Emotional Dysregulation Treatment: What Really Works for Children and Teens
If nothing’s working, therapy, routines, medication, it’s time to stop chasing symptoms and start treating the root cause of emotional disregulation. And that means calming the brain, not just correcting behavior. So, there are lots of treatments for kids with emotional dysregulation, but today we’re going to talk about what actually works. Before we do that, let’s talk about what doesn’t work so we can be clear and you can get the help your child deserves and your family can move from co-isregulation to co-regulation. That is possible. So behavior charts, sticker systems, reward reward-based programs typically don’t work for disregulated kids because they rely on external systems and they don’t address teaching a child how to regulate. They might be needed in the temporary, but for a long-term solution, it’s just not going to work. And if you have a kid where you’re like, “Yeah, Dr. Row, nothing’s working.” Well, it’s probably because of that. Um, and punishments and times outs don’t work. They typically just escalate behavior. They feed the shame cycle. And again, we’re not teaching anything to the child. We’re just punishing them. And you know, if you know anything about disregulated kids, they don’t want to be disregulated. So why are we punishing them? And boy, we feel ter terrible as parents. So endless reminders, long pep talks don’t work. Why? Because the frontal loes offline. Logic is suspended during these times of activation and you’re just not the preffrontal cortex is not there to take in what you’re giving and instead you’re getting heated. They’re getting heated and again nobody’s learning anything. So we get caught in these reactivity cycles. talk therapy alone when you have a disregulated kid a absolute waste of time. And for me, I feel sad about that because it means you might never go back to therapy. But talk therapy without nervous system regulation, you’re just not going to absorb anything. And you know, it was so funny like I heard somebody saying they were doing like talk therapy with like like a six-year-old. Like I was like, what is a six-year-old going to do in talk therapy? Like it needs to be play. There needs to be, you know, uh, somatic therapy. There are other therapies to help us regulate. Therapy is important. You need to learn skills. And our brain behavior reset program, our onetoone program is all about regulating the nervous system, teaching new skills. If you’re interested in working with us, you can go to drross rosan.com/help and take our solution matcher. And if you’re ready for our onetoone program or you need one of our other resources, it’s going to guide you in this quick threeinut quiz that gives you my personal guidance on what your next steps are. Okay. What what doesn’t work? Medication. Medication is not the only solution. When we put kids on meds, right, we’re saying something’s wrong with you and this is the only thing you need. But it’s not going to retrain behavior. You still must address behavior and then you are opening the door to side effects and other things that you can listen to other episodes about. But I want you to understand to regulate and teach behavior. Medication isn’t going to do that. So what does the brain need to regulate? Because there’s lots of things that we can do, right? So one, we need a calm responsive nervous system. And that means our vagus nerve needs to be activated regularly to shift at a fight, flight or freeze. And that has to happen again regularly. So doing things every day to in those calmer moments, if you have a highly disregulated kid, you got to squeeze it in there because the more we regulate, the more we regulate. The more we disregulate, the more we disregulate. Rich get richer, the poor get poorer. It’s the same thing with the nervous system. So, we really have to make sure we are doing this. And I’m telling you, the more you do it for yourself and you role model it, it becomes easier and you’ll feel better. So, kids in order to regulate need emotional and physical safety. So, they need to feel secure before they can access higher level thinking. If they are in that warrior state, right? You heard me talk about the brain in previous episodes. They just are not going to be capable. So we need to have that regulation in order to activate. We need predictability and connection with regulated people. So consistent routine, secure attachments, reduce overwhelm. Right? We don’t want to create a rescue pattern. We want to create a co-regulation pattern and consistency in patterns so that kids can learn to be self-regulated by being in a safe m environment, seeing a healthy role model and being able to practice safely, right? Um, and that co-regulation with a calm adult is critical. Okay. So critical. Sometimes people will say like why do they behave, you know, regulate in school or why do they regulate with grandma? Maybe it’s just that emotional safety and the calm, right? Um I was telling my bestie Shelly, um my godson Harvey, let me pick him up, you know, right away. And I was just so excited cuz I could barely contain myself cuz I wanted to squeeze him. And I was telling him that my mom was like a baby whis whisperer. And like people would bring their, you know, collicky babies to her and she just was like, I’m gonna make this baby sleep. This baby’s just gonna sleep. Plus, she was hot all the time. And she would get these babies, boom, they’d be out and the mothers would like, you know, she’d be like, “Go and do something. Go do go take a shower. Go relax.” And she just believed and she was just a force of calmness for these kids and they would sleep like, and she would teach them how to do it. And it’s very easy. We all can relate to those moments when we have a baby and we’re like, “What did we do? This kid’s crying all the time or whatever.” They have a period of it. Okay. What else fuels regulation? proper nutrition. Okay, you’re eating Ding-Dongs, you’re eating Doritos, you’re having soda, you’re going to have a d a reactive nervous system, key nutrients like magnesium, zinc, and healthy fats support mood stability. If you’re feeding it with garbage, you’re going to be reactive. If you got a Ferrari, you’re not putting in the low gas. I don’t even know what that is. You’re putting in the premium gas. Why are we expecting something different with our kids? Oh, don’t tell me this is all they’re going to eat. Because you can retrain your kids and you can sneak things in. If I have mothers of three autistics who can do it, you can do it, too. I’m not saying it’s easy, but good nutrition is important. Sensory integration tools and techniques can be incredibly helpful in regulation. um they can reset the brain quickly. Whether you’re working with an OT or you’re Google brain gym, uh don’t go to brain gym, Google brain gym and integrate those activities. They basically are activities often where you’re crossing the midline in order for the brain to integrate. These are things you can do on the home at home if you’re making a party routine. So just just know with all of this, this isn’t about fixing your child. It’s about helping your child’s brain and nervous system regulate so they can access skills they already have. How about that? Right? So often these kids have these skills, right? So this is why when you know they’re they’re in therapy at school and they’re like, “Well, I taught them and they seem to know it and then they go home or they are in the playground and they can’t.” It’s because their nervous system is activated. So just because you’ve learned something doesn’t mean you can access it. The regulation of the nervous system allows you to access tools and and make this learning be fluid and move beyond a disregulated state. So what are evidence-based tools that work to regulate the nervous system? We know the ways that we need to, you know, regulate breath work. Quickest, easiest, free thing you can do, right? You want to make sure whether it’s box breath or 478 or bubble breath, I don’t care what it is, just have a long exhalation and be consistent with it. I would do at least three times in a row, three times a day, some form of breath work. I do way more than that because I’m a spaz. I need a lot of regulation. Those movement breaks, bouncing, walking, bilateral, you know, tapping, right? the butterfly tap, you know, um tapping across on your on your legs, you know, there’s so many activities that you can do. Somatic grounding, weighted blankets, body scans. Where do you feel it in your you know, where do you feel that stress in your body? That’s a body scan. And then even better, lean into it and imagine it disappearing or let’s breathe through it. These are things that work that actually comes from trauma therapy. um getting propriceptive input, hugs, cross crawls, the weighted blankets, and then brainbased therapies like my PEMF regulates brain waves, supports the vagus nerve, neuro feedback, which is direct brain wave retraining, BOF feedback, which is teaching you to um have conscious control of your autonomic functions, your breath, your body temperature, your skin conductance, which is crazy. You can do that, but that’s been around forever. And then supplements like magnesium, L3enate, and glycinate are the ones you want for cognitive and emotional balance. Um, L3N8 crosses the bloodb brain barrier. It’s in our multimag brain formula and it’s really important. And as far as what can parents do, what can teachers do, what do we know works, that’s why I designed my comm’s protocol because the five steps are important, right? So it’s co-regulating first. Kids need that. They need a regulated adult. You cannot be showing your anger and expecting your kid not to be angry. Just remember, you signed up for kids. They didn’t sign up for you. you have this power to regulate yourself, right? Um, we want to avoid personalizing their behavior. That’s the A. The L is looking for root causes. The M is modeling those coping skills because let me tell you, the more you model it, monkey see, monkey do, this is what happens. You know, all those cute things that they watched you do and model, they can learn this, too. And the S is support and reinforce. They just need so much support, so much reinforcement to produce those calm responses. But I promise you, they will get there. And when you have family routines around regulation, consistent bedtime, limiting screens, um, shared calm-down rituals, and then really making sure you’re adding in sensory tools, and, you know, thinking about what are things that I could change in my home environment to better support their sensory needs. It’s really important to have this and there’s no easy way just like we know parenting isn’t easy but this makes it where you’re working smarter not harder. Um, and then you want to think about root cause support, right? What is actually causing, right? So, this is one of the greatest things that people struggle with when they come to see me is actually that root cause. And and remember, if you want to get support, you can go to drross rosan.comhelp um to get, you know, onetoone support with me or get one of our digital assets or just get on our email list to get our emails that are valuable. but they are missing out root causes. And one of the things I recommend is functional testing to look at infections and toxins, nutritional deficiencies, potentially gut brain imbalances, um you know, if your kid is constipated, has stomach issues, has loose stools, um is bloated every time they eat, they probably have a gut issue, and that’s going to affect your neurotransmitters. And then also additional testing to look at hormones. um our endocrine system which can really be affected when you are struggling all the time and then just inflammatory triggers right because if we can get inflammation down it could be a major source of your child’s behavior you know so just know that emotional dysregulation is not just a phase if you’re seeing it all the time it’s a pattern of nervous system dysregulation and overwhelm that can actually be treated And we went over the things that actually make a difference. But we want I want you to know that treating behavior without regulating the brain is like trying to clean the floor with paper towels. It just doesn’t work great. And you get your mop out, you clean it up and use paper towels after. But you really have to regulate first before you teach behaviors. And it’s not about doing more. It’s about what actually is doing the right thing for your child to regulate their nervous system. So, I hope you learned today about, wow, maybe some of the things that I was doing really isn’t helpful for my child and now I have a better sense. My next step is to take Dr. Rose solution matcher. And you’re going to go to drross rosan.com/help. More insights and solutions. Well, subscribe to our disregulation insider and it will show up in your inbox every week. [Music]
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