Healthy Parenting Handbook with Katie Kimball
Sep 22, 2026 · 26 min · 14 segments
When your child is melting down, refusing to listen, shutting down, or exploding over something small, **their nervous system may be overwhelmed**—not ready for more words or discipline. Dr. Roseann…
And so in our autonomic nervous system, we have a relaxed state, which is called the parasympathetic state.
I love to call that the hot tub state, right? You're feeling super relaxed.
Something stressful happens like, oh, my gosh, I left my computer at home and I'm going to get an F at school or I was just almost run over by a truck.
Your frontal lobes come offline, so you're not really thinking logically.
What's happening to us is I like to talk about a stress cup, is that our stress cup is getting very full.
And our nervous system does not have unlimited capacity, despite what we all think, right? That we can work 20 hours and just go to sleep and be relaxed.
So as our stress cup is getting full and full from everyday life things, but also some people have major things, right? Maybe they had a grief, a loss of somebody they love or a pet or a divorce or they're in an abusive situation or they have trauma or there's clinical diagnosis.
What's happening is we are moving to dysregulation to the sympathetic dominant state because we're not emptying stress out of our cup, which is what I talk all about in all of my work to make it really easy for people.
But what happens when you dysregulate? What happens when the nervous system gets stuck? You will see signs of overstimulation, exactly what you think of, right? I call those externalizer behaviors, like fancy, you know, psychologist word.
But you'll see rage, you'll see anger, you'll see anxious avoidance, you'll see bigger, more outward behaviors, or you'll see signs of under-stimulation, which is internalizer behaviors.
Also anxiety, difficulty focusing, slow processing, a lot of hus and was.
But Both are reflection of a nervous system that isn't regulating in that state, in that parasympathetic state.
And so in our autonomic nervous system, we have a relaxed state, which is called the parasympathetic state.
I love to call that the hot tub state, right? You're feeling super relaxed.
Something stressful happens like, oh, my gosh, I left my computer at home and I'm going to get an F at school or I was just almost run over by a truck.
Your frontal lobes come offline, so you're not really thinking logically.
What's happening to us is I like to talk about a stress cup, is that our stress cup is getting very full.
And our nervous system does not have unlimited capacity, despite what we all think, right? That we can work 20 hours and just go to sleep and be relaxed.
So as our stress cup is getting full and full from everyday life things, but also some people have major things, right? Maybe they had a grief, a loss of somebody they love or a pet or a divorce or they're in an abusive situation or they have trauma or there's clinical diagnosis.
What's happening is we are moving to dysregulation to the sympathetic dominant state because we're not emptying stress out of our cup, which is what I talk all about in all of my work to make it really easy for people.
But what happens when you dysregulate? What happens when the nervous system gets stuck? You will see signs of overstimulation, exactly what you think of, right? I call those externalizer behaviors, like fancy, you know, psychologist word.
But you'll see rage, you'll see anger, you'll see anxious avoidance, you'll see bigger, more outward behaviors, or you'll see signs of under-stimulation, which is internalizer behaviors.
Also anxiety, difficulty focusing, slow processing, a lot of hus and was.
But Both are reflection of a nervous system that isn't regulating in that state, in that parasympathetic state.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
