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"Boys Don't Cry": Breaking the Cycle of Emotional Suppression to Raise Emotionally Healthy Men · the ACT OUT podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome to the Act Out Podcast.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_04: I'm your host, Adam Tomlin.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_04: Today's guest is Gloria Vanderhorst.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_04: She is a psychologist who primarily works with men.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_04: Let's roll the tape.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_04: Gloria, how are you?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: I am great today.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Really looking forward to a good conversation.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_04: I I am too.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_04: I was uh kind of like reading over your uh a little bit of your biography, and uh you have a uh you have a really fascinating story, and I really can't wait to uh dive into it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it'll be fun today.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_04: How long yeah, are you a psychologist?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_04: Is that what do you uh consider your title to be?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I'm a psychologist, and I got into psychology through calculus too.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_04: That is actually the natural route.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_04: I'm pretty sure like 99% of all psychology students uh start with calculus.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's the normal route.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_04: How did uh how did calculus uh turn into psychology?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was a math major.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I loved math, and I went to college to become a high school math teacher.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just was destined to do that, and I took psychology as my minor because it was fun.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I just enjoyed it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I ran into a new teacher for calculus too.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: She was straight out of Harvard.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: She faced the blackboard, wrote with her right hand, erased with her left, filled the blackboard in the front, filled the blackboard on the side, never turned around to the class, talked to the blackboard.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you can imagine, all right, these college students are looking at each other and making faces with each other, and we're hanging out together trying to teach ourselves calculus because nobody can get it.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And my challenge for myself as a college student was to graduate in three years with a 4-0.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was on track to do that, right?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this lady put a huge roadblock in my plan.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I got a D in calculus too, and I was delighted because I didn't have to take it again.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I immediately flipped my major and my minor.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that was destiny, all right.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's the place I belonged, and I wasn't gonna get there on my own, all right.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some circumstance in life had to push me there, and I think that happens to people with probably more regularity than we really understand that certain circumstances move you from an expectation that you have for yourself into the right role for you in this culture.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what happened for me.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I have never regretted it, never looked back on it.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was absolutely the place that I need to be.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: What you said actually makes a lot of sense.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, like whenever you have a uh a goal, or well, at least for me, whenever I have a goal, it is a very singular mindset.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: And I have blinders on to everything else.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_04: And it's just it's me and that goal.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: And so if like it has to be a circumstance to like take those blinders off and I'm like, Right oh, right, there are other options.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I went into teaching and really liked that, got tenure, and decided that I wanted to start seeing clients.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I worked for another psychologist for a period of time and then started my own private practice.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when I started my own private practice, I had a friend who ran a preschool.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so she naturally referred some preschool children for evaluation, and they were all boys, right?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're all boys.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because how do you evaluate a toddler?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are tons of ways to evaluate a toddler.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to observation, because you do go to the school to observe the child, there are intelligence tests, their achievement tests that are designed for the preschooler.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's real easy to take a deep dive into what's happening for a preschooler.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was a real education for me.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because as I said, all the referrals were boys.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Boys have more energy at that level, at every level, I think.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: But they stand out.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons, the strongest reason that they stand out, is that preschool teachers are by and large females.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I learned a few weeks ago that there are countries where the preschool is required to be staffed by both male and female teachers.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: That would be fabulous.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what are the pros of it?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a direct example from my own family.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: My granddaughter in preschool was fortunate enough to have a male teacher.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Highly unusual in the United States, but she got lucky.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And one day they did finger painting.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So they have these big sheets of paper on the table.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are six kids around the table, and there are finger paints in the middle.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so she's finger painting on the paper, and then she decides to move off the paper onto the table.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: She's finger painting the table.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then she's sitting at the corner, she decides to go down the leg of the table.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: She's finger painting.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's hilarious.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: She's finger painting the leg of the table.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: The male teacher took his phone out when she went off the paper and just videotaped her.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just let her do whatever she was gonna do with those finger paints, and he just captured all of it.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: A female teacher, I will put money on it, would have stopped her immediately.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Keep the paint on the paper.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get paint on the table.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to clean that up.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Keep the paint on the paper.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there's the difference, right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: The male has much more tolerance for experimenting and expanding.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because of his emotional makeup.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Men have a broader range initially of feeling experiences than girls do.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, oh yeah, it's fascinating.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the man then can really tap into kind of let's give that an opportunity.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see where that's going to go.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's dangerous, it can always be cleaned up, nobody's, you know, hurt by doing that.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he allows the experiment to continue.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's that kind of flexibility that our preschool boys need.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: They cannot sit quietly in the circle and listen to the story.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna want to fiddle with something, they're gonna want to elbow the person next to them.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna want to move around.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna want to get up, right?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: They want to walk around.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I say, you know, if we could put a tree in every preschool, boys would be happy.
• 8:04
  unknown: All right.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_04: My son turned uh oh, I'm sorry.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just saying they could climb the tree and listen.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_04: My son turned three uh this past Sunday.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, congratulations.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_04: We went, thank you.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_04: He is the objectively speaking, cutest, cutest kid ever.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_04: That's good.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_04: We went to a uh went to a hockey game here uh here in town, and it was some minor league team, and there weren't like a whole bunch of people there.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_04: And so uh him and his friend, who's the same age and in the same class, basically had the entire like row and to move around.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_04: And they did not stay in a single seat for longer than maybe five seconds, right?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_04: And uh they were running up and down like the entire game.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_04: And at one point, my son had was just like so excited and like had so much energy, like you he could barely contain himself.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_04: He was just like he was squealing, right?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_04: It was it was the cutest thing ever.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: But and that's natural, right?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's normal and natural for boys.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you had a girl and had taken her to the hockey game, she would sit in the seat, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: She would be chatting with you, she would be asking lots of questions, she'd be watching the game, but she would just sit quietly in the seat.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_04: So what is going on like inside boys and girls like at that age that makes them kind of predisposed to do, you know, those particular things?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it it's a natural characteristic, all right?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Boys come into the world with a broader range of emotional expression than girls do.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about energy, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: They can go higher, they can go lower in terms of emotional expression, and we hold things in our bodies, right?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Our bodies keep the score.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's Bessel Vanderkock's title of a book, right?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: The body keeps the score.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we house things in our bodies.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So motion is a natural response to anything that we're experiencing, right?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a motion person, right?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I use my hands to talk.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody does.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do that at all.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, you don't do that.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I do that all the time.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so boys do come into the world with this capability of more breadth in expression and more intensity in expression.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: They get modified at the infant level because most boys, most infants, spend the majority of their time interacting with a female, not a male.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's changing to some degree.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: There are many more men staying home to raise children, and their wonderful groups started to support them all over the United States.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that would be a beautiful thing to happen to increase the number of males that stay home to raise children.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: But by and large, our children are raised by females, and females don't have access to that broader range of feeling.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when the infant kind of goes more intense on the positive end, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: More excited, more exuberant, you know, more emotion in the body, mother unintentionally does a natural reaction to that.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: She does a little back up, a little look away, a little scrunch of the face.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: And infants are brilliant.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Their only survival mechanism is to read the room and to know how to modify themselves so that their safety is guaranteed.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when mother does a ugh, right?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: What's that about?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: That boy knows, whoops, don't do that again because mother doesn't like it, or the female caretaker doesn't like it.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they immediately narrow their range of expression.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: You never lose access to this.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is in your brain.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're born with it, all right?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can always get a path back to accessing those parts, but you learn in infancy to narrow the range of expression.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then we set you on your feet, you start to walk around, and we double down.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: We do something that I think is truly cruel to boys, and that we start telling boys that they are not supposed to cry.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: Happens all the time.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Girls can cry, but boys can't.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people, you know, go to a park, watch preschoolers play in a park with their parents.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: A little girl gets knocked out of line, starts to cry, she goes up to her parent, and she gets picked up, and then she gets asked, What happened?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she tells her story.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: All right, she gets comfort, she gets sent back into the line to try the slide again.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Little boy, same thing, gets knocked out of line, starts to cry, goes to his parent, and the parent looks down at him and says, What happened?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: If he gives a good enough answer, he will get some comfort of some kind, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a little pat, maybe some assurance that he's okay, and people shove in line all the time, and then he gets turned around and sent back into the playground.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: We treat boys and girls very differently at the preschool level.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: We train you guys to cut off access to the tender range of feeling states.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: A boy in preschool that goes to the doll corner and picks up a baby will be shamed.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: All right, he'll be shamed not only by his peers, but by the teachers too.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: He will be redirected over to the blocks or the trucks, all right, or the soldiers.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: He will not be allowed to play with the dolls, play in the kitchen corner, all those things that we call female territory.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's told to stay out of.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we constantly tell little boys, stop crying.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: We don't say that to little girls.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to be a like man and not step it up.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_04: That was uh it was very much uh like beaten in and uh where like and you're right, it was even peers too.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_04: Like every every male peer knew like hey, I'm not supposed to cry.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_04: And the only like we we weren't really supposed to like talk about feelings or emotions.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: So the only excuse me, the only um like um the only examples that I saw were from like pop culture and like Hollywood.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_04: And so I would I would watch a lot of like 90s action movies.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_04: That's great.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I mean Jean-Claude Van Damme can do sweet flip kicks, but he is a terrible model for emotional regulation, though.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_04: But that's I mean, the examples that boys have.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_04: Like I, you know, I watch professional wrestling and like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_04: And so maybe I could be angry, you know, with certain like uh terms and conditions applied, but that was about the only emotion that I could express, you know.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can act out in an angry, aggressive way, and we understand that as that's just being a boy.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you can't have tenderness, you can't cry, you even can't be worried, really, right?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be courageous and brave.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_04: Very much like uh thinking about like the other stories where the knight in shining armor rescues the princess.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's like the guy's gonna be on the journey and you've got to be tough and you know, like fearless the whole time.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_04: It's amazing how how like those tropes are kind of like beating in such stereotypes.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is adaptive in many ways, right?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I can understand why the culture has taken this approach, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have historically used men to fight, not men and women.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: We send men into battle, all right?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're landing on Omaha Beach, I do not want you running the other direction, right?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to be brave, I want you to be courageous, and no matter how scared you are, I want you running up that beach as fast as you can.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we kill off a lot of our men as a result of that, but we have historically used men in that way such that it makes natural sense that we want to limit your emotional access so that you can be used in that way.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_04: Hmm.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_04: That yeah, that that is incredible.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_04: There was uh another guest I had on recently that was talking about um like because uh kind of the uh inherent uh like biological like reproductive mechanisms, men are a lot more uh kind of uh you know disposable than than women.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_04: And so it kind of makes sense on that level to put the uh to put the men into battle.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sorry, but you guys are disposable.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be another one along in five minutes, so but not podcast hoes, things.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, not podcast hoes.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And but life is changing, all right?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go back to the war example.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Even though there are wars where men are being killed at this point in time, most of the war is done by pushing buttons.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're in a closet, basically, someplace on base in the United States, you're pushing a button that kills somebody overseas, that explodes something overseas, all right?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Or you're up in an airplane far enough away that you know nobody's gonna destroy you, you push another button and lay a bomb down someplace.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the world is changing, but we are not changing the opportunity for growth for men.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Except, I'm gonna take that back.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are exceptions to that.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are men's groups that are developing across the United States that are designed to educate men about their access to the full range of emotions and to facilitate those men tapping into those parts of their brain and body that give them permission to experience the full range of emotion, all right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: To become whole human beings who can have tender thoughts and ideas, who can have tender feelings, who can cry over something that's truly sad.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you go to a funeral recently, unfortunately, we lost a very close friend.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: You go to a funeral, and you will see men who had a very close relationship with that guy struggling not to cry, right?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Holding themselves together, right?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And not being able to give themselves permission to do the natural, normal thing that goes along with loss, right?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're designed to cry, and we're designed to cry about loss, but we have trained you guys not to do that.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's shameful to cry.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we have all kinds of negative words to describe you if you're going to cry, right?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're a sissy, right?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Along with lots of others that men use with each other.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_04: That makes so much sense.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_04: I so uh my godfather I was uh incredibly close with.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_04: We we shared the same birthday.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_04: I started spending the night at his house whenever I was six weeks old.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_04: Like we were very, very tight.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I whenever he passed in 2015, and I remember being at his uh, you know, like being at his casket and just I mean breaking down.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, just sobbing.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_04: And after that was over, uh got back in my car and I shamed myself so hard.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_04: Because like there were so many people there.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_04: Like, what were you doing?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right, what were you thinking?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can never recover from this, right?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: They'll all have different thoughts about they'll approach you in different ways.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody will want to talk to you, right?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: The guy that was thinking of hiring you won't hire you anymore.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all kinds of thoughts that are just real shaming and negative.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's an incredible disservice to males in this culture and in every culture, because it's not just in the United States, but there's a possibility of change on the horizon, which would be truly healthy because men die earlier than women.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: For this very reason, right?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't let you express emotion.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so it stays in your body, right?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It turns into heart attacks, right?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: It turns into stress reactions physically.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Spinal fusion surgery for me.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 23:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: So if we start at the preschool level in really recognizing that it's all right to cry, and that reminds me.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know who Rosie Greer is, famous football player?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Decades before you.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Not maybe decades, but Rosie Greer was a huge football player.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, physically and professionally, well known and just a giant of a man.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a children's program decades ago in which he was invited to sing It's Alright to Cry.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: So that is still accessible on YouTube.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is a horrible, grainy video, but it's well worth watching, right?
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: To see this gigantic man singing It's Alright to Cry.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because it is, right?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're human, and men should be able to cry at a funeral without having to go shame themselves afterwards.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's healthier, all right?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's better for your body if you cry rather than holding those things in.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But we're we need to make that change.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're on the verge of making that change more specifically across the board and helping men to understand you'll be healthier if you give yourself access to the full range of emotion.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all packed up in your brain.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain never loses that access.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: The culture just tells you to box it up and don't go into that box.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_04: I tried to do that.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_04: Like I tried really hard.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'll bet.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm so glad you couldn't.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's it's it's healthier.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's healthier.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um you know, I'd shared with you uh before we started recording that I've I've been in therapy for uh three years.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_04: The first like probably six months, I call it the CNSA therapy.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like the the horse says, yay.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: But it was essentially just for emotions in my body.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_04: Like whenever like my body feels this, that means, oh, I'm like, I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm anxious, or whatever.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_04: And like being able to like figure out what my body is trying to tell me that it feels and what I need to do to help it.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_04: Like it took six months for that to even like somewhat begin to run.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's fast.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_04: I thought it was it felt really slow for me.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll bet it did.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: But for a guy, that's really fast because you had to be seriously engaged in the process in order to access feeling states at that rate.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: It honestly, that's really fast.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Congratulations to you.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_04: I did not realize I was bragging at all, there.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, you are.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_04: Walked right into that.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're definitely bragging, and it's so powerful when a man does gain access to the full range of feelings.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right, your body relaxes, your gut heals from ulcers and other things.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it you are now accessible to the other people in your life.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Men are not accessible, and it isn't all the guys' responsibility.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you truthfully, not only do we train you not to have emotions, we do a double down because we train women to say that they want you to be emotional, but to behave in a way that avoids you being emotional.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you get a double dose in adulthood because women say, gosh, I wish you would talk to me.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: I wish you were more expressive, I'm a safe person for you to share with.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you start to share, right, the guy who comes home from work and he's obviously down the jumps, right?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: The wife asked, Well, what happened?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he shares something that was really important to him that didn't work at work.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he missed a promotion, maybe he got reamed out for doing something, maybe he just failed to experience something, right?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: So he's got a big story to tell, and he gives his wife the headline, right?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I was up for this particular award, and Joe Schmoe got it instead, all right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, I am so sorry, that must have really hurt.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then she goes, Don't worry, you'll get it next time.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and she turns away and goes back to whatever she was doing before.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you were a girlfriend instead of her husband, said exactly the same thing after the headline, she would say, sit down.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I want to hear all about this.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and she would stay and encourage conversation.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: So as wives, and I'll put myself in that bucket too, we say we want you to be more expressive, to use us as confidants, to tell us more of what's going on inside of you.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we've also been trained that boys don't cry, right?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Boys don't go into those tender emotions, right?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Boys figure things out on their own.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Boys are assertive, right?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: So who what's the the office guy, right, who says to me, you know, every time something breaks in this office, the women come to me.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I am not a mechanic, right?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: I am an accountant, I don't know how to fix these things.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the women always come to me because I'm the only guy in the office, right?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he's right on target, right?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: We expect our men to be the problem solvers.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: We do not expect them to be needy or wanting attention.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are supposed to be independent and capable and just take charge of everything.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's completely irrational.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_04: So where do how how do we start to kind of uh to be able to uh you know like lessen that disconnect uh between uh you know the feelings uh between the feelings and the communication.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: You have to educate yourself, all right?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you accept what I'm saying, all right, that you were born with a full range of emotions, even a broader range of emotion than your wife, you have to be curious.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: You have to educate yourself.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, what happened?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Those are still up there in my head.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get access to them?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the journal book that I've written, I did that for that very purpose, right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: To help men and women get access to those feeling states.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So the journal book just has lots of stories in it, but the facing page for each of those stories is blank.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And most journal books have lines, they expect you to write in language, but honestly, the feelings that have been packed away are not packed away in language.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: They got packed away before you learn to talk, right?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to access that box, you have to give yourself permission to use other pathways.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we store things in terms of pictures and in terms of action.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: So a blank page lets you draw a picture, lets you take the action of scribbling.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people you can tear the page if you want, if that's the reaction that comes out of you.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: You have to tape it back together to read the essay on the other side.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it gives you access to these storage lockers in your brain, and you can open up to feeling states that are genuine, that are real, and that do jump into the present.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been raised in a household where you were intimidated because your father was aggressive, your mother was passive, so you never had any protection from that aggression, you are gonna be taking a back seat a lot of the time, right?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna be out front, but you have the capability of being out front.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's just locked away in your brain, and you have to be able to unlock it in order to discover what are my capabilities, what are my strengths, what can I do to advocate for myself.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's all available to you.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: The brilliant part about being a human being is that you never lose access, it's all up there.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: You just don't have a pathway to get into the locker.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you can find a pathway.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if you don't put yourself into therapy, put yourself into the journal book and start the journey right there.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that can lead to then putting yourself into therapy.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because as you've experienced, it's really productive to work with a therapist and to expand your feeling vocabulary and then take a look at the pieces of your history that impact you, that shape how you react in the present, because there are parts of us that happened in preschool, that happened in early infancy, that jump into the present and take over a situation, and we're not even aware that that's coming from some part of early history for me.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_04: Can you explain why?
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_04: Like, so you know, like you're just walking down the street uh feeling like a 39-year-old guy, and then something happens, and then all of a sudden you feel like you're two years old.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because because your brain does hold on to everything.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: So something in that environment triggers a memory that you don't have conscious access to, but your brain does, right?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: It could be something really small, right?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a a sign in a window, it could be the expression on the face of somebody that just walked past you, right?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: It could be somebody who unintentionally bumped into you, right?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's a crowded sidewalk.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: And where they bumped, right, is associated with a memory of someone, you know, pushing you off the stairs, right?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's your older brother who pushed you off the stairs, right?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Got mad at you, pushed you down the stairs, right?
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's terrifying, right?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to hurting physically, that's scary.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: So naturally, if someone unintentionally bumped you in that same place, your brain goes, all right, I remember this, and then it triggers everything that came after that.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think another thing, like before um, whenever I was like pretty committed to never feeling emotions, I think that it there was like this the thought that, like, well, if I let myself even like feel it a little bit, this emotion will overtake me and I will will always be like sobbing or always be very anxious.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_04: Where do you think that kind of where do you think that belief that mindset comes from and like how wrong was I?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so that that actually comes from infancy, from the interactions that the caretaker has with the infant.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: As I said, infants are brilliant, and I can prove it, right?
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you are going into business with someone and you're considering two, three, four different people, find a baby.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Bring all these people together, pass the baby around the room.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Babies read the environment, right?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the lap of someone, the baby's gonna be happy, cooing, and relaxed.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: In the lap of somebody else who's not quite trustworthy, the baby's gonna be a little fidgety, right?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Move around a little bit.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: In the babies, moves to someone who really is not a safe partner.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Someone who is really gonna undermine you, comes across as really interested and genuine, but can't sustain that, the baby will start to cry.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: The baby has just read the room for you and told you who is safe and who is not.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: That happens in family gatherings all the time, right?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: And mothers typically say, oh, he must be hungry or needs a diaper change.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Wrong.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: He has just told you what relatives are safe and which ones are not safe.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Babies read the room, they read the environment perfectly, they have to for survival.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's their talent, that's their survival mechanism.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's common for us to discount the intelligence of a baby, but infants are incredibly intelligent.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have other resources, they can't walk around, they can't feed themselves, right?
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: They they can't interact in any other way than using their expression and their bodies.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: So babies are perfect for figuring out who's safe and who's not, and they store all of that information.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you can tap into that information that's stored in your brain.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: You just need help with the right pathway to get there.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it does, like your example of walking down the street, sometimes it just jumps into the present uninvited, and then you go, why'd I do that?
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: What's that about?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's about your history, so take it seriously, trust it, be curious.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: What just happened that reminded me, reminded my brain, of something that was dangerous for me earlier.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's uh that's kind of another thing is after a moment happens to be able to be curious instead of judgmental or shameful.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_04: How can uh like what's a good step into like beginning to see yourself in the light of curiosity as opposed to judgment?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I think you actually have to give yourself instructions.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because honestly, particularly for a guy, your first reaction is going to try to squelch that feeling state, right?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if I immediately start to feel some degree of shame, I'm I'm gonna try to squelch that, right?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: To push it down.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's expanding your feeling vocabulary.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I have on my website that everyone should download because it's free, is a list of feelings.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this is, I think, four pages, three or four columns on each page.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are tons of feelings out there.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: I probably haven't covered all of them, but to demonstrate to yourself that your brain is really brilliant if you're having an experience like that, and you could access the feeling sheet and just start reading through the words, the feeling experience that you had associated with that experience is gonna jump off the page.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: As I said, your brain is brilliant, your brain holds on to everything.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so that feeling from history will just jump right out at you.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can then label it.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when I can label a feeling, I can be interested in it, I can be curious about it, I can start building the story around that particular feeling.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to be able to labor it, label it accurately.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And men have a very poor feeling vocabulary.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so it also helps to expand your feeling vocabulary so you can recognize what you're experiencing much more easily.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think there's like to be able to label it also, I don't want to say gives you a sense of control.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's not it's not control.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's agency.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's called agency.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, agency.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: That um and hey, I own it.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, very much so.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_04: And so it feels way more management.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_04: Uh as opposed to something that's just that is going to just like erupt and just continuously, you know, like out never ending.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Control is from the outside in.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Agency is from the inside out.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_04: I like that.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I haven't I haven't thought of it that way before.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, that yeah, this is I I've loved this conversation.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_04: This is so much fun.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_04: Me too.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's been it's been fun.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_04: So uh how how did you start to kind of like work with men after, you know, you began with like the preschool I started with boys and stuff.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: I started with preschool boys, and I will say to you, anybody out there who does therapy that wants to end up working with men, start with preschool boys.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Same maturity level?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, because their fathers have had similar experiences, and as they see their boys getting help, they will put themselves on your calendar.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened for me, right?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: The fathers and they just put themselves on my calendar.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: My calendar was chock full of men, not because I solicited them, but because they saw that's illegal.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, really, because they saw what's happening with their own boys and they wanted to dive into their own history.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: So for years, my calendar was full of adult men.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: I got the best education about what it means to be male in this culture, to have relationships with male friends, to have marriage relationships with women, to have gay relationships.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: I got a super education, right?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they paid me for it.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_04: What do you think your biggest like misconception of misconception of men was like but before you started working, but you kind of learned pretty quickly?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that they really didn't want access to feelings, right?
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: That, you know, they're supposed to be brave, they're supposed to be courageous, and that they're kind of perfectly content with that, that they didn't desire access to the tender feeling states or the deeper end of the Emotional range.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was wrong about that.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: They they thrive in that environment of really understanding themselves and having more access to their own feeling states.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing is true of boys.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've done a lot of work with boys, elementary, middle school, high school.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: When they can name a feeling, they have power.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: They have control.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: They stand up taller and they advocate for themselves in ways that they would not have advocated before.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's powerful to understand what you're feeling.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_04: I think that another something that I was very obsessed with was being logical.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_04: Like I I wanted to be to be a logical, uh logical human being.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_04: And um I thought that emotion were the opposite of logic.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_04: But what I have found is that the more connection that I have with my emotions and the better relationship that I have with my parts, right, the more logical my thinking actually can.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's oxymoronic, but it definitely works.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's all interwoven, right?
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: We are born connected to another human being.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: We spend our lives seeking connection, and we do not survive if we don't have connection with another human being, all right?
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Which reminds me of Spitz research done, I think, around World War I or two, losing track of my decades.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: But he researched uh a very well-maintained orphanage overseas.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: The children were well fed, they were well clothed, they were changed regularly in from all aspects.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: You would think these are healthy, happy babies.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: They died.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: They died, right?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: They are physically healthy, they are very well taken care of, but people don't interact with them, right?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: They don't get talked to, they don't get stimulated, people don't interact with them.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: They house them, feed them, clothe them, make sure they're clean, very well taken care of, but they don't get social interaction and they healthy babies die.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's clear evidence.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: We are born connected to another human being, and we seek connection for the rest of our lives.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when we don't have it, we die.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not for sure if it's that same study, but I do remember when I think it was a Ukrainian orphanage or it was Eastern Europe.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_04: And uh the infants had like they would be put in a crib, and that was it.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_04: Like no human interaction whatsoever.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_04: Human interaction.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_04: And the and whenever whenever they grew up, the results were like absolutely awful.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Terrifying.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right, terrifying.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: They have no no skill for human interaction.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_04: And humans are just innately social creatures.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, we are we are we are social mammals.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_04: And to and that is something that we crave from the beginning.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_04: And to not do that is psychologically devastating.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: So your brain needs that stimulation.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: We need interaction with other people in order to be healthy human beings.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_04: So um if guests want to uh find out more about you, where can they go?
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: They can go to my website, which is www.d-r-v-a-n d-e-r-h-o-r-st.com.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's www.drbanderhorst.com.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can find access to all kinds of resources there.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've described different approaches to therapy.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can make an appointment to meet with me there.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can download the feeling sheet, and I really encourage everybody to do that.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: One in the kitchen, one in the place where you gather to play games or watch television, put one in the bedroom.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you always have easy access to scanning through those feelings and figuring out what feeling you have and expanding your feeling vocabulary.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually you don't have to use the feeling sheet at all.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I would welcome interaction with anyone who is watching, listening to this.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_04: And we will have your uh like website down in the uh description.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_04: So uh please feel free to uh check her out if you if you'd like to.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_04: I have had an absolute blast today, Gloria.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much for acting out with me.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's been fun.