Not Getting Weight Loss Results? Your Body KNOWS You Have A Father Wound with Terri Cole

Have you ever wondered why you feel the need to prove yourself, struggle to set boundaries, or constantly put everyone else's needs before your own? In this episode of Live Like a Girl, I'm joined by licensed psychotherapist and bestselling author Terri Cole to discuss her new book, Father Wound, and how our relationships with our fathers can shape our self-worth, relationships, and behaviors long into adulthood. Terri explains why so many high-achieving women struggle with perfectionism, people-pleasing, and overfunctioning. I also open up about my own father wound, the childhood experiences that shaped me, and what I'm learning about healing these patterns during midlife. _ IN THIS EPISODE: What a father wound is and how to recognize the signsWhy childhood criticism can lead to perfectionism and people-pleasingHow father wounds influence relationships and boundariesThe connection between childhood experiences and nervous system patternsWhy old emotional wounds may become more apparent during menopauseHow to begin healing and reclaiming your self-worth_ TERRI'S NEW BOOK, FATHER WOUND: https://fatherwoundbook.com/ _ MORE ON TERRI COLE Website: terricole.com http://terricole.comBook website: fatherwoundbook.com http://fatherwoundbook.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/terricole/FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/TerriColeLCSWYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/terricolenyPodcast: https://terricole.com/itunesFor more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: drmindypelz.com/ep381 https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep381 Connect with Dr. Mindy: Join the Reset Academy https://resetacademy.drmindypelz.com/reset-academy?utm_source=libsyn&utm_medium=podcast&utm_term=&utm_content=loc-description&utm_campaign=reset-academyWatch the episodes on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DrMindyPelz?sub_confirmation=1Follow Dr. Mindy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dr.mindypelz/Subscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletter https://www.drmindypelz.com/ Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mindy Pelz?

  Before we get back into the episode, I want to ask you something. When was the last time you paused, like genuinely paused, long enough to ask yourself, what do I want from this next phase of my life? Because I know a lot of you have spent years taking care of everyone else. And somewhere in there, your own needs moved to the bottom of the list. This needs to change. I want you to start making room for yourself again. And I realize it's actually more difficult than it appears, which is why I am so excited

• 0:45Mindy Pelz?

  to share my new card deck with you all. It's called Who Are You Becoming? Keep it somewhere you'll see it. Pull a card with your morning coffee, take a breath, and spend a few minutes reflecting on what comes up for you as you read the question on the card. Give yourself permission to listen deeply to that inner voice, the one that you may have been turning away from, who wants to speak now. You don't have to figure out your whole future today, which is why these cards are so powerful, because they allow you to take each understanding of yourself and what you are looking forward to in the future, step by step.

• 1:30Mindy Pelz?

  And you start with a small, simple moment for yourself. Who You Are Becoming is available for preorder now. Just visit discover.hayhouse.com/whoareyoubecoming. I am so excited to share these cards with you. I'm even more excited to see who you discover in these cards. And I can't wait for these to arrive at your doorstep. Enjoy.

• 2:01Mindy Pelz?

  Hey, Dr. Mindy here, and welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast, where I bring you icons, disruptors, educators, scientists, and doctors that show you what can be possible when you love and celebrate the female body you are blessed to live in. Let's dive in.

• 2:26Mindy Pelz?

  When I went on the Today Show last December to promote my new book, Age Like a Girl, my parents watched from their home in California. Two hours after I came off the air, my phone rang. I had never been on the Today Show before. This was literally the biggest moment of my career. And my dad's first question to me was, what happened to your hair?

• 2:53Mindy Pelz?

  At the moment, I laughed it off. I told him a stylist had done it. And I hung up the phone and realized that I felt like I was about 10 years old again.

• 3:05Mindy Pelz?

  I've spent a lot of time in therapy over the last couple of years, going back through the wounds of my childhood. And I have discovered that much of how I think and behave today started with the voice of my father. I remember telling my therapist one day, my father constantly told me I was lazy. Haven't I proved him wrong yet? When do I get to put this down?

• 3:32Mindy Pelz?

  I also realized somewhere in my 40s, that when I walk into a room and a man is leading, I perform. I show how capable I am. I try to become the favorite. And I finally caught myself and thought, what am I doing? And it all goes back to a little girl who wanted her dad to really see her. Today's guest has a name for that. And it changed how I understand myself. It's called a father wound. And her new book, named Father Wound, will no doubt change the way so many of us look at our behaviors.

• 4:14Mindy Pelz?

  There's a line in her book that I literally cannot stop thinking about. Here's the line. At its core, a father wound is a worthiness wound. It's where you learn that who you are isn't enough to earn the love and attention you need. So you become different, do more, be more, and it doesn't require a terrible father. Terri points out that even an attuned dad raised us inside a patriarchy that planted its own seeds of limitations. When she gathered 650 women who identified as having a father wound and followed them

• 4:59Mindy Pelz?

  over two years, she found something I see in my community every day. A wound doesn't stay in childhood. It follows us into our bodies, our boundaries, our careers, and our relationships. This is why I have brought you Terri Cole for the third time. Terri is a licensed psychotherapist with 30 years in practice. She is one of the world's leading voices on boundaries and is the author of Boundary Boss. Her new book, the first of its kind on this subject, gives women a step-by-step blueprint

• 5:41Mindy Pelz?

  for understanding what they receive from their fathers and what they didn't. In this conversation, Terri and I talk about why the father wound can look so different from woman to woman, why it so often shows up as perfectionism, people pleasing, embracing for impact, and why this work gets louder after 50 when the neurochemical armor finally comes down. If you've ever caught yourself performing for someone who couldn't really see you, this one is for you. Her book comes out November 17.

• 6:21Mindy Pelz?

  And if you preorder it, you'll get free access to a four-hour deep dive into the Father Wound Blueprint with Terri on October 24. You can find all the details at fatherwoundbook.com. I am so honored, excited, and humbled to bring you this conversation. Let's dive in. Terri Cole.

• 6:48Mindy Pelz?

  Terri Cole, you are coming back to my podcast probably for the third time because I love your books so much. So let me start by thanking you for being here again.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate your support.

• 7:05Mindy Pelz?

  Okay, I have to start this book. You had me at the title. And then, as I dove into the book, I have to start with a quote that pretty much sums up who I am. So let me read it. I know you know it because you wrote it, but I want my audience to hear this. At its core, a father wound is a worthiness wound. It's where you learned that who you were wasn't enough to earn the love and attention you needed, and that you had to be different, do more, or somehow be more to be worthy of receiving it. What the heck is a father wound?

• 7:49Mindy Pelz?

  And why does this quote hit me so deeply? And please tell me I am not alone.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  You're still not alone. So let's just start with how the book is being received, even just in the early phases.

• 8:05Mindy Pelz?

  Please.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm gathering with women. I gathered 650 women online who are self-identified as having father wounds. Like, it is all of us. Because here's the thing, even if you had an attuned father, which most of us didn't, but let's say you did, we were all raised in a patriarchy, which also planted all of these seeds of limitation and the weaker sex and all of those things that we're still dealing with. So back to your original question. What is a father? And let's just start there so that we're sort of all on the same page.

• 8:42Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, please.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  So this is a psychological and emotional injury that stems from growing up with a father or father figure who was absent, addicted, abusive, not emotionally available to you. Perhaps they passed away, someone who was hypercritical of you, someone who was very authoritarian, it could have been a very religious upbringing, very angry, no patience, judgmental of you physically, or your beauty, or your brains. It's basically an imprint left when a daughter doesn't receive presence, protection, or emotional

• 9:25Speaker 01

  attunement from her father, and the patriarchal culture reinforces the wound, making it so easy to miss and hard to name.

• 9:35Mindy Pelz?

  You said something in there that I just want to be clear. Is this the father wound? Is it deeper for women than it is for men?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  I would say it's different. So what the expectations that we have of fathers to daughters is different than the expectations we had from fathers to sons. What they're supposed to teach, how, what, what that relationship is supposed to prepare us for. They are different things. So I wouldn't say deeper, I would just say different. And when people were like, you know, a lot of people have asked, why didn't you just write this book for both? The same reason Dr. Shapali has a conscious parenting for boys and that their sons and daughters, because there is a difference in the way that you do it. I think that it's invisible, though, like part of what makes this such a hard wound

• 10:28Speaker 01

  to put your finger on, it's very much like my high functioning codependency, that so many women, father wounded women are very successful. Cause we're working overtime, we're dancing as fast as we can to prove how worthy we are.

• 10:43Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  So nobody looks to you and you're like, gee, I hope you're okay. And nobody looks to me being like, oh, Terry is okay. Cause they know you're always okay and so am I.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  So you don't walk around with some obvious wound and your life isn't like this dysfunctional mess for other people to go, oh, I see there's a problem there. So I think that that we just keep going and going and going. And that a lot of times in midlife is when we're sick of over functioning, over giving and overdoing, because these are all the ways that father wounds show up in our lives.

• 11:17Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting you say that because I remember with, as I've recently in the last couple of years have really gone into my childhood traumas, let's just call it that. And before I dove into those, I was like, I had a great childhood. I had loving parents. Everything was great. And then when I dove in there, I was like, wow, what I, the messaging I received in the household I grew up in has informed everything that I do today. And one of the things my father constantly did is tell me I was lazy. And so when I was in therapy at one point, I had turned to my therapist and I was like, do you think I proved him wrong now?

• 12:00Mindy Pelz?

  Like, did I, did I prove him wrong? And when do I get to put that down? Right? Like, there's not a lazy bone in my body yet. I realized it had been running me. So when you say we are high functioning codependence, talk a little more about that personality, because so many of the women that listen to my podcast are going to resonate with that and not necessarily make that link back to their father.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So let's talk about the symptoms, like what you might be experiencing in your life now. So perfectionism is one of them, right? This need to be perfect because we sort of don't feel like we're enough. Self doubt, people pleasing, we know this obviously, having a harsh inner critic is also part of it.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Disregulated emotions, right? Like having anxiety, being irritable, feeling easily overwhelmed, but still going. Like that's another thing is that we just, we're just like the Energizer Bunny, though. We figure it out, we'll keep going. Self abandonment is a major, this tendency to abandon your own needs, whether that's your time, your finances, your body, your own, your own emotional well being. I'm having crappy boundaries and they can be either way, right? It could be either difficulty setting boundaries, right? Your boundaries can either be too rigid, where you're very much like my way or the highway, or they can be too malleable, where you're more like a pushover or peacekeeper, too self sacrificing, too accommodating.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Fear of abandonment, this intense fear of being left can either make you cling in relationships or make you avoid real intimacy. And then these last three that I think are really probably the most telltale sign, over functioning, which we know that means in relationships, that means feeling overly responsible for things. Hyper independence.

• 14:03Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  So this is difficulty trusting others or accepting help, like it's, we just don't trust people to do it. And we know when you're so highly capable, you know, you can do it and you know the way you want it done. And another thing with father wounded women is often we don't want to be a burden to other people. We don't want to take up too much space. We don't want, we don't want to over stare our welcome. Again, all of that is insecurity based on this worthiness wound, right? And then hypervigilance is the last one I want to talk about, which is where you had to pay attention.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  When you're a father wounded daughter, often you need to pay attention. So even though my father, my father wound was a neglect wound. I had a father who had four daughters. I was his fourth daughter, his last chance for a boy. I had this whole trip. I thought I was born the wrong gender. So I was endlessly chip on my shoulder, proving, proving how smart I was, how successful I would be, all the money that I would make. And I did all those things. But

• 15:17Speaker 01

  part of what we want to look at is what, what is driving your behavior? Choice, desire, passion, or fear, right? Fear of failure. Like I really feel like with father wounded daughters, we often have this very profound fear of failure because our success, at least for me, this was the one connection I could rely on with my father, that if I got straight A's, if I got good grades, if I, if I became successful and made money, he would respect me, even though he still didn't know me.

• 15:54Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Okay. So that, that hits with you too. But that

• 15:59Mindy Pelz?

  Even today.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Same.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  I mean, listen, you get into recovery, but there's still a reality that a lot of these things travel with us. Um, one last thing I want to say about the hypervigilance though, is that we become these super empaths, these women with antennas that go like to Mars, where you're so attuned, right? To other people, feelings.

• 16:26Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  What's going on in a room? I can come in and I, there could be 200 people and I can zero in on the fight that is happening in the back left corner, right? I'm still like, oh, what do I need to do to stop that from escalating? Let me see.

• 16:40Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Why do I feel responsible for the fight in the back left corner? I can't explain to you, but I do, because this is again, the hyper responsibility that we feel. So those are some of the top experiences you may be suffering from or the symptoms you may be suffering from if you have an unhealed home.

• 17:02Mindy Pelz?

  It's so interesting because the longer that I have been educating women on metabolic health and on hormone balancing and doing it through lifestyle, I start to see patterns of people, women specifically, who, how they receive the information that I'm teaching them. And when I was listening to you say that, that list of father wound byproducts, let's call it that, um, I see not just myself, literally every single thing you said is accurate, but I, I end up with seeing the woman who's like, how many macros did you need me to do for protein? You wanted me just to do 30, right? Was that 30 or was that 31?

• 17:48Mindy Pelz?

  I want, I need to like, and there are moments where I'm like, I don't know. It's like around 30. Did, okay, I, when I close my fasting window, do I close it at noon or should I do it at 12:30? Like there's so much of that in women. And I've been trying to figure out what is it in us that's so scared to make a mistake? And I dove all into the mother wound. We did that with Kelly McDaniel and mother hunger. Um, and that was really helpful. But what you're saying is so potent and I'm wondering if it's because your dad is a reflection of the patriarch. So you're getting it from both sides.

• 18:32Mindy Pelz?

  You're getting it in the home and then you're getting it outside the home and then you become paralyzed to make a mistake. And am I accurate in that?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Oh, I definitely think that the patriarchy reinforces whatever the limiting messages were that you received. And sometimes if you had a dad who died or, or who was in jail, you never saw him or was, um, you know, abandoned the family, you still have a wound because people will say, how can I have a wound? But we have to think about our fathers as our first experience with the masculine. And so if my dad didn't necessarily think that I was someone who was worth prioritizing and he didn't, or protecting, and he didn't, that's just the truth. That told me something about my value and about what I needed to do.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  It didn't matter what I looked like or how accomplished I was. You're talking about this core injury of feeling unvalued, right? Like why, why was I out when I was a sophomore in high school with like guys from the football team at two in the morning on a Tuesday? Cause everyone was asleep at the wheel. And luckily, Korean up and God awful happened, could have, certainly.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  But those messages, whether you consciously know them or not, they are planting in your unconscious mind about what you need to do to stay valuable. What you need to do, you need to add value, or you need to be the hyperresponsible one, you need to make a lot of money, or whatever those things are. So it affects us in ways, when you're high functioning, that again, society would be like, you're doing great. There is no problem there.

• 20:31Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  But you and I, we know that there's something else that happens, which is you get burnt out.

• 20:38Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  And you get exhausted, you become resentful, right? We do all these, all the things for all the people, and then we hate all the people.

• 20:45Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Right? That we're mad at all the people.

• 20:49Mindy Pelz?

  Right, at all, right, at all the people that we signed ourself up to help and to do. That's, that, that's definitely an old pattern, for sure. Does it, does the birth order matter? Like, my sister and I have spent quite a bit of time talking about my dad as I've uncovered, you know, my father wound. And she has a very different perspective. She's an older sister than I do. And one of the things she told me that really hit home is she said, oh, I never respected dad. So anything that came out of his mouth, I just wrote off as he's being ridiculous. Even at a young age, she felt that. Yeah, and she was, she was a, a brill, she is brilliant.

• 21:32Mindy Pelz?

  She was born with photographic memory. They had trouble figuring out what schools to put her in because she was so smart. And my dad just loved that. He had this successful daughter who went to Princeton and went to Yale, and he loved that. He thought she would be president. And she was like, and I thought he was, he was a doofus. Like, I just didn't respect him. Whereas I, on the other hand, did everything he told me to do. And, and largely so I wouldn't get smacked as a young child.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yes, because you don't need to teach kids how to lessen their own suffering.

• 22:07Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Right? We watch, we're like, oh, this is the behavior that will lessen the amount of painful stuff that comes my way. So adaptive, these kids are. But let, let's compare the sibling things, because, you know, Dr. Marielle Bouquet, um, I don't know if she's been on your, your show, but she's a friend.

• 22:27Mindy Pelz?

  Long time ago, yeah, a long time ago.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  And she's a psychologist, and she wrote a book called, uh, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergeneration Trauma. And she, her quote is, no two siblings ever have the same parents or exist really in the same household.

• 22:40Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  And I think that's, I quoted it in the book because I think it's very accurate. We have different stories, different wounds, different memories, right?

• 22:49Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Everyone lands in a different version of the household and experiences their father differently from their sibling. So it's not at all uncommon that you're like, what?

• 23:00Mindy Pelz?

  We would have a different, yeah, yeah. The interesting thing, though, is in my situation, and I think this probably extrapolates out into a lot of families, I was compared to her. So he was like, she's getting straight A's and you're sitting on the couch procrastinating your homework. Like, be like her. So I was always compared to her. And, um, and so that's, that was a big amplification of what I wasn't. And I'm wondering, like, if I, if I had been, yeah, if I'd been an only child, or if it had been a boy ahead of me, like, would that have made a difference?

• 23:39Speaker 01

  How do you think him doing that, though, impacted your relationship with your sister?

• 23:45Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah, that's, that's another great question, because we've had a very turbulent relationship. And, um, yeah, and so, you know, I, I've, we, we've done, I've done a lot of therapy, we've had a lot of conversations about our upbringing, and to your point, it's a ver, we had very different experiences living in the same household.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:07Mindy Pelz?

  Um, and I, I've done, I've chatted with, uh, Dr. Nicole Lepara has been on this podcast, and, um, nobody was protecting me in my household. And so I had to learn to protect myself from even my sister. Nobody was, was reining her in. I just, so I learned, like, that, I really resonate with what you said about you walk into a room, and I can tell you immediately the person that's hurting in the room. And it's just an innate skill that I had to, um, figure out, because the person hurting in the room may cause the room to go into chaos. And if the room goes into chaos, I'm, I'm, I'm under, I've got problems now.

• 24:48Mindy Pelz?

  So I learned to try to keep the room really calm, so no, none of the three of them blew up.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Yep. So it's all, when we think about it, there's so much control, right? The, when you think about codependency, at its core, it is a desire overt or covert to control other people's outcomes or situations.

• 25:09Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Right? We don't want there to be any problems, right? We, and the only way to stay, feel like we could stay safe is to be as high functioning as we are in controlling so many things. But of course, there is a better way. That's why I wrote a whole book. But we need to identify, like, what is this that is happening in, in our lives now? When you think about what we were handed, and we're in this similar generation, for generations, we were handed like this ID, this image of father as ruler, right? He was supposedly the protector, the disciplinarian, the provider.

• 25:43Mindy Pelz?

  Wait till your father gets home. Did you ever see that show? I watched that show all the time, and I was like, yeah, yeah, wait till he gets home. We don't know what's showing up.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. We don't know what's happening, but you knew it was a threat. Not on that show, I don't think, but in real life, if anyone said that, it was a threat. Because he was somebody you were supposed to look up to, but not really know.

• 26:04Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  And in my family system, we were all terrified of my father. So he walked in a room and we left. We would be like, hey dad, and literally, it, it could be the last two minutes of like a movie. And if my father came down and he was gonna take over the TV, we would all just get up and scatter. That's how, um, we were all terrified, from all my sisters, and it wasn't just me. And I remember going in fourth grade, I went to my friend's house, and her dad came home early, and I immediately was like, quickly putting my sneakers on and grabbing my stuff. I was nine, maybe. And I remember, I was like, I gotta go. You know, and, and she was like, where are you going? I was hopping down the steps as I was putting my sneaker on to like, get out as fast as

• 26:50Speaker 01

  possible. And I bumped into her dad, terrified, uh, because I was afraid of anybody's dad. And he was like, stay, right? And, and he was like, stay for dinner.

• 27:01Mindy Pelz?

  Any male authority, yeah.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yes. And I was, I was afraid to say no, so I was like, okay. And that was the first time I ever saw a fun dad, a not scary dad. And I was mesmerized. I was like, wait a minute, somebody has a father that is not scary? I can't, I thought all fathers were scary.

• 27:25Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  So you, you said a good thing, though, Mindy. How do you think this impacted your relationship with authority? Because of course, that's another thing that is profoundly impacted by having a father.

• 27:36Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. So, and I, I realized that in, somewhere in my forties, that if I walk into any group, and if the leader is a man, I will put on a performance to show how capable I am to become the favorite, to be like, and I'm like, I caught that somewhere in my forties. I'm like, what am I doing? I'm like, oh, that was the inkling that, uh, this goes back to my dad. I just wanted him to see me. He just didn't, he couldn't completely see me. One of the foods that I think is often overlooked, and we should be having it with every meal, especially women, is extra virgin olive oil.

• 28:21Mindy Pelz?

  And let me explain why I think this particular food source is so important to pay attention to. Olive oil contains polyphenols. And you've heard me talk a lot about these plant compounds, especially when we talk about repairing your microbiome. Olive oil has one of the highest concentrations of polyphenols. And polyphenols will go into your gut, and they will make your microbes so happy that they start making you serotonin and dopamine and melatonin, and they'll boost your immune system and regulate your energy and help you boost your metabolism.

• 29:04Mindy Pelz?

  This is literally how powerful this plant compound is for your gut. So when you're putting a meal together, I want you thinking about the olive oil you're reaching for. For starters, how fresh is it? If it has kind of a rancid feel to it or smell to it, get rid of it. You, your body really deserves fresh olive oil. Also, my next question is, do you enjoy the taste of olive oil? It's funny, because there are actually olive oil sommeliers out there, because the taste profile of olive oil is vastly different, depending on the orchard in which it was pressed from.

• 29:46Mindy Pelz?

  This is why I'm a huge fan of the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club. They give you a chance to try farm-fresh extra virgin olive oil from small farms that have a fresh, grassy flavor. You can pour a little into a dish and taste it. And then you can try it over vegetables, you can obviously put it in your salads, you could try it on an avocado. Any meal that I eat, I am drizzling fresh pressed olive oil over my meal. And so I want you to get familiar with the taste profile of olive oil. So I have asked Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club to give you a discount for doing that, and

• 30:29Mindy Pelz?

  they have an incredible offer. You just have to go to getfreshpells.com, and you can get two bottles, and they'll give you the third one for free. Now, I promise you, when you get those three bottles, I want you to pull the cap off, and I want you to taste them and see how vastly different olive oil can be. And if you don't love them, they offer you a hundred percent money-back guarantee, and you don't even have to send the bottle back. So all you've got to do is visit getfreshpells.com for three bottles, but you're only paying for two. That's getfresh, P E L Z, dot com.

• 31:11Mindy Pelz?

  I can't wait to hear what you think of this incredible olive oil. It is a meal changer. Talk a little bit about this blueprint. You have a father wound blueprint. Because I think it's important, I'm hoping that people who are listening, you know, are at the core of what I'm trying to do with women and help women discover is how much you can love your body and how miraculous your body is. And the more, the deeper I go into that, the more I realize 99.9% of women hate their bodies and they talk poorly to themselves.

• 31:53Mindy Pelz?

  And there's so much in that. It could be a critical mother. It could be the patriarch. And now you are offering me another lens, which is it could be, you know, your father. My dad, by the way, always comment, commented on what I wore. He always commented, even to this day, he'll comment. This is a crazy one, Terry. Do you know, when I went on the Today Show in December, he watched from, from his home in California. And he and my mom called me two hours. I'd never been on the Today Show. They called me two hours afterwards and he goes, "What happened to your hair? What did they do to your hair?" And I said, "Dad, I had a stylist come." And he goes,

• 32:39Mindy Pelz?

  "I know, but I didn't like what, did they straighten your hair? They did something to your hair that didn't look like you." And I, and that was the first time I stood up to him and I said, "Dad, I, I just went on the Today Show. That was a big deal for me. And I'm going to ask you to not critique how I looked." And he's like, "Okay, okay." Like he'll, he'll listen. I mean, he's 90 now, but it's just crazy how it just keeps going. So, you know, for women that are resonating with this conversation, where do we begin? How do we start to unwind this?

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Well, let's start with, before we get into the blueprint, just quickly, there, there's this block to entry for a lot of women because they feel guilty or they feel like, "I have a great relationship with my father now. So why do I gotta talk about what happened 40 years ago or 30 years ago or 20 years ago?"

• 33:32Mindy Pelz?

  Well said.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  So I want to just get clear that this, you do not need your father's participation or his permission, his presence, nothing, right? This is finally just for you about you, just about you.

• 33:50Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're always maximizing. We always gotta consider all the other people like in our lives at all times. This experience with this book is just a gift that you can give yourself. You could have had a perfectly fine dad and you were raised in a patriarch. You trust me, go get father, you need this book. Like, we're not, because women will also say to me, "My father did way better than his father."

• 34:16Mindy Pelz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  But the five-year-old, then you doesn't give a shit. If your father wasn't there for you, like, I understand that, but we're so used to protecting other people and making excuses and minimizing our own experiences, that I invite you to have faith that there's something in it for you to simply, honestly, focus on what you experienced in childhood. And I walk you through exactly how to do it. Don't worry, we don't linger too long. But we have to do it because the child within you knows what happened. And she wants to make sure that other people know what happened and that you know what happened.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  So all we're doing is raising awareness around what you actually experienced. We're doing exercises around it. We're integrating it into the beautiful tapestry of your life. Right? But those things don't go away if you don't honor them. People think that time will heal.

• 35:21Mindy Pelz?

  Changes it. Yeah.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:22Mindy Pelz?

  Do, do you find that women, once they hit like 50 and over, the father wound actually reveals itself more? Because that's the one thing I noticed in my research for Age Like a Girl is because of this neurochemical shift, it's, I called it the neurochemical armor. It like comes down and all of a sudden you're like, "Wait, I'm, can't hold on to a lot of these traumas that I could turn away from." So I just want to dovetail on what you're saying because I'm, if women are like, "Whoa, I didn't really think about this until I hit menopause." I, from my lens, I say, "Welcome." That's the purpose of menopause.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And I absolutely see pre-menopause, we have too many Fs to give for all the people and all the things that have got all this bandwidth.

• 36:15Mindy Pelz?

  Yep.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Post-menopause, very few Fs to give, like, like less Fs to give. It's funny, I just did, we could do hard things a couple of weeks ago, talking about this and Glennon had said, um, yeah, they're so great. Glennon had said about her just not having the bandwidth since menopause. She's like, "I still want to," because I said, to me, it was more like, "I can't care about the amount that I used to care about because I don't have the bandwidth." And she said, "I still do though, Terry. My problem is I physically can't. Like I, my mind still wants to control and tell people what to do, but I'm so physically exhausted that I can't do it."

• 37:00Speaker 01

  I said, "Either way, menopause is sort of sparing us in a way from this over-functioning." And the change in hormones certainly, as we said, Mindy, I, I think definitely has something to do with it.

• 37:14Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And I just want to point that out for women that are listening that are like, "Oh my gosh, I resonate with this now. Why didn't I see it 20 years ago?" And I, you know, as, as a good friend told me, "It's because you were drugged on estrogen." And estrogen blocked you from a lot of things that you couldn't see. And it made you an incredible people pleaser and to your point, a high-functioning codependent. So you, you know, we, we don't have a tendency to see all of that. So, okay, but continue. I want to know how we, how we move forward from this wound.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  All right. So the Downloaded Father Wound Blueprint, and this is an exercise, and maybe with all my books, it's the same in that you don't just read them, you do them. And it's all in one place because I, I use all, you know, these are all anecdotal, but it's also case studies. It's also my own life. So there's tons of stories in the book because that, and I did famous women too. Kate Hudson, a whole, a whole bunch of different famous women who have been very vocal about having a father wound and then sharing sort of how they came out on the other end of it.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  So when you think about your Downloaded Father Wound Blueprint, what you experienced is completely different than what I experienced, but yet we end up in a very similar place. Like there's many, many roads to having a father wound that can look different, but the symptoms rarely look the same. So what the questions that you start to answer in the Downloaded Father Wound Blueprint is about how was fatherhood regarded in the home that you grew up in, right? Were people, were you supposed to talk to your father directly? In my house, not that much. Were, were people afraid of him or did they not have respect for him?

• 39:03Speaker 01

  What kind of a culture, right? So we came from a patriarchal culture where men were above women. We know that. All of those things impact what happens to us. And then you have the, I wanted to talk a little bit about the co-wounding, right?

• 39:22Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, I was, I had that in my notes, like what is co-wounding?

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Okay. Um, then finishing the, the Downloaded Blueprint though, what ends up happening is when you answer these really pretty extensive questions in the book, you end up getting a really clear visual of what you experienced. What, what was masculinity supposed to be? What were fathers supposed to be like? What, and then I also teach you about good fathering and less than good fathering, because if you didn't have good fathering, it's hard to know, we think we know. But so many of the women in the group that I gathered, because there really, honestly, Mindy, there was not a lot of research out here about father wounds.

• 40:06Mindy Pelz?

  That's crazy.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  People can't stop talking about mother wounds.

• 40:09Mindy Pelz?

  I know, in all angles.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  In all angles. Can't wait to blame women to a degree. But, so what I ended up doing is I gathered 650 women from my community who were self-identified as having a father wound. And I asked them all of these questions, you know, and did a massive survey. And I met with them multiple times over a two-year period. And I also created a course long before I wrote the book because this was, there wasn't much out there. And I, I was like, "I have to be in the trenches with the people having this experience." And part of why there wasn't that much research is because the researchers in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, they were looking where they expected to find problems, which is in the mother-child relationship.

• 40:56Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Right?

• 40:59Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah, right. Yeah. We always go to the mom first.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  We do. And the dads were like, "In 1975, your father was babysitting his own kids."

• 41:09Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Like, nobody expected your father to be attuned to you.

• 41:16Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  But the, the point is in not studying it, then we minimize its impact. And what I saw over and over again in my therapy practice of thirty years is its impact.

• 41:31Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  So I was like, why isn't there more, why are there no seminal texts about father wounds? Well, I guess because I needed to write it, which I did.

• 41:39Mindy Pelz?

  Um, yes, excellent.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  So you would figure out what, once you get your own downloaded blueprint and you sort of have a better idea of what is going on, then, then we look to the home and we go, okay, so what is with co-wounding, which is also a concept that I basically created for this book. Um, because it makes a difference. You know, attachment theory, traditional, and you know, there's lots of different problems with attachment theory. We all know this, okay, fine. But the conventional wisdom says that you have one primary attachment style. And I say, and in my work that I've seen, I don't think that's true. I think that we have two.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  And that you are, you know, my, for me, my attachment to my father was anxious and insecure. That followed me into my romantic relationships and it's not always like that. It's not always linear like that for me at once. My relationship with my mother, right, the co-wounding says this, how the mother reacts and responds to the father, how they behave, what's going on. That, that either can make it better or make it worse. It either amplifies the wound or it buffers the wound. So, right, that child, that original injury gets intensified and reshaped by how the other caregiver responds to it.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  So you think about a father's absence or abuse or neglect, that doesn't just impact the daughter directly. It also impacts the mother, if there's a mother figure in there, in, in the mix, whose emotional responses magnify it or buffer it. Um, and many mothers.

• 43:20Mindy Pelz?

  So like, so if the mother allowed it to continue or dismissed it, oh, he had a hard day or, you know, just sort of somehow normalized it, that would be a co-wound. That would be example of a co-wound.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Or maybe she made it worse, maybe she glommed on, right? Maybe she was yelling or hit you and then you, her saying you deserve it or whatever it is. Denying, I have clients who were being sexually abused and the mother turned a blind eye. Said that's not happening, right? So painful. So in my own personal experience, I had this incredible relationship with my mother. She just turned eighty-nine yesterday. I still have an incredible relationship with her. But she was super attuned and very present and such a believer. Like she was like, you're amazing, you could do anything, always, always, no, no matter what. So that, well, how did that impact me?

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Well, I have the same friends I've had since nineteen seventy-three, right? Women I always got, I was like, of course, because these people are safe. So you, I understand, you know? And men were people to be manipulated and managed.

• 44:34Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 44:34Speaker 01

  Nobody to have a heart connection to, forget it. So that's what I'm talking about would be the co-wounding and also how it impacts the attachment. And there's different ways this can play out, of course, depending on what your experience is. But I do think it's worth certainly looking at, and I've seen it over and over in my practice.

• 44:53Mindy Pelz?

  So in your book, you'd walk through like steps where people can start to unravel and see this. My, my feeling is some of the people listening to this podcast, this might be the first time they've ever heard of it. Like you said, it hasn't really been brought to the mainstream. So I always love to make sure we have clear action items. People can go through and they can work through their behaviors, see their behaviors through this father wound a little more clearly. Is that what you talk about when you say a blueprint?

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yes, but we also look at your past relationships. We, we look at what did you learn about yourself? And what are you repeating? Right? So a lot of it is, we do, we look at present life. Cause what I care about Mindy is helping women have a happier, healthier, more expansive, more joyful, more spicy, more amazing, more juicy lives. That's it.

• 45:46Mindy Pelz?

  Amazing.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  So we look at the now, like what is blocking you from doing that?

• 45:51Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Where are you feeling, um, resentful? Right? I think the last time I was here, we talked about doing a resentment inventory, which I talk about in this.

• 46:01Mindy Pelz?

  Yes.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Yes, right? So I talk about that in this book as well, because what that does, right? Is it's exactly what you're talking about. It shows us, it's a GPS to situations and potentially relationships that need our attention. Because bringing it back to the, this original wound, often what we experience at the hands or in the, in the environment of our fathers, we, we learn to tolerate stuff.

• 46:31Mindy Pelz?

  It's true.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Too much stuff.

• 46:34Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  And so one thing that we're always looking at is what am I tolerating

• 46:41Speaker 01

  right now in my life that I'd rather not? Big and small. So I help you because you guys, there's all the step-by-step guidances in this book. You don't even like need a workbook, like it's all in this book.

• 46:54Mindy Pelz?

  Thank you.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  So that you're welcome. One-stop shop.

• 46:59Mindy Pelz?

  For the past two years, I have been in a stuck nervous system. A lot of you have heard me talk about it here on this podcast. And I've been experimenting with all kinds of ways to balance my nervous system. And I gotta tell you something that's gonna sound incredibly backwards. Because what I've learned is that sometimes the fastest way out of a stuck nervous system or out of fight or flight isn't more calm. It's not sit your butt down on the couch. It's actually a little bit of heat and light. Now stay with me because I discovered something that I'm really excited to share with you.

• 47:43Mindy Pelz?

  There has been something that my Sunlighten Infrared Sauna has done to my nervous system that no other tool has been able to accomplish. At the end of a crazy long day, a few minutes in a gentle heat with some warm red light on me, and all of a sudden I feel myself coming down from the chaos of the day. And let's be really honest, we could all use a way, a quick way to get out of fight or flight, not only so we can feel better, but so that we can be our best.

• 48:22Mindy Pelz?

  And we can show up in a very balanced way for the people that we love. For me, this is the rare kind of self-care that's actually doing something. And what I love about Infrared Sauna is that the heat is gentle and comfortable. It's like, it's like sitting in the sun and you instantly feel relaxed. But you're in your own home, there's no schedule. There's no driving to a gym to share sauna space with anyone. Sunlighten has been the pioneer in infrared for more than twenty-five years.

• 49:01Mindy Pelz?

  And their science holds up, which you know me, I love the science behind a good health tool. If that sounds familiar and you're needing another tool, I can honestly tell you that this has been a game changer for me. So go check them out. Visit sunlighten.com slash Dr. Mindy and use the code DRMINDY to save up to twenty-one hundred dollars on your sauna purchase. And plus the shipping is free. This is honestly self-care that I could absolutely get behind. Sunlighten, thank you. I am so grateful for this tool.

• 49:45Mindy Pelz?

  I just thought of this. Do you think, you know, not to get too political, but do you think that we have a country with a bunch of father wounds for what we're tolerating in authority right now?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  I do. I think the patriarchy is, I'm hoping it's like the last gasp of my wish. I'm not sure that's true, but I do see that how father wounds in my clients, so much of it is coming to the surface now also because of how enraged women are about what's happening politically. And then you're starting to connect those dots of like, oh, I also felt this in childhood because I had no power over, for some of them had domineering fathers or whatever. So yeah, I do absolutely see there's a connection.

• 50:32Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And, and my, my other thought as you're talking, and this one's a really challenging one, I think for a lot of women, or I mean, people in general, our age, is now, my sister and I are taking care of my 90-year-old father. We are, we are taking care of him financially. We are taking care of him emotionally. And this is part of why this topic is so at the surface, because here's this man who by all means was challenging for each one of us

• 51:10Mindy Pelz?

  in a different way. And we're having to be the parent to him now at 90 years old. And I'm watching how she and I handle this. She's like, peace out, wasn't there for me. I'm not going to be there for him. I don't respect him still. And I'm sort of a little more like, how do we take care of this man who we call dad? Like, how do we do this? And he's got, he's, the thing that's also really hard with a lot of dads, and my dad fits into this, is he's full of love. He has so much love in his heart. It's just wrapped up in a lot of dysfunction.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Yep. It's interesting, though. You have different roles, you and your sister. And so it's like you're fulfilling the dutiful, more obligated, more of an HFC. She probably was more of the scapegoat in the family system. So she has less of that compulsion to do it. I have a lot of women in my community that we are like a pay community and maximize all the things, who this is a real, they're at a real crossroads.

• 52:24Mindy Pelz?

  Right. It's a crossroads. Yeah.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep. And most are very, they feel duty-bound to do the right thing, even when their father didn't do the right thing. Now, imagine a situation where the, there was egregious abuse, and you're still left with someone who sexually abused you, or physically beat you up often. And now you're left to inconvenience your life, spend tons of money, do all the things. And they're like, do I have to do that? And I think that each person

• 53:05Speaker 01

  has to come up with their own, what is the right thing for them to do morally and ethically within themselves? Because we have to live with ourselves after this person is gone. And it's such a personal decision. Like, your sister may be perfectly fine with having limited contact with him. Maybe hopefully she's financially contributing to, so it's not just you. But, you know, there's, no.

• 53:35Mindy Pelz?

  We have, we've split, we've split the roles, though. We've split the roles. She's managing their finances, because he can, he can no longer properly do that.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Okay. So, so there is some, some responsibility taken off of you. But, but it's hard when, when we've been the good girls forever and ever, that I, there's a cost, though, Mindy. Like, there still is a cost to you and, and to me too, because even being in recovery, you know, you're still figuring out how much over-functioning am I still doing, right? Like, you can be in recovery and you're still kind of being hyper-responsible about things. And I guess, yeah, I guess it could be worse.

• 54:18Mindy Pelz?

  And you feel like, again, you know, those people that are listening to this and resonating with it, you know, this will go on audio and it will go on YouTube. Put in the comments if you're resonating with this, because it's, it's a real day-to-day struggle at this point in my life of like, how much do I give out of responsibility because he's my dad? And how do I protect myself? And, and that has been, I luckily have a great therapist, but that has been a real challenge on, you know, how do you, and I think a lot of people, we

• 54:58Mindy Pelz?

  don't talk enough about taking care of these parents that wounded us. And every, everybody, nobody gets out of childhood, I've learned now, without some kind of wound. But the deeper the wound, the more difficult it is when you're 57 years old, and I gotta turn around and now take care of the people who, who wounded me in the first place. How do you, how do you deal with that? Because there's a lot of conversation about cutting family members off. And somehow, we seem to make that seem very attractive. And that's not within my ethos. I wouldn't feel good about that. There's, on the flip side of that, there's

• 55:43Mindy Pelz?

  a lot of conversation about what does elder abuse look like? And I think it's just important for the people who have listened this far into the podcast, like, what do we do when we're hearing something like this? We're coming to this awareness that the way I think, the way I show up in the world, even at 57 years old, is a byproduct of what you created and did in my home growing up. And now I gotta turn around and take care of you. And I, talk about resentment. I have resentment on that.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Of course you do, as well you should. So I say, deal with that resentment, talk about it in therapy. Perhaps you could talk to your father, potentially, even though he's 90.

• 56:28Mindy Pelz?

  I actually do. I'm very straightforward with him, but keep going.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Now, that's so important, though, Mindy. That goes so far. You being straightforward with him now is thrilling. The child within you, she is feeling so happy that you're doing that. Because, listen, we can't, you know, what is it? And the Montes, you know, we can't, you know, go back and have a better past, right? We can't turn back the hands of time to change anything. But it's in the assertion of what we want now, it's being the good, caring, and present, but to parent you may not have had to yourself. So in the book, I talk about self-parenting. And I don't really call it reparenting, right? Because

• 57:14Speaker 01

  for many of us, it's the first time around that we are having this level of self-consideration and care. And being able to, what I was going to say, in your situation, and many other people probably listening, is that, think about where you can delegate things to other professional people. Like, delegate where you can, so you can preserve your energy where you can. Don't give financially more than you actually can, because you really will, and it's resentful, and keep talking. Because that changes what happens for you, right? We're not changing what's happening for your father. This is about the kid in

• 57:58Speaker 01

  you. Every time you assert yourself, feeling happens. Every time.

• 58:04Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. And, and for people who are listening to this and say, wow, I've never even brought this to my dad. I've never even talked to this. I'm just having a self-awareness from listening to this podcast for the first time. You know, is there a question or some easy way to like ease into that conversation with your father, especially when you're being mistreated as an adult by an aging parent?

• 58:34Speaker 01

  Yes, there is, but I say, we have to do, we have to do you first. Right? We have to go in, we have to go through the process, you know, it's a healing process based on my five pillars of transformation. Like, it's a whole thing that you do just for you. And then see what you feel like you may need to do. Like, in the end of the book, what I did was, because I knew people were gonna have these questions, maybe, like, I knew this is from a psychological point of view, that we do the first ten chapters, you do you. This is all for you. It's see it as a gift to yourself, set up a little zen den to do your work, light a candle, like,

• 59:14Speaker 01

  get really intentional, ritualistic about your own healing. Don't have it be an afterthought. It's not a friggin' box for you to check. It should be the honor of your life to help this little kid inside of you feel safe and secure and relaxed and loved, and it's possible, but it has to come from you prioritizing you. So we do the first ten chapters. And then I wrote this addendum, because everyone's situation is so different. It's like a flowchart. So if you say, my father's alive and I need to have better boundaries with him, it'll be like, okay, go to page two twelve. Um, my father's alive and I wanna have um, a better relationship with him.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Okay, go to two fourteen, where I give you a conversation starters, questions you could ask, ways to do it, different scripts. My father, let's say, has passed away, but I don't feel like I've really honored it or ritualized it in a way like I, I, I want something that will um, be a ritual. Okay, go to page two twenty, there are rituals for a father who has passed. So I really thought of sort of every situation you could be in. And then, the last thing that I share is that, after my own father passed, when I was in my early thirties, I realized, and this is really after I did my father wound work, right, is when this, I was able to find out more about him.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  But there's something about asking the people, and I give you all the questions in, in this addendum. Asking people who knew him about him, and I remember saying to my mom, why do, my parents got divorced way in nineteen seventy. And I said, Mom, why do you think Dad had like the emotional IQ of like a sneaker? Like, what happened in this guy's life that he was so stunted? And she said, you know, Terry, I don't know, but I do know that when we were uh, seventeen, and your dad was a big basketball star, she was a cheerleader. And he and his best friend were coming back from a game, and they flipped a coin to see who would drive.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  And it was icy stormy night, and my father lost the toss, and he drove, and his friend, Tim, was laying in the back, got into an accident and his friend died.

• 1:01:32Mindy Pelz?

  Oof.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  And the mom, Tim's mom, blamed my father publicly in this very teeny small town where my father had been a big man on campus, big hero, going to like an Ivy League on a full ride, like, for basketball, whatever. And now, he was kind of like,

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  not that, right? There was this social um, isolation and humiliation and embarrassment. So that information, after I did my healing work, was helpful.

• 1:02:06Mindy Pelz?

  It was giving you compassion.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:09Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  But we can't bypass our own work to get there, because what happens is the little kid in us, if we do, because often we wanna jump to that. I can't tell you how many people have interviewed me, it's like, right, but there are people who just wanna kind of move on. I'm like, yeah, we're gonna, but you can't just move on until you've actually processed what you've experienced and honored it, right? We are integrating these experiences, because you know with traumatic pain, they stay frozen in time and in your body. Right? So you have a lot of, I don't need to tell you about the autoimmune disorders and all the other things that come along with, right, unprocessed stuff.

• 1:02:53Mindy Pelz?

  Yeah. One thing I've been thinking as you were talking is, um, I'm now really speaking about the different nervous system states that we find our bodies in, and how to match our food and fasting to those nervous system states. And as I'm bringing this forward to my community and discovering it for myself, I'm seeing that a lot of those nervous system states got, got locked in in childhood because of things like a father wound. And then, you know, so do you see that a father wound could put you in fight or flight for decades, which would lead to weight loss resistance and insulin and glucose challenges?

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Yep. It, it, when we say the word, when I say hyper vigilance, what am I saying? Fight, fight, freeze, or fall? That's really what I'm saying, that there's no rest for a kid with a father wound. If, if you're, if there was fear, if your father was in your home and you felt like you needed to be on guard, it's like constantly bracing for impact. I remember if my father, who, this guy, I say this in the book and it's true. I maybe, by the time my parents got divorced, when I was thirteen, I might have exchanged fifty words with my father, five zero.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  That's how much he, he didn't talk. So if I ever heard his voice, he had a very deep, I think like Barry White, rumbly kind of a voice. It, and I had three sisters and my mother and a girl dog. And if I heard that, that rumbling voice, even, even if he was just saying, make me a sandwich to my mother, right? I would sit up in bed and be like, what's going on? What's wrong?

• 1:04:43Mindy Pelz?

  Wow.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  I was in a hyper vigilant state my entire childhood, I believe.

• 1:04:50Mindy Pelz?

  Right. And then that shows up, and this is why conversations like this become so important to somebody who's trying to lose weight. Like, you know, it's like, these are, this is the importance to me of having a conversation where a woman is like, I'm doing all the things right and I'm not getting a result. And that's what I hear um, from women who gets what I call stuck. They're like, I'm fasting, I'm eating, I'm exercising, I'm counting my macros, I'm listening to every single podcast, I'm reading every single book, and it's still not working. And I have come to this place where I'm like,

• 1:05:31Mindy Pelz?

  okay, then we need to, like, take your childhood, and we need to start to pull it apart, because it's really, truly, the body keeps the score. And I believe that the female body also reads the room, always is reading the room. And what I'm gathering from this conversation is that if there's a father wor- wor- wound, you're really reading the room over and over and over again. So, talk a little bit of, go ahead.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  No, go ahead.

• 1:06:01Mindy Pelz?

  Talk a little bit about what's, just for people who are having an awakening right now, what's on the other side of healing this wound?

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Putting yourself first without guilt, trusting your own instincts, uh, your own decisions. Um, handling your emotions, there's a whole chapter on becoming fluent and really like an expert at your own emotions. Letting go of resentment and anger, which I don't call forgiveness, because I'm super not into that, I don't know. Forgiveness has been co-opted by religion and a bunch of other things, it's not my thing. I like to say, we can release ourselves from resentment prison by processing this stuff. That's what we do. Um, I don't know, forgiveness always feels like someone's getting over, I mean, I don't like it.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Um, we stop self sabotaging so much, like, on the other side of this, you believe you deserve good things, and that it doesn't have to all be so hard. We're not as terrified of rejection, right? Feeling that you are inherently worthy, not being in toxic relationships, really breaking free from those toxic relationship patterns. Um,

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  finding people that you can trust and really being vulnerable, allowing people to do things for you, becoming a better receiver, how's that? Because I know we're not good receivers.

• 1:07:22Mindy Pelz?

  Right, right. Well, that's why we become fixers, right?

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:07:27Mindy Pelz?

  We go into professions that will help us make sure we never receive, all we do is give, so. So there is definitely that. What about boundaries? Do you find that when women heal their fa- their father wound, setting boundaries, which I know was your last book, or your second to last bu- your book before that, um, is, are boundaries much easier? Because it does seem like for women, setting boundaries is really difficult.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Yep. It, it's amazing how much it changes what you think you can do, right? If we look at boundaries the way that I write them, it's about your preferences, your limits, and your deal breakers. Right? It's about you knowing those things and being able to assert them. When you understand why you've walked around being afraid, why you have tolerated the things that you've tolerated in your life,

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  it makes it so much easier to stop, to press pause, to realize you are not that fragile. That's what comes out on the other side of this work, is how incredibly resilient you are. So it's okay if you're gonna be a little bit uncomfortable, or even a lot uncomfortable with some of these conversations. But you're not gonna die.

• 1:08:45Mindy Pelz?

  Right.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Right, from that.

• 1:08:46Mindy Pelz?

  And it's gonna set you free, because boundaries, I have found, um, uh, haven't, don't come naturally to me. I've had to really work at them. And uh, I'm going deeper in that thought as I'm listening to you throughout this conversation of like, yeah, that would make sense, that I, it was hard to set boundaries, because I was uh, shamed and uh, ridiculed for speaking up many times, especially by my father. So, um, yeah, really fascinating. Well, Terry, I could sit here and talk to you forever. Um, I do, this, this podcast is now named, uh, Live Like a Girl, because I really believe

• 1:09:29Mindy Pelz?

  that women should live diff- in a different way. We do live in this patriarchal world that impacts us, conversations like we're having today impact us, our physiology is very different. Um, what does living like a girl mean to you?

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Uh, being free, living like a girl means living free. But considering ourselves and the collective, right? That's what women do naturally. We're free to care for ourselves, but we'll also care for, for the work. Like it, it, the ma, the rising matriarchy is where it's at, my friend.

• 1:10:09Mindy Pelz?

  I agree, and it's happening. I'm watching, I watch it and go, oh, it's happening. What the, the, the pain and the rage and the, um, everything we've kept under the surface is really boiling to the top now, as painful as, as it is to watch. Yeah, and it's time to speak up, which is why books like this become so important because I think if you're wanting to speak up, uh, and you can't, something like Understanding Your Father Wound seems like a really important place to start. So how can we help you? How can we help you get this book out into the world?

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Well, preorder it. That would be great. Uh, it, it drops on November 17th. Um, I'm also doing a ton of free things, of course, free bonuses. I'm doing, um, a four hour deep dive into Your Father Wound Blueprint on October 24th. Um, with, that's part of the preorder campaign. So if you preorder the book, then you get that, um, four hour retreat for free. So that's really how, you can go to fatherwoundbook.com. All the information will be there and you know where to find me. I'm just Terry Cole in all the places on Instagram. I have a pod you've been on a bunch of times, of course, called The Terry Cole Show. Now I'm on Substack. I've got a YouTube channel, same as you. Um, so I'm in all the places that Dr. Mindy is in, I am also in, just as Terry Cole.

• 1:11:31Mindy Pelz?

  Just in a different room. You're just in a different room. It's like a big house and we're just in a different room. Well, I love and appreciate you, Terry, and I just, I always feel, uh, filled up and have new insight every time I talk to you. So thank you for all of your books, but this for me might be, and for a lot of women, the most important one you've brought forward to the culture. So appreciate you. Can't wait to bring you back with the next book.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  In like five years from now?

• 1:12:03Mindy Pelz?

  Well, you're gonna have to heal, maybe go a little deeper into the fatherhood to stop writing so many books.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  I could say the same to you.

• 1:12:14Mindy Pelz?

  I, I believe me, believe me. This was awesome. Thank you, Terry. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.