Returning to Us
To help people who help people, the organization needs to be healthy and have practices in place that consider the trauma of those they serve. Lauren Spigelmyer and Jessica Doering have helped thousands of people who help people all over the world. Each week they'll explore tools, insights, and stories to help you lead and live with more clarity, calm, and connection. If you’re looking for support as you grow your organization’s capacity for caring for staff and the community, we would love to be part of that journey.
Episodes
222 episodes
Growth & Feedback Without Fear
In this episode, Lauren explores how leaders can promote growth and give feedback without triggering fear or threat responses. She explains why traditional evaluation systems dysregulate staff and why regulation, clarity and collaborative feedb...
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Season 5
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Episode 87
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33:45
Onboarding as Co-Regulation
In this episode, Lauren explores onboarding as a nervous-system experience rather than paperwork. She shows how predictability, belonging, clarity, and emotional tone shape a new hire’s first 30 to 90 days and influence whether they feel safe, ...
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Season 5
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Episode 86
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26:20
Policy as a Nervous System
Lauren shares how policies and procedures act like an organization’s neural pathways, shaping safety, trust, and overall regulation. Punitive or confusing policies create anxiety, while clear and compassionate ones build stability and support.<...
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Season 5
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Episode 85
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16:52
Meetings That Calm, Not Drain
Meetings set the tone for an organization. Lauren explains how structure, pacing, tone, and clarity can calm the nervous system and keep teams grounded instead of drained.She also shares simple practices like ritualized starts, sensory g...
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Season 5
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Episode 84
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22:41
The Regulated Organization: What It Means to Be a Regulated Organization
Lauren launches The Regulated Organization series, exploring how stress and regulation affect entire workplaces, not just individuals. She explains how an organization’s “nervous system” shapes culture, communication, and trust, and ho...
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Season 5
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Episode 83
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29:33
Retain: Sustaining Staff, Culture, and Capacity
In this episode, Lauren explores how organizations can move beyond burnout to build lasting staff retention through the Three M’s: Moments, Memories, and Meaning. She explains that small daily interactions, shared experiences, and a sense of pu...
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Season 5
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Episode 82
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35:42
Reinforce- Ensuring that Change becomes Cultural Muscle Memory
In this episode, Lauren dives into Reinforce, the third phase of the Staff Sustainability Program. After moving through relief and reset, this stage is about turning new, healthy patterns into lasting habits that define an organization...
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Season 5
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Episode 81
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28:03
Reset: Moving from Relief to Real Transformation
In this episode, Lauren explores what it means for organizations to truly reset after burnout. She shares how leaders and teams can move from short-term fixes to lasting change by addressing root causes, rebuilding trust, and fostering compassi...
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Season 5
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Episode 80
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35:11
Stage 1: Relieve — Stabilizing in Survival Mode
In this episode, Lauren explores why many organizations try to build sustainability while running on empty and how real change begins with creating relief. She shares how survival mode shows up through reactivity and disconnection and off...
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Season 5
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Episode 79
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37:17
Why Women in Leadership Micromanage
In the second episode of the Staff Sustainability series, Lauren explores why women in leadership often turn to micromanagement and how it’s rooted in stress, trauma, and cultural expectations. She shares practical steps to move ...
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Season 5
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Episode 78
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34:37
Understanding Burnout & Turnover in Trauma-Impacted Organizations
In this episode, Lauren launches a new series on staff sustainability and explores the hidden costs of burnout and turnover in trauma-impacted organizations. She shares why quick fixes like pizza parties or gift cards fall flat and how deeper s...
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Season 5
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Episode 77
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24:54
The Five Ives Hot Seat: Honest Answers for Hard Questions
In this Q&A episode, Lauren tackles some of the most pressing challenges organizations face including burnout, high turnover, and behavior struggles in both staff and students. She explains how the Five Ives framework, rooted in nervous sys...
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Season 5
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Episode 76
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20:04
The Regulated Team: Creating Cultures That Breathe
In this episode, Lauren unpacks how nervous system regulation shapes workplace culture. She explains how stress and micromanagement spread through teams, and why leaders who model calm can shift an entire organization. Lauren also shares simple...
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Season 5
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Episode 75
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28:26
No Off Switch: Why Regulation Belongs in All Your Roles
In this episode, Jessica explores how nervous system regulation shows up across the many roles we play, whether we’re leading, teaching, parenting, or supporting others on the front lines. She explains why our nervous system doesn’t switch hats...
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Season 5
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Episode 74
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13:30
“Why wasn’t I good enough?”: Walking Away from What Wasn’t Meant for You
In this heartfelt episode, Jessica turns toward a question many of us have wrestled with: Why wasn’t I good enough? Drawing from her own experiences with rejection, criticism, and seasons of struggle, she reflects on how painful moment...
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Season 5
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Episode 73
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20:45
Can’t Sleep, Can’t Think? Resetting Rhythms That Rule Your Day
In this episode, Lauren explores the hidden power of daily rhythms and how they shape our ability to stay calm, focused, and resilient. From sleep and meal times to email habits and screen use, she shows how predictable patterns support the ner...
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Season 5
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Episode 72
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20:33
Taming Transitions: Tiny Rituals That Calm Big Shifts
Transitions are everywhere from shifting between tasks at work to moving through family routines and they can quietly dysregulate us. In this episode, Lauren shares why these moments feel so disruptive and how tiny rituals can anchor them, brin...
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Season 5
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Episode 71
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18:20
Spaces that Regulate
In this episode, Lauren takes a thoughtful look at the often overlooked impact our environments have on regulation and well-being. She explores how seemingly small elements like lighting, layout, sound, and even clutter can either support or sa...
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Season 5
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Episode 70
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20:38
Part 2: Regulation in the Real World
In this episode, Lauren dives into the real world challenges of creating a morning routine that supports nervous system regulation, especially when life feels chaotic. She breaks down the morning into four key parts and offers practical, compas...
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Season 5
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Episode 69
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21:26
Part 1: Regulation in the Real World
In this episode, Lauren explores what it really means to regulate in the midst of everyday chaos. Building on the Five Ives framework she and her partner developed, she explains why common strategies like breathwork or meditation often fall fla...
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Season 5
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Episode 68
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20:21
How to Get Kids to Cooperate Without Power Struggles
Today Lauren is looking at what drives power struggles with kids and how we can respond in ways that build cooperation rather than conflict. Whether you're a parent, teacher, or work with children in any capacity, the strategies shared here off...
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Season 5
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Episode 67
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28:02
What Happens When Consequences Backfire
If you've been questioning why traditional consequences often fail to create meaningful behavior change, this is for you. Lauren walks through the whys of this failure and how traditional consequences may harm relationships and regulation. She ...
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Season 5
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Episode 66
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20:28
Helping Children Catch your Calm with Nervous System Co-Regulation
In this episode, Lauren explores the importance of adult emotional regulation when navigating children’s challenging behaviors. She emphasizes that outbursts aren’t personal—they’re rooted in a dysregulated nervous system. By staying calm and c...
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Season 5
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Episode 65
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20:52
Chaos to Connection
Today Lauren is setting the stage for a new series that encourages a shift from managing behavioral chaos to building meaningful connections, especially in classrooms. Lauren uses examples from her personal experience to illustrate how the idea...
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Season 5
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Episode 64
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22:10
Part 2: Behavior isn't the Problem
In this episode, Lauren continues exploring the connection between behavior and the nervous system, focusing on the stress responses known as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. She encourages us to look beyond the surface of behaviors like hittin...
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Season 5
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Episode 63
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17:28