Hello and welcome to the Kappa Podcast.
My name is Matt. I'm the Senior Practitioner for
Kappa First Response and I'm joined today as ever by our
Founder and CEO, Jane Griffiths. Hi, Jane.
Hey Matt, how you doing? So lovely to be here with.
You with me face to face. I know in your lovely flat
sunny. It's a rare treat, isn't it?
Fantastic. It you know what, It is a rare
treat. Yeah, I think it.
It's so lovely to be together to record this.
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
It already feels a lot more real.
Yeah, Yeah. So this series is going to be
slightly different to what we've done previously, isn't it?
Do you want to say a little bit about about why we're doing this
series to begin with? Yeah.
Well, I mean, I guess our previous series that we we've
thought about, we've sort of been in conversation with or
we've been zooming and and speaking to particular people
about particular issues. This one is really designed for
families who feel a bit more isolated, whether that be via
location or through circumstances and their
experience, feel like they're unable to talk to people.
And we wanted to provide something that families could
access 24/7 regardless of their locations.
I also think it's really important to say that East
Sussex local authority sort of really commissioned us to do
this because they really wanted to support families living in
those rural outlying areas who found it really, really
difficult to get support. And we'll be offering, well, I
guess if we were to sit, Matt, and think about what would be
our top five or six strategies, we're sort of aiming to to sort
of think about those strategies for families, aren't we?
That's what the series is going to be about.
Yeah. So it's, it's a little bit more,
it's going to be a little bit, I mean, I think hopefully all, all
of our podcasts have been useful, but this is a bit more,
something a bit more tangible, a bit more solid that people can
use and put into practise. Yeah.
We're not thinking about, you know, this, these episodes
aren't for about us understanding what this issue
is. This is really let's go, what's
the support that we offer to families and let's share that,
Yeah. I think you said a minute ago
that these are like probably 5 or six of our top strategies
that we, we know are useful to quite a few different families
that we work with. But it's always really important
to say that nothing works all of the time.
And there isn't one thing that is going to work for every
single family. And if even if it works for that
family, it doesn't mean that it's going to work 100% of the
time. So it's just important that we
say that at the at the top, I think to say these are all ideas
that, you know, have a listen, keep it in mind.
Hopefully you think I'm going to give that a try.
But even if you think it's not going to work for me, it doesn't
feel quite right. Hopefully you'll still think
about the idea behind it. And even if you don't action
anything from it, you can think about why, why it might be
useful and why it might be important.
And hopefully there's some use in that as well.
Yeah. And and I think, you know, a
reminder that all of our work and all of our support to
families is tailored and bespoke.
You know, we speak to families and think what's happening for
them in their home and we can, you know, it could be that we
don't talk about any of these strategies, but generally what
we've found out is these strategies come into our support
at some point for families. And there will be somebody out
there listening to this and maybe think I can't, I can't get
on board with what Matt, I can't get on board with what that that
strategy that you've spoken about.
But I can really get on board with this other strategy.
And we we anticipate that and expect that.
I think what's important as well is that, you know, everything
and all everything we're going to be sharing on the in this
series, it's not necessary. It's not going to do any harm.
It's all about it's all relationship building.
And that's only a positive thing.
You may see things and we'll talk about that and what in one
of the episodes that we're going to be presenting about, you
know, what can happen if actually things do feel
different. My child has noticed something
different. What do I do then?
So, and we will we'll sort of address that weren't we want to
I think it's Episode 2 when we're thinking about our safety
Lanning. OK, so, so that's a little bit
about why we're doing it and you know, some of the things we're
going to be covering, but it's going to it's going to look a
little bit different from our other podcasts, right?
Yep, Yeah. So, you know, up until now it's
been us chatting, hasn't it, And having conversations.
Yeah. What we've decided to do with
this, which will look a little bit different, is the beginning
of every episode. We'll have a little explanation
around what we're doing. You know, this isn't about
explaining why this happens, because we've done that.
This is about sharing those strategies, how we would share
them with a family. So we're doing it separately.
So I'm going to be presenting three of them and thinking about
3 strategies and you're going to be presenting three of them and
support 3 strategies. But we're doing them solo.
So they won't have that opportunity of a back and forth.
And I think that that's going to be the main difference that
people will see. Yeah, and I think that's
hopefully will make it a little bit more useful because you can
follow along. It's not you're not listening to
a conversation like you're saying of us back and forth.
You're listening to us giving you a strategy as we would, you
know, in a session if, you know, as we were explaining it to you
and and kind of telling you why we're suggesting you do this,
what what the background is to it.
Is there anything else we've missed, Jane?
I think we, I don't think we have.
Hopefully we can just let's do it.
Let's. Go All right, let's get into it.
OK, so for the first one, we something called 3 phases and
it's, it's all about really understanding what happens when
we become dysregulated. Now, a lot of it is aimed at
thinking about what happens when your child becomes dysregulated,
but it relates to all of us. It's about being human,
essentially. It becomes more relevant when
you've got someone who is really struggling to regulate their
emotions. But I think it's valid for
everyone to to to think about. Well, I think it's probably fair
to say as well as we Co regulate as well, don't we?
So if somebody's starting to dysregulate, it's really normal
for us to start dysregulating too.
So of course it's, it's really helpful regardless of scenarios,
but particularly when we're, we're, you know, we've your
child is dysregulating what's going on for you.
And, and as we know, if your child is dysregulating or if one
person's become dysregulated, then if you have, if that then
triggers the other person, they become dysregulated and you have
two people dysregulated, that's going to lead to escalation.
So the idea being the more you understand about what's actually
going on, what you can, what you can do about it, what, what's
kind of going on in the brain at this at this moment, you've got
a better chance of being able to stay a little bit calm in
yourself and respond in a more helpful way.
Brilliant. OK.
Well, over to you, Matt. OK.
So this is the three faces and I first came across this in my
work with Doctor Annie Clements. And we're doing some work around
neurodiversity, but it's it, I think it relates to everyone as
well. And it's useful for all of us to
think about what's kind of going on when we become dysregulated.
It's quite, you know, it, it can be quite simple.
And that's, that's for a reason. Because when things are
difficult, when we're in a heightened situation, you know,
when there's an escalation happening, we don't want to have
to think about really complicated, I don't know,
complicated theories or abstract ideas so much, you know.
So we, we kind of used some visuals with this as well to
help it, I guess make a bit more sense really.
So yeah, like I say, it's really quick and easy way to visualise
where you're at, where your child or your children are AT
and emotionally and the most helpful way to respond so you
can de escalate a situation because that's always our first
priority is to de escalate. You know, de escalation is the
best way of keeping everyone safe.
So, you know, like I said in the moment, we want to keep things
as simple and as straightforward as possible.
So, you know, with that in mind, I'd like you to draw if you can
follow along with this, or you can just look, but if you're
following along, I'd like to draw three like emoji faces on a
page. First one's going to be a :) or
a happy face, second one would be like a sad or a kind of
grumpy looking face. And then the third one is sort
of a flat or a neutral looking face, just with a, a line
straight through the middle. Yeah, for the mouth that is.
So for the first one, I'd like you to draw a dotted line
straight through the middle of that face so it divides the top
and the bottom half. So that's for the :) for the
second one, I'd like you to draw a line directly above the face,
and then the third one, a line directly below the face.
So you should have three faces :) sad face, neutral, flat
looking face, first one line through the middle, second one a
line above, third one line below.
So these three faces indicate our three main emotional states
that we're going to be talking about.
First one is when we're feeling more balanced or calm, a bit
more like ourselves. Second one is when we are
dysregulated or, you know, maybe when someone's having a
meltdown. And the third one is when we're
masking and we think about masking in terms of
neurodivergent people a lot. But in a way, we can, you know,
we all do it to some degree. You know, if we can think of it
in terms of putting a brave face on a situation, which is
something probably most parents who are listening to this will
have experienced quite a lot. You know, someone goes, oh, how
you doing? You know, yeah, yeah, I'm all
right. I'm all right.
But really, you know, you, you're having a really, really
tough time. So you can't, you can't let that
person know that because you're you're worried you'll be
rejected if you respond, you know how you're actually
feeling. So that's kind of what we're
thinking about in terms of face #3 OK, so let's look at that
line across all three of them. First one lines in the middle.
Now, this is quite a simplistic way of looking at it, but like I
say, hopefully that makes it a bit more useful to you in the
moment. Anything above that line is the
thinking part of the brain. OK.
Anything below that line is the feeling part of the brain.
So the thinking part of the brain is, as it suggests, the
part of our brain that is responsible for our thoughts.
You know who we think of in terms of, you know, what, what
we think of in terms of who we are, You know, maybe our
thoughts for the future, you know, hopes for the future, our
memories of the past and our things we like, things we don't
like our, you know, our passions, things that, you know,
ways we show our creativity, all that kind of stuff.
That's more coming from our thinking part of the brain.
And the feeling part of the brain is more, as the name
suggests, how we feel. So that can be emotionally or in
terms of our sensory input. You know, this is I'm feeling
hot or this jump is itchy or you know, our senses.
So those kind of feelings, so light sound like I say,
temperature, touch, all that, all that kind of stuff.
So when those parts of the brain are in balance, we're feeling
OK. So that's, that's phase number
one. That's where we're at.
Essentially. We've got, we know how we're
feeling emotionally, we know how we're feeling physically.
And then we've and then we've got a good balance.
So we've got all those that kind of raw information coming from
our feeling part of the brain. And then the thinking brain is
online so it can process all of that information.
So we, we understand. OK, I'm feeling really hot.
I can take off a jumper or I'm feeling really worried because,
you know, that friend said that thing to me.
I'm not sure what I should do about it.
Or whatever it might be. We've got input from the feeling
part of the brain. And then the thinking part of
the brain makes sense of it stops us becoming overwhelmed.
Now if you look at the face #2 and that line starts creeping
up. Now, if if we start coming more
from that feeling part of the brain, we have more input from
that side, it will push that line higher.
So, and that can be due to, you know, emotions.
So if we're dealing with a lot of difficult emotions or really
powerful emotions that can lead to dysregulation, we can find it
hard to regulate our emotions. So it can be if we're, you know,
dealing with a lot of anxiety or a lot of stress or you know,
even sometimes excitement, that's going to push that line
higher. Now, if that line goes higher,
that means we're responding much more from the feeling part of
the brain. But that also means we've got
less thinking brain online. So our ability to think
rationally, use that thinking part of the brain is reduced.
And we can't have all thinking and all feeling at the same
time. It has to be in balance.
So more of the feeling means less of the thinking, which
means as we become dysregulated, you know, and as that line gets
higher and higher, we become more and more dysregulated.
We're going to see more irrational behaviours start
making unable to make good choices because we're running
from that thinking part of the brain which isn't responsible
for making good choices. It isn't responsible for making
rational choices. It just knows how it feels in
this moment. It's not thinking about the
consequences to this action or how we got here in the 1st
place. It just knows right now I feel
really angry or right now I feel really upset and that's its job
basically. Now if it gets right to the top,
that's when we have, you know, become completely dysregulated,
full meltdown. At that stage, there's not much
we can do except kind of wait it out, help that person to be as
safe, help ourselves to be as safe as possible until it, until
it kind of it comes down again. But the key is noticing the
signs as that line starts to rise.
So that's, that's phase #2 that's when we, when we're
dysregulated. And then phase #3 is like I say,
masking. So the idea of showing the
outside world what we think the outside world needs to see in
order for us to be accepted. So a lot of neurodivergent
people will experience this a lot of the time or do this a lot
because their experiences, if they are authentically
themselves, if they respond to how they're actually feeling,
they will not be accepted, They'll be rejected.
And that's not safe. So they learn to mask.
And like I, you know, I said earlier on it, it may be that,
you know, again, you're having an awful time with your child
and someone goes, how you doing? And you go, yeah, you know,
yeah, I'm all right. Yeah.
Getting through when really, you know, it's, it's all kind of
falling apart a bit. And if you've experienced that,
you'll probably know just how draining and how tiring that is.
And so what's going on when, when we're at that face #3 is
you'll see the line is directly at the bottom.
That means we are suppressing how we're truly feeling and
we're trying to think our way out of it almost.
So we use an awful lot of thinking brain power when we're
at that face #3 so instead of just feeling how we feel and
responding authentically, we suppress that.
And then we think, well, no, how should I be feeling?
OK, if I was feeling that way, how would I then respond?
OK, so I'll respond in that way. So it's quite a complicated
mental task just to be just to kind of be living, just getting
by. And for lots of children, this
is, this is what happens when they're at school.
They spend a whole day masking a lot, especially for
neurodivergent people or those, you know, have experienced
trauma. This can happen.
This can happen a lot. But like I said, we may all, all
recognise it. So those are our three faces,
you know, face #1 balanced, face #2 dysregulated, face #3
masking. Now, if we spend a lot of time
at face #3 what will happen is, well, we can, we can lose touch
with ourselves where we really are, which can be really
disorientating, really upsetting, lead to anxiety and
depression, lots of different, you know, different mental
health difficulties. But also what happens if we do
too much, spend too much time at that phase #3 we are burning
through those three thinking brain resources.
And when they're gone, the feeling brain takes over.
So what we see a lot of in the families we work with, and this
is for both parents and, and children, is that they're in
this kind of really vicious cycle of jumping from being at
phase #3 suppressing how they're really feeling until they can't
do it anymore. And then they shoot up to phase
#2 there's a, there's a big outburst or there's a big
meltdown. And then there may be feelings
of guilt or shame, which are really difficult emotions to
carry, which then pushes their line higher again.
When, when we've calmed down again because of those feelings
of guilt or shame or other other difficult emotions that you're
carrying or maybe other sensory difficulties, that starts
pushing that line higher again, means we're, we're starting to
get closer to dysregulation again.
And but then we try and suppress it.
We try and mask, we try and think our way out of it, hold
that in until we can't anymore. We burn through those thinking
brain resources and it happens again.
So we get into this cycle, like I say, of dysregulation and
masking and jumping between the two faces, two and three.
But then we never actually get to phase #1 or very rarely.
So, you know, we're going to talk a little bit more about a
good way of helping your child to get to phase #1A little bit
more regularly. But I think that the key thing
for this is that being able to recognise or being able to
visualise well where is this line from my child, where is
this line from for myself is really useful.
Because if you can go right, the line is rising, I see that line
rising. And you'll see that because you
start seeing more irrational behaviour from your child, you
know, they may become more irritable.
They will show you they're not, they're not regulating their
emotions, they're not happy, they're not able to control
themselves. That's a surefire sign that that
line is rising up. And now it's really important
that if we recognise that that line's rising up, that we
respond in a useful way to try and deescalate.
So thinking about those thinking brain resources, we don't one of
the one of the thinking brains jobs is to regulate the
emotions, try and make sense of what's going on from this, this
feeling part of the brain. Now what we don't want to do is
if that line is starting to rise, is take away those
thinking brain resources by engaging that thinking brain
with lots of conversation, asking questions, you know,
really engaging in conversation that that can be quite demanding
to, to process. First of all, you know,
processing language. We're taking that thinking brain
energy away, then we're trying to interpret, you know, what's
being said, try and interpret any other meaning into it and
thinking about how we feel about that, think about how we want to
respond. This is all taking energy away
from that thinking brain's job of just regulating emotion
again. So what, what we, what we need
to try and do is it's not reason with an emotional brain.
Don't try and make that part of the brain do something it isn't
designed to do. So if you see that line is
rising, if you can see someone becoming dysregulated, give give
that a thinking brain space. Because once that line has come
down, once we have this, you know, once we've been able to,
to de escalate, help that person from a place of dysregulation
back to a place where they're able to manage what's going on
for themselves emotionally, then we can talk.
Then we've got a thinking brain online that we can have a
conversation with. But before that, we're what
we're going to do is likely lead, you know, push, push that
person into further dysregulation, lead to further
escalation of conflict. So, you know, that is
essentially the three phases, I guess that the key points again
are really keeping an awareness of where you are, where is your
line? If you know your, you can feel
yourself, your line is going up here.
You know that your thinking brain isn't working at optimum
levels. So what can you do to step away
to regulate yourself so you can come back and make a, you know,
maybe a more useful decision about them, the way you respond
and if you can see that your child, you know, that line is
rising up for your child, what can you do to give their
thinking brain more space and not, you know, not escalate the
the situation further? So, so that is the three phases.
I hope that's been useful. Like I said, we're going to,
we're going to come back to thinking about some things you
can do that are going to help to bring that, bring that line down
and help your child get to face #1A bit more of the time.
Because it's really important to think about the fact that at
face #3, we're not able to make any sense of how we're feeling
really because we're suppressing it can't really get close to how
we're actually feeling. We're pushing it down, trying to
think our way out of how we're feeling, which doesn't work at
face #2 we're, we're just completely ruled by how we're
feeling. We're not, we're not thinking
about it. We're we're just feeling it.
The, the, the feeling part of the brain doesn't do thinking,
it just does feeling right. So we're not able to, to make
any sense of how we're actually feeling.
So that means that if we spend all our time at phase #3 and
phase #2 we're never actually able to process, make sense of
how we're feeling and move on from it.
So that's why it's really important that we do help
ourselves and our children to get to phase #1 so we can start
to process it, so we can start to let let some things go and we
can start to make sense of, you know, what's going on for
ourselves. So that's phase #3 that's the
three phases. I hope it's useful for you.
If you have any questions, you know, feel free to get in
contact with us, send us an e-mail, you know, look on the
website, maybe some more information there that may be
useful for you. You can look into Doctor Annie
Clements's work as well. As I said, that's, you know,
this is where I first came across it.
And yeah, hopefully that's useful and we'll we'll talk to
you next time.