Healing Through Relationships: Dr. Erin Hambrick on Childhood Trauma and Resilience

Matthew Darrah (00:01)

Hello and welcome to All Things Foster, a place for coffee, connection, and community. The episode title for today is Healing Through Relationships, Dr. Erin Hambrick on childhood trauma and resilience. Before we get to that, our episode sponsor this week is Blueprint Fitness Lab. We provide personalized nutrition coaching for those who are ready, willing, and able to reach their health and fitness goals.

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And I want to reintroduce to those of you who slogged through our five part series on trauma, we have Hannah Doggett back with us again. We talked a lot about Dr. Hambrick's work, the work that Hannah had done kind of under Dr. Hambrick. And so I wanted really to kind of have an opportunity to meet with Dr. Hambrick as well. And so Hannah, thank you so much for coming back.

And Dr. Hambrick, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm really, the issues of trauma and trying to help folks understand trauma and overcome trauma is really, really important to me. So before we kind of dig in, give us a little bit on you and what you do.

Hannah Doggett (01:55)

Of course.

Erin Hambrick (02:16)

Yeah, well, thanks for having me. And Hannah is my first research student ever. Thanks for thinking of me for this podcast and ⁓ carrying on the great work that we started together many years ago at this point. Kind of hard to believe. So yes, I'm Dr. Erin Hambrick. ⁓ Work with children mostly. So I go by Dr. Erin a lot. And my background is I'm a clinical child psychologist by training.

And I've always specialized in children and families who have been affected by trauma. I'm particularly interested in how early life trauma really affects the developing child and family dynamics ⁓ and especially what we can do to help and relationally oriented ⁓ resources and interventions are really important to me in this.

Matthew Darrah (03:06)

Absolutely. And so you ⁓ work some at UMKC and then ⁓ you also do some independent stuff as well as ⁓ with The Children's Place, which is what?

Erin Hambrick (03:20)

Yes,

yeah. So I, ⁓ for the 1st eight or nine years of my career, I was a professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City with a research lab focused on child trauma. ⁓ you know, kind of following the COVID pandemic and ⁓ just changes in my own family, I was looking for new ways to re-engage kind of the same material. And so I decided to go out on my own as an independent consultant.

Matthew Darrah (03:44)

Mm-hmm.

Erin Hambrick (03:49)

I still work some with the University of Missouri, Kansas City, helping students learn how to work with infants and young children, particularly those who've experienced trauma. And I spend a lot of time at The Children's Place here in Kansas City as a clinical and evaluation consultant. And so help them think through treatment goals, intervention goals for specific children and families, help them lead relationally oriented intervention groups.

but also help them think through how to tell the story of what works for very young kids who have complex needs. Many of the children that we intersect with, by the time they enter our services at the average age of three, they've experienced six to eight different types of trauma already. And ⁓ we also know that something that kind of goes hand in hand with trauma exposure is ⁓ kind of a low history of relational health.

Kids who are trauma exposed also tend to have very little access to those safe, stable, nurturing relationships. And so it's just a very important age group to me, especially because I think when we think about trauma, we don't often think about how at risk very young children are ⁓ for experiencing the effects of trauma. And so, yeah, I'm just excited to still be in this same vein of work, even though I've shifted venues.

Matthew Darrah (05:03)

Right? Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, see Hannah and I talked about how, you know, they say, well, you know, they're just a little bitty. They don't remember it, right? So it's not, it doesn't really matter. And, you know, it's just not the case, right?

Erin Hambrick (05:28)

Yeah, it's absolutely not the case at all. I mean, it's very true that a four-year-old can't tell you in their own words what happened to them when they were zero, one, maybe even two years of age. They can't tell you a story about what happened to them. But the impact comes in, and I'm sure you all have discussed this some already, know, the very systems that help us

Matthew Darrah (05:43)

Right, yeah.

Erin Hambrick (05:54)

stay alive, regulate our heart rate, understand if we're safe, understand if relationships are safe, are developing more rapidly when we're very young than they ever will again. And so if those developmental systems get told at a super young age, the world isn't safe, it's chaotic, it's unpredictable, you never know when you'll hear a loud noise, you have no power over whether or not you'll

Matthew Darrah (06:06)

Right.

Mm.

Erin Hambrick (06:23)

get your basic needs met for toileting, eating, sleeping, soothing. That just teaches the young system to either completely be on guard or to just completely disengage from the world, right? Because engagement with the world didn't help them. It didn't meet their needs. And so, you know, it's easy, yeah, to think, well, they can't tell the story of what happened.

But their bodies know exactly what happened and it really sets the stage ⁓ for how they interact with the world.

Matthew Darrah (06:52)

Yeah.

Right. We were—this is on my TBR list, and Hannah and I talked about it some on our recordings, but the book The Body Keeps Score, right? We were on vacation and I saw it and I grabbed it, and of course then my wife decided she was going read it first, and you know, so I'm waiting my turn. Yeah, so first, Dr. Henry, what made you—

Erin Hambrick (07:06)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you gotta get two copies, you know?

Matthew Darrah (07:26)

go into this field? Was it just you were early in college and you were like, man, that sounds interesting. Why this field?

Erin Hambrick (07:35)

Yeah, you know, it was I can remember so clearly a lot of the steps that that took me on this journey. I went to a liberal arts college, and so the emphasis early on wasn't on, ⁓ know, you got to pick a career or a major immediately, right? It was kind of that academic exploration. And I loved all of my classes. I loved learning. I describe myself as a lifelong learner still.

⁓ And I just kept thinking, you know, I feel like I have things to say about the world, right? Like I just have things to say, I care about things and I want people to hear about the things that I care about. And so I knew that much. And then I was sitting with a friend, my sophomore year of college, she just started describing the psychology classes that she was taking. And I thought, I'm so completely interested in that, right? And so I immediately enrolled in a psych class, loved it.

Matthew Darrah (08:08)

Mmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Erin Hambrick (08:33)

Couldn't get enough of the information. But then when it came time to go to grad school, I had been so focused on just the learning itself that I hadn't really been focused on thinking about like, how do I get into a good grad school, right? Like, how do I make this launch? And so I thought, I'm gonna take a gap year. And I took a gap year working with kids who had autism, working as an administrative assistant in a therapy office.

And I thought, I just love this field, but I don't know nearly enough to solve the problems I want to solve. And so I went and got a master's degree at Western Carolina University. Love that place. Learned so much there. And their goal was to get students into doctoral programs. And I thought, yeah, I have so much to learn. I'm probably going to want to stay in school for the next 10 years and knew that about myself early on somehow. And ⁓ that was when I became so curious.

Matthew Darrah (09:20)

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (09:28)

about resilience. Why is it, how is it that people can go through terrible things and come out fine, come out with growth, but also come out facing significant challenge, right? Like how is it that all of that is so possible? And it was at that point in my education where I actually read Dr. Perry's book, The Boy Who Raises a Dog, and it just hit me that

Matthew Darrah (09:43)

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (09:57)

Besides the trauma and resilience stuff, I was very interested in how it is that life experience can literally get under our skin, affects our neurobiology in a way that can lead to very enduring outcomes. Again, either positive or negative.

Matthew Darrah (10:18)

Right, right. then, know, yeah, because so much of what we, how we experience the world, it's, you know, we, Hannah and I had to, did an episode that, you know, that the reversibility of trauma, right? You can overcome it, but so much of, of kind of who we are happens either in utero and then within that first, you know, year to two years, right? When

when baby cries and needs are met or when baby cries and needs aren't met, right? That begins that process ⁓ and man, it can just have lifelong impacts.

Erin Hambrick (10:59)

Yeah,

I mean, I like to say it kind of shapes the life template. It shapes our expectations for what life will be like. And the more we have later experiences that confirm those expectations, I mean, wow, the deeper our body digs in and says, yep, this is the kind of world I'm living in. I got to look out for myself any way that I can. Yeah, but you know, to your point, it's not. ⁓

Matthew Darrah (11:07)

Mm.

Right. Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (11:28)

over. It's not like there isn't hope after those early years, right? Because the more that we have experiences that disconfirm that early learning, it takes more disconfirmatory than confirmatory experiences to change us. ⁓ The change is still possible, but the magic is really in the work that we need to do. ⁓ The work has to be very grounded in an understanding of what the experiences in those early years have done.

Matthew Darrah (11:30)

Yeah.

Right, Yeah.

So I know this is kind of off topic, but kind of on. So my wife and I love Special Victims Unit, right? And so we're like rewatching the whole series and like way back in the early, early few seasons, they were still in the DSM-IV and Dr. Wong is like, you know, I don't can't even remember the case, but it was like, you know, once they're set, it's like some case about some 15 year old, it's like once they're set, they're set and there's no changing it.

Erin Hambrick (12:05)

huh.

Matthew Darrah (12:25)

We've learned a lot since then, right? I mean, is it hard to change? Sure, but it is possible. Change is possible.

Erin Hambrick (12:28)

Yeah.

It is possible and it's easiest the earlier we get started, right? Like starting early is always going to be best, but also ⁓ the current context that we find ourselves in can really override early experiences. You know, even if our early experiences weren't great, if we can get our current context to constantly send us messages that we're connected, we're supported.

Matthew Darrah (12:40)

Right.

Erin Hambrick (13:05)

We have resources, we're loved. ⁓ That might even be the biggest indicator of how well a person is doing above and beyond even how early we can get started. Yeah.

Matthew Darrah (13:19)

Wow.

So what is the key mentors? I know you said you read Dr. Perry's book. Did you work with Dr. Perry?

Erin Hambrick (13:30)

Yes, I had the privilege of working with Dr. Perry for, I don't know, 10 or 12 years. Still intersect with him plenty now as his nonprofit has kind of shifted to a for-profit. So some of the research work that I was doing with his group wasn't as great of a fit for that nonprofit manifestation that they have right now. But, you know, I think one of the things that Dr. Perry really taught me and that was so engaging to me about his work

⁓ was just his ability to respect the complexity of human experience and the uniqueness of every person and how really the very specific elements of a person's life history are really going to give us the clues we need in terms of how we want to relate to them and interact to them and to respond to them. And, know, importantly,

Matthew Darrah (14:06)

Mm.

Erin Hambrick (14:29)

We can't just go around being curious and asking kids to tell us all about their trauma histories, right? So that we can learn all those cues. The key is we have to get to know kids and their caregivers ⁓ so that they feel comfortable with us and so that they want us to know their story. So that they trust us to know their story and then to do something with it. Because the story is no good to anybody if we're not focused on, well, you now,

Matthew Darrah (14:47)

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (14:59)

What do we do? And so I think his ability to just say over and over again, this is complex. This is hard work. This is long-term work. This type of work doesn't fit within our, you know, a paradigm, emerging paradigm in the psychological sciences of short-term evidence-based interventions all the time. We have to be willing to look at the long-term here, but if we do...

Matthew Darrah (15:20)

Mm-hmm.

Hannah Doggett (15:22)

CBT.

Erin Hambrick (15:28)

we can prevent very expensive, very troubling, ⁓ very hard to manage outcomes like likelihood that somebody might go to jail, right? Likelihood that somebody might be unemployed for much of their life. So I just really appreciated ⁓ learning that lesson from him. Cause I think it still shapes the work that I do.

Matthew Darrah (15:52)

That's cool. So, what does your current work look like? What are you seeing as common in the work of trying to help families kind of overcome these early, early traumas?

Erin Hambrick (16:09)

Yeah, I mean, I think one really big challenge is that when kids have experienced trauma, it's also likely that the people who are trying to care for them have also experienced trauma, also have very little access to the resources that could be useful to them and helping them get on their feet. And healing trauma really requires present and attuned caregiving.

Matthew Darrah (16:22)

Right.

Erin Hambrick (16:37)

And I don't care how well-intentioned you are, how good of a person you are. If you're having to work six jobs to put food on the table, if you're having to care for not only your own kids, but maybe now you're 45, 50 years old and you're caring for some of your grandkids as well, right? You've got a lot of kids under your roof. ⁓ Though all of those things deplete those very relational resources that kids need so deeply.

Matthew Darrah (16:43)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (17:07)

And so ⁓ I think one of the biggest challenges is how do we scale up what kids who've experienced trauma need using people who feel safe to them, their community members, their own family members in a way that doesn't further make families think the hill is too big for me to climb, right? Because this type of work really also takes a lot of hope.

Matthew Darrah (17:34)

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, would you say that relationship is probably the single most important piece of healing? Or one of?

Erin Hambrick (17:48)

Yeah, and I mean,

I would definitely say that. And I think we see that even when trauma isn't part of the picture. You you go through the past 50 years of intervention research and so much of the research says it's mostly these what we would call common factors that lead to change. And one of those common factors is always like the rapport or the strength of the relationship between the therapist and whoever they're working with, child, adult.

I think that is really magnified ⁓ for kids who have experienced trauma ⁓ because experiencing trauma, a form of trauma can be neglect, Like actual unavailability emotionally to meet the child's emotional needs, to meet the child's physical needs. So some things just get missed.

Matthew Darrah (18:33)

Right.

Erin Hambrick (18:44)

But then if the child has additionally had other forms of trauma, like they've experienced physical abuse, maybe they've witnessed physical abuse, they've had, ⁓ you know, other sorts of sexual traumas maybe, ⁓ they also spend a lot of their time being what I would call very either hypervigilant or kind of hypovigilant. Hypervigilant meaning I'm looking around my environment all the time for signs of stress.

Matthew Darrah (19:06)

Right. Right.

Erin Hambrick (19:13)

And therefore I'm not paying attention to how nice you are. I'm not paying attention to these concepts you're trying to teach me. Those aren't relevant to whether or not I'm staying alive, right? Or they can become kind of hypovigilant where they say, you know what, only safe place is like inside my body away from this external world. So I'm going to go inside my shell and protect myself and rely on my own kind of internal opioid system to regulate me.

Matthew Darrah (19:22)

Yeah.

Right, yeah.

Erin Hambrick (19:42)

And both of those things ⁓ make it harder to even benefit from the relationships that are around us. And so when it comes to working with children who have experienced trauma at a very young age, we have to understand there's been a double whammy in terms of their ability to get very basic relational needs met. And if we don't start there,

Matthew Darrah (19:50)

Hmm.

Erin Hambrick (20:10)

by making them feel safe, then we really don't have an opportunity to engage them in any other learning, right? Like teaching them a coping skill, they're not even hearing you, right? They might smile and nod and say, good idea, right? But they're not with you unless they feel safe with

Matthew Darrah (20:22)

Right.

So that, and that, whether that's in a therapist's office or in a foster and adoptive home or whatever, if they don't feel safe and seen and connected to you.

Erin Hambrick (20:36)

Right. ⁓

Yeah, they're not benefiting from the other things that you're trying to do. And ⁓ something that came into my mind when you said that is children find themselves in lots of different contexts, right? And so we as therapists want to do all we can when we're with them. But actually, one hour of therapy is really not going to make ⁓

all that much change in a child's life, right? Sure, it's great that one person cared about them and was consistent and all that. ⁓ But really, when it comes to helping kids with early life trauma, I mean, we have to think about how do we embed therapeutic opportunities for them throughout every single place they're going to go, you know, the home setting, the school setting, the community setting, spiritual settings, ⁓ sports and club settings, all that kind of stuff.

Matthew Darrah (21:14)

Right, yeah.

Sir.

Erin Hambrick (21:38)

Yeah.

Matthew Darrah (21:39)

So, it starts with the relationship. So, you talk about the timing, the nature, and the diversity of adversity. What do you see there? What are we looking at here?

Erin Hambrick (21:59)

Yeah, well Hannah probably knows this. know, I talked about how something Dr. Perry taught me was that everything's complex and all people are unique. And no two trauma exposed children are alike and no two trauma exposed children have experienced the same trauma. And I think ⁓ it's been easy historically for our field to say, well, we want to measure something well. So let's just see if the type of trauma.

that a child experience matters, right? Is sexual abuse worse than physical abuse? Is domestic violence worse than neglect? There was a lot of research that kind of looked at that, but all the research was kind of confusing. One article would say sexual abuse was worse and another would say physical abuse is worse. And we started saying, what's going on here, right? And then people started to say, well, maybe it's the number of traumas that you've experienced that really matters. And there's a lot of compelling research to show that, yeah, I mean, the more traumas you experience,

the more likely you are to have lifelong, not only mental health challenges, but physical health challenges, right? Like if our adrenaline's pumping all the time, right? Our heart's working harder. We're not processing our glucose right. You know, we're at risk for diabetes, blood pressure issues, all sorts of health problems as well. And there's been a lot of great work that's come out of that. But then people started to think, well, but what if this person had five traumas, but they were kind of minor?

Matthew Darrah (23:00)

Right.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (23:24)

hate to call any trauma minor, right? I you know, we're talking about all bad things here, but some people said, you know, I've noticed that kids who have really severe traumas are the ones doing the worst, right? This neglect happened for two years, right? Or the neglect was, so extreme that the child didn't have any visual input, right? During their early years of life and people were saying, well, that really matters.

Matthew Darrah (23:26)

Right, yeah.

Erin Hambrick (23:52)

And the kind of the final dimension of trauma that I think has finally been appreciated by our field is the timing of trauma. Like when does the trauma happen? And I think when we finally added that variable into the mix, we've really learned that early life experiences can have a really enduring long-term effect.

Matthew Darrah (24:01)

Yeah, okay.

Sure.

Erin Hambrick (24:18)

especially when they're very severe and especially when they're repeated but especially maybe even bigger than that when they happen in a context in which the child doesn't have any relational supports either while the bad thing was happening or after the bad thing has passed. mean think about it even just when me and you have a bad day

What helps the most? Well, I mean, what helps to me is I can call one of my friends or family members and say, guess what? Like not a thing went right today, right? And I'm not looking for them to say, well, know, Erin, you should really schedule yourself better, right? Or, you know, you should solve this problem differently. I'm not looking for that. I'm looking for somebody to say, man, I hear you, right? I'm with you in that. I would be totally depleted if that was my day, right? And so,

Matthew Darrah (24:50)

Yeah.

Right.

Erin Hambrick (25:11)

When we think about just how helpful that is to get through kind of bad days that we might have, think about how absolutely crucial that is for bad, traumatic things that happen. Yeah.

Matthew Darrah (25:22)

Yeah, right.

Yeah, it keeps coming back to that relationship piece, right? I mean, you can't weigh overgeneralized, but I mean, basically you're talking about co-regulation, Isn't that...

Erin Hambrick (25:29)

No, no, no,

Absolutely. I love the term co-regulation because it's the idea that especially when we're very young we don't even know how to regulate without somebody else. We can't even regulate our own body temperature without another warm body, a really warm blanket. I mean think about it the first thing they do when a baby's born is that if they're doing any testing they're under a warmer they they get them next to their parents skin as quickly as they can right because

Matthew Darrah (25:49)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (26:08)

The body doesn't even know what temperature it's supposed to be at without some external feedback. you know, the co-regulation that we get when we're very young is a lot more physical in nature. When we're older, it can still be physical in nature, a hug, right? That sort of thing. But I can even co-regulate with you over a webcam, right? I can see your smile. I can see that you're being kind to me. It makes me feel welcome, right?

Matthew Darrah (26:35)

Sure.

Erin Hambrick (26:36)

When kids haven't had co-regulation when they're very, very young, their co-regulation needs when they're two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, still look like the co-regulation needs of a very young kid. And so this is where trauma responsiveness kind of starts to butt heads with our very behaviorally oriented world. Like this world that says,

Matthew Darrah (26:52)

Right.

Hmm.

Erin Hambrick (27:05)

Kids should do as they're told, especially when they're this tall, right? Kids need to listen to their parents, right? Kids, that kids should learn to do that by themselves, right? Because one day nobody will be around to do it for them. Well, all those independent skills are great if you're a kid who got all your co-regulation needs met early in life. But for a kid whose co-regulation needs at eight look a lot like what they, like their three-year-old.

Matthew Darrah (27:07)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (27:34)

I mean, that can get really tricky for people, because they'll say, well, I don't want to baby that kid. I don't want to let them get away with things, you know? And so to really get at, like, what do we mean when we say kids need relationships to heal? We also need to be able to appreciate ⁓ just how different the relational needs are of trauma-exposed kids than of kids who didn't have a lot of trauma and had a lot of support.

Matthew Darrah (27:41)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. even if, so if you, let's say you had a, I know you can't compare traumas, right? I know that's not a thing. That's not a good thing. But if you took a healthy four-year-old in a quote unquote normal family and they went through a severe car wreck and they were maybe in the hospital for a while and stuff like that, because of the relationship that they grew up in,

they're going to be a lot more resilient to healing faster than a six-month-old who has never felt safe, felt seen, felt heard, had co-regulation and all the things.

Erin Hambrick (28:46)

Yeah, it's, you know, again, we don't like to compare traumas, but it's absolutely true, right? Our time-limited therapies that teach, you know, kids skills about how to remember that even though something really bad happened, it's very unlikely to happen again, right? And remember when that bad thing happened, did people come and help you and the kid can be like, yeah, that's true, right? And they can kind of say, this bad thing that happened to me,

Matthew Darrah (29:05)

in the

Right.

Erin Hambrick (29:16)

is unlikely to happen again. And sure, it did happen, but right, look at all these supports that I had, right? That can kind of help them frame that one bad thing within this broader context of their life that's generally going okay. Now that doesn't mean they won't have some nightmares, right? That doesn't mean they won't struggle in school for a while. That doesn't mean they don't need clinical support. They do. They absolutely deserve that, right?

Matthew Darrah (29:28)

Mm-hmm.

Erin Hambrick (29:46)

But the kids who I work with are the type of kids that if somebody were to come to me and say, you can give this kid 12 weeks of outpatient intervention and then we're not going to give you any more. I might even say we could be at risk for doing more harm than good. Because what good is it for this kid to go get a new relationship for a very, short amount of time?

Matthew Darrah (30:04)

Yeah. Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (30:14)

just to then be told, right, well, that doesn't exist for you either. ⁓ And so I just like, sure, we can do healthy goodbyes and set the kid up to understand this is time limited and all that stuff. But for me, that's just too many gymnastics. mean, for the kids that I work with and that I care about, we've got to be willing to say this kid might need supports throughout their entire lifespan. And it doesn't mean the supports aren't working.

Matthew Darrah (30:17)

Yeah, right. Yeah.

sure.

Right? Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (30:45)

You know, it doesn't mean

the supports aren't giving them quite frankly some relief from the great suffering that they experience, right? But it does mean that we need to have this kind of lifespan view on services that are available to kids who had this degree of bad stuff happen to them when they were very, very young.

Matthew Darrah (30:55)

Right.

Mmm.

You know, was before I started this organization in 2017 and I worked, but I worked full time until last June when I stepped away from my career to run this full time. And at the time, the company that I worked for provided counseling. I came from trauma myself. And so I was thinking, man, I could really use some counseling. And so I talked to the insurance people and they were like, yeah, you can have six sessions. And I was like, six sessions?

Yeah, nevermind. And it wasn't until I found a Veterans Resource Center that the counseling was there. I mean, I got a CPSD, CPTSD diagnosis and stuff. And I've seeing somebody for over two years because I don't know what you can get done in six weeks. mean, but.

Erin Hambrick (31:45)

for mine.

You might be able to plant some seeds, right? Like I'm never gonna say refuse help just because it's not long-term enough, right? But my point here is that the kids that we're talking about are not kids who can easily be reached by what I would call our like managed care.

Matthew Darrah (32:10)

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Erin Hambrick (32:31)

mental health delivery system, right? Where, you know, the insurance companies are kind of dictating, well, you know, here's what we'll give you, okay? Well, that's not good enough for the kids that we're talking about. And ⁓ we also, you know, I think everybody's so results oriented in the short term.

Matthew Darrah (32:33)

Maybe.

Yeah, right.

Mmm.

Erin Hambrick (32:52)

And something that I talk with the teachers a lot about here at The Children's Place, ⁓ they work four or five hours a day with kids who have these histories that we're talking about. And they want to know if the kid is getting better. mean, it is such a deep desire. Is this kid getting better? Is this kid getting better? And something we have to talk about is they may still be showing some aggression.

Right. And it's hard to see that continue to crop up. It's hard to see that you've been working with them for six months and they still come in and some days don't trust you. They won't take any of your comfort. Right. And it's like, well, my comfort last week, you know, what's going on with this week? It can be so frustrating. The outcomes that we're focused on might not come to fruition for years. You know?

Matthew Darrah (33:32)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (33:46)

And we know that they will through our longitudinal research, right? But within the day-to-day work, it's a real keeping the faith type of work. Because the other thing we haven't talked about that makes, like, sounds like, relationships, great. Give kids relationships. Well, kids who haven't been able to trust people aren't real quick to trust people. And quite frankly, the nicer you are and the more regulated you are and the more on a schedule you are, the more this kid's like,

Matthew Darrah (34:06)

No, no, they are not.

Erin Hambrick (34:15)

Yeah, something bad's gonna happen. Okay, like adults don't do this, right? And something bad always happens. Adults always do something bad, right? And so sometimes kids can resist the most, the very relationships that are the best for them. And that's a long-term game, right? You gotta stick with a kid who thinks like that for a long time before you can expect to start seeing the fruits of that labor.

Matthew Darrah (34:17)

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Look, so I don't want to go to, could say, I feel like we could sit here and talk for the next three hours. However, I know that we can't. So practical takeaways for parents and caregivers, foster, adoptive families, whatever it is. You kind of told me number one, do your own work, right?

Erin Hambrick (34:50)

Yeah, probably.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I say all the time, I mean, I feel like I overuse this line in my work. The greatest tool that you have when working with a trauma exposed child is your own regulation, your own ability to be real with yourself about where your stress level is, about the tone of voice you're using, about how much

tension you have in your body at a given time and that is not easy especially because people who like to do this work are do-gooder type people and they're often taking on a lot of this work and so sometimes it's about less is more. You got to let go of some things to really be present for this kid. Yeah.

Matthew Darrah (35:33)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, and in my experience, a lot of the families that are currently fostering or adopting or have, it's because they themselves, I mean, that's me, right? And so they themselves have been there. And so they want to help these kiddos.

Erin Hambrick (36:12)

Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Darrah (36:23)

But you've got to heal yourself too. You've got to be working on yourself. need to be, you know, if you're not in counseling, you probably should be in counseling and those kinds of things.

Erin Hambrick (36:32)

Yeah, and you know, the work itself can be healing, but I think only for people who recognize what you just said, that part of jumping in and helping the problem that I know was so impactful for me is saying, how did it impact me? And how can I keep the ways that it affected me?

from getting in the way of this good work that I want to do. And we talk all the time with developing therapists, right? People say, I want to be a therapist. What are the areas that you can't do? And what are the areas that you can do? Because we all have certain types of relational work that will always be a place that maybe we shouldn't go. And that's not a bad thing. In fact, I would say you are doing the work.

when you realize what your limits and your boundaries are. And that doesn't mean you can't help by finding a different context for that kid, right? But ⁓ that's really a big, big piece of it. ⁓ You know, I also think when I think about advice for parents and caregivers is keeping that long-term focus, you know, even the child feeling safe enough to misbehave in front of you, right? Misbehave.

is an opportunity for you to teach them when you do something that maybe you weren't supposed to do, I'm going to react differently than other people have. Right. I'm still going to love you. I'm going to react consistently. You're going to get the same consequence. Right. And the consequence doesn't have to be negative. The consequence could just be a nod and the pat on the back of like, I see you're having a hard time. Right. ⁓ And so I think that's really big. And I think

Matthew Darrah (38:04)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (38:26)

⁓ Also, we talk about the child's relational health. People cannot do this work without an army of their own relational health around them.

Matthew Darrah (38:35)

Right. Absolutely. Yeah. We talk about

this on the, I say this a lot, and there's kind of three reasons I started this podcast. the first is there's a ton of resources out there for foster and adoptive families that they aren't aware of. And so that's the number one thing. And the number two thing is, we share burdens, right? I say it, we do better in community.

Erin Hambrick (38:50)

moving.

Matthew Darrah (39:02)

all of us do better in community and we connect well with people that are more similar to us. And so, you know, one week I'll have somebody on that has a resource, the next week I have somebody on that's the foster and adoptive family and stuff like that. Because you, we need that shared, even though it may only come through the speaker, we, if we have that sense of community and connection with others that are running the race, we do better.

Erin Hambrick (39:31)

Yeah, I mean, there's the hope. There's, ⁓ build, people talk about self-efficacy, right? Like this idea that I can overcome, I can make an impact. I think community efficacy is even more important to that. Like what can we overcome as a community? And I think, you know, one reason also why I like to say, hey, therapy's great, but we gotta create therapeutic spaces outside of therapy for kids.

Matthew Darrah (39:46)

Sure. Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (40:01)

is because the therapeutic spaces outside of the therapy room are community embedded. And when a community starts to learn, we can support each other to support these kids. The hope is just so strong. And it's the hope that keeps us going, right? It's the belief in something bigger than ourselves, right? Like maybe we're not seeing a lot of change, positive change day to day in our kid.

Matthew Darrah (40:17)

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Erin Hambrick (40:31)

somebody else is or somebody else has this story about a kid they worked with 10 years ago who's now employed and they've been employed for five years right like wow okay I'm gonna keep putting drops in this bucket then.

Matthew Darrah (40:40)

Right.

Yeah, absolutely. We're running low. So we talked about do your own work, focus on self-regulation. You kind of talked about that. being aware of where I'm at and maybe I need to take a break and take a step and back up and kind of if you got a spouse tag team it or whatever so that I can go and regulate to stay regulated as long as possible because

If you're not regulated yourself, you can't connect and provide any co-regulation if you're not regulated yourself, right?

Erin Hambrick (41:20)

Yeah, and the other thing I like about those moments, those breaks we might take to self-regulate, it also gives the kid, it not only models for the kid good coping, but it also gives the kid some time to self-regulate and pull themselves out of that fight-flight mode a little bit. I think some people are like, what do I do, what do I do, what do I do when something's gone wrong with a kid?

Matthew Darrah (41:31)

Okay.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (41:46)

And we forget that sometimes the doing is in not doing. It's in not being reactive. It's in not being too close that we're crowding the kid and their ability to kind of take that deep breath, right? And, you know, presence is important and helpful, but that doesn't mean we need to be hugging a really distressed kid. Cause I don't know, I don't love to be hugged when I'm really distressed, right? I'm kind of in leave me alone mode.

Matthew Darrah (42:11)

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (42:13)

But I

might not mind if somebody's across the room silently being a witness to what I'm experiencing, right? And so that self-regulation break, I think also gets us out of that do, do, do, teach, teach, teach, nurture, nurture, nurture mode that can actually amp the kid up a little bit when they're already feeling a little off. And so I like that that self-regulation has that dual purpose.

Matthew Darrah (42:41)

Yeah, that's good. Connect before you correct. You talked about how we've talked. Relationship is so important. And so if you don't have that relationship, you have nothing to stand on to provide any correction, right?

Erin Hambrick (42:59)

Right. I mean, a kid is not going to respect what you're telling them if they don't trust you, right? They're really not even going to listen. And honestly, what I typically find is once the connection's in place, a whole lot less correction is even needed. Okay? Because, you know, the other thing we say all the time is kids do as well as they can.

Matthew Darrah (43:05)

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (43:24)

And ⁓ I think when we find ourselves constantly, don't do that, that's not safe. Try this other thing, try that other thing. ⁓ We're kind of letting learning and ⁓ directives get in the way of being together. And so when we focus on being together, building trust, everybody taking space to be as calm and collected as they can be, what we end up

with is a kid who kind of just knows how to do that. And then you'll start to see when you give space, when you show them that you're connected and still with them, they'll often self-correct before we even have to get around to you should have done this or that. And we can even go back to them later, depending on how old they are sometimes and say, hey, remember that that happened yesterday? Wonder what would have worked better. And they're spot on.

Matthew Darrah (44:08)

Right. Yeah.

He

Erin Hambrick (44:19)

with what should have worked better, right? Because it's not that they don't get it. It's not that they don't understand. It's that they can't in that

Matthew Darrah (44:26)

Not in the moment, right, when you are all up or all shut down, when you're all activated or all shut down.

Erin Hambrick (44:32)

You're right.

Matthew Darrah (44:36)

You can't do anything different. ⁓ learn the skill of curiosity. Robyn Gobbel, which I've talked about on the podcast before, she talks about being curious a lot. Kind of hit on that before we have to wrap up.

Erin Hambrick (44:49)

Yeah, so I love curiosity from the angle of caregivers and from the angle of children. mean, again, kids do as well as they can. So if they're not doing very well, we got to be thinking about why, what's going on. It's not because they're a bad kid. It's not. We know that, but it doesn't feel that way in the moment where we're like, we've talked about this 800 times. Why are they doing it again?

Matthew Darrah (45:06)

Mm. Right.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (45:17)

And so I think when we come from this perspective of all behavior is communication. We need to be saying not why is this kid misbehaving, but what's going on in the environment that's getting the kid to this place of dysregulation? Is it the lights? Do we not have enough natural light? Have we not spent enough time in nature? Have we not slept enough? Are we hungry? Right? Like what's going on? Because we know this kid would do well if they could.

right? So we need to be curious about what's going on with us and the environment. And when we do that, we also teach curiosity in the child. And if you think about it, being curious about your own world is actually a pretty brave thing because it means that you're open to the unknown. Which have experienced trauma, all they want is control back.

Matthew Darrah (45:54)

Mmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Erin Hambrick (46:08)

and

curiosity goes away really rapidly in the trauma exposed child. They don't want to be curious. They want to just assume there's going to be a bad outcome here. When we learn curiosity for ourselves and model it for kids, what we see is they also start to get that curiosity about the world back. And when they start to have that curiosity, they might try out something relationally with you. They might smile at you for the first time.

Matthew Darrah (46:17)

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (46:37)

right? And then they might realize, I got a pretty cool outcome out of that smile. so ⁓ curiosity is actually something when we start to see it show up in a child, we know that the child is kind of verging toward a track of readiness to learn and grow.

Matthew Darrah (46:54)

Love it. So staying curious about the kiddos and where they're at and why they're... You could do this yesterday. Why can't you do this math problem today? You did it yesterday. And it's like, well, maybe something's going on. Staying curious. So, ⁓ I could sit here and talk all day. What ⁓ are some ways that they can...

Erin Hambrick (47:08)

Mm-hmm.

Matthew Darrah (47:24)

follow your work, where do they find you, where do they learn about your work?

Erin Hambrick (47:27)

Yeah, that's

a good question. I could do a little better about having a good web presence, but I know ⁓ if you Google Erin Hambrick and Lab Panda for pediatric abuse, neglect, disaster and adversity, ⁓ all of the research work that I've done over the years, you can access links to articles that I've written, different media events that I've taken part in.

Matthew Darrah (47:38)

Maybe.

Erin Hambrick (47:52)

I'm also on LinkedIn. So you can look at Erin Hambrick on LinkedIn. post a lot of information there. Whenever I actually working on a personal website to kind of now that I'm out of my own as an independent contractor. And so I'll get you the URL to that when it comes out. But those are great places to start. I'm always looking to hear from folks, to hear what they're experiencing, what they've tried, what's worked, what hasn't worked.

Matthew Darrah (48:05)

Mm-hmm.

Erin Hambrick (48:19)

We only can move this work forward when we know more about the unique experiences of children and families. And so definitely encourage people to tune in, to reach out, teach us what you're learning. We need ⁓ to hear from children and families about what works and what doesn't.

Matthew Darrah (48:33)

Yeah.

Do you have a, and I don't know that this is even possible, but is ⁓ there a metric of success? know, is it, you know, there's some, somewhere I heard 30 % of, ⁓ if you're present 30 % of the time, your kiddos are gonna do well or something like that. Is there some, how do we provide people hope that it's, you know, all likelihood is going to get better?

Erin Hambrick (49:01)

Yeah.

Yeah, but it's enough,

You know, what I tell people is that one literal minute of no phone, of no look-in-the-way, of no mental distraction for a kid is equivalent to 60 to 90 minutes of the distracted chaos and you're just co-in-the-room with them. Okay? So think about if you can do five minutes like that.

Matthew Darrah (49:09)

You know.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (49:34)

That's better than three or four or five hours of just that distracted chaos. And so I tell people, start there. You start with the five minutes a day where you set your own timer if you need to. But you don't think anything other than, how do I be with this child? How do I imitate them? How do I describe what they're doing? How do I just focus on them and my own regulation? And when you start there with those five minutes a day,

Matthew Darrah (49:41)

Mm.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (50:01)

What you'll find is those five minutes easily become six, seven, eight, nine, because the child tolerates that better and starts to feel safer and safer. And then you start to find that more parts of your day are more easily therapeutic. And so you start with that five minutes. And I think the sky's the limit. And then you remind yourself at the end of the day that if you got those five minutes, you did your good work, right?

Matthew Darrah (50:27)

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (50:28)

⁓

And, you know, ⁓ what we need is caregivers not burning out. We need them to go to bed at night knowing when they've succeeded. And you have put a big drop in the bucket if you've done just that.

Matthew Darrah (50:43)

Yeah, yeah. The national study that I found was that between half and two thirds of foster families quit within the first year because they don't feel supported. They're exhausted. They're worn out. don't know. You go through the foster licensing process and I've been doing this a long time, 11, 12 years, and I'm still...

Erin Hambrick (50:53)

Mm-hmm.

Matthew Darrah (51:12)

constantly learning. ⁓ so you don't spend three months going for three or four hours once a week and at the end of it get a degree and know what there is to know. And so they're just exhausted. They are worn out mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, everything. And so they just wear out. so, yeah, taking that time and you know,

Erin Hambrick (51:34)

Yeah.

Matthew Darrah (51:41)

and being part of that community and learning more and things like that is just going to help ⁓ be more supportive. Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (51:48)

Yeah, and doing less, you know, you don't have

to get five foster kids in your home to start off, right? You know, and I say that because that's how I am. I'm like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do it all the way, right? Like I play a lot of tennis. I recently had some family stuff happen, needed to take some time off, went straight back into it. And my hamstring's not doing real well, right? Like we have to think like that when we think about the caregiving that we're taking on.

Matthew Darrah (51:54)

Right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Erin Hambrick (52:14)

⁓ we've got to start small before we can expand for a greater.

Matthew Darrah (52:19)

For sure. Well, Dr. Hambrick, thank you so much for coming on. I know you're short on time. Really appreciate the work that you are doing and just the amount of research and things that you're putting in. Like you said, I don't think we're ever going to get to where we just know all that there is to know and there's nothing else and we just need to put it all into practice. I don't think that that day is ever going to come.

Erin Hambrick (52:26)

Yes.

No, that day is never going to come. And I talk with my sisters about this a lot. We always say you just got to live those questions, know, live them the best you can because ⁓ you might find that the living of them leads you into the answers of what's going to work for these kids. So stay, stay curious. I think back to that theme.

Matthew Darrah (52:55)

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just to stay curious. Hannah, thank you so much for putting the two of us together and for the five-part series we did on trauma, replaying it. Guys, if you haven't heard it, the fifth episode played last week. It is really good, if I do say so myself. I mean, think Hannah and I did a pretty good job. ⁓ And so thanks again for...

going through that whole process with me and doing the recording and putting this together. And ⁓ guys, next week we're gonna have, I'm super excited about this. There's a guy named Peter Mutazabi and he is a huge on social media, The Foster Dad Flipper. So he's gonna be on next week. Have you guys heard of this guy? Have you seen him on Instagram and Facebook and stuff?

Erin Hambrick (53:53)

No, but

I gotta tune in.

Matthew Darrah (53:55)

Now you gotta check this guy out. He's

got like two million followers. He's actually from, I think maybe Zimbabwe. And he's a single dad. moved here. I don't know when he moved here, but he fosters and he's just, I mean, he's just out there. So he's gonna be on next week. so check it out. This episode we'll post, I don't know, I'll have to send you the dates. But anyways, so next week be Foster Dad Flipper.

Thank you, Dr. Hambrick, so much for coming on.

Erin Hambrick (54:26)

Thank you all for having me. I learned a lot from talking with you all.

Matthew Darrah (54:27)

Absolutely.

That's great. Hannah, thanks again so much for coming on as well again, and we'll catch you guys next week. Thank you. Bye.

Erin Hambrick (54:36)

Sounds great, bye.

Hannah Doggett (54:38)

See you.