7 Quick Wins: Supporting the Child Who Shuts Down

Okay folks, it's now a formal welcome to two groups of people. It's a formal welcome to those that here live. Thank you so much for joining us for the session. There will be a chance for questions etc for you guys. So thank you for getting here. Also equally warm welcome people watching this as a recording. Um we will make Pooky and I will make the magic happen for both of those groups of people. What have you tuned into? Just into one of our seven quick wins that I get to do with Pooky. Lucky me, right? Um and what you're doing today is a session around supporting the child who shuts down. Um, so there will be some particular work of seven quick wins. It might be a slight misnomer to call it quick wins because if I'm entirely honest, as you will see as we work our way through today, um, when we are working with a young person who goes into that hyperaroused, shut down, freeze and collapse autonomic nervous system state, there are clearly some things we don't want to do and some things we want to do in the moment. But it's a long game. It's it's, you know, there's a slight misnomer there in the title that this isn't going to be a quick fix, right? there's going to be a long journey of things that we can do to help that young person feel safer and build those relationships and then have those opportunities to feel less overwhelmed. That will make much more sense as we work our way through. The only bit of housekeeping I want to do is that for those that have signed up for this course, you will get a follow-up email. So, when I'm making reference to the slides and some handouts and various other links and when we answer questions too, you will get that follow-up email. If somebody's watching this recording and they didn't get that follow-up email, there's things you want to get access to, just go to our South Central Teaching School Hub. So, Google South Central Teaching School Hub and on there, if you can't find the stuff you need, there's a little contact us button. So, just contact us there and and someone as wonderful as Mel who's doing the magic in the background, we'll just get back in touch with you and send you whatever you you couldn't find or any questions you've got going forward just to make sure you don't miss out. Okay, so it's it's me doing the the session. Um, disclosure, um, I have tried to pack way too much into this. The intention, Pooky, I believe, was to have about half of the hour um for me talking and then half of the hour for Pooky answering questions. We'll see how we get on with that. I could achieve that by talking really super fast. I'll try not to do that. But there's quite a lot to pack into that half an hour. I hope that's okay. I was looking at it last night and thinking, what could I leave out? And I really couldn't find many things I wanted to leave out. So, I hope that's going to be all right. Quite a lot of information from me. But there will be a chance for questions, too. It's always lovely as well to know who's here. So, if you are willing to and you can, it would be really lovely for people in the chat just to let us know some of those questions. You don't have to religiously follow that list of questions unless you want to, but who are you? Where you from? It says there, what type of school are you from, but I'm aware there will also be people that aren't necessarily from schools. There might be some parents or other professionals here. You're all welcome. So, please, it's lovely. And we will I can't see the chat while I'm presenting, but Pooky and Mel are keeping an eye on that. Um, and obviously I will read that um at some point as well in the future. So, it's always nice to hear how you're doing and where you are. Okay, let's get straight into it. There's seven of them. Um, and the first one I've put at the beginning because it is the most important one really. So, when we're talking about working and supporting a child or young person who shuts down, the first thing we need to understand is this isn't a choice, right? This is somebody shutting down because their nervous system is responding to overwhelm, to threat, to danger and to overwhelm. That's the very much, if nothing else from this session, the one with a drum roll is very much this one. It is not a choice. It is somebody nervous system scanning the environment seeing themselves as not being safe and not going into a fightlight response but alternatively in a subconscious way going into a frozen and collapsed response. I'll make more sense of that as we work our way through. So just by understanding that for starters that this person is not willfully choosing to withdraw and shut down and and not speak to us and look dissociated and and all those things. It is something that is a survival response. They're not trying to sabotage the piece of thing that we're doing with them. So we need to be aware of that in terms of their response and also we need to very carefully monitor our own response because if we're in a busy environment and something is happening and somebody has shut down and collapsed we can also have an emotional and physiological response to that too. Right? So we need to manage ourselves to make sure we are aware of our own response to it but also managing that response regulating ourselves so we are providing the safe nurturing and relational support that that young person needs in that moment. Again, I'll unpack some of that in the session today. And and you've seen some of these slides before, people who regularly come to Pooky sessions, but I'm just going to tune us in with this. So, just like in a fightlight state, right, when somebody scans the environment with their neurosception, their amydala in the lyic system, the emotional part of the brain, and that tells them they are not safe because for whatever the trigger is, we may not even know the person who's gone into that frozen collapse state may not be able to tell us what triggered them, but something has triggered them as not safe in the environment or in themselves. And what happens is the prefrontal cortex goes offline. So we immediately lose a whole load of those functions of being for the period of time that we are disregulated. The lyic system, the emotional part of the brain and the the brain stem take over when it's um into this this state of hypoarous freeze and collapse. So immediately one of the things to be aware of is we are working with somebody that's disregulated when they've gone into freeze and shutdown. We need to help them to be regulated to come back into a safe regulated state and before that period of time their cognitive function their ability to actually interact with us and make choices will be significantly limited. Not a choice thing that's what's happened to them physiologically in their brain. It can happen to all human beings when we feel under threat. And effectively the reason why they've gone into a frozen and collapsed state is because subconsciously they've scanned the environment that their brain has decided for them that it's not safe. And it's also made an additional decision on their behalf to keep them safe. It said you als you're not safe and also you cannot fight this threat off and you cannot run away from this threat. So your best chance of surviving is to go into a frozen and collapse state. Again I'll make some more sense of that as we go through. So this is the amydala bit that neurosception as Dr. Steven Paules calls it in the polyvagel theory. So we're all of us as human beings are constantly subconsciously scanning the environment making a decision. Am I safe? Am I not safe? If our amygdala and our neuro reception says we're not safe, it will go into a defensive state of either fight, flight or freeze and collapse. And it's the freeze and collapse one that we're particularly focusing on in this hour that we've got here tonight. Um it doesn't happen in a conscious way. It happens below that. It's about not feeling safe. So you'll see in a minute we're going to talk about things we can do to help that young person feel safe in the moment and proactively in the longer term. And actually, as I said at the bottom there, those triggers may not even be aware and visible to people. it. Sometimes they are, but sometimes they're not. Okay? But the body has, for some reason, the brain has identified something that's triggered that person into feeling unsafe. Um, and in particularly in that very unsafe overwhelmed state where it's even deeper and even more kind of debilitating than the fight-flight response. So, just to put the kind of um the neuroscience onto that, there's three different states. So when we are feeling safe, we're in a wonderful vententral veagal state and all of those fantastic parts of the brain are available to us to be able to be socializing and empathizing and problem solving and all the things that we want to be doing as much of the time as we possibly can, both us and the children and young people. If we feel threatened and we go into a fight flight, that's a sympathetic nervous system response and then we're responding to fight something off or run away from something. If our physiology sends us into a hypoaroused frozen collapsed state, that freeze and collapse state, that's actually our dorsal veagal system taking over. And at that point, we're in this very frozen and collapsed state going forward. Okay. So, the sorts of things we're looking at there is losing our reasoning, losing our consequence-based thinking, losing the ability, that's quite an important one, to process language and to so often young people will become mute or unable to say a great deal or respond to questions. again will come into some of the actions we can therefore take until they feel safe again and they regulate again. Those are some of the functions that they will lose. So us saying to them use your words do this we need to respond to this question could be just overwhelming for that person who's already in overwhelm. Also impulse control can be limited at those times all of those things. So those different three those different four different defense responses that we're talking about there on the side there. We all have those all human beings. The one we're really focusing on today is the threes and collapse. one of those four. Okay. And again, what I've just put there, it may be there's a bear. Um, it may be that, you know, there is something really life-threatening, but actually, it could also be the perception of there being a bear. You know, it could be, for example, I'd worked with a young person um initially when I was introduced to them. I I looked very much like somebody that they had worked with before who had been quite abusive to them. Um, and so they had a very strong physiological response just to my appearance and and you know, I wasn't a threat to them, but from their point of view, their physiology was telling me very much that I was right. this big kind of white guy with a beard was exactly the sort of person they did not want to be interacting with and they were not choosing that. Their physiology was responding in a frozen and collapsed way because of it was triggering kind of things that were there to keep them safe from past experiences. So again, we've got the different um defense mechanisms there on the screen. The one we're focusing on today is the freeze and collapse one. And effectively your body is making the choice to try and hide from the threat, try and survive the threat. A kind of way of understanding that quite well is if you ever saw a cat catch a mouse, the mouse's defense mechanism may be to play dead. And that's exactly what our body is doing is going into a frozen, collapsed, playing dead way. Subconsciously, the decision that has been made is the best way of me getting through this threatening situation is to play dead, to go numb, to go into this kind of dissociated collapse state. Um, where I'm frozen and I'm going to wait for that kind of threat to, you know, either lose interest or go away in the same way that the mouse's defense mechanism would do. Not a choice, a physiological response to what's happening as a threatening situation. And we see things like shutdown. We see things like silence not through choice and willfulness but because those functions have been severely limited. Glazed eyes. The glazed eyes is I've talked about dissociation. So dissociation is where somebody has gone into that hypoaroused um frozen and collapse state. It's likely to also have dissociation. This kind of numb spacey perhaps feeling like they're kind of not quite there. They're kind of you know afterwards young people would often describe it as feeling a bit like they were underwater or they were removed or they were watching themselves in a movie. That's a kind of dissociated state that can happen. We also get kind of numbness. Some of the hormones change in our body and the the the neurotransmitters in our brain and we get a much more numbed down a pain threshold kind of you know we get we feel pain much less. All of this kind of stuff that prepares us to survive an attack going forward and and being quite frozen um being quite a unable to move or to speak some of the things that we would see at that point. And as I already mentioned this is the work of the fabulous Deb Dana who works very closely with Dr. Steven Paulis I'm in the poly vagal theory and and I don't know if you can see that that's meant to be a ladder and basically at the top of our ladder when we are fully functioning and all of the parts of the brain are available we're in that wonderful vententral veagal state where all of our wonderful human function is available to us when we are under threat and we're not feeling safe we go down the ladder into one of two different very different defense mechanisms. We either go to that fight flight which you probably know lots about and we're not dealing with that today. That's when people would get into anxiety or anger and they would want to fight something off or run away from something and all of the hormones prepare us to do that. Below that subconsciously again we can get tipped into that frozen and collapsed state which is the um the dorsal veagal state taking over that kind of frozen collapsed kind of mouse that we talked about to try and survive immobilized shut down collapsed. Okay, hope that's helpful so far. That's number one, understanding that's what's happening for that person. And that's the most important one of all, right? If we can understand that's what happened to that person, we're then going to respond in a very different way than if we're perceiving that as a willful or somebody choosing not to respond or them not using their words. We need to make them do that. We need to motivate them to be different. It's a physiological response to overwhelm and shutdown that will pass. But for a period of time, that person will be in a state where a number of their functions are not available to them because they don't feel safe. The most important thing we can do to somebody in that frozen collapse state is provide felt safety so they feel safe with us going forward. So when they're in shutdown, the thing we really don't want to do is shout and demand. So the rather nice quote that I've got here is when somebody's in shutdown, increasing demands is like shouting at a frozen computer. No one is going to benefit from that. They're already frozen, right? Shouting at them is just going to add to that overwhelm, add to that demand, potentially add layers of shame and all sorts of other difficulties to the relationship. So let's not do that. Um, what we need to do instead is think about the most powerful things we can do. And sometimes that's just being there, right? Just being alongside, gently being with gentle, calm, not demanding presence is often the thing that the person needs most at that time of freeze and collapse. That gentle, supportive relationship. Um, less is more. Here's a quote from a fabulous person, Pooky. I think this might be you. This quote that I've pinched directly, um, that our calm at that point is their lifeline. You can't rush their nervous system back online, but that steady presence that tells them that you being alongside them and being steady is what's going to tell them that's safe. There's huge wisdom in those words. So that's a direct quote. And what we're thinking there is this bit again, that freeze one is the one we're focusing on today. We want to think about warmth, gentle presence, really reducing demands and being patient. We need to just be alongside and let this thing kind of run its course and gradually that person will come back to a place where they feel safer. they come out of that overwhelmed state and they start going back up the ladder. Again, I'll touch on that a little bit further as we go forward. I'm going to bring Puki in just a moment, by the way, just to forewarn you, Puky. So, this again is a direct cut and paste from a um a really rather wonderful resource that Pookie's put together. It's a single side of A4 that summarizes some of the things we're talking about today about shutdown when a child shuts down. And this is a cut and paste directly from that. So, you will get that as part of the follow-up email um for people in terms of and I'm aware on there just as we start to read through this in terms of what helps and what doesn't help which is incredibly helpful to have that set out. One of the first things you've put there is stop asking questions, reduce demands. Can I just let you speak to that a little bit more because I'm aware that you know the kind of completely stopping asking questions and I might be getting this wrong. I would sometimes maybe ask a gentle question about you know I'm here when you're ready to speak just let me know when you're ready. Even that would you suggest not doing or help me with the not asking questions part. >> Yeah. Okay. It's it's a tough one to be fair. I didn't I didn't recognize this. That says about how many things I create, doesn't it? Um so what we're looking for basically is that obviously some of our children are demand avoidant and um particularly when they are in this state then that becomes even more so. So even for children who aren't generally presenting as demand avoidant when they're very overwhelmed sometimes they become somewhat demand avoidant and sometimes questions just questions in and of themselves and the expectation to interact can feel like a demand but what you're describing Ian isn't asking a question you're describing gentle presence using your voice um to soothe um and what we can remember there is that uh our tone and how we come across can change how a child feels even if they're not in a space where they can process our words. So if we're using our lovely relaxed slow low kind of tone of voice that can be like an audible hug no matter what we're saying. It's the expectation for interaction that I would be looking to reduce as much as possible. >> That's really helpful. Thank you for clarifying that. So actually what you've also said there is the non-verbal part of that communication is so important isn't it? So lowering demand certainly not the whole Spanish inquisition demanding stuff but at the same time something gentle that may or may not get a response. the response might be something as it says there that's non-verbal that you allow people to do rather than necessarily inspecting people to to find words and to do things. I've certainly worked with young people before at this point they might want to write something down or also I wor with a beautiful headteer recently and he had two chairs in in his office which was really lovely. I might have said this to people before and what the young people knew is that when they came into the office because things were difficult if they sat in one of the chairs that meant they were not ready to speak and they wanted just to be there and be in the gentle presence and when they moved to the other chair that meant they were ready to have a conversation and an interaction. Isn't that beautiful? And they'd obviously explain that to the young people and all the rest of it. And I I was in there when that happened and the young person came in and sat in one chair. They moved to the chair where they were ready to talk and actually all much for them. They just move back to the other chair. Isn't that beautiful in terms of going actually do you know what this is too much for me? And and that was all gentlely respected. So just find I'm not saying that do exactly that but finding ways of allowing you know people to be able to isn't that beautiful agency and support. Again, I won't read all of that out loud for you because I haven't got time, but there's some beautiful bits there on the screen and you'll get this as a follow-up in terms of some guidance about things that it's useful to consider doing and things it's useful to avoid in terms of those bits, too. But I like that non-verbal element, Pooky, that you emphasized. You've also got stuff about reducing the sensory overload in there clearly. And you've got things about some sensory bringing things back. Again, I'll pick up on some of that as we work through some of those elements going forward. That's really helpful. Thank you. So, the next thing we want to consider is gently upregulating. Now, when we're talking about regulating, we often talk about regulating somebody from a fight-flight state of hyper arousal and we're wanting to calm things down. What we want to do here very very carefully is support this young person who's gone into or adult it could be who's gone into a hypoarous reason like say to gradually gently upregulate and there's various ways in which we can do that as well. So, we're still working through this wonderful neurossequential model from Dr. Bruce Perry. We're starting with helping somebody to regulate because they're disregulated. They're unsafe. They're pushed outside of their window of tolerance into a freeze and collapse state. We still want to regulate them, but we're upregulating them. Then we're doing the other R. Then we're doing the relate, reflect, and and and repair potentially if we need to do that. But the regulate part of that first is co-regulation. Again, we are alongside them. We're a gentle, calm, caring presence. Exactly as Puky said, we're thinking very carefully about our non-verbals, the slow low, the not too many demands, the kind of being there in the beautiful procity in our voice and the smiling and the open gestures and that gentle patient way of doing things. We're helping them co-regulate over time like effectively catching our calm and and downloading our kind of regulation into into them. And we are still thinking about the co-regulation, but slightly differently. So, I'm just going to talk through these because it's slightly more nuanced than downregulating when we're upregulating. So, we're still reducing demands. We're still giving lots of space and lots of time of activ. We're still thinking about the non-verbals and our calm voice, but the breathing we might do slightly differently. So, when we're encouraging somebody to breathe to calm down, we'd be taking deep breaths with extended exhales and that would stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system and calm people down. When we want somebody to upregulate from a frozen and collapse state, we still want a deep breath but a shorter exhale. So, we might be teaching that to a young person or we might be doing that alongside a young person, inviting them to join in with us. So actually to re-energize when we've lost our energy through hypoarousal then we want to a deep breath and a short exhale a deep breath and a shorter exhale. So the exhale is shorter than the inhale. These are things that you can play with. These are things that you can young people to have a a try at and a go at at different times before they're into this kind of frozen collapse state. But there are you know that that deep breathing with an extended exhale to calm and downregulate. But if in this case we're trying to upregulate somebody, deep deep inhales, shorter exhales, even if that's for 30 seconds or a minute, can bring some energy back to that person. Body language. So we're thinking about exactly as as Puky was saying that slow low with our non-verbals and our body language and then we're gradually bringing some energy back in. It says walk or do next. If we want to bring somebody out of a hypoaroused state, out of that frozen and collapsed, we want to gently get them to move. So gentle movement that might be stretching that might be wiggling fingers or toes. Anything that we can gradually encourage them to gently do some movement by getting them to do different things or activities whatever that is that is appropriate for you in that moment. Those little bits of gentle movement can start to bring people back from that frozen collapsed state to be a little bit more especially if we combine that with the grounding the sensory being aware of the environment and the kind of thinking about. So that kind of gentle movement that could be walking or doing some even more gentle movements than that can be something that starts to bring people back in terms of that co-regulating when somebody is hyperarrest. And on this note again when we're trying to downregulate and calm somebody from fightlight slow and heavy movement that's rhythmical is a really helpful way of calming somebody. So slow heavy rhythmical movement is calming. Faster lighter paced movement which again can be rhythmical that tends to be more energizing. So when somebody's more frozen, collapsed and hyper rest, little gentle movements rather than slow and heavy movements can be energizing. And again, rhythmical slow rhythmical kind of faster movements can be even if they're small can be quite a nice way of starting to energize people. Again, stretching, kind of shaking, all of those things can be a really useful thing when young people are ready to do that too. So again, we might be inviting them to join us in that or waiting till they're ready and doing that alongside them. We might have some resources in our room that they can pick up and use. So I have wonderful things you know like things that people can squeeze and stretch and other things that you know all of those sorts of things you know squishies etc. Whatever it is all of these things can be helpful in terms of that co-regulation and again um just a few examples of that. I think I've mentioned most of these but you know getting somebody to change their position a little bit of gentle movement. So a little question when they're ready to start to kind of come back out of that state of of getting them to stand up for a moment or move somewhere or could you pass me or could you do can be quite useful. Cold water can be quite helpful because that would be quite grounding and bring people into the moment. So a cold a glass of cold water. Um with with young people in school sometimes I have frozen kind of ice in cups and kids might choose to suck on an ice cup or you know put ice on their kind of wrists or whatever. That can be quite a nice grounding way of doing things. And then again that gentle rhythm that tapping or doing you know something that is rhythmical squeezing and releasing or playing with a band or whatever it is can be a really nice way again of gently coming out of that frozen collapsed and hyperaroused state. Okay. Number four of seven is after the shutdown, we want to create a very gentle path backwards. And again, Pooky, you may or may not recognize this. This is a direct cut and paste from that fabulous same resource that I found of yours and managed to pinch ready for this session. So, I think what you've said here, and again, jump in at the end of this if you want to add anything to it. But while I've interpreted this is we've got to be really careful here, right? We don't want to suddenly think this young person is ready for lots of demands and lots of explanations and lots of debriefs. We want to allow them because clearly part of their processing what's happening to them is finding a voice, finding ways to be able to talk about it, explain it, find solutions, different ways that they can, you know, we can do better for them next time. But at the same time, we don't want it to be an interrogation or making them feel as though but so there could be some gentle reflection at some point later when they're regulated. Is that the main message that I'm taking away from that? >> Yeah, definitely. So, we definitely want to wait until they're completely regulated. And that the other thing I would just say is that the approach we always want to take here is one of curiosity rather than judgment. Um and and that's both from us but also from them of theirelves. So sometimes we will observe in young people that they'll feel a great deal of shame or disgust or horrible you know they can be really horrible about themselves. And I think there we need to to gently push back on that if they're speaking unkindly about themselves as well. And um yeah instead approach it with curiosity and positivity about the future. Yeah, I love that, Puky. And and and again, just give an example of that. It's really lovely listening to you. Thank you for adding that. The way that I would do that, and please tell me if this is the sort of thing you're doing, if somebody was being really judging themselves, I might, you know, genuinely hope and go, "Oh my goodness, I think I've just heard you really say some quite harsh words to yourself there. Can I just check what you what you feel is gosh, I'm so sorry that that's how you feel and what you think. You know, let's just explore that a little bit." And we might go through some different options and possibilities. is well maybe but what if it was this or what if it was that or you know and they might go through some work about you know all of us needing to you know work through not beating us is that sort of gentle curiosity and empathy that we can bring to that that internal dialogue the young person because it's a privilege isn't it when a young person shares with us something that they're feeling and thinking but we have to approach that rather than adding judgment to their judgment by going well you're wrong to think about that we have to approach that with curious and empathy as well right >> yeah that's is it's a really difficult line to tread one of the things that I find will help sometimes um if a young person's kind of really stuck there would They're often ever so kind about other people. So I'd sometimes say, "What would you say, you know, if we reversed this? What would you say to me?" Or, "What would you say to a friend?" And then sometimes they can find some kinder ways of looking at it. >> Love that, Puky. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. That's really more much more empathic and curious way of approaching it. And what we're into again is these four Rs. Okay. So, we've talked a bit about the regulate, but then we'd be into the relating, reflecting, and repairing. And exactly as Pooky was saying, we want to do that with that curiosity and that empathy and that support. So when we're looking at the relate stage of bringing them back from being in that state gently supporting them to have that back on ramp into kind of what they need to do next and being you know back with us and feeling safe again and coming back up that ladder of not being so you know so overwhelmed and feeling unsafe what we'd want to do here I can't get through a session without mentioning pace. Um so we'd want to think about that pace approach and there's loads on our South Central website if you want about the pace approach. So that curio and empathy that puki's already talked about. We also want to accept, you know, what the young person is saying to us and not correct them or judge them for that being wrong. Some acceptance. And then the playfulness. Um, in this situation, the playfulness would largely be non-verbal. I'm not necessarily suggesting we make light and jokes and kind of all the rest of it. Um, but at the, you know, playfulness is likely to be that nonverbal kind of procity sings voice, that smiling gestures, those sorts of elements of the playfulness, the non-verbal elements, which again are something that really do help people feel safe and be ready to come back into a more regulated state. So I'm not going to do more on pace today, but there's loads on that on the website if you want to know more about the pace approach and there's lots of things. There's a whole course on that that's free or some various introductory videos etc around that. And then we're into reflect. So this again approach with caution. Um but some of the things I might consider here depending on my relationship with the young person, their age, their developmental stage and all those sorts of things. After a period of time, if I wanted to start to give them a voice to explore with them what happened or what happens, if that happens regularly, I might start to explore things about I wonder what it what it felt like, what it feels like. I might use creative arts to get them to draw something or or tell me, you know, different ways of describing and doing. I might do it through stories and metaphors. So, Alex and the Scary Things is a really nice book for younger children. So, Alex goes through, as you can see, an alligator and Alex the alligator and he can see what they've done. And he goes through a whole lot of things that are frightening to him. And and one of the things that he does in that book is when something frightens me, he goes into a spacey state and then he thinks about what can I do to get myself and he talks about moving his body to get out of the spacey state. So again, it can lead to some really nice conversations. There's also things we can do with animals. The oosum there. So if if somebody did a project on the oosum, that's that's an animal that plays dead when it's under threat. The lemon shark also goes into a atonic state that looks like playing dead. There's some young people that I've worked with who've loved learning about um lemon sharks. which led to conversations about you know is there anything similar in their behavior that might happen sometimes in terms of that you know even though it's a fierce creature sometimes it still plays dead and then some some you know learning about the brain and very often I will get a model of the brain out and we'll we'll look things up on the internet and we'll talk through with young people about the cortex and the functions of that and when we don't feel safe which parts of the brain are not available to us and you know which what happens with the the feeling and we talk about neurosception and young people often really help them feel as though you know they're not broken this is a normal human thing that happens to all of us and they can take control of this and we can look. So some of those things and and sometimes the most important question of all is there is there anything that would help next time? Is there anything you know that I could have done differently or that we could have done differently? So some of those questions too and then we're into repair if we're working. We don't always need to repair but we might do. And again I'm not going to spend ages on this because of time I've got today. But actually that most important part of that repair is that bottom bit acknowledging that I may not got it right. So if a young person felt unsafe and they were going into that hyperaroused frozen and collapsed state when I'm reflecting afterwards repair I find it really helpful to be the adult that takes that lead and goes do you know what I didn't get that right I could see you were in a place where it really wasn't great for you and was really challenging and really difficult and and I really want to understand what I could have done differently so you if I'm taking ownership for saying what could I do differently next time what could I have done differently what can be put in place that would help that's often a really helpful place to start and then the young person might also choose to share some of the things that they might choose to do differently or we give them some solutions and opportunities there. But starting with what we could do differently often is a really helpful way of doing that repair piece. So I'm leading it by walking towards them rather than expecting them necessarily to lead the repair process. And that's a really nice way of modeling that. Number five of seven is prepare for an anxious response. Um so when we are supporting somebody to come back up the ladder from a frozen collapsed hypoaroused state it is not an unusual thing for that person to overshoot somewhat when they come out of a frozen collapsed state of hypoarousal and shutdown and then they start to come back that can be a lot of anxiety in that and therefore they can go from a hypoaroused state all the way through to a hyperaroused state and have a little bit of fightlight anxiety and energy that kind of kicks in. We just need to recognize that's a normal process especially for human beings who have a narrow window of tolerance. So our window of tolerance reduces when we're under stress. When we have sustained, you know, toxic stress over a period of time or trauma, our window of tolerance can stay reduced and we can do things to expand it which I'll talk about in a minute. But actually um when our window very often we will oscillate as a human being between being in a frozen collapsed hypoarous state and a fightlight hypoarous state and we need to kind of balance that. And again, you'll know from Puk's other fabulous work that what we want to do when somebody goes into an anxious state is be that amydala whisperer whispering messages of safety to them, making sure they feel safe. So some of the pace approach stuff again, but also that recognizing when they go from the hypoaroused, slumped, silent, lethargic, zoning out, dissociated, appears to they can tip into a fidgeting, pacing, anxious, you know, those sorts of things can go forward. And at that point, we want to bring our calm. So Pookie's lovely C A LM um that she's produced for this. So we want to give them space, adjust our approach to recognizing there's some anxiety going on, keep our demands low and then meet the need through, you know, that again that relational support to help somebody regulate and be ready to manage their anxiety too. That that can be something just it's used to prepare for that and not be surprised when that is a response. Number six or seven, I'm rattling through lots here. I hope that's okay. Do get ready with your questions, guys. Um support the young person to widen their window of tolerance. So the window of tolerance just to remind you that's the state that we all want to try and be in as much as we possibly can. However, as human beings, we don't always stay in our regulated window of tolerance state and we don't always feel alert and calm and regulated and safe. Um but what we can do is we can think very much about what we can do to widen that window for us and for the other you know the young people that we're working with so that we stay in that more often and we don't push into that hyperaroused fight flight or that hypoaroused freeze and collapse because if the window tolerance is wider we can cope with more stress and less things are going to tip us outside of and what we want to do there is we really want to provide experience of comfort and joy in relationships. So this is a direct quote from the fabulous Dr. Dan um Dan Hughes who is the guy who developed the pace approach um and he you know when he was asked the question what's the most important thing we can do for children young people with a reduced window of tolerance he said actually give them more relational experiences of comfort and joy the more times we are co-regulating and doing comforting things with a a safe adult the wider our window of tolerance will get the more times that we are doing joyful exciting playful things in relationship with a trusting safe adult the more our window of tolerance will expand. So every single time you as a caring, supportive adult are providing comforting, co-regulating things like cooking, fun, chilling, and watching a movie, having a nice convers, you know, things that are comforting and and also playful, exciting things where you're playing together socially. Unfortunately, playing computer games doesn't really work. It has to be a social interaction of play. But that playing and that co-regulation in that is another great way of widening that window of tolerance over time. So that investment of widening a window of tolerance, remembering again from the fabulous Dr. and tradesman that every interaction is an intervention. It's lots of these little micro moments of safe relational interactions that will help expand that window of tolerance over time. So the more times we can have those micro moments. They will only be a few seconds long, but every time have a few seconds of micro moments of safe, peaceful interaction, that's going to be investment about widening that window of tolerance for a person that we're working with. And what we're thinking here is we're thinking about those um things that we can do to really help somebody learn to be self-regulating, too. Um, so we would also be wanting to practice and co-regulate. And I've already talked about the breathing. If we want to calm somebody, it's that kind of breathing in for four, breathing out for six type of stuff. And box breathing. If we want to energize somebody, it's more kind of breathing in for six, breathing out for two. Squeezing and release, rhythmical movement. Slow and heavy is to calm. Faster and lighter pace is to energize. There's also cognitive stuff that we can support people to do. There's sensory stuff that we can grounding things that we can do. And there's those beautiful relational things that we've been talking about throughout today that we can do. So some examples there on the screen and the idea being that we help people to build a toolkit. So again to widen their window of tolerance. Ideally we want that child or young person to know that when they are starting to feel things are stressful or difficult. They know some things that they can do, some things they can practice and of course they learn all of this stuff through practicing it with us. It's the practice that makes it permanent and it's the practice in co-regulation in relationships. So it is about us doing these things with children and young people repeatedly whether that's breath work or movement them learning that's something they can use and then then learning to be able to use that for themselves as a self-regulation independent healthy independence and technique rather than you know so lots and lots of co-regulation practice both proactively and responsively of those regulating activities is another great way of expanding people's window of tolerance and giving them agency and self-efficacy to be able to cope. the very last one. And I did say that I'd probably try and do this in half an hour um without talking too fast. I haven't quite achieved either of those things, but I'll forgive myself. Um curious, not furious. Um this is a Carl Young quote, one of my heroes, that thinking is difficult. That's why so many people judge. And and you know, when we catch ourselves judging, that's part of the human condition, right? We are brought up in our culture to be people that judge who's right, who's wrong, what's good, what's bad. So you know naturally our default position is likely to be going to judgment. We just have to catch ourselves. There's a wonderful stuff around nonviolent communication again from Marshall Rosenbergs. Lots of stuff on my website again there if you want to know more about nonviolent communication NVC. But he basically encourages to notice when we are being judging and switch into being curious rather than judging and try and understand when we're being curious. This lens of this person we're not judging them for getting it wrong and for making a choice to get it wrong. It's not that they can't. It's not that they won't do it and they're being willful. Our mindset is saying here is somebody who is struggling. Let's work out why they are struggling and what we can change in order to make them to be able to to manage better. We're therefore looking at the hidden factors. What's beneath the surface? Is it about fear? Is it about exhaustion? Is it sensory overload? Is it frustration? Is it unmet needs? Very often when we're looking at a young person that goes or an adult that goes into freeze and collapse, which is what we're thinking about, shutdown, it's often not feeling safe for whatever reason. So, what we'd want to think about there is that idea of what do they need? If the need which we're defaulting to very often is around helping them feel safe, then we want to think about Pookie's fabulous five domains of safety and in particular that one in the middle around emotional safety. It really is relationships, relationships, relationships. What can we do to help that young person feel safe in relationships over time so that they can come to us and get that co-regulating support and are less likely to go into that because that's the buffer against the dysregulation is having that safe regulating adult that can be there and they will spend less time. Therefore, when they have that safe adult presence, they have a wider window of tolerance, they'll spend less time in shutdown and over time they won't need to go protectively into that because they will feel safe enough to stay regulated. We also want to think about sensory, social, cognitive and physical. So again, thinking when we are reflecting afterwards about what might have happened for that young person, we might be just thinking about which of those were the things that were most, you know, the needs that were unmet for that young person. And very, very often it will be the emotional needs as one of those key parts. So it's relationships, relationships, relationships. And this is my last I promise before I kind of get into just the summary of the seven we've talked about is that over time what we want to remember here we are working and this is where I said it was a little bit of a misnomer calling this quick wins because these are things that we clearly don't want to get wrong we can make things worse but by doing these things over time consistently what we will find is we help that young person to reduce their fear um to reduce their overwhelm to feel more powerful and less powerless that hopelessness and helplessness and powerlessness can often come with that disregulation we want them to feel less alone that's probably the most important Important one of all, we want to feel as though we are there as an adult alongside them, supporting them, helping them, that fellow traveler as Louise Bomber would describe it. And we want to avoid any shame, which again, Pooky was making reference to earlier in terms of avoiding that judgment, us judging them, or when they are judging themselves, gently kind of challenging that for them. But that aloneeness is probably the most important part on that slide. So anything we can do to understand what's going on with that Charlie on person and double redouble our efforts to really go relationships relationships relationships and safe safety and trust in relationships is going to make the world of difference. Those are the seven things I've just done super