The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unlocking the Secrets to Self-Actualization: A Journey with Skye and Tony Thornton

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Unlocking the Secrets to Self-Actualization: A Journey with Skye and Tony Thornton Actualizingtherapy.com About the Guest(s): Skye and Tony Thornton are the co-founders of T Life, a company specializing in actualizing therapy, a unique approach combining therapeutic practices with mentorship to aid individuals in their personal journeys. Tony Thornton launched T Life in 2017, inspired by the profound impact his late mother, Patricia, had on his life. Skye Thornton, an avid reader, collaborates with Tony to help clients apply therapeutic practices in real-world settings, fostering an ethos of authenticity and self-actualization. Together, they work closely with clients to illustrate life patterns and provide personalized guidance for overcoming challenges. Episode Summary: Join Chris Voss as he delves into an enlightening conversation with Sky and Tony Thornton, the minds behind T Life and its innovative approach to therapy. In this episode of The Chris Voss Show, Tony and Skye share their transformative journey from personal loss to becoming guides in the world of actualizing therapy. They articulate how their unique method, distinct from traditional therapy, fosters self-actualization and personal accountability in everyday life. In this dynamic discussion, Chris Voss and the Thorntons explore the shortcomings of traditional therapy, particularly for individuals who have difficulty confronting their own behaviors. They emphasize how actualizing therapy, with its practical, life-integrated approach, helps clients see their true selves and make meaningful changes. With an understanding rooted in the principles of self-efficacy and a nod to the theories of Maslow, they detail the model of being "illustrators" who guide individuals through their deepest challenges. Their conversation touches on the significance of handling childhood trauma, understanding personal fallacies, and achieving congruence between one's inner and outer worlds. Key Takeaways: Actualizing therapy combines therapeutic principles with mentorship to help individuals address personal challenges directly in their daily lives. Skye and Tony Thornton focus on illustrating patterns in clients' lives to foster self-awareness and accountability. Unlike traditional therapy's one-way street, their method involves real-world interactions that unveil true behaviors and insights. Self-efficacy and genuine personal change are central to the process of self-actualization. Facing one's own issues and becoming authentic provides a path to a fulfilling and liberated life. Notable Quotes: "Embracing the deep, dark shadow work is where it starts." – Tony Thornton "Self actualization is your most natural form." – Skye Thornton "It's not about achieving perfection, it's about becoming the best person you want to be." – Tony Thornton "The fruits of working on yourself are truly liberating." – Skye Thornton "Life is much better on the other side when you mentally fix your game and you're clean." – Chris Voss

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 Oss Voss here from the Chris Voss Show dot com. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no things that that makes it official. Welcome to the show. As always, for 16 years and 23 hundred episodes, 10 to 15 new shows a week. We've been bringing the Chris Foss show and just the most amazing guests, their stories,

their journeys, their lessons of life, and they share with you to improve the quality of your life. And if you're not feeling improved, go listen to all the shows all the way over again. Go back to episode one and just do all 23 hundred. Today we have an amazing young couple on the show with us today. We're going to be talking about their insights, their business and their therapy service that can help you do better with your life as well. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily

reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. We have together with us on the show, Guy and Tony Thornton. And Tony started TeaLife, the company we'll be discussing in 2017, after the loss of his mother, Patricia, to breast cancer at age 51. Her passing left him grappling with grief and searching for direction. From her, he learned authenticity, compassion, and perseverance. Their friendship as mother and son led the foundation for him to self-actualize, creating the path for him to develop into the husband, father, and illustrator that he is today. As an actualizing couple, he and his wife help individuals better

apply therapy to practices and principles to their day-to-day lives through the twinned science of actualizing therapy and the practice of tea life. They know from their own experience from combining therapy and mentorship accelerates the path to self-actualization. As illustrators, the title they use, they have worked with numerous licensed therapists who have expressed that one of their biggest frustrations is not being able to observe how their patients actionably incorporate therapy in their life. To that end, they meet with each client in their everyday life to discern who they are actually, not just audibly, no offices, no worksheets. This creates a highly

personalized approach to each individual and they illustrate problem areas including grief, crisis, narcissistic personalities, and any area demanding personal accountability. And as illustrators, they're here to be friends with purpose and help their clients see the truth, break patterns, and embrace authenticity. Welcome to the show. Ladies and gentlemen, how are you? Great, thank you for embrace authenticity. Welcome to the show. Ladies and gentlemen, how are you? Chris Bounds Great. Thank you for having us. Maura Bounds Hi, Chris. Chris Bounds Thanks for coming. Giveus.com is wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs and get to know you better.

Maura Bounds Sure. Our website is actualizingtherapy.com. That's the main way to find us and that's the way we begin interfacing with our clients. Anybody who's listening to the show and anybody who hears about us who goes to the website and answers one of our six questions, which we can talk about later, that's a great way to get an initial introduction and conversation with us. Do you wanna jump in here and give your thoughts, Tony?

I usually let everybody have a bit of swing at things. Yeah, that's what my wife said, is it spot on, but that discussion starts with us meeting you as a trust-building exercise that we go through before you can even know what that website is not something we we display publicly because our we want our clients to have the utmost privacy when working with us so you would get to know that side by interfacing with us first. How did you guys tell us about both of your journeys through life and how you got into

therapy and helping other people? Actually, I think therapy and life started with just my life, my life, my mother, our bond and our journey. And after passing, yeah, I discovered a lot of things about my life and the things that I thought were true. They weren't, right? And so I had to reinvigorate myself, re-understand and relearn things. And in that, I created, we created this in our journey together as a married couple,

as individuals. We want our clients to know, embracing the deep, dark shadow work is where it starts. Oh yeah, deep, dark shadow work. And a lot of people, I like this self-actualization thing because it tells me if it solves this process. So I've seen people especially narcissists go into therapy and basically run game on the therapist, you know, oh it's you know, it's everyone else's fault. The therapist just goes, okay, it's everyone else's fault and they basically just PR spin who they really are or you know, hiding who they really are to the therapist. And they don't ever discuss any of the things.

It's always someone else's fault. They never self-actualize, be self-accountable. And I've seen people go through years, I think a decade of therapy, it's like, it doesn't work for me. It's because you never faced you. You just went in there and just babbled and kept the therapist on default. So does work that you guys do kind of help bring self-accountability and self-actualization to the process? That's one of the questions that we love to answer when we're being interviewed is how

does your practice differ from therapy? How do you get that narcissist to learn? And that's through modeling and going in your life. And so a therapist is gonna only take what you tell them. And that's a one way street. And so we get to, my wife and I, we set up ways that we can actually maneuver and get to meet you with those individuals in your life that you're discussing. And so now we can use the sermon a little bit better

and see what are those behaviors that you're doing and what they're saying and we can try and do that and kind of see the things that actually happen. And that's not even necessarily a person's fault per se, right? People have their perceptions, they have their way of thinking about their lives. And so it's always refreshing to get a new perspective on something, right? So having somebody illustrate for you the pitfalls in your life, the behaviors in your life that might be holding you back, that you might not even see yourself.

And then that's what tends to happen. These aha moments are live and I didn't see it that way. So having that, as you said, friend with purpose kind of walk alongside you in that a narcissist is a damaged child. Right. And so in that learning of childhood, they the learning wasn't appropriately demonstrated. And so we're alive. People pass them along.

And so what we want to show that narcissists is, hey, look at these things in your life that you kind of take a look at that were painful, but we're going to build with you and allow for us to go do that and face them and confront it. Because it's the facing of those issues where it really helps you change and evolve. Yeah. If you don't self-actualize, if you don't have accountability, you can't fix your problems. You cannot. You can't because you have to, you know, it's just like alcoholics anonymous.

The first step is admitting you have the problem. And you know, I meet people in life and you know, you'll talk to them about their past relationships. They're like, yeah, my past nine relationships were with the narcissist, or my past nine, you know, it was the fault of my past nine relationships. It wasn't, I was perfect in those relationships. And you're like, you realize you're the commandant of an anger in all these past relationships. You touched on the main word, which is accountability, right?

So you really got to look at yourself and see your point, right? If you're talking about your relationships, what you would say is control what you can control, right? You can is control what you can control. You can't control those other people. All you can control is your behavior and the way you present yourself and act with those people. Are you doing the things that you want to do to better yourself? Take a look at that.

Pete Slauson Take a look. You guys call yourselves the title of illustrators. What does that mean? J.J. BORNSTEIN My wife's an active reader and so am I. Your best books are the ones that you can kind of like see. But as our egos, you know, we don't like books with pictures in them, right? We want more words, more words.

But those books that have illustrations in them, they allow you to see a different, a three dimensional look at that, what you're reading. And so as illustrators, we have our clients see patterns in their life that really aren't in their periphery because of whatever it is, through the narcissism, through bullying, through just needing to get through life and not deal with those things. Sometimes you have to blind yourself to things and try to work through, but we're here to embrace that truth and to show you the safety to look at that because that's how you change.

So illustrators, so you illustrate through life, all that good stuff. How does, you call it actualizing therapy, and we may have kind of covered this, but how is that different than normal therapy maybe? Well, I mean, Tony touched on this a little bit, but there's, I would say there's two main ways. The first is you talk about therapy being usually like a one way street. And as you said, Chris, that's a frustration that a lot of people have who go to therapy and frankly, it's a frustration of a lot of therapists is I can only see

you in this room and I can't see you in your life. It's being able to be out in our life with clients, hear them talk to people, see them be with their people, be it their narcissist, their partner, their father, their whoever it is, right? That's problem person for them and watch their behavior. So we can say, so we can talk about the way that they're reacting with that person and tweak that behavior over time. And the other part of it... Yeah, and actualizing therapy itself is a science that actually is a process of change. It's not just a way we're saying what we're doing is actualizing therapy. It's actual science through my doctor, every stroke that we use in our life. It's an ethic. It's an ethos of living. And we use that with our clients to show them

and on a scientific perspective, we use wisdom to illustrate or to illustrate what we're saying. But we use a science to show you that it's back without our doctor social media study was math, though, who created the hierarchy needs. And that's a mouse of actualization. And we're showing people that to self-actualize is your behavior change. You have to change things behavior. Yeah, change your behavior. I mean, a lot of people don't realize that you have to do that. Yeah. And the other part of it, the other big part of it and why I think we're different than

traditional therapy is the, we believe really in the importance of modeling. We talked about a one-way street. It's not a one-way street. We're sitting in a room and we're telling things that we think are true. We are giving a view of our lives. You know, you said it in the intro, right? We share openly the kinds of things we go through, the kind of family we are, the kind of marriage we are, and we bring that experience to our relationship with our clients so that they can kind of see the potential for. And they can pull from what they know, where you show the ups and the downs, and not just

the great things. That's what Instagram and Facebook are all looking for. We want to show you the muck as well so you can understand how to go into muck with your partner and live a brighter day. That's important. Living your life better. How do I know when I'm self-actualized? What does that look like?

How do I know if I've done the work and achieved that or? You don't achieve self-actualization, it's a process that's ongoing in your life. And so just like your parents, it's about becoming, life is a becoming thing. We just changed that in this world to make it about achievement because we have to

fund our life and we want this ego. So we want to look great because of what we work at, right? But when you get to pass that time of work, you want to become something for yourself and for your family and for those who raise you. And so that's what self-actualization looks like is what you become. And if it's something that you're proud of, then you stand tall and you embrace that and you're authentic. If it's something that you're ashamed of, then you'll feel that and you're vibrational, you know, and just the way you move and live.

And you'll know it because first of all, it's very hard work. It's emotionally taxing work to go through the shadows of your life and really face those things, like you said. So that's one piece of it. And the other piece, and Sjostrom says this in his book, and we say this too, is that it's not, you can, like you said, you can say whatever you want to,

a therapist or your friends or your family or yourself, but this is the world willing to receive you in the way that you are projecting it. So if you are congruent in who you believe yourself to be and the world is accepting you as such, there's a chance that you've managed to actualize your life. Pete Do you, are your clients mostly patients or it sounds like you might, in the bio, you might do some work with therapists that are currently active and helping them maybe with their clients, is that it? So we work with clients who are actively, that's how we started.

We work corporately as well, we work with corporations and their organizations helping individuals extend their work behavior so they can be the greatest employee. We also work privately without a therapist because we understand that we can do this. We learn that in our time with therapists that, you know, we're out there on the front lines in your life with you. So we can do that without the assistance of a therapist as well. It's quite the journey helping people and trying to get them to take care of themselves. I mean, it's interesting to me, like I said,

it's the gamification that I've seen people do in therapy where they just play dodgeball with the therapist and run them in circles and nothing really gets done because technically, I think, with therapy, you're kind of supposed to use the therapist for advice, but you're supposed to kind of walk through your problems, identify them and use the therapist to fix them. Am I assuming wrong? A.J. But a therapist is a human who studied that, right? And so what I'm telling you is that the title of the illustrator, that means I'm an artist and it's an art to this. And it's not everything you can go read in a book, right?

You have to experience things and be able to, and to evaluate things in a different way. And I think when it comes to therapy, not all therapists create that ability because they have their, you have your degree behind you, right? So you're given this status that doesn't mean, are they practicing that in their life?

You don't get to see a therapist with their wife or their husband. They get to tell you how to be, but you don't get to see them with their own. So you get to see me with? You don't get to see a therapist with their wife or their husband, they get to tell you how to be, but you don't get to see them with their own. So you get to see me with my wife, you get to see me with my children, you get to see me the way I am. So it helps you believe and trust in what I'm saying. Pete Slauson

Definitely. I love the concept of it. What do you find most people are struggling with nowadays that you talk to in therapy on top of, you know, just being self-actualized or... Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy. Believing in themselves. That's been broken sensitive, their child, believing in what they, who they are. Yeah. And so, the childhood trauma, I suppose, maybe is that part of it? Childhood trauma, that's, we call it that because that's a big label, but some of it is just really, it could be expectations, parents not knowing.

They come, our parents come from a different generation where they have to really work hard, right? And so they didn't know to look at themselves. They have to depend on what they brought into their house and provide. And in that, that's a choice, right? But there's always going to be repercussions to your choice, right? And so if you, and just learning that and trying to relearn so you don't make those same choices as your parents. We're just trying to help each individual be a human, but not trying to

denigrate parents. We're parents ourselves. We understand that it's not easy, but you need to, your parents aren't, they're trying to do the best for them, not always the best for you. They need to survive this as well. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people, they take care of the kids when they take care of themselves sometimes, you know, they're attuned and attentive to take care of the children. If you don't refill your own bucket, you can't share it with others. You have to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you can put on the person next to you on the plane. So yeah. And I mean, what's on the side of people that I guess give people a tease out, what does it look like when people break through and finally become self-actualized, become self-accountable? What do you see the results in people's lives in your experience?

For me, I always call it fountain of youth. Obviously, there's no, you know, like magic elixir, but the fruits of doing that hard work on yourself, of fighting past the fear of examining who your father is or your mother is or who that problem person is, understanding yourself in your truest form is very liberating. It's very liberating to know that you face those things and that you can then take on whatever you need to take on. The people that we work with tell us that it's you know, it's a happier life, it's

a more fulfilled life. It doesn't mean that everything's going to go great for you. It means that you know in your inner core that you have the strength to advocate for yourself and therefore be the strongest version of yourself that you can be. Tony says it's about being a person. It's about being the best person you want to be. It's never about reaching perfection. It's about what does that look like for you? People find themselves in that space. Self actualization is your most natural

form. When you're a child and you're born, you get all these things, you get your parents, where they think you get kids, your friends, all these things change the way you're thinking, your true nature. So self actualization is trying to get you back to what you need to know about yourself. So you can be confident. I told you so, efficacy is the piece that we see. If you can be confident in yourself, then you can believe in yourself and you can strive for things greater than you know. Yeah. I mean, it just improves the quality of your life.

When you get healed, when you get therapy and you heal your traumas, and I'm talking professional therapy, not crystals, or sage, burning sage. When you get real therapy with professionals, folks, it makes all the difference in the world. And you look at life through a different thing. And it helps your relationships too, because you kind of can now start looking at people and you can see their trauma, you can see their damage, and you can make decisions then whether or not you want that in your life. And you can be like, yeah, you can keep moving there with that. I had that sort of trauma for 50 years where I don't need that in my life. Yeah, go have fun.

Fix yourself. That's what we all do. It makes all the differences in your relationships. It really does. It can help you empathize as well, because if you love that person, 50 years, you don't always want them to go. You want to just, Maybe we can keep this, but how do I empathize with you? Pete Slauson Yeah, you can understand people's fallacies

and the issues they have. It helps as a leader to understand people's shortcomings, fallacies, things that they need to work on, etc., etc. Whatever we discuss that we want to talk about and get people educated and get people aware of your services on. I would say, the thing that I would highlight for people is that, and you've kind of touched on this Chris, is that there's what we would call a want to element to it, right? It's hard work that needs to be done and it's a process that needs to be done. We work with clients for varying periods of time, but it's really a process of, as we've talked about, scooping out that source programming, as we will call it, getting that awareness and understanding of who you are.

Then once you have that, attaching that to your behaviors in your day-to-day life now, and then scooping through that working through that tweaking those behaviors that's going to eventually get you to that future state that you're talking about the one. And most of our clients also come there was in prices, honestly, it's when something is really blown them out of water and they want to make a fix. And that's, that's when they work. If you want to be honest, actualizing therapy is great at turning people who feel like they're doing well to weller, right? You have to get used to being uncomfortable.

But when you're comfortable, you don't want to make a change, even if there's negativity in your life, you're good, right? Or the ego wants you to stay there. And so what we do is we wait for that crisis to make sure we're trusting we're, we're trusting and we're in there, and they were valuable in your, in that experience. The brief is, is tough, right? And that's typically when we're getting our clients after some, some, one of their first learners, either mom or their father has passed on and now they want to, they want to, they want to understand how do I, how do I get through it? And some of what we tell them initially is the best work was before, but we'll do this

now. Imagine a life where, as I say, most people come to us in crisis, somebody has passed a big life moment, what we would call a portal, right? Just something that's going to change the fabric of your everyday life. And we will always help people through a time of crisis. But imagine if you worked hard on yourself before that crisis hit, and then you have the ability to pre-mourn, in a sense, to address. So let's say if it's somebody's past, you said the things you want to say to that person, you understand how you actually feel about

that person, you authentically engage with that person without the masks and without the fabrications. And then that allows you to better work through that particular crisis or any other particular crisis. Pete Yeah. I mean, it really does give you a better toolbox. People always say, like on Facebook, they'll say something like, but if you go back and talk to your teenage self or a young self, what would you tell them? And I always tell people, I go back and tell myself the end of therapy and solve a lot of my childhood issues. It's amazing how much so much of what happens from our child affects us and the blueprints

we get from our parents. And for me, for me, it's my father. I'm always open to talk about my father and the notion of being men, you know what that is, but I, but my mother is the one who saved me from a lot of that negativity that was my father. And so I have to, that's what this is about is T-Life stands for Thornton Life. You know, my last name, my mother, that's her maiden name. I just want to obviously have to give honor to that. And it sounds like that shaped you a lot in your upbringing and how you viewed life.

She was kind of your rock, I guess? Very much, but more of the, I would say the eraser. Whatever my father was, we didn't get to see because he was an army man. We were proud of him for that. And my mother was the eraser of that, but they'd go behind their doors and she'd make sure there was some accountability. But after her passing, a lot of that accountability went out the window. And I really learned and really saw what she was to my development and what she was to me and my father's relationship, right? And so, I got to really grow immensely after that. It sounds pretty awesome. So, how can people on board with you? How can they find out more

about your services? How do they reach out, etc., etc.? Yeah, like we said at the top, I mean, we don't do socials the way many do because the privacy of our lives and our science lives is paramount. So the best way to reach us is to, you know, check out this podcast and go to the website, actualizingtherapy.com. As I noted at the top, there are six questions there on that site. As we've done here, we talk pretty openly about our lives and we share it openly. And those questions are some real posers for people to answer and answering those questions will get you to us. And as always, anybody who is watching this podcast and accesses that

and contacts us through there, you'll get a free session, initial session to kind of see if we're good for each other and see if there's anything we can do to help people out. Well guys, give us your final pitch out for people to onboard with you and we'll take it from there. We just, we want you to go through our site, Actualizing Therapy and take a look at the questions, see if they are fit for you. If they are, respond to us and we'll get back to you within a day or so with our impressions

and we'll link up with a phone call. Well, thank you very much guys for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, Skye and Tony. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you. And thanks so much for tuning in. Remember to get help. I got to tell you, as someone who got help late in life to fix my troubles, you know, don't wait. Go get therapy now no matter what your age.

Don't wait. It doesn't get better. It just gets worse. And there's a point that you reach, for me, I reached it at about 50 where you could look back on your life and just see how much you drug trauma and damage and emotional issues throughout your whole life and the damage that it caused. And you really don't want to wait till 50 to do that. That's my advice. Get it done sooner and life is just so much better on the other side. I guarantee you. I know maybe some people are stuck in maybe depression or stuck in their troubles. Life is so much better on the other side when you mentally fix your game and you're clean.

And I mean, I'm single and so I date a lot and so you know there are people that I meet that are I mean they're wonderful people but they haven't fixed themselves and I'm just like yeah I don't I did 50 years that I don't need that in my life you need to go do the work yourself you know everyone needs to pull themselves over the bootstraps I don't do Captain Savior anymore and I highly recommend it so let's put it that way get help now professional help stop stop with the crystals in the burning sage shit you can do that if you like it but it's not gonna do shit for you anyway guys thanks

I just wrecked the whole division just took a giant dump on it anyway guys thank you very much for coming the show thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com for chest Chris was. LinkedIn.com for Chess Christmas. Christmas one on the TikTok and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.