Substance Use & the Teen Trauma Brain

0:21Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Good morning, everyone. Do, do, do. What a beautiful morning it is. Thank you for joining me. And you did enjoy me to hear my beautiful singing voice. You heard me learn. You join me to hear about substance use in teen trauma brain. I am Bryan Post, and I am super duper looking forward to sharing this time with you. Good evening, UK. You guys know what? So we almost always have been doing these webinars. I do one every month specific for Fear to Love, but specific for our California families, adopted families for our to support our LEAF and our Love wraparound

1:17Pathways wraparound programs. And finally, I was like, why are we not inviting all of our Fear to Love people, all of our Bondify people, because these are really good educational webinars and there's nothing to sell you. And it's awesome other than how to be a more powerful professional or parent. And so we open this up and hopefully this is going to work out really well. We'll keep opening it up. And just to impact as many people as we can. Well, that's all I've got to say. My name is Bryan Post. I am excited to join you all. And I am going to get this thing started because I like to stay on time for these webinars. And these usually last about an hour. So I go after it for about an hour. Sometimes they go a little bit longer.

2:13If they go any longer than that, just end up having to make it a part two. And I was thinking before I got started earlier, I was like, you know, I really we should have made a webinar I did on working with teens. I can't remember the title of it, but I did it a few months back. Probably should have made that a prerequisite for this because there's so much intertwined. And it's like understanding the core components of parenting teens and working with teens. And let me just establish that this is primarily for parents. Adopt and foster parents, professionals obviously can get an enormous amount of value. But we do these specifically for our parent network. And so that's what we're going to do.

3:09But I did one on working with teens a few months back. And I think it would be a really good addition to this. So we will probably see about getting the replays for these posted as well. And if you're really struggling with a teen right now, I think that might have even been a part one and a part two. It was really good. Just shoot us in the chat. Shoot support@feartolove.com. And we'll get you a link to that replay for the other one that I did, same as we do for these.

3:44So all right, without no further ado, the user manual for the teen mind, why smart kids make dangerous choices and how to help. So here's the hidden solution. Let's talk about the hidden solution. Over the years of working with thousands of struggling teens, I've noticed a pattern. So first you have the danger. And then you have the danger turns into what the child's attempt is for the solution. And we think dangerous choices are the problem, but that is not true. See, this goes back to something that I've been saying for over 25 years. Number one, I say two things. Addiction is an external attempt to soothe an internal state. Addiction is an external attempt to soothe an internal state. Essentially, addiction is a behavior.

4:39In order to reduce, decrease, eliminate a behavior, heal a behavior, you have got to get to what's underneath it. And what's underneath it is the stress and the fear and oftentimes the trauma. So substance use isn't usually the problem. It's the solution a traumatized brain has discovered. Most of the time your child is seeking the addictive substance because they are looking for a solution, not because they are bad children. So I want to make sure we establish that. So what we have to do is we have to change our lens. And the thing is, when our children get involved in substance use, it is so stressful. And the thing you have to remember is that it is tying into your own parental blueprints.

5:34And I'm going to talk about that at the end towards a little bit later in the presentation. But it's tying into your own parental blueprints. Oh, let me also say these events are not CEU events. I understand that many of our licensed colleagues and professionals need CEUs. These are not CEU events, but we do give a certificate of attendance. So at the end of the talk today, if you need a certificate of attendance, then we'll put a link and you can go get yourself a certificate of attendance. So we have to change our lens. And the thing is, is when children start using substances, it stresses us. It activates our parental blueprint. And our parental blueprints typically come from controlling, suppressing, and changing behaviors. So then we get hyper-vigilant about the behavior. We get hyper-vigilant about the substance. We want to control it. We want to suppress it.

6:29We want to change it. We want it to stop because it stresses us out so much. But here's the thing. That's a part of the problem. So the question that we ask from that lens is, what's wrong with this teen? That very question is a question that comes from an internal state of judgment. Judgment comes with it stress. And oftentimes we'll come with it shame. And oftentimes we'll come with it a degree of control and a degree of expressing that the teen is not good enough and triggering all the other issues. But that's the question that evolves that evolves from our own blueprints. So we always ask, what's wrong with this teen? And the problem with that is that that will create distance and distance meaning.

7:27Listen to this. Relationship is the most important thing. Relationship is the most important thing. So I just said three really important things already. I said the teen seeking the substance use is not about the teen being a bad teen or a bad child. It is about their attempt to soothe a problem. It is an attempt to soothe a problem. I paused. It is an attempt to soothe a problem. What if substance use and teen addiction is about the teen's attempt to soothe the problem? It is them doing the best they can to soothe the problem. So then what question should you ask? What's the problem?

8:24What's the problem? Let me seek to understand what's going on with my teenager so I can discover the roots of the problem. They're doing the best that they can. But if you lose the relationship, you lose everything. So it creates distance. Judgment creates distance. And an addiction is an external attempt to soothe an internal state. I've been saying that for 25 years. Addiction is an external attempt to soothe an internal state. I just say such simple things, but that does not mean they are easy. I just don't need to make them real complex. I need to disseminate them down to really simple things so you can wrap your brain around what it actually looks like, what may actually be going on different

9:21than what you may have thought in the past.

9:23So we have to shift our lens to asking a different question. What happened to this teen? What happened to this teen is fundamentally different than what's wrong with this teen. But see, it's not enough to just ask what happened to this teen because a lot of times what we'll do is we'll ask what happened to this teen and we'll think about it, we'll remember it, we'll read about it, we'll learn about it, we'll research it, we'll find out about it. And then the next time stress sets in, guess what? We forget about what happened to this teen. You can't forget about what happened to this teen. You have to hold, you don't have to get specific. You don't have to get specific. You don't have to go into every detail from their in-utero stage to the toddler stage to their five-year-old stage. You don't have to get into every detail. You just have to be able to generalize. If the child has been adopted and the child was in foster care, if the child's in foster care

10:18or if it's your biological child and they had some turmoil in their early environment, that's all you need to hold on to because that is now hardwired into their brain. So you have to become curious. But being curious is so much easier said than done. We live in a society of judgment. We love to judge other people and we especially love to judge our children. We love to judge them, judge, judge, judge. And then we shame them when they don't operate the way we think that they need to operate from our parental or parental adult brands. So then we create distance and we wonder why. When you're creating distance,

11:13you're losing relationship. When you're losing relationship, you lose influence. Instead, we've got to get curious but it's so hard to get curious when you're freaking out. It is so hard to be curious when you're freaking out. If you cannot stop and slow down and take some deep breaths and realize no one's gonna die even though this may be the scariest thing, even though some of you may have had teenagers who've already overdosed, that teen probably needs to be in some kind of substance abuse treatment to get detox for a while. Before you come back home and you start working on these things that I'm talking about. So if you've had a teen who's already overdosed to want you twice, then you probably have a very high level challenge. So you are going to, you are at the bottom of mountain.

12:12You got a long ways to go but you can do it especially after today. But the first thing you've got to do is you've got to start getting curious because curious is not stressful. And if you have a teen who's engaging in substance use, you have a teen who is stressed out. You have a teen who is overwhelmed. You have a teen who doesn't know what else to do to make themselves feel better, to be able to relax, to calm their anxiety other than use the substance and sometimes it's cutting. And substances are so pervasive these days. When I was, I'm 53. When I was a teenager it was alcohol and maybe the occasional cigarette. But really only the bad kids smoked cigarettes. Isn't that interesting? And you know, the bad kids were, they were the only ones smoking cigarettes. The other kids who were just as stressed out, me and my friends, we were the ones drinking alcohol

13:08but we never smoked. Smoking was always considered kind of gross. But the bad kids smoked cigarettes and then they usually smoked weed because that was, those were both very taboo. Alcohol, everyone was pretty much drinking alcohol. I think you grow up watching your parents even though my parents never, never really drinking alcohol. I think I remember my father, my adoptive father raising me, the man who raised me, he drank maybe two beers my entire childhood. But that was the common thing. Not cigarettes or not weed. Now guess what? Weed is legal. Now it's legal in most states that you are in. I don't know about the UK. I don't, they may be legal in the, is marijuana legal in the UK? Not, I know, I know in Amsterdam and Netherlands but the point is for, they're not legal for teenagers

14:06but teenagers now have easier access to it. You can now instead of going and giving someone $10 for a beer, if you're in Colorado you give them $10 and they can get you a package of gummies. I'm assuming 18 is the limit supposed to be even though the brain's not even developed but here's the thing, you gotta get curious because curiosity allows the opportunity for connection. Let's see what we're doing. We're working against an old paradigm philosophy of control suppressing and changing because the moment you get freaked out, I think I could probably talk about this one slide for the next hour because there are so many, there's so many aspects of it. The moment you freak out as a parent over your child getting drunk, getting high,

15:01going out and doing whatever they're doing with their friends, the moment you freak out you're creating more stress for their already stressed out system and when you create more, let's do this, do this, more stress, more stress, more stress. What is that doing? Pushing away, pushing away, pushing away. How can you have relationship when you're pushing away, pushing away, pushing away? You can't, you can't. The only way you maintain relationship is curiosity and connection. Curiosity and connection. You've gotta create a different vibration. Oh my gosh, I could go so deep into that. No, I'm not, we're not transcribing.

15:50Okay, so here's the secret language. Behavior is the language of stress. Behavior is the language of stress when your child is acting out it's because your child is stressed out. You know, it's not because you're a bad parent, it's not because you're failing, it's not because you haven't done enough, it's because your child is stressed out and there are so many reasons for a teenager to be stressed out in this day and time, not to mention their history. Here's a little secret. When you, just like your teenager, become stressed, it activates their blueprints. When their blueprints get activated, which is their state level memory, then every traumatic experience they've had

16:46throughout their life has the opportunity to get activated and turned on. Now think about all that. I see a traumatic experience is a memory that is incoherent, that has an energy attached to it. Now when I say an energy attached to it, oh my gosh, I felt my ear just like, in my brain I thought about a wreck, like a car accident, bam. Just like that, imagine how much energy is involved in that moment, that moment of that car wreck. Guess what happens? That energy attaches to a memory. That memory, because that energy is so strong, that memory gets suppressed and it gets stored

17:42in the brainstem and the cellular system and it's got this energy attached to it. And so it's so strong it gets suppressed that it goes away from your conscious mind. So you don't think about it because we oftentimes in our society we don't express, process and understand stressful traumatic events so they just get stored. They just get stored in our body in an incoherent way. And so then what happens when you get stressed, that blueprint gets activated and that blueprint drives your behavior. So when this slide says behavior is the language of stress, see we don't think about that. We think behavior is the language of a defiant child. We think behavior is the language of adoption or we think behavior is the language of abuse. We think behavior is the language of a child

18:37who's just willfully disobedient. Behavior is the language of stress. When your child is acting out it's because your child is stressed out. What would it have to be stressed out about? We'll go right back to the first slide. What happened to this child? Not what's wrong with this child. What happened to this child? What if you just get locked in that feedback loop all the time? This is a whole different paradigm of looking at this. So you got your child who's using some kind of drugs. What the teen's saying is my feelings are too loud to handle. I've got to suppress them. Really? Really Bryan? If your child is using drugs they are saying my feelings are too loud to handle.

19:33If they're running away they're saying I don't feel safe here. If they're shutting down, they're not doing their school, they're not doing their work. They say I have no control for my life. Why? You shut down in order to have control. You shut down in order to regain control but what do most parents do when their teenagers shut down? Well, they freak out and they try to regain control. When I say freak out I truly mean stress out and you don't do it intentionally and consciously. You do it because you've been negatively reinforced throughout our society that this is the way we behave that when we get stressed out and we constrict into survival which creates distance and pulls us out of relationship which you've been conditioned to believe for generations is that as soon as you feel that way you've got to regain control

20:29and that's a problem because you're trying to regain control from a child who's trying to be in control. Does that make sense? It makes no sense at all. It makes no sense at all but that's the power of stress. That's why Joseph LeDoux, New York University neuroscientist author of The Emotional Brain said in times of stress our thinking becomes confused and distorted and our short-term memory is suppressed. Common sense goes out the window when you're stressed. So when your child is stressed and trying to regain control and stressed and trying to be in control and then you get stressed and you try to regain control guess what you have? It's called a control battle. Who's going to relax first? Who's going to relax first and stop the control battle? So hard to do when your brain is literally wired

21:26to behave this way. So that's why you've got to be on these webinars. You've got to be on these one-hour webinars I do with you and for you so that you have repetition to start changing your brain but really it's not enough. One hour with BP is not enough. It's a good start. So if you've never been here before, you've never joined me before, you don't know I am. This is a good start. You'll walk out of this one hour thinking about things in a completely different way now whether that's sustainable or not it's going to be completely up to you and it's going to be based on whether you're able to be in repetition. Repetition, you've got to learn, learn, learn, learn and emotional impact. Repetition and emotional impact. Emotional impact is what's actually going on. See when your child is in the midst of a situation

22:21that's the opportunity for emotional impact. The problem is that too many of us judge behavior as a problem. Behavior is not a problem. Behavior is an opportunity. Behavior is not a problem. Behavior is an opportunity. Behavior is an opportunity. Behavior is not a problem. Behavior is an opportunity. It's a paradigm shift. Behavior is not a problem. opportunity for emotional impact, which is there's two ways to change your brain. Repetition and emotional impact. And then danger, I'm trying to escape this pressure. Everything is communication. Stop seeing behavior as an attack on you. It is not an attack on you, it is an attempt for the child to communicate. But we have generations, generations of conditioning that tell us

23:17that behavior is an attack on you. That it's saying you're not a good parent or you're not a good therapist. And so then you get defensive and the moment you get defensive you're stressed and you're trying to control, suppress and change. Then you're in a vibratory state that's just going to reinforce the behavior. This is not hard. This is not hard, it's not complicated, but it's not easy either.

23:49So we have the smart pilot that handles reasoning, logic and good. We have the memory library, stores facts and past experiences, and then we have the fire alarm. So you have the limbic system, you have the orbitofrontal cortex, and then you have the hippocampus and the hypothalamus. The memory library stores facts and past experiences. The fire alarm scans for danger and keeps the body alive. It's your limbic system, cortisol system. But see the problem is, the fire alarm starts ringing, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. And as soon as the fire alarm goes off, everyone thinks you're gonna die. And the reason you think you're gonna die is because your fire alarm hijacks your memory library and then that hijacks your smart pilot. Can you imagine being on a plane and having a little bit of, how many of you have been on a plane? You're flying along and then there's some turbulence. Boom, boom, boom, you have a big jump. And you can hear people,

24:45oh, and people look up and walk around. How many of you have been on a plane and felt some turbulence? Can you imagine if that turbulence is the fire alarm and as soon as there's some turbulence, the pilot forgets everything they ever learned and they got on the intercom and they said, pop, pop, those oxygen masks haven't fallen down yet, but hit that thing thing and make that oxygen mask, fall down and put that oxygen mask. Everyone brace for impact. Oh my God, can you imagine how freaked out people could be? Do you know what? That's what we do in relationship. That's what we do in relationship every time. You know what I do when there's turbulence? Number one, because I have so many repetitions because I have flown two million miles and more. Right now I have a million points. I have a million airline points. That's how much I fly and I have flown

25:41and that's just probably over the last five years. So if you're taking into consideration, I've been flying for 28 years. I've probably flown five, six, seven million miles. So I have so many repetitions. You know what I do when I'm flying in there's turbulence? I never even open my eyes and it can be rough, rough, rough. I just close my eyes and I just breathe because you know what? After flying five, six, seven million miles, you know what's never happened? I've never been in an airplane crash. Now, as soon as I say that, I'm flying to Columbus, Ohio on Thursday. Watch me, that was Bryan Post. You heard him on Tuesday.

26:36He said he'd never been in a plane crash. Rest in peace, BP. I don't believe that's gonna happen. I've never been in a plane crash, but the turbulence causes the fire alarm to go off. But because I've never been in a plane crash, I know that breathing is how I override my fire alarm and keep my memory library turned on. And when I keep my memory library turned on, I keep my prefrontal cortex online. I'm not gonna die. When the turbulence sets in and you know what? If I do die, then I'm going to heaven. All this is left behind. But there's the much greater likelihood that I'm not gonna die.

27:31So the first thing I have to do is I have to breathe. I have to calm that fire alarm so I can keep my memory system intact. And for some of you, for some of you as parents, you just need another day. You just need another hour, another day. You just gotta calm your fire alarm for another hour, for another day and add on a couple more days and keep tying on that fire alarm. I mean, let me tell you something. See, sometimes when I'm talking to you all, someone's thought will be so strong, it just comes right through and it just pops right up in my brain. I feel it. I feel it when you have these thoughts. Not all of them, but the strong ones I do. Someone just said, dang it, as soon as I said that, I forgot what you said. You said something.

28:26You said something. It's gonna come back to me. It's gonna come back to me. It was important to, oh, let's talk about the chemical imbalance. What was that? I felt it. I felt it. Okay, you got cortisol, you got oxytocin. When a teen faces trauma, which is stress, cortisol floods the system. The balance breaks. Cortisol is your brain's stress hormone. It's your primary stress hormone. Oxytocin is the anti-stress hormone. Ladies and gentlemen, these are proven, researched. This is neuroscience. This is neurochemistry. There no one has come along

29:21and said anything to the contrary of these two things. Now we know we have your dopamine, which is your feel good. You have your endorphins, which is your feel good. You have other hormones that do other things. But cortisol, which comes from your limbic system, is your stress reaction in the brain. Oxytocin is your stress response. Cortisol is your stress reaction. It's automatic. It's unconscious. Oxytocin is the response to the cortisol. But remember, oxytocin has to be learned. So if you get stressed out when your child gets stressed out, no one's turning on oxytocin. And when no one's turning on oxytocin, if oxytocin is your brain's anti-stress response, it is the immunization to stress. Oxytocin, then no one's feeling calm

30:17and the child is in an imbalance. The balance breaks because oxytocin has to be learned. I am still thinking about what it was I felt when the brain hijacked. So you get the normal state. The reasoning brain is in charge. The reasoning brain, the stress hits. The alarm sounds and overwhelms the system. Fear hijacks reasoning. The thinking brain is locked out. You cannot logic with a fire alarm. Think about this. Pilots going on. Isn't this a great analogy? Pilots going on. Everything's calm. All of a sudden stress hits. Turbulence. Alarm sounds overwhelms the system because overwhelming cortisol has the ability to suppress the hippocampus and then fire hijacks the reasoning. Then you're completely offline.

31:05The false fixes. So why do teens choose danger because it works? I want to say that again. So why does a teen choose to go out and get drunk, smoke dope, shoot up heroin, play with fentanyl? Why do they choose to do these things? Why did they choose to cut? Because it works because it's giving the brain immediate impact. Now some of you who are not hypocritical remember when you drank. You remember when you drank now. You remember when you used to smoke a joint. You probably never did any of the other hard stuff. Thank goodness. It wasn't readily available when I was growing up. You would have had to go on to the inner city somewhere to find it. But we remember what it feels like. We remember when you smoked that joint

32:00and all of a sudden all that anxiety goes. You know what? The only thing that probably takes that anxiety away at that level greater than that hit of that marijuana is a hug and closeness. A 20 second hug. And do you know what happens when we've been stressed out with our teens? Their teens, you probably started when they were three or two or even when they were stressed out babies. By the time they're teens, there's no more hugs happening. A 20 second hug is the single greatest way to elicit oxytocin response. There's no hugs happening in the teen years. There's been too much separation. You see how I do that? There's been too much separation.

32:55So then how does the teen get the anxiety relief? Well, they cut, they smoke, they drink. They do all stuff, but it's just the false fix, but it works. The nicotine, oh, the vaping. See, I'm so old school all I do is talk about smoking weed. Kids don't even smoke weed anymore. They vape. I think it's horrible to be quite frankly, to be honest with you, I think vaping's horrible. And I think in 10 years, we're gonna see the negative consequences of vaping for adults as well as kids. You got the screens. Wired, these screens are wired and created for dopamine and you have actions like self-harm. These choices are not made because the teen is bad. They're made because the teen is highly dysregulated. They provide temporary regulation. You take a peak state of stress and you settle it.

33:52The problem in the nature of the addiction is the substance becomes the source of the regulation and the brain learns, the brain and the body learns that the substance is the source and there's all kinds of addictions. There's shopping addictions, there's food addictions, there's drinking addictions. There's running addictions and working out addictions. Some people are addicted to running. The endorphins, they get addicted to the endorphins. So they do it because it works.

34:28Now what if, what if, this is gonna be a big what if, you find out your teen has engaged in some substance that stresses you out, freaks you out and instead of getting mad at them, instead of threatening them, instead of punishing them, instead of shaming them, instead of consequence them. You take a step back for an hour, maybe a whole day. Full transparency here. I'm so good at this s**t because I've been doing it for so long. But I got seven kids. I've seen all of this stuff. I've got three grandkids and God willing,

35:23I've created enough relationship and enough regulation and enough understanding with my own children that when it comes time for my grandchildren to go through these trials and tribulations that they have to go through that their parents can be more supportive and more loving and more nurturing. But my soon to be 18 year old, her mom found two vapes in her room one day. She's gonna be 18 in like a week, two weeks. Her mom found two vapes in her room and she came to me and she said, look, what do I do? I said, you go back in the kitchen and you set them on the counter and you don't say anything because she was still asleep, the 17 year old was still asleep. I said, you don't say anything. You just set them on the counter

36:20and that's what she did and that was very hard for her to do. But see, here's what I know. Here's what I know. Here's what I know. Number one, I know my teenager's gonna do stuff like this. It's a rite of passage. It is, that's why I was saying at the beginning of the webinar that I wish the webinar I did on teens before was like a prerequisite to this one because it all builds on one another. Teen acting out is a rite of passage. It is the journey towards independence. It is the journey towards independence but the teen brain is all crazy because the teen brain is going through a pruning process. So the teen brain is on fire so teens are supposed to do crazy stuff. I cannot underscore that enough.

37:17A teenager is supposed to do crazy stuff because number one, their brain is not fully developed. And number two, their brain is going through pruning. It is heating up and it's pruning away everything it hasn't used up until this point. They are quite literally as verifiably insane as anyone else in society other than two year olds. It's a hard time. So they go through this rite of passage and they do all these crazy things with all their peers because guess what? Peer interaction is the same interaction as stress but the biggest problem in our society is that we've lost relationship and connection in our homes. And because we've lost relationship and connections in our homes, it's so much more likely that our teens are gonna go out and engage with other teens who've lost the same relationship, which we spent years,

38:13we spent years losing, mind you. We don't, nothing, doesn't just happen overnight. You spend years trying to control your child from the time they're one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 and all of a sudden they do something that freaks you out and you try to control more but by then you've lost all relationship so you can no longer influence them. So I know these things. So my wife holding two cartridges does not stress me out. And also I have millions of miles of repetitions are doing this stuff. So I'm like, put them on the counter because you know what I know is gonna happen? See, this is how my brain works. I know my 17-year-old is gonna wake up, she's gonna stumble out of her bedroom

39:12to get some chocolate milk or whatever it is she gets and no one's gonna be in there because I'm in my office and my wife's usually in her hat studio doing, building her hats and she's gonna look on that counter and she's going to say, holy crap. And she is going to have the most panic and the most immediate anxiety that she has had in her entire life. It's gonna be a holy s**t moment. I know how it happens. And then we go from there. See, here's the thing, it's the holy s**t moment without me causing it, without her mother causing it that creates the learning. See, when there's no threat, the brain can remember.

40:11So guess what happens? Couple hours later, my teenager takes both cartridges upstairs. She says, mom, I'm so sorry. I'm so embarrassed. I'm so sorry. I will never do this again. I'll never do it again. And they had whatever conversation that they had. Last time it came up. This last time it came up, it hasn't come up since. Does my daughter vape? I don't have any idea if she vapes or not. Probably without with her friends. Yeah, probably with her. Some of her, she has an older brother who's like 22 years old. I'm sure she got it from him. It's gonna happen. But is anyone gonna die? No one's gonna die. And what's important is her mother handled it in a loving, understandable, understanding, kind, nurturing, supportive way. We don't condone it.

41:07You know, I can give her a hard time about it. I'll give her a hard time about it all the time. But it's not from a place to make her feel bad. It's just giving her a hard time. And so I don't get hijacked. If you get hijacked, you miss the complete opportunity. Some of you may already be in that place of hijack.

41:27So here's how it happens. Overwhelming stress, the overwhelm, the stress continues, the teen uses the false fix, the brain feels better, the relief fades quickly, and then you go right back to the stress. The false fix never turns off the fire alarm. It only covers the flashing light for a moment. It's a misguided solution. Every addiction begins as an attempt to regulate overwhelming stress. I've been saying this, I think I said it for the first time 25 years ago when I was speaking at a national conference on addiction in New Orleans, Louisiana. I gave the keynote and I said, addiction is an external attempt to soothe an internal state. I think that's the first time I said it. I may have said it before that. Every addiction begins as an attempt to regulate overwhelming stress. The teen is not trying to destroy their life,

42:24their brain is simply trying to turn off the alarm and survive the day. The misguided solution is that we're always focusing on the stress and the temporary relief until the temporary relief fades. We are not addressing the alarm system. So here's the real fix. Connection restores regulation. A feeling of safety releases oxytocin which calms the fire alarm. So, vape setting on the counter. No one's around. Holy s**t moment. Go to parent. I'm so sorry, I shouldn't do this. I'm gonna ever do this again. I don't know why I did it. I shouldn't do this. I did it. I'm sorry. I feel bad. Make me feel better. I'm not gonna make you feel better. You get to feel bad because you should feel bad because you don't need to be using that crap. So then the story gets internalized

43:19but then what happens is the child realizes that there's no more threat. There's no more stress. There's no severed relationship. There's no threatening. There's no consequencing. It's just, it makes me sad. It makes me really sad. It makes me scared when you do that. What's going on? What happened to this child? Not what's wrong with this child. Curiosity, what's going on? What's going on that makes you need to use this substance? How have I failed you? How have I failed you? Where did I mess up? When did I stop listening? When did we lose our relationship that doesn't allow us to work through things like this and allow you to use your brain to know that those are not good things for you? You hear that tone?

44:14You hear curiosity? It's all about how? What? When? What can I do? No blame, no shame, no consequence, no threatening, no punishing. I had a mom the other day tell her adopted 17-year-old that she's gonna send her to residential like for nothing, which is not even possible to do. But it's just a threat. You get stressed out and you gotta control things. It's just the overwhelm. But we don't take any responsibility for our role in the situation. The brain can heal, healing is always possible. So here's your homework. Observe behavior without labeling it. Remember it's just communication. This is your homework. Observe behavior without labeling it. It's just communication.

45:10Observe, take a step back. Get quiet. This is your homework. Observe. Get curious. Don't say anything. Change your internal script. What stress is my child trying to escape? Not why are you doing this? Shift from judgment to curiosity. You are the safe connection they need.

45:49Let's talk about fear, stress, and the hidden drivers of addiction. Most parents fight the surface behavior. Fighting the behavior rarely works. Have we not learned that? Have we not learned that? It's not one of the first lessons with that when our children become teenagers and they get a boyfriend or a girlfriend that we don't like and we try to control it and try to keep them from it. And then they just want that person more. Haven't we all had that experience? Fighting the behavior rarely works. Almost no one understands the nervous system underneath because we're not seeking to understand. We're seeking to control, suppress, and change, and that's the behavior. We're not seeking to understand the nervous system that's driving the behavior

46:44because we've been conditioned to want a quick fix in our society. We've been conditioned to be so stressed out as parents that when our children need more from us, when they need more energy, when they need more time, more attention, we are already exhausted, but guess what you gotta do? You gotta suck it up and not in a forceful way. Oh, see, that's what it was. I had a parent said, that's what I heard. I heard a parent say, well, what if I am calm when I'm trying to get them to telling them that they shouldn't be using drugs? That's what it was. Here's the problem with that. And only you know this.

47:40But if you were calmly telling your child that they should not use drugs or you don't want them to or you know all that, all this stuff you calmly doing, guess what the underlying motive is? The underlying motive is to reduce the behavior. That is a part of the problem. That means your vibration. As calm as you're appearing, your vibration is still one of stress and fear and anxiety. Your motive should not be to reduce the behavior. Your motive should be to reduce and understand the stress. You understand the stress, you reduce the stress and the fear and the overwhelm. That should be the motive, not the focus on the behavior. Behavior is just communication. If you're focusing on suppressing the behavior, then you are suppressing communication.

48:42That's what it was. See, I told you, I knew it would come back. I knew it would come back. We're not seeking to understand the nervous system. All we're doing is focusing on the behavior. The behavior translator, the old lens is about seeing the child's manipulative, defiant, lazy and disrespectful. I love it when parents say my child's lazy because I know your child's not lazy. I know your child's overwhelmed. Think about that. Think about that. Think about how big of a paradigm shift this is. And let me tell you the biggest problem with a lecture or with a webinar. What time is it? It's 11.50. Oh goodness gracious. I have no idea where I'm at in this presentation. Let me tell you the biggest challenge

49:37with a webinar or a lecture. The biggest challenge is that it's cognitive. And everything you're dealing with right now is not cognitive. The biggest struggles that you have, whether you're a parent or whether you're a clinician, working with stressed out families, is it's not cognitive. It's emotional. Relationships are not cognitive. They're emotional. Addiction is a behavior that is a manifestation of an emotional challenge. But see when we're stressed, we try to approach everything cognitively. So you see your child is lazy. You see your child is disrespectful. I see your child is overwhelmed. Who has the different vibration? The hidden truth is that they're stress sensitive because of their histories.

50:32They're fearful, fearful, stress sensitive and fearful. Most children I work with, I try to communicate this to parents all the time. But most children I work with, because of their early trauma, adopted and foster children, they're stress sensitive and they're fearful. So they get easily overwhelmed. They get easily stressed and it's not up to us to decide what stresses them because anything could stress them because anything can activate their brainstem, which is where their trauma is stored. Anything can activate it. And they're fearful. The moment it becomes activated, they become full of fear. Then they become emotionally overwhelmed and then they regress. They regress right back. You know, some of your children, some of your children were exposed in utero. So when they get stressed and their brainstem gets activated, they are a balled up fetus in a womb

51:28that is exposing that child to overwhelming amounts of alcohol and drugs. So the longer they stay stressed, the more they stay regressed in that state. Gee, this stuff is good.

51:45Addiction is a survival loop. So let's talk about how teens become stressed. So they stress, there's discomfort, there's substance use, there's temporary relief, there's shame, there's more stress and there's stress. Now, how do you interrupt it? Let's talk about that. Parent trap. The parent trap, here's the parent trap. You get this, you see the stress, you get uncomfortable, you see the child uses the substances, they get the temporary relief, then you shame, then they stress, then you stress more. So when the teen gets trapped in stress, the parent panics, the parent becomes dysregulated too. That's what I'm telling you. You have to become curious. I just heard someone say, but Bryan, that doesn't fix it. That's the problem. That's your mindset. Your mindset is that you can fix it. You cannot fix it. You can only influence your child to make better choices via the strength of the relationship they have with you.

52:44So instead of using the drug, they have a resonant memory of your love and affection and understanding of them, your hopes for them, your dreams of them, and then they make a different choice. Now, they may be so conditioned to hang out with friends who use drugs. The best you can hope for right now is that they'll just use less. And on occasion, on occasion, they'll avoid it altogether. But guess what they can't do? They can't do that if you're not giving them the choice of your open, attentive, affectionate, nurturing, present, loving, understanding, state. If your vibration, vibration is fearful and pushing them away, you can't help them. You get two nervous systems fighting. If your child becomes stressed and you become stressed now, you have two stressed out people.

53:40Let me ask you a question. Pop quiz! If you have two stressed out people, who can calm? If you have two stressed out people, who can calm? Nobody can. So you're both stressed. Nobody. Stressed teen plus stressed parent equals nobody heals. You cannot fix the stress brain with another stressed brain. You have to break the cycle and that starts with you. Step one, you're stressed. That's automatic. That's automatic. It's automatic that you're gonna become stressed because you get scared. Can we just acknowledge that when your teens are using substances, it is so scary, especially this day in time. This day in time, there's so much danger in drugs. It's artificial. It's created in factories and labs.

54:39They're using the most dangerous drugs and cutting it up with dangerous substances. Can we just acknowledge how scary it is? And as soon as we acknowledge how scary it is, can we just take some deep breaths? Can we just calm down? Because I'm gonna tell you something really important. If your teen is stressed out and you're getting stressed out, then everybody's gonna stay stressed.

55:08You gotta get yourself regulated. Children borrow calm. A dysregulated teen cannot calm themselves down. A dysregulated teen cannot calm themselves down. They have to borrow your calm. And if they're not borrowing it from you, who are they borrowing it from? Can you answer that question? If your teen is not borrowing their calm, which is oxytocin, if they're not getting their oxytocin from you, then where are they getting it from? Because oxytocin is a learned hormone in the brain. You have to be able to turn it on. If you have a child who's involved in substance use right now, when was the last time you gave them a hug? When was the last time you told them that you loved them? When was the last time that you smiled at them? When was the last time that you did something fun together? When was the last time they walked in the house

56:03and you said, I'm so glad you're home. I miss you. When was the last time you cleaned their room? When was the last time you fixed their favorite food? When was the last time you offered to take them somewhere instead of them having to get there themselves? When was the last time you offered for their friends to come visit? Now, if you checked, if you checked, you know, today, yesterday, today, yesterday, today, yesterday, today, yesterday, you're already winning. But if you, if you have to think about it, you have to think about it. I just gave you, I just gave you the guide. If you got to think about it, I just got, I just gave you the guide. Start doing it. Start doing it today. I love you. What would you like to eat? What's your favorite snack? Smile.

56:58I missed you. What can I help you with? What do you need? What would, what would, what would, what would you need today to feel really good? Because I want to feel really good with you. Is that, it starts there. You can focus on, and, and I'm telling you, even with your children who are using drugs to an excessive degree now, there's some significant relationship. There's a therapy that has to happen there, and there's some trauma therapy that probably needs to be happening with the whole family, but you can start lessening, lessening the urge for substance abuse by just doing those things. The science of calm, you have all those things are increasing oxytocin. Do something fun. Can you allow yourself to be a fun person and not a stressed out person and a fun

57:56person doesn't have to be trying to make everyone laugh. A fun person can also just be a calm person, a present person, an attentive person. Or you're going to be a stressed out mess, and if you're stressed out mess and you're increasing the cortisol, you've got to increase the oxytocin. When you share your calm, it releases oxytocin. The connection chemical in your teen oxytocin automatically lowers cortisol.

58:26So the golden rule, connection before correction. You cannot teach, correct, or guide a teen until their nervous system feels safe. Build the bridge first, oh, you got to get back to safety. You got to get back to safety. You got to stop freaking out because you cannot control. You cannot control your teenager in trying to control them. You're going to lose. You got to get back to calm. You got to get back to connection. You got to get back to safety. You got to get back to understanding. You got to get back to trying to have some kind of relationship because that's going to influence their nervous system. Listen, if you go grocery shopping and you're hungry, you're going to buy all kinds of stuff that you don't need. But if you go grocery shopping and you've already eaten, you get what you need

59:25and then you get out. It's no different with your children. If they go out into the world stressed, they're going to get things that they don't need. But if they go out into the world filled up, filled up with your love and your affection and your comforting and your nurturing and your views of a positive loving future for them, then they're going to go out full and they're not going to need as much of what they've been looking for. That's setting you up. That's setting you up to set them up to heal their brains. You got to see, look for the hidden stress, not just the bad behavior. You got to calm. You got to regulate your own nervous system first, then you got to connect.

1:00:20Let them borrow your calm before you try to fix them. Some of you have teenagers who've been engaging in substances for years. Some of you just months, you've got time, but you have to spend the time in connection and in relationship and in understanding. If you're not there, you got to get there and you can continue to freak out. That's your prerogative. You continue to freak out and let me tell you what that's going to lead to. It's going to lead to doing the same thing and expecting a different result where you can slow down. You can calm down. You can see that your child is regressed. You can see that your child is doing the best that they can with what they've got to work with and you can start thinking about what are the things that I could start doing

1:01:18different to influence my child in a different way, not control, not suppress and not change. That's the scariest thing in the world to not focus on the behavior, but to focus on the relationship. Be the anchor. Here's your homework. Begin practicing regulation before you react to your teen's behavior, breathing. Practicing regulation is breathing, removing yourself. You got time. Your child, your teenager comes home drunk. Don't say anything. Don't say anything. Get them in bed, check on them, get them a glass of water, get them a couple ibuprofen you know they're going to need, but don't say anything else and wait until the next day and don't say anything then.

1:02:15Just be quiet. Be quiet. Don't create more stress. That's the key. Don't create more stress. You have to become the anchor. If you're not the anchor, you got to figure out. I love analogies. I love metaphors. If you're not the anchor, that means the anchor is in the boat. So how do you become the anchor and you do that by anchoring yourself first? That's the only way you become the anchor is that you jump out of the boat and you anchor yourself first.

1:03:02Connection is stronger than control. The old tools are broken when teens struggle or act out. Our first instinct is to punish them. I've talked about this, but punishment often makes things worse, especially with addiction. Why? Because fear breaks connection. And once you lose connection, you lose the ability to influence. So you got control and you can, I love this slide, look at it for a minute. Which one would you rather live in? It's not rocket science. It's brain science. It's not rocket science. Which home would you rather live in? You name it. Now some of you are like, well, I lived in the rules, consequences, threats, punishment home, and I turned that all right. Well, look at your situation right now. Where's it getting you? Now you can keep doing it. You can keep doing it or you have to do something different. Safety, be in relationship, share your calm and repair mistakes.

1:04:01Apologize. Stop asking, how do I stop this bad behavior? Start asking, how do I make my teen feel safe? Oh, God, that's good. Geez. That's so good and so simple and so good. Oh, love is neurological. Love is not just a feeling. It literally changes how the brain works. Listen, presence, eye contact, touch, humor. These simple actions release oxytocin, the chemicals. The chemical tells the brain you are safe. Listening, not judging, not talking, listening. And what do you listen with? Tell me more. What else? Thank you. I'm sorry.

1:04:59Just being present. Eye contact, not making your child make eye contact with you, but you looking at your child. I always remember the 16-year-old family I worked with in San Diego. The dad said, he never even looks at me. He never even looks at me. At dinner, we're sitting around the dinner table because I used to go work in homes with families. We're sitting around the dinner table. Dad's got his face buried in the food and the teen boy is eating and talking to dad and looking right at him. And dad is not looking at his son. Touch, get in some touch, get in some affection. I'm one of my 17-year-old kids. The other day, they'd been having some hard time hearing her mom and they'd lost their little kitty cat. And she said, I just asked my mom to hold me. And she said it was so hard. And she said, I just cried and I cried and I cried.

1:05:54And she said it was so hard, but it felt so good. Ooh, let me tell you, she was going through it. She was going through it leading up to that and humor. Teen feels fear. The brain's alarm bell rings. The 20 second hug releases oxytocin. You may or may not be able to get into the space. It may be too, maybe some of you, some of you don't even know the last time you hugged your child. Why? Because every time you try to hug them, they repel you, they push you away. They say, don't touch me and leave me alone. And guess what? You get your little feelings hurt. And as soon as you get your little feelings hurt, you know why I call them little? Because that's your little child self. The moment your child says don't hug me and you get your little feelings hurt, those are your little child feelings that are getting triggered. They have nothing to do with your adult feeling

1:06:49because your adult feelings say, oh, my child's stressed right now. Let me take a step back up. Let me take a step back. Let me say, okay, we're good. Let me give them some space. And after a half an hour or an hour, let me go knock on the door to their bedroom and see if I can't connect and be present and listen. The brain alarm turns off. They can think clearly again, but if you can get to the hugs, do more of them. Do more of them. Hugs are preventative. Hugs are preventative. If you can give more hugs on the front end, it's gonna lower the cortisol reactions you get on the back end.

1:07:24And the mirror effect, healing your teen begins with healing yourself. They will reflect what you project. That's heavy. I could speak, you know, I could speak probably for an hour on that. I do. I do sometimes. Our Fear to Love intensives. We all have blueprints. The way we parent is built on how we were raised. Our past experiences are hidden fears. You know, I grew up in a home where not only was I a traumatized adopted child. I had a sister who was a traumatized adopted child and I had two parents, both loving parents, both traumatized themselves. All that goes into creating the foundation of the family, but you don't understand that if you're just blaming the child. No one's taking responsibility. Everyone forms a foundation. And I always say in a home, the parents are the foundation of healing, not the clinician.

1:08:20The parents are the foundation of healing. So as a clinician, if you're not working with the parents too, if you're not working with the whole family, you're doing that family a disservice. You've got to work with the whole family and you got to start with the parents because the parents are the greatest regulatory figure. We're not blaming parents nine times out of 10. You didn't traumatize your child. You didn't abuse your child. You didn't neglect your child. You didn't leave your child in the hotel room, but you're the parent, which means you should have the more mature, prefrontal cortex. You are the one who's got to create a regulated loving vibration to guide your child's fearful, stressed out vibration. And if you're a clinician and you're not working with the parents and the family, you're doing the kid a disservice. You're doing the whole family a disservice. And if you don't know how to get to that point, come join me in a Fear to Love intensive.

1:09:18Come learn. Let me show you, let me guide you. I will walk you into the deep waters of emotion and healing. And then all of this stuff really makes sense. You are the emotional thermostat. Children observe adult nervous systems. If you run hot, angry panic, they will run hot. If you stay cool, calm and self, they will cool down. I said, cool down, cool. They will cool down. It doesn't mean that they start out cool down. They're upset. They're upset. We're all entitled to being upset. Let me tell you something. Let me tell you, let me give you another little breakthrough idea. The feeling is the path to the healing. When you can get your child being pissed off and you can support them and you can listen to them and you can encourage them. When you can create space for your child to be sad

1:10:15and for them to let go, guess what it does? It takes the edge off and guess what they need? They don't need, they don't need to cut. They don't need to do more drugs. Because all of a sudden the healing relationship that makes the most difference, the healing relationship that has the greatest, most sustained impact starts to get secure again. Regulation is contagious. When you stay calm, your teen's nervous system naturally copies yours.

1:10:42Create a healing home. It's based on a foundation of predictability and daily rituals. Repair when things go wrong. Just apologize, say I'm sorry, fix it. Have more grace. Because doesn't God give grace to all of us? Are we not the most grace, greedy creatures that exist? Don't we require grace? I caught myself this morning just having a moment of negative thoughts. I'm like, oh, dude, relax, relax. You know what that relaxes? You know what that dude relaxes? That's God's voice. God's giving me grace. God says, dude, relax and I'm relaxed. God's giving me grace. You know how offended God could be with all of us?

1:11:40How stressed out and overwhelmed we get and we don't let go and let God? Extend some grace to yourself. Extend some grace to your children. This is a hard world we live in. This is a tough world. Things are not easy. Teachers are stressed out. Churches are stressed out. Government stressed out. Your employers are stressed out. Everyone's freaking stressed out and scared. Extend some grace. Grace starts with us. And then be emotionally present. 20 second hug, curiosity, deep breathing and repair conversation. This is it. It's your daily tool belt. There you go. 20 second hugs, curiosity, deep breathing and repair conversations. Say I'm sorry, apologize. Here's your homework. You get the 20 minute challenge,

1:12:35spend 20 uninterrupted minutes connecting with your teen today. Let's see who can do it. No lectures, no correcting. Just curiosity and listening. This is your homework for today. The 20 minute challenge, spend 20 uninterrupted minutes connecting. And if you don't have 20, do 10. If you don't have 10, do five. If you can't get in five, then get in two. Don't make excuses. If you want something different you have to be someone different. If you want something different you have to be someone different. Healing is not a straight line. This is why I tell you, children have to go through what they go through. We all did, we've all done it. Review your own history. Review the challenges that you've gone through, the trials and the tribulations.

1:13:33Your children gotta go through it too. And some of your children, their adopted foster children have already been through so freaking much. Their road ahead is gonna be really, really challenging. But your loving presence makes such a big difference. There will be setbacks. That is perfectly normal. Just keep showing up.

1:13:55Okay, thank you so much for joining me. If you need help, if you want to learn the Fear to Love method, if you need coaching, if you need support, however we can support you, take a picture of this QR code or go to feartolove.com pathfinder, forward slash pathfinder. And it is going to assess you. It's gonna give you an assessment. It's an AI generated assessment. Hey, Jasmine, when you put that, can you find the place to the link, post the link for them to get the certificate? Go to feartolove.com forward slash pathfinder. It's gonna give you an assessment. It's going to define a path for you. It will be Fear to Love. Resources could be a book. Maybe it's just a specific video you need. It's gonna give you that. It's gonna, if you're in crisis, if you got a teen, you feel like you're out of control. If they're at risk of adoption disruption

1:14:51or going to residential treatment, it's gonna give you LEAF Wraparound program or Love Pathways program, depending on where you are. It's gonna lead you to Bondify, Bondify.ai. It's a free tool you should all be using. You should all be on. In fact, tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, central standard time, and I do that intentionally, I'd like to do it at like five o'clock, central standard time, but I know my California brothers and sisters are just waking up, but I do a weekly Q and A. I do a weekly Q and A. I just hop on and I just talk to parents. And if there's no one there, I'll just lecture on something. Every, I do that every Wednesday. It's free. There's no excuse. But you've got to be willing to invest the time. You've got to be willing to invest the energy, because if you don't, then you're not creating repetition and you're gonna miss the opportunity for emotional impact

1:15:47and your brain's not gonna change. And if your brain doesn't change, your child's brain's not gonna change. So go to feartolove.com, forward slash Pathfinder, Pathway Finder, take the little assessment, let it point you. We have advanced parenting courses you can take, and then live trainings. Obviously, stay connected. Stay in our Fear to Love community. This is a great community and there's opportunities. If you're a professional, you wanna get certified, you can get certified. But let the Pathway Finder tell you what you need. You might not only need a book, but read the book four times and follow me on Instagram, Bryan Post official. I release some super cool videos every single day. You scroll down, you find the ones I release not too long ago. Oh my gosh, they're fantastic. They're micro-dramas. Bryan Post official, B-R-Y-A-N, P-O-S-T, official. Please let us be a support to you. Do not walk alone, you do not have to.

1:16:45I've got 30 years of education and knowledge and expertise and wisdom and I wanna share it with you. I got people who are trained in this stuff. We wanna share it. Don't do this along. Walk the path. Walk the path with us. Let us walk beside you. FearToLove.com, Pathway Finder, that's it. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me. God bless you. I hope you have an amazing day. And remember, you are the most powerful person in your child's life. You are a force to be reckoned with and when you step out of fear and into love, there's nothing that's gonna stop you from having the relationship with your child that you dream and that you long for. God bless everyone.