Episode 189 | Jul 16, 2026

Why Strong Families Are Built on Nervous System Regulation, With Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge

What if the first step to helping a struggling child has nothing to do with changing the child’s behavior? This week on Health Coach Talk, Dr. Sandi welcomes psychologist, mental health expert, and The Dysregulated Kid author Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge to explore why nervous system regulation is the foundation for emotional resilience, healthy behavior, and lasting change. Together, they unpack what dysregulation really means, why it has become so common, and how simple, consistent practices can help families move from survival mode toward calm and connection.

“A regulated person absolutely has stress, but they have the capacity in their nervous system to manage the stress and figure out what to do while they’re in it. They can get through a storm.”

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge

Dr. Roseann’s work is deeply personal. As both a clinician and the parent of a dysregulated child, she experienced firsthand the anxiety, self-doubt, and overwhelm that so many parents quietly carry. That journey reshaped not only her family life, but also her professional mission, leading to the development of her Regulation First framework. Rather than focusing solely on behaviors or diagnoses, she explains why supporting the nervous system creates the internal capacity for healthier responses, stronger relationships, and more sustainable behavior change through small, repeatable daily habits.

For health coaches, this conversation offers a valuable perspective on one of the most important drivers of lasting transformation. Clients often struggle to follow through with lifestyle changes when chronic stress keeps their nervous systems locked in survival mode. Dr. Roseann shares practical insights into co-regulation, emotional resilience, and the biological foundations of behavior that coaches can apply with parents, families, and clients of all ages. Dr. Sandi also highlights the unique opportunity for health coaches to bring these principles into workshops, community programs, and family wellness education. If you’ve ever wondered why behavior change feels difficult even when motivation is high, this episode offers an encouraging and hopeful place to begin.

Watch The Episode

Listen Now

Transcript

Dr. Sandi: Welcome to “Health Coach Talk.” Today, I am so excited to have as my guest, my dear friend. Her name is Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge, and I know you’re going to really enjoy listening to my conversation with her.

We became instant friends a number of years ago. We met at an event and found that we shared the same values. We were trained in the same approach. We both did neurofeedback early on in our career. She went on to operate clinics with neurofeedback as the primary way of supporting children as well as adults. And I did a research study years ago on neurofeedback for a…but not only that shared background, but we also found that we both had a passion for really helping not only children, parents to thrive, but understanding what was necessary, what was so important to help parents to be able to…what she’s calling regulation. So, I want to tell you a little bit more about my friend, Dr. Roseann.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge, she’s a mental health expert. She’s the author of “The Dysregulated Kid” and the founder of Regulation First. This is a nervous system first framework for emotional regulation, stress, and behavior. This is so critically needed today. So, enjoy my conversation with Dr. Ro.

Dr. Roseann Capanna-Hodge, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Roseann: Well, thank you, my friend and fellow human being who spent their life, really, their first career, supporting kids and families. So, you know exactly what I do. And we both did it in such a unique way. And so grateful that our paths have crossed as we continue our journey and getting other people to get healthy in many ways.

Dr. Sandi: Absolutely. Well, we bonded at a conference and then at many subsequent events, because we had a shared background, both trained psychologists, both focusing on children, and both introducing, which is EEG biofeedback to the marketplace and really seeing the benefit of that process as well as other lifestyle interventions for kids as well as parents.

So, what we’re going to talk about, which I’m so excited, is your new book that is, I think, going to be transformational. This will be a guide and something that will be very helpful, not just for parents, educators, but our audiences, which is a lot of health coaches or people wanting to be health coaches. This is an area where you can specialize.

So, tell us about “The Dysregulated Kid.” Actually, what does that mean? Because the terms that have been used back in my day in the ’70s, we had different terms. And now, we’re talking about dysregulated. What does that actually mean?

Dr. Roseann: Yeah. Let’s jump into that because, boy, is it hotter than ever talking about dysregulation, the nervous system. And we love it because we’ve been talking about it for decades, right? So, I like to think of dysregulation really simply. When you think about dysregulation, it’s when your body, your nervous system, your systems are switching between stress and calm states. And when it becomes dysregulated, it’s that you are moving towards either a consistent pattern of understimulation. And so, what that can look like in a person when their nervous system is moving too much between states or being stuck in one state, I find most people have a little bit of both. But I also see a lot of really over activation is that you’re seeing the over activated, you’re seeing externalizer symptoms like anger, irritation, big reactions. And then on the under stimulation, in the internalizer side, you’re seeing slow processing, attention problems.

And so, when you’re dysregulated, that nervous system is showing you those signs on the outside, they often get put in a clinical bucket. But really, it’s just the nervous system, your autonomic nervous system going between hopefully getting when it’s normally activated, it goes from parasympathetic to sympathetic dominance. Even though your coaches know a lot of this, it’s always good to hear it. And so, you get activated. And when you’re in the highest levels of activation, you go into fight, flight, freeze or even fawn. But when you have a healthy nervous system, it comes back down. And dysregulated people are stuck in these heightened states. And we can talk about why that happens. But that’s what dysregulation is. And in our work, we saw that people were highly affected by the nervous system states. And we saw that people got better when they regulated.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. And I just want to say that there is hope that this is something that kids can be trained and parents can be trained. And you start out the book, you give a really poignant example from your own experience as a parent. Can you discuss what that was like, and of the whole blend of feelings, the shame, the embarrassment, wanting to fit in, feeling like what’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with my child?

Dr. Roseann: It was my aha moment where my kid is the dysregulated kid. So, he’s dysregulated. And he was a little guy. And we’re on the bus stop. And people don’t have a lot of acceptance for kids that particularly are externalizers and show big emotions. And so, every day I would go to the bus stop just literally wanting to puke. My level of anxiety shows up in my stomach. That’s where I get it. I don’t spin about it. I feel it.

And so, I was on that bus stop like, what am I going to do? I’m Dr. Roseanne. I thought I was supposed to have a perfect kid. I did preconception detox, all these things all at once. And then finally, I was like, I’m the one who has to get it together. That myself, I need to regulate myself first before I can give my kid his oxygen mask. And also I had to let go of what other people thought, because the people that really love you, that small group, I call that the level one circle in my own world, they’re going to love you no matter what. They’re not going to be here to judge you. And I didn’t need their approval.

And I talk a lot about my mother, Philomena. And she was like…I call her the Italian Beth Dutton. That’s the best way to explain her. She just was like a force. And she was pure power. She didn’t worry about things. She just did things. And she really didn’t care about anybody but her immediate family. And I think there’s something to be said for that. So, I got to that moment and I was like, pull yourself together, Roseanne. You can’t care what other people think. And did I care what other people think? Ultimately, in the end, you do, but you don’t. What was more worrisome to me about was what was I going to do with my kid? And I realized he’s a kid with PANS and PANDAS. I’ve been here before, talking about PANS and PANDAS. If you have access and the community, please listen to that training.

But when we think about kids with PANS and PANDAS, they have an infection or a toxic trigger, and their nervous system is super activated. And that was part of what was going on with my kid. But I had to realize what was I going to do for myself and what was I going to do to double down on regulating my kid? It is not just about him. It was equally about me. And that’s really what changed everything for me on a personal level. Certainly brought me closer to my…in my relationship with my husband, which I don’t think I’ve ever said that to you before as a dear friend that I check in with. But it changed everything. It changed my work. I already was doing nervous system work, but I wasn’t really understanding about…

We talk about co-regulation, which is when our child or in any situation, you become the calmest nervous system in the room and people regulate off of you. Very much this is how your child learns to regulate.

Well, we don’t talk a lot about co-dysregulation. And what I was experiencing was co-dysregulation. I was up Googling at 2 in the morning. I was nothing but literally gastrointestinal distress, wanting to throw up at the bus stop, just a hot mess. That was not helping anybody. It certainly was not helping my kid. And yet, we get caught up in a worry cycle. It’s pretty easy to have happen, right, Sandi?

Dr. Sandi: For sure. And I think what you’re describing is so common and unrecognized. And if it is, then parents think, well, I’m crazy. There’s something wrong with me. And this is…and now, my kid has inherited this. And I remember back when I was teaching, this is early ’70s, and I was doing workshops for teachers, like stress management for teachers and stress management for parents and teaching them. We didn’t use self-regulation in those days, but it was teaching them to self-regulate.

And I saw that when I had a classroom for kids and full. And when I calm myself and spoke in a different tone of voice and everything got better and even with my own kids. But there’s always that sense of whose needs are being met. Am I thinking about the shoulds like she should act a certain way and also the fears of what is going to…you jump from childhood to picturing them as an adult. Are they going to be having these problems into adulthood? And so, it’s easy to start catastrophizing or looking ahead at what you are seeing and overblowing as the negative.

Dr. Roseann: Isn’t that the truth, Sandi? I mean, you wonder what’s going to happen. Are they going to make it in college? Are they going to have a girlfriend or boyfriend? Whatever. And our brain is designed to go to those negative places. And then what we don’t realize is that worry causes us to stay in this co-dysregulation reactivity loop. Even if you say we don’t have big voices and we don’t yell and whatever, that doesn’t mean you’re not dysregulated. It could mean that you’re shutting down or you’re both in an anxious spiral.

Today, I had…I’m no longer doing clinical care, but I’m finishing my last cases. So, my people worked with me for six months. So, I just had somebody that maybe might have been the most…the second longest time before they decided to come to me. And the only reason they came to me is they knew I was retiring. And they had been analyzing it. And what does everybody think? Do you understand my unique problem? Can you guarantee results? Well, I might understand your unique problem, but there’s no guarantee. But I can guarantee you your nervous system can regulate and improve if you do the things you’re supposed to do.

So, they had done 20 sessions of neurofeedback and PEMF and lifestyle, all the different lifestyle components. And please know that, in my podcast, in my book, I’m not talking about things that cost money. I’m talking about free things. These are all things that we can fold into our lives. That was really important to me.

However, do love neurofeedback, as Dr. Sandi does, because when you have a clinical issue like this person had layers, very severe clinical issues. And of course, I saw this unbelievable positive change in their brain map, over 50% change in just about two and a half months. This is somebody that’s been years of struggles. And they did neurofeedback a bit intensively, like four times a week. So, you know, you get to see a higher level of change. And you could hear a difference in the parents’ voice. They didn’t sound so worried.

So, when people begin to regulate, what does that look like? What does a regulated person do? And I think when people have…they come from families where they’re not regulated, or they have multiple kids and one kid’s regulated and another kid’s not regulated. What does that regulated person really look like? And why do you say somebody’s dysregulated?

Well, a regulated person is flexible. And you could say, well, we’re not going to make it there on time. And they’re like, okay, whatever. Where a dysregulated person’s like, what do you mean? And you start crying or you show these big emotions over something that’s really outside of your control. You start seeing much better problem solving. You see repair. You see that they can apologize or say, wow, I didn’t really like how I acted. I’m really sorry about that. You see these range of things because a regulated person absolutely has stress, but they have the capacity in their nervous system to manage the stress and figure out what to do while they’re in it. They can get through a storm. The dysregulated person, everything is a storm, and they react or underreact to everything and they get themselves caught in these behaviors.

So, in the case that I had today, I was like, we had so much brain change. So, I want you to know there’s a capacity here. What are we going to do to double down on the behavior change? Because we fall into habits. We fall into healthy habits and unhealthy habits. We all got them. I’m not going to walk past chips at my house without eating potato chips. I’m just going to tell you. If I had to choose one food in the world, it would be potato. But I mean, I have self-restraint.

But I joke about that, but we all have these things that maybe we like or we don’t like, and you still have to make change. And when your nervous system is regulated, it’s just so much easier than operating from the highest levels of stress. You just can’t physiologically either do it at all or well. That doesn’t give you a pass with that dislike. The hill I’m going to die on is about regulating first. It’s about regulating your nervous system before you try to connect with your kid or have a hard conversation with your boss or whatever it is. We have to have internal capacity for hard things, and we’re moving to constant dysregulation, and nobody has regulation.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. That’s such important points. And I think that I often see parents are trying to reason with their child, and they’re having a big feeling, they’re having a meltdown and they’re trying to use logic or talk to them in a…and sometimes that will be the answer, but 9 times out of 10, it will not. Yeah. And something that you brought up earlier that I think also can fuel this when there is…when parents are not on the same wavelength, where you have one parent who is…can’t handle it and is very dysregulated, doesn’t like to see a child having a meltdown, for example, and the other parent might be regulated. And I’ve seen so many examples of marriages that are now in crisis, or siblings, where one sibling is the one who is very regulated and how they’re described to others, the good kid, bad kid, and they internalize those messages. So, that just reinforces the issue because now they’re developing an identity as I’m the problem child.

Dr. Roseann: It’s so true. Sandi, when you work with all those parents, I found…I would love to hear what you found. But I found that, on average, I would say that, conservatively, 80% of the parents I worked with were not in agreement to what their kids’ issue or issues or behaviors were. And then they definitely weren’t in agreement even less on what to do about it. What are your feelings? Because I think this is a really under-discussed topic.

Dr. Sandi: Either they’re fine, they’ll go out of it, you’re just over blowing the issue. Another common reaction is when they attempt any lifestyle change. What do you mean that eliminating sugar or gluten or let’s say they’ve been to a functional medicine pediatrician or they’ve worked with somebody who’s…or they’ve read, they listen to a podcast and they want to try some things and the person says, oh, this is ridiculous. And they’re sabotaging. They’ll take the kid out for a meal of things. And I raised my kid’s vegan. I certainly regret it now. And they were not dysregulated, but I remember being very dysregulated when I found out my husband snuck my two-year-old, or she was three at the time, and fries. I mean, that was a major issue. And so, there’s all kinds of dysregulation that occurs when you are not on the same wavelength and together. And it could be extended family as well. There could be grandparents involved and they are sabotaging. But it is a sense that we are all not in alignment and that’s picked up by the kids and they’re perceiving all of that tension.

Dr. Roseann: And it’s so hard. Of course, we’ve talked about this. I found that it’s easier to get people to change their religion than their diet. People just are so hung up and people…my youngest is celiac. My nephews are celiac. It’s a problem in my family. It’s very common in the Italian and the Jewish culture to…celiac is very prevalent. So, people will say things to me like…we’ll be at parties. I mean, I usually host the parties because, you know, we got the place for it. Plus I want to control the food.

So, the last few times I’ve gone to a party and somebody said to my kid, I am so sorry you can’t have gluten. And then I am so snarky now. And I’m like, oh, I’m so sorry your brain doesn’t work as good as ours. And they’re like, oh, I shouldn’t have said that. And I said, no, you shouldn’t have said that. Afterwards, I remember one time I said, would you say that to a diabetic that you’re sorry they’re diabetic? People just think food…food is powerful.

And so, over the years, when I would have conversations with two different camps on the food, I would say, this is just a brain diet. This is what the research says. It’s based on a…if you even want to go simple and say Mediterranean diet, everyone wants to know the diet. It’s anti-inflammatory, people. There are lots of anti-inflammatory diet. Use what works best for you. We know this through research. That’s the best mental health diet. And the number one most researched is Mediterranean because it’s easy to follow. And there’s just so many people that live like that, and they just measure them.

But it can become such a point of contention. But when we think about a stress cup and what fills up people’s stress cup, it is a lot of things. It could be sensitivity to foods. It could be sensitivity to light. It could be having parents that are in conflict. It could be having a really terrible bus ride with really obnoxious kids. So, our kids’ stress cup is filling faster and they’re not emptying it. That’s a big part of it. We also have a rise in neurodivergent kids. And you and I, we’ve talked about this. This is not due to better diagnostics. There is a legit rise in neurodivergent, particularly autism. By the time you left, were you in shock, Sandi, how many kids were diagnosed on the spectrum?

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. When I think back of when I was in that field, I was supervising master’s students in special education, and I would go out and do a psych visit and supervise them in these classrooms. There was a county that…it was Lake County, went all the way from Chicago to the Wisconsin border. So, we’re talking about a big territory with a lot of people there and a lot of schools. They had one classroom for the whole…the whole county had one classroom for kids with autism. So, we’re seeing that. And so, this dramatic rise in neurodivergence.

But what I love about your book is that you don’t just present the problem, but you really come up with really reasonable action plans and really focusing on parents becoming regulated first, which I think is just so key. And it’s so unique because often it is…we’re looking at strategies for kids. I remember working in clinic at Northwestern University in learning disabilities and it was…we get these 25-page reports that we had to write for the parents. And it was all about what’s wrong with the child and all the things to do for the child, but nothing for the parent.

Dr. Roseann: And they want it. The parents are like, Dr. Ro, tell me what to do. And I’m like, here you go. And some parents, they don’t understand. They think, well, if I just work on the kid, everything else will rebalance out. And usually it’s just, we know better, we can do better. But we don’t do enough to give people practical tools. And I see us in a dysregulation crisis as a society. I think it’s even becoming much more global, but I feel like we’re ground zero in America. And I feel like certain parts of the country experience it more. I do feel like, when you have more vitamin D, I feel like you feel less…

But I think every community or wherever you are, you could be like, oh, yeah, Betty, she’s the dysregulated one at my church. We all know people. And ultimately, what I want people to know is little bits of micro habits that regulate your nervous system actually build up. It’s like putting money in the bank. You keep putting money in the bank and you’re like, look, I’ve got money. If you keep taking money out, you’re going to have a negative. I mean, it’s really kind of common sense. Thank you as being an advanced reader and your feedback, you know I have an action plan for parents, but I actually have an action plan for parents to help their child.

So, there’s two parts to this. And I made it so simple that it doesn’t matter if you’ve had a trauma background, it doesn’t matter how dysregulated your kid is. It doesn’t matter if your partner agrees with you. It doesn’t matter. It’s about you and starting with yourself because the nervous system can’t distinguish the kind of stress you’re under. Yes, if you’re neurodivergent. Yes, if you have a trauma background. It’s going to need a little more elbow grease. I get that. But we have to let go of that idea that it’s not possible because that keeps us stuck. And we have to start taking little bits of action. And when the nervous system starts to be like, wow, that’s what calm is like, that’s what feels good to me, it will start wanting more of it because the more you dysreg, the more you’re going to dysreg. The more you regulate, the more you will regulate.

That’s biology. That’s what happens. And we’re forgetting about biology and we keep going into thinking. We’re like, oh, look at this behavior. Look at this. I think this. No, let’s start with the body. Let’s start with regulating the nervous system. Then we do the other things. I think that’s what my regulation first is about. We’re not saying gentle parenting doesn’t work. We’re not saying ABA doesn’t work. We’re not saying all these other things. We’re just saying they can’t work as well if you don’t maximize and regulate the nervous system.

And Dr. Sandi, you and I spent years, decades doing neurofeedback and all these other treatments, which we love and we support. But I want to avoid that and also bring even more wellness to the clinical population because it doesn’t matter what’s going on. You still have to do the micro bits to get your nervous system regulated. So, we take stress out of our cup because everyday life is stressful just the way it is.

Dr. Sandi: Yeah. And I think, dealing with that stress, regulating the nervous system is something that you can do and you can support your child no matter what the diagnosis because sometimes we get so hung up with the diagnosis, the child’s diagnosis and also then as a parent and the next thing you know, people are saying, well, you need to be in therapy. There needs to be family therapy. And I, as a psychologist in my prior life, I’ve seen so many people be led astray and really just sucked into that world of pathology. There’s something wrong with them and they need to be in therapy forever. The child needs to be in therapy. And then those kids as adults have terrible memories of that. And as a parent is…as opposed to thinking in a way that leads towards hope, toward this is possible, I can do this, it’s more I’m damaged and somebody needs to fix me. And that…

Dr. Roseann: It’s so true. I know it’s almost like…we’re never saying that a diagnosis is a bad thing. So, I want…Dr. Sandi, I would never say that, should be one thing, a bucket of understanding to make your life better. Okay. So, you have obsessive compulsive disorder. Well, guess what. There’s some gold standard treatments that are about behavior, not medication. But how do we address the habit of the brain?

There are things that help us to understand. I think what’s happened…I mean, I saw this. So, I spent three decades helping people. The girl today, she had a shopping cart full of diagnoses. So, we see dramatic changes in a very short amount of time, which is awesome. So, then I get to hear the hundredth time about some obscure diagnosis that one practitioner out of a dozen made. And I said, we’re not going there. That’s going in the parking lot, because that’s not going to help us. And this and this look like that.

So, many things can look like they’re ADHD, many things can look like a mood disorder or whatnot. So, we have to say, let’s regulate… This is what I said for all these years. Let’s regulate first, let’s get a baseline back, then we come back and we reassess because some things don’t always pan out. I’ve had kids who were like, are they autistic? I’m not so sure. They’re so overstimulated that it’s so hard to tell. So, let’s calm things down, then you get appropriate one-on-one testing. But I know it’s become cool to have an ADHD diagnosis. It really is. In the entrepreneur space, people get…they’re putting it on like a badge of honor. And some of that is because they’re content creators and they want more traffic to their content. That’s the truth. I don’t care what people say about that.

But we can’t pathologize everything. We should say, what is this behavior? To me, behaviors are…it’s just clues. It’s telling you the nervous system is overstimulated or understimulated. What do I do then? So, we focus on those little micro actions that a parent can take for themselves and/or their child and know that your child is watching every single thing that you do. They have a sonar. And you could say one thing and then they’re looking at you. You know what I’m saying? Isn’t it so true?

Dr. Sandi: So true. Absolutely. Yeah.

Dr. Roseann: And you see that even more with your grandkids, right?

Dr. Sandi: Oh, for sure. Yeah. And the cool thing is that every time you practice what you are describing, step towards regulation, new neural pathways are formed so that the next time and the time after that now it’s becoming easier and it’s becoming more second nature. And people will say, oh, you have such a calm disposition or there’s something different about you and you notice changes in your child. And I love that this book has strategies for kids, for parents. So, I am so excited for this book. Roseanne, tell me, where can people find you? Where can they find the book?

Dr. Roseann: Yeah. Well, they can find me by just going to drroseann.com. And the book is there. You can just search Dr. Roseanne, the word, and it will come right up. You can also search “The Dysregulated Kid.” It’s everywhere from Amazon to Barnes & Noble to your local bookstore. People are going in and ordering it for…asking their library to order it, which I love, which is great. But, you know, it truly is my antidote to the dysregulation crisis. And I promise you, it’s a good read. It’s easy. And yes, I explain science, but I want you…it’s called “The Parenting Playbook for Helping Your Child Find Calm in a Chaotic World” because it is a playbook. We have to move away from theory. And all my work is about doing an action so that your life can be easier.

And I’m so grateful for this conversation because, for anybody that feels overwhelmed, it’s…I promise you, you just make micro steps that you repeat and it happens. You’ll look back and go, oh, I feel better. I notice this. My kid’s hugging me more. All the things that you want, it starts with regulation.

Dr. Sandi: So true. And if you’re a health coach out there thinking of becoming one, get this book and start a book club, get a group of parents together, start a workshop, start to introduce this to your community because coaches are so well-suited for this type of work.

Dr. Roseann: We have book clubs. We have it all laid out for you. And I will be certifying professionals in the method to be…get on the wait list because everyone’s asking. But it’s part of what we’re doing right now. We are focusing on a very low-cost certification for parents so that they can learn this method and feel good about it. But this is…my information is out there in the world for free. It’s on my podcast. My book is 21.95. So, we wanted to…I wanted to reduce any barrier so that people can get this. And like I said, it’s designed for everybody. So, regardless of what your background is, this stuff works. And it worked for me for 30 years with the most dysregulated kids and families.

Dr. Sandi: This has been wonderful, my friend. Thank you for being with us today. This is going to be, again, a groundbreaking book, and I’m so happy to support you.