Welcome to the Mindful Dog Parent, the podcast for overwhelmed and anxious dog owners who are doing their best but still feel like they're getting it all wrong.

I'm Sian, a trauma informed coach and ethical dog trainer.

I created this podcast because dog parenting isn't always cute reels and perfect walks.

Sometimes it's tears after training, guilt in the quiet moments, or just feeling like you're the only one struggling.

If you've ever said, I love my dog, but this is really hard, you're in the right place.

Each week I'll bring you calm, compassionate guidance to help you build confidence, regulate your emotions and reconnect with your dog.

Even when things feel messy because you're not failing, you're just overwhelmed and you don't have to figure this out on your own.

Have you ever stood in the middle of a walk with your dog, A difficult walk or a difficult moment with your dog, and it could be where they're kind of pulling or lunging or barking or ignoring you, and you've thought to yourself, it must be me, it must be something I'm doing wrong, I'm not cut out for this, I'm not good enough, all that kind of stuff, all those negative thoughts, it's really common thing to think that it is just you.

Today, I want to help you to realize that it is not a reflection of failure, but it is how your nervous system is responding and how it's working under stress, how it's doing what it should do.

You know, that's his job when it's stressed.

So together, I want to explore today why that self blame actually turns up and shows up in the first place, what it does to your relationship with your dog, how you can gently shift back into a calmer state and start to see real progress moving forward and start to see that it's actually possible.

So the reason I'm talking about it is because it's one of those things that gets talked about privately in our own thoughts.

We might journal, so we write about it, we might talk about it to some of our closest friends or family members, but there's still that element of we're keeping it quite private.

We don't want to tell people that we think it's something we're doing wrong necessarily.

So it's not something that's common knowledge.

People don't think that anyone else thinks that way because it's not talked about.

And when that happens, it starts to kind of make you feel even more like it's something that you're doing wrong.

Because especially when other people are telling you that that's the case.

Now, I've had clients come through to me who have just been an inquiry and they've said they've spoken to someone before or worked with someone before who've told them that their dog's behavior is happening because of something they're doing.

And they've said, you're to blame for this.

It's all your fault that your dog's doing this.

It's not a great place to start a relationship.

I don't talk about who it is or what else they've said or anything like that.

I'm not interested in that other person who said this.

I'm interested in the person in front of me and supporting them and starting to get that confidence to a place where they can feel like they're going to see that progress.

Because, you know, that person who said that to them, ultimately they don't know.

They don't know.

They clearly don't know the situation or the things that play a part in dog's behavior because they wouldn't have said it if they did.

So it's something that's really common, and I hear it from clients in their first sessions as well, where they say, you know, my confidence has been knocked because my dog's behaviors regressed.

So something that was working before is not working now.

So it must be something I'm doing wrong now for it to just have stopped working.

It's something where if the behaviour is directed directly at you and not the other person in the home, so it could be a couple and it's only happening to one of the people in the home, or if it's a family, it could be happening just to one or two people, or it's only happening to the kids and not the adults.

That's quite common.

But you've also got that element of negative self talk as well.

So it could be coming from internal voices, where you frame things in a.

In from a place of I'm not good enough.

And when your dog's behavior starts to play a part in.

In that, and I've touched on this before, this is where we need to kind of take a step back and try and reframe and think about things in different way so that our nervous system can respond in the way that we want it to rather than in the way that it's done doing so to keep us safe automatically without us really having that knowledge of it actually happening.

So this is where I want to talk about today, because it's A really important topic.

If, if these things are kind of resonating.

If the things that I've said, like you've said, oh yeah, that's me, that's how I, that's, that's how I think.

That's how I feel right now.

It's such a private thing.

It doesn't get talked about between people and it's not common knowledge.

That's why I'm talking about it, because I want it to be become common knowledge.

I want it to be less of a taboo, less of a concern about feeling embarrassed or shameful around talking about these things and saying I need help with this.

Because ultimately if you keep doing the same thing, you'll always get the same results, which is what I always say.

And we've got to change something in order for us to be able to start to see that real progress.

And I want to talk about it and why it must be me is showing up in the first place.

So I've touched on it a little bit.

But the nervous system has been created in the very beginning to keep us safe.

That's its only purpose and job to keep us safe.

Now this is going back when we've kind of thinking about evolution.

We've evolved as a species to, you know, live with all of this busyness.

Our life is full of things.

It can feel overwhelming and it can be stressful.

Jobs, life, taking the kids to all these extra after school activities.

So we go to the gym, we go swimming, we go to scouts, we go to cubs, we go to the gymnastics, we go to dance classes, we go to football practice, we go to rugby.

Like all the things start to feed into our nervous system response.

So when it was very first built, it was there to keep us safe in life or death situations.

We're talking about kind of going back in the day where there would have been a bear or there would have been some kind of threat and it's more likely a wild animal threatening our existence on this planet.

And it was their fight would be go all in and see if we can fight our way out of it.

Flight would be to run the other way and hope that we could outrun whatever it was that was there or freeze.

We stand still and hope it goes away.

Now when we put that and frame that into the modern world, our nervous system haven't evolved like our lives have evolved.

So our nervous system keeping us safe, is that doing the same kind of job?

We can send an email, and I've said this before, we can send an email and that could be seen as a threat.

And our body goes into fight or flight or freeze response in just a simple email being sent, but there's emotion behind it.

Or we've kind of got some really, some really difficult things to kind of talk about on the email or we've been reprimanded on the email or whatever it is.

So our body goes fight, flight or freeze.

And we could, that's where we can go all in and kind of respond in a really emotional way.

We can just like avoid it and put it to one side and hope it just gets forgotten about or we don't do anything at all and we just go, oh, I don't know what to do right now.

And our body freezes.

My dog.

Nervous systems exist with our dogs as well.

And my dog Oliver is a nervous dog.

And in the past when he's had those stressful moments, he freezes in hopes the threat goes away.

And the threat for him would be potentially the approach of another dog or, or the approach of somebody who he didn't trust or didn't know.

So he wouldn't trust somebody he didn't know.

He doesn't do that now.

He trusts people.

He goes to say hello and all the things.

So that would have been his go to.

I'm going to freeze and hope that it goes away.

Bonnie's response in that situation when she was reactive was when a dog was appearing and she could see them full on fight mode, she would go all in.

I feel threatened right now and I've got to protect myself.

So the sight of a dog for another dog could be fight, flight or freeze.

And for us it's going to be the same.

If we are living with a reactive dog, our fight, flight or freeze response is going to kick in as a result of seeing another dog out on a walk with our dog.

And I'll touch on kind of how that looks physically and how it's kind of affecting our relationship with that dog in a second.

So self blame is a survival strategy.

It starts to give your brain certainty which it, what it, it's what it needs.

It needs some kind of, that's what it's looking for.

It's, it's looking for some kind of certainty even if it's painful because you can say to yourself, if it's me, I can fix it so it must be me and I need to do something differently to fix it.

But it's never knowing, it's never known what to do.

And you might change things that you're doing in your behavior.

But Ultimately, you still feel the same way.

And it's changing how we feel.

That calm connection with our dog comes from feeling safe ourselves, from our dogs feeling safe individually and feeling safe together as well.

So that overload that we're feeling that I've mentioned, with all the things that we're doing, that overload narrows your tolerance window.

So that basically means if you're already carrying all that extra stress of work and life, your nervous system has far less capacity to deal with stressful moments.

So even when one small behavior blip happens with your dog, it's amplified, it starts to become this bigger thing.

So you're then reacting in a far more stressed way.

So whatever your stress, like you could be snappy, you could lose your patience faster, you could get frustrated.

Those things are happening far quicker because your nervous system has less capacity to deal with that thing that may be small in on its own, but when you put it with all the other things, it starts to feel much, much, much bigger.

So what I want to do is reframe some of this stuff.

Self blaming is something that you're doing at the moment, and I did in the past.

So when Bonnie used to get reactive, I used to blame myself.

And it was far.

It was really embarrassing.

Being out in public and your dog flipping herself up into the air and it looking like you were doing it on the lead and you weren't doing anything.

You know, it starts to become something I'm doing this wrong, that nothing I'm trying is working.

When you catch yourself saying it's me, I want you to pause and recognize that this is your nervous system signaling that it's overloaded and it's not proof that you're failing.

You need to tell your body and your brain that this isn't proof of failure.

It's my nervous system kicking in.

And I need to take and acknowledge it, take note that this is happening because I need to do something else.

I need to start to tell my nervous system that it's safe right now.

When you start to see that and feel that and understand it and tell yourself and show yourself, it starts to make a big, big difference.

So that is the reframe.

Your nervous system is there to keep you safe.

It acts on an automatic basis.

So all of this stuff that you're doing and stuff that I'm going to talk about in a minute is happening automatically.

It's not something you can consciously control because it's created to keep you safe.

What you need to do is interrupt it, start to show it that you are safe.

And saying, actually this thing that's happening isn't fight, flight or freeze.

There's no real threat to life here.

I am safe.

And telling yourself it is one thing, but showing yourself it is another.

And it needs some repetition because it's acting on historical stuff.

So things that your nervous system's learned is safe in the past that might not be, it's kind of telling itself.

You have to try and reframe it and change what it starts to tell itself.

So if you are actually safe and it doesn't feel safe, you have to reframe that as well.

So there's things that we just need to do and have that awareness in the first place.

So the hidden cost of blaming yourself is quite big because three things happen.

The first thing is tension transference.

So that just means when you start to blame yourself, your body starts to tighten because it goes into fight, flight or freeze.

So it starts to have physiological automatic responses.

In those moments, your dog's going to pick up on that energy because you're going to get tighter on the lead.

If you're out on a walk, your tone of voice is going to change, your breathing changes.

You have a different, different body language signals.

As well as tightening that lead, there are other things that your body is doing that your dog is going to read and take as a stress signal and a stress cue.

So their nervous system starts to mirror you because they feel that tension through the lead and they say, oh, my human's tense.

I also need to be tense.

So you spot a dog if it's reactivity, you spot a dog coming around the corner and your dog hasn't spotted them yet.

You start to go, oh.

Because your nervous system saying, this isn't safe, this is stressful.

We need to do something right now.

You get tense.

Your dog then feels that and goes, oh, is something happening?

There must be something going on.

And they start to tense up and they have that.

They get then start to be like checking out, get hyper vigilant, oh, there's something over there.

There is a dog.

I need to start to build up that stress.

So you get more stressed, they get more stressed and it starts to feed this cycle.

So that's tension transference.

So this is where it starts to then build up to a stress spiral.

So I use the analogy of the stress bucket because it's used in human terms and I use in dog terms as well, and loads of other trainers do too.

Your stress is activating your dog's stress.

Their behavior starts to get worse for Want of a better word.

And then your self blame starts to deepen because your dog's behavior isn't improving, it's actually potentially going the other way or it's staying the same and it's quite extreme.

So think of it as a bucket.

So I've got a mug here, so this is my stress bucket and this could be yours.

And your dogs could be different size.

So this one is taller, this one's a little bit wider.

So there might be more capacity in one than the other as.

So this one's got something in it already.

So this bucket is kind of about a quarter full.

Every time there is a trigger or something and it's not a trigger as in I'm creating a reaction here, but just something.

It could be somebody coming to the door, it could be visitors to the house, it could be they've seen a cat outside.

Whatever it is, all those things add into this bucket.

When they react, the bucket is going to fill quicker because when there is a reaction, there is a lot of stress going on in that system.

So it starts to fill faster when it gets to the top, it's got nowhere else to go.

So your dog's stress is filling, filling, filling, filling, and the only way to go is out.

So their tolerance is as much space as that mug is giving them.

And when they hit the top, all those behaviors that you don't want to see start to spill out.

So imagine water spewing out of this and that's all, that's the barking, the lunging, the pulling, all the things happening.

When we start to put holes in this and start to make it bigger and it starts to get a bit more capacity, that then means the water is leaving this in a much calmer way.

Because when you put a hole in it, it's not going to start to spew out everywhere.

It's just slowly emptying as stress starts to fill the bucket.

So stress is still going to fill it, but not at as such quick, as such a quick rate.

And it's not going to over spill when we start to help make it bigger and add some of those holes in there.

So we have those, our dogs have those.

And that's where the stress spiral can start to really take over.

Because when, when we start our day, you're not going to see inside that one when we start our day up here.

So we've been to bed and we think, okay, I feel a bit less stressed today.

So you know, it's emptied a little bit.

And for our dogs we've only got that much capacity to deal with anything.

So that's when we start to get stressed and we start to see, you know, that much is filled up, that's going to fill up really quickly in a day.

Especially if you're going to work and you've got a busy day.

Your dog's behavior being thrown in there as well, you're gonna, you're gonna over, over top there and it's the same for our dogs.

So that's where we start to get stuck in this spiral of stress.

It can't constantly gets filled, consistently gets filled and it's always over, over spilling.

And each day you start, if you're not emptying out too much, if you're not emptying out a lot, it's not gonna start to have much of an impact.

So every day you start, you starting from a stressed state and then we start again on that cycle.

So then that leads to learnt hopelessness because over time you're trying things and they're not working so you stop trying them or you're doing it half heartedly because your nervous system's already braced for failure.

So it's telling you already, your body is telling you because it's already learned that this is the case, that nothing works.

It's me, nothing's working.

So what I want you to start to do and you can see how deeply this can go.

This is like learned hopelessness is not a nice place to be in and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

It's not the behavior alone that keeps you stuck here.

I want you to reframe it as that it's the nervous system feedback loop between you and your dog.

So your dog doesn't feel safe, you don't feel safe, your buckets are getting full every single day and they're spilling over.

So I want you to see as it's not just one single thing, it's not you that's keeping everything stuck, it's the nervous system states that you and your dog are in and this cycle that you're stuck in with each other that's causing this.

It.

If you are listening and you're not watching on YouTube, I was holding a glass up to the screen with water in it so you wouldn't know what I was talking about without if you weren't watching.

So if you are just listening, imagine a glass of water filling and spilling over with what we just talked about.

So what is a nervous system reset?

Because I've told you kind of why, it's why you kind of Telling yourself that it's you.

I've talked about how it looks and how it feeds into that relationship with your dog.

So now instead of giving you the same do, do a reset kind of advice in other episodes, I want to make it more applied in this situation.

So a simple 60 second nervous system reset here that you can try next time you are telling yourself it's me.

So you've paused and you've had that awareness that you're saying it's me.

I want you to ground yourself.

So that is just about putting those feet flat on the ground.

Softening your body, doing that body scan.

Soften your jaw, drop your shoulders, see where there's tension in your body and try and loosen it.

So I tend to feel tension in my legs, so I have that awareness.

So I've made my feet flat.

I have that tension in my legs, so I'm making them softer.

I'm lowering my shoulders, I'm softening my jaw because my jaw tends to be the thing that tightens with when I'm feeling anxiety and that kind of thing I am aware of.

Like is my forehead or mouth tight?

And I'm loosening like all of the tension that you feel.

Do that before anything else because you have to start to tell your nervous system that it's safe.

In order for that to happen, we have to ground ourselves.

We have to just start to bring ourselves back to the present and start to change what our body's reaction is.

In this moment.

I want you to breathe.

So inhale gently through your nose, count to four, exhale slower than you inhaled.

So take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth for six seconds.

So I tend to say count in for four, count out for six.

If you can hold it for a couple of seconds as well, that would be good.

But do that a few times because that is starting.

That exhale is a way of telling your nervous system that it feels safe.

And that is the starting point.

We have to do this.

It's not just about telling ourselves in our head we're safe, we're safe.

We have to show our nervous systems that we're safe by doing these things.

So inhale for four, exhale for six and do that a few times.

Then I want you to co regulate with your dog.

So that is looking at your dog with soft eyes.

If they're sniffing, let them sniff because they're going to be regulating through, through the sniffing and the breathing exercise as well.

If they look at you and give that, give you that eye Contact, notice that and just be really aware of what your dog is doing right there and then.

So just start to kind of co regulate with them, soften yourself, slow yourself down and see if you can start to notice more of that with your dog as well.

And then I want you to anchor yourself.

So that is just to tell yourself out loud if you can, but in your head is good too.

This is stress, it's not failure.

So it's starting to say, I'm safe here.

It doesn't mean I'm a failure, not under threat.

Right now I am feeling stressed and I'm not a failure.

Make it your own words as well.

So if those aren't words that you would say in that way.

So you might use the word stress and failure, but you might not say, this is stress, it's not failure.

Try and use words that you would use in this situation.

The more of your own words you can use in this, in your affirmations, the better, because it starts to kind of sink in a little bit more than if you use another person's words.

This is how you start to teach both nervous systems, yours and your dogs, that calm is possible in that moment.

Because that is where we start from, a place of grounded action.

We start to reset our nervous system and say that we're safe right now.

We tell ourselves and confirm that that's the case.

Then we try and do whatever it is that we're doing.

So when you start to tell yourself it's me, do that.

And it will start to really help reframe things and change that response and that reaction afterwards.

Most people start to miss progress because they're only looking for the big things, the big outcomes, the big changes.

But nervous system changes and nervous system progress is far subtler.

And I can say this from experience.

So my own experience of my nervous system telling me that I'm not safe is where I feel it in my body.

I get a tingly forehead, tingly, tingly scalp.

My scalp tends to tingle when I'm anxious and I feel a knot at the top of my ribs.

So when I'm telling myself where I'm feeling it, that's my body scan.

I've said to myself, oh, my knots back.

That's how I say it.

My anxiety knots come back.

That's me having that awareness and saying, right, I feel anxious right now.

My nervous system does not feel safe right now.

I need to change things and start to reframe it a little bit.

So rather than looking for the big things and this has happened Slowly.

So I think before I had an awareness, my nervous system was always in Fight, flight, or freeze.

I've been in burnout before, and I know how it feels to have that kind of chronic level of constantly being in fight, flight, or freeze, because that's what it leads to.

It leads to the burnout.

And then I started to say, okay.

Once I was aware of it, I was like, my anxiety, not I can feel it.

This is where I feel it in my body.

When I started to tap into that, I grounded myself and it went away.

And.

And I was like, okay, it's gone now.

And then a little bit later, it come back.

So it's not about it going away completely.

This is a.

This is a.

This is deep stuff that you need to work on over a period of time.

It went away and then it came back.

And it might not come back very long after I'd grounded myself, because the situation that I was in, in a.

In a job, say, like in my old corporate life that I wasn't enjoying, or the situation that I was in, the last job that I was in before I left corporate, I was in Fight, Flight, or freeze a lot.

I was not in a good place in that job.

And I can see why that would have led to all these things happening with my nervous system.

So then subtle things started to shift, because then I would do a body scan maybe a little while later, and I realized I wasn't.

I didn't have the anxiety knot.

I wasn't feeling anxious.

And I say, oh, I haven't got my knot, my knots, not there.

So again, I'm like, okay, that's a win.

I'm not feeling anxious right now.

Whereas before it was constant, then it was intermittent.

So it was happening, you know, every so often, quite often still.

But then I was checking in with myself, and I was like, it's not happening anymore.

And it's subtle.

It's very subtle.

You don't know unless you do it.

Like, I wouldn't have realized until I checked in or until some someone says, how are you feeling?

And then I think, actually, I don't have my anxiety knot and it's not there.

And now more often than not, my anxiety knot isn't there.

So I check in and it's not there more often than not.

So when it is there, I'm very aware of the situation, and I'm very aware of what's making that happen.

And I work on it, and I'm doing deeper stuff now, working on it at a deeper level at the minute so it's something like I say, it's ongoing.

So your recovery time might shorten.

And this could be with your dog as well.

You recover quicker.

But also your dog could recover quicker from a period of barking, that kind of thing.

They settle faster after they bark.

For example, the baseline starts to shift so you feel less tense starting a walk.

Beforehand, you felt tense every time you were going out on a walk.

And now the tension isn't there as much.

You might start to feel tense out on the walk instead of it being before you leave the house.

And then you might start to see that shift where the tension doesn't happen hardly ever, just like with my anxiety knot.

So the baseline is shifting there because it's not happening before you leave the house.

Micro regulation starts to show up.

So your dog takes a breath.

You might see them take a big deep breath.

They shake off.

So if you see a wet dog shake.

So when dogs are wet and they do that big shake off and everybody gets soaked around them, that is happening when they're not wet.

That is a sign that they're reducing their heart rate after an exciting event or after a stressful event.

They're trying to regulate themselves doing that.

Or they might check in and glance at you more often.

Just little subtle things are changing here.

Look out for those, because they're your nervous system's way of saying, we're expanding our capacity.

If you start to track that, you're gonna see that you're not stuck.

You are rewiring your nervous system slowly but surely.

And I have worked on that and I am still working on that at another level now.

But that is what I want you to spot and start to work on, because that is where you start to see these things.

You start to see the smaller, subtler changes that then starts to build that momentum moving forward.

So here's what I would love for you to try.

As we come towards the end of the episode, I want you to notice one moment this week when you think it's me.

When that thought shows up, I want you to notice it because that's going to be your first place.

This is the first situation that you can say, I can change things now because I'm aware that I'm telling myself that it's me.

Instead of spiraling, pause and run through those reset steps.

So that's the ground in yourself, the breathing exercise, the co regulation and the anchor.

And I want you to write down one micro nervous system win that you've noticed either in your dog or yourself.

So things that I mentioned like that little wet dog shake when they're not wet, that's them regulating, taking a deep breath, sniffing more, you doing stuff to help yourself have that awareness and, and you can notice that you're not feeling that anxiety as much or the stress hasn't kind of made you snap as, as quickly as it would have done before that kind of thing.

At the end of the week, I want you to look back and celebrate your nervous system starting to learn to find that calm and your dog is following suit.

Now at the end of week one, it might only be really small, subtle things, but the end of week two, that's where we start to see some bigger changes.

So you will, if you're consistent with it, you will definitely see by the end of week two some of these things happening a little bit more.

So it tends to be a two week time period when like habits can start to change, that kind of stuff.

So if this episode has resonated and you are curious about going deeper because it goes much, much deeper than what we've talked about today, I have just opened up the Confident Dog Parent Blueprint.

It is my step by step course that is designed to help you to create these nervous system informed shifts in real life so that you can find that calm and that confidence with yourself and with your dog.

And it's not about bouncing between tips and quick fixes that just don't stick.

The link is in the show notes if you'd like to explore more.

It is a brand new thing.

It's something that has never been out there from me in the past and I've never seen anything like this course moving forward.

It's there to help you.

I help both ends of the lead.

It's there for you and your dog and that connection that you have together.

That is the end of today's episode.

So check out the show notes for the links.

As always, my inbox is open.

So do come and kind of tell me how you're feeling if you've noticed any of those wins, what you think.

If there's any topics that you want me to cover in any of the episodes, I would love, love, love to do that and I would never use a name.

So if you tell me how you're feeling with anything, I would never reference your name.

If I were to talk about it in an episode.

Anybody who is going through anything like this and the feelings of feeling like all the guilt and the hopelessness and all of that stuff is very personal and very private.

So I always keep everything in that regard, so it wouldn't ever be shared.

But I hope it's really helped.

These things have helped me and I'm in a place now that I've never been before.

So yeah, I want it to be something that you see as well.

So I shall see you next week on the Mindful Dog Parent.

Thanks so much for tuning in to the Mindful Dog Parent.

If this episode gave you something to think about or it just made you feel a little less alone, I would love it if you followed the show and shared it with another dog parent who needs it.

You'll find all the links and resources mentioned in the show notes@lavendergardenanimalservices.co.uk podcast and I would love to see Stay in touch, so head there if you want to explore more ways to work with me or get support.