speaker-0: You ever catch yourself reacting to something and later realize that wasn't really about today? The way you handle conflict, the way you shut down, the way you love, that didn't start here. So the question is, are you responding to the moment or to your past? Today we've got Dr. Gloria VanderHorst with us, a psychologist, writer, advisor. but more importantly, someone who spent time understanding why people are the way they are. Gloria, welcome to our show. speaker-2: Thank you, Tommy and Lance. I'm looking forward to this conversation. speaker-0: there. speaker-1: Alright, so where are you from and growing up did your life turn out the way you thought it would? speaker-0: you speaker-2: ⁓ that's a wonderful question. I'm from Indiana and my parents were the first people to leave the farm and move to the city. when my mother was the youngest in her family, a very large family, by the way. And so when she left to go to the city, her father told her she'd be back within a week because the city was dangerous. Well, She never went back. ⁓ speaker-0: Prove them wrong. speaker-2: Right. But growing up in the Midwest was a wonderful experience because my time was split between the city and the country. So I got the benefit of both worlds in the course of growing up. So, you know, I know how to ride a horse. I know how to milk a cow. I know how to complete an essay. speaker-0: ⁓ Can I ask what sets you on your path into psychology, especially working with preschoolers, boys and fathers? speaker-2: I don't hear you. Yeah. So I got into psychology because of calculus too. speaker-1: Gotta do it. speaker-2: Yeah, that should do it for anybody. ⁓ speaker-0: Wow. speaker-2: I was a math major. I loved math as a kid, as a teenager, and I went to college to be a math teacher. And I set myself a goal. I wanted to finish college in three years, and I wanted to finish college with straight A's. I was on track to do that until I ran into calculus two. We had a new professor straight out of Harvard, I swear. She faced the blackboard the entire. Yeah, really. Yeah. Rote with rote with her right hand erased with her left. Right. She feels the front blackboard. She feels the side blackboard and she starts again. All right. Everybody's lost. Everybody's lost. All right. So we're trying to help ourselves learn calculus too. And we're smart. speaker-0: Back to speaker-2: Right? The calculus too is hard. speaker-1: A confusing. speaker-2: And so at Christmas break, I took the bus home, I sent a friend to her office door to check what my grade was. The friend comes running across the parking lot screaming, you got a D, you got a D. And I went, yes. speaker-0: I get it. speaker-2: Not an F. I passed. Right? I don't have to take it again. And then I immediately switched my major and my minor. And my minor was psychology. I took psychology because it was fun. And it was interesting. Right? It was a break from the rigors of math. But it was exactly the place that I belong. So, you know, sometimes in life, life throws you a roadblock and you have to take a detour. And this detour was perfect. It was designed for me and I have loved it ever since. speaker-0: Go standing. speaker-1: So what made your focus shift from children to couples and individuals? speaker-2: So I started my practice after teaching psychology at the college level, and I had a friend who ran a preschool. So my early referrals were preschool boys because teachers are females and they get concerned about little boys moving around and not being able to sit in the circle. and instead of reading the book, maybe throwing the book. speaker-1: Sounds like some little bull. speaker-2: Yeah, right. Being creative, right? They're just being creative. And so they got referred to me to answer the question, do these boys have attention deficit? Right? And so they're by and large, they're just boys. Right? They don't really have a problem. I say we should put a tree in every preschool. And if we did. speaker-0: Mm-hmm. speaker-2: All right, the boys would be content listening to the story while climbing the tree. They are in motion. They're designed that way. Little girls will sit in the circle, fold their hands, listen politely, and little boys will elbow the person next to them, fiddle with their clothing, right? They'll do all kinds of things to keep their body in motion. And so that's what started. my practice and then, you know, other preschools would send boys to me as well. And when your calendar fills with little boys, their fathers get interested. And so the next phase of my practice was working with adult men who were really curious about kind of their own histories and how school had labeled them and talking about the difficulties that they had in relationships because we don't train anybody to be in relationship, but we do a better job with women than we do with men because we give women access to the full range of feeling states. Women have a broader vocabulary for feelings and we deny that to boys. Absolutely shut them down. Right. And you guys have to be familiar with that. Right. Big boys don't cry. Right. You're you're yeah. Suck it up. You're also you're not to complain. Right. You're supposed to keep keep keep that to yourself. Right. And then we can try to control your bodies too. Right. speaker-1: Yep. speaker-2: Don't fidget, stop all that moving around, sit still, face forward. Right, you can't do it. It's natural for a boy to have more action and more motion. It's also natural for a boy to have full access to every feeling a human being can feel, but we train you guys to shut that off. And we train you as infants. to shut that off, believe it or not. speaker-0: ⁓ I got stories, yes. speaker-1: Thank speaker-2: I'll bet you do. ⁓ speaker-0: I mean, you know, it's just something as simple as like, I remember when I was like nine and 10 and I had a couple of neighbor friends that were two, three years younger than me. And when we were out playing football or doing something, you know, and I tackled them harder than I should have anyway. The first thing I'd say is, uh, be a man. Stop crying. speaker-2: Right, Suck it up. speaker-0: Exactly. the sad part is it's not the the the advice I was giving them was the advice my dad had to tell me because I was always speaker-2: That's right. But you know, it's normal. It's natural. The truth is that male infants come into this world with a broader range of emotional expression than infant girls. You guys have resources that we don't have. You have a more extensive emotional vocabulary than women do, but we rob you. of that. And we start doing that in infancy. Because most infants are raised by or interact with females. Now that's changing because there are more men staying home and raising their infants. And I applaud that because it makes a huge difference in the emotional development of that child. speaker-1: Wow. speaker-2: Men are much more accepting of a broad range of emotional expression and women are not. They narrow it down. speaker-0: Okay. It's true. speaker-2: Yeah. And then the society as a whole, then when you start to walk around, we tell you, everybody starts to tell you not to cry. Right. How stupid is that? Right. That is stupid. I have I have my own observation. We had friends in the neighborhood when we had a little girl, they had a three year old boy. We had a three year old girl. We'd get together. The kids would speaker-1: Agreed. speaker-2: play, the adults would have a good time chatting. And one time my daughter kept his favorite toy and would not return it. Now out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guy make a valiant effort, right? He really tried to get his favorite toy back, but she was stubborn. She was not giving it up. And so he gets up from the play area and he starts to whimper. And then he starts to cry as he's walking towards his parents and his dad back hands him in the chest. Yep. Lands him on his butt and says, stop crying. Right now that's Yeah. Yeah. After he you. Right. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-2: But that's so typical. That's typical, all right? We limit the emotional expression that a boy can have and we do it intentionally. This is not an accident, right? We do it across the board. And then when you're adults, we expect you to get married and somehow have a deep, speaker-0: Perfect. speaker-2: tender, emotional experience, right? With your spouse and with your children. Hey, look, we shut that tap off long time ago. Right? We cannot expect you to turn it right back on. You don't even have access to it anymore. speaker-0: It's easy. We did. ⁓ So what got you to the adults and the the the couples counseling what took you from the preschoolers and the fathers to the next level? speaker-1: You speaker-2: Yeah, so when you're working with fathers and adult men, right, after you help them and facilitate some emotional growth in them, you have disrupted the family system, right? Just like the whole thing is out of whack. And so that will naturally lead to the wife coming in, all right, and to couples. work so that, you know, even though women say they would like to have a man who's tender and sensitive, that's not true. That's not true. Right. They don't want that. The minute, the minute you had in that territory, they get stiff and, they shut down. And suddenly there's something on the stove. They got to go take care of speaker-0: at all. speaker-1: you speaker-0: All right, so now we're gonna get into the core conversation. Once again, welcome to the show and ⁓ you seem like the perfect fit for this show. So let me, I'm gonna start with Lance. Lance, when did you realize your past was still influencing how you show up today? speaker-1: Thank speaker-2: ⁓ good! speaker-1: When did I realize that? I mean, you know what, I think I did early on, probably in my 20s, and that's because of being a nurse and just ⁓ the mindset that I had to have ⁓ working with patients, working with... ⁓ key to work in the welcome with working with elderly and stuff i think ⁓ how i can be a little paid you know can be patient can be a little calm ⁓ influence how i am now as far as trot you know and and through my career as far as just trying to take a beat for a second and speaker-0: before you engage. speaker-1: Before I blow up, I because I'm good to blow up and I mean and I had done that I had I mean I was able to recognize that I guess sooner and I guess I don't I stopped blowing up as fast than I did ⁓ when I was I mean now I don't even blow up I just I'm happy to be retired and be alive. But it was just ⁓ that energy that Glory was talking about earlier, how boys are just like, gotta, you know, that would, you know, exude itself and, you know, work in situations or whatever instead of being able to think about it, go and calmly do some things, you know, that. made more sense, which would have made more sense for everybody involved. But that, yeah, back in my 20s, I guess, is when it really started kicking in as far as like, I gotta stop blowing up on people like ⁓ this. speaker-0: Lucky you. So before I tell my story, Gloria, ⁓ when did you realize your past was still influencing how you show up today? speaker-2: I'm ⁓ I have a great story about my past and how it influenced me in the present. So as a teenager and an adult, ⁓ I tended to be a bit shy, a little resident, you know, just cautious, not jumping in immediately, waiting for people to come up to me. And then even when they did, I was more quiet reticent to get too busy with them. ⁓ And when my mother was a nurse, by the way, when my mother was in her mid 90s, right? ⁓ My father was gone. And so my mother started telling more stories about early in her life. And she told me my own birth story at one point, which clearly explained my reticence to interact with people. Now, I was born in 1946, so there were no sweets for birthing, right? This was like, know, women were in labor as long as it took. My mother was in labor for two days. So by the time I was born, she's totally exhausted. So there is no introduction of baby to mother. She's exhausted. They take her away. I have a birth defect. They take me away, right? But they don't tell her. So the next day, you know, there's a maternity ward, tons of beds separated by curtains. The nurses bring in all the babies on carts and they pass out the babies. So they pass me to my mother and the first thing she does is unwrap me, right, to see this entire new baby. And when she sees the wound on me, she starts screaming. She's screaming for the doctor. She's screaming for the nurse. My mother's a nurse and she's powerful. Right? And so she wants immediate attention and answers. Well, that's my introduction to a human being. That's my introduction. And so when my mother tells me this story, my shyness makes perfect sense. Of course, I'm going to be cautious about introducing myself to a new person. And with that story, the consciousness just disappears, right? I'm as bold as all get out now. speaker-0: Wow. speaker-1: Mmm. speaker-2: But it's clear evidence that every piece of your past has an impact. It changes who you are and what's programmed in your head. And then you're going to reapply that and reapply that and reapply that until you get some insight into, why do I keep doing this? speaker-1: I'm so happy you told that story because my birth story was that my mom always tells me is that I went from being born straight to the incubator because I was screaming and yelling so much that I couldn't catch my breath. speaker-2: Yeah, really. Yeah, it's traumatic. It's traumatic. speaker-0: So it was a little different for me because ⁓ I was raised... So my father had it was ten of them and they were from Troy, Alabama and then my mother there were six of them They were actually from Ohio, but my dad and his brothers stood so strongly on that Jones name and it was It was put in my head very early that ⁓ Jones's are big Jones's are loud and Jones's are a force to be dealt with. Right. And so, and so the thing is I grew up a small child and so I always felt the need of trying to prove myself. And then my size caught up with me and I sort of thought. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. speaker-2: Thank Absolutely. speaker-0: this is my time, right? And so I was very, and so I, to this day, I'm very overly everything. I'm overly loud. I'm overly, ⁓ well, with maturity, it's, I've, so yeah, but I'm like. ⁓ speaker-2: My destiny! speaker-1: Cool. I ⁓ speaker-2: We'll call it assertive. It's assertive instead of aggressive. speaker-0: Absolutely. But I like I can't sit down and not talk to somebody. I have to. And I know now because of maturity and because of counseling that it's it's because I'm still trying to prove myself ⁓ to to the detriment of everything else. And so I had to learn that. that stigma of being a Jones, that was heavyweight. Yeah. And, it, and that's the thing that we always talk about, cause he has the same sort of legacy building his father did about putting a stamp on that Taylor last name. so it's very advantageous, say for instance, for a military person, speaker-2: That's very heavy. Very heavy weight. Absolutely. speaker-0: but when this military person now has a kid or this military person now and specifically talking about me, Mary's, it was very hard. I'm talking, I'm still learning now, but it was very hard to stop being the focus of my life. And so that's how I... That's how I learned it was a problem when I started to get past the point with my current, my wife, Nikki. ⁓ I got past the point of us falling in love and getting comfortable with each other. And now she's sitting there waiting on the next step. And I'm, I have no idea that there is a next step because I'm still, I still got goals in the military. So And yes, that caused problems. speaker-2: Well, you know, we we needed ⁓ men like you to throw into the military, right, and to run up Omaha Beach. Right. I'm grateful for every one of those. But the truth of the matter today is that we no longer conduct war that way. We're in a war right now. Right. We're conducting that by pushing buttons. We push buttons and explode things. So we don't need to keep you confined to aggressive feeling states. You can broaden your feeling vocabulary. In fact, all right, I want both of you to go to my website and download the feeling sheet under resources. Yeah, feelings, she's Yes, it is. Yes, it is. speaker-0: Yes. speaker-1: You speaker-0: What's your ⁓ what's your page ⁓ speaker-1: You speaker-2: Because it's www.drvanderhorst.com. it's www.drvanderhorst.com, right? You were born with access to the full range of human feelings. We socialized you to deny that you even have feelings. So it is time to re-access the feeling states you were born with. This is, I think, four pages, three or four columns of feeling words on each page. The nice part about your brain is that you came into the world with awareness of every possible feeling a human being can have. So when you run through the feeling sheet, your brain will recognize what you're feeling. And that word or three or four words, they'll just hop off the page and voila, you have increased your feelings vocabulary. So instead of mad and sad, which is what you guys are limited to, you can now select a variety of others, discombobulated. speaker-0: Yeah, our truth. speaker-1: Alright, so looking back, how much of who you are today is really you and how much came from what you had to learn growing up? speaker-2: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: and speaker-2: I think it's a good mix. It's definitely a good mix, right? Because you're born with a particular character, personality that does get shaped by the people that you interact with, the way that you get treated as a child. But you always have the opportunity to change that, to modify that. There is no lost cause out there. Everyone can grow emotionally. speaker-0: Yeah, that's easy. It's both. ⁓ And I would simply say, I didn't change until I realized that there wasn't really me. You know, I didn't. Because I like I said, the aggression and the needing to be right all the time and the competition of being successful in the military. puts you in that, that rut I like to say of I don't really have time to look left and right because I gotta keep moving forward. then the more so my dad being from Troy, Alabama and the way he was raised, he was not a very affectionate person, you know. speaker-2: That's right. speaker-0: ⁓ Yeah, his way of love I love you is throwing me out of his chair into the couch, right? But when I would go to my other friend's house, you know, their dad was hugging them and telling them they loved you and all that's right and so therefore a while Not only was I trying to live up to the name, but I was sitting there trying to get his attention and frustrating myself when I wasn't getting the result that my friend's dad gave. so it was most of my early career was still trying to prove myself, trying to be accepted, trying to be so outstanding that my dad didn't have a choice, but to acknowledge that. speaker-2: Right. But right to admire you. speaker-0: Absolutely. then I mean, it got to the point I told Lance, I still remember a time when I was somewhere between six and 10. to where so we used to have a hideaway bed downstairs and dad would watch, you know, late night TV or sports. And sometimes he'd let me stay down there. He just promised I just have to promise I was going to sleep. And I remember trying to lay in the bed like I was like I was throwing a football or like I was running and just hoping that he would notice, you know, it's right. speaker-2: Right speaker-0: What you do, but it took me to, it took me to become an adult, right. And have some sort of basic therapy because I didn't go to therapy because I volunteered. went to therapy because it was a step I had to take to get the next job. Right. And so, but Even that simple little therapy moment it taught me to ask myself questions and answer them and something that I started to realize the older I got is that ⁓ My dad was there every day and he worked his butt off to make sure we had food clothes And and my mom and dad were together until he passed away, you know So I have all of that rich ⁓ family history, but because I was seeing it another way, somebody else's way, I didn't really realize what I had. speaker-2: Yeah, that's great security. speaker-0: But the worst part was at his funeral. I'm there protecting my mom, trying to make sure that she's OK. ⁓ And then all the seats beside her are taken. So I had to sit in the very front row right in front of the casket. And then everybody was going on stage talking about how he bragged about me all the time. I was just. Crying my butt off. speaker-1: No. speaker-2: Good for you. speaker-0: What about you later? No, go ahead. Glory, I'm sorry. speaker-2: I'm going to say it really good for you because one of my examples is go to a funeral, watch the men. They have lost someone powerful and important and they are working hard not to cry. They are trying to contain it and they are going out in the hall or out to the parking lot. speaker-0: fighting it. speaker-2: rather than just being a normal human being and do what you did in the front seat, and just blubber away and cry away. That's an important person to you. They deserve your tears. speaker-1: That's what I did. I cried right there. there. Yeah, I mean, I think what I learned growing up is what is who I am. Yes. You know, and it's just the experiences. And I guess my biggest thing is not trying what I had to learn and realize that I can't project. speaker-0: You speaker-2: Yeah, yeah. That's valuable. speaker-1: how I am onto my son. And it's not as so much my daughter as I'd learn that I do it to my son. And I had to realize I can't make him have the experiences that I had growing up that made me how I Yeah, it's not him. I had to learn that I can speaker-0: be an effect. speaker-1: tell him stories and give him the suggestions and tell him things to look out for, but I can't have him, I can't make it so that he just, yeah, so that he, that it's natural to him because it's a different time. He grew up in a different place. And we talked about this before is that we raise our kids so that they have a better, know, life situation and what we did. So we take away some of those experiences that we, yeah, but we treat them like they're in the struggle. so me, yeah, I mean, what I, like, what I learned growing up is absolutely how I am that built me today. So. speaker-0: And that's the thing, like, so I learned, I grew up under my father and my mother and my sister and my brother. And then you break away from them. And in our case, joined the military. And then you start to sort of define who you are. But what I'm starting to learn now is you go back to the. strong presence that your parents were because you start to see their point of view because now you're their age and beyond. speaker-2: Right. speaker-1: That's pretty. that base. I feel like had an ⁓ outstanding example. Yeah, a base to start off with. And then as I went through life and things were happening and not happening, I was able to ⁓ realize some of the things and be able to react appropriately. And some of them I didn't and I didn't react appropriately. And I had to learn, you know, that way. So yeah, that's outstanding. speaker-0: Okay Gloria, when did you realize you were ignoring or pushing things down instead of dealing with them? speaker-2: Well, I think this example that I shared earlier, but it's really not my awareness. It was thanks to my mother being able to take the risk of sharing some very early stories. But I think in general, as I work with people, ⁓ we are shaped by the families that we grew up in. We need to be able to give ourselves permission to go back and to challenge all of those ideas and explore what were the other options. I work with a lot of men and so many of them have had the experience that dad works and then dad comes home and sits in the lazy boy, comes to dinner. that he doesn't really do. doesn't do any play. He doesn't do any games. He really doesn't do any action with the kids. He's just a figurehead when he's home. But as a dad, every kid in that family needs you to interact. Needs you to take time. I've talked. Yeah, participate. I talked recently with a man who told me of speaker-1: paint. speaker-2: beautiful story and that is that he was the one putting the children to bed from the time that they were little. That was his ritual. And I thought, wow, what a wonderful experience for his children to see him not as the breadwinner, right? Not as the guy that went out to work and came home and sat in the Lazy Boy. Yeah, as the guy that speaker-0: BAM! speaker-2: could get down on their level, read stories that were appropriate to them, be tender in putting them to bed and ending their day. And I thought, man, those kids will benefit so much from that. speaker-0: What about you? speaker-1: That's a good question. That is, mean, that's real good question. Because I don't know if I was ever ignoring anything or ⁓ pushing stuff down and not dealing with them. I don't know. That's a good question. speaker-0: well let you think of us ⁓ mine is sort of like i talked for it's i had to when i started to mature and just so you know gloria are matured institutionally for the military very quickly My maturity as a man was very delayed because it was so structured in the military where I could go and read a rule and understand that rule. when it came to my personal life, and I'm talking about relationships and all that stuff, to include my own son, ⁓ it was... I didn't realize I was fighting it off. Right. Right. But I learned I was fighting it off specifically when I was with my son. And it was weird because and I just thought about this while you were hesitating because I used to get so jealous that my dad the way he would communicate with my son as a baby. I was just like, like not jealous to the point to where I was mad at my dad and I'd go storming off to the room. But I was just, I was a kid again, longing for that same type of interaction that didn't happen. And it just didn't make sense to me. But that when my son was born and that first interaction because they saw my son three days after he was born and that interaction between my mother, my father and my son, it started things bubbling in me. But I, yeah, I still because no therapy, no understanding and still leaning forward, trying to be, you know, super soldier in the army. It wasn't coming. speaker-2: I'll bet it did. speaker-0: clear as to first of all what's bubbling up and then secondly right no clue how to deal with it and so what I kept doing was I kept trying to overly kiss on my son, overly tell my son I love him, overly be present and overly protective of him because I wanted to show him that I am there and I am available to him. But the reality of it is me and his mother were never co-located, right? So I'm sitting there giving my son all of this attention and all of this ⁓ Energy, but it's in moments and I can't imagine and this is just dawning on me right now, right? I can't imagine that if if I had somehow scared my son because growing up our relationship Until we were 12 until he was 12 ⁓ I was in his life regularly after 12 ⁓ Things sort of problems become to show, right? He started to regret the fact that I wasn't there all the time. And then his mother would always reach out to me, but never, it was never the connectivity that he needed and all that stuff. And so ⁓ I was too busy trying to ignore my own personal pain growing up. that I was in reality probably causing ⁓ some type of pain to Jaylen. That even now he doesn't really know how to open up and talk about it. speaker-1: Yeah, all right, so. speaker-2: Let me jump in and say that is so common, right? That what you describe is the dad engaging in a performance, right? Not engaging in a relationship because you're motivated to perform in order to correct something that was missing in your own experience. speaker-1: you. speaker-0: Nuff. speaker-2: That's crazy. Right. You're healing yourself, but you're not helping him. speaker-1: Thinking about it more and I think mine was I guess this came realizing whenever started having kids and just ⁓ Push I guess wanting to push them or expecting them to have the same ⁓ Drive energy. Yeah as I did coming up and when they did when they didn't or when you know They didn't like sports or you know things like that. It just would speaker-0: Goodness, Christ. speaker-1: driving, you know, it would upset. Yeah, it would just upset me instead of what I realized later, you know, when it came to my came to mind where it's like, I want to have a relationship with my kids, you know, instead of trying to put again, I think I said earlier, push myself and what I did and what I want to do on to them is learning what they like, what their interests are, and just in going that way, because speaker-2: Right. speaker-1: I mean they're adults now, but they were great kids and they're great adults now, know, with... Yeah, just different than how I was. speaker-0: for the new. speaker-2: Yeah. And it's It's, it's, it's hard to join your child, right? Particularly for a guy. A guy has this idea that, you know, you're going to go throw balls. You're going to go run. You're going to go ride a bicycle. You're not going to do finger paints. Right. And, and you're definitely not going to have a tea party. Right. So, but if your kid wants to do finger paints, if your boy wants to draw. Right? Instead of throw a ball, you got to get out some paper. Right? And you got to find a big pencil to start your own drawing with so that you can join him. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: because we absolutely believe that if we were any kind of athlete that our son's gonna be so much better. We gotta fix the things we didn't do. speaker-1: it. my goodness. Next question, I think we answered it kinda ⁓ in the last one, but we could probably elaborate on it. But what did it actually take for you to start changing those patterns? speaker-2: ⁓ I think it takes interest for anyone to change a pattern, right? You have to be curious. You can't approach a change unless you recognize what is going wrong. that that takes curiosity. Right. I have to stop and reflect and think, OK, why doesn't my son want to go out and shoot hoops with me? Right. He's not rejecting me. I gotta realize that he's not rejecting me. ⁓ speaker-1: It is. speaker-0: It's hardest thing I realize. speaker-2: Right. Right. He's rejecting the ball. doesn't like to play with balls or trucks, right? He likes to play with paper or crayons. So you have to join. speaker-0: To be honest, I got sick of being lost. I got sick of not understanding why I react certain ways. You know, my whole life people have told me that you're the baby boy, you're spoiled. They've told me you're a Jones. They've told me you're a ball player. They've told me you're a soldier. You're an insid... You know, all of these people have told me growing up, speaker-1: Okay. speaker-0: that I had signs of greatness and it's up to me to go and get it. And then I start to go and get it. And the decisions you make, the way you interact with people, specifically when it comes to being a leader, you have to do some type of self evaluation. Right. And you have to you have to try to improve yourself and so evaluate myself trying to improve myself and then realizing that i'm falling short in certain areas that's what made me ⁓ start actually go and fix myself. And first thing I did was I went to therapy, which was nothing I ever considered doing because it was taboo growing up in the military. And then when I first went to therapy, my first experience was great, because I got to be honest and let some stuff out. But what turned me off of therapy is the same therapist was hardly ever available. speaker-1: I'm to say it changes. You never get to to the same. speaker-0: telling the story over and over again. So I had to get through that, but that's what made me change. speaker-1: All right. Yeah, I mean, for me, it's simple. was just recognizing and acknowledging. Yeah. Yeah, and I need to make the changes, you know, if I wanted. I mean, it was that thing where it's like if I wanted one thing that I know I was going to have to change. Right. To get it. Yeah. How I was thinking and how my approach and all of that. So. Yeah. speaker-0: changes need to be. I hear you. All right, Gloria. At what point did you feel like I'm not just reacting anymore? I'm choosing who I want to be. speaker-2: ⁓ I think ⁓ that happens continuously for an adult, right? Because you only uncover pieces of your history, and then you address that piece, and you don't have to repeat that pattern anymore. So now you're choosing how you want to respond in a particular situation. And then, you know, life keeps moving and you'll discover something else that is from your past jumping into the present and you'll decide to rework that. So we continue to grow all the rest of our lives and being interested and curious about how is my history jumping into the present is incredibly valuable. speaker-1: I mean I was lucky enough that was early on and I was again and I was probably from that all the different experiences that had growing up and being in the Midwest you see you're in a you're not in a just all black or all white and you're dealing with all of the different races and and and Dylan growing up and dealing with that early you know in life helps to change and shape perspective on things. I mean, that happened early in life. So, and it just, again, you just learn, learning from those ⁓ experiences and situations is, we're here. speaker-0: It's just a continuation of what I was saying. Going through therapy, starting to think in a more mature mind. ⁓ You start to, you start to become yourself, you know, but like I said, like I said earlier, you start to realize that mom and dad sort of knew what they were talking about or old school blah, blah, I knew what they were talking about. you, a smart person that has the maturity will start to adjust themselves and change. The people who don't change are the people who are so convinced that their way is the right way. speaker-1: Okay, I mean, and going to talk to people doesn't make you weak. I going to speak to a professional therapist does not make you weak. speaker-0: year. And the worst part is not all therapists are going to be able to help you because it takes a certain connection. know, so but ⁓ that was it. I just realized. speaker-1: Yep. Yep. speaker-0: And luckily, the more rank I got and the more responsibility I got, luckily that also meant me adjusting myself because if I was still run through a wall, Sergeant E5, Tommy Jones trying to be the same mentality, trying to be first sergeant or sergeant major, I would have been kicked out of military for abuse. You know what saying? Because I'm too busy holding people to my standard instead of the Army's standard. speaker-1: I think the biggest thing for me is realizing a lot of what we think is just who we are. It's really what we've been through and if we don't take time to understand that, we keep showing up the same way in different situations, different relationships, different seasons of life. Just calling something new when it's really not. speaker-0: Well, Dr. Gloria Vanderhoof, thank you very much for joining us on our podcast. A very valuable voice. speaker-2: Well, thank you, Tommy and Lance. I've enjoyed the conversation. I hope to talk to you again. speaker-0: Absolutely. You take care of it. speaker-1: Thank you. speaker-2: All right. Thank you. Bye. speaker-1: Thank you, Gloria, and let's keep the conversation going.