Parenting and Showing Up with Agency, Personal Choice, and Intention, with Dr. Amy Hoyt

Debbie:

Hey Amy, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Thank you so much, Debbie. I’m really excited to be here.

Debbie:

I think we’re gonna have a very interesting conversation. You reached out to me a couple months ago and I hear from a lot of people as you might imagine and I always like explore their work and I checked out your website and the work that you’re doing in the world just seems so interesting and relevant to my community. So, and I think we’re gonna have a very interesting dialogue today. So thank you first of all for reaching out to me. I’ve read your bio already, but I always want guests to kind of put their story into context and kind of share their personal why or how they came to be doing the work that they’re doing in the world. So anything you want to share would be really lovely.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Sure, absolutely. Well, I think my origin story typically starts when I was eight years old and I experienced abuse in my childhood home. And it was a foster brother who had been brought in to live with us. And so I was sexually abused at a young age. And that really sent me on a trajectory of what we now know was severe nervous system dysregulation and different responses that I now understand as trauma responses. And that led to addiction pretty early in my life as a teenager. And I ended up in a rehab facility and a halfway house when I was 18 and started the sobriety journey. And so what this does is it set up this, um, this very young way of looking at. what happened to me and how I could possibly minimize some of the symptoms. And that really ultimately led me into my academic pursuit of gender studies and religious studies and ethics. And of course, once you get your PhD, you start to kind of choose your particular area of research. And I was really drawn, no surprise, to trauma and to mass trauma. And so I led research in different parts of Africa for several years and worked on a fairly large project looking at mass trauma and forgiveness.

And that was a really pivotal point in my life because I started to make these connections between mass trauma and individual trauma and what we were seeing with. survivors of genocide and apartheid and what was working for them in terms of helping them with symptomology and helping them carry on with life. And then kind of starting to translate that into what we were seeing, you know, this was right before COVID and so what we were seeing in the Western world. And that is when my sisters and I, one is a licensed therapist in California and one is a medical doctor. in California, we started talking so much about what we were all seeing in our research and in our different fields, and it was trauma. And that led us to basically form a digital mental health program to help people recover from trauma.

Debbie:

Wow.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

And that is how I ended up working in individual trauma.

Debbie:

What an incredible story. And I, you know, even just to go back, you as an 18 year old, I hear from so many families who are navigating significant disruptions with their teenagers. I did an episode last season about the options available for kids who are struggling with addiction with kind of harmful behaviors. And so to hear that you were in that place at 18, and then to see you and have this conversation with you today, like what an incredible journey. I think it’s so hopeful for people. Can you even just talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Oh, absolutely. Well, I think I do feel like that was one of the biggest gifts that I have been given in my life is an early intervention. And it was a best friend who called my parents and said, she needs help. Like she’s completely out of control. And so that act of courage, and then my parents’ courage and their willingness to get me help because they could have just buried it. or not dealt with it directly. And since sobriety taught me a lot about, without knowing the language, I mean, when you go to 12 Steps, there’s wonderful resources and they are free for anyone who is considering stopping drinking. But the language is a little bit different than what I know now was nervous system dysregulation and some problematic neural wiring, if you will. But what it did is it set me up on this path of not being afraid of looking at myself and not being completely terrorized to face some of my flaws, which are many, because I’m human.

And so that journey was, of course, attending meetings and having a sponsor, and then it was helping other people work through sobriety as well. And that act of service, I think, is the most meaningful. I just, in particular, I think the most poignant part was the self-reflection that you’re asked to do when you get sober. And it is a particular step in the 12 steps, and you’re asked to take a personal moral inventory. And what that did is it, you then go and make amends with people. And I think that just… I mean, it was awful. I put it off and put it off. And then when I finally did it, the relief was so intense. I became almost, I don’t want to say addicted, but I just don’t want any contention in my life anymore. I don’t want disruptions like that. I want to take responsibility for myself. And I think that’s what it really did for me ultimately is make me less afraid of the pains of discomfort and growth.

Debbie:

Wow. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. And I do want to talk about trauma a little bit. And we do have a lot of different things listeners just so you know, we’re going to be getting to some really interesting things in addition to trauma. But I do want to talk about that. That’s a big part of your work. And I think trauma is something that is misunderstood. It’s a word that has gained. invisibility or popularity or what you will in past several years. I think there are people who lean all in into kind of acknowledging trauma they may have experienced. There are people who don’t think that what other people may feel as trauma is actually trauma. How would you define it in the scope of the work that you’re doing and for listeners to really have a sense of what it means to have experienced trauma?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Absolutely. Well, I was certified through the Trauma Research Foundation that Bessel van der Kolk founded. And so I definitely follow the definition of trauma that is a terrible event that is overwhelming and that fundamentally changes the way that you view the world and you view yourself. And it ultimately is a change that is quite negative and harmful. And I agree there, you know, It’s so funny, I was recording a podcast episode with my sister earlier today and that was actually the topic we were recording on is, how do you know it’s trauma when traumas become a buzzword? And I think ultimately two points. One no one else can tell us when we’re overwhelmed. And so it’s not uncommon to have people raised in the same home that had radically different experiences. My sister was not abused when she was eight or sexually at any age. She has a radically different experience. So we were raised by the same parents and there were other issues in the home, but we have very different childhoods. So she can’t tell me nor can I tell her what circumstance overwhelmed her nervous system and flooded her with this feeling of fight flight freeze.

And then the second point is, I guess what… What is the harm? And I know one of the things that people worry about is that if trauma becomes too common that it will lose some of its meaning. But we know through the ACEs study, the landmark study that the NIH did in 1997 with Kaiser Permanente, that 64% of American adults have experienced an adverse childhood event, which is trauma. So is it a buzzword or is it an awareness, a cultural awareness? Because if in a research study 64% have experienced this, we know the numbers are higher. And so those are the two things that kind of come to mind when we talk about trauma. Yes, it’s a buzzword and a lot of us have trauma and those two things can coexist.

Debbie:

Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to say for listeners to we’ve done a couple episodes where we’ve talked about trauma in our kids. And for the purposes of this conversation, we really want to be focusing on us as parents, and what our experience has been. I know that you are passionate about teaching others to reprogram their brains and to heal their nervous system so they can overcome challenging behaviors that may stem from past trauma. And And I also know that our kids, if our kids have experienced trauma, especially again in this neurodivergent space, it can trigger our own trauma as parents. So what might that even look like? How would a parent listening to this know if they’re experiencing a trauma response to something that’s happening in relationship with their child or just in their daily life?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

That is a really good question, Debbie. So there are over 40 symptoms of trauma and they range from, this is my favorite because it’s so obscure and I happen to have this one, not having proprioception, the ability to understand where your body is in space and time so you get lost a lot and you bump into things. So that can be a symptom all the way up to over drinking. And so we have many, many symptoms of trauma. So one way would be to familiarize yourself with the symptoms of trauma. But I think a more practical and immediate way to know if we’re in a trauma response is to understand what’s happening in our body. And trauma shows up as adults as physical bodily reactions. And so that clenched stomach you’ve had, or that tightness in your chest that keeps coming during a stressful situation, those are all invitations to get curious about what’s happening in your body. And when we do have a nervous system dysregulation, which is part of a trauma response, it’s going to show up as pain or as, it can show up as chronic illness, it can show up as your face going red all of a sudden, heart palpitations. And so in our Western culture where we’re very cut off from the body and the body and brain are seen as completely separate, this is so counterintuitive but we need to go into the body and just start cultivating awareness. And that awareness is going to be able to show us what’s happening when our neurodivergent child is not doing well and needs us to help them resource. Are we feeling triggered and how do we know that? what’s going on with our body.

Debbie:

Mm hmm. So I interviewed earlier, Hunter Clarke-Fields for the show for the season. And she is, you know, her thing is mindfulness. We talked about her book, Raising Good Humans Every Day, but we really talked about mindfulness and cultivating this practice. And she also was just talking about the importance of going into our body and leaning into it and go, you know, that we can’t kind of skip it. We have to lean into the discomfort. So You are reiterating that. And it’s not always what we want to hear as parents, because it’d be really nice if we could just be like, okay, got it. I’m just going to put that on that shelf over there and go on with my life.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Yes, it would be nice and yet, oh, we just stay stuck. And that’s really painful.

Debbie:

Yeah, yes. So I want to actually, we’re going to pivot to be talking about agency shortly, but I do have one more question about trauma and how we, well, it’s probably a whole other episode, but I do want to touch upon one more aspect of trauma before we move on. So we are going to be talking about agency and choice, which I think is related certainly to all of this work that we’re doing. But before we kind of make that full pivot, just to kind of close out or kind of Sorry, my brain, my brain. But before we make that pivot, I would love to just even share if listeners have been listening to this conversation and they’re recognizing, yeah, this is something that is showing up in my life. Like what would be a first step for them? I mean, you mentioned, of course, Bessel Van der Kolk’s resources and like, but is there kind of like a best practice in terms of where to start if you wanna get to know your own trauma and start to work to mend that?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Absolutely. There’s a few things. One, in the moment, because that’s when it starts to become really urgent, I would definitely recommend doing deep breathing. And that way we can reset our nervous system. My favorite breath work is the physiological sigh. It’s also known as the double breath sigh. It’s two inhales through the nose, which you hold, and then an exhale through the mouth. And you do that. New research actually has shown from the Huberman Lab that when you do that for five minutes a day, it actually helps with depression, anxiety for a 24-hour cycle. Isn’t that amazing?

Debbie:

Yes.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

I know. But when we do it in the moment, which is a lot of what I end up doing, you know, three of my kids are differently abled, I do it in the moment and it will help reset. So I would say that would be my first tip. And then once you have the space and the resources to look into if this is a journey for you, I would say Bessel van der Kolk’s book is awesome, and it is a little bit more of a textbook level. And so if that is how you like to learn, that would be perfect. Deb Dana also has some great exercises for somatic work. Just truly incredible. I’m thinking of her workbook that she has, I can’t think of the name of it off the top of my head, but. Deb Dana, anything she does is going to have wonderful actual exercises that you can do in the moment.

Debbie:

Mm, that’s great. Yeah, we had Deb Dana on the show last year, about her book, Anchored, Anchoring. And her work is incredible. And I you know, she is really such a good interpreter of Polyvagal , and I love her approach. And also the Huberman Lab, I’ll find a link to that episode. And I’ll share it on the show notes page. I love that show. But it’s really I mean, He goes deep, I need like notepads, but that’s fascinating about that physiological sigh. I wanna know so much more about that, yeah. so cool.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

And I think it’s such a great small step that we can all do. Because sometimes we think of mending our trauma, healing our trauma as a, just a multi-year process. Start small. The brain loves small steps.

Debbie:

Yes, yeah, totally doable. I can do that as soon as we get off this call and I probably will, that’s awesome. So, okay, so let’s make the pivot then. When we were emailing back and forth, we talked about talking about this idea of agency. Again, this is something we often are exploring within the context of our kids. How can we help our kids have a sense of agency and self-control in their lives? But we wanna look at agency as parents in our experience. Just so we’re on the same page, do you have a good definition of agency?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

I do. So agency is the ability to self-direct in a meaningful way. And a lot of times it can be thought of as personal choice. Old definitions of agency used to kind of focus on autonomy and independence. But in a relational model, what we’re talking about when we talk about agency is making choices that both allow for self-direction without severing. the relationship and connectedness that we are all working so hard to maintain with our children.

Debbie:

That’s a great definition. And I love that kind of, um, that newer way of looking at it outside of the, uh, the autonomy and independence, because that’s something we’ve also talked a lot about on the show is that there has always been such a priority on helping our kids be independent to do all these things and actually none of us are independent. I mean, I have such a support system around me and am in community with people. who helped me with every aspect of my life. So I really appreciate that we can still have agency even within these kind of connected communities.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Absolutely, yeah, and I think independence in the sense of getting our children able to function in a world that prioritizes, you know, work and progress, I think that’s very important, but in terms of minimizing the support that we need, then that’s where it becomes a little bit more problematic.

Debbie:

Yeah, exactly. And just one last note on that. I believe it was a conversation I had with Megan Ashburn and Jules Edwards about their book, I Will Die on this Hill. We had them on the show last season and they talked about that what we’re really looking for with our kids is for them to have a sense of self-determination,not really independence. It’s But so that’s very connected to this idea of agency. So I really like that. But let’s again, bring it back to us as parents. Why is it important that we as parents experience agency?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Well, I think when I think about the work that led me to work on trauma and agency, my doctoral dissertation was on agency. And so why did I become so obsessed with this concept? And it’s because during trauma or chronic stress, and we know that chronic stress shows up as trauma. So it’s called toxic stress because of what it does to our body physically. So during toxic stress and trauma. there is a loss of agency, mainly because we are in a reactive survival mode and our brain and body is going into let’s get me safe and we hyper focus on that. But secondarily because when we go through hard things our world gets a little bit smaller and it’s really difficult to widen our view and see different options. And so as parents, especially of differently wired children or any differently abled child, I think that there is an inordinate amount of stress that we go through and it’s… Let me start that over. I think as parents of differently wired children or differently abled children, we are under a lot of stress. And often I don’t even realize how much stress I’m under until the end of the day. When we can start to recognize that we actually have choices and self-determination and agency throughout the day and in our relationships, I think what it does is it shifts, for me, it shifts me into a feeling of empowerment and peace and calm, regardless of how difficult the circumstances. When we don’t have choices, it feels it we can go into victim mode and that can be really dangerous in terms of our nervous system and our brain we’re not able to regulate and we are definitely not able to co-regulate with our children and By dangerous, of course, I don’t mean physically dangerous But we’re not able to show up the way we want to and the way we need to in order to help our children

Debbie:

I wanna look at this idea of choice a little bit more. This is something that I wrote about in Differently Wired and it’s something that I. recognize for a lot of parents, as you said, our worlds can feel like they get smaller and smaller. We can feel like we have less and less options, especially if we’re in a smaller community where there’s like two schools or, you know, we just feel like things are kind of closing in on us. I also think that this concept of choice, there is, you know, this idea that with more privilege comes more choice and more resources comes more choice. And so could we talk about choice a little bit more within the context of those things? Like what, you know, we’re not necessarily talking about where, you know, having the money to fork out for this, this or that or living in this specific place. Like what is choice really mean on a deeper level?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

I think for me it means I’m developing an internal locus of control. And when I can find choice, even in the different stages of not only my child’s life, but my life, I am, what I’m doing is I’m widening my window of tolerance. And the window of tolerance is this place, this metaphorical place where we can think and feel at the same time. And we do that. by really strengthening our internal locus of control. Because ultimately, I can’t control anyone or anything outside of myself, especially my children, as we all know. And that can feel really disempowering. I have choices internally. I can choose how I think about a situation. I can choose how I talk about a situation. I can think about how I label. particular child or don’t label them. There are so many choices that we have throughout the day that are micro choices and the brain does not reject small decisions because it doesn’t feel threatened and so in that sense I feel like it’s actually very powerful to find choice in the internal ways that we are

Debbie:

So, okay, you said so many interesting things. Microchoices, the brain doesn’t reject those. That feels really interesting to me that it doesn’t feel threatened. So why would it throw up a fuss if we make these microchoices? So could you give us a couple examples then about what you’re talking about? Like what would some of these microchoices look like that could help develop this stronger internal locus of control that you’re talking about?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Yeah, so of course we talked about awareness of what’s happening in our body and that shows up as parents and so one micro choice could be, you know, I’m feeling really activated. You know, my child is really, it’s a difficult day and I’m feeling depleted. So one micro choice would be to go in my bedroom and this is something I do all the time and lock the door for a few minutes and reset. taking charge of my reaction and my nervous system instead of displacing what’s happening with me onto him. So I have thoughts and feelings about how he’s behaving and those are my thoughts and feelings that I can do a reset on. So that would be a very small micro choice and maybe doing the physiological sigh. Another example would be, Letting, you know, texting my partner, my husband, Kevin, or, you know, if as a single parent, a close friend and saying, I need 20 minutes to go get a soda or to go just walk in the park. And those micro choices, they don’t seem like they would be radical shifts. But what it does is it gets you out of that immediate environment. You start to reset, especially if you’re in nature and you’re able to return. to parenting in a way that you’re able to show up the way you want to show up. Because we all want to show up as our best and highest selves, but we’re inundated. And it’s a very tricky balance of allowing our children’s needs to take priority and then balancing that with if we’re completely empty, we can absolutely cannot serve them.

Debbie:

Yeah, absolutely. So because we are talking about such small moments, which I appreciate again, that makes so much sense that the brain isn’t going to push back on that. Can you talk about what we gain from that? Because, you know, I’m trying to imagine my listeners, you know, hearing this conversation and thinking, okay, well, that’s all well and good, but I’m still feeling trapped. I’m still feeling like I’m still living in this town. I still don’t have options for school. So is there a cumulative payoff or, yeah, just kind of talk us through this a little bit.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

There is a cumulative payoff. We start to reframe how we are showing up. And does it change the fact that you’re not getting the adequate services in your small town? It does not. What it does is it keeps us connected to our prefrontal cortex, which is where logic and reasoning and wisdom lives. And we’re able to problem solve more efficiently. So I too live in a very small town with limited resources. And so I really empathize with any of your listeners that experience that. And when I am connected to my prefrontal cortex, I start doing things like looking for, in the nearest cities and looking for services, looking for research protocols that may be enrolling children in. My son who’s profoundly deaf was enrolled in a research, a long-term research study, and that’s how we were able to kind of get services that we weren’t able to find in town. So what it does is it allows us to stay online so that we can start to problem solve. It won’t change our direct situation in that moment, but kind of like glimmers, you know, Deb Dana’s concept of glimmers, like joy points throughout the day that we string together. Microchoice is what they do as we string them together. It helps us regulate quicker and problem solve more efficiently. And I think that’s what our kids need, ultimately, because their circumstances are constantly changing.

Debbie:

Right, right. And as with everything that we do, I imagine this is something that we can be modeling as well and help our kids learn how to do this. Do you see that in your work?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Oh, absolutely. So my differently wired son is now 15 and he actually joined the swim team this year. And I mean, I have sobbed tears of joy and also pain as he’s made this decision and watching him not be able to swim in the first swim meet because he just couldn’t get up to the block. He just started to go into fight or flight and just really, oh, it was so painful. And then I also saw him yesterday at his swim meet. I was a timer, so I was right there. He got up right before he got up to the block. He started doing deep breathing and he was doing the physiological side. I’m not kidding. And I looked, I said, are you doing okay? He goes, I’m just doing my deep breathing, mom. And so he has seen me do this for several years when I’m feeling activated. He was feeling activated. He was going for a new challenge and he did it. So I absolutely believe that anything we’re doing is being modeled for them and they are, it’s gonna show up in ways we can’t even imagine. Both the good and the challenging parts of our parenting.

Debbie:

Mm hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And just kind of to tie in agency and trauma, how do you see those things as being connected?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Yeah, that’s a great question. We, you know, research does show, and this comes out of Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Research Foundation, that one of the more insidious parts of trauma is that we lose agency. And of course, trauma and toxic stress have similar reactions, and as parents of differently wired children, we are under that toxic stress we talked about. We, when we are having Living in such a stressful environment, agency seems to, unless we’re conscious of it, it seems to almost drift or our sense of it drifts away. And in order to recover some of the self-determination in our parenting, we have to actively look for places that we can have more choice. So I feel like it’s directly tied to how we’re able to navigate our parenting journey.

Debbie:

So for parents who are, again, listening to this and are just very much in it, any kind of best practices or something that they could even play with today to explore this concept of whether or not they even feel any sense of agency in their life and then how they might be able to build that wherever they’re starting from.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Yeah, absolutely. I think, I’m a list maker, I love making lists. And so I would encourage a five minute timer on your phone and just start on the notes section of your phone or pen to paper listing out places where you feel like you have choice. What shampoo you use, how long your walk is, if you allow pets in the home, what friends you text. We all have a lot of choices that we can start expanding. And when we start to become aware of it, just a list, and then choose one and decide, you know what, I want to expand on that. I want to text my friend more often. I’m going to make a different choice next time I’m activated, whatever that is. And it’s really through those small steps that we see large gains over. And our brain’s not going to notice incremental process, but at some point you will look back to who you were as a parent a few years earlier and you will be amazed not just through this practice but through all of the practices that your listeners are employing in order to show up as the parent they want to be.

Debbie:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love that five-minute list. I started making it in my head as you were describing it. And just to be clear, this also isn’t saying that we’re just going to be focusing on the things we do have a choice on as a way to deny the areas where we don’t have that sense of agency, right?

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

That’s right. I mean, it is not practical or advisable when our child is really activated and having a hard time regulating for us to turn around and say, it’s my choice, I’m going in my bedroom right now. These are all mitigated around what’s happening in that moment. And so it definitely needs to always be a flexible concept where we’re taking into consideration our children and our family.

Debbie:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s great. So, oh my goodness, such an interesting conversation. I really love having dialogues like this just because it’s, yeah, it’s a little nerdy, but in a really good way and practical. So it’s kind of all the good things. So before we say goodbye, could you tell listeners a little bit more about specifically the way that you work and you’re mending trauma? organization and how people can connect with you.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Absolutely. We are a digital mental health organization that focuses on trauma. We have a Trauma Recovery Program. It is a monthly membership. And inside the program, we use all sorts of different therapies, including somatic therapies and practices, EMDR, internal family systems. We work on brain and nervous system rewiring. And we have a group. that is for women and we have a group that is for men. And it’s been, it’s such an honor to walk people through trauma recovery. And of course we’re also on Instagram at Mending Trauma. And it’s just, we are here for anyone who’s interested in looking at whether they’re ready to heal their trauma.

Debbie:

Mm-hmm. That’s wonderful. Thank you. Well, thank you again. I’m really grateful that you reached out. I think this is such a again, interesting conversation and it brings together so many different aspects of what we experienced as parents and other conversations we’re having throughout this entire season. So and a lot of food for thought. So thank you so much. Thanks for everything you shared and for yeah, just being on the show.

Dr. Amy Hoyt:

Thank you so much for having me, Debbie. It was really, really nice to talk to you.