PDA Parents & Children nervous system activation!

Welcome back everyone!

After a short break for season 2 I am back with a bang. This week I wanted to talk about nervous system activation and re framing the lease from anxiety to loss of autonomy, trust me on this it will make you feel a lot better!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back, everybody. Your girl is back. This is the Keeping Shit Real podcast. I am your host, Jesse Towns, and welcome back. Firstly, guys and girls, everybody, I just want to apologize for my little absence that I've had. I have been completely overwhelmed with life, I think. And I found it really hard just finding the time to record the pod, but I'm back, baby, and I am back with a bang, that is for sure. So, what we're going to talk about today. So, I have had so many messages talking about just the gaslighting, I think, that parents to children repeat a get. And I listen, I have been on the receiving end of that many, many a times, not just from schools, but from education authorities, from in-laws, from family members, from other siblings of my kids. And after a while, this shit gets you down. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm not here to, you know me, I'm never here to sugarcoat stuff in any way, shape, or form. But I do think it's something that as parents or carers to children with PDA, that this makes our life even more difficult. It can be really, really hard to try and not justify your decision making, your parenting skills, but just to be able to constantly, constantly have somebody in your back fucking ear, I'd say, so to speak, constantly, constantly questioning your the reason why you're doing something and the reason why you're not doing something. And it is one of those that is incredibly infuriating. And I just want you to know for starters before I go really off on one, that you're fucking doing a great job. This shit is hard. I know there's a lot of parents out there, English might not be your first language. You might be a single parent, you might be a parent whose other half works away, so you are like a part-time single parent. Never underestimate how hard it is. And I think it's really, really important that we reframe PDA from this anxiety-based scenario because it's not anxiety, don't get me wrong, there will be anxiety with a lot of children that have got PDA because they may have been out of school for a really, really long time. But looking through it as a lens of autonomy loss, and when I talk about autonomy loss, it is it's quite hard for people to absolutely understand. And I just think that when you're trying to explain PDA to somebody that is gaslighting you, telling you that your kid's defiant, they're manipulative, they're choosing to be like this. This is a really easy way to just explain it. So your brain has got something in it called the amygdala, we like to call it the Amy Godala in our house. And that is the part of your brain that registers threat. That threat, the how it's registered, is then what results in the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn that we see in kids that have got PDA. Now, when you're explaining it to people that kind of don't get it, and they're like, God, your kid's a little shit, I would never let my kid do that. Well, you're not me, so fucking do one. But if we say it reacts to their nervous system and the part of their brain that registers threat is way more sensitive than your eyes, this is when we see the behaviour that escalates into fight, flight, freeze, or form. Now, it listen, I know how lonely this journey is as a parent to a child with PDA. I've been there, it's stressful, it's long, it's fucking time consuming, it's energy draining. And some days, you I mean, I remember when we were absolutely in the trenches. Don't get me wrong, we still have days where I am like, fuck this, fuck that, I've had enough. But actually, there will come a time where you feel more confident in advocating, and your child can become more confident in advocating. And I do think that age is quite a big part to do with PDA. For us now, as you know, I've got three children, my eldest is neurotypical, he's 17, and we've got eight-year-old, nearly nine-year-old twins actually, both got ADHD, and our youngest twin has got autism and a PDA profile. So the advocating for himself is actually getting better, he's much more receptive at being able to advocate for himself. He is much, much better, and he knows his own tolerance levels. And I talk about this all the time with parents that have got PDAs, and some days they're like, oh, they can do this, and other days they can't, some days they can get dressed, other days they can't, and that is because they have a window of tolerance. Now, once that window of tolerance is you know reached to a point of no going back, then we're not going to get anything from them. Like that absolutely is the reality here. And I just want you to remember that when we are at that point of the window tolerance is very low, then we are just there to keep them safe. And it is really difficult for parents when they're you know, we're trying to get our kids to go out and do things because we want them to be able to do things because we know that they enjoy it. We know that our kids love going to the park or they love baking a cake, but some days that window of tolerance is really low, and when the window of tolerance is very low, we need to focus on keeping them safe. When the window of tolerance is very high, that is when we can push them to be able to do more. We could maybe try new things, we could go back to doing things that we loved. And I find that when you are constantly being gaslit, it's very difficult to kind of get out of that. I think you, you know, we always, always, always, always want our kids to be able to try and do new things, but the reality is sometimes they just can't. They don't have it, they don't have the capacity in that day. And that's because their tolerance window is very, very low. And it's worth drawing the tolerance versus demand dial out for people to actually understand. Um, and I actually, do you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna I've actually got a copy of it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I will attach it to the show notes actually for this podcast so that you can see it. And when you see the tolerance versus demand dial and the how their window of tolerance affects them, it becomes very easier, I would say, for family members for other halves to understand maybe why some days they can do some something and other days they absolutely can't. And it's one of the hardest things to try and balance, I always think, as for a parent, is the trying to constantly balance all these nervous system activations and accommodations because one day something could work very well, the next day it's an absolute car crash. And the window of tolerance is it's like your key. That and explaining about the threat part of your brain, the amygdala, or as I said, I call it Amy, Amy Godala, is really, really important because it allows other people. We are almost creating an invitation for somebody to be able to understand our child better. That's what we want, isn't it? That's the end goal, you know. The judgy, because you know, I have felt that I've been judged by my own family members, by my own husband at times, because the way in which I decide to parent my PDA is significantly different from my other children. Good God, if I let my eldest son, when he was 17, give me the middle finger and call me a fucking dickhead, all hell would have broken loose. But actually, as the years have gone on and PDA has become a thing in our house, I've had to become less receptive. I'm still working on it, I'm not gonna lie. Like it is not easy when your child is, you know, calling you a fucking dickhead and giving you the middle finger. But the less we react, the better and calmer the house is overall, and that is what we want, isn't it? That is the end goal. I feel that we all want to live in harmony, we want some sort of peace and quiet with our kids in our house because it is really, really hard to be able to leave the house some days. It's hard to be able to even brush teeth, and I think one of the really important things to never forget when you've got a child with PDA is that you can be absolutely smashing it, and the next day it's chaos. That's normal, guys. Absolutely is life, and it's there's nothing wrong with having bad days. And I want to absolutely be here today to absolutely fucking normalize this that even neurotypical parents have bad days. We cannot be the best parent every single day, day in and day out. And if somebody says that they are, they are chatting absolute shite because there is no way that anybody's perfect. And if they say they are, maybe you need to think about getting some new friends because that sort of shite just doesn't whitewash me. And I think it's really important that when we look at nervous system activation and how we can measure capacity buckets and accommodation versus activation, it's really important that we don't give ourselves a hard time because this is every day is a learning day. And somebody called me an expert the other day, and I had to refrain from saying, like, listen, I'm not an expert, and I don't claim to be an expert. I claim to be a basic bitch parent that has got a lot of lived-in experience of PDO parenting because that these are my personal circumstances. But you know, people talk, we talk about co-regulation, and we know the theory behind co-regulation, and then you know, your child refuses to leave the house, you know, and then we as parents go into full fight, flight, or freeze, and basically, then nothing's going to work. Co-regulation, it's so important to kids with PDA, and it's not about knowing that it's not always about co-regulation of your child, it's about knowing your limits as well as a parent because you we get dysregulated. I mean, Jesus Christ, I get dysregulated all the time. I've got ADHD, and I, as much as I love loud music, I also cannot bear being in really loud places. So when it's all kicking off at home, I really, really struggle with that. And I do have to say, like, I think this is really hurting my ears. Like, can we calm it down? But I think it's really important to remember that the nervous system challenge it is not just hard parenting, all right. And we need to make sure that PDA is not anxiety-driven avoidance. There's a lot of stuff I read on the internet, a lot of stuff on social media, a lot of PDA accounts are pushing that it's anxiety-driven avoidance, but actually it's not, it's a neurological drive to protect their autonomy, and this is so important and it matters so much that it changes how a child's nervous system reacts, and that then is what changes their behaviour. Yes, a child, like I said a minute ago, will sometimes have a lot of anxiety in their day-to-day life because they're out of school, they've spent a long time out of the school system. But when we start to reframe a child's nervous system as reading everything as a potential threat to how that that how they are in their autonomy loss, that is when the responses are aggressive, you know, they're unpredictable, they might be violent, there might be a lot of swearing, and that threat is obviously going to activate your own nervous system because we're human, and that is that part in our own human body and our brain, even though we know actually what's happening, like we're smart enough, we know that they're dysregulated, we know that their nervous system's been activated, we know that if you trigger a parent with PDA, it is normally going to end in a bit of a catastrophe. And the reason why we need to kind of try and work out not what's just happening in our body, because the thing is we carry a lot of invisible loads, don't we, as parents to neurodivergent kids? And probably, dare I say more for PDA parenting, because we're trying to not activate our own nervous systems, but we're trying to also not activate theirs. Hypervigilance is so important and it is a survival strategy. I'm not gonna lie, we are constantly scanning the next day, the next transition, the next meal, the next TV programme because we want to make sure that we are not activating their state. So there's something called the polyvagal system. Now, polyvagal, I mean, it sounds it it polyvagal is you know, it sounds like a really hideous word, doesn't it? You spell it P-O-L-Y-V-A-G-A-L. So the nervous system has three states in it, not two. All right, and most people learn fight or flight versus everything else. But polyvagal, obviously it's poly, which means it's got three sides, has a third, and that's what changes everything. So you've got the ventral vagal, and that is the feeling safe and feeling light and social. So that's when we feel calm, we feel connected, and we're absolutely able to think you can like you can properly co-regulate, you can problem solve, and you can be present in that moment. And that is when our good parenting generally tends to happen. We're in that ventral vagal, and that's that safe and social part. Then you've got the sympathetic, so that is the fight or flight, and that is when that threat is then detected. You'll notice probably your heart rate starts to go up, you're starting to get a little bit more anxious, you're getting more like aggravated, and that's when the behavior that you would see for us as parents is we're probably going to get a bit snappy, a bit shitty, start to get, you know, maybe your voice is starting to raise, you know, you're starting to shout a bit, and which is very, very familiar on a really shitty PDA parenting day. But then you've got the last bit, which is called the dorsal vagal, and that is when it goes into shutdown. So that's when we have too much for too long. And I'm sure we've all been there. I was in burnout, and that's when that dorsal vagal is activated. You've checked out, you can't be fucked anymore, you can't feel much, and everything. Sometimes it can look like depression, but when we're dealing with a child's autonomy drive, that means that their nervous system is frequently in that threat detection mode. So it's just basically gonna pull our nervous system into that sympathetic state of the polyvagal system without a single big incident. And the thing is, you can't, and this is so important to remember that you cannot think your way out of a nervous system state. You have to work with your body first, you need to feel safe and you need to feel connected. We are no different to our PDA children, apart from the fact that our amygdala is not as sensitive to our children's. And when we are looking at the invisible load that we carry on a day-to-day basis, this comes with a massive cost. It you know, we're constantly probably masking our own stress because we want to keep the environment calm at home. There's a lot of emotional labour and psychological labour come to having children that have got PDA. You might have other children as well that are neurotypical, and that then brings, you know, that cumulative stress. When we are repeatedly doing micro, like not active, like micro things, you don't have to have a really big like bang to be absolutely fucking exhausted. And what happens then is this is what happens on our day-to-day sort of day of being a parent. You know, I felt so shameful a lot of the time, and I felt in complete and utter isolation that I just like my own nervous system was completely overloaded, and it's really, really hard. Your nervous system is gonna feel overloaded when people don't believe you. They've been told that your child's manipulative, been told that your child's defiant, they've been told your child is choosing to behave like this, but you just need to stop and think and be like, right, I'm gonna take a deep breath and I'm gonna pause. I am gonna have, I don't know, a cup of tea to myself, I'm gonna go upstairs. And a lot of the time, people say, Oh, you know, just do some deep breathing, go and have a hot bath. Like, listen, at this point, a bubble bath ain't gonna fucking save you. I'm just gonna tell you that straight up. Most nervous system advice will always just tell you to step away. But PDA parenting, we know that you sometimes you can't step away. Physically, you can't step away. I mean, Christ, our PDA, when he's really acting when his amygdala is really activated, it'll follow me around, chasing me about if I try and leave the room. Um, and then that becomes like a massive co-regulation trap. You're expected to be regulated, but for your child, but who's regulating you? So you get into this really, really, really vicious cycle of then trying to work out the window of tolerance and what's working and what's not. And PDA can chronically narrow your own window of tolerance. And this is why so many sort of do I say willpower power? Yeah, willpower-based strategies will never work. If you and your if you and your nervous system is in survival mode, thinking from the top down, it ain't gonna work. I hate I hate to tell you this, it's not gonna work. And it's not about being told that we need to be more self-disciplined, that we need what we need as parents is more access to safety. Now, that safety needs to be people that understand us, people that get this fucking crazy roller coaster ride that we have and that we are on. And I just think it just please, please, please, if you're listening to this, just don't give yourself a hard time. Like, this shit is hard, and we are absolutely all in this together. And in terms of like your own nervous system support and what realistically fits a life when you've got a child with PDA, it is not about a massive intervention, it's not about a massive achievement, it is about a micro, like a little thing, a little moment that you can name there and then that is an achievement, and a lot of the time we can, it can be it's really really hard to be able to be able to do that, and building your own safety is really really difficult. But I think when we notice afterwards that something has happened, don't beat yourself up, we're not here, we're not debriefing, we're not processing, we're just returning our state of mind and our mental health like back into its baseline of where it should be. And co-regulation is not perfect, it's never gonna be perfect. Being slightly a slightly more regulated parent is still way more powerful than one that isn't, and that you know within yourself when you are regulated and when you're not, and I think sometimes like long term finding somewhere, somebody, some people, whether or not it's a community, it's Instagram, it's a Facebook group, it's a group of mums or parents that you've met. When you feel believed and understood, or in a space like this, like you know, I run a PDA community, I've got a following on Instagram and I share things, you know, tips and strategies and education and support to help parents because I've said this many a times until I started my Instagram page. I had, you know, I had heard of PDA, I was very aware of it at this point because my son was obviously in burnout, he was in mainstream school. And there was a part of me that I felt so alone. I felt so alone, I felt so misunderstood. I kind of felt really angry at the world because I was like, why me? Why my fucking family? I've never heard of this, I'm struggling, I need help, my nervous system was activated, it was absolute utter hell for a while. And it's one of those that finding your people is what your nervous system needs, and chronic nervous system like dysregulation, it's not it's you're not being weak, all right. And I don't want you thinking that you failed because you haven't failed. Of course, you haven't failed. It is not a failure for saying that I need help by far from it. It's the biggest thing that you can do is reaching out to somebody and saying, you know what, I am fucking struggling, this is hard, and I just don't know how or what I can do anymore. And it's when we recognize that that we when we are asking for help that actually the biggest change will come. As I've said many a times, I felt very alone in my journey with PDA parenting. I really did feel that nobody understood it. I was very on a pity party for one flex. I very much felt that nobody understood me, that nobody got where I was coming from, and I felt so alone. And at times, you know, when you feel really, really alone, you're constantly, constantly trying to not activate your nervous system. You are trying to regulate yourself, and regulating yourself is really, really hard. Like, of course, it's you know, you might have been at home with your PDA for like a couple of years, and obviously you're fighting all these different people, you're constantly form filling in, and it is really, really hard. But Finding your people is gonna make you feel seen, heard, and validated. And I just can't stress that enough. And that's it for the week. This is it. I feel like I'm back on form now with the pod. I feel like I've got my mojo back. Mojo, is that the right? Yeah, I've got my mojo back. I felt kind of a little bit, I don't know. I felt like I had a bit of imposter syndrome. It's probably a bit of RSD. For those of you that don't know, I've recently been diagnosed with ADHD. And to me, I've always known that there was something not quite right about me. That sounds really mental, but I've yeah, I've always kind of known that there's I'm not your average girl. That is, that is a fact. And anybody that knows me personally or knows me off my Instagram, like I am very, very outspoken. I very think, very without thinking a lot of the time, but I'm also very passionate. But I had really bad imposter syndrome, and I kind of, I don't know, I kind of felt like maybe podcasting wasn't a thing for me, but actually I've just been sat here and I was just thinking it's so important that as a community that we are constantly supporting and validating each other because it is a long, hard, stressful slog when you've got a child with PDA. Like I said, I feel that maybe the older PDAs get, the better they are at advocating. So if your PDAs are quite small, they're younger, you know, on the infant side of age, then it's very, very difficult anyway. And I just don't want you to ever forget that you are doing an amazing job. This shit is hard, and we are all in this together. That's it for this week. If you want basically a badass group chat with live trainings every single week, come and join the PDA parent circle, it's going to be linked in the show notes. I will also link the window versus the window of tolerance versus demand dial so that you can read that also. Because I think that is really really helpful when you are trying to advocate for yourself and for your child with PDA. That's it, guys. Bye for now.