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Learning about nervous system for better parenting outcomes with Guest Leah Davidson {Episode 245}
415 Plays1 year ago
Bonnie & Audrey share their amazing conversation with nervous system expert, Leah Davidson. She teaches actual techniques and skills to teach your kids to help them calm down. They discuss why it's easy to get disregulated and how to get to regulate your own emotions so you can help your children regulate theirs too.
Mentioned in this episode:
Leah Davidson training about the nervous system
Episode 135- Sleeping Arrangements, times, routines, etc.
Episode 106- Get baby to sleep
About Outnumbered the Podcast:
Two moms, parenting a combined total of 19 kids and finding joy in the chaos. Join Audrey and Bonnie as they share real parenting tips for real people through humor, advice and compassion. Whether it's tackling how to teach kids to work or discussing where to turn when you're all out of patience, these two experienced moms are here to offer authentic tips for raising children joyfully.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello, hello, friends. Welcome back to Outnumbered. We have a super exciting guest today. Her name is Leah Davidson. And she is an expert in teaching us about our nervous system. And many of us probably don't give many thoughts about our nervous system until it's way out of whack. But it really, really plays into keeping ourselves emotionally healthy and really plays into the coaching skills that we talk about a lot today. And Leah herself is a coach as well. So welcome, Leah.
00:00:56
Speaker
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here to talk with you. Yes, of course. Okay. We just want you to start off by telling our audience a little bit about you and your family and then launch into like your business, like what you know, um, that how it involves the nervous system.
Leah's Background and Focus on Nervous System
00:01:14
Speaker
Awesome. Sure. So I am Leah Davidson and I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. So that's probably a first unique thing.
00:01:22
Speaker
And I think from what I understand, I think you guys have a lot of younger children. So I am probably your future because all my children are heading into the majority of them are young adults. So there is hope we do get through. Um, I am a life coach, as you mentioned, and I am also a speech language pathologist. And that's really where my love affair with the brain and all things nervous system started. I've been doing that for about 25 years, working in the area of traumatic brain injury.
00:01:51
Speaker
And then over the course of time, it just has expanded working with people who have challenges in their life, dealing with a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, a lot of overwhelm.
Nervous System Resilience Training
00:02:01
Speaker
And that naturally led into working with people with their nervous systems. And I also run a training for advanced training in nervous system resilience because I just love talking about the nervous system because it is really the foundation and the base to everything that we do.
00:02:20
Speaker
Okay, so first I have to ask, okay, speech language pathologist, in my mind, there's not a lot of overwhelm, but when you're talking about working with traumatic brain injury, obviously there is. So tell us how you specifically started getting curious about the nervous system and wanted to just explore more in that area. Yeah, it's true because speech language pathology, typically people just think of like you work with kids in schools with their R's and their S's or they have fluency issues.
00:02:44
Speaker
So I started out working in rehab, and then I eventually went into private practice, specifically working with people who had been involved in traumatic brain injuries. So when you have a traumatic brain injury, obviously areas of the brain are damaged. And part of my role as a speech pathologist is to not necessarily help them with their speech, but it is to help them with their cognition, so their thinking skills, so attention, memory, all their executive function skills. And what I was noticing is that I would
00:03:12
Speaker
help people with these cognitive skills or try to help people with their cognitive skills. And we would get stuck. And it would be hard for people. They would get completely overwhelmed because everything was different. Their brain wasn't working the same way, all the ways that they used to do things. And I started to see that a couple of things were playing with what was happening. Mindset was a big piece.
00:03:39
Speaker
that I would see that if they had a mindset of, I'm never going to get better. I'm never going to be able to do this. My whole life is over. My whole life has changed. That really hindered any kind of growth. And then I started realizing that it was a nervous system, that their whole nervous system was whacked out of balance.
00:03:56
Speaker
that they were often now in a state of either hypervigilance, so they were feeling a lot of anxiety, a lot of overwhelm.
Role of Nervous System in Emotion and Cognition
00:04:05
Speaker
Obviously, there's a lot of emotions around when somebody is involved in an accident, which is usually what I worked with. There's blame, there's shame, there's all sorts of fear, or people also were managing with a lot of lower emotions, sadness, depression, hopelessness, helplessness.
00:04:26
Speaker
And so I started realizing, okay, if we are going to get to the cracks of working with your cognitive skills, we have to first learn how to get you regulated. And so that's where I started to see, oh, we can't do cognitive, we can't do mindset, we can't do anything like that before we deal and befriend the nervous system. So that's how it all ties in together.
00:04:50
Speaker
That is so, so fascinating. Because sometimes, I have to admit, when we try to teach our kids the concept of your thoughts are affecting your feelings, that all kind of seems advanced to them. They're like, but mom, it just comes on me, and I can't do anything about it, like this feeling. I just felt so angry, and I didn't know what else I could do. It was so, so fascinating. Can you talk to us about how it works at a child's level?
Children's Nervous System and Co-Regulation
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:19
Speaker
It essentially works the same way with an adult as a child, except that the child really does not have the ability to regulate because regulation is something that their CEO, their executive function skills are going to be doing. And as we know that when children, it's developing, but your frontal lobe where those executive function skills are housed really is only hitting its maturity when they're in their mid 20s, mid to late 20s.
00:05:45
Speaker
So essentially what happens for all of us is our nervous system is how the body and the brain communicate with each other. And we are constantly picking up on the cues around us. We're picking up on cues within us and we're picking up on cues in between us. And that in between us is really important when you think about a parent child. Your child is constantly reading your own nervous system. This is how they learn about their own nervous system by feeding off of yours.
00:06:13
Speaker
And based on all these cues that are coming in, our nervous system assigns you a state of safety or danger. And when you are assigned a state of safety, that's where you go into this zone where you can be creative and connected and curious and all those things. And we're trying to help our kids establish that zone. And then when you're in that zone, that is where your CEO, all your thinking skills can come online.
00:06:42
Speaker
Now, if you can't get to that zone, which that happens with a lot of kids, they have a lot of energy and there's a lot of dysregulation, when you are assigned a zone of protection is essentially what it is, you're going to go into a zone of activation first, which I call it a team hyper, so it's just a hyperaroused state.
00:07:04
Speaker
And when you're in that state, there is going to be a lot of emotions. And you see that with kids. Just think of a toddler. Everything's so reactive and everything's so dramatic. They're in team hyper. And if you can help them learn to regulate themselves and calm themselves down, that's when you're going to be able to have a little bit more reason. Now, also, bearing in mind, they still don't have those executive function skills. So that's why you will do a lot of what we call co-regulation.
00:07:32
Speaker
which is that, OK, child, I know that you're not going to be able to calm yourself down. So I'm going to model it for you. And you're going to follow my lead. Or I'm going to touch you in a way I'm going to share with you. Let's breathe together. And you're co-regulating. You're using your own nervous system to help them calm their nervous system.
Influence of Genetics and Personality on Nervous System
00:07:54
Speaker
And they're not really able to do that without your assistance when they're young.
00:08:00
Speaker
And that's why as adults, we rely on ourselves to learn how to regulate. But if we've never been exposed when we were younger to co-regulation, we could end up feeling and being an adult who doesn't know how to regulate themselves either. And that's simply because we missed out on opportunities of co-regulation with either our parent or caregivers. That's usually who we do that with.
00:08:28
Speaker
And if we've missed out, then we have to learn it later on in life. Otherwise we're not going to be able to self-regulate. Leah, where were you 20 years ago when I had my first kid? I feel that way with my own kids too. I'm always like trying to say to them, I know like 20 years ago, I probably should have done this. But I didn't, so it's never too late, right?
00:08:58
Speaker
Okay, so I have so many things to comment on this. Okay, first off, what I'm noticing is I have one child, especially with some neurodivergent issues.
00:09:07
Speaker
And how difficult it is for her to regulate her immune system, her immune system, her nervous system. Everything is unsafe for her. Like I really feel like she's in that danger phase or stage or whatever you call it all the time. Like it's time to do your chores and it's panic mode. You know, it's time to do school. It's panic mode, right? And, and just understanding that, that, that there is no thinking happening in the danger mode, right?
00:09:32
Speaker
is so, so, so powerful. And we hope anything we say in this podcast never increases mom guilt, but that in order to have peace and tranquility in your home, you have to regulate yourself. Mom is the one that sets the stage for the home. So such good information and just how crucial it is to learn how to do that yourself.
00:09:56
Speaker
And that being said, like in all fairness to, you know, everybody is going to have different nervous systems, there is genetics and personality involved in that too. Like there are some kids who are built and born with more hyper, you know, they're more hypersensitive. They're my sensitive child. They're my, you know, quote unquote, my difficult child. You know, and I say that in jest, but I think we all know that our children arrive with different personalities. And that is part of our own regulation.
00:10:25
Speaker
is am I able to adjust myself based on the child that I have in front of me? Because some children are going to need more regulation than others. It's also to bear in mind, and I think of this, like when I think of my own children, we have a blended family of five, and I think of my two biological boys were very, very young when I got divorced. And then even pre-divorce, there was a lot going on, my father had passed away, there was a lot of things going on.
00:10:54
Speaker
So I can almost look at my children and I do want to remove the mom guilt because I spent a lot of time with that mom guilt thinking like oh my gosh all the things and the prime time of my kids and this was going on. Yeah it was but at the same time I was doing the best that I could with my nervous system.
00:11:13
Speaker
And yeah, my kids, they did feed off of my nervous system. There was probably a lot of dysregulation there. But I still, at any point, even though they're older now, I can just change that relationship and work on that regulation and help them in co-regulating and be so much more compassionate with them when my young adult child calls me and I can tell it's dysregulated.
00:11:40
Speaker
making it such a big deal. I'm just like, yeah, they're dysregulated. I wonder what's going on for them. I wonder what their system is reading as dangerous, and I wonder what I can do to send those cues of co-regulation with them. So there's mom guilt, but there's biology, there's situations, there's things that happen in our life, and we always have the opportunity to co-regulate now.
00:12:06
Speaker
Well, and one other thing I wanted to say is it actually gives me a lot of peace knowing that I do have a lot of power to help them through that, right? And that when I realized that when they're dysregulated, they are sensing some sort of danger, that to me reminds me, hey, it's important that you take care of you first so that they can feel at peace. That's a great reminder. It doesn't feel like too much pressure.
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so this is fascinating to me. I love what you said about us having to help them learn how to regulate themselves, like their own nervous systems, because we think like a nervous system is something that just works automatically in your body.
Conscious Influence on Nervous System
00:12:46
Speaker
You don't have to think, okay, now I'm going to make my heart beat.
00:12:48
Speaker
Now I'm going to make myself breathe. Those things just happen. I'm going to digest my food now. No, it just is. Thinking about bringing conscious thought to a nervous system that we can affect our emotions and our thoughts is really, really powerful. I know we have one episode where we talked about teaching kids to sleep, like babies especially. It's mostly expected that babies know how to sleep, but we talk about
00:13:15
Speaker
this technique that we use co-sleeping where we actually are teaching our babies to sleep by having them sleep with us, because when we exhale, you know, they're in several ways, it triggers them to inhale. And like this, this co-sleeping thing is like teaching them to sleep, like fascinating. You wouldn't think you need to teach somebody how to sleep. And so like my brain is still stuck back on that part. Like, why do you have to teach somebody how to get their nervous system going? That's, that's really, really fascinating.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, you're right. Our nervous system is functioning behind the scenes all the time. And thank goodness for that. Like it is taking care of our digestion and our heartbeat and things like that. But because we are also fundamentally wired for survival, the goal of our nervous system is survival. And because it is survival and it's scanning for safety and danger, it's very, very sensitive, but it's highly inaccurate. So it often misreads cues.
00:14:09
Speaker
And so we have to learn how to reread cues. We have to learn what to do and to evaluate whether or not there is actual danger. If we are in danger and our survival is activated, thank goodness. I don't want to have to think about what to do when I am in danger.
00:14:30
Speaker
except that we have to be able to learn how to hit the pause button, because as we have continued to evolve, we're really not in danger as much as we think we're in danger. And so we have to learn how to hit pause, do some things that get us moving towards a state of more safety, of more regulation, or get to our parasympathetic nervous system, which is where that rest and digest is.
00:14:57
Speaker
And then when we're there, we invite our CEO to come back online and she gets to come back online and say, okay, what can we do here? How serious is this? Am I going to need to do A, B, or C? What about if I do this? What would the consequence be? We want her to be driving our car. We don't want to be driven by our survival monkey because he's completely reckless.
00:15:21
Speaker
So that's how I look at the roles of it, and that's why we have to treat our kids, because let's face it, our kids are in a constant survival state. That's how they're wired to be. That's okay. That part of their brain that the CEO has not developed yet. So they are stuck in survival, and we're trying to teach them how to regulate and how they can learn and continue to develop until
00:15:47
Speaker
their CEO has reached its full maturity. What you're saying here about inviting the CEO back in reminds me of on your episode when you were being interviewed by Jodi Moore, you mentioned fires, right? In my mind, I just see like, if there's a fire in a building, you don't want any of the management team still in the building.
00:16:02
Speaker
They all need to be out. But then when the fire department, the fire department is the emergency management, right? They come in, determine it's all safe. Everybody can come back in. They come back in and start planning things. I'm just a very visual person. So I'm seeing, and now we're coming back in and it's safe and we're moving on. But so interesting that the kids don't even have a fully mature CEO and management team. And so we're going to have to help them get back to their thinking. We have to. Yeah. The fire department is constantly called. And I think in that analogy that I like using is
00:16:29
Speaker
Like, it's great that the fire department arrives when our house is burning down.
00:16:34
Speaker
But if you simply burnt toast, then that's problematic because then the fire department eventually is going to be like, I am here like 20 times a day. This is a problem. Like you don't need me all the time, but our kids don't have that ability to make that assessment of whether or not. And, and that is our role, right? That is our job. That's, that's why we're there as parents to explain like, okay, this is when the fire department is needed and this is when you've just burnt toast.
00:17:01
Speaker
Okay. This is, this is perfect because we want to dive deeper into those two parts. Okay. So first of all, we need to talk about, give us some logical or practical things. What can moms do?
00:17:13
Speaker
to practice regulating themselves because you said it's us that has to be able to help our children learn this. So we need tips and practical things that we can do to start learning to regulate ourselves. I think the words you used were to go from whatever emergency situation back into the parasympathetic, like give us some logical things we can do. Yeah.
00:17:36
Speaker
So one of the things I like to impress upon people is what we're trying to do is we're trying to widen our capacity. We're trying to widen our ability to be safe and to stay regulated. So everything that we do is trying to increase this zone. I liken it to people like when you're working on befriending your nervous system.
00:17:59
Speaker
I say it's like joining a sports team and taking your kids to a sports team. When you sign them up for the team, you are essentially committing to three different things. You're committing to practice and depending on the type of team they're on, let's assume it's a very high level team, you're committing to daily practice and daily training. Then you're also committing to making sure you're getting to the games and then you're committing to after the games where they do like that debrief, what went well, what didn't go well.
00:18:28
Speaker
So as a mom, one of the things you need to be focusing on is you need to focus on your own daily practice. What can you be doing on an everyday basis that will help you grow your zone? And a lot of it is going to start with the body. And that simply has to do with one of the main nerve that is responsible for our parasympathetic state of our nervous system is something called the vagus
Daily Practices for Nervous System Regulation
00:18:55
Speaker
nerve.
00:18:55
Speaker
It's pretty popular, so you might have heard of it. It's not the vagus in Nevada, but the thing about the vagus nerve is it is a collection of nerves that forms a feedback loop between the brain and the body. And it starts out in the brainstem, and it has a branch that comes around to the face and comes down to the heart, and then it innervates all the organs. Well, a really fascinating part of the vagus nerve is it's bidirectional, meaning that it goes both ways.
00:19:24
Speaker
Except 20% of the communication goes from the brain to the body and 80% goes from the body to the brain Which basically means like if you think about it, where are you gonna get the most traffic? Like you're gonna get stuck heading down but you're gonna have a lot more success from the body to the brain so I say that because when we think of what can we do to help our nervous system a lot of it is going to be working with our body and
00:19:52
Speaker
because it's our body that is going to be able to quickly get the message up to our brain. So that is where things like movement is going to be really important. And I like saying movement as opposed to exercise because I think exercise can be very triggering for some people. Like, oh, I have to go run a marathon? No, it may be just going out for a walk. It may be playing with your kids. It may be, you know, running the vacuum. It may be doing something and it could be movement where you're trying to expend a lot of energy.
00:20:21
Speaker
And that will be more so if you're somebody who feels you're on that team hyper state where you're very, very activated. But sometimes people are dysregulated where they are in that lower state, in that shutdown state. And so it may require more gentle movement. So they would want to do things like stretching or yoga. So movement is a really big one. Another one is breathing. And it sounds so basic. And breathing is so fascinating.
00:20:49
Speaker
because it is the one system that, you know, like digestion in our heart rate, it is working behind the scene. Like you don't luckily have to say every, you know, breathe, breathe, breathe. Like your body just knows how to do it. But it is the only system that we can also have direct control over. So we can stop at any point and change our breathing pattern to help us move from that emergency state to that safe state.
00:21:17
Speaker
And when we do that, when we want to try to calm down or relax, we are going to focus on exhalation. And so you would be breathing in. We want to try to breathe in a nice breath and then a long, slow exhalation. And there's so many different ways you can do that. I think the way that is most researched at this moment right now is something called the physiological side.
00:21:43
Speaker
where you're going to sort of take two quick breaths in and then a much longer exhalation. And it kind of makes sense cause it's natural. If you think of like when a child is crying and they're trying to calm down, they do that. And really that's, they're doing a natural physiological side, the too quick and the long one out. And then just a super simple way that you can even teach your kids is you tell them to smell the flower through the nose.
00:22:13
Speaker
and then blow out the candles. And you're going to tell them to blow out the candles. Imagine that there's a lot of candles. So imagine it's mom's birthday cake blowing out because you want to extend the exhale. So breathing and movement, they're so basic, but I think it's helpful to understand why they're helpful. And when you see that they are helpful,
00:22:37
Speaker
trying to find the five, the 10 minutes that it takes, you're a lot more invested in it. Because you know, if I could invest, you know, five, 10 minutes upfront, this is gonna help me regulating, which is gonna make my whole day a lot easier. And I'll be able to be modeling that for my kids.
00:22:55
Speaker
Okay. I am madly scribbling notes because this is so helpful. Oh my goodness. We could talk to you all day. So I have another question about, so, so tell me when we're talking about the brain going into the nervous system, is this what we're trying to do when we are like self coaching and we're trying to work on the thoughts that can, that can calm our emotions. It's just maybe not as effective sometimes as interesting. Okay. So we talk about there's top down approach, which is brain to body and bottom up approach, body to brain.
00:23:24
Speaker
Both are valuable, and I would never want to knock one or the other. It's just that we spend a lot of time doing brain down to body, and if you notice, there's only that 20%
00:23:38
Speaker
But it's also that when we are dysregulated, we don't have access to the brain. So that's why we want to be starting with the body and go into the body. And then really, when I work with my clients, I talk about it's a combination. I want to have a flow both ways. But definitely, when we're talking about thought downloads or using cognitive tools like CBT, using a model, if that's what you use,
00:24:03
Speaker
Those are all top-down, which require your CEO, and that's why they work, but they're not great when you're dysregulated because your nervous system basically hijacks your thinking. And so you're not able to then think, and that's required for those strategies.
00:24:23
Speaker
Okay, that is so fascinating. I learned this technique in yoga and it's alternate nostril breathing. Alternate nostril breathing. Is that like a vagal nerve reset? Yeah, so all the different breathing, there are so many different breathing patterns and that is one of the benefits of yoga, right? Is you're going to be learning different breathing patterns. Breathing patterns are different for different people. So I always encourage people, yeah, go research them. Try out which ones you feel
00:24:53
Speaker
are the match for you. And there's breathing patterns that are for down regulating. So for calming yourself down and they're going to focus on exhalation. And then there's going to be ones that are sort of up regulating. So when you're feeling exhausted, when you're feeling low, when you have low energy, those are the ones that are going to focus on inhalation.
00:25:13
Speaker
And like in yoga, it's gonna be things like the breath of fire and doing things very quick. That's gonna be up-regulating. So all of these, all the breathing is supporting your nervous system and you just have to find the right one for you that is going to be giving you the right response that you need.
00:25:32
Speaker
So my question is, when it comes to stimulus for the body, what about touching other humans? I know some of my kids really, really crave touch and other ones do not. Is that just kind of a personality type of thing?
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely a personality. Connection is definitely a way that we can regulate our nervous system as well. That when we enter into a stress response, we actually biologically crave connection. So a stress response, one of the neurochemicals that's released is oxytocin, which is known as that cuddle hormone. So just instinctively, we will want to connect and it's going to be stronger for other people than for some
00:26:14
Speaker
They won't want to connect. Others will. Which is why I think if you imagine yourself in a situation where maybe you're going through something difficult, we naturally maybe will want to reach out and like put a hand on somebody's shoulder or rub their back or a hand on their leg. And naturally we may want that. We crave that connection. It is regulating for
Co-Regulation from Infancy to Adulthood
00:26:35
Speaker
us. Not for everybody, but generally speaking, connection and touch can be very regulating.
00:26:41
Speaker
even like self-touch can be very regulating. You know, they talk about different techniques like there's one called the Havening Technique where you sort of can rub your hands and often people put like cream on and they'll be rubbing their hands and it's just a gentle touch, soft massage, sometimes putting some pressure. These are all things that for some people they will find them very regulating and it's also just a personal preference.
00:27:07
Speaker
Okay, so the next logical step is when we've learned to regulate ourselves, is to start passing on some of these techniques to our kids. Because obviously, you know, you with adult children, and Bonnie and I both have adult children too, we don't want to follow them around in their lives having to co-regulate with them.
00:27:24
Speaker
You don't? No, actually Bonnie and I have too many kids. She can't be in 10 places at once, so I can't be in nine places at once, so it just doesn't work. So the next logical step is to help us give our audience some tools that they can use to teach their kids to start to regulate. And at what age also maybe is it reasonable to start expecting and teaching them some of these things?
00:27:50
Speaker
You are going to be co-regulating with them the entire way through. Actually, just on my own podcast a couple weeks ago, I did an entire episode where I walked you through all the stages of children's development and co-regulation. Because when they're newborns, that's all we're doing with them, is we're co-regulating. You hear them cry, you pick them up, we're swaying with them, we're rubbing their backs, we're cooing, we're doing all those things. That's co-regulation. And it's really responding to them in that way all the way through.
00:28:20
Speaker
Toddler we may be you know, let me give you a hug. Let me you know, let's take a deep breath together Do you need a moment on your own? Is there something and then that continues as they get to be a little bit I'd probably say, you know that elementary or primary school age We start doing a little bit more direct teaching and that is where I would be directly teaching them first about breathing
00:28:45
Speaker
That I think is probably the number one tool and that's why I do the smell the flower blow out the candle. It's the easiest way they get it. You can also just practice blowing bubbles with them and you know like focus on like how long can you make this bubble go. So as you continue going and then as they become teenagers and go on we're starting to introduce some more of those top down strategies.
00:29:10
Speaker
So the bottom up one with breathing and you can also do things like letting them, you got a lot of energy. Why don't you, we're going to go for a walk. We're going to go for a run. We're going to put some music on and we're going to dance it out. And if you're really angry, maybe you're going to hit the pillow. You're going to do those things. So you're teaching them about movement. And then as they get older, we start to introduce more of those top down because their CEO is starting to become developed.
00:29:34
Speaker
What do you think you should do? What do you think would be the best way? Is there another way you could think about this? If you were to recommend this to a friend, what would you say to your friend? So you're doing a lot of modeling. And that's why the number one thing you can do is by taking care of your own nervous system. And as you continue to model, now you slowly start doing the direct teaching until the time where they become the adults. And then you're just sitting there and you're
00:30:02
Speaker
You're there as a guide if they choose to invite you in, but along the way, you've been giving them some skills and techniques that they can be practicing.
00:30:12
Speaker
This is so fascinating, especially considering the infant years. We always think that we're so exhausted and emotionally unavailable because of hormones and sleep deprivation, but this brings a whole new understanding to you are the buffer for your child's emotions as well and teaching them, obviously subconsciously at this point, they're not really understanding yet.
00:30:32
Speaker
how to be calm when they're with mom and that nursing and holding and rocking are safe things. Anyway, it really kind of expands the mind to, oh yes, no wonder I needed to take such good care of myself when I had babies because they were relying on me for so much more than just feeding and diapering, right?
00:30:49
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. And we know that the more care you can take, the safer you're going to feel and the wider your zone is. And you can really think of it like that zone is like the charge on your phone.
00:31:03
Speaker
Like if your phone is charged to the maximum, you are able to do so many more things. You have the capacity. You can deal with the stressors. You can deal with the ups and downs. But if your phone is running low, you've got to go into low battery mode. You've got to shut down all your apps and you're just like racing to find a charger. You're not able to tolerate anything. So you have to be really thinking of yourself.
00:31:27
Speaker
that especially, and it is in the early years, but as you know, it changes. It's just the needs are different. So that's why all the way along from the moment you're pregnant to way into the future, you constantly have to be making sure that you are charged because that allows you to have the capacity to be able to help and co-regulate with your kids.
00:31:52
Speaker
Okay, Leah, I think I want to talk to you for like three more episodes worth. I know. Can we make this an hour episode? Just kidding. We're going to wrap up soon, but seriously, so much good stuff. Oh, Leah, we would seriously talk to you all day long if we could. This is so, so, so fascinating, especially for Audrey and I, because we love talking about how the body functions behind the scenes.
00:32:14
Speaker
of what we do as moms is invisible a little bit, as far as being there emotionally for your kids and the weight that is on us we don't always see. And so I think this is so beneficial, especially for young moms that have lots of little kids. So please, please, please tell us where people can come find more information
Leah's Podcast and Further Learning Opportunities
00:32:32
Speaker
from you. You mentioned a podcast, and I think you have a training as well. Please tell us. That's right. So my podcast is called Building Resilience.
00:32:40
Speaker
pretty much everything that we talked about. There's an episode on almost every topic, and if there isn't one, there's gonna be one. So that's the place, building resilience. And then I do have a training. It's called the Advanced Training in Nervous System Resilience. And it's really a training that I designed. Initially, it was designed just for coaches and helping professionals, but I have expanded it for people who really wanna take a deeper dive into understanding their nervous system, understanding sort of the science behind it, as well as the practical tools.
00:33:10
Speaker
And so that's the best way to work with me at this point right now.
00:33:15
Speaker
Thank you so much for sharing those resources. Everybody, please be sure to go check out her resources that she has available for you. If you're like us, there's so much more that we could be learned. But Leah, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wonderful wisdom with our audience today. Thank you so much for having me. I love talking with you. I could talk for hours as well. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
00:33:42
Speaker
Thanks for listening friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
00:34:07
Speaker
Yes, I'm not sure when to ask. Yeah. I have so many things I would ask you and talk to you about, but it's going to go on hours here. Go ahead. OK.