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The Neuroscience of Teen Tantrums: How Your Calm Can Regulate Their Chaos
23 Plays6 days ago
How do mirror neurons and parent co-regulation help de-escalate emotional outbursts and stress in teenagers?
In this episode of The Positively Healthy Mom, we dive deep into the science of nervous system regulation, exploring how parents can use their own energetic presence to calm a dysregulated teen, while also providing practical mind-body tools to support competitive teen athletes through injury prevention and intense physical stress.
It is a must-listen for moms navigating high-stress seasons with their teenagers, academic or performance pressures, and the daily chaotic bursts of teen hormones.
Listen in as we sit down with Lisa Danahy, an MS in Yoga Therapy, BA in Psychology, and founder of the non-profit Create Calm, who specializes in evidence-based behavioral and emotional regulation.
Key Conversations in This Episode:
- Why telling an upset teenager to "just calm down" backfires, and how to help them access actual nervous system resources instead.
- Understanding the neuroscience behind why emotions are contagious and how an adult's steady presence serves as a physical reflection for a teen's emotional reset.
- A breakdown of a 30-second somatic tool involving movement, body-shaking, and breathwork to instantly exit the primitive stress response.
- How teaching "intense sensation" practices builds physical endurance, prevents joint/bone wear-and-tear, and fosters deep peer communication in competitive sports.
Common Question About Moms Of Teens and Emotional Regulation:
Question: Why do big conversations with my teenager always seem to turn into explosive arguments when we are in the car?
Answer: When parents and teens pile into a car, they are bringing all the bottled-up stress of their respective days into a highly contained space. Because you are physically confined and unable to move or discharge that physical energy, trying to navigate heavy topics relies entirely on words and breath to force the stress out, making the environment literal kindling for an explosive interaction. It is much better to use the car as a low-stakes space for rambling, and save big topics for after you have physically moved and reset.
Meet Our Expert:
Lisa Danahy (C-IAYT, YACEP, MS) is a powerful educator, entrepreneur, and Hay House featured author. With an MS in Yoga Therapy, a BA in Psychology, and over 30 years as a school administrator and social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum developer, she is highly skilled at creating accessible, evidence-based training for emotional regulation and resilience. Her non-profit, Create Calm, has facilitated deep healing and mindful programming for thousands of students, teachers, and families across the country since 2016.
Connect with Lisa and Create Calm:- Website: createcalm.org
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lisadanahy
- Facebook: Create Calm Page
- Instagram: @create_calm_yoga & @yogalinilisa
Resources From Your Host, Laura Ollinger
- Emotional College Prep Session For Girls: Positively Healthy University
- Book A Coaching Call: Let’s Work It Out!
- Instagram: @positivelyhealthycoaching
Recommended
Transcript
Teen Athletes and Body Stress
00:00:00
Speaker
you know, they've got these raging hormones that they can't manage. And they're going from these little puppies into these big dogs. and And then they're being asked to really challenge their bodies with a lot of repetitive, especially the high-fishing athletes, a lot of repetitive motion.
00:00:18
Speaker
And I think, and they're wearing out their joints, they're wearing out their bones and muscles. And um so I'd love to see them take on some more of these kinds of mind body practices so that they're able to hold themselves in ah in a healthier, more balanced state.
Introduction of Guest Lisa Danahy
00:00:38
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast. I'm your host, Laura Olinger, teen and young adult well-being coach and founder of Positively Healthy Coaching. Today, I'm so excited to introduce my guest, Lisa Danahy, who has the most amazing resume. She's got an MS in yoga therapy, a BA in psychology.
00:00:58
Speaker
She's an educator, an entrepreneur, and has a nonprofit called Create Calm. So she's all about social, emotional learning, curriculum development. She certifies like just everything. So Lisa, just kind of like help make sense of all of these things that you're doing.
00:01:15
Speaker
You pretty much caught it there. you know, I love helping people grow into the best versions of themselves. I love um promoting wellness and um and connections. so my work focuses really on helping build
Social-Emotional Connections
00:01:35
Speaker
connections. And one of the best ways to do that is through social emotional development, connections in families, connections in schools, connections among people.
00:01:44
Speaker
um and through those connections, we all feel a little more safe, a little more joyful and a little more well. So yes, yes. And you talk about creating calm. So what that's a big, big topic. But like, if you could just kind of, you know, concentrate it down to one principle idea, what would that be?
The Inspiration Behind Create Calm
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it actually, it comes from a kind of funny little backstory. um i ran a school for almost 20 years for littles, five babies to five and six-year-olds going off to kindergarten. And I was constantly hearing, um and probably through my own personal life, I've heard it a lot too, but I was constantly hearing when a child was upset, I'd hear someone say, just calm down.
00:02:30
Speaker
You need to be calm, you know? and so And it was so ridiculous because I'd be like, who can calm down when someone's yelling at them, calm down. And don't you think right I'm freaking out? It's because i can't access calm. And so I started to consider what if we created practices that create calm,
00:02:54
Speaker
What if what I do is help model for you the way you can access your nervous system, you can access resources so that you can actually create the calm yourself.
00:03:09
Speaker
And we practice it outside of the craziness. So that when you get into that uncalm space, you're more likely on your own to go, okay, I think I know what to do. i can go into my little you know toolkit and I can come out and I can create my own calm.
00:03:28
Speaker
e and Okay, I'm so glad you explained like how this, you know, got started where it, you know, came about because those principles and of course, we all as moms remember those days, where we're either saying it, or we hear other moms saying it, or everybody's saying it, right. and And you think of the classic, like grocery store example with the kid freaking out, and it's embarrassing, right. And so ah ah It's like, oh, I'm the mom who, you know, can't calm my kid down. So yes, that's so important to teach kids and empower them to learn these skills when they don't need them. So that way, when they do need them, they know better how to turn those on and how to access those.
00:04:06
Speaker
Yes.
Emotional Regulation in Adults
00:04:07
Speaker
and And, you know, the other side of that is usually when when a ah kid is dysregulated, is uncalm, usually the adult matches that vibration, matches that craziness.
00:04:22
Speaker
And the and adult is no longer regulated. And so my goal in teaching these tools is to help the adults be able to be more regulated too. And, and, you know, I'm a bit of a science geek. And so i will try to make this really brief. Yeah, yeah, I do. You and I could go on the fall a really big tangent on this. but yeah But what it really boils down to is nervous system regulation through mirror neurons.
00:04:52
Speaker
And mirror neurons are these pathways by which we are constantly assessing where we belong and how we fit into the world around us. And we're looking at people to model for us how we're supposed to behave, how we're supposed to feel and engage.
00:05:09
Speaker
And we've all had that experience where we're having a really good day. We walk into a room and something really ugly is happening. And all of a sudden we're like, oh, and we become that energy, right? we yeah You can just feel it. Yeah. It's palpable. And when we when we do that, you know all of a sudden we go, oh, I'm the oddball here. They're all freaking out. So let me conform and become ah unregulated too. and And the goal here from a neuroscience perspective is for the adult to have enough skills in their toolbox that they can regulate and they can walk into that room and they can stay steady even when everybody else is not. And then they become the reflector.
00:05:56
Speaker
They become the one that the other mirror neurons start
Case Study: Calming Practices
00:06:00
Speaker
to follow. And so, you know, I had a little one um who I was working with, who came to me because everybody talked about this child was imbalanced, this child needed help, was getting kicked out of school, wasn't ever invited over to friend's house, um had four-hour tantrums.
00:06:18
Speaker
Well, I started working with them, and in two sessions, we had drastically shifted his capacity to access his calm. And he was down to, like, less than 20 minutes in a tantrum, He was in his school teaching methods, but the ultimate was one day his mother was upset.
00:06:38
Speaker
Now, I'm not saying that even the best at admit regulating their nervous their nervous systems are not going to be upset. So, I mean, that's part of what we're here to practice. But the mom was upset and the little guy turned and said, Mama, I think you need a balloon breath.
00:06:52
Speaker
yeah That's so cute. That's so cute. He started doing balloon breaths and he offered a regulation platform for her. So I do think we all have to be doing this together because if you have a a tool that you use, but no one else understands what you're using and how you use it, it's, it's not going to be um as powerful as if we're all practicing it together.
00:07:17
Speaker
ah Yes. Yeah, that's so true. I mean, recently I was in event where it was multi-generational.
Generational Emotional Support
00:07:24
Speaker
And so it was kind of like the concept was that older women were lifting up the younger women. But in return, it it goes both ways, right? Like we're getting the energy from the younger women and it's it's building and helping these older ladies grow. So it's kind of like very similar to what you're saying. We're just all helping each other. Yeah, it's beautiful. And and i and I think that's that's what we're here to do. We're here to engage and connect.
00:07:48
Speaker
And, and it's not always going to be smooth and it's not always going to be, you know, efficient, but it is going to be an opportunity to practice doing it differently again. And, and it's the connection. you know, I say this all the time when I'm working with teachers and doing trainings in schools, connection before instruction, connection before engagement, connection before integration,
00:08:14
Speaker
And so we need a sense of belonging and safety before we can accurately and and effectively connect with the world around us.
Connection Before Correction
00:08:26
Speaker
Yes, yes. i i would That's something I'm working on with ah several of my clients at the moment is, um for in my world, I say connection before correction. And it's just like, not only that, but, um you know, we're in this society that is ah driven by achievement and performance and this competitive world. And it's not only the pressure on the kids, but the parents feel the pressure. And so when the parents feeling the pressure, they're pushing that onto the teenagers and And it's just suddenly a lot of my clients say, you know, my parents care. It feels to them not saying it's true, but it feels like they care more about my grades than they do about meat
00:09:05
Speaker
Right. And that's hard. and That's sad. That's not yeah really what we want. And that's not what the parents really want either, but they don't know how to flip it. Right. I mean, that's what I'm helping with. But like, you know, kind of just as a society, like how do we flip it where we can connect first and then we could do the other things later. Right. but um We let go of outcome.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah. You know, yeah one of the one of my favorite things to do when I'm leading group experiences for especially for teens um is to give them the opportunity to be their own decision maker, to modulate their own behavior.
00:09:44
Speaker
And they are so conditioned because they've had a lot of years of people telling them on the outside what to do. You know, this is what you should look like. This is how you engage. This is how, you know, this is what's important.
00:09:55
Speaker
And so they, they have lost a connection with their intuition, with their inner knowing. and And so what happens is when when we are so bombarded constantly on the outside by these comments and these expectations that push us to be something and do something, we stop listening on the inside. We stop connecting on the inside. So it's just as important as my external connection is my internal connection. When I lose that connection, then I'm constantly looking to the outside for the message. What do I do next? How do I behave? What you know what comes next? And when that happens, there's no more agency. There's no more capacity to regulate myself because I'm needing my external world to regulate me.
00:10:49
Speaker
So my favorite thing in these classes with these teens is to say, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm going to recommend some things and move in some ways and you come along in the way that works for you.
00:11:02
Speaker
And if you become, did it you're going to access the tools that we're practicing to regulate yourself. Mm, that makes so much sense.
00:11:14
Speaker
Wow, what how that's so powerful. And and it's funny because um I want to tell you, honestly, it took me years and years and years of kind of like learning this and practicing it myself and in various modalities um to like understand that
Mind-Body Connection
00:11:30
Speaker
really like mind-body connection and like feeling really integrated. And so many times now I find that when I'm talking about I really do like kind of hesitate or pause a lot. and And it might seem like, oh, I don't know what I'm saying. But really, I'm like just kind of like checking in with my body and like really feeling like how does this feel? And then I can I find that I give a more accurate or more and authentic responses. And and when I so say that, I find like...
00:11:56
Speaker
the pre that Before I did this work years and years ago, I don't think I would have understood what I'm saying right now. And so how do you describe that to kids or even adults so that it makes sense to them? Yeah, well, you know, for me, part of it is this notion that what we're thinking and how we're feeling, our emotions, are directing physiological responses in our body. Right.
00:12:24
Speaker
And physiological responses in our body can direct how we think and feel. So a key piece of this is, like you said, this mind-body connection. So if I can tune into what's going on in my body and I can feel my muscles getting tense, I can feel my breath short or shallow,
00:12:48
Speaker
I can feel ah dryness in my mouth or sweat on my body or these physiological markers that something is out of balance. Then I can go, oh, wait, what what's going on in my body? And sometimes it takes a whole lot of practice to be able to go into your mind and say, oh, well, it was just that feeling or that thought. And it was that belief system. But instead, if I feel my body, and this is where I think movement is so important.
00:13:20
Speaker
You know lots of studies have shown that the brain needs movement to function. So if I can feel into my body and I notice my muscles are tight. Then i can pick a movement to take care of that in my body.
00:13:37
Speaker
And very often it will give me the room for my mind to go okay, wait, what's going on here? It'll give me that pause. Like you were saying, that moment where yeah I go, okay, okay, okay, okay wait, wait, what?
00:13:52
Speaker
And then I can drop a little more clearly into the feelings and the thoughts and I can manage them. So for example, one of the things I do a lot with teens is if if they're feeling really tight and tense, um you know, let's say they're getting ready to go into a big test or they're having to have a conversation with a parent around something that's a little edgy.
00:14:17
Speaker
What I recommend that they do is stand up Stomp their feet a little and shake their bodies. And take 30 seconds and shake your whole body. Shake it really forcefully. Shake it up, shake it up, shake it up.
00:14:35
Speaker
And then, yeah, feel it. Try it. Yeah, I kind of want to feel that looseness. Yeah, yeah And then reach your arms out to the sides. Take a big breath in Reach up over your head as you breathe out. Bring your hands right down through the middle.
00:14:49
Speaker
And you do that once or twice. You do another big breath in. and then you breathe out and just pause here. and just notice your body. So we did that for about 10 seconds.
00:15:03
Speaker
But it's a super quick nervous system reset. It's a super quick way to get out of the stress response. And. realign with sort of ah ah decision-making mode, that higher functioning part of your brain. You get out of the system, that primitive yeah response mode, the emotional brain.
00:15:24
Speaker
You can do the same thing just with the breaths, but I find that actually moving my body helps me to rework what's happening physiologically and therefore it automatically begins to shift what's happening mentally.
00:15:43
Speaker
Mm, yes. And i think for the moms, this might be very relevant because I know I find um certain times of the day i get stressed out, my body feels stressed. And it's when I'm in the car because I can't really move. I can't really shake or wiggle it out or do my big practice. I mean, you know, you could do a little bit of breath work at a stoplight or something, but I've caught myself so many times like, why am I feeling so tense? What's happening, you know, in my brain? What can I do?
00:16:12
Speaker
And it's always related to some, you said this earlier, like outcome. And it's always like the outcome of the rest
Managing Stress in Confined Spaces
00:16:17
Speaker
of the day or of the evening or how we're going to get to dinner and sports and bedtime all, you know, without right way and some kind of yeah in one piece and in in a way.
00:16:27
Speaker
And so we all yeah we all piled in the car, carrying all our stress from the day into the car. and then in the car, all contained and bottled up, we start to have these significant conversations.
00:16:41
Speaker
Around huge issues. And then we wonder why it becomes explosive. And what's happening, the words and the breath are trying to move that energy. And it's quite literally contained inside of the stars.
00:16:57
Speaker
But if we get out, if, you know, if we can resist the urge to have the big talk in the car, sometimes that's an awesome place to let kids just ramble and talk. But if we can risk that urge to ask and engage and get out of the car and everybody shake. i i I do this with my students. I don't just tell them to shake. I shake with them. and we shake And then as we shake together and we take those big breaths together, then It's, okay, are we ready to have this conversation?
00:17:30
Speaker
Yes. I just like this tool just even to use a alone by myself. But then also what you're saying is you can do it with your kids. Or and like you're saying, if you're a teacher or, you know, you work with kids in some other capacity, if you're a sports coach or something like that, right? Like have the whole team do this, come together.
00:17:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:50
Speaker
Just a quick word before we get back to the episode. If you have a teen daughter heading off to college and you've quietly wondered what happens when she's there and I'm not when something goes wrong at 11 p.m. and she can't call me, that worry is exactly why I built Positively Healthy University.
00:18:07
Speaker
It's a three-hour live workshop just with me and a group of 10 girls where she'll get to build the emotional toolkit no college prep class covers. how to sit with hard things, how to regulate without reaching for her phone first, how to build a real community when she gets there.
00:18:25
Speaker
I have got two sessions this summer, so head to positivelyhealthycoaching.com slash PHU for dates and to grab her spot. I have tapped at 10 girls on purpose.
00:18:36
Speaker
Okay, back to the show.
00:18:42
Speaker
I bet you have a lot of experience. like Tell us some a story about you know a time you were um educating or or coaching a group that you know did work with like a large group of kids. and And what was the outcome of that for them, what they learned
Yoga's Impact on Athletes
00:18:56
Speaker
from you?
00:18:56
Speaker
The story that comes to mind is I was actually working with a high school basketball team. And um none of the kids had really done yoga. And the coach hadn't done a lot of it. But the the team was not doing very well.
00:19:11
Speaker
And then we had a lot of injuries and the coach was getting really frustrated. And the coach said, you know, I don't know what I'm going to do. And I said, let's try, let's try a session. So we worked through um the fall, getting them ready to go into their winter um in session. And we worked together and we did a lot of moving, and a lot of breathing.
00:19:35
Speaker
um We did a lot of what I call intense sensation. And I love intense sensations because I um i actually do this a lot with pregnant moms too. I pick one pose or one position that we hold for a minute.
00:19:54
Speaker
and the goal is to continue to notice that you're inhaling and exhaling. Continue to keep the breath going. Notice which muscles are gripping on and holding and trying to do all the work. Notice what muscles are kind of lazy and not helping out.
00:20:09
Speaker
Switch muscles, play with the muscles, play with the engagement, play with the breath for a whole minute. And that is a long time. and what we found was at the beginning, there was a whole lot of resistance and everybody knew that at some point in every class,
00:20:28
Speaker
Miss Lisa was going to do intense sensation. and so some of them are watching the beginning of class, like, do we have to do intense sensation today? And I'd be like, yes, we did. Every class we would do one. But by the end of the sequence of classes, they were asking for it, not to do, to do away with it because they were recognizing that it empowered them.
00:20:54
Speaker
They were recognizing their growth and their capacity to be in a challenge for a minute. And what ended up happening was the coach said that next season, these kids had more endurance. They were able to run much more effectively up and down the court.
00:21:13
Speaker
They were much less injured. and they were much more communicative and collaborative because what happened in the intense sensation moments was they were starting to turn each other and And so they'd be in this this really frustrating place and they'd still make room to to see somebody next to them maybe challenged or struggling a lot. And they'd go, come on, man, you know, you can do it.
00:21:41
Speaker
And they'd all hang in there. And so it built this this community that he did not expect. And I really, i was wonderfully surprised at how robust it was. But it was yeah it was really cool because they they all were brave enough to do something outside of their comfort zone, something unfamiliar.
00:22:01
Speaker
And the key to me was that we practiced all of this in a really playful, low outcome, low expectation way. And it's something that they took into their school day, into their athletic life, into their home life.
00:22:18
Speaker
And they walked away with these tools that did far more than give them a great season. Yes, yes. what ah What a great lifelong skill and learning that they had.
00:22:29
Speaker
and I bet in some way, shape or form, they'll always find a way to come back to that because of what you taught them. So, wow, what a beautiful story. I wasn't expecting something like that, but I love that. And it kind of inspires me to my two football sons, football player sons.
00:22:44
Speaker
They're always dealing with injuries, these things. And I would I love to introduce them to some of your work and and maybe find a way for them to do something like that. Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. I think it's really awesome. I've, you know, I've worked with ah my, my, I have two sons who are all grown now and I worked with their school. They went to an all boys school and I worked with the athletes, but I also worked with the musicians and we did breathing and movement to enhance the breath capacity, especially the wind flares, but the percussionists, the strings, like everybody needs to have balance to perform, to be able to,
00:23:23
Speaker
take their talents and apply them in that way. And so... Right. And get like in that flow state where man they can just lock in and play and it just feels like no time has gone by because they're just in in the zone or in the flow.
00:23:37
Speaker
Yeah. I would love to see more kids, especially teens, because one of the reasons... I liked working with the um the kids at this school where teens are prone to injury anyway by the the biology of their bodies. You know, they've got these soft growth plates, their bones are growing quicker than their muscles.
00:23:57
Speaker
Um, you know, they're, they've got, let's, ah we could do a whole other section on, on hormones. Um, you know, they've got these raging hormones that they can't manage and they're going from these little puppies into these big dogs.
00:24:11
Speaker
And, and then they're being asked to really challenge their bodies with a lot of repetitive, especially higher conditioning athletes, a lot of repetitive motion. And I think, and they're wearing out their joints, they're wearing out their bones and muscles. And um so I'd love to see them take on some more of these kinds of mind body practices so that they're able to hold themselves in a, in a healthier, more balanced state.
00:24:39
Speaker
Mm, man. Yes. Wow. Who knew this was how this conversation would go would lead? um Well, I know it's super fun. um Is there anything, you know, with our our last minute or two that you feel would be important for the moms to hear today? it could be relating to their stress, to their teenager's stress, to just kind of um having this co-regulation or the self-regulation that we've been talking about.
00:25:03
Speaker
I think um moms lighten up on yourself. stop having those big expectations of you you, know, allow yourself to be really present and really messy.
00:25:14
Speaker
Um, and get your kids along on the journey with you and ask your kids how you can go on the journey with them. e That's beautiful. okay. Well, with that being said, how can people find you?
00:25:28
Speaker
Best place to find me is probably, um, at my nonprofits, um, website and that is create calm.org. Perfect. Okay. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. This was a really cool conversation and and I appreciate it. Have a good one.
00:25:44
Speaker
It's my pleasure.
00:25:49
Speaker
I just enjoyed my conversation with Lisa Danahy so much. We talked about emotional regulation, co-regulation, mirror neurons, breathing, mind-body connection, so many great tools. And my thoughts are what an amazing educator this woman is. And she's bringing these tools to schools in her nonprofit program and also has her private coaching business that she does.
00:26:15
Speaker
And I really think just kind of getting this awareness out there, the more and I talk about it with different guests, that it's so important for moms to realize that they are really the leaders and the teachers and the educators within their own families, and that the more they can teach these skills,
00:26:32
Speaker
to If they have young kids, it's ideal to start when they're young, but really, there's it's never too late. I know I didn't start learning a lot of these skills until um my late thirty s early 40s. And so just going to show that it's never too late to learn some mind-body connection tools, emotional regulation, breathing And just how that can bring us together. She talked about connection and whether it's ah a one-on-one relationship or a classroom, a family, um a community can bring us closer together because if we're all helping each other, supporting each other and bringing each other, you know, kind of holding each other accountable even to our emotional regulation. um She said the number one thing that does not work is telling people to calm down. That's how she got started with this whole thing. you know, I think she said 30 years ago, the more you tell someone to calm down, the more they're not going to calm down. We all know that.
00:27:22
Speaker
And so the more we can kind of practice these things when we're already in a relaxed, calm state, then when we get to some type of an emotional boiling point, we're able to just calm ourselves back down on our own so that we can reconnect and solve our problems better.
00:27:37
Speaker
When you get a chance, please go to the show notes and click on the link ratethispodcast.com slash tphmom to give my podcast a rating and review.
00:27:48
Speaker
And if this episode resonates with you, be sure to share it with your mom friends who are going through the same things. Be sure to tune in for next week's conversation. Until then, keep up the good work.