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Pam King: Our brains hold all our relational history. All the joys, all the ruptures, all the repairs. And even in the most difficult childhood or parenting circumstances, the science of relationships and connection can give us hope for whole brain and whole life transformation.
Therapist, bestselling author, and mom, Dr. Tina Bryson is seeking a connection revolution that brings neurobiology and practical relational wisdom to bear on both how we were parented, how we parent, and how we relate to one another throughout our lifespan.
Tina Bryson: We have to remember that the brain is a social organ. We are highly impacted by the other brains around us. And we have to start with ourselves because I actually think that a huge contributor to some of the struggles youth are having is because their grownups are not thriving.
One of the best predictors for who we turn out to be is that we’ve had what’s called secure attachment with at least one person and attachment is a mammal drive to be connected, particularly during times of distress,
But what I really aim to do practically is that in all my relationships.
to respond moment to moment in ways that help the other feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure. And then in order to do that means I need someone to give me the four S’s. I need to feel safe and seen and soothed and secure.
So I have the capacity to do that in this thriving relationship
But when we mess up, the research is so full of hope that not only can we change our attachment responses based on new experiences, and we can change our child’s attachment to us by the kinds of experiences we provide them when we mess up, the research shows that as long as we make the repair, the rupture itself was actually beneficial.
Pam King: I’m Dr. Pam King and you’re listening to With and For, a podcast that explores the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and thriving on purpose.
Pam King: My longtime friend and neighbor, Dr. Tina Bryson, is an expert in applying interpersonal neurobiology and neuropsychology to maybe the most central part of human life, our closest, most intimate relationships. A bestselling author, and at times with Dan Siegel, of The Whole Brain Child and No Drama Discipline, she has written several other books on parenting and the brain.
Her latest book on the science of play just came out in January 2025. Tina is a psychotherapist and the founder and executive director of the Center for Connection. She speaks and advocates widely, has appeared across media outlets like Time Magazine, Good Morning America, Huffington Post, Redbook, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Her doctoral research explored attachment science child rearing theory in the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology. Tina is an absolutely brilliant, motivating, and encouraging communicator. She can break down the science of connection in a way that’s clear, realistic, humorous, and immediately helpful. For more resources from Tina, including her books, and science packed relationship tips, visit www. thecenterforconnection.org and tinabryson.com.
Pam King: In this conversation with Tina Bryson, we discuss:
The science of childhood, relational development and growth into strong, adaptive, thriving adults.
The brain as our most social organ. Capable of holding a lifetime of relational and emotional history.
How to emotionally co regulate with another person to achieve a calm, peaceful, and vibrant relationship.
Neuroplasticity and our ability to change with intention toward our deepest held values.
And we explore how the science of connection, attachment, and interpersonal neurobiology shed light on how we were parented and impacts how we might parent ourselves and how we relate to everyone
Tina, great to see you again. I am so thrilled to have you on With & For. Thank you for joining me.
Tina Bryson: Thank you so much for having me.
I’m so excited about the work that you’re doing. So this is such a treat to get to sit down and chat about all of this important ideas.
Pam King: Thank you. And you bring so many important ones and from Your diverse background as both being a clinician and being so science engaged. You offer a very unique perspective and have really been in a pioneer in a very science neurobiological informed approach to therapy and raising kids.
I’m so grateful for the way that you’ve helped myself as a parent, as a professor dealing with students who get stressed and overwhelmed. And, I’m really grateful. So looking forward to it. YouI’m just going to add to, our listeners, although we are talking about parenting a lot today, this conversation is relevant to all of us because we’ve all been parented, whether for good or for bad, we all have.
And there’s things to make sense of and process. I think parenting. Has so much to do about leadership and many of our listeners are leaders and caring and nurturing for people. And so understanding how to be attuned and connected is so helpful.
I feel so aware that this is not an easy time to be a child or a teenager in the world.
And I think all of us as adults need to kind of up our game as advocates and caretakers and be aware of some
of the sensitivities for young people today. So.
Tina Bryson: It’s really tough. And I think it’s, I think let’s broaden it even a little bit more beyond that. And it’s tough to be in relationships. It just is. And so, to your point about leadership today, we’re going to really be talking a lot about, relationships and dyads,
I’ve been surprised at. How many businesses and organizations and approaches outside of the parenting world have been interested in these ideas.
But in terms of our kids,it’s very different from how those of us who are parenting or doing some sort of caregiving had, it’s so different from the kinds of experiences we had.
And,there’s so much more information and stimulation. and I also want to be really thoughtful about how so much of the time people talk about. The difficulties that you have right now growing up. there are things that are different. Like adolescence begins earlier. Puberty begins earlier and adolescence takes longer.
Kids are taking longer to launch. there’s all these things, but some of that is actually a reflection of really great things, which is if you are under a lot of pressure and the world is not safe, you have to grow up really fast. Kids. Can take longer to develop because the world in general is safer.
And we often, yes, we are in a mental health crisis right now. Yes, that’s true. It’s also true that far fewer kids die each year because we have safer cars and safer car seats. There are fewer teen pregnancies, fewer kids start smoking. we have a lot more awareness around substance abuse stuff. So I think we have to be really careful too, because a lot of times when people are talking about the challenges of youth, which are real, We also don’t want to forget the context of how in many, many ways for kids, the world is better and safer than it was in previous generations too.
Pam King: I’m so glad you brought it up. And at the heart of my work is the concept of thriving, which I know we’re gonna talk
Tina Bryson: I love, love, love.
Pam King: so much of that work was initiated and originally energized around the the reality that the world holds such a negative view of young people. We always measure health outcomes by risk behaviors, teen pregnancies, dropout rates, all these negative things.
And that it is. so important to keep a positive perspective and to look at what can go right with young people. And some of the science that I’ve been involved in has really tried to pioneer what are even measures or indicators of thriving? What are the strengths of young people that we need to cultivate?
And that’s part of the reason I’m obsessed with your work because you actually take a perspective of how do we grow, thriving, Openhearted, strong young people into adults that can be adaptive and contributing citizens.
Our brains are a powerful part of human anatomy. Perhaps the most mysterious, complicated, and glorious object in the universe, I’m not even kidding,
but in our conversation, Tina was able to simplify one clear function of our brains that often goes unnoticed. Like that lost pair of eyeglasses sitting on top of my head.
Our brains are a powerful social organ. The fact that we are social at all emerges from how our brains have developed. So understanding all the complicated emotions, feelings, thoughts, and interactions in our relationships
starts with seeing the social function of the human brain.
Tina Bryson: One of the things that I’m finding, not just only in my clinical world, but I’m exposed to youth and lots of different, contexts and their caregivers.
And one of the things that I think is such an important idea is, Is that we have to remember that the brain is a social organ. We are highly impacted by the other brains around us. And. We have to start with ourselves because I actually think that a huge contributor to some of the struggles youth are having is because their grownups are not thriving.
And I’ve said for a long time as a clinician, like it’s a rare situation where I could be like, let me just see your kid and it’ll take care of whatever your challenges are. I mean, certainly I can teach kids skills and all of these things, but. Most of the time, the issues that arise for youth, if I could just work with their, the grownups that are with them, really we could change everything with the kid.
my colleagues, Bill Stixred and Ned Johnson wrote this beautiful book called, what do you say? And they have a whole chapter in there called a non anxious presence. And I love that phrase so much.
because I think so much of our own, what’s getting in the way of our thriving. And we can talk about what that means from my perspective and how we weave this together is that when we are in heightened states of fear, reactivity, negativity, sadness, whatever, for prolonged periods of time outside the normal range of human emotion, we should feel all of those experiences.
But when we stay in them for prolonged periods, or even in micro moments and everything in between, it does impact the other brains around us. And so When we’re talking about the struggles that kids are having so much of it has to do with many, many things that contribute to why it’s hard for grownups to care for children and to survive and thrive in the world, not just post pandemic, but just how isolated we are, how disconnected we are, how overstimulated we are, how much pressure comes upon us without support.
the demands are so high and that our capacity can just get so low. It’s that gap between the demand and our capacity that leads us to not thrive.
And so this is what we need to tend to for all youth and for all relationships
Pam King: we need to care for our brain, but we have to realize our brain is impacted by other brains.
So, not to overstress the parents in the audience, But if they’re dysregulated and they’re stressed, think about how you’re going to work more regulation and ease into your life so you can be more present with your loved ones. Because the greatest gift we can give each other is a calm presence.
But have hope because our brains are plastic and Tina is going to guide us through how we can help calm our brains, which in this world today,
we are. Officially in an era where we need to work out our brains and keep our minds and our emotions in shape. It does not come
easily for us.
Tina Bryson: I think you just said something super important there, Pam. And I think, you know, when I know there have been certain times in my parenting journey where if I had heard what I just said, I might feel devastated.
I might feel like, Oh my gosh, I’m ruining my kids because I’m not doing well. This is actually the beginning of a moment of hope. You know, we all mess up. We all have struggles that are outside of our control. I have chronic health issues. I have since my early twenties, there were times as a parent, I just did not have the capacity to even engage.
Right. there are many things outside of our control and then there are things in our control, but I will say to, to you is the first, and this is actually a Dan Siegel quote, which is without awareness, we don’t have choice. And so this is the beginning of saying, Oh my gosh. I’ve been really struggling with my kid or I’m really frustrated with my kid, or sometimes I really don’t like my kid or I don’t feel good about what’s happening in our home.
This is such a beautiful beginning right now because, we can say, Oh my gosh, like we actually. Don’t have a ton. there’s so many things that are not part of our control when it comes to how our kids are developing. There’s a lot of that is really the trusting development to unfold. and different things that are happening for them socially and academically, and in terms of their own identity, all of these things, And what’s so exciting is that we may not be able to control our child in those ways.
And not that we would necessarily want to, I hate that word actually, when it comes to kids, but we can actually make some changes ourselves. And you mentioned the word neuroplasticity, which is,full of hope for us, because as we start making shifts, our children’s experiences with us start to change and their brains get rewired.
It’s super exciting.
Pam King: Just to elaborate on that, something that I’m very aware of at my age is that many of my peers who have been on therapeutic journeys, so much of the therapeutic process is like, you know.Tell me about your background and let me validate you for the person you are because of what happened in your history.
But with the idea of neuroplasticity and what you bring us, we can say, okay, we’re aware of that. And now what? Now, I can begin to shape my brain, be in relationships that help calm me, have practices that can actually help me mitigate some of that past influence on me so that I can show up for the people, my children and
others In my life and that we’re not stuck with what we inherited.
Tina Bryson: Yeah, In fact, in the book that Dan Siegel and I wrote called The Power of Showing Up, we talk a lot about how we use the phrase history is not destiny. And we mean that in terms of our long term, like how we were parented, how our brains were wired, what experiences we had growing up, but it also means, you Today and this week, like what happened this morning or this week or this month or this year, like all of those are changeable.
And let’s get really practical here. When we talk, when you and I talk about neuroplasticity, what we’re really meaning is that the brain is changeable based on experience. and so just like when I lift weights and I do reps, that muscle gets stronger, the repeated experiences we have in our lives, what we focus our attention on, what we spend time on, what we practice.
what we avoid, all of these things actually shape our brains and the brain is incredible because it actually changes fairly quickly.of doing, a daily practice over three to four weeks, we start seeing functional changes, in the brain and imaging. So it’s really exciting. So what this means practically is if there’s something that you really want to see differently, let’s just get really practical.
when we’re away from our kids and then we come back together. These often are, we idealize them and then they ended. Being, then we end up catastrophizing. So we do jump from idealized into catastrophizing. So we’re like, Oh my gosh, I’ve missed my kid. They’ve been at camp all week. I can’t wait to see them or, or, we’re going to have a lovely family dinner tonight, or I’m going to pick them up from school or they’re coming home from college or whatever these things are, like the,first thing in the morning, anytime there’s a separation and separation would be when kids are younger and they go to daycare or school or that’s, or they sleep like bedtime is a separation, or you go out and you’re other people The other co parent is, or someone else is watching your kid and you come back together.
or then longer periods as our kids get older, you and I have college aged kids, that they, are gone and come back anytime we come back together. We often have these idealizations and then it doesn’t sometimes like when our kids are with us, hopefully, ideally, they feel safe enough with us to fall apart.
So we often get what’s called emotional offloading or emotional outsourcing where they just kind of dump all their stuff on you or. Or they’re really grumpy and they kind of take it out on you or whatever. And then we have these moments of ah, so let’s say that the times you’re with your kids, when you hoped for something else, and it doesn’t ever kind of come off that way.
One of the things you could do in terms of thinking about how do I make a change here is you in your own mind, say, when I pull up my car to pick up my kids from school. Or, when my kid walks in the door or when we’re having family dinners, I’m going to create a space that is like a safe Haven, or a safe Harbor.
I want it to feel cozy, safe, calm. That doesn’t mean totally no one has any emotions and we all talk like this. That is not actually what regulation is. Regulation might be really excited to, it’s, so we can really start saying, how can I create moments being really intentional of coming back together where I’m regulated.
I’m not having too high of expectations and I’m just going to join with them wherever they are. And,that can start being one thing that you can repeat over and over. So your child then starts to come to expect when I’m with my parent, I feel at rest. I feel safe. I feel accepted for who I am.
I don’t feel all this pressure. I mean, I will tell you as a pediatric clinician, one of the things kids said to me all the time is
no, my mom will never listen. You know? So this is an experience. A lot of kids feel like they’re grownups don’t listen very well. So like when I’m with my kid, when we come back together, I’m going to listen. I’m going to show up for them. this is an example of something we can make a change on that we practice over and over and over.
Pam King: I love that. I’m going to ask you a practical question. So let’s say,One of
our listeners, not me,might have a teenager at home, and you’re so excited you haven’t seen them, and they’re like, yeah, I just want some space,so how do you join them when they’re a little bit like, I just need some space?
How do you bring that, meet them there, and then bring them
into a little more relational space?
Tina Bryson: it’s such a good question and I actually get that question all the time, even for younger kids too. Cause I talk about the idea from the whole brain child of connect and redirect and to co regulate first, you help them calm down so that they can, you know, really you can discipline or you can get them to problem solving or whatever.
And parents will say to me all the time, this is, this Much more true of teenagers than it is of younger kids. But every kid, sometimes has these moments who were like, I try to connect with my kid, but they tell me to leave them alone. They go into their room and tell me to stay out, Your kid, maybe in a really wonderful way, gives you some cues that they want some space. Please don’t chase your child and force connection upon them because I’ve had moms are like, no, I’m trying to empathize with you. let me, I’m going to calm you down. And it’s like not helpful. here’s the key.
And this is really from, I’ve talked about the power of showing up. the thesis of that book is based on 80 plus years of cross cultural research looking at. How one of the best predictors for who we turn out to be is that we’ve had what’s called secure attachment with at least one person and attachment is a mammal drive to be connected, particularly during times of distress, and it’s not just connection in terms of one fuzzy feelings that actually those kinds of connections actually calm down the whole nervous system, et cetera.
So, the way we get there is by providing not perfect, but repeated experiences of feeling safe. Seen, so seen is really about tuning into the mind behind the behavior soothed, which is where we are like, I’m here for you. How can I help,comforting that kind of thing. And then secure and secure is not really a feeling of security.
It is, but it’s more than that. It’s also that the brain has wired based on neuroplasticity to know that if I have a need. She’s going to see it and show up for me. So we bring the four S’s to any moment. So any question you ask me, I’m going to say, okay, lots of times, I don’t know. So my kids, like, I need some space.
And I’m like, Oh my gosh, I really don’t even know you right now. I don’t even know what’s going on with you. Like I miss you. so that’s really actually in that moment to recognize that’s about my need. And, I can notice that I have that need, but I also want to tune in. And so for me, the North star is these four S’s.
I want to respond. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how long I can wait, but I’m going to use this North star of the four S’s and respond in a way that helps my kid, not me necessarily feel safe and seen and soothed and secure. And here’s the key about what that attachment science says to us is that it’s the availability of our presence. Not that we are actually like making eye contact and holding hands. Right. so you say to your kid, I miss you. I’m so, I are like, I really want to hear about your day, or I really want to hear about how your first day of whatever went. but I can see you need some space or less. I’m going to give you some time to, to check out and chill.
And I’d love to hear about it when you’re ready. or even let’s say your kid’s You’re so annoying. Why are you bothering me? Why are you pestered? Maybe they even come at you in a really negative way. I mean, most kids and teens aren’t like, you know, I’m reflecting on the fact that I need some space.
And I like, they usually don’t do it that way. They’re usually like, mom, why are you asking me? Like they, they come at you in more of a, directed, um, not so positive way. And in those moments, just take that deep breath and say, I’ll be in the kitchen. If you need anything, if you need a snack, or if you want to, you know,Whatever I’ll be in the kitchen.
So it’s just the availability of your presence that lets them know I’ve got you and I’m here.
Pam King: And with teenagers, I would say, um, not making eye contact. Super helpful. That means, Hey, will you walk the dog with me? I don’t want to go by myself. Will you just do two blocks with me? or will you help me in the kitchen where you’re not looking at each other?
Tina Bryson: ping pong, anything that you can do driving in the car, all of these things, non eye contact feels less intrusive and they will often share more.
Pam King: asked Tina to offer us the basics of attachment science.
In the mid 20th century, psychologists John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth began studying the way infants bonded to their primary caregiver, usually their mother. Taking a closer look at the distress babies experienced when separated, they began theorizing and researching the long term relational impact of the original attachment style between caregiver and child
Pam King: I’m wondering if you could say. For our audience who may not be as familiar with attachment theory, just some of the basics, of what attachment means, the role of attunement and how that shows up in being present.
Tina Bryson: I think typically the way to start with it is to give an example. So as mammals, we’re born needing. someone to take care of us or we can’t survive. And so we have this, attachment drive that is an innate inborn drive to be connected and protected. And if we have that, we’re much more likely to survive.
So this is why it’s such a strong drive. It’s a survival drive. So if you think about a bear cub in the forest who gets hurt or sees a predator or is frightened in some way, they have an instinct to go straight to their. Mama bear, um, not to leave dad bears out, but mom bears are actually the ones that raised the young.
So I’m just being, you know, naturalistic. so they go to their mama bear and the mama bear then. Either protects them from the predator or gives them cues that says you’re okay, or I’m going to take care of you, or I’ve got you. And what happens in those moments is not only are they protected from harm, but, and they feel safer, but we are also regulating the nervous system.
So what that means is we’re calming down physiological states too. So heart rate slows down, respiration slows back down from kind of in these reactive states. In fact, that’s another place for me to just take, make a little point here is that. When I talk about the brain, I mean the whole nervous system, the brain is part of the whole nervous system.
and we often think about the brain as like top down. So we’re processing information and then it sends signals to our body. And that’s one direction that we process information, but we also process a lot of information bottom up, you know, a lot of information comes from our body and our heart and our gut and all of these things that communicate with our skull brain as well.
So what happens in this bear cubs nervous system is, so either the nervous system is in a reactive state. That’s not thriving. that’s or that may allow us to survive, right? but we’re either in a reactive state or we’re in a receptive state. And when you talk about thriving and openness and creativity and curiosity and connection and, you know, large bandwidth for resilience, those are all coming from the receptive state.
So what happens in these micro moments of attachment is that you have, you’re in distress in some way, right? Someone shows up for you and helps you feel connected and protected. Not only do you have those emotions, but you’re actually regulating the whole physiology. and what happens is when you get multiple reps around that.
your brain and nervous system wires to know that if you have a need, someone’s going to see and show up for you. And then as you become more and more autonomous over time, because of your own development, this allows you to enact that in other relationships and to become that as a parent. Now that’s the ideal.
That’s what we would call secure attachment. And then there are patterns of non secure attachment, where maybe your caregiver was really unpredictable and only showed up for you sometimes. and other times where maybe, your parent really dismissed your needs and your drive for attachment.
or another pattern is where your caregiver is actually the source of your terror, the source of your fear and distress. And that actually creates what’s called disorganized attachment. But what’s really interesting too, is, they’re historically, the attachment research has really focused on, This could get really complicated.
There’s like developmental attachment and then there’s social psychology attachment, which looks much more romantic relationships and they have different measures and it’s very complex. but what’s interesting now is a move away from the categories of attachment, and moving more toward kind of states.
Of attachment. Like what, you know, do you feel reactive when you’re in conflict with your partner? or when your child explodes, what happens to your nervous system? Are you more reactive or are you more receptive and regulated? and how, and what’s exciting about that is that moving a little bit out of the categories. And I would really encourage people, if you’re interested in this kind of more modern attachment, um, looking at, yeah, historically the categories are helpful, but also looking at what’s happening in our nervous systems in relationships because of our attachment histories. I love, a new book that just came out called Secure Relating, by, Sue Marriott.
It’s an amazing book. And I think what’s important about this is you start to notice what’s happening in your body and with your own emotions when you have these moments of distress and then you can make shifts.
And this is again, relational. Lots of times conflict with my husband you know, he has a need. He is wanting met at aparticular time and I’m busy doing something else. And then instead of me maybe saying like,Oh, I totally hear you’re needing some time to catch up with me on some stuff.
Um, let’s find some time to do that. That would be like a secure kind of, receptive thriving kind of response. I might get really annoyed and be like, why do you need to talk to me? I have so much going on. Just figure it out. Yeah. Right. and so that might be kind of more of like my dismissing attachment history, kind of working its way into this kind of moment.
So it’s just super helpful to learn about this. But what I really aim to do practically is that in all my relationships.
Pam King: Mhm.
Tina Bryson: to respond moment to moment in ways that help the other feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure. And then in order to do that means I need someone to give me the four S’s. I need to feel safe and seen and soothed and secure.
So I have the capacity to thrive and to be able to do that in this thriving relationship way. And then the one other thing that, it’s funny, we’re going to come back to this idea that you brought up earlier is that we can’t provide the four S’s perfectly all the time. That’s impossible. And so one of the key features of attunement, which is really.
What the four S’s are all about is tuning into the other person’s nervous system, their mind, their needs, their emotions, and responding in what’s called a contingent attuned way. The way that, that happens means we have to be in a receptive state of mind to do that. If we’re in a reactive state, we’re going to miss the cues or we don’t care about the cues.
We’re like, you’re on your own. You drive me nuts, But when we mess up, when we don’t respond in ways that are attuned, where you’re kind of thinking about instruments tuning to each other, where you’re matching their state, where we’re not providing the four S’s. The research is so full of hope that not only can we change our attachment responses based on new experiences, and we can change our child’s attachment to us by the kinds of experiences we provide them because they’re based in experience.
They’re not hardwired. The other thing is that when we mess up, the research shows that as long as we make the repair, the rupture itself was actually beneficial.
Pam King: Right, exactly.
Tina Bryson: I mean, that’s huge. Yeah.
Pam King: It’s similar in meditation, like when start thinking about something, the ability to recover and come back is actually, enables your meditation practice.
And that is so hopeful, so like when there is a rupture,
Tina Bryson: Yeah.
Pam King: able to come back strengthens you and the relationship.
Tina Bryson: yeah, and you think, if you think about it,I feel like, one of the things that I think kids, a lot of there’s, well, this is complicated, but I feel like kids have a protection gap in the world right now. Some kids are not protected enough. And then a lot of kids are also overprotected, like way overprotected.
and both lead to fragility. my formula for fragility is like adversity minus support or plus too much support equals fragility, but adversity plus the right amount of support, the Goldilocks kind of just right leads to resilience.
Pam King: If you’re a parent, you have just about the most challenging job in the world. I see you. Meeting the standards of creating a safe, seen, soothed, and secure environment is definitely a goal.
But it’s the kind of goal that can create a high bar, which creates a lot of anxiety and fear when we fail to meet it.
Tina reassures us that as long as we make the repair, the rupture was actually beneficial.
And in a moment of vulnerability and honesty, Tina explained a story about her own parenting misstep and rupture that she was able to repair
Tina Bryson: Okay, so I have a couple of stories that my kids have given me permission to tell.
And they’re like, you have my permission. You’re the one that looks like me. It’s terrible. So you’re, it’s fine with me if you
Pam King: Go, Mom, go!
Tina Bryson: Yeah. But, I tell a story. One of the stories I have permission for my boys to tell, is that, I was playing Yahtzee with my boys. They were probably, Like 12, nine and six at the time or something like
Pam King: Mhmm.
Tina Bryson: and we were playing Yahtzee and they started to fight with each other. And to me, that was one of the worst parts of parenting is the sibling conflict. by the way, it’s very natural. It’s, actually evidence that they’ll be close later in life. The science tells us. and once brain development unfolds as they move into the later teen years, typically, a lot of that goes away anyway, regardless of what parents do.
So anyway, they were fighting with each other. And as they started to fight my heart rate, I’ll, got, I started moving toward reactivity. I started my whole nervous system started getting upset and, I was feeling the stress. And instead of now I look back, I wish I had said this isn’t working.
I’m not enjoying myself. This conflict is making it really unpleasant for me. So I don’t want to do this anymore. So do you guys feel like you can pull it together and get along and let it be fun for all of us? Or do you need to, do we need to switch it to another, that’s how I wish I’d handled it.
That’s not how I handled it. So for me, I know that I start moving into reactivity. for me, my, my kind of pink flags moving into that is when I start getting, really immature. And I move into biting sarcasm. So, so I’m like, Oh guys, what fun I’m having. I’m having such a great time playing this game with you.
This is so peaceful and lovely. this is kind of where I start. Um, but not in a fun way. My tone of voice is definitely like edgy. Um,And they continued and I didn’t set the limit to say, we’re not doing this anymore. I should have set my own boundary around that didn’t. And eventually I got so mad, I yelled and I threw the dice across the room like an insane person.
And, so a couple of, and so then I left the room, I calmed myself down and I came back and I was like, guys, I really wish I had handled that differently. And I don’t want my kids to, I want my kids to know that they’re responsible for their own behavior no matter what anyone else does. So I can’t say if you guys hadn’t stopped, hadn’t continued. I say, I got mad. I should have calmed myself down. I didn’t handle that well. I should have taken a break. I’m so sorry that I yelled and threw the dice. Will you forgive me? And then I asked if I could have a do over. So that’s what repair can look. That’s one way repair can look. But when I think about this, let’s break this down.
There’s this moment where I’m not nice, and I’m stressed out and acting out, and that’s not at all pleasant for my kids. What I’m imagining they feel in that moment is she’s scary right now, or oh my god, what is wrong with her? She’s so immature, or I don’t know what is going on with her. But it’s an uncomfortable feeling when someone is out of control.
And particularly if it’s the parent and the child is, especially for my younger one. It’s a really uncomfortable feeling, like the messiness of conflict in this relationship and being with someone who’s dysregulated. That’s a really uncomfortable feeling. And our nervous systems are programmed to go, I don’t like this.
So my kids are feeling that in that moment. and then what happens is I come back, I reconnect, I repair. And so they go from this state of, this feels really terrible. Relationships are messy. This is awful. But because I’ve also repaired the other times I’ve messed up my kids, because the brain is a prediction machine, know that I’m coming back very shortly, and I’m going to make things right with them.
When we sit in adversity and discomfort, and then things get okay, This is what builds resilience. So this is basically a rep for resilience. So it builds relational resilience so that the first time they have conflict or when they’re in conflict in their romantic relationships or their platonic relationships or at work or whatever, they have a relational resilience that relationships.
can be messy and I can feel icky sometimes because the other person isn’t who I want them to be and the relationship’s okay and I’m okay and we can come back into connection. So that’s one of the reasons besides just modeling repair that it’s such a valuable experience if we make the repair.
Pam King: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that very personal and very real reaction. You know,we’ve all been there as parents. I
might have thrown it. I might have thrown what was it? the Cars, a Cars DVD, across the room, at one of my glorious parental moments. Yeah. And, and if you haven’t parented and thrown something, you probably have witnessed your parents do that somewhere along the way.
and in this moment, we know so much more now. I really think like our parents, older generations, didn’t know how important it was to come back. And in some ways we need to give grace in retelling our stories or understanding our own parenting journeys. But now we know. And when we throw something, or flip our lid, or become dysregulated in another way, it’s on
us to repair,
Tina Bryson: Yeah. and I think remembering that my regulation is my first responsibility. That’s my very first responsibility is my regulation. And if I, and what’s interesting too, is again, as our brain changes, as we start notice paying attention, what does it feel like in my body when I start to get dysregulated? what are the cues and signs for me?
Pam King: Yes! Your
pink
Tina Bryson: it can allow us to kind of interrupt the stimulus and response cycle and create a pause there, a moment of reflection, a moment of pause to allow us to let our, because that’s the other thing too, is our nervous system can be really reactive. It’s really, really fast processing. Our prefrontal cortex, which is That’s the part of the brain that allows us to, I tell little kids to pause and make calm, kind choices and be a problem solver, that this part of the brain is much slower as it processes information.
So if we kind of slow things down for a minute, it gives our prefrontal cortex, a minute to catch up so that we really can choose as opposed to react. But I think if I’m like my regulation is my first responsibility, that’s my most, and then once I’m secure and steady in my footing with my own regulation, then I can respond to others.
And then if I need to, I can also repair. So those are like not reading, writing, arithmetic, but there are another really important three R’s regulation,responding or, being in relationship and then, repairing when need to.
Pam King: Our emotional lives are profound, complicated, always changing, and sometimes a little scary. Depending on how we were raised, we’ll have different responses to emotional disturbance.
For some, it might be tempting to think that emotion regulation means casting emotions aside, pushing them away, or denying them. No, not at all. Regulation is not about being cool, gentle, stoic, calm, robotic, or emotionless.
Rather, emotion regulation means monitoring and moderating the flow of our emotional reality. And Tina explains that when we’re operating from an integrated whole brain approach, we’re able to thrive in any close, intimate relationship
I’d love, Tina, to slow down to use that word a little bit and unpack a little more how you mentioned, you used the term pink flags when you were talking about playing Yahtzee. And I’m wondering, like, just in terms of that first R, regulation, what do you thinkfor some people, this is new vocabulary, new ideas.
what should people look for in terms of their own pink flags or red flags of like when they’re dysregulated and when things are no longer effective?
Tina Bryson: Yeah. I mean, it’s much easier to know what regulation does not look like, right? It’s, you know it when you see it. Um, but what, what do we mean when we talk about regulation? And, you know, Dan Siegel has this beautiful phrase that is used and used, called the window of tolerance. And it’s really What you can tolerate without losing it, right?
that’s kind of a really quick and dirty way to talk about regulation. It’s and so that might regulation and this is where, I get really frustrated because, my work and me and my name have been lumped in with this kind of thing that’s called gentle parenting. and I don’t really accept that.
I don’t like the concept of gentle parenting. I love. Responsive, respectful, regulated, intentional parenting, gentle parenting sounds really passive. because sometimes, and so what happens is a lot of times we’re like, Oh, we need, people think that when I say we need to be regulated first as parents, that I mean, making eye contact and talking to your child like this and being completely without emotion, almost like a robot.
That is not regulation. I mean, it could be. That could be what you are like in a regulated moment, but regulation, I can be regulated, meaning I’m able to, and this is again, Dan Siegel’s words, monitor and modify my states. When we’re not regulated, we’re not able to monitor what’s happening. We are just reacting.
Okay. So if I’m able to monitor and notice what’s happening and shift it, modify it, monitor and modify, then I know I’m still in this window of tolerance. We also in the guest brain call it the green zone. it’s where we’re in a regulated state where we’re not reactive. We’re in a receptive state.
And in that state, I might be angry, I might be angry and I might even have an elevated tone of voice. I might be like, I’m not going to ask you one more time. This is the last chance you need to pick that up and get in the car right now. I don’t have one more minute to wait. So it might be angry like that, or I might say, I’m so frustrated. I’ve asked you three times, that I’m still regulated. So it’s not emotionless. We can feel frustrated, angry. We can be super excited, but I’m not so excited. I’m running around the room like a puppy with the zoomies. Right. So it can be a wide range.
And I might even feel a little bit sad or I might feel sleepy or I might feel bored. We can still have a whole range of human emotion. In that window of tolerance where we’re still able to monitor and modify. We’re still in control. We’re and really mechan in terms of mechanism, what that means. Is we have an integrated brain, we have a whole brain, we’re not operating out of the more lower reactive sort of survive structures of the brain where we’re operating out of a whole brain that’s integrated, it’s connected so that I’m able to use my prefrontal cortex to be like, Ooh, I’m noticing I’m feeling really reactive right now and I want to scream at my kid.
here’s another story I’m allowed to tell. yeah. I, kids can be really different, but when my kids get, I have three. and when they would get really upset and reactive, they had three totally different responses. The first one was a fighter. Like he would immediately go into battle and he wanted to fight when he was dysregulated.
my baby would just cry and want to collapse into my arm, but my middle guy had what I would call cool anger. Even as a two or three year old, he would make eye contact with me and slowly lower the dining chairs. With eye contact, like I’m going to mess with you. So I remember one time when he was in middle school, instead of yelling or whatever, he would say things to me that he knew would be really activating for me.
And that was how he kind of would express his reactivity. And, that was the thing I could really handle the tantrums. I could handle most of the time I could obviously the crying and collapsing, that’s easy to be nurturing for, but even the yelling kind of I just would say to myself, At his worst is when he needs you the most.
w those would be moments where I would just you know, practice regulation before I would respond. You’re so angry. I’m right here with you while you’re angry, something like that. I had these phrases I would pull up, but my middle guy, one day he said, I can’t remember what he said, but I was in my pajamas and slippers.
And I was about to scream and I noticed I’m like, I’m going to scream at this kid and say some really hurtful things. So I just looked at him and I said, I’m too mad to talk to you right now. And that was a really regulated response, given what I was feeling on the inside. And I literally went and walked the block outside in my slippers, like eight loops.
Just to prevent my, and then I could come back and be regulated. So regulation is not being calm and emotionless. It is a full range of emotion, but it’s where we are still able to shift and respond instead of react.
Pam King: So helpful. I love that, that you had the presence of mind to modify your state.
thank you so much for your candor.
I think you’re normalizing a lot of our experiences and, as one who has known you as a professional and a luminary in these areas, as a local parent, a mom in one of my son’s schools, I hold you in such high regard and it’s really nice to know that you throw dice and have to go on walks around the block too.
Tina Bryson: In slippers.
Pam King: Maybe some night I’ll see you out there.
Tina Bryson: Oh my gosh. Yes.
Pam King: Understanding Thriving for Tina is about integration, and she uses a familiar metaphor of a river and its two banks. As we flow down the river of our emotional, mental, and relational lives, we need to avoid the banks Of chaos on one side and rigidity on the other.
And for those of you who are faithful listeners to With and For, you might recognize this image from my conversation last season with Tina’s collaborator and co author, Dan Siegel
So a word you’ve been using, and I use a lot, is thriving. And, I’ve always appreciated your approach to the word thriving. And I’d love if you’d share with our audience what you mean
by thriving and how people thrive
Tina Bryson: You know, in the whole brain child, in the opening introduction, we talk about how oftentimes we think of our lives as either we’re just surviving. Or we’re thriving. And the truth is, survive and thrive aren’t always separate categories. Um, thatwhat we do in the survive moments can absolutely be thriving.
And what we do in the survive moments as parents, like with our kids can lead to thriving. It really depends on how we’re responding and how we’re taking advantage of those repeated experiences. My lens is interpersonal neurobiology, which is Dan Siegel’s life’s work and many, many others.
I trained with Dan for 10 years before we wrote these books together. When I think about. Thriving. Dan and I, we have this image in our whole brain child’s, book that’s,a person in a little boat on a river. and we call it the river of wellbeing. We could call it the thriving river if we wanted to.
And the banks of the river are labeled chaos and rigidity. And this is really based in a bunch of science coming from dynamic systems, theory, complexity theory. That looks at really any system. and how, when it’s integrated, meaning the different parts of the system. So think about different parts of the brain and the nervous system.
are functionally. So they’re separate. They’re unique. They do their own job. they’re functioning the way they’re supposed to, and they’re functionally linked. So think about, let me give this example, the organs of our body, they all do different things. That’s important that they do their unique job, but if they don’t work together as a coordinated hole in our bodies, we’re not well.
We don’t have health. And this is really how the brain works. it’s how relationships work too, right? Two individuals, separate, autonomous, unique, who also are fun, are connected to each other. So integration is about differentiation and linkage. And when both are present, we are in this river of wellbeing and we use a lot of acronyms.
Dan says he’s an addict. but our acronym for, What integration looks like, how we know integration is happening. And we could substitute the word thriving. Thriving looks like is FACES and FACES stands for flexible, adaptive, coherent, I’ll define that as resilient over time, energized and stable, flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable.
And that when we are in these states, flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable states, that’s when we’re thriving. And that comes about because The different parts of our brain and nervous system are all doing their jobs and they’re working to their functionally linked, doing, working together, allowing us to access all of our capacities.
and when we’re talking about children, that means accessing all of their capacities based on where they are in development, When we’re not in states of integration, what it can look like is chaos, rigidity, or both.
Pam King: So again, this is a way to talk about sort of reactivity, chaos and rigidity, or receptivity, which is more flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable, which allows us to have the capacity to thrive. And what, the science behind interpersonal neurobiology talks about is that we, the science really shows that systems are compelled and driven toward.
Tina Bryson: More complexity and complexity doesn’t mean complicatedness. It means being more stable. And I really believe that the way we are created is to be driven toward thriving, to be driven toward,more stability and all of these things and relationships sometimes can be, and sometimes not depending on the individuals.
Right. But I think of thriving as moving toward, These flexible, adaptive. coherent energized and stable states. And so for me, when I’m noticing chaos and rigidity in my own individual, like my nervous system today, or be like in my life this year, those are accused to me that I need to get back into the river of wellbeing.
How can I, and so I might ask myself,Well, I’m noticing I’m being really rigid and anxious about this one particular thing about my husband or my kids, or I’m being really neurotic about I can’t stop thinking about, how I can’t figure out what to do with, my basement that is always too moist,or whatever it is.
I’m like, obsessing about it or whatever. Like, how can I? Move toward feeling more flexible and adaptive around this piece. I can’t control. And there are many things that help promote that kind of thriving. and of course you talk about them all the time and yours, you bring the science behind them.
Often when I’m speaking, I have this image of a tree and I have all these roots and I’m like, the science is really clear about what we need to thrive. and there’s lots of things probably that are not included in there, but To me, the number one most important one because of how our mammal brains are wired is connection, positive supportive connection, not perfect, but that’s a key one.
And then We need time outside. We need time where we have a distant view. not just looking at something right in front of us. We need to move our bodies. we need good nutrition and sleep. And I actually think one of the biggest contributors to our, youth mental health crisis is chronic sleep deprivation.
So sometimes it’s even just some really basic things that, that lead us to thriving. It’s not I’ve had families in my office. They’re like, I think my kid needs therapy. Here’s what’s going on. And I, one of the things I start with in the very first session is Talk me through your child’s sleep.
and kid, a kid historically, I’ve seen this multiple times where a kid could meet diagnostic criteria for a mood disorder or something else. And once we get the sleep on board, no longer would mean a criteria. So sometimes we just need to, we sometimes are like, Oh my gosh, I’m really, maybe I’m going through this big life change or maybe, and sometimes we forget to think about the little things first.
You know when we’re suffering with kind of moving to the outer limits of our window of tolerance or even in our window of tolerance, but
we’re feeling these levels of stress and it’s really interfering with our ability to be our full, use our full brains and all this stuff.
It’s incredibly isolating. And the reason it’s incredibly isolating sometimes is because when we start moving towards surviving as opposed to thriving, the closer we move towards just surviving and reacting, we become more and more myopic. So we start not thinking about, in fact, I just did a. A recording about how fear as parents, how much we do fear based parenting, how it makes us so myopic and so hyper narrowly focused on what we’re afraid of.
We’re forgetting about all the other things like, Oh my gosh, I don’t want my kid to suffer, get hurt. So I’m so scared. I’m not going to let them do that. And we’re there. We should also be looking at, Hey, do I have fear about my child missing out on an opportunity that could really be great for their development or whatever?
so when we move towards yeah. that more survive reactive kind of state, we become,really isolated. So when you bring it into the classroom and you name it and you’re bringing attention to it and saying, Hey, everyone just noticed your nervous system. And then let’s do this together. What you’re doing is allowing connection to happen and your, and what that does is it moves them more away from that kind of reactive, myopia and moves them more toward, an integrated state.
Pam King: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for explaining what I intuitively do, but I really appreciate that. Yeah, no, it does. It’s so important. and you know what? That’s easier for me to do in the context of a classroom where I have some respect and authority as opposed to my teacher. dinner table at home when I’ve got, people of different ages and way different stresses, somehow doesn’t quite go as easily, but perhaps that’s why people say grace.
It is a moment to connect people in focus and transition from, whatever’s going on out there to, to being
Tina Bryson: Yeah, to move from that sort of narrow focus for whatever you’re suffering from into something bigger. I think, family dinner times. Sometimes it’s 10 minutes to Chipotle and other times it’s like a full sit down, whatever. But I will say, there’s so much science behind the more we can do.
and doesn’t have to be dinner time. We’re big fans of Saturday and Sunday morning breakfast burritos. family time. coming together for those meals is super, we, when we talk about youth, we can talk about risk factors and protective factors.and one of the, having family meals is a,
huge protective factor.
And then in terms of our own neural plasticity, sometimes, Oh, in fact, one of my sons took a, was taking a video of my youngest telling a story. He was probably 11 or 12. And it was just going on and on. And I was, I’m sure I was really tired, but, I, apparently in part of the video, I leaned forward and put my head in my hands.
Like I looked like I was just so bored. And my son screenshot of that, of the video and it’s part of our family. Like he constantly it’s, he’s using it like a,
Pam King: Blackmail.
Yeah. Oh, great. Great.
Tina Bryson: and by the way, that same kid also, Has decided that my book, no drama discipline, he’s writing his own one, his own version called full drama discipline, and he’s making notes of all of my, all of my areas where I needed repair.
he’s also the same one that was the strategic cool anger kid,
Pam King:
Tina Bryson: much
Pam King: Shocked to hear that. Oh my gosh.
Tina Bryson: I am. But I think, when we bring intention to those family meals and say, here’s just a huge principle, which we haven’t talked about yet. The brain is an association machine.
What feels pleasant and enjoyable. We want more of what feels not enjoyable. We want So I think when we think about, I want to go into dinnertime or mealtime with my partner, with my kids and have it be when possible, a positive experience. Like I’m just going to bring some levity, or I’m going to, I’m going to, use it as a time to tell a funny story and we can just, it can be light and breezy.
And sometimes I’m like, babe, I’m so tired. I know I’m not going to be super chatty. But that’s not personal. I’m just super tired. So you do more talking tonight, you know, or something like that, where we just sort of name it when we can’t. but bringing that kind of intentionality can be super helpful, in terms of how our brains get wired.
And then as our kind of family brain gets wired to expect family dinnertime are pleasant.
Pam King: I asked Tina to share a regulating practice, an exercise to notice our nervous systems. That might sound challenging, but it’s really what I call attunement. When we attune to our bodies, we’re connecting to our nervous systems, we’re feeling.
Tina leads us through a practice called the Deep Physiological Psy. And she’ll walk us through it right now, offering the science behind the practice as she goes
Tina, this has been, so insightful in terms of,shedding light on how the brain may be cooperating or not and, um, how these things play out in relationships.
I was wondering if you might offer a practice, like either one that maybe you use in those moments mentioned take a walk, but if you can’t, you aren’t in a place to leave, is there something that we can do to help us calm down or that we might do daily so that we are
able to monitor and modify our
Emotional state.
Tina Bryson: let me just say one kind of prompt that I’ve used with a lot of parents and then I’ll talk about a specific exercise. usually parents are in their vehicles a lot in and out of our cars a lot.and so just asked parents and I do this myself. Yeah. Every time you get in your vehicle or pick another time, like I actually am constantly drinking water and I go potty a lot.
So it’s every time I go to the bathroom. So pick something that you do multiple times during the day. And each time you do it, It’s just your only job is to notice your nervous system. So just sort of notice. And sometimes you’re like, I’m fricking hungry. And I haven’t even eaten. And it’s two o’clock.
It might be something like that. And you’re like, Oh, I’m going to go grab some, I’m going to go grab something before I leave the house or whatever. so just notice your nervous system. Or I might notice like, I’m feeling really anxious right now. what can I do? So just calling it out, just naming it.
We know that, in whole brain child, we talk about name it to tame it. so that’s just one thing is to pick a prompt that happens multiple times a day. And your only job is to just notice your nervous system. When we do that and we start doing it regularly throughout the day, it actually builds our prefrontal cortex.
This capacity. Okay. To tune into our internal world, which is also kind of the flip side of the coin of being able to attune to others. So insight and empathy are two sides of the same coin. So just that simple practice is going to allow us to tune into ourselves and others more automatically. So that’s a good one.
But I’ll tell you my very favorite exercise that is easy to do anywhere and just can take less than a minute. And I use it when to survive a moment and I use it to thrive and prepare, and to be my best. and it’s something that has been science backed since the 1930s. I’ve been teaching it for a really long time.
Um, but, and Andrew Huberman has made it really popular, in the last couple of years, it’s called the physiological sigh. And it’s the quickest thing we know to kind of turn down the reactivity in our nervous system. And the main point of it, there’s lots of ways to do it, um, but the main point of it is for your exhale to be longer than your inhale.
Now, if you think about this lots of times during the day without even thinking about it, we sigh. We will like, I’ll be like doing something and I’ll be like. We do that all the time. And it actually, what it does is it turns down the dial of our nervous system arousal. It calms, it moves us into more parasympathetic state and turns down sympathetic.
So, what I like to do, and I’ll just invite our listeners to do it with me is to place a hand on your chest
Pam King: Why
Tina Bryson: and place a hand on your belly, like kind of right below your belly button and just sort of notice how it feels. Push provide a little bit of pressure and Dan Siegel taught me this. You can actually experiment with either hand.
Usually people prefer right hand on top, even regardless of handedness. but whatever feels more comfortable to you and then maybe breathe in through your nose for a count of five, four or five, and then breathe out, through your nose or mouth, whatever’s comfortable for you for a count of seven or eight.
So I’ll try to count us up. Okay. So we’ll, let’s start. We’re going to breathe in for five, one, two, three, four, five, and then exhale for eight, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. It’s nice, right?
Pam King: Total.
Tina Bryson: And then you can do it two or three times. but it’s a restart. It’s a Moment to pause, to tend to your nervous system, to move from chaos and rigidity back into the thriving river of wellbeing, where we’re more flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable.
And it’s also something I do. And this is actually kind of a funny story. I would do this all the time when my kids were little, because when the kids are little, it’s so stressful all the time. And I feel like I was so overwhelmed all the time And so right before I would yell, I would put my hand on my chest, my belly, and I would do it.
And usually as I did it, I was also saying to myself in my head, at his worst is when he needs you the most. I would say that to myself because that to me was like, this is my highest calling in this moment is to regulate myself first and then regulate my kid. And so I can move him from a state of reactivity into receptivity.
And that’s when I can. teach and set limits that he understands and do all of the things we need to do and to reconnect. But what’s funny is that when I would do it, I would put my hand on my chest and belly and they would see me close my eyes and start to breathe. They began to associate that with moms trying to calm herself down.
Like they knew. So it was basically like, Oh, we better watch ourselves. She’s about to lose it. And actually it was amazing because sometimes they would be like, Oh, We’re at that
Pam King: We’re at that point.
that was the signal.
we’re at
Tina Bryson: huh. And because I previously I had tried doing something I thought was really cute and clever but didn’t really work where I would be like mommy’s patient started out like a watermelon and Then it was more like a cantaloupe and now it’s like the size of a blueberry like and they were like they just didn’t stop But when they saw me do this, they got to see me regulating myself, right?
But they also were like, oh, we’re at that point We don’t want that either. And it allowed them to kind of be, and it’s obviously, we don’t want our children to feel like they’re our therapist or that they’re responsible for our own emotions. I say all those disclaimers too, but we are, we do influence each other.
And so that was a way for me to regulate first and for them to be like, okay, so yeah, they knew it was a warning sign. but it’s something I love and, So much in parent education, it’s like count to 10 before, a lot of those things don’t work, but what you’re doing, you can also imagine the dial, like a thermostat dial getting turned down or volume dial getting turned down.
and it’s just a beautiful practice that works very quickly, especially if you do it two or three times. it can be really powerful to have it, like I said, a restart or to regulate.
Pam King: Because our emotional relational lives are so much like a river, constantly flowing, sometimes calmer than others becoming adaptive and flexible is such a core personal strength that we can cultivate for the sake of our thriving and spiritual health.
So much of this is connected to our ability to stay attuned, Aware and aligned to our values. That’s what gives us the power to activate towards our purpose and thereby thrive
I’m so interested in what our, The core strengths that kids, adults need to thrive, to be adaptive and flexible. And I actually want to just ask you specifically, remind me how you distinguish between flexibility
and adaptivity in the FACES model.
Tina Bryson: Yeah, adapting is much more like making an adjustment in coordination with whatever else is happening. And, I guess another way to say flexibility, flexibility can becognitive, emotional, behavioral, and it’s really, it’s kind of an agility. So you can think about it as like emotional agility, behavioral agility.
So you’re being flexible. Adapting is like making a shift in order to align or to down regulate somebody else or whatever. They’re very similar. But,um, I think when, you know, when we talk about what is it we need to thrive? It’s funny when Dan and I wrote the book, the yes brain, we were in his office and we were walking, we were both kind of walking around and we were brainstorming and we were talking about how many young adults. Maybe have all the best achievements. They’ve gone to amazing colleges. They have amazing job offers, like all marks of success by achievement. And I’m using air quotes. they’ve hit all those marks, but they don’t have an inner compass. They don’t know themselves. They feel lost in the world beyond what’s typical in terms of, life changes.
and so we were talking about, what if we talked about a different kind of success, what is it we want our kids to have? By the time they’re young adults. And as we started brainstorming the list,we were saying things like the ability to have insight and empathy and to regulate themselves, to, have strong sense of morality, to be able to have a tuned communication and meaningful relationships, the ability to kind of overcome fear, the ability to be amazing problem solvers, and to shift. We started kind of listing all of these things and I was like, Dan, we’re listing functions of the prefrontal cortex. And so, which is really great because, you know, we ended up, kind of consolidating them into the four pillars of a yes brain. And a yes brain is a thriving brain that’s open and receptive and ready to be out in the world, as opposed to kind of a no brain that’s reactive and shut down and rigid and all these things.
And we basically kind of divided it up into four pillars, which are balance, which is like emotional balance and life balance, lots of kinds of balance, resilience, insight, and empathy. So we spelled out Brie, which we could all remember cause we love cheese. but really when I, when you talk about like the qualities of thriving, to me, they’re functions of the prefrontal cortex.
And I want to say just from a science perspective, this is actually a huge responsibility and a great news because the prefrontal cortex doesn’t finish development until now they’re saying late, late twenties. Now we might. Think about that and go, Oh my gosh, I have to wait that long for my kid to have all those capacities fully on board.
Well, we see those capacities very early, but they’re not fully wired yet. Right. To me, this is great news because what it means is even as our young adults, and I have three children between, 17 and 24 right now, I’m glad their brains are still developing and shifting. I mean, they’re amazing already where they are and who they are, but I’m so grateful that there’s this continuing window where.
I can still have input and where their life experiences can be shaped and that their brain doesn’t kind of lock in at their capacities at 18. So, and what’s, what we know is that, the farther up and out, when we’re talking about the brain, like not the inner deep parts of the brain, the higher up and the more kind of, outside parts of the brain are more changeable in our life.
And we know that the prefrontal cortex is changeable and plastic throughout the whole lifespan. So when we look at those things like insight and empathy and regulation and attuned communication and morality and fear extinction, and there’s many more. again, the ability to pause, make calm, kind choices and make good decisions.
All of those things can be changed and shaped to become automatic for who we are, depending on what we give attention to and what we practice. And so when you talk about mindfulness practices or contemplative prayer, or you talk about, tuning into your own, inner world and reflecting, even noticing when you go to the bathroom, what is my nervous system need right now?
and as we tune into our partners and our children, as we do these things, we’re actually kind of like giving reps to our prefrontal cortex, which allows it to get fully developed and then be integrated with the lower, more reactive structures of the brain. And this is what we mean by a whole brain.
And so to me, Thriving is a whole integrated brain that allows us to have whole integrated relationships.
Pam King: We’re all familiar with blaming in relationships. Whether it’s he said, she said, feeling guilty, feeling shame, staying angry and offended. Our social lives and relationships are the grounding for right and wrong and our concept of morality.
In this conversation, talking about the whole brain and these pillars and naming things like morality, There is a more prospective development of what we’re hoping for, of like how people find meaning, how people understand what moral is.
I’m curious how you consider how people develop morally. Are these, you know, we were in an era where I was raised, given a belief system. Um,In this very pluralistic age, there are many different belief systems. I am very aware that kids are following many Instagrams and are getting many belief systems, thousands of them through, social media, and there’s not a coherent story.
and so how does a developing young person, proactively
seek out developing a moral compass?
Tina Bryson: Well, we know that the way children learn there’s two primary ways children learn. The first is by Most importantly, what they do themselves. So what they practice, what they do themselves is what wires their brain. Number one. And number two is what is modeled for them again, back to that social brain.
Right? So when we’re talking about, the building of morality, first of all, anytime we build the prefrontal cortex in any way, it helps build All of the prefrontal cortex. So if we just help kids make a sound decision making is another obviously piece of it. If we give kids opportunities to make decisions, if we give them opportunities, when we read to them, when they’re little and we talk about, do you think that bear, what do you think that bears feeling right now?
Oh, look how sad he is. That’s empathy building. All of those things build morality, just as we build the prefrontal cortex. But I think what’s so important is, When our kids move into middle school and high school, they see what hypocrites we are and they see, and they start pointing out, because they have kind of a really more rigid black and white sense of morality, which is part of the developmental trajectory, which is great.
A couple of things that people don’t really talk about that I think are super important is one of the best ways to develop morality is in how we discipline. And I’ll say that could be a whole other episode. And I know my lens on discipline is, very different from how most of us were raised and it’s very science based, but it’s,it’s definitely, a shift away from like behavior and consequences.
I think that kids need rules and limits and boundaries. definitely that creates a sense of safety and there absolutely should be consequences for things, but the way that we do it matters.and so let me just give two really brief snippets. By that. And because this applies even to college age and high school age students as well as much as, you know, little kids. And that is that we need to remember that the whole point and purpose of discipline is to teach and to build skills. And if you actually go back to the original meaning of the word disciplina, it’s like Jesus’s disciples. It’s like disciplines in a college. It’s all about teaching mentorship, building skills, but our culture synonymously has created, has connected discipline with punishment.
And. Punishment is often counterproductive to learning, and so if the end goal of discipline is to create a child who is self disciplined with a strong sense of morality so that they make the right decisions and handle themselves well when no one else is looking, we need to do things differently to get them there, and one of the ways that we need to do things differently is, first of all, when parents are harsh very punitive, It actually does not change the child’s behavior and it doesn’t really,develop a moral compass for them.
What it does is it teaches them to hide the behavior to avoid punishment, and to make the parent someone they don’t want to share mistakes with. and so it actually is counterproductive for developing morality because it teaches them to be more sort of sneaky and these kinds of things. What we want to do is have high boundaries, limits, structure, all of those things along with. Deep connection, relationship, empathy, co regulation, all of these things.
Pam King: Tina, in a stroke of brilliance, flips a negative emotion like guilt Upside down. into a human superpower. Importantly different from shame, guilt can signal a relational break and helps us know our inner lives and live out our values, our sense of justice, and strive for goodness and flourishing.
Tina Bryson: this is going to sound really strange, but I think one of the huge key features of morality is allowing kids in the context of a lot of safety and connection to feel what I would call healthy guilt. And I want to distinguish that from shame, having a lot of shame in childhood is predictive of mental health challenges.
Shame is you’re a horrible person. There’s something wrong with you. Guilt is I feel uncomfortable in my nervous system about what I did. Now think about this for a second. When we were like back in more primitive days, we had to live in tribes and groups, or we would probably get eaten by the lions.
Like we needed to be with people in tribes and in company. and the way that we don’t get kicked out of our group is by our conscience. This feeling that we get guilt is a really unpleasant feeling. And remember the brain is wired to say that doesn’t feel good. Let’s not do that again. So it’s a very, the feeling of guilt is actually completely.
A very effective disciplinary and it changes our behavior. so what happens is. we do something wrong. We violate the mores of our group. We get this feeling of guilt. It feels terrible. We don’t do that behavior again. If we ignore that feeling or we start blaming other people for our feelings or for our behavior, we actually sidestep that whole thing.
So I’ll just give a quick example. My five year old hit my eight year old. I attended to my eight year old. I’m so sorry. It feels, that looks like it’s really sore. There was like literally a handprint on his back. so I tended to my eight year old comforted him and then it was time to go deal with my five year old who did a behavior that was not okay.
We don’t hurt each other. That’s a breaks the rules in my house. Like we don’t hurt each other. So, so I go to him and, have permission to tell the story. And I say to him, JP, you really hurt Luke. What happened? And, first of all, he’s really reactive. He’s really mad. He’s not out. So he’s outside of his window of tolerance.
So I first comfort him, calm him down. It’s you’re so angry. I’m right here with you while you’re angry. Let’s just take a breath together, blah, blah, blah. So within a couple of minutes, I can see, I can feel his breathing is more regulated. I know he’s moved to more towards receptivity. And then I say, you really hurt Luke.
And when I say that I stated a fact, he dropped his head. And looked down. And to me, that’s such a beautiful moment because he’s feeling something he’s feeling that guilt. And so I say to him, I can see you feel bad about hurting Luke. So now I’m giving attention to it. And I say, That feeling you have right now is one of your superpowers.
That feeling you have right now is your amazing mind telling you that what you did was not okay. So if you ever have that feeling, that’s kind of like your guide. That’s like your little person inside of you that’s saying, that’s not a good choice. So you listen to that feeling. That’s an amazing superpower.
And then I’ll just finish the story by saying, and then I said,but remember, we have another superpower in our family. Just no one can beat Superman’s speed. No one can beat our love. no one can lose each other’s love. So you can go make things right with Luke. So um, you know, are you ready to do that?So in that moment, I’m helping him tune into what his inner compass and his inner emotions and that, that guilt is feeling and seeing it as a positive thing to shape behavior. If I had just sent him to his room. And said, I’m taking away your play date today. You clearly can’t be with people. He would have gone to his room and thought about how mean I was.
Cause it was actually Luke’s fault. And Luke actually did something really mean to him and that’s why he hit him. So it kind of was Luke’s fault, but he would have thought like my mom loves Luke more and that was Luke’s fault. And he would have blamed everybody else and would have taken zero responsibility.
So that’s why I think just jumping from behavior to a consequence can sometimes really be counterproductive to that idea of building the morality Changing behavior, helping them tune into their own inner world. So I think we, we develop morality by helping our kids learn about their internal world and the internal worlds of others.
And there’s many ways to do that. I know, in my growing up years, we did a lot of, prayer where we were praying for other people.we were, doing things, specifically for hours and hours to help other people. and, even saying, giving attention to things that When we shine the light of attention on something, it makes our brain notice it in fire and wire.
Even just out in the world, Oh my goodness, that man’s carrying so many packages. Let’s go open the door for him. Little things like that are what build morality as the brain develops over time.
Pam King: That’s really powerful. I love how you described how you connected a tune to where? He was emotionally feeling bad, helped him name that because younger kids need help putting names and this is the Inside Out movies here right here. and then helped him understand the meaning behind that, which a younger kid can’t always do, nor can a dysregulated adult.
I know. Or adults. So I know I was trying to work this out in my mind with the college student. ’cause it’s a lot easier to have that teaching posture with a younger child than it is with a college student. So I, would love to ask you to
offer an example with how do you do this with an adult or a young
adult. yeah, I’ll give it a kind of a dramatic example and then I’ll give a lesser example and I won’t be specific here in order to protect my children’s privacy on purpose. but. Everybody typically at some point and like me, has an adolescent or young adult who makes a decision that’s really unsafe, that frightens us or we’re like, wow, you’re really lucky you came out of that.
Tina Bryson: Okay. That could have turned out really badly. so in those moments, one of the best things we can do is, Give ourselves some time. I want to give all of us permission to not respond in the moment when we first learn the information, when it first happens on our first kid, when we see, because my reactive fear based angry place, my first response is not usually my best response.
So I want to give you permission, to wait and to think about it. So typically in that moment, I would say to my kid, I really want to think about how I want to respond to this. So now my kid knows like we’ve already made a connection. I’m thinking about it. They have, and I said, I, and I’ll say, usually I want you to be thinking about it too.
So then we come back together whenever that is that day or the next day. And I typically, and if it’s a, if it’s still like a younger, like high school age, still where you’re in charge, like you’re, you’re in charge of their kind of everyday lives still to some degree is to say, my number one job is to keep you safe.
And you did something here that made me not feel as comfortable giving you the reins of freedom you have. So I’m pulling in the guardrails a little bit tighter in order to keep you safe. And you can be really mad at me. You can feel like I don’t understand. You can feel like I’m ridiculous, and that’s totally okay, whatever you feel.
I will listen and I’m not going to change my mind. And I also want to let you know that in the weeks, the three next three to four weeks, I’m going to be watching for ways that you can show me that you have the responsibility and maturity in order for me to move those guardrails back out. So that’s not reactive.
I’m not screaming and yelling. And we specifically, and then here’s my favorite thing. This works with college students. is to say, I’m going to let you give the lecture. You don’t want to hear me say it. You don’t want, you already know pretty much everything I’m going to say anyway. So you tell me, what do you think I would say here?
And then here’s something amazing that happens is instead of just tuning you out and rolling their eyes or saying, yes, ma’am, or saying, I hear you. And where you’re like, you’re not really hearing me. You’re just saying the things, I want to hear is that, they start saying all the things and maybe even Better than you would say it and maybe even more dramatic than you would say it.
And then you’re like, Oh my gosh, they have really internalized that. So I feel much more comfortable that they’ve got it. And my favorite thing here is to say with college students and actually all ages is to say, this can’t happen again, or I’m really concerned about, or I’m, I’m worried about.
Can you tell me what is your plan to keep yourself safe? Or what is your plan to keep this from happening again? And when we ask them, what is your plan, they have to use their, their brains to their prefrontal cortex to really do some problem solving on that with college age students.the truth is.
They already have so much morality already built in and the times that looks like they’re not moral are actually moments of dysregulation and reactivity where they weren’t using their whole brain. So I think a lot of times parents are like, they don’t have good morality. it’s what got in the way of them practicing the morality they have.
I think that’s a better question because it’s usually fear or it’s about saving face or it’s about,anger or whatever it is, and then we can do some problem solving around that piece around some skill building there more and more with college students. We really want to be,Keeping ourselves, our homes, our relationship with them, open doors and advising less and less and less and asking them like, what do you think?
What’s your plan? Or where do you think you need some support here? And to really invite them into conversation with you where they are doing much more of the reflecting.
Pam King: That’s really powerful. really powerful, Tina. I appreciate how that even furthers the relationship because it’s not a one way lecture. It’s a much more
reciprocal
connection.
Tina Bryson: Yeah. Because if they, if it’s a one way lecture and it’s, that means it’s it’s another rep of unpleasant. I don’t want to have conversation. and it’s shocked me how many times I’ve, when I’ve taken the time to think about how I want to respond, maybe some language I want to use my kid who has made a bad decision after we have the conversation, we’ll say, thank you for how you handled it.
And I’m like, Wow, that was a deposit in the relationship
Pam King: hmm.
Tina Bryson: they’re not always going to go that way. we may set a limit or a boundary or tell our kid like that was not a good reflection of who you are, and it might feel really badly to them, and we might have to do some repair after that.
And, so it’s not all supposed to be warm and fuzzy. Sometimes there’s some discomfort in those difficult conversations, but our children should always know that they cannot lose our love. That we are always opening to listening and we’re always open to watching their neural plasticity and not having our minds made up about them.
Pam King: Tina shares with us that her faith and spirituality inform her work and sense of self and the relational grounding she brings from these commitments and community helps her understand the meaning of integrated spiritual health and wholeness
This conversation around morality gets close to something that I’m very interested in. And that is spirituality. And my understanding of spirituality, is that it is so helpful for thriving.
And if you have a loving understanding of transcendence, in my own belief system, Christianity, a loving God, which is not all people’s experience or internalization of God. there is the possibility of having divine sources of love, I would love to hear from your experience or your practice. What might be insights into what healthy spirituality is? Because sometimes religion, spirituality does not go so well. Some forms can be very affirming and, allow people safe spaces. So I’m wondering if from your experience you would have thoughts on what
might be elements of healthy spirituality?
Tina Bryson: Yeah. I’ll say just personally, I grew up, at Saddleback community church in Southern California. and, I, my spiritual background was, and is a huge source of resilience for me. And one of the things that I think a spiritual life or spiritual practices, um, or even,even spiritual histories, even if we don’t practice later in life,earlier I talked about how, we want the demands of our life and our capacities, when they’re a good match, we’re resilient and we can thrive, but when our capacity is too low to meet the demands of our lives, that’s where we don’t thrive.
I think spirituality is a huge part of building our capacity. not only in the practices that we do, which often bring about, meaningful connections and relationships, uh, which bring about, you know, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly practices and rituals that, are really meaningful that build that capacity, as well, but really the daily,the larger lens of being connected to something or someone, that is holding us and that, we can actually I think about a lot how one of the reasons I think it was such a huge source of resilience and is for me is my experience.
was that I felt a lot of the four S’s, not only in terms of, seeing God as someone who kept me safe and who I felt seen by, who soothed me and who I felt secure in knowing God was going to show up for me. That was also my experience with, my religious mentors. and so I had a lot of those kinds of experiences.
So for me, when I think about healthy spirituality, and I think safe is the key one, really it’s, I always start with safe cause it’s the most important one, no matter what we’re applying it to, but, um, do we feel safe? Um, when you think about cults and other kinds of things, like there’s a lot of things that undermine safety and connection and the things that keep us safe.
So, when we think about healthy spirituality, does it lead the person to feel safe and seen and soothed and secure and knowing? That God or that, or that community is really going to show up for you. That to me is a huge marker. and people have definitely written, there’s a lot in the science about, God or other religious figures as attachment figures.
That, help us have that feeling of connection and protection. so I think that to me is the marker,for what I would consider healthy, thriving spirituality. if you’re in a situation where you’re, there’s tons of like shame and those kinds of things, that’s going to lead to a lot of chaos and rigidity, and it’s going to lead to not feeling safe and seen and soothed and secure.
So. Again, I talked about the four S’s being my north star. They’re my north star in lots and lots of ways. and here we see it applied to healthy spirituality.
Pam King: So helpful. Because I extend those experiences of being safe and secure and seen. That helps incorporate, a positive identity as a beloved person, a narrative that is constructive and a part of something bigger, like you were saying. it’s helpful to have a broader horizon. That your life is part of something bigger.
Then yourself that’s really helpful. I’ve also heard you talk about the power of narrative and people telling stories and brain integration. I’d love to hear if you have any comments on,on why people should tell their stories or journal.
Tina Bryson: Yeah. There’s a bunch of really interesting science, even looking at the mechanism of this, that, for one, when people journal, even if they never show it to anyone else, um, we see improved heart function, heart, improved immune function and improved mental health. Um, so we definitely know that’s one piece of many pieces of science that show us that, as we tell our stories, make sense of our internal lives, it’s really beneficial for us in terms of the brain, and the.
the first chapter of the whole brain child, and a lot of the stuff that Dan Siegel has written is the idea of integrating different parts of the brain, right? So, we have different modes of processing in different parts of our brains and our nervous system. So the left side of our brain, Is specializing in putting together things in a linear fashion, using words, making sense of things in terms of the facts and the order of things and kind of explaining things in that way.
And the right mode of processing in our right hemisphere is much more the felt sense of experience. It’s more connected to our bodies and our emotion, the texture and feel of things, more big picture, kind of thing. And so we really, when we tell a story, we don’t want just the facts and the details.
It also has to include a felt sense of experience and the internal world and our emotions and all of these things, the textures of those experiences. and obviously we need the words and the order and the kind of more some of the structure that the left brain provides. So We talk about name entertainment when we tell a story and we are talking through an experience or sharing how we feel or what we think about something.
It actually brings the brain, the left side provides the words and the order and all of those things. And the right hemisphere provides the sense of self and the autobiographical memory and the texture and feel all these things. It actually. comes together, that forces the brain into a state of integration.
So when we tell that story, it helps us move toward being more flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized, and stable to move out of chaos and rigidity. And as humans, we’re really driven to make sense of our lives and our stories. I mean, any little thing that happens, if my sister didn’t respond to my text or, said something mean or something like that, I would be like, well, wonder what’s happening.
Is she okay? Like I would immediately, or someone backs into us, we’re like, What happened there? We want to make sense of our experiences. So, this is what happens in therapy. This is what happens in journaling. This is what happens in prayer. This is what happens in our conversations with our partners or our friends.
Or, I talked to my mom. When we say the words and talk about our internal states and the things that happen to us, it makes our brains more integrated. And of course,it doesn’t all have to be word based either. there are a lot of somatic ways, like somatic therapies, where people are moving their bodies.
telling a story through their bodies or through, play therapy, kids might be playing their stories as opposed to like sitting down and walking through, well, this happened and then this happened. It can happen in play or in sand trays. these are the kinds of things that allow us to integrate our experiences and integrate our brains.
Pam King: I’m wondering like from a child perspective of all of us who have been children, is there a practice that can help?
us understand or open us up to the realities of our own childhood, and how we were parented for better or for worse. is there a journal prompt, or is there a way you might guide us to have more open awareness of potentially painful memories, or even
like unconscious relational or emotional trauma?
Tina Bryson: Yeah. I’ll, we’ll give one quick disclaimer if you’re,pregnant at the time. I would not recommend walking through a lot of traumatic, childhood stuff because we know that cortisol crosses the placenta, but assuming you’re not pregnant, it’s really helpful to reflect on our past experiences.
And so, I would make two recommendations. There are lots and lots of good ones out there, but in the power of showing up, even if you’re not a parent, it applies to all relationships. at the end of each chapter, we do have some questions for reflection or for journaling, walking through the four S’s.
Like,what did it feel like to be safe in your family? Who helped you feel the safest? When did you not feel safe? Those kinds of questions. and then I also very much love Dan Siegel’s book that he wrote with Mary Hartzell called Parenting from the Inside Out. And that’s really focused on our own experiences of being parented and how we can move toward integration.
In our own brains. And he explains right brain, left brain, and the higher structures, the brain and the lower structures, the brain, and how we can integrate all of that. and that’s actually how the whole brain child was, prompted was I loved parenting from the inside out so much. I was teaching it, leading groups, uh, while I was studying with Dan.
And I was like, that whole book is about how to integrate our own brains. I want to write some books about how do we integrate our kids brains. And of course, those are mirrored processes. As we do that with our children, it does it for us and
vice versa. So, I would recommend the power of showing up and, parenting from the inside out as great places to start.
Pam King: Awesome. And we will put all links to these in the show notes. These are wonderful books. They, not only introduce you to the science behind them, but they’re so practical.
One of the ways Tina describes parenting is that we help our kids become fully themselves. This process of becoming and growth, which starts so young, is one of the highest honors of parenting. they are and help them to
come to love and accept that. Thank you. I wanted to close with another practical exercise that Tina offers for tuning into this kind of noticing, acknowledging, and accepting our inner emotional realities, however negative, challenging, confusing, or frightening they might be. when it comes to kids of really any age, where they’re pretty verbal, like I would say four and up, and all the way into our adult, young adult children. You know, one of my favorite exercises or prompts for my kids, oftentimes like they might come to me and they’d be like, I’m so frustrated with blah, blah, blah.
Tina Bryson: Or, I’m just really grumpy right now or whatever, where they’d come in kind of hot. one of my favorite responses is First to kind of create space for that and to not immediately move into fixing. I think it’s so important that especially this generation of kids and adults Understands that negative emotions does not mean something’s wrong it means something’s Right. because we are feeling the whole range of human emotions and As I was leaving to come, uhMeet you virtually here, Pam.
My neighbor was standing out front with her, four year old who was in her arms crying and. They were in the front yard just walking. And I said, hello. And she said, she’s really sad because she wants to watch a show and we’re not going to watch the show. And I was like, good for you, mom, for holding a boundary and letting her be sad.
And then the mom, beautiful, she’s a wonderful mom said, it’s okay to be sad. And we’re just going to be sad for a while. And I was like, that’s right. Sometimes we’re just sad. So, I tend to be very productive oriented, very action oriented, and so that was something I had to be very intentional about was when my kid was sharing an emotion to not just solve, I still am really bad at this sometimes as a wife.
And so one of the exercises, or one of the things I would say to my kids is something along the lines of when we have feelings or emotions, They’re really important. They often tell us something really important. They often tell us something like something’s not working for me. And so I would then invite them, I would say, why don’t you just go sit somewhere really cozy, comfortable, and just take two or three minutes and just get really curious.
About what it is you might need or what might not be working for you and what you’re feeling right now. And I’ll then I’ll come find you in a few minutes. And so it was actually like carving out a place, very briefly to help them move into a state of curiosity and allowing that feeling to happen.
And then sometimes, they would come back. Remember one time my son was like, I don’t know what I was feeling. I couldn’t figure it out, but I feel better. And I was like, great, that’s great. but I think. giving them a prompt of curiosity and response to emotion is great. And then we can build upon that by saying, emotions are important.
They are information, but they don’t get to make the final decision. and so I can, that’s another sort of little conversational activity is to say, if your feelings you have right now, we’re making the decision, what would they tell you to do?
Pam King: and then to say, if your feelings weren’t making the decision and you, we’re thinking with your whole brain.
Tina Bryson: What do you think you should do? Or what would the response be? And to kind of help them build those skills too. I know those are cognitive exercises, but they’re also reflective, mindful exercises as well, particularly saying, I’m just going to be curious and just tune in to what I’m feeling and be curious.
What is it telling me? And I think for me, that was something I really tried to do as a parent, instead of going into the shame spiral after I had a rupture with one of my kids or handled something in a way I wasn’t. Feeling great about is instead of beating myself up to say, I’m going to move to curiosity and see what got in the way of me being the parent I wanted to be in that moment.
and then kind of being soft and gentle to whatever that is I’m not getting enough sleep or I’m feeling really resentful. I’m too much mental load is on me or whatever it is,to kind of bring softness and nurture to that as opposed to beating myself up. because that leads to a more integrated brain that allows us to have greater capacity to make it less likely we’re going to flip our lids the next time.
so we want to build those skills from early on when our kids come to us, With emotion or,or if they want to just be really thoughtful, I’m in the getting ready to go into the final kid going through the college application process. and that can be really stressful for, for them, sometimes for parents, and to just, even with an older kid to say, I hope that you,have the space and freedom to feel whatever you feel around this.
and what would be helpful for, from our end,
Pam King: thank you so much.
I’m feeling hopeful. I’m feeling excited about, a set of strategies and insights into how I can be more present, for not just my family, but also those around me.
So thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom. Really grateful. Thank you.
Tina Bryson: Thank you so much for having
Pam King: Tina Bryson’s vision for healing, transformative connection, makes me confident that amidst the world’s storms, is possible to find safe harbor for repair and resilience in our closest, most intimate relationships.
The key takeaways that I will carry with me from this conversation are the following.
Pam King: We’re inherently wired for connection. And our brains store all of our relational history.
Rupture is inevitable, but our capacity for repair can strengthen our bonds with each other when we make the effort to reconnect.
Thriving involves and integrates all of our most intense emotions. We get closer to thriving when we can learn to regulate and integrate our inner emotional experience.
Attuning and paying attention to our nervous system is a core emotional and relational skill and goes a long way in healthy intimate relationships.
Finally, we were all children once. We were all parented for better or worse. Learning to integrate every aspect of our relational history can help us on the path to thriving
With & For is a production of The Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. For more information, visit our website, thethrivecenter.org, where you’ll find all sorts of resources to support your pursuit of wholeness and a life of thriving on purpose. I am so grateful to the staff and fellows of the Thrive Center and our With & For podcast team.
Jill Westbrook is our senior director and producer. Lauren Kim is our operations manager. Wren Jeurgensen is our social media graphic designer. Evan Rosa is our consulting producer. And special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy.
I’m your host, Dr. Pam King. Thank you for listening.
Tina Payne Bryson, LSCW, PhD
Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is the author of The Bottom Line for Baby and co-author (with Dan Siegel) of two New York Times Best Sellers—The Whole-Brain Child and No-Drama Discipline—each of which has been translated into over fifty languages, as well as The Yes Brain and The Power of Showing Up. She has just completed the manuscript for The Way of Play (Random House 2025), co-authored with Georgie Wisen-Vincent. Tina is also the Founder and Executive Director of The Center for Connection, a multidisciplinary clinical practice in Southern California. She keynotes conferences and conducts workshops for parents, educators, and clinicians all over the world, and she frequently consults with schools, businesses, and other organizations. An LCSW, Tina is a graduate of Baylor University with a Ph.D. from USC. The most important part of her bio, she says, is that she’s a mom to her three boys. You can learn more about Dr. Bryson at TinaBryson.com.
Episode Summary
Our brains hold our relational history—all the joys, all the ruptures, all the repairs. And even in the most difficult childhood or parenting circumstances, the science of relationships and connection can give us hope for whole-brain and whole-life transformation.
Therapist, bestselling author, and mom—Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is seeking a connection revolution that brings neurobiology and practical relational wisdom to bear on both how we were parented, how we parent, and how we relate throughout our lifespan.
In this conversation with Tina Bryson, we discuss:
The science of childhood relational development and growth into strong, adaptive adults
The brain as our most social organ—capable of holding a lifetime of relational and emotional history
How to emotionally co-regulate with another person to achieve a calm, peaceful, and vibrant relationship
Neuroplasticity and our ability to change with intention toward our deepest held values
And we explore how the science of connection, attachment, and interpersonal neurobiology sheds light on how we were parented, and impacts how we might parent ourselves and how we relate to everyone.
Books by Dr. Tina Bryson
- The Way of Play (Tina’s latest book!)
- The Whole-Brain Child
- No-Drama Discipline
- The Yes Brain
- The Power of Showing Up
Follow Tina Bryson
Show Notes
- Dr. Tina Bryson: an expert in neurobiology, parenting, child development, and attachment theory.
- Highlighting Tina’s unique perspective as both a clinician and science-engaged researcher.
- This conversation focuses on parenting, but it’s relevant for everyone—whether you’re a leader, mentor, or someone reflecting on your own upbringing
- The importance of connection, attunement, and emotional regulation in today’s world.
- "I feel so aware that this is not an easy time to be a child or a teenager in the world."
- Kids today face unique challenges that are very different from previous generations:
- More stimulation, information, and pressure than ever before.
- Earlier onset of puberty and adolescence, with young adults taking longer to launch.
- "We often talk about the challenges of youth, which are absolutely real, but we don’t want to forget that in many ways, the world is actually safer."
- Positive shifts in youth well-being: fewer teen pregnancies; safer environments (cars, car seats, public spaces)l greater awareness of mental health, substance use, and emotional well-being
- The brain is a social organ—we are profoundly shaped by the people around us.
- "A huge contributor to some of the struggles youth are having is because their grownups are not thriving."
- Interpersonal neurobiology teaches that children’s well-being is tied to their caregivers’ ability to regulate their own emotions.
- Example: The Chicken Experiment
- Chickens placed in front of a mirror stayed scared much longer than others because they thought they were looking at another terrified chicken.
- Takeaway: Parents who are anxious, reactive, or dysregulated create environments where their children struggle to regulate their emotions.
- "The greatest gift we can give each other is a calm presence."
- Understanding Attachment & The Four S’s
- Secure attachment is a key predictor of well-being in children and adults.
- Attachment is built through repeated experiences of the Four S’s:
- Safe: "Do I feel physically and emotionally secure with this person?"
- Seen: "Does this person understand and acknowledge my emotions and experiences?"
- Soothed: "When I’m in distress, does this person help me feel better?"
- Secure: "Do I trust that this person will be there for me consistently?"
- "Without awareness, we don’t have choice."—Dan Siegel
- History is NOT destiny. We can rewire our brains and create new, healthier patterns in relationships.
- Practical Parenting Tip:
- If your child pushes you away, don’t force connection. Instead, say: "I can see you need some space right now. I’m here whenever you’re ready to talk."
- The availability of your presence creates a secure environment
- Regulation & Emotional Resilience
- Definition of Regulation: The ability to monitor and modify emotional states rather than reacting impulsively.
- It’s NOT about being emotionless—it’s about responding intentionally
- Pink Flags vs. Red Flags
- Pink Flags: Subtle signs that you’re getting dysregulated (irritability, sarcasm, tension)
- Red Flags: Full-blown loss of control (yelling, throwing things, shutting down)
- Real-Life Example: The Yahtzee Incident
- Tina shares a personal story of losing her temper while playing Yahtzee with her kids.
- She repaired the rupture by apologizing, taking responsibility, and asking for a do-over.
- "When we mess up, the research shows that if we make the repair, the rupture itself was actually beneficial."
- The Three R’s of Parenting:
- Regulation: Managing your emotions first
- Responding: Engaging with your child in a safe, attuned way
- Repairing: Acknowledging when you mess up and making amends
- Practical Strategies for Thriving
- Creating a Safe Haven at Home
- Set an intention: "When my child walks through the door, I want them to feel at rest, safe, and accepted."
- Reduce pressure—kids should not feel they must "perform" to be loved.
- The Power of Breathwork: The Physiological Sigh
- Quick, evidence-based technique to reduce stress and reset the nervous system.
- Take a double inhale through the nose, followed by a longer exhale.
- "It’s the quickest thing we know to calm the nervous system."
- Managing Teen Independence: When teens ask for space, don’t take it personally. Instead, try:
- "I’m here if you want to talk later."
- "Would you be open to a short walk or helping me in the kitchen?"
- Non-eye-contact conversations (e.g., driving in the car) help teens feel less pressured.
- The science of thriving vs. surviving: "Survive and thrive are not separate categories. What we do in survival moments can lead to thriving."
- The FACES Model for Well-Being
- Flexible: Open to change and new ideas
- Adaptive: Able to adjust based on new circumstances
- Coherent: Emotional and cognitive stability
- Energized: Engaged and present in life
- Stable: Grounded and consistent
- The YES Brain Approach: Four pillars that cultivate resilience in children
- Balance (emotional regulation)
- Resilience (bouncing back from challenges)
- Insight (self-awareness and growth mindset)
- Empathy (understanding others’ experiences)
- "Thriving isn’t about avoiding hardships—it’s about learning how to navigate them."
- Recognize your influence: "Your child's nervous system mirrors yours. Take care of yourself first."
- Practice daily regulation: Set a personal cue (e.g., getting in the car) to check in with your emotions.
- The physiological sigh for stress
- Embrace repair: "Making mistakes in parenting is inevitable—what matters is how you repair them."
- Prioritize connection
- Family meals are a huge protective factor for youth well-being
- Create positive associations with time together
- Parenting is about progress, not perfection. "Every small shift you make has a ripple effect on your child’s well-being."
- Pam King’s Key Takeaways
- We’re inherently wired for connection, and our brains store all of our relational history.
- Rupture is inevitable, but our capacity for repair can strengthen our bonds with each other when we make the effort to reconnect.
- Thriving involves and integrates all our most intense emotions. We get closer to thriving when we can learn to regulate and integrate our inner emotional experience.
- Attuning and paying attention to our nervous system is a core emotional and relational skill—and goes a long way in healthy, intimate relationships.
- We were all children once. We were all parented, for better or for worse. Learning to integrate every aspect of our relational history can keep us on the path to thriving.
About the Thrive Center
- Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
- Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
- Follow us on X @thrivecenter
- Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter
About Dr. Pam King
Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.About With & For
- Host: Pam King
- Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
- Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
- Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
- Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa
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