Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E261: The Psychology of Raising Emotionally Healthy Kids w/Dr Suzanne Baars | Lila Rose Show

Transcript

E261: The Psychology of Raising Emotionally Healthy Kids w/Dr Suzanne Baars | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  What we're doing is helping the person see their emotions as
• 0:03
  part of their strength. It's this beautiful paradox
• 0:06
  where she let her child be and then he actually could grow to
• 0:10
  be more confident in himself. Many people have said, I read
• 0:14
  that book. How did your father know me?
• 0:17
  No one else has understood me the way I really feel.
• 0:20
  The affirming life and learning how to affirm other people
• 0:23
  should be a way of life for all of us.
• 0:25
  And that is probably the best way to live the Christian life.
• 0:29
  This is such a secret, I think, to all relationships and
• 0:31
  certainly to parenting. What is the secret to
• 0:37
  cultivating your child's identity and creating a deep
• 0:40
  bond with them? What is the role of affirmation
• 0:43
  and acceptance for our feelings and the feelings of others?
• 0:46
  And how can we channel our emotions to serve our
• 0:49
  relationships and not hinder them?
• 0:50
  Welcome back to the Lila Roche show.
• 0:52
  Today I sit down with Doctor Suzanne Bars, the daughter of
• 0:55
  profound psychiatrist and thinker Dr. Conrad Bars, who
• 0:59
  actually survived Nazi persecution as a young man in
• 1:02
  Europe. We discuss how emotions are a
• 1:04
  vital part of the human psyche and how they fit in with our
• 1:08
  reason and will to help us live flourishing, healthy and
• 1:12
  virtuous lives. Doctor Bars also discusses the
• 1:15
  dangers of repression, Freudian philosophy, as well as Immanuel
• 1:19
  Kant's faulty notion that the harder thing is necessarily the
• 1:22
  better thing. If you want to continue to
• 1:23
  support our mission with this podcast, hitting the like
• 1:26
  subscribe and notification buttons are the quickest way to
• 1:29
  do that. You can also check out our brand
• 1:31
  new clips channel where we post the best, most interesting
• 1:35
  portions of our interviews, all for you to watch in one place.
• 1:39
  And lastly, if you want 100% ad free episodes and other perks,
• 1:44
  continue joining our Patreon over at patreon.com/lila
• 1:48
  Rocheau. We still have our Supercast
• 1:50
  account, but we will be pivoting to Patreon full time.
• 1:53
  I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.
• 1:55
  Doctor Suzanne Bars, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:57
  Thank you so much for having me, Lila.
• 1:59
  This is wonderful. I appreciate the opportunity.
• 2:02
  I'm honored you're here. I'm an admirer of your father's
• 2:05
  work and your work, and I think it's so incredibly useful and
• 2:09
  helpful to people. So very excited to share you and
• 2:12
  your expertise with our audience.
• 2:14
  Thank you so much. It's a great opportunity and I
• 2:17
  hope it will benefit your listeners.
• 2:20
  I'm sure it will. I know it well.
• 2:22
  It's already helped me, your dad, your dad's work and yours
• 2:25
  by extension. So for starters, tell us a
• 2:27
  little bit about your background, where you're from,
• 2:29
  and we'll get into your expertise.
• 2:33
  Well, the, the short of it is I was born and raised in Minnesota
• 2:37
  and then we ended up circuitously through
• 2:40
  Massachusetts, but then we ended up in Texas.
• 2:44
  And so after I graduated from the University of Dallas with a
• 2:48
  degree in philosophy and suddenly realized, oh, what am I
• 2:52
  going to do with this? And so I, I did a lot of
• 2:54
  discernment over the next year and a half and did a lot of
• 2:59
  praying the rosary and reading my father's books.
• 3:02
  He had passed away during that time and reading my father's
• 3:05
  books very thoroughly. And the Lord really showed me
• 3:08
  very crystal clear that this is what he wanted me to do to be a
• 3:12
  therapist. So I had to go back and get a, a
• 3:15
  master's in counseling and then I began a career, a first of
• 3:20
  all, inpatient with a wonderful inter Christian unit.
• 3:26
  And we had some Catholics there, but some other people of
• 3:30
  different Protestant faiths. So it was a great clinical
• 3:33
  experience, but it was also a really great introduction to how
• 3:36
  do, how do evangelicals and other denominations think?
• 3:41
  How do they think about us? But how do they think about God
• 3:44
  and healing? And then I ended up in private
• 3:47
  practice when that ended. So I've been in private practice
• 3:49
  probably 25 or more years. So overall, about almost 40
• 3:55
  years now. Wow, 40 years as a therapist,
• 3:58
  marriage and family therapist. Yes.
• 4:00
  And your dad, Doctor Conrad Bars, author of many books and
• 4:04
  really a pioneer in affirmation therapy.
• 4:07
  Yes and AI think a groundbreaking way to understand
• 4:10
  the human person, not a new way. Yes, because it dates back to
• 4:14
  Thomas Aquinas and the philosophy really of of our
• 4:17
  faith, the Christian faith. But it's something that I think
• 4:20
  is especially needed in the modern and the postmodern era.
• 4:23
  So tell me about what is unique about your Father's body of
• 4:27
  work, which I know you work from in your own practice and your
• 4:30
  own teaching. Yes.
• 4:33
  Well, initially my father and his colleague Dr. Anna Truer,
• 4:38
  they were both Catholic psychiatrists and Doctor True
• 4:41
  was from the Netherlands. My father was also from the
• 4:44
  Netherlands originally and had been in a concentration camp
• 4:48
  towards the end of the war, but always and then after the war
• 4:51
  became came to the United States and became an American citizen.
• 4:55
  And he ended up in psychiatry and worked as a psychiatrist in
• 5:00
  a state hospital, I think it was for about 10 years and felt he
• 5:05
  really couldn't help people. And so he was looking for an
• 5:09
  answer. And there's a Long story short
• 5:12
  that he came upon the dissertation of Doctor Tarua
• 5:15
  Who, which was based on using Saint Thomas, St.
• 5:21
  Thomas's psychology in, in dealing with people who had
• 5:25
  repression. And this new way of approaching
• 5:28
  repression in which she discovered and, and really
• 5:31
  postulated that one emotion repressed another emotion and
• 5:36
  sort of got in the way of reason guiding that emotion.
• 5:39
  And that's something we can go into a little bit later on, but
• 5:43
  it was just electrifying to him to find this.
• 5:46
  Of course, it was very providential because as an
• 5:48
  American, but as a Dutch citizen, he could read her
• 5:51
  dissertation in Dutch. And so that's where he began to
• 5:55
  work with her. And so their work really, they,
• 5:58
  he would became her students. She mentored him, then they
• 6:02
  became colleagues and then they wrote together.
• 6:06
  And so the the whole idea of Saint Thomas is looking at the
• 6:10
  whole person and he's looking at what is the psyche.
• 6:15
  And Saint Thomas, it might be surprising to some people,
• 6:17
  actually has a psychology. And psyche is the Greek word
• 6:22
  meaning soul. So psychology comes from, that
• 6:25
  is the study of the soul. But Saint Thomas says you might
• 6:29
  say there's three aspects or three parts.
• 6:32
  Parts, you might say to the soul, which are the intellect or
• 6:36
  reason, the will, and then the passions.
• 6:40
  And so he says there's an order where reason and will guide the
• 6:45
  emotions, guide the passions. But he also talks about
• 6:48
  explicitly that reason guides the emotions in a benevolent
• 6:52
  way. And one way that we would look
• 6:54
  at that is as though reason is the parent.
• 6:58
  So it provides reason for what the child is to do.
• 7:00
  And the emotions are more like little kids that say, oh, I want
• 7:03
  ice cream or I don't like that or I'm not going to that.
• 7:06
  And the parent as reason will step in and say it is OK that
• 7:12
  you feel like that, that makes sense that you that's come up
• 7:15
  for you or you don't want that or you want this.
• 7:17
  But we have to look at whether that's going to work out or
• 7:20
  whether that's reasonable or whether we have enough money to
• 7:23
  do it. And so with this order in the
• 7:27
  psyche, St. Thomas really sets a foundation
• 7:31
  for how we are to understand how are we to live.
• 7:34
  And so it's not just a matter of thinking or knowing the truth,
• 7:39
  where our intellect reflects the truth, or it's not a matter of
• 7:43
  just spiritualizing things where a lot of times people will come
• 7:47
  into our practice. And they often times say, oh,
• 7:50
  well, when I've talked about this difficulty before or this
• 7:53
  wound before, I was told just to pray about it.
• 7:57
  And they say it's very discouraging because it doesn't
• 7:59
  really help me address how I feel about that or what I did.
• 8:03
  And So what we're doing is helping the person to really be
• 8:08
  able to see their emotions as part of their strength.
• 8:12
  And Saint Thomas says one of the basic tenets that he offers us,
• 8:18
  he says it is the nature of the passions to be guided by reason.
• 8:23
  And there you have this order. And so when we look at that,
• 8:27
  he's looking at it as the we we want to accept those emotions.
• 8:32
  We want to accept our feelings and we want to receive them
• 8:36
  because they will arise spontaneously no matter what
• 8:39
  they are, whether it's unpleasant, like I'm sad or I
• 8:42
  feel hate or I'm depressed or I despair of something, as in as a
• 8:47
  feeling, not as a decision. And so we have a lot of times
• 8:51
  people get mixed up about that and they'll think, well, I'm not
• 8:54
  supposed to hate. I shouldn't feel despair.
• 8:57
  I shouldn't be depressed, I shouldn't be angry.
• 8:59
  And so we want to actually help them to see, as Saint Thomas
• 9:04
  introduces the passions, the emotions to us is that they're
• 9:08
  just, they're just telling us something.
• 9:10
  And that they we have to discern through our intellect is what do
• 9:15
  we do about that? We don't always indulge our
• 9:18
  feelings because it might not be reasonable.
• 9:20
  It might not be medically good. Like say if I'm diabetic and I
• 9:24
  want something sugary, but I shouldn't eat it, and how do I
• 9:28
  manage that? I might have to just say no to
• 9:30
  myself. So we help the person to begin
• 9:34
  to learn to accept and receive those feelings without fear,
• 9:39
  without trying to repress them, without trying to control them
• 9:43
  or avoid them, because that creates a whole problem in
• 9:46
  itself. So there's so much to get into
• 9:49
  here. Doctor bars, I know he said call
• 9:51
  me Sue earlier, but you are the doctor here.
• 9:54
  There's so much here to get into in terms of emotional management
• 9:58
  and the way that we talk about emotions today, because there's
• 10:01
  a lot of, I think understandable pushback against a highly
• 10:05
  emotional reactive way of living.
• 10:08
  But what you're describing, I'm not saying is that, but there is
• 10:12
  a I think misunderstandings can get in there and I want to
• 10:15
  explore it more. But before that, going back to
• 10:17
  your father. So put put a note and that will
• 10:19
  come back to it. Going back to your father,
• 10:21
  Doctor Conrad bars you mentioned in passings from the Netherlands
• 10:25
  and he spent time in a concentration camp.
• 10:27
  Yes. Was that as a child?
• 10:29
  What? What was his story there?
• 10:30
  Well, it's a, it's a quite the story and fortunately he wrote
• 10:35
  about it and essentially for his children because he wanted to
• 10:38
  know what had had happened after the war.
• 10:43
  The year after the war, he wrote his essentially a biography.
• 10:46
  After World War 2. After World War 2, but he was,
• 10:50
  he was raised in Rotterdam, but he wanted to be a physician.
• 10:53
  So he went to the University of Amsterdam and he was a medical
• 10:58
  student there. And I'll try to make this short
• 11:00
  for the show because it is published.
• 11:03
  We did publish it some years ago and it's called Doctor of the
• 11:06
  Heart as an autobiography. But what happened was the Nazis
• 11:12
  occupied the Netherlands for, I think about five years from 1940
• 11:18
  to 45. And they decided the for the
• 11:22
  first few years, they left all the students alone, the students
• 11:26
  in the law schools and the medical schools, any kind of
• 11:30
  higher education. But they finally decided, well,
• 11:33
  why are we using our own German students to man these labor
• 11:38
  camps in Germany? Let's get them gets, let's get
• 11:41
  the all the people in the occupied countries where we are
• 11:45
  to be the slaves and let's take them and put them in the labor
• 11:48
  camps so they can do sort of feed the war effort.
• 11:52
  Well, so one day in 1943, and this is when there, there
• 11:57
  started to be reprisals against the Jewish professors and there
• 12:02
  weren't, they weren't going to be allowed to teach in the
• 12:04
  medical school or the law schools.
• 12:07
  And so the the students knew this was coming, but they
• 12:10
  returned after Christmas break in 1943 and they tried to push
• 12:15
  back against the Gestapo, the Gestapo said.
• 12:18
  If they meaning the students, including your father.
• 12:20
  Including my dad. And they pushed back.
• 12:23
  And so the Gestapo said if you don't go back to school, you
• 12:30
  know when you're called back to school, there will be reprisals.
• 12:33
  And just to be clear, they were afraid of going back to school
• 12:35
  because they thought they'd get picked up and dragged to a
• 12:37
  concentration. Camp not yet.
• 12:38
  So they were just pushing against the fact that the the
• 12:42
  Jewish professors had been excluded from their faculty at
• 12:46
  that point. And were they trucked off at
• 12:48
  that point to concentration camps or it's unclear.
• 12:50
  To the I'm not sure about that, but they were not allowed to
• 12:53
  come back to teach. Because of their ethnicity.
• 12:55
  Because of their ethnicity. Now my father was Catholic.
• 12:59
  Many, many of the Dutch were Catholic, so they went back to
• 13:04
  school. They decided they didn't want
• 13:05
  that to happen to anyone, so they went back to school.
• 13:08
  They were in class, luckily, people are going to sort of
• 13:11
  raise their eyebrows. Luckily, my father was a smoker
• 13:14
  at that time, and so he had been out with another other, some of
• 13:19
  the other students in the hallway having a smoke break at
• 13:22
  their break. So he went back into this
• 13:25
  auditorium, sat down right near the door, and suddenly some
• 13:30
  students came running through the hallway yelling the Gestapo
• 13:34
  are coming, the Gestapo are coming run.
• 13:37
  So everybody crawled, just just crawled over each other rant
• 13:41
  trying to run, getting out of that door, out of the
• 13:43
  auditorium, and they just were running.
• 13:47
  But they got caught. Well, my father being near the
• 13:49
  door, just ran for his life. And he ran all the way down into
• 13:53
  the basement of the building and hid in one of these in a like a
• 14:00
  room that was marked biohazard. And so there was another six
• 14:04
  people that came in and hid there.
• 14:06
  And because it was marked biohazard, the Gestapo didn't go
• 14:10
  in there. So they didn't find them.
• 14:12
  And everyone else in the medical school was sent to Germany.
• 14:16
  So my father and his friends were able to go into the Dutch
• 14:19
  resistance for, I don't know, about six or seven months.
• 14:24
  Then the Gestapo figured out who they were, what they were doing.
• 14:28
  They didn't like it. And so my father and his friends
• 14:31
  had to run and escape into France, where they also worked
• 14:36
  in the French Resistance. And there they were helping any
• 14:41
  of the Allied Flyers who had been shot down in France get
• 14:45
  back to England. So they did that for probably, I
• 14:48
  think, maybe another three or four months.
• 14:51
  Then they learned that the Gestapo was going to knew who
• 14:55
  they were and was going to catch them.
• 14:57
  So then they thought, like a lot of people, they would just go
• 15:01
  down to the Pyrenees and they would walk over the Pyrenees
• 15:05
  into Spain. And so the Spain was neutral.
• 15:09
  So they attempted that. They left from Lourdes in
• 15:13
  October. Oh wow.
• 15:14
  And unfortunately that's when it started to snow.
• 15:17
  And Long story short, it there came a Blizzard, they got lost.
• 15:21
  Their guides deserted them, and so they eventually were caught
• 15:26
  by the Gestapo. On the On the mountains, in the.
• 15:29
  Pyramid mountains in the pyramids.
• 15:31
  And so after my that was actually in his biography, my
• 15:35
  father said that was the only time during the war he was
• 15:37
  actually glad to see the Gestapo because they were going to some
• 15:41
  of the people actually froze to death.
• 15:43
  So from there he was sent to Book and Wald in a different
• 15:48
  camps along the way or different prisons along the way.
• 15:51
  And then he describes being in a cattle car and then being being
• 15:56
  brought into Germany, into Buchenwald.
• 15:59
  And a lot of the Dutch had heard how bad Buchenwald was.
• 16:03
  It was one of the worst concentration camps.
• 16:06
  And so he was there. He he was lucky, lucky to they
• 16:10
  would have prisoners who would matriculate the new people, the
• 16:14
  new prisoners getting off of the cattle cars into different areas
• 16:18
  of the camp. And so one of the, there was a
• 16:21
  Dutch, I think it was in a Dutch attorney.
• 16:25
  We're a law professor. And he said, what do you do?
• 16:28
  And my father said I'm a medical student.
• 16:30
  And he said don't tell anyone. You're a medical student, you're
• 16:34
  a doctor. And he said he protested.
• 16:36
  He said, well, I haven't finished yet.
• 16:37
  And he said if you tell them that you're a medical student,
• 16:41
  they will send you out to work on the V bomb, which is
• 16:44
  underground, and you will be dead in six weeks.
• 16:47
  And so he was actually, he said, OK.
• 16:50
  And so he went, and he worked in the Infirmary.
• 16:52
  What is the V bomb? I don't know exactly what it
• 16:55
  was, but it was something that the Germans were working on to
• 16:59
  attack the. And dead in six weeks because of
• 17:01
  the. Because of the conditions.
• 17:03
  Wow. Yeah.
• 17:04
  Because they would be underground, they would not be
• 17:06
  taken care of, they wouldn't be given good rations, and they
• 17:09
  would just be used up. Wow.
• 17:11
  So my father was actually able. There were a lot of stories in
• 17:15
  the camp itself, even in the Infirmary where he talks about
• 17:20
  like we hear that in prisons in different places, even in our
• 17:24
  country where their subcultures, while there was a subculture of
• 17:28
  the communists, communist prisoners, the Russians often
• 17:31
  times in the Infirmary. And so they would actually kill
• 17:37
  their political enemies when they would come into the
• 17:41
  Infirmary, and my father sometimes would find the bodies
• 17:44
  afterwards. But there's also a story.
• 17:47
  There are stories where my father was able to there were a
• 17:50
  few priests in the camp and he was able to be there when the
• 17:54
  priest would confect the Eucharist, have a secret Mass,
• 17:57
  and he was able to carry the Eucharist.
• 17:59
  He was able to receive the Eucharist but carry it to people
• 18:03
  who are dying, who are Catholic. And then he was there for about
• 18:06
  a year and a half, very traumatic experience, but he
• 18:10
  made it through. And in one of his books later
• 18:13
  on, he writes the one thing that kept him going.
• 18:15
  The two things that kept him going were his faith in God,
• 18:19
  which grew deeply because he had been deprived of his freedom,
• 18:23
  and also his anger at the Nazis for restricting his freedom,
• 18:28
  taking away his freedom. And so that actually those
• 18:31
  things kept him going. Whereas I think you read in a
• 18:34
  lot of the other accounts of people that were in the camps,
• 18:39
  especially the Jews, probably also Christians who just lost
• 18:43
  hope. They've and so they died of they
• 18:45
  didn't necessarily die of anything physical, but they died
• 18:49
  of a died of a loss of hope. But my father talks at the end
• 18:52
  of his biography about he actually says, and this is sort
• 18:58
  of amazing, he said it was a terrible place to be and he was
• 19:03
  glad that he survived it. But he said in a way, it was
• 19:07
  actually a privilege to be there because of how he could minister
• 19:11
  to other people and how it deepened his faith and it which
• 19:16
  he had taken for granted before that.
• 19:18
  So that really set the tone. He was very, he always had
• 19:21
  wanted to be an American citizen.
• 19:24
  So after the war, for a while, he helped the the Allies.
• 19:30
  Buchenwald was liberated by General Patton.
• 19:35
  And so that was very lucky that the Americans came and liberated
• 19:39
  them. But then he became an American
• 19:41
  citizen later on, came to the United States and then went into
• 19:46
  his residency and became a physician here.
• 19:49
  So it's quite the story and we're getting it republished.
• 19:52
  It should be published soon by a new publisher and we should have
• 19:57
  it in e-book, which I think people find it fascinating.
• 20:00
  It's one of these books you just can't put down.
• 20:03
  It's incredible and it's AI think it's a not well known gem
• 20:11
  in understanding, like you said, what it means to keep hope and
• 20:14
  faith alive to survive the worst conditions.
• 20:17
  You know, Victor Viktor Frankel's man search for
• 20:19
  meaning, of course, is a classic.
• 20:21
  And it's the same principle operating there.
• 20:23
  Where what are we? What are we?
• 20:25
  What's keeping us alive? What's keeping us giving us
• 20:27
  meaning even in the worst conditions?
• 20:29
  That's right. And part of it is, you know, of
• 20:31
  course, our hope, but it's our human dignity that life has
• 20:34
  value innately, intrinsically. And I think it your your
• 20:38
  father's body of work really valuing the human person, the
• 20:43
  dignity of the human person. I'm going to guess those
• 20:45
  horrible years is suffering over a year suffering in a
• 20:50
  concentration camp gave him a perspective he would have never
• 20:53
  had. Otherwise, I think that's
• 20:55
  exactly what he was referring to.
• 20:56
  And I think he really valued human life.
• 20:59
  He was very, especially later on in his life when the whole issue
• 21:04
  of abortion and, you know, as you know, came about in the
• 21:07
  United States, it was very anti abortion.
• 21:10
  And you know, you know, worked against that and really wanted
• 21:14
  to help women who are considering abortion and to
• 21:17
  affirm them in their capacity to be able to carry the child even
• 21:23
  if they didn't keep the child. So he talked about that aspect
• 21:26
  of of affirmation, to affirm the person's courage and capacity to
• 21:32
  do something that they were afraid to do.
• 21:36
  As you may know, porn addiction is on the rise for both women
• 21:39
  and men. Today, the porn industry is a
• 21:41
  billion dollar industry praying off of vulnerable men and women.
• 21:45
  The good news is that there is a solution and our show is proud
• 21:48
  to partner with covenanteyes.com.
• 21:51
  covenanteyes.com is not only something to block explicit
• 21:54
  material on your phone, your tablet or your laptop, but
• 21:57
  covenanteyes.com is also a community to give you strength
• 22:00
  to choose good things instead of to choose the destruction of
• 22:03
  porn. Whether you're a parent
• 22:04
  protecting your kids, husbands, or searching for accountability,
• 22:07
  or a wife searching for accountability, or somebody who
• 22:09
  just wants to make sure that porn doesn't make it onto your
• 22:12
  screen, covenanteyes.com has got you covered.
• 22:14
  So you can go to covenanteyes.com and get a free
• 22:17
  30 day trial using the code Lila.
• 22:19
  That's covenanteyes.com. Use the code Lila for a free 30
• 22:23
  day trial. Start your journey to freedom
• 22:25
  today. You know how much I love and
• 22:28
  support Every life.com, America's only pro-life diaper
• 22:31
  company and also its fastest growing diaper company.
• 22:34
  I use their diapers for my one year old and their pull ups at
• 22:36
  night for my 3 year old. Well, now the great team over at
• 22:39
  Every Life has officially launched something new.
• 22:42
  They've created Every Life Women, a clean, premium feminine
• 22:45
  care line designed to honor women the way God intended.
• 22:48
  I've tried these products and they're great.
• 22:50
  Their pads and tampons are thoughtfully designed with 100%
• 22:54
  certified organic cotton. Every Life Women.
• 22:56
  It brings uncompromising integrity together with comfort
• 22:59
  and care that you can count on. No harsh ingredients, no toxins,
• 23:03
  just products that reflect dignity and the truth of who we
• 23:05
  are as women. Also, super cute and classy
• 23:08
  packaging. You can try Every Life's new
• 23:10
  feminine care brand Every Life Women with my code Lila for 10%
• 23:14
  off your order. Thank you Every Life for helping
• 23:16
  women in every season of their life.
• 23:18
  Visit everylife.com/lila to shop now and use the code Lila at
• 23:22
  checkout. Some of the best films in recent
• 23:25
  years have come from Angel Studios, such as My Favorite
• 23:29
  Sound of Freedom, Cabrini, The Sound of Hope, and their new
• 23:32
  movie Sketch. And now you and I can have an
• 23:34
  active role in which movies see the light of day and which ones
• 23:37
  get rejected over at Angel Studios.
• 23:40
  With the Guild from Angel Studios, you vote on upcoming
• 23:42
  movies and TV shows. If a movie doesn't pass, it
• 23:45
  doesn't get published and with their premium subscription, you
• 23:48
  can get 2 free tickets to every new release.
• 23:51
  Plus, no matter what, you can get unlimited access to all of
• 23:54
  Angels movies and shows, including their amazing kids
• 23:57
  content. Two of my favorite movies on the
• 23:59
  Guild are Sound of Freedom and Cabrini.
• 24:01
  My kids also love their kids programming including Young
• 24:04
  David, the story of the life of David from the Bible, as well as
• 24:08
  the show Iggy and Kirk with Kirk Cameron.
• 24:10
  Check out all of this content and more.
• 24:12
  Plus, vote on the future of content over at angel.com/lila.
• 24:16
  Sign up today and shape the future of entertainment.
• 24:19
  That's angel.com/lila. There is a maybe a reaction
• 24:25
  today. Or push back against what is
• 24:27
  seen as an overemphasis on affirming feelings.
• 24:32
  My feelings are my reality. I do what I feel.
• 24:36
  I have my truth. It's no longer about the truth,
• 24:38
  it's about it's about my truth. And yet your father and others
• 24:43
  coming out of the worst circumstances because of evil
• 24:46
  ideologies. Ultimately, you know, World War
• 24:48
  2 and the Nazis and many of the you know, communism obviously is
• 24:51
  1 horrific ideology. The fascism and eugenics and
• 24:54
  everything that was animating the Nazis is another set of
• 24:58
  ideologies. There's overlap, but a response
• 25:02
  to those ideologies that your father chose, obviously his, you
• 25:06
  know, the truth of the faith, our Christian faith, but within
• 25:09
  that was really appreciating and letting free ultimately the
• 25:14
  human psyche to love and connect with God and others and an
• 25:19
  appreciation for the one's feelings.
• 25:22
  And I just want to get you to comment on that because it's
• 25:24
  such an interesting dichotomy in my view that you have a
• 25:28
  concentration camp survivor. I mean, like someone who's been
• 25:31
  through everything, your father, you have the extremes of today
• 25:35
  where we are so babied in the West.
• 25:37
  You know, I think we, we, we've my generation, the suffering we
• 25:40
  see is largely self-imposed. You know, it's not external
• 25:44
  forces. And and yet your your father's
• 25:47
  coming in here and he's saying actually part of the secret to
• 25:50
  untangling this is appreciating and understanding your feelings.
• 25:55
  Walk us through where the truth is when you're dealing in the
• 26:00
  sea of ideology and, and I, I would say extremes that we're
• 26:03
  dealing with today. I often say, and this is
• 26:05
  something that Doctor True and my father's colleague would say,
• 26:09
  my emotions are my strength. Saint Thomas Aquinas says it is
• 26:14
  always a good thing for the person to use their reason and
• 26:18
  their will to deuce alone to do something that's virtuous.
• 26:22
  So it's still a moral and a good act, But he said it is even
• 26:27
  better when the person loves to do the good.
• 26:31
  So because that action now is coming out of love for the good,
• 26:37
  for the other person, for God, whatever it is, And so it
• 26:41
  actually takes up more of the whole human person.
• 26:45
  And is he referring to the feelings of pleasure when he
• 26:48
  uses the word love there not just the disposition of the
• 26:51
  will, but but the feelings that have come, that come with it.
• 26:54
  Yes, and that's a really good distinction.
• 26:56
  So he's saying if the emotions of love, the emotion of love is
• 27:00
  there, or the desire is there, it is even a better and more
• 27:04
  complete, more perfect moral. Whole human experience.
• 27:08
  It comes from the whole person. And that's what we have to look
• 27:11
  at is, you know, we can do things with our will, but if
• 27:14
  we're only doing things with our will all the time, life becomes
• 27:19
  very difficult. And I've seen that in so many
• 27:21
  people over the years, very good Catholics, very good Christians,
• 27:26
  but they think that they have to push themselves all the time.
• 27:29
  And it they've got this probably from some of the philosophers of
• 27:35
  the Enlightenment, like Kant. Kant said the more difficult
• 27:38
  something is, the better it is. And that's actually contrary to
• 27:43
  what Saint Thomas Aquinas says to us.
• 27:46
  I think that's just that point alone that you just made.
• 27:50
  And then I want to follow up on expression versus repression
• 27:52
  with feelings. We're going to put a note on
• 27:54
  that and come back to it. But what you just said, this
• 27:57
  idea that just because something is hard, it's almost like
• 28:00
  there's a reaction against maybe the, you could say even the
• 28:03
  sexual revolution or just move, operate from impulse, operate
• 28:06
  from emotion. I am my own reality.
• 28:08
  I create my own reality. You know, the reaction to that
• 28:13
  can be, well, I'm going to do the tough thing.
• 28:14
  I'm going to stand up and even though it's like extremely
• 28:17
  difficult every day and then I just plow through it and it
• 28:20
  you're saying that that's not that should not be the goal.
• 28:25
  No, I think sometimes we have to do that right.
• 28:27
  There's always things that I don't want to do or I'm afraid
• 28:30
  of that I I need to do right. I'm not saying that we just wait
• 28:34
  for our feelings to be there because that can't be the case.
• 28:38
  I mean, even Christ going towards the cross, said Father,
• 28:41
  if this can be taken away from me, that would be preferable,
• 28:45
  right? And so we, we still have to do
• 28:49
  what we are called to do. But if it's, I sort of give the
• 28:54
  the analogy of a canoe, rowing a canoe versus being in a sailboat
• 29:01
  when we're in a canoe, that's it can be a very pleasant
• 29:03
  experience, but you're going to be rowing and rowing and rowing.
• 29:08
  And so if that's an analogy for life and that's all you're
• 29:11
  doing, you can only do that for so long before your arms or your
• 29:16
  whole body is exhausting. You have to rest.
• 29:19
  You have to rest. And so when you, when I, I sort
• 29:22
  of see the, the analogy of the sailboat as let's say that the
• 29:26
  boat and the person represent reason.
• 29:29
  So that person is saying, well, I'm here and I'd like to go to
• 29:33
  that side of the lake. And so that the rudder
• 29:36
  represents the will. And so it's like I can, I can, I
• 29:40
  want to go there. So I'm going to turn the rudder
• 29:41
  whichever way they turn the rudder to go particular way.
• 29:45
  And so, but then I can do that and not get anywhere.
• 29:49
  But if I have, I put up the sail, which represents the
• 29:53
  emotions, and then I cultivated the desire for this, and that
• 29:57
  desire comes and it fills the sale.
• 30:00
  Then I'm actually pulled towards.
• 30:03
  I'm guiding my emotions to whatever that is, but I'm at the
• 30:07
  desire actually pulls me towards it.
• 30:10
  So I'm not pushing towards the good all the time.
• 30:14
  I can do that sometimes, but I'm actually letting the good I'm,
• 30:18
  I've, I've learned how to love the good it's been, I've been
• 30:23
  cultivating it in my life. I, I want to stay away from the
• 30:26
  bad, the ugly, the false right as much as possible because
• 30:30
  there's plenty of that. But I want the good to pull me
• 30:33
  towards it as much as possible. So that makes life much easier.
• 30:39
  But that depends on the cultivating, cultivating and the
• 30:42
  openness to the emotions. All the emotions, especially
• 30:47
  love, desire, and joy, those we call Saint Thomas called them
• 30:53
  the concupiscible passions. And concupiscence has, you know,
• 30:58
  a negative commentate connotation.
• 31:00
  St. Thomas actually used that in
• 31:03
  meaning what is pleasurable or what is not pleasurable.
• 31:07
  And then the other emotions, those emotions, I should say, we
• 31:12
  call them the humane emotions or the pleasure emotions because of
• 31:17
  the misunderstanding that can come from that term
• 31:20
  concupiscible, which he doesn't mean.
• 31:23
  And so those emotions not. Meaning evil emotions.
• 31:25
  Not meaning evil, yeah. Or sinful, right.
• 31:28
  And so when those emotions, those emotions give, we might
• 31:33
  call all emotions psychological motors.
• 31:36
  And my father talks about this in one of his books, Feeling and
• 31:39
  Healing Your Emotions. And so that motor, it's sort of
• 31:42
  like, what if how something affects me, like I find it
• 31:45
  pleasant or desirable or unpleasant, and I want to avoid
• 31:49
  it. It's sort of like a light bulb
• 31:52
  going on and it sort of says, ah, it illuminates like this is
• 31:56
  what I like or this is what I don't like.
• 31:58
  So that's helpful to me, but it doesn't move me.
• 32:01
  And the other passions that Saint Thomas talks about, he
• 32:05
  calls them the irascible passions and we call them the
• 32:08
  assertive drive. So these emotions provide motion
• 32:13
  so that actually move me to act. So those emotions are hope and
• 32:19
  its opposite are despair. Is is despair.
• 32:23
  And that, I should say right now, is that's not the despair
• 32:26
  of the will, which you know, is known as a sin, where I say
• 32:30
  there is not no I. Do not believe.
• 32:34
  And God can't forgive me. It's just the feeling, the
• 32:37
  feeling of despair, like so I haven't studied enough, so I
• 32:41
  can't pass the exam. I can't do this or I can't face
• 32:45
  that person, right? So we have to counteract that.
• 32:48
  So it's hope and despair and then fear and courage your
• 32:52
  opposites and we need those as well.
• 32:55
  And then Saint Thomas said the last emotion didn't have an
• 32:58
  opposite. And that's anger.
• 32:59
  And anger is arises in the face of injustice.
• 33:07
  And so it helps us, it gives us, it's sort of like when we put
• 33:10
  the key in the car and turn the car on, or if we push the button
• 33:13
  and we have our foot on the brake and it turns on that, it
• 33:17
  turns on the car. And then that car takes us
• 33:20
  someplace, it moves us someplace.
• 33:23
  And those emotions do that. And So what we want to do, what
• 33:28
  Saint Thomas says, is that the emotions, the pleasure emotions,
• 33:33
  the humane emotions were of love, desire and joy take
• 33:37
  precedence because things should arise.
• 33:40
  I should be moved here. And then these emotions of
• 33:44
  motion actually helped me to achieve that or to move away
• 33:47
  from it so that I actually come to rest.
• 33:50
  But if I live always in this, in this area or this life of I'm
• 33:55
  always busy. And this is sort of what we do,
• 33:58
  especially in our country, because we're based on, we come
• 34:01
  from a Puritan way of living, which we got, yeah, activity and
• 34:06
  everything is measured in productivity.
• 34:11
  And so we're we're very good at things.
• 34:13
  But there's, there's, it's really hard for Americans to
• 34:16
  come to rest and it's easier, I think in Europe, even though
• 34:21
  they're not a, an actively Catholic country, countries or
• 34:25
  continent anymore. But they live in a Catholic way
• 34:29
  because they actually live to rest and to spend time with each
• 34:34
  other and to appreciate the goodness of life.
• 34:37
  And so their work supports who they are as human beings.
• 34:42
  So much to unpack here and these are wonderful distinctions, the
• 34:46
  assertive Dr. versus the with these irascible passions.
• 34:51
  Again, not naming them as good or bad because anger doesn't
• 34:54
  isn't good or bad. It's what you do with the anger.
• 34:57
  And same with the pleasure emotions or you called them
• 35:00
  humane emotions of, you know, love and desire.
• 35:06
  Very important question here. What is your distinction between
• 35:11
  repressing an emotion, whether that's anger or desire, right?
• 35:15
  And by desire I can meet. We can call it sexual desire or
• 35:18
  we can call it the desire to obtain something versus
• 35:22
  expression of the emotion and the importance of expression
• 35:27
  because as you were describing earlier, you can't, We should
• 35:31
  not express every emotion endlessly, but there's a
• 35:34
  tremendous danger. And a lot of your father's work
• 35:36
  in your work is about the danger of repressed emotions and how
• 35:40
  that can develop neuroticism and incomplete and incomplete self
• 35:43
  and all this. So how do you not repress an
• 35:46
  emotion, but also when it's not appropriate to fully express the
• 35:48
  emotion? What does one do?
• 35:50
  I see. I'd say that the the one thing
• 35:52
  that we teach people is simply to be aware of, to learn how to
• 35:57
  be aware of what is going on inside of me and what is that
• 36:03
  about? What is that like for me, which
• 36:05
  is essentially saying how am I affected by this idea or this
• 36:09
  person or this thing and so? So that would be a self
• 36:14
  knowledge or a observational state.
• 36:16
  That's right. Which is dispassionate.
• 36:18
  Inherently. You're observing your own
• 36:20
  emotion. That's right.
• 36:21
  Exactly. So it doesn't mean you don't
• 36:23
  have the feeling and you're just analyzing it.
• 36:25
  It's more, oh, what what's happening inside of me, right?
• 36:29
  Now would you call it identification?
• 36:31
  Yeah, I could say that a lot of times people will say, oh,
• 36:36
  that's mindfulness. And I like to stay away from
• 36:39
  that term simply because not that I'm an expert on Buddhism
• 36:44
  or Eastern meditation, but I think that that concept, even
• 36:49
  though I think it's valid within the English language, just to be
• 36:53
  mindful of what's going on because it's sort of leans
• 36:56
  people into Eastern meditation and maybe other things is at the
• 37:01
  end of that, from what I understand is really
• 37:03
  nothingness, right? And so when we, that's I, I
• 37:07
  don't like to use that term. So I like to use just growing in
• 37:11
  self-awareness. So there actually can be a more
• 37:15
  comfort level that grows from that self-awareness.
• 37:18
  Like I may, a lot of times we teach people to say, I may feel
• 37:22
  whatever I feel, right? It doesn't mean I'm going to
• 37:25
  express it because I have to think about it like we were
• 37:28
  talked about earlier, but with repression.
• 37:32
  This is one of the unique discoveries that my father and
• 37:39
  Doctor Trua developed. And this was really in response
• 37:45
  to Freud, because Freud's work was very commonplace when my
• 37:52
  when my father was early in his career.
• 37:54
  And so was Doctor Trua in the probably thirties, 40s and 50s.
• 37:59
  And so his idea was that if we're if people were neurotic
• 38:04
  and they were repressing, which is a very repression in itself,
• 38:08
  was a very brilliant discovery. By Freud.
• 38:11
  By Freud, but we think that he misunderstood it because he
• 38:16
  decided if there was repression, let's say a person had certain
• 38:20
  morals that the best way to alleviate the repression was
• 38:25
  just to get the person to let go of their morals.
• 38:28
  Well, no good Catholic psychiatrist or therapist could
• 38:31
  ever agree with that. And so they came up with the
• 38:34
  help of a Redemptorist priest, Father Dines Day, who gave
• 38:40
  doctor true the idea that one emotion actually represses
• 38:44
  another emotion. So fear.
• 38:47
  So let's say a person becomes afraid of their anger because
• 38:50
  they've seen their, their parents be so angry with each
• 38:54
  other and fight with each other and hurt each other either
• 38:57
  emotionally or physically. And so they came to the
• 39:00
  conclusion that anger is a bad thing.
• 39:03
  It's a scary thing. And I'm never going to feel
• 39:05
  that. And so they, their fear really
• 39:08
  says, gets rid of and sort of presses down on that feeling so
• 39:14
  that it's, it's not, they're not so aware of it.
• 39:16
  Sometimes when people repressed, they're still aware that they're
• 39:19
  angry, but they're afraid of it. So they don't let it come out.
• 39:23
  What can happen when people repress their emotions is that
• 39:28
  it's sort of, I give people the example of it's sort of like
• 39:31
  taking a spring. Let's say anger is being
• 39:35
  repressed. And so a spring, like all the
• 39:37
  emotions, if you use this analogy, it's like a spring is
• 39:40
  supposed to cushion and it's supposed to push up, right?
• 39:44
  It's supposed to go up and down. A real heavy duty spring.
• 39:46
  It's not meant to come all the way down, but when I repress it
• 39:50
  or I try to control it because it's, I think it's dangerous,
• 39:54
  then what's actually happening is #1 as you can see, it's like
• 39:58
  I've got tension all through my body.
• 40:01
  And so the person lives with tension that is just seeking.
• 40:05
  The tension of that anger is just seeking guidance by reason,
• 40:11
  right? And So what we what happens is
• 40:14
  eventually the person will have an outburst.
• 40:17
  And then they think, oh, this is terrible because they just hurt
• 40:20
  people or they'll just begin to repress again.
• 40:24
  And so it actually gets stronger and stronger over the years.
• 40:27
  And that is not a healthy way to live because.
• 40:29
  That's resentment too, right? The the it's a packaging.
• 40:32
  Yeah, it could be a resentment, but I think when people are
• 40:35
  resentful, they're actually very aware of their anger and they're
• 40:38
  stocking it. Because I think that comes from,
• 40:41
  I don't know if it's the French, but Reisenti means to feel
• 40:45
  again. So I always sort of see it as
• 40:47
  like like a like a cauldron of anger, which might be
• 40:51
  legitimate, but you keep turning the flames up and you keep
• 40:55
  adding a wood to the fire. I guess I'm thinking of maybe of
• 40:59
  people are unaware of their own resentment.
• 41:01
  It's like that brooding resentment where they're
• 41:03
  stuffing the anger. That's right.
• 41:05
  Over years and years and. It will explode.
• 41:07
  And it and it. Does become bitter?
• 41:09
  But they're not even aware. They're may not, yes, they're
• 41:11
  not really aware. So what is the?
• 41:13
  Distinction though, because you know, back to the road rage
• 41:16
  example that you used earlier, you don't want a road rage.
• 41:19
  So let's say you're just you're, you have this anger, you have
• 41:22
  this frustration, whatever it is, right?
• 41:24
  You need to let it out. You can't just stuff it, but you
• 41:27
  also can't go, you know, 80 mph on the freeway or Rev engine,
• 41:30
  you know, like, oh, you can't. You shouldn't yell at your kids.
• 41:33
  You shouldn't yell at your. Spouse you.
• 41:35
  Shouldn't yell at your, your, your employee, you know, your,
• 41:37
  your, your staff, you know, whatever it is.
• 41:39
  So on the issue of anger, what do you recommend?
• 41:42
  Like how do you approach anger, whether it's in parenting or in
• 41:45
  relationships or in work or whatever it is where you're not
• 41:48
  repressing because there's a danger to making the anger worse
• 41:52
  that way. But you're managing the, you're
• 41:54
  managing the anger. Not as a bad thing, but you can
• 41:57
  channel it. That's right, we would hope
• 41:59
  towards good, good ends. Yes, and so I think a lot of
• 42:02
  times people will say, well, I go running and that takes care
• 42:05
  of my anger. Well, I'd say running is a good
• 42:08
  thing and it might help to defuse the level of anger, but
• 42:11
  that doesn't necessarily resolve the fact that the person doesn't
• 42:15
  know how to manage their anger with the the people around them,
• 42:18
  right in all those situations. So #1 becoming aware that like
• 42:24
  when I'm starting to be angry, I actually be, I can notice it.
• 42:28
  That's why I want people to begin to be aware of when it's,
• 42:32
  I don't want them to go from probably initially they're going
• 42:36
  from like a volcano. It's like it's not going off to
• 42:39
  all of a sudden it's spewing, right?
• 42:41
  So it's like, can you start being aware?
• 42:43
  When do you notice that you're getting really angry?
• 42:47
  And when they can practice that and they begin to see that,
• 42:51
  which usually doesn't take too much because now we're talking
• 42:54
  about it. And so they think about it.
• 42:56
  So when they become aware of that, then we start coming up
• 43:00
  with other things like, OK, you know that you can take it out on
• 43:05
  your kids or on your spouse or on the people at work.
• 43:09
  So how about when you become aware of that, if you're having
• 43:13
  a conversation with that person, why don't you, let's say you say
• 43:17
  to them, I think I am getting a little overwhelmed or whatever
• 43:22
  language they would want to use. And I think I need to take a
• 43:25
  break and calm down and I will try to come back and talk later
• 43:30
  in the day. Let's say we talk after dinner
• 43:33
  so the person doesn't feel abandoned or that you're just
• 43:37
  going away to punish them. OK, so there, there's a plan
• 43:40
  there. And so the, the whole idea is
• 43:43
  the person, how then we find out, how does the person calm
• 43:46
  down? Like do they need to sort of
• 43:48
  write it out? They write sometimes we have
• 43:50
  them write a therapeutic letter to that person.
• 43:53
  A therapeutic letter means they're not going to send it or
• 43:55
  give it to the person, right? It's just to get it out, to let
• 43:59
  the feelings out. Or maybe they just talk it out
• 44:01
  with their therapist or they talk it out with a good friend.
• 44:05
  So that actually helps to defuse the anger.
• 44:08
  It's it's not as strong, but if it's still there, then we want
• 44:13
  people to learn how do I actually talk to my kids when I
• 44:18
  am annoyed with them or I'm going to be angry with them in a
• 44:21
  healthy way? So then I might want to say, you
• 44:25
  know, when you do this, when you do this, I, I react like this.
• 44:30
  What I would want you to do is this.
• 44:33
  And I'm, this is how I'm going to manage that.
• 44:35
  Like I'm going to give you, I'm going to take away some
• 44:39
  privileges for you until you can learn to manage your own
• 44:43
  behavior, right? And you might have to come up
• 44:46
  with something different for the people that you work with.
• 44:49
  But with spouses, it's really a matter because some spouses
• 44:53
  we've seen in therapy, they're so angry over so many years, is
• 44:58
  that it takes a long time for them to learn how to moderate
• 45:01
  their own anger. So that second step of, you
• 45:04
  know, if there's a chronic anger and, and we could use this I'm,
• 45:07
  I'm sure on other fronts for other emotions like fear, if
• 45:10
  there's a chronic fear, right? You know, like you said, you
• 45:12
  can, you can sort of acknowledge it, set it aside and then come
• 45:16
  up with mechanisms to kind of explore it, cope with it,
• 45:19
  whatever, you know, you know, put it a box around it to some
• 45:22
  degree. But at the end of the day, it
• 45:24
  sounds like there's still a containment that is practiced or
• 45:29
  you have to change the dynamic of the relationship.
• 45:31
  Like you were saying, if you do this, like I always get angry
• 45:34
  when you fight with your brother, you can't fight with
• 45:36
  your brother anymore, you know, or I get sad when you fight with
• 45:39
  your brother, whatever the emotion is.
• 45:41
  So you either need other people to change or you need to change,
• 45:44
  but at the end of the day, there's still decisions that
• 45:46
  need to be made, changes that need to be made despite the
• 45:48
  emotion if the emotions in the way.
• 45:51
  That's right. But you were saying a big part
• 45:53
  of your father's work in response to Freud is this
• 45:56
  understanding that one emotion can repress another emotion.
• 45:59
  They get this pile up effect. I, I'm still trying to get to
• 46:02
  the, you know, a deeper understanding here and for us,
• 46:06
  all of us listening where and maybe there's no Direct Line,
• 46:11
  maybe it's kind of an area of a lot of Gray, but where it goes
• 46:15
  from, I want to explore this emotion and give it space, but
• 46:19
  then I also can't give this emotion space.
• 46:22
  It doesn't belong. So I need to put the box around
• 46:25
  it. Well, I think the, the whole
• 46:27
  idea of containment, I don't want people to necessarily just
• 46:31
  always walk around containing their emotions because I think
• 46:34
  that might be sort of maybe as you're saying it, sort of a
• 46:37
  lower level of repression. So that they're always going to,
• 46:41
  it's always going to be in the back of their mind.
• 46:44
  But I think most people need to learn how to be aware of the
• 46:47
  feeling, how to talk about it in a constructive way and also come
• 46:51
  up with constructive ways to solve the problem that they are
• 46:55
  angry about. And it does.
• 46:57
  There is something, I mean therapy, most of us there will
• 47:01
  say, therapist will say, well, the only person you can really
• 47:04
  change is yourself. And that is true.
• 47:07
  But we can also learn how to communicate better with our
• 47:10
  spouse, with people that are under us, that work for us or
• 47:14
  work with us. We can't guarantee they're going
• 47:16
  to change, but we can be very clear when we're saying a lot of
• 47:20
  times we'll use, we'll teach people I statements.
• 47:23
  So we're not saying well, you always or you never do this
• 47:26
  because that just sets up people to be defensive themselves.
• 47:30
  But we take responsibility for what's going on inside of me and
• 47:33
  then looking at what is it that I want differently, What am I
• 47:37
  willing to do about that? And I will practice that.
• 47:40
  So that I don't think is more containment.
• 47:43
  It's more trying to look at how do I resolve this so that I
• 47:47
  don't have to be angry all the time.
• 47:49
  Right now, I can't guarantee that, but at least I have a more
• 47:53
  effective way of going about it. Repression is when the person
• 47:58
  really doesn't want to either because of fear or they, they
• 48:01
  just, sometimes people have a different disposition and they
• 48:05
  just don't like, they just don't, they're not going to have
• 48:08
  anything to do with certain feelings.
• 48:11
  And so that's a different approach where we have to
• 48:13
  convince the person they sort of want to rise above their
• 48:18
  feelings. And that's a different type of
• 48:20
  repression. And so we have to convince them
• 48:23
  that their emotions do not should not be treated that way,
• 48:27
  but be part of the whole sort of family of feelings.
• 48:32
  Just like physical feelings need to always be considered, but not
• 48:36
  always indulged. So that we have to sort of work
• 48:39
  on people to help them realize that the emotions give us a
• 48:43
  breath and a that when we can bring in or be aware of and
• 48:51
  allow all our, our emotions and feelings to be, we actually can
• 48:55
  live more effortlessly. You know, when people have, for
• 48:58
  example, maybe a more common example example that people
• 49:01
  would understand is eating disorders where there's a
• 49:04
  rejection and a repression of the natural desire to eat
• 49:09
  because of this sort of a delusional thought that I'm fat,
• 49:14
  right? And they do it in different
• 49:15
  ways. Well, no one.
• 49:16
  And this sort of relates to what we're talking about before, you
• 49:19
  know, how the culture sees emotions.
• 49:22
  No good therapist is going to say, oh, I'll help you with
• 49:25
  that, right? And you must be right because
• 49:28
  that's how you feel. We want the person to come to,
• 49:31
  to look at, yes, you have to start looking at what is it like
• 49:35
  right now, it's difficult for you to want to eat because
• 49:39
  you've denied that you've repressed that.
• 49:42
  And some of them don't even don't have any awareness of
• 49:45
  being hungry at all. So we have to correct that so
• 49:50
  that it's resolved and eventually the person can get
• 49:52
  back to actually having even the feeling of desire for food,
• 49:58
  which is normal, right? That is our nature.
• 50:00
  And so it's the same thing with all physical feelings and all
• 50:05
  emotions. And one of the things we often
• 50:07
  say, which is also in one of my dad's books, is every emotion is
• 50:15
  a feeling, a physical feeling, but not every physical feeling
• 50:20
  is an emotion, right? So being hungry or thirsty or
• 50:24
  tired is not an emotion, but it is good.
• 50:28
  Even if it doesn't feel good to me, it is something that really
• 50:32
  helps me because if I, let's say I repressed or I never learned
• 50:36
  to feel hungry or thirsty, I'd have to sit here and go.
• 50:41
  You know, Lila, I think it's been about 24 hours since I
• 50:45
  drank something and I think I don't know how much I'm supposed
• 50:48
  to drink. I might have to look that up.
• 50:50
  Well, that's exhausting. And it's the same with the
• 50:53
  emotions. We want those, the physical
• 50:55
  feelings and the emotions to simply be there spontaneously
• 51:00
  and that we learn how to evaluate what that's about and
• 51:06
  what should I do about it, if anything.
• 51:09
  And all of that. Also what comes into play is I
• 51:14
  learn how to live with other people in society because
• 51:17
  sometimes I have to restrain the desires I have for something,
• 51:23
  right? Whether it's an object of, you
• 51:27
  know, pleasure, whether it's a a sexual attraction, because
• 51:31
  they're my reason is guiding like, well, that person's
• 51:34
  married or that person is not available or I'm not available
• 51:39
  or I've made these promises or this wouldn't be proper right.
• 51:44
  So I actually really we could say that the love that is self
• 51:51
  restraining is the highest kind of love.
• 51:55
  That is what Christ did on the cross for us, right?
• 51:58
  So I may have all my feelings, but sometimes I'm going to
• 52:03
  restrain the expression of them for the good of the other
• 52:06
  person. But there's still the
• 52:08
  acknowledgement to your point. So it's not considered
• 52:11
  restraining one's feelings is not repression because there's
• 52:15
  an acknowledgement and and largely speaking, an allowance
• 52:17
  for it. I think it's almost like.
• 52:19
  I may feel it. You have a bank allowance, you
• 52:21
  know, for how much you know, a financial allowance effectively
• 52:25
  for your own emotions, say, I'm going to let myself do this
• 52:27
  within the organ order of my relationships, my obligations,
• 52:30
  my responsibilities. And if it's not working out, you
• 52:33
  know, I keep hitting like the person with anger problems as an
• 52:36
  example, and they just keep hitting.
• 52:38
  At what point do you trigger? OK, there's more work needs to
• 52:40
  be done. This isn't just a daily
• 52:41
  management question of blow off some steam, go on a walk, write
• 52:44
  the letter, you know, maybe change the dynamic in the
• 52:47
  conversation with your kids or, you know, how you're handling
• 52:49
  discipline or how you're handling, you know, education.
• 52:52
  Instead, you actually have a deeper issue here.
• 52:56
  And this gets into childhood and dealing with deeper, deeper
• 53:00
  potential issues. Or maybe an it could be a nature
• 53:03
  issue too. Nature, not nurture.
• 53:05
  Yeah, that the person just has more of a temperament to be
• 53:09
  angry. How do you, how do you balance
• 53:11
  that or how do you, when you're working with someone and they're
• 53:14
  dealing with, we're on the anger of topic.
• 53:16
  We could do, we could do fear as another 1A phobia, but we're
• 53:19
  dealing with or, or we could do shame, you know, pathological
• 53:22
  guilt or scrupulosity. Where, when do you identify?
• 53:26
  Oh, this is more than just identification of the emotion
• 53:30
  and kind of management throughout the day and
• 53:31
  throughout relationships. And this is something deeper
• 53:33
  that needs some sort of a deeper therapy or a deeper healing.
• 53:37
  I think we're always looking for that.
• 53:39
  I'm always. I'm not just looking for, not
• 53:43
  just listening for this is what the person is presenting to me.
• 53:47
  But I have not preconceived notions, but I have ideas about
• 53:53
  where in this case, given what the person is telling me, what
• 53:57
  there might be roots that I need to explore with them.
• 54:01
  Because if we don't pull up the roots, the person is going to be
• 54:04
  left with this way of living or their behaviors.
• 54:09
  And if we can get at that, sometimes we're as Catholic
• 54:15
  therapist and Christian therapist as well.
• 54:18
  I think we're asking the Holy Spirit as we work with them,
• 54:21
  like show us Lord what we need to see and show this person what
• 54:25
  they need to know about themselves when it's the right
• 54:28
  time. So we are looking for what the
• 54:31
  roots of that anger could be. Maybe it's, you know, a very bad
• 54:36
  childhood that they had. And then we want to explore what
• 54:41
  was that like for you? Tell me.
• 54:42
  Tell me more about because it sounds very painful.
• 54:46
  And that's where we're affirming.
• 54:47
  We're helping to affirm what we hear the person saying and what
• 54:52
  I've heard over over many years, but especially the last probably
• 54:57
  5 to 10 years. What I've noticed coming back to
• 55:01
  the topic of affirmation is that when we are really listening to
• 55:05
  people and we're really present, what people have come back and
• 55:09
  said to us is I, and it's not just with us and maybe with
• 55:13
  other people in their lives. I feel seen, I feel heard, I
• 55:18
  feel known, I feel understood, I feel respected, I feel cared
• 55:23
  for. And that also will tell me that
• 55:26
  they have not gotten that before.
• 55:29
  And so I hear what the wound is about.
• 55:32
  And that can bring about shame because a lot of times things
• 55:36
  that don't happen or that maybe the parent is very well meaning.
• 55:41
  I've, I've sort of noticed that a lot when I'm listening to
• 55:46
  people is I think most parents are very well meaning.
• 55:49
  They're doing the best they can, but somehow the child takes some
• 55:54
  things as rejection or they're not important and the parent has
• 55:58
  no idea about that. And so we want to see if we can
• 56:01
  explore that and help the person open up to what is that shame
• 56:07
  about and see if we can begin to look at where does it come from
• 56:12
  and how do we begin to alleviate that, which is not an easy
• 56:15
  matter when it's shame, when it's deeply rooted shame.
• 56:19
  I really want to get into that topic and explore and from the
• 56:21
  lens of parenting Born Only once and healing the unaffirmed and
• 56:24
  that, you know, affirmation therapy.
• 56:26
  I one other thing, turning back to something you said earlier
• 56:28
  about your father's work building on Freud's did did we
• 56:32
  capture the whole difference? You were saying your father
• 56:37
  identified it not so much as repressed emotions that you need
• 56:39
  to done go act on, but that a repressed emotion is just a
• 56:43
  basically rejection of another emotion that needs to be
• 56:46
  explored. So it's not about breaking free
• 56:48
  of the moral norm or the societal norm.
• 56:50
  It's about exploring all of what's going on inside and then
• 56:54
  having the natural lot of guide our actions and decision making
• 56:57
  while acknowledging the emotional state of the person.
• 57:00
  That's right, exactly because Freud of course, would would
• 57:03
  say, well, if we just get rid of the the moral roles that we
• 57:06
  don't go without having neurosis.
• 57:08
  Yeah, right. And so yes, we just create.
• 57:10
  More neurosis that way. Yeah, exactly.
• 57:13
  Or we create someone who's just acting out all the time, which
• 57:16
  is not healthy. So yeah, I think we covered
• 57:19
  that. Yeah, because we're looking at
• 57:22
  helping the person to, we're affirming what they're feeling
• 57:26
  and thinking. We're listening to them.
• 57:29
  It doesn't mean we necessarily, you know, when we affirm someone
• 57:32
  emotionally and we can also affirm them intellectually,
• 57:35
  right and morally. So I want to make that clear as
• 57:38
  well. So we've been talking about
• 57:40
  emotional affirmation, which is very important.
• 57:43
  But when we affirm someone intellectually, we tell them the
• 57:47
  truth, right? But we want to tell them the
• 57:49
  truth in love. Saint Thomas Aquinas says a
• 57:53
  thing is received according to the mode of the receiver.
• 57:57
  So it's, it's like parents with children, like I, I want to feed
• 58:00
  them steak because steak is so wonderful.
• 58:02
  But they're only three. They can't eat it, right?
• 58:05
  So we have to wait. We're going to give them some
• 58:07
  hamburger if they like that. And as they grow up, we will
• 58:10
  introduce them to better and better things, a more refined,
• 58:15
  helping them to refine their tastes and things.
• 58:18
  This idea of emotional deprivation and lack of
• 58:22
  affirmation in childhood and parents who are accidentally,
• 58:26
  this is like the scariest thing for any parent, right?
• 58:28
  I'm doing this wrong because of patterns I've been grown up
• 58:32
  with, you know, raised with or just because of, you know, human
• 58:36
  error or whatever it is. What is emotional deprivation in
• 58:39
  a child? There's actually a term your
• 58:41
  father uses, emotional deprivation disorder and a lack
• 58:44
  of affirmation. What does that give us?
• 58:46
  Some examples of what that can look like.
• 58:48
  Yes, parents to children. Yes, the the lack of
• 58:51
  affirmation, complete lack of affirmation would be where the
• 58:56
  person really has not had any kind of positive interaction on
• 59:02
  the emotional level from most people.
• 59:05
  And So what I've seen in in those people when they grow up,
• 59:09
  because we usually are working more with adults, is that they
• 59:14
  have great difficulty relating to other people as adults.
• 59:20
  Like so they feel, sometimes they actually feel if it's very,
• 59:24
  very primitive in them that it happened very early, they
• 59:28
  actually could feel like babies, but they're adults or they feel
• 59:32
  like children or they feel like teenagers.
• 59:35
  Do they know they feel that way? Now they don't always tell us
• 59:38
  that because that's so personal. And that's where I was
• 59:43
  mentioning that sometimes people will say, I don't even know how
• 59:46
  I who I am and, or how I feel. And so when they cannot relate
• 59:52
  to other people, you're going to have people who have difficulty
• 59:55
  in marriage, have difficulty in, in friendship, adult friendship,
• 1:00:00
  have difficulty in a religious life or as priests.
• 1:00:04
  Because those people, all of us as adults, have to be relate to
• 1:00:08
  other adults as adults and adults expect.
• 1:00:13
  We expect each other to be able to manage our conversations.
• 1:00:16
  How does someone know that they feel like a baby or they feel
• 1:00:19
  like a high schooler if they don't know what it means to feel
• 1:00:20
  like an adult? You know, like, So what?
• 1:00:23
  How does that identification happen?
• 1:00:25
  Because I do think for a lot of people, they, they haven't made
• 1:00:28
  that identification. There's an emotional stuntedness
• 1:00:30
  that they don't fully understand, but it creates
• 1:00:34
  problems in their adult relationships.
• 1:00:36
  Well, or. With their own parenting of
• 1:00:37
  their children. Yes, exactly.
• 1:00:39
  I think sometimes they do not know exactly, but I think a lot
• 1:00:44
  of times what what they do know is that they do not fit in and
• 1:00:50
  they will be there sort of awkward.
• 1:00:53
  IA long time ago, I had a, a woman who had been very
• 1:00:58
  unaffirmed as a child and really had great difficulty relating to
• 1:01:03
  other adults was sort of awkward.
• 1:01:05
  And she and she's let me talk about this, but she said it's
• 1:01:11
  like being on the outside of a, a home and I'm looking through
• 1:01:16
  the window at this family and I'm on the outside and I've
• 1:01:22
  never been in there. I don't know what that's like.
• 1:01:26
  And it was, it was really this plaintive cry of, you know, help
• 1:01:31
  me to know who I am. And it's so it was very sad.
• 1:01:35
  But a lot of times they will begin, they actually sort of
• 1:01:38
  know that they can't handle the emotions of an other adults.
• 1:01:43
  I had one person, one time we were having a conversation like
• 1:01:46
  this, or so I thought. And I'd known her for a long
• 1:01:50
  time. And she finally had the courage
• 1:01:52
  to tell me, why are you angry at me?
• 1:01:56
  And I was so taken aback because we were just having a
• 1:01:59
  conversation, but she heard even this tone of voice as anger at
• 1:02:05
  her. And so that also gave me a clue
• 1:02:07
  as to where she was on the emotional level.
• 1:02:10
  Now, this person had, I think 2 master's degrees.
• 1:02:14
  So intellectually they are at a, they could be at a very high
• 1:02:18
  level. They can be at a high level with
• 1:02:21
  degrees or in business because most of the time or in the in
• 1:02:25
  the church because most of the times that doesn't require
• 1:02:29
  anything but the intellect. It is when you have the emotions
• 1:02:34
  and how that's part of interact, human interaction that they feel
• 1:02:39
  less than or they feel like they don't understand what we're
• 1:02:42
  saying or they think that a normal tone of conversation is
• 1:02:46
  being angry. So I think that sometimes they
• 1:02:49
  don't know, but they be they actually feel like outsiders.
• 1:02:53
  And I've seen that in some of them or I've heard them say that
• 1:02:56
  or that's, or that's part of they begin to see I can't relate
• 1:03:00
  to my, my spouse expects this from me and I can't give it
• 1:03:04
  right. So that's, that's I think where
• 1:03:08
  they begin to see it. They read the book.
• 1:03:10
  Actually, they read born only once.
• 1:03:12
  And many people have said either they said it to my father and
• 1:03:16
  now they say it to me, they'll say I read that book.
• 1:03:19
  How did your father know me? No one else has understood me
• 1:03:23
  the way I really feel. So the hypersensitivity in the
• 1:03:27
  adult that you may have come across in a clinical setting or
• 1:03:30
  just in your own relationships. And many of us maybe experience
• 1:03:33
  hypersensitivity, right? What does that mean?
• 1:03:37
  What does that connect back to in terms of a childhood
• 1:03:41
  experience or, or life? And and and also, you know, this
• 1:03:44
  goes back to, you know, your father's work and maybe where we
• 1:03:48
  should lay the ground a little more with born only once.
• 1:03:51
  What is the operational principle there?
• 1:03:53
  That is such an aha moment for this hypersensitive person adult
• 1:03:57
  who never really got what they needed as a child.
• 1:04:00
  A lot of times people will come in and they'll say people tell
• 1:04:03
  me I am so oversensitive, I'm hypersensitive, and they'll say
• 1:04:08
  I don't know what to do with that because I've always been
• 1:04:10
  like that. And so number one, I will tell
• 1:04:13
  them to be sensitive is actually a very good quality.
• 1:04:18
  And I think what has happened in childhood is that their
• 1:04:22
  sensitivity was never attended to in a in an affirming way, in
• 1:04:28
  a receptive way. So this is sort of the other
• 1:04:31
  part of your question that you were asking like how do parents
• 1:04:35
  affirm their children but not just let them do whatever they
• 1:04:38
  want? Well, it could be something
• 1:04:40
  like, and I, I maybe have already said this, but I can see
• 1:04:44
  that you're angry, but you may not hit your sister like you
• 1:04:47
  just did, or you may not kick the walls.
• 1:04:50
  But I'm going to let you do this and I'm going to let you just,
• 1:04:54
  you know, be angry and then we can talk about it when you're a
• 1:04:57
  little calmer. Is that OK?
• 1:04:58
  And then they, the parent actually follows through with
• 1:05:01
  that or the attentiveness to I've heard a lot of parents or a
• 1:05:08
  lot of clients of mine say, oh, my parents would say you stop
• 1:05:12
  crying or I'll give you something to cry about.
• 1:05:15
  Well, that's very unaffirming. It's very denying of the
• 1:05:17
  person's feelings. Now, if they're crying all the
• 1:05:21
  time, OK, that's something else we have to look at.
• 1:05:24
  What is that about? What is that though?
• 1:05:26
  What about the child that is, like you say, hypersensitive and
• 1:05:29
  has a very thin skin when it comes to their needs, their
• 1:05:33
  wants, their desires? What I, what I'm trying to say
• 1:05:36
  is that I, I think, I assume that maybe they've never had
• 1:05:40
  those feelings attended to. And so to have them all the time
• 1:05:45
  or a lot is sort of saying, look at me, listen to me.
• 1:05:50
  And so I think we have to moderate helping them, helping
• 1:05:54
  them by learning to listen to those feeling feelings, helping
• 1:05:58
  them to process through them, help helping them to own those
• 1:06:02
  and then helping them to learn how to moderate them and calm
• 1:06:06
  down themselves as adults. Right.
• 1:06:09
  But I don't think that the parents are are sort of there to
• 1:06:12
  help Co regulate the child. That's more of the language
• 1:06:16
  today, I think in the literature, which I think is
• 1:06:19
  really part of affirming the child.
• 1:06:22
  Like you may have this feeling, but you can't do these things.
• 1:06:25
  Or you know, if you can, if you can manage to wait, learn to
• 1:06:28
  wait. We can have some ice cream
• 1:06:30
  later, right? So they actually learn how to
• 1:06:33
  restrain the expression of their feelings while having them, like
• 1:06:38
  not being told it's bad to have them, but we have to wait until
• 1:06:41
  that's going to be fulfilled. So what does this look like when
• 1:06:46
  you're giving parenting advice and, and going back to, you
• 1:06:49
  know, born only once you know, this miracle of affirmation?
• 1:06:52
  What does you, you, you gave an example about, you know, I know
• 1:06:55
  you're angry or you're hitting your sister, you know, so let's,
• 1:06:58
  you know, it's not bad to feel angry, but it's bad to hit.
• 1:07:01
  So let's, you know, try to separate you and go do something
• 1:07:05
  else. What are ways that parents can
• 1:07:09
  ensure that they are affirming their child that you would say
• 1:07:15
  are foundational principles for for any parent, especially the
• 1:07:18
  parent that really is want to mess things up, right?
• 1:07:21
  You know, they're trying to have good discipline, good training
• 1:07:23
  in the home, everything else, but they're afraid they're
• 1:07:27
  missing something. Yes.
• 1:07:29
  Well, in the book Born Only Once, I think it's in the first
• 1:07:32
  or second chapter, there's this beautiful little example.
• 1:07:35
  And it was apparently a friend of my dad's that he asked maybe
• 1:07:40
  when they were adults about something he had remembered.
• 1:07:44
  And he said his, his, my father called him Little Johnny.
• 1:07:48
  And so there's the story there where little Johnny is a shy
• 1:07:53
  boy, maybe about 5 or 6. And one day the pastor comes to
• 1:07:58
  visit his mother, and he hides under the table where they were
• 1:08:03
  talking, and neither one pays any attention to him.
• 1:08:07
  And so then finally they end their visit and the pastor
• 1:08:11
  leaves and the mother looks under the table and she just
• 1:08:15
  says, were you shy, Johnny and my.
• 1:08:20
  And so they didn't what they didn't do was the parent didn't
• 1:08:24
  say, come out from under there be a big boy, you know, stop
• 1:08:28
  being scared. And So what my father asked his
• 1:08:32
  friend. He said, what did you think that
• 1:08:34
  did for you? And he said he didn't use the
• 1:08:38
  word paradoxical, but I am paradoxically.
• 1:08:42
  It actually made me feel like it was OK for me to be shy.
• 1:08:47
  And that actually gave me a lot of confidence to be myself.
• 1:08:50
  And I lost my shyness. It's this beautiful paradox
• 1:08:55
  where she let her child be and he felt it's all right to be as
• 1:09:01
  I am, and then he actually could grow emotionally and to be more,
• 1:09:08
  I guess, more confident in himself.
• 1:09:11
  I I, I love the concept. I think the fear, you know, not
• 1:09:15
  to play devil's advocate more to, you know, bring up the
• 1:09:18
  concern of a parent might be if you label your child as shy, are
• 1:09:22
  you shy, right. And they're more being shy in
• 1:09:25
  that scenario, right? Then you are giving them a new
• 1:09:29
  identity or an identity of shyness when you want them to be
• 1:09:32
  able to overcome it, right? And today I think this happens
• 1:09:36
  with, you know, things like gender, endless gender affirming
• 1:09:40
  gender ideology and affirming people's identity.
• 1:09:42
  Oh, do you feel like you're a boy?
• 1:09:44
  OK, no judgement. Do you feel like you're a boy?
• 1:09:46
  Let's just let you let you continue to, you know, you're
• 1:09:50
  actually a girl, but you're going to wear boy clothes
• 1:09:52
  because that's what you're feeling today.
• 1:09:54
  So when do you, how does the parent, especially in today's
• 1:09:57
  world, which is very confused, guide the child where you're
• 1:10:01
  actually recommending a label is maybe even put on their behavior
• 1:10:06
  to define it, but the goal is to get them out of that behavior
• 1:10:09
  ultimately without making them feel shame.
• 1:10:12
  Yeah. For well, for one thing, I think
• 1:10:14
  those are very big differences in what we're talking about,
• 1:10:18
  right? They're both legitimate.
• 1:10:19
  But I think what we're, we have to see is that that what we're
• 1:10:25
  doing is we're allowing the person to be as they are.
• 1:10:28
  First of all, we're being receptive to who they are.
• 1:10:31
  She was being receptive to the fact that he was a shy boy.
• 1:10:35
  We're not giving him an identity.
• 1:10:37
  We're actually letting him be who he is at that moment because
• 1:10:40
  he's only 6. If you push the child to be
• 1:10:44
  something that he's not, he actually may go the opposite way
• 1:10:48
  and. I mean like stand up, shake his
• 1:10:50
  hand, look him in the eye. That's exactly right.
• 1:10:52
  It's like, I don't think that that's necessarily the case.
• 1:10:55
  Or if we do it, can we do it in a way that actually matches
• 1:10:59
  where the child is? Like can I help bring him along?
• 1:11:03
  Because at some point we want to say, you know, I think you have
• 1:11:06
  this in you. Like maybe not at six, but maybe
• 1:11:09
  later, you know, I think you have this in you.
• 1:11:11
  I see a lot of good in you and I see you're able to, to do these
• 1:11:15
  things and this things. And I really want you to try
• 1:11:18
  this, right. You know, when they come out, I
• 1:11:21
  want you to, you know, as they're growing, the child is
• 1:11:23
  growing. I'd like you to, I'd like to
• 1:11:25
  teach you how to say hello to father So and so when he comes
• 1:11:29
  or when we go to Mass, can we, can we work on that?
• 1:11:33
  And it's sort of like coming alongside and accompanying the
• 1:11:36
  child. So that's not the same.
• 1:11:38
  I don't think that's the same as giving them an identity and
• 1:11:42
  they're locked into that forever.
• 1:11:44
  Like they're always going to be shy.
• 1:11:46
  It's actually when you really think about it, when people
• 1:11:49
  really let you be yourself, you actually feel more more free and
• 1:11:55
  accepted and it actually helps you to move forward.
• 1:11:59
  It's really paradoxical O when we're talking about the, the
• 1:12:03
  modern day things about, well, I feel like the opposite gender
• 1:12:08
  now. We also want to we, we were
• 1:12:10
  going to necessarily pay attention to that and say, well,
• 1:12:14
  tell me more about that. When did that arise?
• 1:12:16
  And tell me more about what that's about, right.
• 1:12:19
  And I want to look deeper for that because I'm not going to
• 1:12:22
  leave them there when I affirm someone, I don't want to leave
• 1:12:25
  them in it. But the, how I approach that is
• 1:12:28
  very important. So I would want to give the
• 1:12:31
  person some amount of truth about that, but I might want to
• 1:12:37
  for the person with the gender issues, I would want to start to
• 1:12:43
  explore, when did that's? When did you start feeling like
• 1:12:46
  that? What was going on in your life?
• 1:12:48
  Let's explore the whole picture instead of your immediate
• 1:12:51
  feeling and then just affirm that because that would be
• 1:12:56
  essentially A disservice to the person, right?
• 1:13:00
  Whereas with the child, we're saying, actually, this boy is
• 1:13:04
  shy. This doesn't have to be an
• 1:13:06
  identity, but I want to let him be there and I'm going to sort
• 1:13:09
  of give little emotional broke bread crumbs so that he can grow
• 1:13:14
  at when he's ready. And that actually helped this
• 1:13:17
  little boy to actually feel like it was OK to be shy.
• 1:13:20
  And now he could actually come out and talk, right.
• 1:13:23
  But I don't want to do the same thing with the gender affirming
• 1:13:26
  person because that is just, it's such a narrow way to a
• 1:13:31
  narrow conclusion that the person has come to about, well,
• 1:13:35
  I feel this, so it must be true. Well, it's like, well, if you
• 1:13:38
  feel like an elephant, are you an elephant?
• 1:13:40
  No, of course they say that too, you know.
• 1:13:43
  So we, we want to, we want to make a distinction and we want
• 1:13:47
  to help the person, affirm the person as much as we can
• 1:13:51
  intellectually so that they can begin to see that this doesn't
• 1:13:55
  make sense. This is not the conclusion that
• 1:13:58
  we want to draw for you. We want to look at where if
• 1:14:02
  there's, I would imagine, and I don't know if I'd say this
• 1:14:05
  directly to them, that there's been some trauma about being
• 1:14:10
  their sex, that it's somehow it appears to be easier or better
• 1:14:16
  or safer to be the opposite sex. And then then we want to look at
• 1:14:21
  what is that about? There's the root and we want to
• 1:14:25
  start looking with them at the root.
• 1:14:27
  So we don't want to pass that by.
• 1:14:30
  We don't want to ignore that. But that's where I think we can
• 1:14:33
  help a person, not just by argument.
• 1:14:36
  That's not going to help the person that's really set on
• 1:14:38
  that, but we want to help them. We're just has someone in my
• 1:14:43
  doctoral program say what is the meaning of the symptom?
• 1:14:48
  And I thought that was a beautiful question.
• 1:14:52
  So what is the meaning of the symptom when someone thinks they
• 1:14:55
  are the opposite sex? So I want to look at I want to
• 1:14:58
  look for where did that come from with the person?
• 1:15:02
  Give me let's, let's look back at your life, you know, was the
• 1:15:07
  person unaffirmed? Is it very difficult?
• 1:15:10
  Did they get bullied as a boy? I've had people tell men tell me
• 1:15:15
  occasionally that they started with cross dressing and then it
• 1:15:18
  became they started actually realizing it looks like it's a
• 1:15:23
  whole lot easier to be a girl because I don't have to face all
• 1:15:26
  these things. And so we had to look at that
• 1:15:29
  right, wasn't necessarily successful, but it that's where
• 1:15:33
  we want to go. So I'd say there's it's two
• 1:15:35
  different scenarios that we're talking about.
• 1:15:37
  Here they're a bit of apples and oranges, understandably so
• 1:15:40
  exactly. I think that's part of the
• 1:15:43
  problem with modern parenting today is people we don't we've
• 1:15:46
  lost a prudence really, I think and and our reason a lot of the
• 1:15:51
  time too. You know, you can't really have
• 1:15:53
  prudence without reason. But I think that's what makes it
• 1:15:56
  so difficult for parents today because on the one hand, and I
• 1:16:00
  think they look at really a, you know, a, a therapeutic world or
• 1:16:05
  school of thought that I do think your dad was influential
• 1:16:08
  and, and others and, and that can be taken another direction.
• 1:16:12
  This idea of affirmation, this idea of feelings are not bad.
• 1:16:15
  This idea of don't repress, right?
• 1:16:17
  You can take all of that, you know, that, that even
• 1:16:22
  literature, and then you can build on it and say, well, now
• 1:16:24
  we're going to do radical affirmation or, you know, make
• 1:16:28
  sure we never repress anything. And that's not saying you get to
• 1:16:30
  go just hit anybody you want to hit because even the most crazy,
• 1:16:33
  you know, you know, therapist today, whatever they would call
• 1:16:37
  their school of thought, there's the gentle parenting school of
• 1:16:39
  thought as an example. And then there's, you know,
• 1:16:41
  gender ideology over here. And there's, you know, maybe
• 1:16:44
  radical relativism about I decide my reality and everything
• 1:16:47
  else, right. And so I think they, they would
• 1:16:49
  all maybe say, though we're trying to not repress the
• 1:16:52
  person, we're trying to help them be fully who they are.
• 1:16:55
  I think if you lined up all of the different ideologies, they'd
• 1:16:58
  probably all say the same thing, which is what in some way, which
• 1:17:01
  is what your own father, what you say, what we say as
• 1:17:03
  Christians, right where God wants us to be free to be who we
• 1:17:07
  are. And I think for the for the, you
• 1:17:10
  know, the average parent today who's trying to do the right
• 1:17:12
  thing, how to make these judgement calls day in and day
• 1:17:15
  out can be really challenging. How much to affirm, how much to
• 1:17:19
  restrict, how much to guide, how much to let things be, you know,
• 1:17:23
  how much to even notice when the five year old is being shy
• 1:17:25
  versus OK, He's really got to look him in the he's got to be
• 1:17:28
  polite. He can't just like someone, a
• 1:17:30
  guest came over. The six year old can't be like
• 1:17:32
  running off and hiding on the day like he needs to say hello,
• 1:17:35
  nice to see you. Nice to see you, Mr. So.
• 1:17:37
  But I think what would you recommend for the parent who's
• 1:17:40
  kind of constantly trying to sort that out and there's these
• 1:17:45
  different schools of thoughts that are ultimately promising
• 1:17:47
  the same end game? Yes.
• 1:17:49
  Well, first of all, they could read my dad's books, of course.
• 1:17:54
  But yeah, I think it's complicated these days, but I
• 1:17:56
  think if people can, you know, even read some good, healthy,
• 1:18:01
  maybe Christian books on discipline where there's a, a
• 1:18:08
  balance between how do we teach our children?
• 1:18:11
  How do we affirm their feelings? How do we affirm who they are
• 1:18:15
  because they're going to be different even in the same
• 1:18:17
  family? And how, what's the what are
• 1:18:20
  the, the methods that we're going to use to enforce
• 1:18:24
  discipline and not just let our kids just be, do whatever they
• 1:18:27
  want? Because I always try to help
• 1:18:30
  people to see, you know, we want children in a lot of different
• 1:18:35
  ways to learn how to live in society with other people in a
• 1:18:40
  reasonable manner. And that means we have to begin
• 1:18:43
  to teach them at young ages that there's a, there is a
• 1:18:47
  relationship between cause and effect.
• 1:18:50
  When I don't do this, like when I don't do the dishes, which is
• 1:18:54
  my chore, I don't get this privilege.
• 1:18:57
  Well, that's a really good thing for when they are working.
• 1:19:00
  If I don't show up, I'm not going to get paid right?
• 1:19:03
  And so we want them to. I think it takes takes some
• 1:19:07
  help. And that's where parents have so
• 1:19:09
  many resources nowadays, good resources to really look at like
• 1:19:13
  how do I do this? What are different ways that I
• 1:19:17
  can affirm my child but not, not let them not let them grow up to
• 1:19:23
  be a person who just does whatever they want.
• 1:19:25
  They're selfish, they're self-centered, but they they
• 1:19:29
  want to do the right thing. They become responsible.
• 1:19:32
  And I think we have sometimes we have to be very firm as parents
• 1:19:36
  and to say, I know you don't want to do this, but you are
• 1:19:40
  going to do it. You know, like if they get older
• 1:19:42
  and they don't want to do something being a play or you
• 1:19:46
  know, OK, you don't have to be 1 of the leads, but you need to
• 1:19:49
  work on this or you need to show up for this or you need to study
• 1:19:52
  this or I want you to get a little part time job and I want
• 1:19:56
  you to learn how to save money. I'm going to help you to do
• 1:19:58
  that, right? And but there are that we link
• 1:20:02
  things that we expect them to do with the consequences.
• 1:20:06
  Just like real life adult life, things are going to happen if I
• 1:20:09
  don't show up or if I do the wrong thing or if I mean to my
• 1:20:12
  boss, I'm going to lose my job. It's like I want to show them
• 1:20:16
  cause and effect, right? And I want to maybe even talk
• 1:20:19
  about that. Help them to see that I I need
• 1:20:23
  to be responsible as a citizen, as a person, as a family member,
• 1:20:29
  that I'm responsible to other people.
• 1:20:31
  And I think we can do that if people learn how to manage like
• 1:20:35
  what's reasonable, what's not reasonable and that spouses are
• 1:20:38
  really looking, parents are looking with about that with
• 1:20:41
  each other, you know, and they're looking at that even
• 1:20:44
  before they marry. Like what's our approach to
• 1:20:47
  parenting? What's our approach to finances?
• 1:20:50
  Like? Are we on the same page?
• 1:20:52
  That can also help them like begin that process.
• 1:20:56
  Along with affirming, identifying and affirming, and
• 1:20:59
  by affirming we mean identifying and helping direct a child's
• 1:21:02
  emotions in parenting. What are other elements of
• 1:21:05
  affirmation that parents should be being intentional about when
• 1:21:11
  it comes to parenting their kids?
• 1:21:12
  You mentioned intellectual affirmation.
• 1:21:14
  Yeah, I, I would say I want to go back to the emotional
• 1:21:17
  affirmation because I don't think I said this is that I like
• 1:21:21
  to, to explain this is really a way of being with another
• 1:21:26
  person. It's not doing something to the
• 1:21:28
  person to make them feel good. That's not what this affirmation
• 1:21:32
  is. And so affirmation is being
• 1:21:35
  present and open and attentive. And then I allow myself to be
• 1:21:40
  moved as I get to know the person, maybe with delight, with
• 1:21:43
  love, with liking, maybe I'm sad for them, right.
• 1:21:49
  And but as I get to know them because I'm allowing myself to
• 1:21:52
  be moved by them. So now I'm this is a personal
• 1:21:56
  interaction, right? I'm receiving them in my
• 1:21:59
  feelings. Now I have a decision to make
• 1:22:02
  where I can reveal my feelings to the other person and that if
• 1:22:07
  the person can receive it is much before I say anything or do
• 1:22:12
  anything for them that can actually help to show them sort
• 1:22:16
  of might the mirror. This is who you are and the
• 1:22:20
  reason why I say that. That's that's how my father
• 1:22:24
  defines it in the book Born Only once.
• 1:22:28
  Often times in my talks, I'll say when you see a a really cute
• 1:22:33
  baby and you're moved by that baby, where is the origin of
• 1:22:38
  your feelings? Most people say, well, they're
• 1:22:40
  my feelings, so they're in me, but that's actually not true.
• 1:22:45
  Is that the origin of my feelings is in the baby's
• 1:22:49
  goodness, in the baby's delightfulness, in the baby's
• 1:22:54
  just their darling and so, or when I look at the mountain or I
• 1:22:59
  look at something beautiful in nature or in the Fine Arts, that
• 1:23:04
  I am moved by the goodness or the truth or the beauty of that,
• 1:23:10
  that that because I am open, I live in this affirming way.
• 1:23:14
  Like we started talking about this is affirming.
• 1:23:17
  This is the way I live in an affirming way because I can be
• 1:23:20
  close. I can be close to anybody or and
• 1:23:23
  everything because I'm too busy trying to get to the next thing.
• 1:23:28
  And I've often said to people, the gospel, living the gospel is
• 1:23:32
  not doing one good thing and the next good thing and the next
• 1:23:36
  good thing because it lacks love.
• 1:23:38
  It can lack love. But in this way of affirming
• 1:23:41
  living is I am open and I allow myself to be moved.
• 1:23:47
  I'm not, I'm not going to be moved by everything and every
• 1:23:50
  person, right? But I allow myself to be moved
• 1:23:53
  by those things. And when I am moved, that is a
• 1:23:58
  joy to me. And then I can reflect it back
• 1:24:01
  to the person, which actually over time, and maybe it's just
• 1:24:05
  even in the moment, it strengthens the person to be
• 1:24:09
  themselves. And that gives identity.
• 1:24:14
  And that's in that human interaction, hopefully in the
• 1:24:18
  family, but it can happen with other people.
• 1:24:21
  That identity is what we don't often have in our secular world
• 1:24:26
  today because we're too busy or the the family is or the parents
• 1:24:30
  are trying to teach the child something, but they're not
• 1:24:35
  actually just present and receptive to that person or the
• 1:24:41
  things around them. And that's why that's what
• 1:24:44
  people can do when they have not been affirmed is they can learn
• 1:24:49
  to live and practice living in this affirming way where they're
• 1:24:53
  open to whatever is moves them because their emotions actually
• 1:24:58
  grow. Their emotions grow to be able
• 1:25:01
  to receive the goodness of things, and that brings peace
• 1:25:07
  and joy and a healing. And so the person who is
• 1:25:11
  unaffirmed can actually, in many cases, catch up and heal simply
• 1:25:17
  by living like that. And so that's what I want people
• 1:25:20
  to do outside of therapy. The affirming life and learning
• 1:25:24
  how to affirm other people should be a way of life for all
• 1:25:28
  of us. And that is probably the best
• 1:25:31
  way to to live the Christian life, right?
• 1:25:35
  Because we're really open to the other and we're actually letting
• 1:25:39
  ourselves be moved by the other and their goodness so that I'm
• 1:25:44
  not creating something. I'm not just deciding something.
• 1:25:48
  I'm actually allowing other people to be who they are.
• 1:25:51
  And I, I'm, like I said before, it's sort of like I show them in
• 1:25:55
  my countenance that their, who they are has the power to move
• 1:26:01
  my feeling. That's very powerful.
• 1:26:06
  Some people are have been sort of blocked from that.
• 1:26:09
  But I've also seen over time when they stay in therapy or
• 1:26:14
  they stay in a relationship, they actually learn how to
• 1:26:18
  receive that. And one of the things I often
• 1:26:21
  quote is John Paul the second said he who knows how to receive
• 1:26:29
  knows also how to give. So, and Benedict the 16th talked
• 1:26:33
  about the primacy of receiving. So it's very important to learn
• 1:26:38
  how to be receptive and to practice being receptive and to
• 1:26:41
  practice being open and attentive, really attentive to
• 1:26:46
  others. We, we're not God, so we can't
• 1:26:48
  be attentive to every person we meet or every person in the
• 1:26:51
  world, but it is important that we live like that.
• 1:26:55
  And it actually brings this affirming way of life, this what
• 1:26:59
  we call affectivity. And affectivity is defined as
• 1:27:04
  the capacity to be moved by those emotions of love, desire
• 1:27:10
  and joy. And this way of life, this
• 1:27:13
  affectivity, simultaneously brings peace and resolves
• 1:27:18
  difficulties. And that's what also will help
• 1:27:21
  spouses when they learn how to really listen.
• 1:27:25
  And I mean, even in some of the things that all therapists know
• 1:27:28
  how to do, help them, help people to be really attentive
• 1:27:32
  and receptive to what's the meaning of the other person.
• 1:27:35
  And then I repeat it back. And once I they feel understood,
• 1:27:39
  now I can say my piece, how I see it.
• 1:27:42
  It's a, it's a different approach to having a
• 1:27:45
  conversation, right? And it brings peace.
• 1:27:48
  This is such a secret, I think, to all relationships and
• 1:27:51
  certainly to parenting, because it's not about doing something
• 1:27:55
  for to the child. It's about receiving the child
• 1:27:58
  and really looking them into the eyes, receiving them even in
• 1:28:01
  their anger, their fear, their sadness, their irritability or
• 1:28:05
  their joy and pleasure, and then letting the child know that
• 1:28:09
  they're delighted in. That's right.
• 1:28:11
  And I just think about, you know, walking around and just
• 1:28:13
  everyday life that we go through, you know, grocery store
• 1:28:15
  or whatever we're doing and how busy we are today and always on
• 1:28:20
  our phones, myself included. And how that prevents human
• 1:28:26
  interaction, which isn't just about, oh, you need human
• 1:28:28
  interaction because you're a human.
• 1:28:30
  It's actually about the whole purpose of our existence, which
• 1:28:33
  is love. Which is love.
• 1:28:35
  That's right. And you encounter another
• 1:28:37
  eternal soul and you're, you're distracted, which is again, many
• 1:28:41
  of us today, you're just not, you're not really living
• 1:28:44
  anymore. You're like a zombie.
• 1:28:46
  That you're just going from one thing to the next thing to the
• 1:28:48
  next thing. You're just doing tasks and
• 1:28:51
  we're not really present, and we need to understand this
• 1:28:55
  affirming way of living because it is so profound.
• 1:28:58
  It's not just bringing about healing.
• 1:29:01
  It is bringing about the joy of life, which Saint Thomas starts
• 1:29:06
  the summa with happiness, with beatitude in this life as well
• 1:29:12
  as the next life. And I really think that this
• 1:29:15
  whole concept and theory of affirming living is a way to
• 1:29:20
  live that out. Can you give us a couple more
• 1:29:23
  examples of what this can look like?
• 1:29:26
  If you're training someone to activate their receptivity, how,
• 1:29:31
  how do they do that? And I and I'll give a another
• 1:29:34
  prompt here, especially for the people who are really busy or
• 1:29:37
  experiencing overwhelm. Yeah, I the, the assignment that
• 1:29:44
  I give people is, and I'll give little examples from what I do,
• 1:29:50
  is that I want them whatever the things that they have done or
• 1:29:54
  they they do or they've done in the past that are enjoyable and
• 1:29:58
  pleasurable to them. Or things that sort of maybe if
• 1:30:02
  they do art or some people have told me, well, I play guitar and
• 1:30:06
  I'll say, well, what is that like for you?
• 1:30:07
  And they're like, I can do that and three hours pass and I don't
• 1:30:12
  even notice. And I said, I want you to do
• 1:30:15
  that. I'll say, I want you to do that
• 1:30:17
  more often. Can you do that a little bit
• 1:30:19
  every day? And they'll say yes or no.
• 1:30:21
  And I'll say, well, how about you just do things with a
• 1:30:26
  different attitude, like if they, you can go walking in a,
• 1:30:31
  in a park, because it's, you're going to get 10,000 steps and
• 1:30:34
  you don't notice anything. And I'll say, why don't you go
• 1:30:38
  walking in that park And you, you get whatever steps you get,
• 1:30:42
  which is no good for you. But I want you to notice the,
• 1:30:46
  the birds. I want you to notice what's
• 1:30:49
  around you, the colors of the leaves.
• 1:30:52
  I want you to listen for what it's like if you hear the, the
• 1:30:57
  breeze going through the trees, like I, I sell, I say, and
• 1:31:01
  sometimes I sit out on my back patio and I listen when there's
• 1:31:05
  a little breeze. There isn't always a breeze in
• 1:31:07
  Texas, So we have to really thank God for that.
• 1:31:10
  But when there, there's a breeze, that's one of my
• 1:31:12
  favorite sounds. And I'll, I'll just say I just
• 1:31:16
  love that. So it's like it brings the sense
• 1:31:19
  of contentment and joy. Or I look for the birds or I, I
• 1:31:24
  listen for the calls and I just, and the other part is I'm
• 1:31:28
  drinking my coffee, which I love and I'm, I have a nice warm cup
• 1:31:32
  of coffee. So I'm holding that.
• 1:31:35
  And so all of that is a very pleasant experience.
• 1:31:39
  And I'm not doing anything to anything.
• 1:31:44
  I'm just receiving. So it's those things that move
• 1:31:49
  me with a sense of pleasantness, a a sense of joy, a sense of
• 1:31:57
  liking, a sense of enjoyment, pleasure.
• 1:32:01
  And So what I'm, what I want that person to do is I want them
• 1:32:04
  to practice that. And sometimes I just, I want
• 1:32:09
  them to, I'll say, especially if they're very busy, I'll just
• 1:32:14
  say, I want you when you think about it, to stop and take your
• 1:32:18
  feeling temperature. And that means you don't have to
• 1:32:21
  write anything down for me. It's just when you think of it,
• 1:32:25
  you're going to stop and you're going to say, how am I feeling
• 1:32:28
  right now? And it might just be a physical
• 1:32:30
  feeling like I'm thirsty or I'm hungry or I'm tired.
• 1:32:34
  And it doesn't mean that you can do anything about it, right?
• 1:32:37
  Then you're in the middle of a big meeting or whatever and you
• 1:32:40
  can't just go leave and go have your lunch, but you're aware of
• 1:32:43
  that. And So what what I find happens
• 1:32:48
  is #1 sometimes people will, will tell me, I realize that I
• 1:32:53
  get thirsty, but I don't do anything about it.
• 1:32:56
  I don't drink anything all day long.
• 1:32:58
  And I'm a little cranky and I realize I'm actually dehydrated.
• 1:33:03
  So now I've got a bottle of water.
• 1:33:05
  The other thing that I find happens is that when people do
• 1:33:09
  that, number one, they're enjoying those experiences and
• 1:33:13
  things they've forgotten and that actually helps their days
• 1:33:17
  to go better. Because they're not just looking
• 1:33:20
  for someone to affirm them or whatever, but they are really
• 1:33:25
  more aware of what they need. And that those things bring
• 1:33:31
  bring them a sense of peace and contentment.
• 1:33:34
  And it also helps them to open up to their emotions because I
• 1:33:39
  think I said before, every emotion is a as a physiological
• 1:33:43
  component, even though every feeling doesn't.
• 1:33:46
  So when we are more aware of our physical feelings, it naturally
• 1:33:51
  comes that people become more aware of their emotions.
• 1:33:55
  And so then they can look at that in the same way.
• 1:33:57
  Like what are the things that are pleasant for me?
• 1:34:00
  It doesn't mean they, they don't.
• 1:34:01
  That's what they're doing all day.
• 1:34:03
  They still have to go to work, they still have to accomplish
• 1:34:05
  things, but it gives a more human way of living throughout
• 1:34:10
  the day and it actually brings peace and can resolve
• 1:34:14
  difficulties. What are some things that
• 1:34:16
  mothers can do to make space to delight in their children more?
• 1:34:21
  Because I think that's one of the chronic issues afflicting a
• 1:34:23
  lot of parents is they're caught up in the doing, providing
• 1:34:27
  household management of the home, management of activities.
• 1:34:31
  There's always an activity go to management if they have multiple
• 1:34:34
  children between the children, meals, everything else, and so
• 1:34:37
  they lose in a whole day goes by and the enjoyment of the child.
• 1:34:41
  And this is how you have children have identity issues
• 1:34:44
  like you're describing. This is where identity issues
• 1:34:46
  come from and and emotional issues come from is they're not
• 1:34:49
  actually being enjoyed as as human beings.
• 1:34:52
  It's not this exchange happening of of really hearts between
• 1:34:55
  parent and children. That's right.
• 1:34:58
  I do think that a lot of times parents are having their kids do
• 1:35:04
  too many things now. And I know that that's a
• 1:35:07
  problem. I I don't know exactly what they
• 1:35:09
  they may have to make some decisions about.
• 1:35:12
  Sports School. Sports, yeah.
• 1:35:13
  Extracurriculars Between all the activities, there's no time and
• 1:35:17
  space to be together. Exactly.
• 1:35:19
  And so I think they have to start looking at the parents
• 1:35:22
  together, like what maybe needs to stop or we can't do all these
• 1:35:27
  things or maybe the kids are going to be in in all these
• 1:35:30
  sports or activities, but we don't do those sports on Sunday,
• 1:35:34
  for example, or we don't do them at this time.
• 1:35:37
  What I often times will suggest to when I'm working with
• 1:35:41
  families with kids is that I want them all to think about the
• 1:35:47
  things that they would each like to do within reason.
• 1:35:51
  And you know, it has to do with if that has to do with money or
• 1:35:53
  whatever time, but they each take a time like the maybe they
• 1:35:57
  have a family night and that they actually take turns doing
• 1:36:02
  what each person wants to do. And that often times get brings
• 1:36:07
  about this attentiveness to the other person, to the children,
• 1:36:11
  to the parents as well, like to the family as a whole.
• 1:36:15
  And that that has really helped to resolve some of the
• 1:36:18
  difficulties that they come in with.
• 1:36:20
  Just having. Time together.
• 1:36:23
  And each person gets to speak what they enjoy, and then you
• 1:36:25
  make intentional choices to do what each enjoys and give each a
• 1:36:28
  turn. Yes.
• 1:36:29
  And to celebrate the other person's enjoyment, enjoy it
• 1:36:32
  with them. That's right.
• 1:36:33
  That's right. It's beautiful.
• 1:36:34
  Yeah. And I think just ways to is
• 1:36:37
  maybe to to ponder. I think the other thing too, I
• 1:36:41
  would say is that I've been a therapist for a long time and
• 1:36:44
  this was this whole concept of affirmation I, I brought from my
• 1:36:49
  father, but I had to contemplate what it meant for a long time
• 1:36:55
  before I really understood what it meant and this whole
• 1:36:59
  receptivity. And so it takes some amount of
• 1:37:03
  stillness to be receptive. And so when are we, I think we
• 1:37:08
  have to the parents need to look at do we have time for
• 1:37:11
  stillness? Do we have, and this is also
• 1:37:15
  part of the going everywhere parent.
• 1:37:18
  What I found is the parents don't always have meals together
• 1:37:21
  at home, like they're having meals together in the car.
• 1:37:25
  Sometimes I hear parents say, well, we actually have some
• 1:37:27
  really good conversations, but a lot of times I I hear they're
• 1:37:30
  just dropping one kid off, then they're picking up something,
• 1:37:34
  you know, to eat and then they're doing homework in the
• 1:37:36
  car. And they're not always having
• 1:37:38
  conversations. They're just trying to get
• 1:37:40
  everybody where they're supposed to go.
• 1:37:42
  And I think that that has to be really looked at, like, do we
• 1:37:47
  spend enough time just with each other, enjoying each other's
• 1:37:50
  company, or just even in the same room where maybe people are
• 1:37:56
  reading different things and not on devices, but we're all
• 1:38:00
  together, right? So like, how would we do that?
• 1:38:03
  I think people can be creative, but I think they're so caught up
• 1:38:06
  in doing the best things for their children that the if they
• 1:38:11
  can listen to what we're saying here and read some of these
• 1:38:14
  books, maybe what they can begin to ponder is when am I really
• 1:38:20
  present to my kid and really look him in the eye, right?
• 1:38:24
  Is it only at night or do I even do that at night?
• 1:38:28
  I've heard some adults just recently say, oh, yeah, it was
• 1:38:32
  we, we never had prayers at night.
• 1:38:34
  It was get out of my sight. Go do your prayers by yourself.
• 1:38:37
  And it was like, oh, it sounds so sad.
• 1:38:39
  But so I think parents are there's a lot of challenges that
• 1:38:43
  they have to really consider and what is what is the most
• 1:38:48
  important thing and what's the foundation we want them to have
• 1:38:52
  and how are we going to do that? You know, years ago, I realized
• 1:38:56
  sort of realized something when I do, we always do intakes as
• 1:38:59
  therapists and we want to find out about the person.
• 1:39:01
  And so I would ask, I learned I needed to ask people.
• 1:39:06
  Did you have meals together as as a family?
• 1:39:12
  And this one person said yes. And so I went on to the next
• 1:39:15
  question and she and she interrupted me and she said, but
• 1:39:18
  there were four of us and we each were watching a different
• 1:39:20
  television. And so even now today, it's
• 1:39:24
  like, are people on devices? And are we really having a meal
• 1:39:29
  where that's designed not just for nutrition, but we're having
• 1:39:33
  conversation and we're telling each other jokes and about the
• 1:39:37
  day, and it's like there's a bond that's formed.
• 1:39:40
  Or dealing with the tough stuff, like you're having a hard day.
• 1:39:43
  Tell me about it. Whatever it is being present to
• 1:39:45
  each other. That's exactly right.
• 1:39:47
  I can see something's going on with you.
• 1:39:49
  You want to tell me about it? Yeah.
• 1:39:51
  Or no? OK.
• 1:39:52
  Well, I'm going to pursue that. Maybe in a while.
• 1:39:55
  Let them calm down. Can we talk?
• 1:39:58
  Do you think that if I had to categorize the two biggest
• 1:40:01
  threats to this practice of affirmation, which is quarter
• 1:40:05
  identity and really to love? I mean, it really is to love and
• 1:40:09
  it's for the parent and it's also for the adult.
• 1:40:11
  It's really in any relationship. But it's it's the phone, it's
• 1:40:15
  the distraction of technology, whether it's videos, movies,
• 1:40:18
  video games, social media, being on your phone, working on your
• 1:40:21
  phone, whatever is like devices related, right?
• 1:40:25
  Or it's just the activities of daily life creating chronic, you
• 1:40:29
  know, automation and and you could say the the activity stuff
• 1:40:33
  is connected back to maybe economic issues or cultural
• 1:40:36
  issues of, you know, hyper valuing productivity, success,
• 1:40:41
  etcetera. Even it could be academic
• 1:40:42
  activities because they don't have to just be, you know, doing
• 1:40:47
  a nine to five job or you know, going to a sports event.
• 1:40:49
  It could be you're at school, you know, just being engrossed
• 1:40:52
  in education. So you're not creating space for
• 1:40:54
  a relationship and really receiving the other.
• 1:40:57
  I think that's right. And I think that that needs to
• 1:41:00
  be looked at like how do we do that and how do we decrease
• 1:41:03
  these like that? There have to be some rules
• 1:41:06
  about how often the child can be on the devices.
• 1:41:10
  Or the parent. Or the parent.
• 1:41:11
  I that's a very good point because oftentimes that's where
• 1:41:14
  the kids are learning it. You know, I, I met someone
• 1:41:17
  recently that has 2 little kids now and he said we have ATV, but
• 1:41:22
  it's, we only have it, it's one of these TV's that has like a
• 1:41:25
  painting on it. And we never turn it on, you
• 1:41:29
  know, except if it's like maybe for the parents later.
• 1:41:32
  But the kids don't watch television and they're, they're
• 1:41:34
  young enough. And they began to see how even
• 1:41:37
  when they put them in a little bit of daycare, how that changed
• 1:41:41
  the child. And the child had a different
• 1:41:44
  attitude towards things. So they even took them out of
• 1:41:46
  daycare and they said, we want our children to grow up being
• 1:41:50
  innocent and the way we want them to be children and to enjoy
• 1:41:54
  life. And so that's what they were
• 1:41:56
  inculcating in these children. It was beautiful and but it's a
• 1:42:00
  challenge, right? And that it you're right, it's a
• 1:42:03
  challenge for us to look at ourselves like, am I on the
• 1:42:07
  phone all the time? No wonder my child wants to be
• 1:42:10
  on the phone, right? Or how many times have I heard
• 1:42:13
  people I've seen it where the parent, the family's out to
• 1:42:18
  dinner and the parents want to have conversation.
• 1:42:21
  And so they give the child a phone or a device.
• 1:42:24
  And so the child doesn't have to, doesn't get to learn.
• 1:42:27
  Well, they can't act a certain way and they're going to.
• 1:42:28
  They might not be part of this, but they give them maybe
• 1:42:31
  something else to play with. And it's not the device that
• 1:42:35
  activates all the dopamine where I want to be on this all the
• 1:42:38
  time. And the message to the child is
• 1:42:40
  we don't want to engage you. Yeah, you are just.
• 1:42:44
  You're awesome. You just have to grow by
• 1:42:45
  yourself over here until you physically mature into
• 1:42:47
  adulthood, but you're not going to be emotionally, mentally
• 1:42:49
  there with the way that we're. Doing right, it's a.
• 1:42:51
  Scary situation we're in. It is, it is and people have
• 1:42:55
  really decisions to make, but they're, I think a lot of them
• 1:42:59
  are not aware or they don't want to.
• 1:43:01
  We don't want to give up what we like, right?
• 1:43:05
  Parents and. Adorns.
• 1:43:06
  That's right. That's right.
• 1:43:07
  Exactly. What do you think?
• 1:43:10
  Where do you think we're going as a culture and what do you
• 1:43:12
  think is needed? Because I think, you know, the
• 1:43:14
  mental health is really poor today.
• 1:43:16
  Suicidality is that maybe it dipped a little bit down from
• 1:43:20
  where the highs are in COVID, but it's not great.
• 1:43:23
  Everyone's neurotic. You know, people maybe want to
• 1:43:26
  say that term, but everyone has some kind of a condition.
• 1:43:29
  What would you say is the how do you see the future right now of
• 1:43:33
  our culture, where we're headed? And what do you, you know what,
• 1:43:37
  what gives you hope? Does it?
• 1:43:39
  Do you have hope with all of the the problems that we're seeing?
• 1:43:42
  Yeah, I think the the problems are just what we're talking
• 1:43:45
  about, Lila, is that people are very distracted, they're very
• 1:43:50
  driven. Sometimes when people tell me in
• 1:43:53
  the intake that I'll ask them, are you driven?
• 1:43:56
  And they'll say yes. And I'm like little, you know,
• 1:43:59
  bell goes off and I, I want to see how I can help them to learn
• 1:44:04
  in a more peaceful, receptive manner.
• 1:44:07
  And so I think there's so many things now that distract people,
• 1:44:11
  that hurt people, you know, that they're exposed to and that that
• 1:44:17
  needs to be reined in. You know, whether it's devices
• 1:44:21
  or certainly there's a lot of pornography out there, there's a
• 1:44:24
  lot of use of other people. I really think following
• 1:44:30
  everything that we've just said this morning is that people need
• 1:44:34
  to learn how to just be face to face with other people and they
• 1:44:38
  learn. They need to learn again if
• 1:44:40
  they've never learned it or they need to be reminded that the the
• 1:44:44
  most happiness that they will have is in their family and in
• 1:44:48
  their friendships and in their relationships with the Lord.
• 1:44:53
  But that has to be all those things come through a person to
• 1:44:57
  person encounter. They don't come through a
• 1:45:00
  screen, even though we sometimes think that's the case.
• 1:45:05
  But even people who say, was talking to someone yesterday and
• 1:45:08
  they say, well, how much of your work do you do by telehealth?
• 1:45:12
  And I said, well, actually nowadays it's about half because
• 1:45:16
  people will count, will call and they want to work with me from
• 1:45:19
  different points in the state. And, you know, it can be
• 1:45:22
  effective. But we both agreed that it's
• 1:45:25
  much better in person. I like it better in person.
• 1:45:28
  The person does and you actually get more of a sense of the
• 1:45:31
  person. That's true for friendship too,
• 1:45:34
  or your spouse. It's like I'd rather be with
• 1:45:36
  them, talking with them then on the phone or on FaceTime.
• 1:45:41
  I'd rather be with them. So this connection has to come
• 1:45:46
  person to person, but it has to really be face to face.
• 1:45:50
  You know, and long time ago I was, I was saying to this
• 1:45:55
  priest, I said, you know, I really wish there was a way that
• 1:45:59
  I could get the, the whole idea of affirmation out and this
• 1:46:03
  whole work that we do. And, and he said the gospel was
• 1:46:08
  spread one person to another person.
• 1:46:12
  And I thought that was very wise.
• 1:46:14
  And I think that applies to what we're talking about today.
• 1:46:17
  And that's where we learn that we are loved and that we can get
• 1:46:21
  through disagreements and conflict is that I can still
• 1:46:27
  love the person and hopefully they can still love me and we
• 1:46:30
  can disagree. And that's another thing people
• 1:46:33
  are learning these days is a whole nother topic is that
• 1:46:36
  people are cutting off their family because they have
• 1:46:38
  different views about things, which is really not how family
• 1:46:43
  does things. Family needs to be able to talk
• 1:46:46
  through things and maybe be mad at each other and then actually
• 1:46:50
  come back around and say I still love you.
• 1:46:53
  But I totally disagree, you know?
• 1:46:56
  The secret affirmation of the person.
• 1:46:59
  It's so beautiful. Yeah, it really is the gospel in
• 1:47:02
  action. It's so beautiful, Doctor Barr.
• 1:47:06
  Thank you so much. Where can people find your work?
• 1:47:09
  They can go to barsinstitute.com and make sure that they spell
• 1:47:13
  bars with 2A's not 2 Rs. So BAARS institute.com and so
• 1:47:19
  that has a lot of resources. They have my father's books.
• 1:47:24
  I have some lectures on there. There's some that some CD's that
• 1:47:30
  are downloadable and some other resources.
• 1:47:33
  And then if they're in the state of Texas or actually if they
• 1:47:36
  just, if they're interested in therapy, I have someone else
• 1:47:39
  outside of the state of Texas who is a bars life coach who can
• 1:47:43
  help them, but they can go to ihicounseling.com and that's
• 1:47:49
  short for in his imagecounseling.com.
• 1:47:53
  Beautiful. Thank you so much.
• 1:47:54
  Thank you Bars. Thank you so much for having me,
• 1:47:57
  this is wonderful. Thanks so much for listening to
• 1:47:59
  this episode of the Lila Rose Show with Doctor Suzanne Bars.
• 1:48:02
  I hope you found it fascinating. I love these topics.
• 1:48:04
  I think they're so important to help us lead flourishing lives.
• 1:48:07
  Make sure that you are subscribed so you never miss a
• 1:48:09
  future episode and we'll see you next time.
• 1:48:12
  A huge thank you to our partner EWTN, the largest religious
• 1:48:15
  broadcaster in the entire world. EWTN is reaching millions of
• 1:48:18
  people every single day with the beautiful truth of the gospel.
• 1:48:21
  You can watch new episodes of the Lila Rose Show 24 hours
• 1:48:25
  before they hit podcast app over at ewtn.com slash on demand.