The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Adult Chair: Get Unstuck, Claim Your Power, and Transform Your Life by Michelle Chalfant

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

The Adult Chair: Get Unstuck, Claim Your Power, and Transform Your Life by Michelle Chalfant Amazon.com Theadultchair.com It’s time to find your power, learn how to love yourself, and break free of the limiting patterns and beliefs that are keeping you stuck—from the therapist behind the popular podcast The Michelle Chalfant Show. “An excellent ‘how to act like an adult’ manual that would assist anyone looking to shelve self-doubt, handle triggers, relinquish grudges, and learn self-compassion.”—Library Journal (starred review) Many of us were never shown what it truly means to be an adult. Instead, we learned unhealthy patterns from parents who, themselves, had never been taught. It is no surprise that we often find ourselves filled with self-doubt, stuck in feelings of overwhelm, and trapped in unfulfilling or dead-end relationships. But there is a way out. After decades of working with clients, therapist, coach, and podcast host Michelle Chalfant passionately believes in the potential for every person to awaken to their true selves and create a life filled with purpose and joy. Her Adult Chair model fuses spirituality and psychology, making complex concepts accessible and practical. The Adult Chair explores the three key stages of human development using a framework of three chairs: “The Child Chair,” “The Adolescent Chair,” and “The Adult Chair.” By understanding and working through each stage, you’ll identify how your early life experiences shaped your thoughts, behaviors, and self-worth. This insight alone is powerful, but Chalfant’s five pillars of healthy adult living also provide simple, practical tools to help you permanently release the negative beliefs and behaviors holding you back. This is the manual we all needed while growing up, and it’s not too late to learn from it now—a way to grow into adults who feel worthy, empowered, lovable, and confident. No matter what you want help with, The Adult Chair is your path to self-discovery, healing, and personal transformation.

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. I'm Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, there are the latest things that makes official welcome to 60 years and nine episodes of The Chris Voss Show with all the most amazing guests, the CEOs, the billionaires, the White House presidential advisors, the Pulitzer Prize winners, the great authors that share their stories of life, their journeys, as

we always say, stories of the fabric of all of our lives. And today we have another amazing author on the show. Before we get to her, go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1, the tick tock, Chris Foss at Facebook.com, Fortress, Chris Foss. Today we have an amazing little lady on the show. We're going to be talking about her hot new book that's coming out May 6th, 2025. It is called The Adult Chair, Get Unstuck, Claim Your Power and transform your life by Michelle Schofont is joining

us on the show. We're going to get to her book and all the insights that go into it and how you can live a better life. So those of you who don't want to live a better life and want to live in misery and uncomfortable, you can tune out now and skip to the next episode. Now you can't skip to the next episode. Every episode is about how to make your life better. Michelle has worked for decades with her clients in her private practice. She's a renowned therapist, holistic life coach and host of the popular podcast,

The Michelle Chalfant Show, life from the adult chair with over 10 million downloads. Congratulations. It's good to know we're in companies here. It says there's five pillars that define a healthy adult self. I probably lack all five. In her forthcoming book, The Adult Chair, she reveals the fundamental building blocks that have been the most transformational, if I can learn to spell or read or just use my brain, and has been transformed for clients over these years. She has a straightforward approach and yet powerful tools that address common challenges such as low self-esteem, unhealthy relationship, poor boundaries, anxiety, and codependency.

She just described me. Welcome to the show, Michelle Howard. I love this intro. Hi, Chris. We threw a lot of funny in the improv, Michelle Howard. I love this intro. Hi, Chris. We threw a lot of funny in the improv and then it just goes downhill from after that. Michelle, give us your dot coms. Where can we find you on the interweb, which is in the sky?

To make it really easy, I'm just going to get you, there are two ways, of course. You can go to michellechelfont.com, or you can also just go to theadultchair.com, which is the name of the book and a lot of the live events that I do. So either one will get you to me. Tell us what's behind the title, the adult chair. What does it mean and where did it come from? And then 30,000 overview in the book, if you can just pack that all together for us, please. Let me pack it in.

I'll throw in you like two questions at once, kind of winging it, you're right from the get go. it in. I throw in you like two questions at once, kind of winging at you right from the get-go. Yeah. So the adult chair basically teaches us who we are and how we got this way. So you mentioned, oh, that's me, whatever, codependent people, please, or whatever is going on in your life. It really helps us to understand who we are today and then how we got that way. And the best part of the book are the five pillars that you mentioned, which are the how-to. And the book was really inspired by my own life in my earlier years, many, many years ago, high school, college. I was, nobody knew it. I was functionally depressed. I had a lot of anxiety, codependency, all those things. And I did not know my way

out. I didn't, again, back then there was no Google, there was no internet. So we're talking a long time ago. But what I realized was there was no pathway out of what I was feeling and how I was living. I didn't know what to do. There were not therapists in every corner like there is now. But there are now, and I even have a coaching program. We have coaches. I get that. What I still find today, even in 2025, people still need to understand how the heck we heal. How do we transform our lives? How do we transform our relationships? The most important relationship that we need to have

in the world is the one with ourself. Ah. This is, yeah. And this book will teach you exactly how to do that. And you can't have healthy relationships. What I don't know if people are watching this, but I'm pointing out there outside of self until you learn how to have healthy relationships inside of self. So this book will help you with relationships. It will help you to raise your self worth.

It will help you to become more confident. It will help you become badass. It will help you have amazing relationships with everybody. This is not just saying your primary, but I'm talking about friendships, relationships with your mom, your dad, your whomever. It teaches us really how to be healthy, functioning adults in this world. And I know, I know we look like adults, but I don't care how old we are. Quite often we show up in what I call our

adolescent chair, which is we're really young. When we make choices in the world, sometimes we're showing up, even though physically I might be 40, 50, 60, 30. However, I'm showing up like a 13 year old. That's why I'm overreacting. That's why I'm pissed off. That's why I'm raging. That's why I'm reaching for too much alcohol, drugs, all these things, because we don't know another way out. And the book gives you all those answers. And probably some of those last times you mentioned is just kind of a cope. The underlying issues that we're not dealing with.

I know for a long time I abused alcohol. Just at night I was an alcoholic, but I would flip it on to work later. Sugar was a fuel for the machine. But as an entrepreneur, you know, you're like, I got more accounting I got to do or whatever the hell. And you're just like, throw back some vodka and I can work for a couple more hours and wide awake because I'm relaxed now. But no, you can use a lot of people use drugs for crutch.

And it's interesting to me, you know, you talk about the child, the adolescent chair, a lot of are still showing up and acting like children. Have you seen social media lately? Don't write me social media. Anyway, but yeah, it's so tell us the proponent behind this book. Why did you feel like it needed to be written, need to be shared? Maybe this intertwines a little bit with your podcast if you want to plug that a bit and when you started it and how you did and why you kind of went down this whole journey with becoming a coach and helping other people and yada yada. Yeah, it was because I was suffering. I knew how I suffered when I was growing up.

And again, in college I was drinking almost every night. I was getting high every day. That's just college though, isn't it? No, I'm just kidding. I mean, it is, but it isn't. It's unhealthy college life. And just feeling lost. But again, nobody knew it. On the outside, I had the hot guy, I fit into all the hot, you know, the friend groups, the story, all that stuff on the outside. But on the inside, I wasn't feeling that way. So I'm a seeker, you know, really a stuff on the outside, but on the inside, I wasn't feeling that way. So I've just, I'm a seeker, you know,

I'm really a seeker of knowledge, I'm a seeker of truth, I'm a seeker of everything that I have focused on. I like go full at it. And again, I said, I've got this negative self-talk, where the hell is it coming from? I wanna understand why do I feel like this self-talk is so hard on me? And that's where it started.

Honestly, I was probably 20 years old. And I said, I've got to figure this out. And I just started peeling back the layers of really who I was not. It's the mask that we all build, that we all wear and the false self that we all build. We all do it. It's part of the ego. It's not, ego's not bad. It's just what we build into this false self.

So I just delved into everything. It was like, I was on this quest of learning, how do I love myself? How, what does that even mean? People say you should love yourself. What the hell does that mean? So I learned how to do that. I learned how to build self-worth.

I learned, and I realized these are the basic building blocks every human should have. I said, when I wrote this book, I said, this is the book that every single human should read because it's basic, but we don't know how to do it well. We don't live as functioning or healthy functioning adults very well. We get triggered. We explore it all over people. I have a whole section on triggers.

I have a whole section on how do we feel our emotions. I didn't know how to feel my emotions. That is one of the, that is the greatest things humans need to learn how to do, or just say it like this, remember how to do. When you were little, you cried, you wanted things, you had emotions. We learned not to feel, we learned to cover up. And that's where our addictions come from. I don't care if it's a work addiction or an alcohol addiction and everything in between. where her addiction's come from. I don't care if it's a work addiction or an alcohol addiction and everything in between. Now, when you mentioned that you didn't know your feelings,

was that, did I understand that correctly? Yeah, I don't know, I wasn't feeling emotionally. What was the proponent buying then? What do you mean? Like, why didn't I feel my, or how did I, why wasn't feeling my emotions? Yeah, was there, what was, how were you raised and what kind of influenced you to kind of work on some of these things

and have these childhood issues? I think it's not so black and white, obviously. I was feeling some emotions. It wasn't like I was completely sealed up. I felt nothing. I grew up in an Italian family. But they have spaghetti meatballs and lasagna. I mean, how can you- Loud.

Everyone is enmeshed with each other. There are no boundaries. We're all in each other's business. I felt like I was raised by my mom, dad, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins. Like everyone, we were just all one baby. Lots of pressure, lots of judging. Yeah. Maybe.

Yeah. And you don't air your dirty laundry outside of the family. So God forbid you go to therapy. Really? Yeah. That's kind of interesting. Yeah. This is way back.

This is, we're talking back in the eighties and nineties. So this is a long time ago. That was before I was born. Yeah. Yeah. So I knew that something was off. I had a father that was an identical twin. He chose my father who loved us, but chose his twin. So there was that. There's just a lot of just like, there's a lot of alcohol in my life growing up.

Oh really? Mm-hmm. A lot of alcohol. Was that from your parents that gave you that blue pen or did you just- No, that was my uncles. You were coping? It was like uncles, aunts, grandmothers. Specifically, it was my uncle and my grandmother. Lots of drinking, lots of...

It was just, there was a lot of love, but there was a lot of dysfunction too. And I think all families have that. There's a scale, of course, to how much there actually is. There should be a game show whose family is worse. Or maybe that's the family feud. Is that the family feud? That's the family feud. You can sit around and I can see this

as a psychologist game show where you're like, pick which family is worse. And like everybody, all the kids come up and tell their horror stories and who can tell the worst. And then like, that might be bad though. That might really be bad for some people. But but I don't know it could be fun other people's misery always you know, I love watching that show cops and cheaters and After about two hours of that I'm done being depressed and I'm like my life is great

No one's cheating on me and not getting arrested for anything I've done. What? Did I just submit to something? No, I'm just kidding. But no, it's, it's, yeah, the people of car crashes. What can you say? So the adult chair. So the book is, let me ask this question. Does, so is the, is the adult chair book designed and your work designed to help me move from the adolescent chair to the adult chair, it's kind of Thanksgiving

dinner, it's, it's, I get to move from the kid table to grow up finally. That's it. You got it. We, we act again, I talk about social media, all these things. You watch people how they're showing up in the world. It's just some of the unhealthy responses we see. Some of the stuff we see out there is a little wonky and it's, it's from the adolescent part of us. It's from this really younger version of self that is showing up in this adult body that we have, it's just unhealthy or it's dysfunctional or I just think

about relationships in general. It can be something as basic as if you and I are dating and I have an issue, I'm just not going to say it because I don't want to get you upset. It's very basic things like this that we do all the time. We don't speak up. We don't know how to communicate in healthy ways. Again, it's not this black and white, but some of us do, but some of us don't. Some of us can set boundaries.

Some of us don't do that well. Some of us feel our emotions. Some of us don't. To me, let's just take anxiety. So many people suffer with anxiety. And I saw clients, I don't see clients one on one anymore, but when I did 25 years of sitting with clients and the first question I'd ask them, and that's the book is honestly based on 25 years of working with clients. I'd say to them, how do you know you have anxiety? I'm breathing really fast, my heart's racing, knots in my stomachs and throats tight, etc. I'm like, I realized anxiety is this physical thing. It's a physical manifestation of unfelt

emotions. So when I would ask my clients, I'd say to them, hey, tell me about what you are feeling emotionally. They couldn't say. And then I'd go, okay, wait a minute. You're telling me you've got a speeding heart, all this, you're nuts in your stomach. Tell me, how does, what's going on in your life? And I'd put them in their bodies. I'd help them to just get in their bodies, take some deep breaths, feel into what's going on behind the beating heartbeat or the tightness in their stomach.

And they'd go, oh my God, I have grief. I didn't even know that was there. Like they're absolutely surprised over and over and over again. And I said, what if we sit with that here? Let's just sit here. If you want to close your eyes, great. If not, fine. They'd feel it. I kid you not Chris. Anxiety would be like, Oh my God, it's, it feels like it's moving through me. Like it's not there anymore. Not everybody was that black and white that it would go here and gone. But most of the time people would say, oh my gosh, I didn't know. It was just a matter of feeling what was there.

And sometimes you would cry. Sometimes you will get upset and angry, whatever the emotion is. Emotions are meant to move through us in 90 seconds. If we let them. And when we stop them with our mind, that's where the anxiety is coming from. Or we don't address them. Is that maybe also a word you'd use? We don't know how to address them. Unless your parents or parent or some adult figure when you were growing up sat with you and said, hey, I understand you had a hard day at school today or I understand you're crying over this.

Talk to me. How does that make you feel? I'm here with you. Without fixing it. What parents tended to do was, again, it depends on what generation. I don't know who's listening to this, but it could be a range of people. Some parents ignored us when we were growing up. Some parents like lately in the last 10 to 20 years, they fixed it. Let me fix that. Oh,

so and so was me and you on the playground. I'm going to the school to talk to that parents, those parents are that I'm going to fix it instead of wait, what's happening? Let me sit with you and really understand what are you feeling? What's happening? What's going on? And letting that that emotion is just an energy that passes through Instead, you know letting it sit inside of us It's it's it's kind of is it a fight

Do you see that sort of response as a fight or flight mode that that's being activated there? Or is it just that they're just not Facing reality and their body's calling out to them like hey, dude, you need to fix this day. Maybe, I don't know. Number two. It's like maybe there's fight or flight, maybe not. It's just what's going on. Like we don't spend a lot of time with ourselves as crazy as that sounds. I can sit home all day and I can be listening to a podcast or listening to books or whatever it is. I'm not with myself. How much time, and I'd say this to podcasts or listening to books or whatever it is. I'm not with myself. How much time, and I'd say this to everybody that's listening right now, like how much

time do you sit by yourself? And I don't mean going for a run listening to a podcast. I mean just sitting quietly and sitting in the backyard looking out at the birds or the squirrels or the whatever or just sitting and just spending time alone. Even if it's five minutes, we don't know how to be alone. I again, heard this thousands of people, I get home, I gotta turn the TV on immediately. I don't like to be by myself.

I don't like to be alone. It's uncomfortable. I've always got to have something going on in the background. I don't like to sit and listen to my thoughts. Hello, that's the where exactly that we need to go. This is turned toward what is, what you don't like to hear to get to know it. And then you move through it. That's what people don't understand. You literally move through this

stuff, but we don't know how to sit with it. Yeah. Yeah. We, you know, it's, it's so funny how we don't face reality. We have all these distractions. Someone brought up the same thing you're talking about in the show recently. And I realized that I was filling all my time. If I'm at my desk in my office, I've got the kitchen just outside my door. If I go to get a coffee or something in the kitchen, usually I'm refilling water, protein drink, coffee, espresso, all that sort of stuff. I drink a lot of espresso folks, if you can't tell. You can tell I'm still tired. I'm 57, I'm tired. I was born tired, I think at this point.

Anyway, but I would take my phone with me and I'm just going there for, you know, refill of water or something, right? And I realized that I was wondering, you know, everyone takes their phone to the bathroom, of course. I lay in bed at night, sometimes, you know, watching videos. I'm just like, one more TikTok spin, one more TikTok spin, and then it's 4 a.m. So much distraction.

Even when I was driving to the gym, I would listen to audiobooks thinking, I'm being efficient, I'm driving the car, and ain't downtime, I try and listen to audiobook. And I realized that I was kind of running away from myself. Like I wasn't sitting like you say in my, in who I am and just having peace and quiet. And now I do things like go out in the yard in the mornings, sit in the sun, get my vitamin D, start my cicada rhythms and just kind of enjoy the peacefulness and try and avoid looking at the phone. No, but you're laughing and you're absolutely right. And it's really sad to me because the internet is one of the greatest things that we've ever

had in our lifetimes. I mean, let's face it, it can connect us with the entire world. I think about my podcast. I mean, I have met people from all around the world and become great friends with them. People in Australia, Australia that I would have never met had it not been for the podcast. But so it connects us. But at the same time, like you're saying to your point,

people are going to bed at night and they can't put their phone down. It's horrible for sleep. Or that blue light, I mean, all the reasons why. But it's not even the blue light. It's that we're keeping not just our brain, but our nervous system in a constant state of go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. So I've started bounding myself. And I really,

I get up in the morning, I wear an aura ring. So I'll look and see how many hours I slept and all that stuff. And then I put the phone down. I do not look at anything else on my phone other than my sleep score. Put the phone down. I go for my walk in the morning. I go grab my dog. We hike. I do, you know, an hour's worth of some sort of physical activity. And then I come home. I meditate. I journal. I do something for about 20 minutes. And I'm very intentional about when I decide to open up my phone. I go, okay, it's 10 o'clock. I'm starting my day.

I'm going to look at emails right now. I'm going to look up my phone. I go, okay, it's 10 o'clock. I'm starting my day. I'm gonna look at my emails. Right now, I'm gonna look at my Slack. I'm gonna look at my text. That's it. Oh, let me check what social just went up for me. I'm gonna look at that. And then I put it down. And then I go to work and I read a lot of content

or I'm doing a lot of podcasts and things like this. And then I'll check it again after lunch. And then I check it again at the end of the day. That's it. I do not. I'm very boundary now. I feel you talk about sleep and feeling drained. I have so much more energy because I would get out of the shower and I'd pick up my phone and go, let me just quickly check the slack or let me check my emails. I'm like, God, that was so undisciplined and so hard on the mind. I mean, think about the brain that's kind of like, oh wait, I'm telling you off.

And now, oh wait, we're checking Instagram. Oh wait, let me, but you know, it's like this massive, we have distractions like crazy now that we've never had at any other time. You know, the pings, dings, notifications. Horrible. And you know, you bring up a good point and give me an epiphany on that because, you know,

I know about setting boundaries for people because I have to set a lot of them these days. It seems like whack-a-mole boundary setting in my life, or at least on social media. You're like, block that, dude. Crazy nut jobs. Bye. But we don't really think of setting boundaries in our workflow, in our work day for that matter.

One thing I discovered was setting my circadian rhythms and getting that started and the importance of going out into light and getting that vitamin D, that natural vitamin D. And then just spending time, I'll spend time in the morning with my dogs playing in the yard and just kind of have some gratitude. I'll usually read a snippet, a couple of pages of something from Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius or other things. And I'll just kind of read them and just kind of be marinating the piece.

But you know, you've got me thinking from a new paradigm now that, yeah, some of the work, especially as an entrepreneur, because you know, we live sleep dream business. There is no offers, there's no punch out. And so this is probably really important for entrepreneurs out there, but for everyone, I think. But setting boundaries on your work.

I've had to do that. I tried doing the podcast all week long and on weekends so we could ram out a massive amount of content. And I just was frying out. And finally I had to set a boundary and say, we're not doing weekends anymore. I need decompression time. Even between the episodes that we do, because we do 10 to 15 episodes a week, we have to, you know, I need it.

I just recently changed it to where I need a few more hours of downtime between another podcast. I just need to recharge. And so I like your concept there, boundaries to work and stuff. I definitely needed some of those all my years ago. Where were you 50, 30 years ago when I started my businesses? I was probably drunk somewhere. None of you were much older.

I didn't have any boundaries. But no, what you're saying is I, as an entrepreneur, and I freaking love what I do and I do a ton. I've got a coaching program. I've got a membership. I've got the podcast. I do online defense. All this stuff that I do and I love it. Like you said, like I will be up sometimes till 10 o'clock at night.

Like my head just goes with ideas. Oh, I could do this and I could do this and all the things. Right. But and I did not, I was not great at taking downtime and vacations and things like that. I now have a quarterly vacation. My husband and I go away every quarter. It's on the books. And it's hard sometimes.

I go, but I can't. And then when I go away or when I take those 10 minutes, even 10 to 15 minutes in the middle of the day, I live on a lake. So I go outside. I sit on the dock. I'm looking out, no phone, I just sit. I got to tell you that those moments on vacation in my 10 minute breaks, that is when I have some of the best downloads and ideas and inspirations that come through. But as entrepreneurs, we're going, going, going, going, going. We never

stop but when we stop is when, oh my God, that's when the magic comes through. Pete Slauson Tell people about your website, what you have offering there, what, any events or anything you have coming up, whatever you want to plug there, let's get a plug in for that and how people can onboard with you, reach out and get to know you better. Julie Yeah, the book, the Adult Share book, you can buy it anywhere books are sold. That is live on May 6th. We can preorder now.

I don't know when this podcast is going live, but you can preorder to order it whenever. And if you preorder it now, you get I did a kick ass master class. And I only say it's kick ass because the feedback has been like it's still coming in and you get a master class. So that's a two hour class where you can go deep into the adult chair. Another thing, we've talked a lot about boundaries. I want to give anyone that is listening today a boundary cheat sheet.

It's absolutely free. That's at theadultchair.com forward slash boundaries. And that cheat sheet will help you get started with boundaries inside and out. Yeah, theadultchair.com. Everything is right there. I've got a three day live event coming up in September. I got a lot going on. Just go to theadultchair.com, everything is right there. I've got a three day live event coming up in September. I got a lot going on. Just go to theadultchair.com.

Check out the website, everything's there. I got a lot going on there. Michelle, it's been fun and wonderful and insightful and you've given me some new paradigms and things to think about, especially with, I need to tape that to my forehead or get a tattoo, set boundaries at work and stuff so that you can give your best every time. It's just so important. And like you said, a lot of people are really bad at boundaries.

Why isn't there a... Why isn't in elementary school or junior high, there's not a boundaries class or something? Chris, this is why I said everyone needs to read this book. I mean, the five pillars, I feel my emotions, I live with self-compassion. I work with my triggers. Like, I set healthy boundaries. It's all in this book. This is what I'm teaching. Hey, graduation present, mother's day gift, this is the book because this is what we need to be learning to live as healthy adults, like really healthy adults in the world. So thank you very much, Michelle, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Order up your book, folks. Wherever fine books are sold, it is called The Adult Chair. Get unstuck. Claim your power and transform

your life out May 6, 2025. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1 on the TikTok. All those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out. Great show, Michelle.