving erratically. Step 1 is physiological safety. It's bringing the autonomic nervous system back into the green zone. Until that happens, they are not capable of any of the things you might ask them to do about managing emotions or looking at things from a different perspective or considering somebody else or any— like, all of those capacities are only available to us. when we have this foundational level of our physiology is within bounds. So if there was just one thing to change, it would be you look at the person and if you see they're in fight or flight, extreme distress, they're frozen, they're anxiously fawning, like any of these things that indicate that their nervous system is out of balance, then everything stops. All agendas go to the side. And all attention and resources are focused on bringing everybody's nervous systems back into the normal regulated zone. And only once the nervous systems come back into at least some level of regulation, then we can work on empathy. Then we can work on connecting at the emotional level and having the person feel seen and accepted and understood in whatever they're feeling. validated in their experience, even if their behavior is unacceptable, validated in their experience so that they feel emotional safety. So physiological safety is the necessary underpinning. And then you work on emotional safety, feeling seen, feeling validated, feeling accepted. And then you can go to the mental level of mental safety of, okay, Let's all get on the same page with understanding what's going on here. What is the trigger? What is the concern? What is the need that's not being met? And once we all understand that, then there's a sense of mental safety of, I'm understood. My situation and my needs are understood. And each time you reach a new level of safety, so when you reach emotional safety, the physiology will settle some more. When you reach mental safety, the emotions and the physiology will settle more.

Yeah.

So now you're in a state, your, your physiology and your brain activity is such that you can attune to each other. And once you're attuned to each other, then your systems will find the pathway to solve the issue.

Yeah.

And it will be the right solution for everybody because everybody's systems will be involved in the solution because everybody is attuned.

I like that. How can we take that and the result of that and create something sustainable? Because that sounds like a great, like, I wish I had that growing up. And what happens the next time I'm dysregulated, right? How can we Ensure that— how can we ensure that that feeling of safety remains?

Well, it's not going to remain. It has to be constantly recreated.

Good.

Yeah. Right? Like, life keeps throwing shocks at you. And so you have to constantly return your system to the feeling of safety. And when you're young, what you need is that the adults around you to go out into the wilderness where you are in the middle of all of the chaos and upset and take you by the hand and step by step walk you back into that place of safety. And when someone's done that with you over and over and over, you start anticipating the next step and then you start being able to walk yourself back.

Hmm. So this is just about regulation.

Yeah, we can do the same process. I do the same process all the time with my adult clients. Clients who didn't get this from their parents. Uh, I give them the model, the construct of like, these are the layers with physiology, emotional, mental. And then I just keep reminding them like, okay, so how's your physiology? Are you actually physiologically regulated? Okay, what's your— what's your go-to for calming your system? All right, let's just do that for a couple of minutes. Okay, now then, you know, so I'm just reminding them of steps along the pathway that they They mentally have, but of course they can't access that when they're in an agitated state. You have to practice it enough times that it becomes as subconscious as, you know, walking or driving. Like, it has to be available subconsciously, otherwise the moment that you get dysregulated, you can't do it anymore.

There we go. There's, there's the key. So we have to practice this. It has to be a practice. And we have to practice it often and often with enough concentration through time to make it a subconscious response. Exactly. It's a skill.

It's just a skill, right? If you think about this, right, soccer players have this thing they have to do, the goal kick, you know, where they're lining up, there's the goalie, and then they have a particular place where they have to stand. There's nobody else interfering. It's just the person kicking the ball and the goalie trying to stop it.

Wow.

Now, if the only time you ever tried to do that was in the grand final in extra time after the last whistle with 100,000 screaming people in a stadium around you, how many of those shots are you likely to make?

Yeah, right.

Whereas if you've practiced it thousands and thousands of times, in a zero-stakes environment with nobody around, with as many tries as you want, and you've built the muscle memory, you have a much better chance of being able to do it under intense pressure.

And none of the skills of strategizing or organizing or, you know, planning the trajectory of that ball or the score or how to kick the ball, or none of that matters if that person met a 4 Physiologically isn't regulated enough to even consider those components.

Exactly. Those skills are only available to somebody whose physiology is regulated.

So would you say you teach people how to regulate? Yeah.

Or are you doing way more than that? I teach people how to expand their awareness of what's going on in their system, how to regulate, how to identify the drivers of the patterns that they notice, the repeating patterns that they notice. how to get a constructive dialogue going between their analytical mind and their embodied subconscious intelligence that's actually doing most of the doing in the body.

Yeah.

Um, in our culture, we, we tend to sever people at the neck, basically. Um, we, at 5 years of age, we put them somewhere and we say, sit still on this hard wooden chair and do what you're told and don't look out the window and In order to do that, kids have to cut themselves off from the natural bodily impulses that make them want to get up and run around at that age.

Hmm.

So we basically cut people off from this healthy dialogue between their analytical mind and their experience, their bodily experience. And so most people have to learn as adults how to get those 2 intelligences to actually work in cooperation rather than Right.

What do you mean by fighting each other?

So there's a sensation in the body, um, and then the mind says, well, I shouldn't be feeling that.

Okay. Yeah. Right. So for me, that I would identify that as either guilt or shame. Like I feel something and I'm bad or wrong for even having the feeling about the thing I'm having.

Or you get frustrated. That you're feeling that, right? Like, you, you, you, you know you need to do some work, and then you just have this, like, collapse feeling of tired, and, you know, like, I do it, and then you beat yourself up for being lazy, and you get frustrated with yourself. Like, you've got these 2 intelligences battling each other rather than working cooperatively together.

Fascinating. You're helping me realize how much in my own work that I've applied to my life, similar to you, how much works and parts that we might want to talk about some more. Because I think I've come past, personally, I think I've just come past this place of feeling like shit about what comes up for me, but instead— I get dysregulated when others are judging what's coming up for me because it affects them and I can't stop what's coming up for me. So all of my previous relationships have ended as a result of me, the way they feel when I get dysregulated ultimately at the end of the day. And that obviously creates some story. And there's a lot that you're saying that Um, is very clear and is very almost obvious, but nobody's talking about it. It is obvious, but nobody's talking about it. What do you think we need to do as people who get it, you and I, you, I, and others, whatever, to make this way of being, because this is an embodiment, it's a skill, but it's also an embodiment, right? Yeah, being embodied is a skill. That's fair. Okay. Yeah, we got to talk more. Something that, um, something that can be taught to people at scale. Like, I don't know that parents should have to go seek and hire and find and vet somebody who teaches, here's how to be a human being.

Yeah. And most of the places where people go looking for this They don't necessarily find it either. Like I've had clients who did 15 years of therapy and it, it helped a little bit and it gave them some insight, but until they mastered these physiological level skills, they couldn't apply most of what the insights and knowledge were from the therapy.

I mean, the expectation—

they were too dysregulated to access that stuff.

That's the expectation, right? Is there's no consideration for the function of regulation as far as I can And that's my whole shtick, is if we have a way to systematize regulating, that helps. But you're taking it even a step further and saying, all right, now that we're regulated, build that skill, and here's how to build that skill, and then here's how you connect to your intelligence. So how can we bring that to the world? How can that be a global thing rather than a just Jenny or just Chris thing?

Well, you know, I've broken it down into steps. I've broken it down into a training program that people can go through over a 4 to 6 month period, which gives a solid grounding in all of the foundational stuff about regulation and awareness and identifying what's going on, understanding how the system hangs together, and enough time to practice to at least get the regulation part in if they're doing the practice diligently. Um, and then all of the information about then expanding the skills. Um, and people, you know, can get together in graduate groups or have a one-to-one coach to explore more, the more advanced stuff, the getting the 2 intelligences working together. And then in a relationship with somebody else, um, you being the analytical intelligence supporting their embodiment and their understanding of themselves. There's, there's a whole world of richness and amazing stuff that becomes possible once you master these basics.

Right. So that's at an individual level. Curious what we can do to bring these skills that you're teaching to individuals to be— for example, I wish when I was going through school, 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, I was getting MRIs. I was in the special ed classes. Teachers didn't know what to do. I was getting pulled out of classes. And in my adult jaded view, that's just ignorance. Like they didn't know, right?

Hmm.

What can we do to make that be like? And I even was in a relationship with somebody who had an ADD kid in one of the wealthiest cities in Massachusetts. And I live in Massachusetts in the United States. And so we met with the school and the school had no idea what to do, which triggered the shit out of me. So What, like, what can we do to make this a global thing? Like, you have the trainings, you have a plan to bring those to the world. Do you want to bring those to the world? Like, how can we make this more accepted? You know, that's really the conversation I'm—

Ideally, you know, every childcare worker, every parent, every teacher would have done this program and mastered the foundational skills so that they could teach them to kids because it's, it's designed for adults, my program. Like, it has all of the psychoeducation of how the maps and how it all works, you know. It's for adults because, um, there needs to be like a personal connection with the child. It's not like a random strange adult can explain something to a child and have them get it. You have to be there in the thick of it with the child and walk them back to safety over and over and over.

Yeah.

So it's all about having the adults who are engaged with children having these That's the fastest way to raise a generation who come to adulthood already having these skills.

So do you have a way to take like a bunch of teachers from one school at this point and teach these skills? Or are you at a point to do that?

Yeah, yeah. I had a teacher do, um, so I have like my basic program and then I have a coach training program for people who want to facilitate my program. And I had someone in the last cohort who was a high school teacher and did the program mainly to master the skills himself, but also with the thought that he could then be mentoring, you know, teenagers and helping more generally. And so the situation with him when he started this 6-month process, was that he had identified that he had a lot of anxiety and his anxiety manifested as irritability. So when he was in a classroom with a bunch of 14 and 15-year-olds who were doing what 14 and 15-year-olds do, he would get irritated pretty fast and he had one of the highest levels of sending kids to detention from his class.

Okay.

He was also, it didn't help that he was teaching a not so academic subject, so he was teaching hospitality skills. So he's teaching things like, you know, barista, making coffee, and like all of those kinds of more vocational skills. So already the kids were prone to not take the class so seriously. You know, it's a practical class, so they tend to, you know, muck around more in those. Um, so 6 months in, once he had got his own regulation in place, He went from being one of the least popular teachers who was sending the most kids to detention to the most popular teacher in his school. And with so many students wanting to continue in the subjects that he was teaching that the school had to take on another teacher who could teach those subjects because there were too many students wanting to.

Wow.

In a 6-month period.

That's incredible. Cool. So you're, you're doing some of this?

Yeah.

Um, awesome.

Yeah. And having had that experience with, you know, somebody who was, um, you wouldn't think this was— this is not the person most likely, right? This is, this is somebody who, you know, he, he, um, is neurodivergent with ADD. Um, you know, uh, uh, Uh, cis male, you know, around about 40 years of age. Um, like, there's many factors that would say this wouldn't be somebody who would get the hang of, you know, touchy-feely. That's the perfect thing for me.

That's the best combination.

Yeah. Um, but, you know, to see how, like, when you break it down and go, here's the skill, here's the steps, you know, he teaches in a competency-based system. All of the skills he's teaching are broken down into small steps, and you can assess that the student is able to do step. So he had already this model. So we just gave him the emotional skills in exactly the same format, you know, bullet point by bullet point. These are the, these are the behaviors that show that you've mastered this skill.

Mm-hmm.

And he just took to it like a duck to water because it had been made clear to him for the first time ever what needed to be learned and in what order did the skills build on each other. And that was all he had ever needed, and he'd never got it in his life before.

I believe that.

Really, um, cool.

So as we come up to the top of the hour, like, that's really powerful, and I think we should have another conversation about it. And how can people connect with you if they want more of this?

Uh, all through my website, uh, jennyhale.org. Um, there's contact forms and things you can opt in, there's videos and articles and all the rest of it. there. So, um, that's, that's the easiest way to find me. I'm also on Facebook, um, so I have a professional profile on Facebook. If you search for Jenny Hale, um, you'll find me.

And that's H-A-L-E, guys.

Yeah.

Um, so as we're wrapping up, is there anything you want to leave the listeners or viewers with to help them be more regulated, or anything else?

I think the most important thing to know is that this is not some big, horrible, complicated, intractable fact of life that it has to be like this. It does not have to be like this.

Hmm.

It doesn't matter where you're starting from, how little you already know about regulation. It doesn't matter how much distress that you have to deal with and how often it gets triggered. There is a system that you can practice that will over time build that skill and make it happen below the level of your conscious awareness so that from your experience, you just get triggered less often. And when you do get triggered, it's not such a big deal and you come back faster because it's all now happening below the surface at the subconscious level. So it doesn't have to be this way. doesn't have to be painful and difficult and agonizing and alienating. It doesn't have to be.

Yeah, doesn't have to be this way. That's potent. Thank you. All right, well, we are at the top of the hour, and I really appreciate this conversation, Jenny. Um, your precision of Like root cause is really refreshing, and the fact that you're poised to make this change happen is really refreshing. That you are making it happen, that you're poised to make it happen in an even bigger way, and I'm really inspired after this conversation. So thank you so much, guys. If you want to connect with Jenny, jennyhale.org. Also find her on Facebook. And what was that you said, Jenny? It doesn't have to be this way, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well, thank you guys. Yeah.

Just thanks for having me. It's been a great conversation.

Absolutely. It really has. And thank you guys for tuning in. Stay tuned for the next episode and take it easy.