The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Read, Reflect, Respond – The 3 Rs of Growth and Change by Gloria Vanderhorst

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Read, Reflect, Respond - The 3 Rs of Growth and Change by Gloria Vanderhorst Amazon.com Drvanderhorst.com READ, REFLECT, RESPOND: The 3 Rs of Growth and Change will provide you with stimulating content to READ at your pace. Each piece will encourage you to deeply REFLECT on yourself, your relationships, and the life you want to live. As you RESPOND to each piece, you will discover interesting parts of yourself and your history leading you to grow and create change for the future. The adventure of self-discovery awaits! As you go deeper into the early influences which impact the present you will begin new ways of thinking, feeling and being. Unlike other journal Books, you are free to roam around and select topics that meet you in the present. Over time you will visit all the entries and spend a week with each. ENJOY THE JOURNEY!About the author Gloria is a licensed psychologist practicing in Maryland and Washington, DC. Through her four plus decades of practice, she has worked with preschoolers, teens and adults. She is skilled in the most advanced and innovative approaches to treatment: Emotion Focused Therapy, Internal Family Systems, and Traumatic Incident Reduction. Currently, she works with teens, adults, and couples to improve functioning, build strong relationships, and reduce the influence of early trauma on present dynamics. She serves the Court system in facilitating co-parenting and reunification between children and estranged parents. In her spare time she enjoys watercolor painting and playing her baroque instrument.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain.

Now here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome home. When the shrill lady sings it, that makes it official. Welcome to the big show. As always, the Chris Voss Show is a family that loves you, but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as the rest of the world because, you know, we're nice. We really mean it when we say we love you as an audience.

Unless you're evil, then we think about it twice. But work on that, folks. That's why you listen to the Chris Voss Show so you can always make sure you're up to par on how to be the best person you can be. And we have the wonderful authors minds Coaches and stuff who come on the show they share with you their stories the journeys of life and share with you on how to Be a better human being so if you're just wanting to be more evil. There's on Twitter

Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily Reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show some guests of the the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Anyway, guys, thanks for joining. We've got an amazing young lady on the show. We're going to be talking about her hot new book that came out November 22nd, 2024. It is called Read, Reflect, Respond, The Three R's of Growth and and change. The three Rs, there's growth, we'll get into it in the book. Gloria Vanderhorst joins us in the show. I'm just having some fun with her book title. She is billed as the best possible experience when you decide to hire a mental health professional.

I've seen some of you out there, you need all the help you can get, so call her. The relationship she has is an intricate part of your success. She will help you understand how 30 plus years of her experience have shaped her approach and her ability to support your growth. Her work has taught her that change is possible at any age. Wait, you mean teach old dogs new tricks? She hasn't met my dog, it's a husky and it's stubborn, but we can try. In her early work with children, she learned that our brains are creative as well as vast storehouses of early experiences. From early experiences of bonding relating to others and reacting to circumstances, we all lay down reaction pathways that stay with us as we grow. In this way, the past is always important as part of the present.

The key to change is appreciating that our brains enjoy neuroplasticity. I'd poke mine and I don't have a joke for that. I'm starting to do a plastic joke and I just can't find what it is, but. Let me tell you, I don't have enough plastic joke residuals in my library there, sorry folks. It's a narrow comedy that I do. So anyway, she uses techniques

based upon this principle and current research in brain function and can be found in the two primary techniques used in her practice, emotional focused therapy and internal family systems. Welcome to the show, Gloria. How are you? Gloria S. Flaherty I am great. Thank you for having me. Pete Slauson Hello. Gloria S. Flaherty Looking forward to the conversation. Pete Slauson I'm looking forward to have you as well. Give us your dot coms.

We're on the interwebs. Do you want people to find you and follow you? Julie You could find my website. It's www.drvanderhorst.com. And you can also find me on Substack. I write every week and you can sign up to receive them. I'd love to have a bigger audience.

Substack, boy, it's really getting popular over there. It is. Yeah, it's getting popular. It is, tons of people are writing on Substack. It's almost like people have something to say. No, I have a lot to say. Yeah, you and me in the podcast. So give us 30,000 overview of what's inside your book.

Read, reflect, respond. Dr. everything, they house every experience we've had from kind of the last trimester that you're inside mother's womb. You have memories packed in your brain from that time frame and you have memories from the day that you were born moving forward. They're all there. They're all accessible, absolutely every one of them, which is a miracle, actually. And the book is designed to help people access all of those memories, ones that are current, ones that are far in the past, ones that you just lost track of. And it has an essay on the left-hand page. So you're gonna pick that out. You don't have to go through the book from page

one to the end. You can jump around, pick anything that strikes your fancy for that day or that week. And then the facing page has three questions or comments and then the rest of the page is blank and it's intentionally blank because we store memories not just in terms of words but in terms of motion and action. So if you want to draw, scribble, scratch, anything that you put on that page, it's going to access some very important memories that you hold in your brain. And so that's the design of the book. It's organized so that you could do one a week. You could go through it as fast as you want, as slow as you want, and it's

also organized into some different categories related to family, related to work, related to relationships. So if you're a person who just wants to go discover what's hidden up there in my brain, what can I learn as I sit with myself and just read some simple paragraphs, this is ideal. And it's applicable for anybody that can read and write. Pete You know, does it, so it covers everything, does it focus a lot on your childhood, things that shaped you, trying to maybe focus on remembering specific things in our brain that we have in our childhood that maybe we… Julie Yeah, the reason that the facing page is blank rather than lined is that very thing.

We store things in childhood a lot of the times in terms of pictures or in terms of motion. So we have muscle memories you can remember in your body, a particular experience. If somebody grabbed you sometime and scared you, your body holds that memory and that memory could be triggered if somebody else kind of grabs you in the same place. And so we keep information and we can access that information. I think that's the good news here is that our history shapes who we are, how we interact with the world around us, and we put limits on ourselves without really recognizing that we're doing it. Some early history

experience that you had, let's say that you were in elementary school and shamed in front of a class and, you know, had to sit in the corner or be made fun of. I mean I have heard stories that you would not believe where teachers will have the entire class shame somebody, say the same, repeat the same thing to them until they just collapse and fall into tears So those memories tend to get boxed up, right? That's not something that I'm gonna want to take home with me. Yes, it's something I'm gonna want to remember for very long I'm gonna box that one up and I'm gonna put it in the back of my brain as far back as I can put it But it will influence me from that day forward. I'll be more cautious in interacting with people. Maybe I will keep a distance from people, or maybe I will be very brash, right? That I'll just come barreling at them

because I expect them to be mean to me or be nasty to me or to reject me in some way. And when I can then as a teenager, as an adult, recognize that I had that life experience, the whole thing gets unlocked and it doesn't influence you anymore. You now have a choice. You don't have to be nasty to everybody. You don't have to be bossy. You don't have to be brash. You can now say to yourself, wow, that was a real serious injury. And I've suffered with that injury for an extended period of time, and I can now let

it go. And I mean literally let it go, right? Toss it in the ocean, put it in a balloon, and let it float away, but it doesn't belong to you anymore. Somebody shamed you, and that's not a part of you. You need to let that go. You need to really release it. Pete Slauson I like that concept of yours, you know, letting that balloon go.

Peteus Mm hmm. Peteus You know, and the symbolism of it, that kind of put, you know, because you tell people, hey, you know, you should just let that go. And people are like, yeah, I don't know, whatever. They still haven't reconciled that evidently. You know, you bring to mind some of the things we've talked about over the years on the show in psychology, and evidently, according to some people, I don't want to create conspiracies, but evidently, a lot of times in our childhood, the stimuli that we get, what happens to us, maybe even down into the womb, it's surmised. us, maybe even down into the womb, it's surmised. There are things that can happen to us that if they're too overwhelming for us to handle

at that time, because we're children, we don't understand what's going on. Trauma, big T, little t, we don't understand what's going on. And so sometimes our memory will hide stuff from us and go, okay, you can't handle this right now. We're going to save this for later when you kind of mature or maybe you get to a point where you can maybe square this round peg. And so is that true? How do you think about that? Chris? Well, that's absolutely true. We could go digging in your brain. Would you like to go digging in your brain? No. We don't have time for that.

We don't self-analyze, Chris, on the show because we don't have that kind of time. This would be like a week-long podcast, if not years. No, it is true for all of us, right? Every one of those pieces of information is housed and it's interesting, right, that somehow instinctively some piece of us knows this is dangerous, we're gonna box this one up, all right, we're gonna hide it, we're not gonna get rid of it, but we're gonna put it in a safe place so that it doesn't assault you on a regular basis.

But the consequence of having that experience is going to stay with me. So if I have an experience in elementary school where I am shamed in front of a group and then you meet me as a college student and I'm kind of shy, a little backward, I kind of hang back with everybody. That's not me, not me. Right? That's the child who was shamed in elementary school. So there is no doubt that we collect everything, our brains remember everything, and they provide a protection for us if something is way too intense to manage at that time, it'll get boxed, it'll get held onto, and then later on, you have the opportunity to go roaming through the attic and open all those boxes and see what's in there.

Right? What if you just don't want to go in the attic? It's kind of spooky in there. No, no, it is so, it's so important to go in the attic? It's kind of spooky in there. No, no, it's so important to go in the attic, right? Everyone, you know, we have attics that are filled with junk and stuff. But in terms of your emotional health, it's very important to go in the attic

and to do that intentionally. You want to be able to heal, you want to be able to be the best person that you can be, you want to be able to make connections with people. We're born connected to another human being. We are physically connected. That's true. My mom won't let me live that down. She's sorry she had you. Okay. All right. But then we spend the rest of our life trying to connect with other people. That's not a mystery. CB Yeah. I'm walking around waving my umbilical cord going, who wants to hook up to me?

KB Yeah, grab on to me. CB Actually, there's probably a sexual... KB Connect with me. Get a hold of me. Pete Slauson I'm not trying to be perverse, but based on what you said, we're trying to connect, could that be part of the sexual drive? Debra Larson Oh, that's, yes. Pete Slauson I'm not trying to be dirty here. I'm just… Debra Larson No, no. Pete Slauson I mean, you kind of made an interesting point

where we're born connected to a woman or a human being. And, you know, we do, I mean, we do search for connection. We do. You know, that's the social medias, you know, powerhouse and, you know, there's podcasts, there's people searching for connection, they're searching for stories, they're searching for lessons. Yeah, maybe even sexuality is a way of, you know, connecting even in the physical act of it. It's definitely a way of connecting. It's the most intimate way that we can connect

with a human being. And it's thrilling. Oh, I wasn't cheating on you, honey. I was just trying to connect with people. Anyway, just kidding. That's just a joke, folks. Don't write me. I just couldn't resist that one.

Yeah, yeah. You know, when I was younger, tell me about this. When I was younger, I would hear about these people that are like, oh, I woke up one day and I realized I'd been molested as a child. And when I'm 30, I realized at 30 that I have these memories that came from hypnosis that I was molested as a child or some other sort of trauma example. And you'd be just kind of, that seems, what's going on here? Come on, man.

You wake up at 30 and you realize whatever, but I think the older you get, the more unrepressed or press memories come to you. You realize that there's that packing system. And then when you realize, you know, a lot of it is, you know, a lot of the reminders that ego brain, I'm not sure what you call it, but that ego brain who's always, you know, he's always, mine's a he, cause I'm not sure what you call it, but an ego brain who's always, you know, he's always mine's a he, cause I'm a guy. If it ever talks to me in the female voice, I'll be scared. I mean, not, not, not from any anyway, not from any prejudice.

I'll just be like, what's going on. But it's probably just one more voice out of my 12 voices in my head. Yeah. So we all have hundreds of doing, oh, wow. All right. I'm, I'm, I all have hundreds of them. Do we? Do we? Oh, wow. All right. I'm working my way up.

We all have hundreds of them. I'm working my way up. And you talked a little bit about kind of the connection with mom. And the truth of the matter is that there's a very different emotional experience for males and females. By and large, mom is the person that takes care of the infant. Now that's changing in this day and age because both men and women are working, both of them get time off for having a new baby, so there's much more involvement of fathers at this

point in time, but historically, mother took care of the baby. She stayed home, and a mother's reaction to a male infant is different from a mother's reaction to a female infant. Really? Yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah, the significant difference is that mothers will spend more time chatting and interacting, being verbal with a female,

because somehow the female is comfortable for them than they will with a male. Now, the truth of the matter is the male comes into the world with a broader range of emotional expression than the female does. Pete Slauson Really? Marcia S. No, stop. Think about that. Pete S. I never would. Marcia S. Yeah, you never would guess that.

Pete S. Seriously? Marcia S. Yeah, you would never guess that. Pete S. Do they, Do they… Julie Larson Yeah, you would never guess that. Pete Slauson Do they develop their emotionals and outpaces in their childhood? Julie Larson No, what happens, because mother pays less attention to the boy than she does to the

girl, and because the boy's expression is unfamiliar to her, boys really do have a wider range. So, sometimes they're much more intense in their expression as an infant, whereas the little girl is kind of, you know, cute and within a normal range and doesn't get really excited. But the boy is boisterous, excited, but the boy is boisterous, right? That's because he does have a wider range of emotional expression. This is difficult for the mother, and so the mother pays less attention, spends less time investing with the boy in terms of verbalizations. So naturally, normally, the boy loses access to emotional expression. And then we send them through school, we put them in college,

and we expect them to marry a female and somehow be magically able to access the full range of emotions. Pete Slauson Hmm. Marybeth Hockerby Never gonna happen. Pete Slauson Wow. And so, does part of this come down to, you know, I hear a lot of mothers, maybe I don't mean complain because I think they mean, but they'll complain about their sons, how different sons are than men, or women. And I see how sons are different than men. I hope they're different because one's a son, one's a man. Wait, you can still be a son.

I don't know, it's Monday. My brain's broken clearly. I can't make all these jokes work, folks. I'm trying too hard for you folks. This is how much I care. But female nature is more subdued in the feminine, that is, in its feminine. Female nature is more subdued, it's more passive, it's more agreeable. Mary Feehan It's more pleasant, let's just make it that.

It's just like more pleasant. Pete Slauson Yeah. And with boys, you know, they're rambunctious. We've had a lot of psychologists on that have talked about one of the problems boys have in school now where there's no recess sometimes, where they're treated like broken girls. They're like, why can't you calm down and be like the girls and study? And, you know, and like you said, they're more outward expressive. We're designed to be that way because we, you know, it's how we have to go through the world and in our talk.

Yeah, it's a great asset. It really is a great asset. I want to be able to help men access. It's not gone, right? It's still up there in your brain. It's not gone. It's just really boxed away or maybe put into a safe. And you just need to find the right key to open it up. It's still available. All right, I do this in working with men. Often I will send them a feeling sheet just a four or five pages of feeling words. And the truth of the matter is we have a hard time generating, all right? You had this experience, your wife got irritated at you, you thought that you were doing

absolutely the right supportive things, and you know you start to have all of these feelings, but you can't label them. You can't figure out, what am I experiencing right now? If you look through, run through all of these feeling words, they will just pop right off the page. Pete Huh. Julie Larson It's a magical tool. It'll just pop right off the page. Pete So, what do men do with those feelings? Because as men, we learn that our feelings really don't matter.

Janna That's true. Pete And that if we express them to other women we're intimately involved with, they'll be weaponized against us. It shows us a weakness to our masculinity and our stoicism. So, how do we utilize that data for delving into our feelings? I mean, I'm very stoic, but I have feelings. I don't need to express them, or I don't need to feel every one and completely express it. I can look at it and go, why am I feeling that way? Okay, I made a mistake on this and I won't make that mistake again. But I don't have to emote the whole fucking feeling. I just can pick it up, look at it in a box and go, yeah, okay, cool, I felt something. You know, I love my dog.

I can express that. My dog isn't going to weaponize it and three years later, it'll be thrown in my face or something. But so how do men utilize that data, their feelings and stuff? Because we certainly can't express it. The world doesn't give a shit about our feelings and it shouldn't. It's part of our masculine role. Mary F. Kennedy First of all, let me compliment you for asking yourself the question, what am I feeling? Lots of men don't even ask that question. Pete Slauson Wow. Mary F. Kennedy And it's a valuable question to ask, what

am I experiencing? What am I feeling? Being able to identify it gives you the option of deciding what do I do with it? But if you don't have that capability of even doing the reflection and asking yourself, what am I feeling? It is going to come out of your body in a different way. It kind of starts out for a man with what the fuck is going on? Mm-hmm. Is there something on me? And you're like, oh shit, I'm having a feeling. And then you're like, oh shit, what do I do with this?

This is annoying. And we manage to stose. Now it depends on if that man operates in his masculine or in his feminine. If he operates his feminine, then he's probably going to go emote it and all that crap, and that's where men really stop being men. Mary Flaherty Yeah, but why do you say that men stop being men if they have awareness of their feelings? Pete No, it's not about awareness. It's if they emote it and they act in a feminine nature.

So if they respond emotionally to their emotions, you know, they act out. A message violence. So it's good. Let's just call it expression. Look at the negative language that you're using. You're calling it acting out. Yeah. Other than experiencing, expressing, being transparent.

Those are all really healthy parts of a person. Pete I would agree with you. I am being negative on it. So, there's a broad range of that rainbow. Yeah, if I want to express to my child that I love them, expressing maybe to a partner that you love them in a masculine way, that won't come back to you. It's just that men have realized that, we realize that it's a very harsh part of our experience is, you know, women, children and pets get unconditional love. Men do not. We are expendable. We're over the first months to go. That's why they say men and women and children first. And that is exactly why men do not have access. We're not just talking about decades, we're

talking about centuries of experience where we send the male out to either hunt or protect. So they can't afford to access feelings. Pete Yeah, we can't. I mean, we go do, you know, you see men in blue collars. I mean, most of the foundational work in this country that runs the infrastructure, the buildings, the hard work, the labor under the streets, the internet, all that stuff is done by 98% of men. It is hard labor. Debra It is. Pete We die earlier than women because we, you know because we work jobs that you'll die in. Can you get into more trouble than women?

Yeah, we get into more trouble too because of that expressive nature of ours where we like to have fun as well. And sometimes our fun involves a hold my beer. But you're right, I mean, being able to express oneself and emotions or at least understand them, you know, some people disregard masculinity and stoicism as cutting off your feelings and just becoming a complete logical and reasoning being, which is somewhat. But as a man, you know, your place in the world is to bring logic and reason and to not be overwhelmed by your emotions. Your emotions are secondary.

To a female, her emotions are primary. 11. But listen to your expectation. Your expectation is if you access a feeling, it will be overwhelming. 12. No. 11. That's not reasonable. 12. If I communicate, that's not what I intended to communicate. 11. Okay. 12. No. No, it's not necessarily overwhelming.

It can be for men who live in their feminine, I believe. Because they will go right to the emotion first and they will live. As a man, I identify men who are, we do a pecking order, we do a hazing of men when we tribe up. And so we figure out who the masculine men are and who the feminine men are and who can be the hunter killers and who are going to ride with us and die with us and adhere to the aspects of masculinity, you know, trust, honesty, loyalty, all that sort of stuff that we want. You know, otherwise we'll

get in the battlefield and the feminine guy will run away screaming the first time he sees danger. Mary Flaherty Here's what I think, which is slightly different from you, which is I think there is a benefit, particularly in this day and age, to facilitating access to a broader range of feelings for males because it will improve their relationship with females. We have a culture where men and women cannot stay engaged with each other. Divorce rates are huge. All right. And the consequence of that for the next generation is mind blowing. Yeah, I would agree with you there. Mind-blowing. So if we can facilitate the male accepting that he does have the capability of accessing

the full range of emotions and open that door up just a bit more than the dynamic between men and women who are creating a family can change dramatically and then the children that benefit from that family will not be the damaged lot that we're experiencing right now. Pete Let me ask you this, because I want to fall back to this. lot that we're experiencing right now. Pete Slauson Let me ask you this, because I want to fall back to this, this is a question I had from about, I think, five minutes ago, if people want to track that thing. You mentioned that when the women turn their attention away from their son, that they don't really fully understand, I suppose that's the point that a man's supposed to step in and do the father-son thing. But maybe there's a,

is there a necessity that we're teaching a son to go off on his own and not be conditionally supportive to the mother, or it's a way of cutting the boy off to try and get him to develop as a man, or maybe it's a turnover or a handoff to the father. But do you think there's a reason why that is? Maybe that's why they do that? It's to help him become a man and become an entity of himself. KB I don't think it has that motivation. I do think that it is just clearly, I'm more comfortable with someone who's similar to me. Let's just take height. If you're five feet tall, you're not as comfortable talking to someone who's six feet or seven

feet tall. Right? So when it comes to the way that mothers interact with their male or female children, It's a matter of comfort. I know this person. All right, this person is like me. And so I can have immediate comfort with my little girl. The guy, the boy, I'm so glad I had a boy. Everybody gets excited about having a boy. Boys take preference over girls, but in terms of what do I do with this boy, how do I interact with this boy, how do I talk with this boy, I'm not quite as comfortable with that. And so, that has a consequence for the boy.

Pete Plus, boys aren't big talkers. I almost wonder if that's just a natural way of putting us on our hero's journey as men and how we have to develop ourselves. Because it's a lonely world when you have to approach the world that we don't get unconditional love. Probably our mothers are the only ones who have given us unconditional love. But even, you know, mothers are known to, you know, give a kick to the kid, especially as a son, to make sure he gets launched and get him out there. And sometimes, you know, I kind of learned this from my huskies, where if a puppy is annoying the mom, some she'll withdraw attention or she'll maybe snap at them and then withdraw attention.

And it isn't necessarily decided to be mean. It's designed to build the character and to educate, get them ready for life. You know, you know, I mean, that's the thing a lot of fathers bring to the table. So mothers will mothers, you know, you fall and you skid your knee and you, you go crying to dad and dad goes, suck it up. That welcome to life. Life isn't fair. They teach life lessons. They go to mom,

mom goes, oh, I'll hold you and comfort you and put your bandaid on it. And you need to have both. You can't have just one person nurturing you all the time every time you fall down. I think we see that with this generation. I mean, I've seen Gen Z people that I swear to God, if they asked their parents to wipe their bum, they would at 30 years old. I'm not even kidding. We're not going to do it there. Yeah. And you see that with the helicopter parenting and stuff. But there's a yin and yang to it. You need to learn that life isn't fair. Otherwise, you're one of these idiots screaming the word, maybe you need to be here. And you're like, you didn't learn this when

you were 12 or 10? You got some serious problems waiting for you. Anyway. I agree with you. I agree with you. I don't want to wipe out the masculine characteristic, but I do think that it is truly a shame that a dad can't tell his little boy that he loves him. I think you can do that in a masculine way. Debra Mm hmm.

Pete I think you can share that. And I think, that was the other question I was going to, I'm flipping around on you now, we're going back to the end part where I threw back. Do you think that, do you find that in your work that you do with men, that a lot of them, you mentioned that a lot of them aren't really identifying their emotions and understanding them, they're just kind of packing them away as we have the ability to do. We can box up anything really. Do you find that's happening a lot with men in your council that they're really not,

I mean, they don't really have to emote their emotions, but they really aren't identifying them internally and going, you know, what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? Is this, you know, being able to analyze their feelings? Because the Stoicism, you're designed to analyze your feelings. Mary F about falling down in a puddle and crying, but it is about appreciating that hurt me. And I'm sad about it. I don't have to go crying in a puddle, but I do have to recognize that hurt.

Or I felt love or happiness or love for my child. That was tender. That was beautiful. That was loving. That was connecting all this language that men have been deprived from. And, you know, let's face it, you get men together, they're not talking about feeling experiences. They're talking about sports. Pete Slauson Yeah. That's what we, that's how we keep each other strong. You know, because talking about feelings is usually seen as feminine and talking about, not talking about it as you see as masculine, it's a hard balance that we do as men.

Mary F. C. Yeah, but I'm going to push back on that. Pete S. Okay. Mary F. And I'm going to push back hard. Pete S. Okay. Mary F. Because recognizing and identifying a feeling, excuse me, is not devastating. You make it devastating. Pete S. How do you explain that? is not devastating. You make it devastating. I can do...

Men can do much better problem solving, particularly in relationships with their spouses, their children, their friends, if they themselves can identify their feelings. The key is to be able to identify it and name it. It doesn't mean that I end up in a puddle of tears, but it does mean that I recognize that you hurt me. Because you hurt me, I'm going to kind of monitor how often do you hurt me and how comfortable

is it for you to hurt me? All right. And why do you get pleasure out of hurting me? And, you know, hey, maybe I don't want to hang out with you so much anymore. And then maybe I can also see that my son gets hurt in interactions with other kids. And I can validate that. All right, hey, I know that he insulted you, I know that hurts, but it doesn't have to stay with you. That's his insult. You get to choose whether you keep it or not. All right, so if you want to send it back to him, feel free, send it back to him.

Pete We've learned some things today on the show. That's why we do the show. Pete Yeah. Pete I love your thought process on it. You know, I think, I think men look at it from a darker aspect because of the hero's journey that we go through. We have to make ourselves into something and we really don't become anything of value till 30, 40, 50. And it's a lonely road when you're, when no one loves you unconditionally. It's hell-lonely and it's a lonely road. When no one loves you unconditionally, it's hell lonely and it's a bit dark sometimes. But you learn to live with that and you just go, this is the way it is. This is why in stoicism and masculinity, we say it is what it is. And

so we're a little scarred from our hero's journey. I mean, we're not given from, you know, women, women from their birth, they're given, they're adored. They're in their youth, they're adored. They're the highest value at what, 18 to 22 at their highest peak of femininity and being able to bear children. It's a biological thing that we have for breeding and propagating the species. But I think men have a little bit darker slant on it because it's a hard road that we live. Living your whole life, I mean, when men are in their 20s, they're pretty much worthless. They're worthless to women. They're worthless to society. I mean, this is why we send 20-year-olds

off to die in war. They don't have anything better to do but be meat for the grinder. we send 20-year-olds off to die in war. Because they don't have anything better to do but be meat for the grinder. I know that sounds mean. Mary F. Goldstein No, no, I think it's realistic. Just think of the number of people, the number of men that we lost in the Civil War. Oh, yeah. It's incredible.

It's insane. The talent, the capability, I mean… The fathers, the had children at home. Debra Larson Huge. Pete Slauson Our fathers. Debra Larson

And you're right on target, right? We take these young guys and we think they're expendable. Pete Slauson Yeah, because they don't serve anything in society. If you come to work for me as a 20-year-old, you're the new guy on the block, you're the guy who doesn't know shit, you know, everybody else on the crew is talented. They've got their, you know, they've been up for decades doing their things. You know, and have little to no experience.

And we look at you and go, we're going to pay you shit and you're going to eat shit and you're going to do all the shit work and we're going to age you. And that's one of the reasons men haze each other is because we're, we're also building character on each other. We, we are sharpening the knives on each other because we know if we're going to run as a team or as a society or all the things that we've envisioned and built as men, we have to have that thing. We can't sit around and boob because the Marauders are going to come for our women and children.

They're going to come for us. They're going to come for everything we built and earned. And it, you know, everyone looks at us, say, hey, you got to defend us in war. You know, it's kind of funny. The new age sort of attitudes people have of, you know, everyone's equal. But you know, you see in Ukraine when it gets shut down for war, only the men can't leave and the men have to go to war. And so that's our role.

And that's fine. But it is a bit dark to live in this world, I can tell you as a man. And when you have to- I believe it. I believe it. When you have to grind for 30 years, I mean, men's peak value is about 50 to 60. It's when we earn the most. It's when we finally have all our shit together.

It's when we've finally kind of learned human nature the hard way. But- 7 If you look at the culture and project it into the future, can you see a future where we don't send boys off to war? 7 No. 8 No. 9 The one thing man, this is what I always say on the show, the one thing man can, and when I speak

the species of man, the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history and thereby will go round and round. Mary Feehan Yeah, you're right on target about that. Pete Slauson I mean, for eons of time back to, I don't know, Babylon or whatever you want to believe was the starting of everything, we've been warring and doing things. There's, you know, the sad part is I think we, and this is kind of a side note and off topic for the book, but I think we've thought that war was behind us and that we graduated from, you know, being animals.

Kirsten Yeah, that it might be much more technological rather than throwing moffins at each other. Pete Yeah, but here we are, 2025, the Russia-Ukraine war and God knows what else and you know, you've got the Chinese doing the Uighurs thing, which is bigger than the Holocaust. And no one's stopping them. And so, yeah, I mean, I always tell people, they go, I wish we could have peace on earth and I'm like, kill the humans, then you'll have peace on earth. It's just human nature is, is a beautiful and ugly thing at the same time. Yeah, I mean we're just, it's our hope, it's our beauty, it's our imagination that makes

us wondrous I suppose, but it's our ugliness and evilness and selfishness and the other parts of us and so we're Pandora's box, parts of us. And so we're, we're a Pandora's box. You open us up, you never know what you're going to find. And then as a society, but I love your insights into this and your insights into men and working with them. Have we, I want to get to some of the offers on your website and make sure we flesh those out on read, reflect, respond. Is there anything else you want to, that we should touch on that

maybe you want to tease out to people? Nope, but I want to show it. All right. So people know what it looks like. And I want people to enjoy it. All right. Do some self-discovery. And you can order it wherever fine books are sold. Let's talk about your website. What are the offerings you have there? And we'll get a plug-in for the sub sack as well. So, on my website, I have all of the writings that I've done over the years. So you can tap into any one of those. I also have some videos on my website that demonstrate the two techniques that I use. Emotion-focused therapy is most effective for couples,

and it helps couples to uncover the emotional blocks that have kept them apart and led to difficulties and conflicts and hurt and injuries. And the IFS technique, the internal family systems technique, is actually brilliant. It is truly brilliant because it takes advantage of the fact that that we have ever experienced. And it facilitates looking at pieces of your history, pieces of your behavior, to really find the beginning thread. So it's like tracing back and tracing back and tracing back

to find the beginning experience. I was talking with a woman earlier this week at a training, so not a client, but she was telling this story of the fact that as a girl she could not master math. Multiplication tables were just way beyond her. Okay. You know, but this woman is a very successful professional respected in her community and in her state. Yet when she goes to her father's house, he greets her by giving her multiplication questions.

Yeah. Pete Slauson Is that good or bad? Debra Larson That's horrible. Pete Slauson Sounds horrible, yeah. Debra Larson That's horrible. Pete Slauson Makes you want to go around there. Debra Larson Just throwing her back into her childhood. Pete Slauson Wow.

Debra Larson And – Pete Slauson She's just talking about hitting her trough. Debra Larson I know, right? Just throwing her back into her childhood. Wow. And she's just talking about hitting her trauma. I know, right? Just hit you right in the back. Just get a hammer and just pound people's trauma.

It's brutal. And this technique will help her, will help anyone in a similar situation recognize that that shaming that Father is doing is no longer about her. That's not who she is. Makes no difference whether she can answer that question now or not, all right? This is father's problem, all right? Father's good at math, and father can't tolerate raising a daughter who was not good at math. Pete So, he's like signaling to her that she's not good enough because she doesn't measure up to his accept. Yeah.

So it's like a barnacle on a boat. Scrape this one off and toss it away. And you know, if you can get your father to stop doing that, if you can stand up to him and say, you know, you really want to see me, you're not going to do that greeting anymore. I actually had this problem. I don't know if you want me to interrupt in your –

Debra Larson No, go. Pete Slauson Because you're giving such great data. I had that problem with my father. One of the challenges I had was they were in a cult and I grew up in a cult and I left the cult. I'd left the cult when I was like three years old. I'm like, this is bogus bullshit. But when I was 16, I officially left the cult and said, I'm not going to, I used to, I would go to their church and then I would just go back home, watch TV and they thought three hours, I was at church and then I'd go back to church at the end, sit in the back of the view for the last five minutes and be like, hey, yeah, oh, they're so great. I'm so brainwashed now, thank you.

And for decades after that, growing up, we struggled to have a relationship with me and my father and other members of my family because I had left the cult. And any time we would try and reconnect or try and have a, I'm telling this hopes someone, so if someone thinks I'm just pissing here, I'm hoping this helps somebody with the story. And so I couldn't, anytime you, so you start talking to him, you call him after a year and you'd be like, and it was years, there were some years where I maybe have not talked to you for five years, which is a little rough being a son and father or mother and son relationship. And I called him and you'd start talking, how are you? Oh, you're good. You know, you'd have that small talk and you're like, okay, well, I'm thinking that maybe things

have changed. And then somewhere it'll start slipping in the conversation. If you were with Jesus, this wouldn't happen. You're telling them about something that's happening with you and then it starts just really getting pushed. And then you kind of try and ignore it from a stoicism thing where you're like, okay, I'm just going to dance around this. And then pretty much you're just like, why do I feel like someone is, I don't know, pulling a P-Diddy on me, Freakfest, and they're just ramming the information at me. And like you said, I don't have a problem

with their cult. I mean, the only problem I have with the cult is this interaction I keep having to have. It'd be great if my whole family would just abandon it, but that's not going to happen. You don't get to choose your family unfortunately. We need to look into that, by the way, get some laws passed, where you can choose your own family. But, you know, I don't know if that was a good example of some of the things you were saying. And so it would just… Mary F. Cooley It is an excellent example, because what you've described is that contacting your father actually puts you back in that family of origin. All right?

And so, the boy who had a different experience, a different insight, knew in his own heart that this was not going to be a path for him, but was completely unable to separate himself, right? You're a kid. You're in this family until you can get out on your own. until you can get out on your own. So at six, seven, eight, there's no argument that you can make. So even as an adult, when you call your dad, it's that part of you that is longing for the communication and the connection, wanting dad to accept you as different and valuable, right? You're

not following his path, you're following a completely different path, but you're still valuable. And you want your dad to acknowledge that you still have value to him, even though he still is committed to this faith experience that he's having. Pete And like you said earlier, a few minutes ago, for those hopping around, what you said a few minutes ago to the fact that you recognize that this parental person that's holding onto this, it's their problem now. It's not your problem anymore. But you are still looking, as you said for that, and you said it really well, you should

put that in a coffee cup, maybe, or a shirt, that you're still looking for that validation. I remember it took me 35, 30 years, somewhere in my thirties. I think it was 33 or 35. And I have to go look it up, but I built a multitude of multimillionaire companies. And it was the first time that I remember the exact place. I remember the exact time. I remember the exact feeling where my father finally, after 30 some odd years, said to me that he was proud of me.

Wow. That had to be powerful. It was powerful, but it was cutting in a way because it wasn't until I built multi-millionaire companies and he was standing in my office and he could see the opulence that I had built. He wasn't really proud of you. He was proud of the product that you. Yeah. And that's the way I felt.

Boy, you nailed it right on the head. You just psychoanalyze me right there. You're doing a great job on the show. We don't psychoanalyze Chris on the show. That's like a rule we have. Okay. All right. No, you're doing great.

Please, you're doing fine. As long as we don't really start making me cry, we'll be fine. Pete Slauson Okay. All right. Pete Slauson But no, I mean, you really, you've nailed a lot of great stuff on the show. But yeah, it's interesting. And I think it's harder between a, you know, a mother's love is kind of what you seek as a son. But sometimes that acceptance of the father can be really hard. And sometimes he does it because he's hazing you, because he's doing some of that masculine stuff that we talked about.

And he wants… Or because he's so busy, he's not able to interact with you at all. Yeah. And that was one of the other things I had to come to, and I think a lot of children need to come to, you know, our parents are doing the best they can and they're overwhelmed, like we're overwhelmed. You know, I used to always listen to that song, oh, was it the cat's in the cradle on the silver moon?

Maryfranc Fischer Oh, yeah, right. Pete Slauson And the story of how, you know, I'll play with you son, but I gotta do some work now because I gotta pay the bills for the family. I'll get with you. And then when he grows up, he doesn't have time. Eventually, after I think it was 40 or 50 years and facing death, he finally came to the realization that some of this shit didn't matter, the cult shit, and that really time and who we were was the more important part. And I think he went and saw a professional psychologist, so plug for you. Kirsten Oh, that's good. Pete And he actually came to us after meeting with a psychologist and realized he'd been

a narcissist a lot of the years and he'd been emotionally disconnected. And it wasn't that he was emotionally disconnected that wasn't the problem. It was the problem that he wasn't giving up a lot of what he wanted us to be or was pushing us to be. And maybe as a father, I'd never been a father, but maybe as a father he had a dream that we would turn out a certain way and as a prodigy or product of him or a junior of him. But, you know, that wasn't going to happen. Maybe it was fear as a father when you believe in whatever, pick your afterlife poison or lack of afterlife poison, you know, that, you know, Chris won't be with me in

heaven because he's going to go to hell because, you know, there was the Stacey DC. And that can be very, very powerful. That can be incredible. And maybe some of that was his thing. Yeah. But I like your thing identifying why people are approaching us that way. And I love that aspect. I mean, like I say, it should be in a coffee cup. Sometimes it's not your problem anymore. We're born connected to another person.

We spend the rest of our lives seeking connection. Pete Slauson What if you're a test tube baby, you're still born connected to another person? I don't know. Elna Miller Yeah. Pete Slauson I don't know how that whole thing works. Elna Miller So far, we have not produced a real human in a test tube. Pete Slauson Ah. Elna Miller Or produced embryos that will implant in a human being.

Pete Slauson Yeah. Elna Miller That explains Elon Musk. Elna Miller The test tube itself has not created a baby. Pete Slauson That explains Elon Musk then. I don't know what that is. I think he was created a test tube or something. I'm just joking. Elisa We're not going to go there. Pete Slauson Just joking with the Eloners. All right. And then the substack, tell us what you write about over in the substack.

Elisa I write every week and I write about things in my childhood, I write about stuff that I see on the wall. Pete It sounds like we're on a podcast. We talk about everything. Kirsten I write about everything, all right? And I challenge myself to keep this to one page. That's a challenge for people like you and I. That's a challenge. But so far I've been very successful in keeping it to one page. And I challenge myself to write in a way that, A, somebody out there will identify with it and go, oh yeah, that, I know that, I get that. And that they will also be challenged to reflect on some aspect of their lives and

it can bring them joy to do that. It can bring them conviction to do that. I want to impact people emotionally on that level. I don't just want to entertain. I want to impact people emotionally and hope then that they will do something with that challenge. I'll never know what they do with that challenge, but I hope that they will do something with that challenge that leads them to grow, to improve, maybe to reach back to someone and apologize for something that they did decades ago, or to challenge themselves

to try something new that they thought they were afraid of. Pete And reflecting on, you know, reflecting on our life or our emotions or thoughts, I mean, that's stoicism and masculinity. Do you normally work mostly with men then? Mary F. Kennedy It's interesting. All right, I started my practice working with preschool boys because preschool teachers are women. And preschool boys just don't seem to fit for the preschool female teacher. Boys are a little bit more rambunctious, they're a little bit more active, they require a little bit more attention.

And so I started working with preschool boys and had a great time doing that. But as a result of that, the fathers of these kids put themselves on my calendar. And I had seven straight years where my calendar was completely full of adult men. So I've learned a lot from the men that I've worked with. And the other book that I'm working on is about fathering. It's basically how not to blank up raising your boy.

Pete Slauson Father, the father is so important in the thing, in the whole mechanism. Debra Haldon It's interesting, you work with men a lot. You know, one of the problems I see, one of the challenges I see with a lot of men is a lot of men operate and they feminine now. They don't operate in their masculine. We've had psychologists on the show that have written books and they wrote books 20 years ago. So now you read the books and you go, holy shit, they called it. But they address one of the problems was there's not enough men in teaching as there used to be. When I grew up, there was like 50, 50 of men in

teaching that we're exposed to. So we're exposed to both the feminine and the masculine. And at my age, those men teachers are pretty damn masculine. They carried around paddle boards and kicked ass and took names and they could, it was legal back then, I guess, to give you an ass whooping. Can you throw me back, please? Anyway, I'm just kidding. I'm not. So I think this is great. I mean, if you're

watching the show, I mean, this is a really great show and you've done some wonderful work here and shared some wonderful things and some skitomas and some topics that, you know, if you're hopping around the show, basically what I'm telling you is you go back and listen to it and order up her book. I've ordered it. On some of the services you offer, that was the other thing. Sorry, I'm getting this show is going really long, but that's because we have good content, that's how you can always tell a good show. You work with individuals, you work with couples, you can divorce. Kirsten Yeah, at this point in time, thanks to COVID, when before COVID, I had two offices, and because of COVID, I gave up both of my offices because no one's coming in person,

and started doing my work through Zoom online. And I've continued to do that and really enjoy it. And so my focus is on adults and couples. And the process works well with the exception that like you and I, right, you get to see me from about chest up. I get to see you from chest up. But there's so much more information that's happening in the rest of your body. You know, if your foot were going like this while we're talking, I miss that. Oh, all right. But if you were in the office, that would I would notice it that would be significant

that would have some meaning to it. Or if you're, you know, twisting something in your hands in your lap. I don't see that on the video, but there's enough opportunity to ask some questions about how are things feeling in your body? What are you noticing in your hands and your legs and all the parts that I can't see that you can pick up some of that nonverbal information that you miss because, you know, we're on a video. Pete Yeah. Julie So, I can see all of you.

Pete Yeah. And that's really important because the body tells the story. Julie That does. The body keeps the score. Pete Yeah. My teachers used to get after me because I always did that knee shake, like the shake thing. And I was tapped on the desk, drummed on the desk. And you know, my psychologist teacher, he goes, it's because you have an overactive brain. He probably, I don't know if he told me that, but I had a... Yeah, you need the stimulation. Yeah.

And so he's really bored in class because it's fucking boring. And what's interesting is I learned a lot from the classes that I was in when I stopped focusing on passing tests and reading books or semi reading books. Just liking the material. I think I learned more from Denial of Death, the book in our psychology class than most people who read it and I never read it. I cheated the report.

Anyway, I don't know why we're talking about that. But anyway, so issues with Chris. No, I do that. I have a habit of multitasking in AHD. So you're probably well aware of that. Yeah. You're probably like most. Sounds very familiar.

I need a lobotomy, don't I? No, no, actually I think a brain that does that is an advance, right? We're evolving as a species. Right? We're evolving as a species. And I honestly believe that people that are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder are an evolutionary advance. Oh, I'm going to screen, I'm going to cut that video piece and send it to everybody who hates me. If you look at the recent experience of who's been creating things that we now use, you and I are using this computer. That wasn't there when I was a kid.

Somebody invented that. You go find out, you know, who started that, who invented that. It's a guy with attention deficit disorder. Pete Slauson Yeah. There's a reason they call it the CO disease. It's a curse in an asset. You just have to learn to tame it. I had mine tamed with old age and then I got on testosterone replacement two years ago and it came back. I had it mastered in my old age. I'd wake up and I'd be like, should I have anxiety today?

I'm like, no, I'm too tired for that. I'm not doing the ADHD thing. I just want to sit in peace for fuck's sakes. And then it was just old age and me being at low testosterone, you know, I just didn't have enough energy for anything. And then I got testosterone, it's like, the OCD just came back, swirl. Anyway, so it's been wonderful to have you on. You've dealt with so much shopping.

It's been great to talk with you, I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed it as well. We've had immense discussion here, so please folks, if you've hopped around or if you caught the middle of this, go back and listen. This is one of the shows you wanna listen to over and over again. Tell people how they can reach out to you, how they can order the book, how they can

get to know you better, et cetera, et cetera. Julie Lierz They can order the book on Amazon. They can also request it from their local bookstore. Every bookstore in the world actually has access to this book, which is very exciting. Pete Slauson You can order it wherever fine books are sold and give us the dot coms again for the substack and your website. Debra And then, so the website is www.drvandherhorst.com. Pete Thank you very much for coming on the show.

We really appreciate it. Debra You're welcome. Pete Very insightful. And keep up the great work and the great books coming and stuff and all that good stuff. Thanks for tuning into my audience. Be sure to go to goodreads.com fortress, chrisfoss, linkedin.com fortress, chrisfoss, chrisfoss, one of the tick tock and he always crazy place in it.

We can do it. Sure. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. That's the episode.