Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Ask Mayim Anything #5: Can Therapy Make You Worse Off?

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

It’s another episode of Ask Mayim Anything! Mayim answers your questions about her tattoos and the meanings behind them, food service on sets, and she reveals the strangest place she’s ever slept. She breaks down alexithymia, agoraphobia and when to seek help for it, how dyslexic brains differ from neurotypical brains, and the science behind startle reflexes. Mayim tackles your parenting questions, from combating overstimulation as a parent and parent-child attachment styles, to coping with parents who don’t want to be grandparents to your kids and tips of parenting older adopted children. She also reflects on whether or not therapy can actually make you worse off and the purpose of revisiting trauma. BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It really sucks to be someone who's sensitive to over-stimulation when you have kids, because kids thrive on overstimulation. I think you should count yourself lucky if you end up with kids who don't like a lot of noise and chaos. God gave me two of those, I think, because my higher power was like, this lady can't take much more. That being said, I have found a lot of regret around times that I didn't even realize what was going on for me was overstimulation and what it sounded like. was like, shut up.

Like, stop. Be quiet. Go outside. Like, I don't want to hear it. This is my advocacy for the sooner you can get help with things like this. If you have ADHD, if you have a history of trauma and you have a startle reflex that makes you really, really sensitive to sound. If you're just a highly sensitive person, learn tactics as early as you can.

And even if you feel like you've already messed it up because you're already a mom, there are still things you can learn. It's my and Biologics breakdown. She's going to break it down. for you because you know she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break. Hi, I'm Miami-Biolic and welcome to a Thursday edition of my breakdown. I'm flying solo today.

And today is Ask MyManything Day. And let me tell you, based on these questions, you really do think you can ask me anything and you do. And here are some of the things we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about my tattoos and the meanings behind them. We're going to talk about the strangest place. ever slept. How does craft service work on sets? What is up with dyslexic brains? What's a lexathymia? It's the inability to express emotions, but you're going to want to hear all about it.

Let's talk about agoraphobia. Two of my favorite questions. Can therapy actually make you worse? And what's the point of revisiting traumatic experiences? Ways that you can combat over stimulation as a mom, how to cope with grandparents who don't want to be grandparents for attachment styles and how do they relate to parenting, tips on parenting an older adopted child, and what the heck is up with my am having a startle reflex, and where does that come from? So let's get started.

We'll start with some fun ones. Can you please do a show and tell if your tattoos? Well, Ellen, that seems a little bit intimate, but I will talk about them a little bit. I have a cherry blossom on the back of my neck, which usually doesn't show, except if I wear my hair up, and once I cut my hair short,

towards the end of Big Bang theory, it definitely showed. That cherry blossom is a frequent image in Japanese literature and Japanese art. The cherry blossom blooms very briefly throughout the year, and it is exceptional when it does bloom. But you kind of spend the whole year waiting for it to bloom. So the cherry blossom is sort of a symbol of the fleeting notion of happiness and the need to both hold on to its beauty and also. embrace what for much of our existence is not always beautiful or joyful. So that's one. Second one is the Hokasai wave, the Great Wave off Kanagawa, is a woodblock print by Hokasai.

It was created in 1831. And this was a piece of art that my father really, really loved. It was always up in my house, my whole life. No matter where we moved, there was always the Hokasai wave. and my name means water and I spent a very long time thinking about getting my first tattoo. I was a grown-up. I actually had a close friend of mine whose name is Hawk Chate design it based on the Hokka-Sai wave. And he created a temporary tattoo so that I could walk around with it for the better part of a year. I thought about it. So I did have it done.

It's a very large piece. It is around my whole body. and it took two different sittings, and it's really big. And we talked about, like, should there be something funny where the waves meet like Moses with the staff? And then we decided, no. Those are my tattoos, Ellen. What is the strangest place I've ever slept? Kristen wants to know.

Well, Kristen, I want to know why you want to know that. But this is not an Ask Kristen anything episode. I've slept a lot of strange places. I did a military-style camp program the summer before I got married. And it was with soldiers who had just come to America from Israel. And one of our exercises was to sleep alone in the middle of a dark field. And what was most unusual about this is that you didn't get to see what it looked like in the daytime, meaning we had activities and did. all sorts of things. And when it got dark, we were walked by our counselors, as it were. We were

walked by our counselors to the place that we would be sleeping. So you had no idea really where you were or what was around you. It was scary, but in a healthy and character-building way. And I thought I would never sleep. But I did. I went to sleep. It was just me and my sleeping bag. And no one was around me. We were placed far from each other. And then when I woke up in the morning. It was really beautiful. And we were retrieved and reconnected with people. So the place was right outside of Malibu. That's not what was strange. But the fact that I was alone in the middle of a field in darkness was very, very strange. Joy asks, do you have to keep your vegan cheese away from your vegan meats in order to stay kosher? No, Joy. Cute question. There is a law of kosherness.

that you separate your dairy and your meat. And they can be in the same refrigerator, but you can eat vegan meat and cheese together. Actually, the only way that I have eaten, like, a cheeseburger, and I'm putting it in quotes, because it wasn't real meat and it wasn't real cheese, that's something I had not really eaten because I was raised in a kosher home,

at least for part of my childhood. So, no, you don't have to separate vegan cheese and vegan meat. For the same reason that you can eat, like, vegan shrimp or fake kosher shrimp. Not something I'm interested in at all. But anyway, that is the vegan cheese and meat story. Chevas asks,

can you tell us a little bit more about how crafty food service on sets work? Well, every set is a little bit different. Back in the day, in the 80s when I started acting, craft service was handled by the props department. Now, the props department was usually two kind of rough and rugged guys, and their idea of craft service

back in those days was like pretzels and M&Ms and like soda. But craft service over the years has become its own department on sets. And, you know, it often depends on what the director wants or what the actors need. But craft service is usually a table set up that has all sorts of snacks that are easy to eat and fast to eat because that's usually what crew needs for small breaks, things that can be eaten with your hands. and usually more elaborate things are served around lunchtime. Craft service sometimes handles also meals like lunch or dinner, if that happens on a set or breakfast.

But essentially, craft service should have every kind of fruit that is available. They've started having healthier things now, so you can get nuts, and you can get, you know, vegan things and gluten-free things. When we had craft service on Big Bang Theory, Jeanette was this amazing, amazing cook, and she would bring over little parfays. in tiny little things with a baby plastic spoon, and it was so cute. So it really depends on how creative the craft service person wants to be. But it's a really fun position. Often craft service is also responsible for first aid. So that's also the person you go to if you hurt something. Just how it works.

Let's move on to some neuroscience questions, shall we? How are dyslexic brains different from typical brains? I've been struggling with my neurodivergent brain and finding where I belong. How does someone with a round brain fit in a world for square brains? Well, Jamie, there are many ways to answer the few questions that you asked. So there's a general notion in terms of neurodivergent brains that can include things like dyslexic brains, but it's a much more general term when we talk about neurodivergent brains. And, you know, the short answer is you can't fit a round peg into a square hole, or a square peg into a round hole, meaning, you know, celebrating differences is, it's not just

lip service. We actually need to understand that our human experience is different than that of every other person. And while there are similarities, for people whose brains generally work different than, quote, the norm, there's going to be challenges. It's going to be hard. One of the things that I find really encouraging is the level of conversation that people are having about this at all. The notion that we can even understand that people learn differently, people think differently, people organize the world differently. That's really important. And the ability of people who don't think, quote, differently, the fact that they know that that is also something that exists is also important. So it's not just important for people who are neurodivergent to know that they are. It's important

for people who are not to understand that those people exist. And that's something that did not exist, even 10 years ago, I'd say. In terms of how dyslexic brains are actually different one of the distinctions that I find helpful is to note that dyslexia is not a disorder. It's not a condition. I guess you can call it a condition, but I think of dyslexic brains as brains that simply have different circuitry, different wiring. It's not significant enough that you cannot function. And there are people with varying levels of dyslexia who function at incredible levels.

But the thing about the brain, when it has to learn to read, is it's incorporating a lot of different information. It's not just looking at words and saying them. What it is is it's tracking words. It's having them go through circuitry in the brain that converts that to an understanding that then converts that into speech. And so all of those places, all of those circuits, there are opportunities for differences. And that's where we get dyslexic brains. There are differences in that kind of circuitry. So I think it's important to note that while there may be differences in other brain regions, cerebral cortex differences have been noted in differences in the thalamus, which is a relay center in the brain. The general notion is that people who are dyslexic can read, can comprehend,

can communicate about what they read. It just involves kind of finding other ways, kind of shortcuts, ways to sort of say to the circuitry, I'm going to get around you. So that's kind of a general way that I hope is helpful to think about the dyslexic brain. Mymbialx breakdown is supported by superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful.

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but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiotics breakdown to help support the show. We have an excellent request from, I believe it is pronounced, hell or could be heal, H-E-L, I'm asked to break down Alexathymia. And when I saw this question in our Ask My Am Anything bucket, I got really excited because I have very recently been learning a bit

about Alexithymia. So, Alexa thymia is a term that means the inability to kind of communicate emotions. Now, I want to make a really, really, like a shred of a distinction. The notion is not that you can't feel the feelings. It's that you cannot communicate the feelings. And you might be thinking, what? Often in science, we use the most extreme example of something to demonstrate something like a lexathymia. And I'm going to give you kind of a difficult example. So there are people who have experienced certain kinds of trauma, and when you ask them to describe either what happened or how they feel about it, they literally can't. I've been specifically reading about this in Bessel van der Kalk's book, The Body Keeps the Score. And Alexa Thymia is described in cases

where people can describe their abuse, but they don't have any emotion connected to it. And the idea is not that they're pushing down the emotion, because sometimes if someone asks you about your trauma, you don't want to be like, oh my God, this is what happened is so hard. You sometimes will just report the facts. This is not that. This is someone who does not have access to the emotional content attached to the trauma. Sometimes when doctors will ask these people to talk more about what they're feeling, they will report, I don't know. And recently, my therapist has been telling me to take every time I say, I don't know, as a part of me that doesn't want to. know. If that doesn't blow your mind, I don't know what will. It sure blew my mind. So when people

with Alexa thymia are asked, what are you feeling or what do you feel about that? When their answer is, I don't know, it literally means an inability to have access to those emotions. It's often because it is too enormous and it's a protective mechanism that this person has adopted. There are ways to break through it. And we've talked about a lot of those here. A lot of transendarmine, a lot of mental experiences can help people break through that. A lot of spiritual experiences can help break through that. When you hear about people who have experiences with psilocybin or with ayahuasca or with ketamine in therapeutic environments, often what happens is this gets broken down. So really, really fascinating, fascinating protective mechanism that we can adapt as humans. Sometimes you'll

also find elixothymia in things like Alzheimer's disease or Huntington's disease or Parkinson's disease, but really in any chronic condition, things like multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, you will sometimes see this. And the question is, you know, are there genetic predispositions to getting elixothymia or having alexothymia? I want to just emphasize that alexothymia is a state. It doesn't have to be a permanent state. And please don't confuse it with, I don't want to feel or I don't want to talk about my feelings. Alexothymia is literally an inability to describe or feel emotions, usually related to something significant. Great question. Also being asked to break down agoraphobia. This comes from Lisa.

So agoraphobia is the fear, typically we think of agoraphobia as the fear of going out, like going outside. And, you know, if you've seen any sort of sensationalized depiction of this, You know, it's usually a very exaggerated version of agoraphobia, but many people can be agoraphobic and still go out, but there's a tremendous amount of anxiety associated with that. And agoraphobia is one of those things if untreated or not addressed, it can grow to the point that people literally do not leave their homes, which is obviously very dangerous. What happens in agoraphobia is a fear of what happens when you leave the home. So this can also be something that we see when you also have anxiety or if someone has obsessive compulsive disorder, you can find some of these things may group

together. There are many reasons why people may become agoraphobic. There's not kind of one like this is how it happens. Or here's the gene for agoraphobia. I know that would be much easier if we could say like, oh, well, let's just fix the gene. But it's very, very complicated, this kind of condition and this kind of presentation. I also want to mention that agoraphobia is something that can often start small. And if you start flagging, not just a lack of desire to leave the house, because that can happen with depression, it can happen with panic disorder. If you start tracking that there's something specifically ominous or feels like is looming

when you think about going out, that's a really good time to get help if you have not already. and describe very specifically as specifically as you can to a therapist or a licensed professional what you're experiencing because agoraphobia is the kind of thing you want to kind of nip it in the bud see if you can figure out where it's trying to grow so that it doesn't. We have two questions next that are really, really difficult. They're so difficult that I almost didn't want to answer them, but I'm going to. The first question comes from Jimena, and I'm going to combine it with a question from, Cecilia. So first, Jimenez's question. Can therapy actually make you worse off? A friend mentioned

that our bodies have defense mechanisms for a reason. We need to function, so we store pain away from our awareness. My friend says it's not possible to get rid of pain just by talking about it. She says she knows many people who've ruined their lives with therapy. Is this a thing? Well, Jimena, yes, and let's listen to Cecilia's question. What's the point of revisiting traumatic or unresolved experiences. Why can't the brain just file it away and forget like it does with what I had for breakfast? What is the neuroscience behind these things manifesting in acting irrationally or back pain or other things? Well, these are two really, really hard questions and really important questions. I'm going to start with Jimenez first. First of all, your friend is wrong,

sister. Your friend is wrong. And while Sigmund Freud may have been wrong about a lot of things like your friend is wrong. Freud did discover that when people have space held for them, that's kind of the fancy term, when people sit with a therapist and a therapist holds space for them, something would shift in his patients. And he couldn't explain it either, but it was the basis for kind of what we know

as psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. And the notion is something that we do understand a bit more now than in Freud's time. when you are alone with something painful, it is different than when you are not alone with it. And the notion is if you have a relationship with someone who is trained to hold space for you. And what that means is a therapist is not there to be like, OMG, some might. But generally speaking, the practice of therapy is not for them to freak out. It's not for them to try and fix it.

And in many cases, much to my dismay, I've been in therapy for almost 25 years, they also can't just direct you to do what they think you should do because that's not how it works. So a therapist is someone who is holding space without judgment, even without specific enthusiastic reflection. They are holding space with knowledge about the structure of the brain, the psyche, the mind, and the soul. When that person hears what happens for you, and in many, cases will reflect on it, give more insight, point out things that you may not see that they are trained to see. It's not a best friend. Things that they have been trained to see and look for, that is where this process of people getting better by talking can happen. Now, your friend is not

wrong in that for some people simply talking about it does not make it better. Why? Because there are more complicated things often going on than can just be fixed by talking about it. Okay. Okay. So many people have had experiences with therapists that they did not feel comfortable with, that they did not feel safe with, and guess what, there are bad therapists. So you can't take someone's experience anecdotally and generalize it about everything. That's just not how science works. It's not how the world works, right? If one person's like, I dated a guy and he was a real jerk. I would never say, well, no one should date guys because that guy was a jerk, right?

So if someone has a bad experience in therapy, that's a completely different thing. And that can really F you up. I'm going to be honest, there are bad therapists and there are bad matches. Sometimes if you're with a therapist that reminds you in a way that you don't even realize of, let's say, your abuser or your mom or your dad in ways that are damaging, you can actually get into an unhealthy relationship with your therapist. And guess what? Therapists are people too.

If you remind them of some issue that they haven't worked out in their training, you can have a really bad experience because your therapist wasn't equipped to handle it. This feels like a good time to mention that this is one of the reasons that people have credentials. And this is one of the reasons why a lot of people are kind of persnickety about like, well, what did they study and who did they study with? and did they do a thesis or did they do research? A therapist who is not trained to appropriately hold space can harm a patient. So I want to say that your friend's not wrong,

but your friend may be speaking from experiences that are not accurate to what the therapeutic process is supposed to be. So the second part that I wanted to tackle Jimena is our bodies have defense mechanisms for a reason. 100% your friend is right. We need to function, yes. so we have to store pain away from our awareness. This is where it gets a little bit shady.

So many horrible things happen to many people. And yes, we need to be able to function so our body will develop coping mechanisms, defense mechanisms and protective mechanisms. Sometimes those can be compartmentalized, but more often than not, they actually are not compartmentalized. They are part of our existence

in ways that we're not consciously aware. So again, we learn from trauma studies, people who have a strong desire to run away from an abusive situation will often hold pain in their body. And it's a primitive part of your brain that is trying to tell you to run. But this is one of the reasons that Cecilia asks, how can bad things contribute to body pain? That is one example where Vandercock and people who are in the trauma world have realized that we can hold things specifically in our body, in our somatic experience that for some people will start making itself known in our lives. I want to move on to Cecilia's question, but I also want to point out, Jimena,

the statistics are not on the side of what your friend is saying, because we have a world, and this is described in Gabour Maté's book, The Myth of Normal. We have a world that we live in in a particular Western culture. We have a culture that we live in that seems to think that it is reasoned, for many people, many hundreds of thousands of people to suffer from conditions that we now know are related to psychological features, dietary features, the way that we take care of our body, mind, and spirit contributes to what is essentially a medical crisis in this country. The number of people on medications, the number of people needing support in ways that go beyond just the

medications that doctors prescribe. So I don't want to, like, be that stats person, but the fact is we are not well compartmentalizing what's going on. And the amount of trauma that people experience is enormous. And when I was growing up and we would start learning about rape statistics, one of the things they would always say is these are just the rapes that are reported, right? think of that for every kind of abuse that we know can happen. And the things that we see reported are showing that we have always had a problem in our culture of abuse, of sexual abuse, of physical abuse, of emotional abuse, of spousal abuse, of harassment. The Me Too movement brought a lot of this out. These are issues that our culture has always held. And the truth is we're

just not doing a great job of holding them. And we can see that in how people are interacting in conditions of related to loneliness, you know, depression and isolation. COVID also brought a lot of this out. So I'm going to go on to Cecilia's question, which I've sort of tipped off a little bit. And I know this is heavy, but you're doing great. Hang in there, people. What's the point of revisiting traumatic or unresolved experiences? I've already sort of indicated a little bit. Traumatic experiences can be processed. But if we have, we have a lot of, have not resolved them if we have not had the proper support and the proper access to even education about what trauma does to our body, mind, and spirit, we will eventually live with

later effects of that. So one of the more commonly talked about aspects of traumatic or unresolved experiences is, again, a hard one. Women who have been sexually abused have very high rates of problems in the region of the body that is hurt. So this is not to say that every woman with endometriosis or with ovarian issues or cysts or things like that. That's not to say that every woman with those diagnoses has been sexually abused, but what we know is that for women who are sexually abused, that is a vulnerable place in the body. That's an example of something that we didn't use to connect to any experience. We used to say like, oops, you've got this too bad. Let's treat it. Or let's give you medication. But what we're now understanding is that the mind and the body literally

are connected. And so as we see more and more the diagnoses that many of us have been given, we see that those unresolved experiences, those traumatic experiences that we've been told to shove away to put aside, they actually have an impact on not only our mental health, but our physical health as well. The brain does have a lot of power, has a power to file things away, just like you said, like it does with your breakfast. But more often than not, there are experiences that are not filed away in a way that we're not revisiting them in some way or another. For some people, things like dissociative identity disorder and other dissociative and depersonalization features will show up to protect from very, very painful things. But I think that the notion,

that many of us were told to just like, suck it up. Like, that's how parenting was then. We have a different understanding of psychology now. And what we know is that revisiting those things, especially for people who are struggling, if you are struggling at work, if you're struggling in your personal relationships, if you drink or smoke pot or take edibles or do other drugs in a way that feels like they are running your life, that might be an indication that there's something in there that you're trying to cover up.

You know, in 12-step programs, we call it the God-shaped hole. You can fill it with food. You can fill it with sex. You can fill it with work. You can fill it with shopping. You can fill it with alcohol, drugs. There's usually that hole is there, usually, for some reason. And I do happen to believe that everyone has something.

Gabor Mante talks about lowercase tea or big tea trauma. We all have it. And even if you were told your parents got divorced, big deal, get over it, or everybody was hit, get over it. What we now know is that that stuff lives in our body and it follows us into pretty much every adult relationship that we have. I'd like to mention David Rico's book, How to Be an Adult in Relationships, because he talks a lot specifically about how unresolved issues from our childhood can follow us into unhealthy patterns as adults. So I hope I didn't just super bum you out. These are great questions and they're really hard questions to answer, but I hope that that's been helpful. Kirsten asks, let's go to a question about moms.

Kirsten asks, how can moms combat overstimulation, especially around a ton of noise or clutter? Well, you know what, Kirsten? It really sucks to be someone who's sensitive to overstimulation when you have kids, because kids thrive on overstimulation. I think you should count yourself lucky if you end up with kids who don't like a lot of noise and chaos. God gave me two of those, I think,

because my higher power was like, this lady can't take much more. That being said, I have found a lot of regret around times that I didn't even realize what was going on for me was over-stimulation and what it sounded like was like, shut up, like, stop, be quiet, go outside, like, I don't want to hear it. This is my advocacy for the sooner you can get help with things like this. If you have ADHD, if you have a history of trauma and you have a startle reflex that makes you really, really sensitive to sound. If you're just a highly sensitive person, learn tactics as early as you can. And even if you feel like you've already messed it up because you're already a mom,

there are still things you can learn. So for me, I literally would limit the amount of time that I went certain super loud places. I'm grateful that my ex-husband likes Disneyland and likes amusement parks, and that was something that he would do with the kids more than I would. You know, even the mall can be really overstimulating if you're a person who's easily distracted or struggles or lives with ADHD. You know, I had to learn that there's a certain amount of language that when my kids were old enough, I could explain to them. I would tell my kids, and I still tell my kids, like, this is hard for mama. It's hard for mama.

And they also give me a really hard time because I have to go up and down every single aisle of the supermarket. it's the only way that I can make sense of the supermarket is if I go up and down every single aisle. So it's something that as they've gotten older, they're more used to. I've worn earplugs places. I'm not going to lie. Like, I'm that lady who sometimes just like needs to not have a lot of sound. And I will remove myself from situations if need be. I can't even like go to the movies if people are talking because it's so hard for me to focus. So imagine children and children's movies. Makes me crazy. Like I would want to run. ring the neck of sweet five-year-olds who were just like screaming at the screen.

So anyway, it's hard. But I will say that there are practical ways that you can, you know, try and desensitize yourself. And if you haven't gotten help or assistance or pointers or even cognitive behavioral therapy for some features of ADHD or trauma, that can help a lot. But practicing self-compassion is very, very important, knowing that you cannot force a square peg into a round hole. And also having language around it that doesn't make your kids feel like you're apologizing for being you because that's another thing you don't want to do, especially if you're going to have conversations with your kids about it. You don't want to be like, mama's such a mess.

I mean, mama is kind of a mess sometimes. But you want to come from it from a positive place of like, I know what is healthy for me. And it's really good for you to know what's healthy for you. And I'm going to give you an example. Like, mama cannot be at this particular, you know, party for four hours. She can be there for two hours or she can drop you off and she can come back. So you want to also not make your kids feel like it's bad or wrong if you are hypersensitive because we want them to both have compassion for others and also for themselves. Heather, oh Heather, Heather says, both sets of her children's grandparents, meaning her parents and I guess her in-laws, don't make an effort to be in her kids' lives. One of the grandparents

says he just doesn't want to do the grandparenty thing. She said that they like buying stuff for them and handing over money, but they really need time with their grandparents. How should you react to this? Well, Heather, you can react however you gosh darn please, but you're likely not going to change the situation. So let's deal with both of those separately. In terms of how you should react, you should be annoyed, you should be frustrated, you should be, I don't know, you might feel sorry for yourself, like, because you should. And when I say that this is how you should react, I don't mean that's how you should react to the grandparents. I'm saying you have every right to be like, this isn't fair.

Other people have this and I don't and it sucks. I want you to feel all those feelings. However, people give exactly what they can. Forcing people to interact when they tell you they don't want to is going to hurt one person the most and that is you. So yes, your children do need time with their grandparents, but they actually need time with grandparents who want to spend time with them in the ways that are meaningful for them.

You may not have that and that sucks. It sucks. I'm not going to tell you it doesn't. Part of me feels like it's nice that they do want to buy stuff and in some cases give them money. Like those are things that also, you know, when you think about us as a community raising children, we do need support and resources and you are getting that. Some people do not get that.

I'm not telling you you shouldn't also feel crummy about the other part. but I think for you, this might be a place to dig into with some therapy because I have a feeling there might be other issues here, but I could be wrong. For you, you really want to be able to figure out how can you be appropriately grateful and model politeness and not have your resentment, which is completely justified, poison the relationship between you and these parents. And I think it's also really important as much as possible for children not to pick up. up on their parents' frustration with grandparents. I know it's hard. I've caught myself with this. My kids have reminded me, like, we don't want to hear you interacting with Bubby that way. Or like, that doesn't feel good to be around. So be really careful how much of that consciously or unconsciously is making its way into interactions. Also, as your kids get older, you might find this shifts.

Some grandparents are just better with older kids. And there might be ways that you can find activities that do work better. Sometimes activities with grandparents who aren't super grandparenty is like going somewhere and hanging out so the kids can play and you can have a meal. There are these outdoor malls in certain places where there's like restaurants where there's like a play area that's close by so that like adults can hang and kids can play. That's just a suggestion. You might find something else that works for you. Some grandparents like if they're really into like we're hikers. As the kids get older, it might be something that can be done more as a group. But also it is everyone's prerogative to not like grandkids, the thing that I would be interested for you to work on

in therapy is, did you get a feeling from your parents that maybe they also weren't super into the parenting part for you? Just throwing that out there. And I'm sorry. Marissa asks, can you break down each of the four attachment styles as they relate to parenting? Well, Marissa, there's two ways to answer this because you could be asking me how they relate to parenting children with these styles or what happens when parents have these different styles? So first let me just describe. And there's subtle differences in how people categorize them, but generally speaking, and this was John Bolby's work, an attachment theory. So there are four main styles of attachment that we seem to know about. Secure attachment, avoidant attachment,

ambivalent attachment, and disorganized attachment. So I'm going to sort of sum these up. there was this really incredible experiment that Mary Ainsworth did in 1978. It was called the Strange Situation Technique. And between her and Bolby, we kind of have these four techniques that we talk about. Mary Ainsworth was a student of Bolby. I should mention that. So secure attachment is what many people will tell you most people have. I don't think it's true.

But anyway, what Mary Ainsworth study did was they had a child. I'm going to loosely paraphrase what the study was. So I might get a couple things like wrongish. I'm just trying to keep it a little bit simple here. You take a kid with their mom, in this case it was moms, and you have a stranger come into the room, a friendly stranger, and the mom leaves. And basically the study was like, what happens? What is the kid going to do when the mom leaves?

And then what's the kid going to do when the mom comes back? All right? So from this, we have found these four attachment styles. So secure attachment is that like the kid is like happy with their mom and like playing and doing whatever babies do. And when the mom, leaves, they're left alone with this friendly stranger, they'll be upset because, like, mom's gone, like, makes sense. But then when mom comes back, they're relieved. Like, whew, mom's back. That's

called secure attachment. So generally speaking, people who behave like that as children, we would like to think, will go on to be people who think about it with your partner. Like, when they're with you, you're happy. When they leave, it's like, oh, but when they come back, it's like, yay. But, like, that's it. Okay? Let's go on to ambivalent attachment. ambivalent attachment, you'll see that the child is a little clingy, like clingy when this stranger is present. And I had very clingy children. I don't know that that means they were ambivalently attached. So being clingy is not the only thing that makes you have ambivalent attachment. But when the caregiver leaves, like when their mom would leave, the child freaks the

F out, like more than you would see in, let's say, the secure attachment child. And when the caregiver comes back, the child is so upset by the fact that they left that they have a hard time reconnecting with the mom. Okay? That's called ambivalent attachment. And I just got a little emotional. If you've dated someone with ambivalent attachment, you probably know what this looks like. They have trouble getting truly close. And when they do get close, it feels scary to them, which means they will often withdraw or place barriers or obstacles in the relationship. and reunion can be like ecstatic but also doesn't feel super safe. That's ambivalent attachment.

Avoidant attachment is a child who doesn't really register that the mom is leaving. Like they're not really connected to the mom to want to really care that she leaves. They will tend to treat strangers similarly as to the way they treat the mom, meaning there's not really a discrimination. And the child, in this case, when mom, comes back will often run away from her. If you've dated someone with avoiding an attachment, you know what this looks like.

You really want them to date you and they're giving you all the signals that they really don't want to. Sex might be amazing, but that's often the only part that you'll have that's amazing here. So that's what a void and attachment looks like. Disorganized or disoriented attachment style

is very, very inconsistent and can have some kind of chaotic features. The child might freeze when the mom comes back in the room. They may cry when the mom leaves. They may not. It's disorganized. And people with disorganized or disoriented attachment style have often had a hard start in life. All of these styles can be upgraded.

We can all work towards secure attachment. But those are kind of examples that you can apply when you think about what that's like for a child. If you have an ambivalent, avoidant, or even disorganized attachment style, when you become a parent, there's a real opportunity to try and fix some of those relationships. That's not what your child is for, though. So I also want to flag that being a parent who has struggled in your own attachment style is a real wake-up call for many of us to be like, wow, what's actually going on. Children will do all sorts of things to make you feel enraged, to make you feel rejected, and also to smother you, that can be a real challenge. And if any of you are thinking, like, why did my parent never seem like they felt comfortable when I wanted to hug them? It probably

has something to do with their attachment style and probably something from their childhood. So this stuff can keep you busy for days. Another great suggestion for David Rico's book. He talks a lot about this in his book, what it's like to be an adult when you come from these attachment styles and also how to shift them to more secure attachment. Speaking of parenting, Tina says, you said in the Dr. Becky Kennedy episode that you don't have to spank your child to keep them from running into the street. It's the couple of years before that that the issue should have been worked on. Do you recommend any parenting techniques for someone adopting a nine-year-old? Well, Tina, I first of all appreciate you listening to the Dr. Becky episode, which was fascinating for me to be part of because she's so brilliant.

And I want to just clarify that, you know, if you feel like you have a child who only listens to you when you hit them, I don't want you to think that I'm saying, you messed up, you did it wrong. What I was trying to communicate, and actually what Dr. Becky was trying to communicate, is that discipline is something that starts, you know, essentially from birth. And you adopting a style that works for you and your child without hitting or without harsh punishment and yelling, that's something that we all have to work on from the time our children are very, very little. And the idea is if you have a child that you feel can only be parented with hitting, that's the time to get help because it's simply not the only way.

And as we know, it's not, it is never comfortable for a child to be hurt by the person that is their protector. And there's really interesting longitudinal research supporting that. In terms of parenting techniques for adopting a nine-year-old, I am not the authority on that, but there are specialists and therapists who can help. with that. But especially if you are adopting a child, many children who come out of foster care systems or the adoption system, many come from homes where they were not shown love. Many come from homes with harsh discipline. And this is just, there's statistics around this. I'm not just kind of making this up. But in particular, those children need a very, very special kind of care and compassion.

And if you feel that physical discipline is the only way you know how to parent a child that you have adopted, you have to get help. It is incumbent upon you to get help so that you do not, you know, add any trauma to the relationship, meaning yours and the child's. And also just some general ideas to keep in mind, threatening abandonment, which is another, you know, violent technique that many people use and those kinds of threats, especially difficult for a child who's been adopted. and there are many support resources that I hope you can get. And also, you know, adoption is such an incredible gift to the child and also to the home that the child comes into. So I wish you all the best. Our last question from Laura. Laura wants me to talk about my, quote, bad startle reflex. I don't know.

It's funny. There's no good startle reflex, but I'm sure I mentioned it as my bad startle reflex that I developed after a car accident I had 11 years ago. What's the science behind that? what are some tools you've used to reduce that response? Oh, Laura. So a startle reflex is a response that animals have, and we are animals. And a startle reflex is a physiological response or reaction to a stimulus.

And it can be a physical stimulus. It can be an auditory stimulus. It can even be an odor, a smell. I've never had a startle reflex from a smell. But sometimes you smell something and it's like, oh, my gosh, that's not exactly what a startle reflex is, but it's a small indication of what it looks like. So what I'm describing is a feature of clinical PTSD. And the simplest way to describe what a startle reflex is like, if you've known anyone on the spectrum who has a startle reflex that may not be from PTSD, it also can happen

in those who are highly sensitive. And sometimes people on the autism spectrum will have this as well. I can tell you my personal experience is that it's not just like I don't like a loud sound. I can feel loud sounds in my body since my car accident. And when other things are going on in life that are very stressful, my startle reflex, essentially the baseline gets elevated. So we have a normal degree that we function at of like homeostasis in the world. If you have a startle reflex, your baseline's a little bit higher. So, you know, a siren, a honk.

if you're in a really bad state, like even the phone ringing will cause physical agitation. Sometimes you'll start crying. Sometimes my startle reflex will just make me start crying. It's a physiological response. And when I say that I can feel sounds, I'm not having a synesthetic or psychedelic experience. My younger son and I have shared, I had never articulated it, but he experiences it too. Sometimes sounds are so loud or like a boom is so loud that I feel pins and needles. It usually starts at my head and it goes all the way down to my toes. And it's like the sound is like rocking my body. Now, you might be thinking like that sounds crazy. And indeed, it does. And before I had experienced it, I thought like, oh my God, these people like talking about this,

like, they're so sensitive. Like, get over yourself or like, take a chill pill is what we used to say in the 80s. But guess what people? It's a real thing. And it's painful. It's not painful in the way of like, I'm being wounded. But it is, it's disconcerting. And it's, it's disconcerting. And it's, It can make you cry. It's that much stimulation and intensity. I don't like that this happens. I don't choose it. I don't want it to happen. But when other things are going on and my anxiety is up for other reasons, meaning like, oh, I don't know, during a global pandemic, that's when my baseline, which is normally elevated, gets really, really high. The glass of water metaphor is something I've talked about here. If a glass is already full, one extra drop will spill it over. The idea with meditation,

the idea with therapy, the idea with processing trauma is that it lowers the level of water in a glass so that it takes more drops to get it to spill over. So that's a good kind of visual for what it feels like. The tools that I've used to reduce my sterile reflex, you know, processing trauma, which is an actual thing, there are techniques, there are therapists, there are somatic therapy in particular, which is therapy that involves actually working with your body. Trauma can get out of your body. It's a thing. It's science. And I'm happy to do another episode. Probably all about that would be great. I think people would probably really enjoy that. But somatic therapy, some people do craniosacral therapy, which is a very delicate therapy. If you're into more holistic and alternative

practices, people do reiki and energy work for this. People do, you know, regressions, you know, past life regressions and things like that. But a good therapist who's trained in processing trauma can help with this. And yes, lowering your baseline. on a daily basis through things like exercise, meditation, you know, twice a day if you can, and learning what sleep hygiene is because sleep is a huge, huge factor for a lot of these kinds of physical aspects of PTSD. And again, even if you don't have PTSD for people on the spectrum, desensitization so that these kind of responses are not so shocking. Thank you so much, Laura. And thank you everybody. This is a really, really awesome set of questions. I hope you enjoyed the

answers you clearly can ask my am anything and uh that's it follow us at biolic breakdown and can't wait to see you for more ask my am anything and for a regular episode on tuesday from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have i'll see you next time it's my and biolics breakdown she's gonna break it down for you she's got a neuroscience phd or two one fiction more than now she's going to break down it's a breakdown she's going to break it down