Terry Real is the bestselling author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, the straight-talking How Can I Get Through to You? Reconnecting Men and Women, and most recently The New Rules of Marriage: What You Need to Make Love Work. Terry knows how to lead couples on a step-by-step journey to greater intimacy—and greater personal fulfillment.

He founded the Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, and parents as well as a professional training program for clinicians.Terry’s work, with its rigorous commonsense approach, speaks to both men and women. A proponent of “full-throttle marriage,” Terry has been called “the most innovative voice in thinking about and treating men and their relationships in the world today.

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 Today on IFS Talks, we are honored to be speaking with Terry Real. Terry Real is the best-selling author of I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression. Also, How Can I Get Through to You, Reconnecting Men and Women, and most recently The New Rules of Marriage, What You Need to Make Love Work. Terry knows how to lead couples on a step-by-step journey to greater intimacy and greater personal fulfillment. He founded the Relational Life Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, parents, as well as a professional training program for clinicians. Terry's work with its rigorous common-sense approach speaks to both men and women. Terry is a proponent of full throttle marriage and has been called the most innovative voice in thinking about and treating men and their relationships in the world today. Terry, we welcome you to IFS Talks and thank you for being here with us.

 

Terry Real: It's a pleasure to be here and an honor, thank you for inviting me.

 

Aníbal Henriques: Thanks much, Terry, for willing to sit with us. Starting off with this parts language that you, Terry, you also practice so eloquently, what parts come up today, hearing your bio?

 

Terry: That's a great first question. What parts came up today hearing my bio? I'll tell you a funny story that I always think about when I listen to my own bio. There was a great American blues man, Mississippi John Hurt, and he's from the rural south. Very simple man, very simple music, but beautiful. And the story about him, I don't know, even know if it's true, but it's an old story about him. He was playing it like the Philadelphia, you know, symphony hall or something this huge auditorium with thousands of people. And the announcer says, “And here is Mississippi John Hurt.” And nobody shows up. He goes, okay, “And here is Mississippi John.” And nobody shows up. And you know, the third time, and then all the way up in the rafter, there's this old black guy and he's going, “Oh, I was here, I was here” and he makes his way all the way down through all of the people, finally gets up on stage, he looks at the guy who announced him and says, “I just wanted to see what everybody was looking at.” I sort of feel like that guy. It's like, “Wow, it sounds like a cool guy. I wish I knew him.”

 

Aníbal: Terry, you are a major figure in the field of couples’ therapy. Also specializing in men's issues, particularly depression and relationships. I'd like to appreciate your dedication and beautiful work of decades for this noble cause of helping couples to find a better life together. We all know how fundamental can be for child development to have happy well-regulated and connected parents around. So, in your opinion, can better couples also be better parents?

 

Terry: No question. Absolutely no question. And better people are better parents. You know, you know this already, but let me just say it. One of the things I say to the people I work with is the best gift you can give your kids is your own recovery. And when I speak of recovery, I speak of what I call relational recovery that is recovering that original state of connection to ourselves and to others that is our birthright. A state of connection, that trauma and the culture pushes us out of with all of that consequence. So, the best thing you can give your kid is a healthy You. They say that is the height of pretension to quote yourself, but I always do quote this one quote from, I Don't Want to Talk About It. May I quote myself, please?

 

Aníbal: Yeah, please.

 

Tisha: Oh please, yeah, we'd love to hear it.

 

Terry: “Family pathology roles from generation to generation like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to his ancestors and spares the children that follow.” And so when you talk about bringing recovery to the parental unit, I speak to the people that I work with about daring to change the legacy, transforming the legacy, transforming the defaults that were given to you by your family of origin and the culture and handing to the next generation a completely different, but maybe not completely, but radically different and hopefully healthier set of defaults. And, you know, I say, each person is a bridge spinning those who came before and those who come after and their fate rests on your work. There's an old AA saying, pass it back or pass it on to the degree to which you do the sorting out of your legacy, which I believe is the true meaning of the word individuation. And to the degree, to which you have freedom from your own automatic responses. To that degree, you will be not just a better parent, but not a burden to the children that will come after you.

 

Aníbal: So important, yes. Beautifully said.

 

Tisha: It sounds like with your model, the Relational Life Therapy model, there's a few different layers to legacy unburdening I'm hearing about. Kind of addressing individual triggers, but also acknowledging how things have been passed down. Is there a process specifically that addresses how trauma has been passed through generations?

 

Terry: I don't go back generations as a rule. Although I learned how to do that by one of my mentors, Olga Silverstein, who used to do an incredible genogram, go back five generations and pick out all the themes. I usually only go back one generation, sometimes two. And I am concerned with, well, my correlate to managers and protectors is the part of you that I call the adaptive child part of you, the part of you that adapted to whatever was going on. And that part of you almost always represents, or you could have many different adaptive children, but let's call it a conglomerate for the moment. That part of you represents always a reaction to what was being thrown at you. I say the adaptive child has two avenues of being formed. The first is reaction. And that's the one we always think about because we always think about trauma. So, a reaction means if I have an intrusive mother, my adaptive child puts up big thick walls. If I meet an adult, an adult man, a guy with big thick walls, one thing that may have happened to him is that he had a lot of intrusion growing up. And so, he needed those walls. I don't know if you know him, but I have a friend and a colleague Thomas Hubl a German mystic...

Aníbal: Yeah, on collective trauma.

 

Terry: I love his many phrases. And one is, “We must always respect the exquisite intelligence of the adaptive child.” You did exactly what you needed to do back then. But I have a saying adaptive and maladaptive male, “You're not in that environment anymore. You're not that little boy or girl, you're talking to somebody different than your family, and you have different resources than you did as a child.” So, it's the adaptive child that resists what's coming at you, but the other pieces that internalizes what's coming at you. You model yourself on what you see. Is the adaptive childpart of us that is the repository for all of the multi-generational projections. It's like a battery. So, if you have a harsh inner critic, for example, you probably have multi-generational legacy of a harshness and criticism. And the spark jumps between your inner critic and you, it's the last line of the spark plug, but that spark goes back and back and back. I say, we tend to hold ourselves the way we were held. And so, you internalize it. So, our adaptation is almost always a mixture of resistance and internalizing both. And it's the particular balance, tension of that mixture that makes the adaptation so rich and interesting to deal with. So necessary back then. And so troublesome now, all the above,

 

Aníbal: Terry, you do a wonderful integration work, as we can hear of many authors in the field of couples and gender issues, and also parts work, as you just said. Can we say, Terry, that your approach to men and couples is on the spectrum of the mindfulness based or compassion centered therapies?

 

Terry: I would say that, but not that alone. There's a, you know, my friend and colleague Carol Gilligan has a phrase. She says, there is no relationship... There’s no voice without relationship and there's no relationship without voice. So yes, compassion, certainly self-compassion and compassion for your partner. I will put it more as staying in the wise adult part of ourselves, some correlates to what Dick would call the Self, capital S. Staying in the wise adult part of ourselves and remembering the relationship, remembering the whole. And that's what I'm writing about now in my new book, I'm talking about the difference between us consciousness and me and you consciousness. And us consciousness remembers that we are a biosphere. Our partnership is a biosphere that I live inside of and is in my interest to treat that biosphere well. When I'm not in my wise adult, when I'm in an adaptive child or wounded child part, I lose that sense of the relationship and it becomes zero sum and adversarial. It's only the wise adult part of us, prefrontal cortex, not triggered, that can hold the relationship and maintain a sense of that relationship and our own enlightened self-interest to do well by that relationship. When you move into what I call me and you consciousness, adaptive child, you lose the relationship and everything becomes adversarial. It's a zero sum game, one wins, and one loses. And once you're in that part of you, all bets are off in terms of doing anything constructive in your relationship. And so, the mindfulness piece is what I call relational mindfulness. And it's the art of moving from that triggered adaptive part of you back into the wiser Self. Compassion?  Yes, but I would also say wisdom, perspective, the ability to see the ecological whole and not just be too adversarial individuals that shift from that adversarial me and you consciousness to the us consciousness, from the Part to the Self, I think Dick might say. Is mindfulness and it is an intentional practice and is an intentional practice that can be cultivated and learned in strength.

 

Tisha: And how long does it take for people to learn this relational language?

 

Terry: You know, it's like learning any language as an adult. To be honest, I think it takes a couple three years to really get fluent at living a relational life. But one of the things that I say is that this way of thinking and these techniques are so different from the culture at large and so powerful that doing them badly will transform your life and your relationships. And you can start doing them badly right now.

 

Aníbal: You talk of first consciousness couples and second consciousness couples, first consciousness as fighters or fliers or fixers. And you also say that you are a first consciousness fighter. Are you still a first consciousness fighter?

 

Terry: Yes, that's my knee jerk response. I grew up in a violent family. My wife, Belinda grew up in a violent family and we're both fighters. We're a symmetrical couple, boom, boom, boom, screw me, screw you. And that's our particular dance. There's an old saying in family therapy, there are two kinds of couples in the world: there are symmetrical couples. Screw me, screw you, screw you, screw me. And then there are complimentary couples. Come talk to me. No, I won't, pursuer-distancer or as a complimentary couple. And I'll tell you a little secret. When you're dealing with a symmetrical couple, as the therapist, you want to introduce some complementarities screw me, screw your... “Honey, I don't want to fight.” And you go down and then you invite the other person to come down with you. When you're dealing with a complimentary couple, it's good to introduce some symmetricality. “I'm going to treat you badly. I'm going to put up with it. I'm going to treat you badly. I'm going to put up with it, I'm going to treat you badly. Don't treat me badly...” And that breaks the pattern. So, it's interesting to know what pattern you are and what you need to do to break it. Belinda and I are symmetrical, and I'm a fighter. Why? You guys tell me what to say about it.

 

Tisha: It sounds like parts. So much of the way, Terry, the way you work with couples fits with parts work and IFS. Do you find that as well? And do you believe in multiplicity?

 

Terry: Sure. Well, I have a tri-part system of the psyche as Dick does. They don't completely line up. They line up pretty remarkably. And, you know, Dick and I are not the only people with tri-part systems. There are lots of people, lots of people work with parts. One of the things that does, if I can say this as a non-IFS therapist, who's worked with parts for 50 years, it does get me a little bit when any work with parts is seen as IFS.

 

Tisha: Oh yeah, it's a language that's been around for a long time, hasn't it?

 

Terry: A really long time. Once I was presenting with Dick, we were doing the same couple. I would do them in the morning and he would do them in the afternoon. And one diehard IFS, a person came to me and said, “I just want to congratulate you. Your interview was absolutely masterful.” And I said, “Oh, thank you.” She said, “Yeah, it was IFS”. The best compliment this guy could give me was that...Thank you.

 

Aníbal: Terry, when so many in our field fear to sit with couples, even for 50 minutes, you can spend full days with couples in the most severe and critical crisis. Where do you find such an energy and space to do this?

 

Terry: Well, I started off about four years old in my family growing up, you know, I was the all hell was breaking and I did my best to regulate my parents. I'm comfortable with a certain level of chaos and blatant discharge of feelings because I grew up with it in a way that maybe somebody else wouldn't be, but like all RLT therapists, my strength comes from my detachment from outcome. It's a spiritual principle.

 

Aníbal: Ok.

 

Terry: Is this couple going to stay together or not? No, I don’t know. Is this couple going to shape up and stop beating each other up? Or are they just going to beat each other up endlessly? I don't know. I do a lot of shrugging. I don't know. I'm not God, it's not my life. It's your life. And we have very clear boundaries in RLT. You know, somebody says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and they give me a hard time. I'll often say to them “Look, I want you to know I'm in service, not sales. If you want these skills, I'll give them to you. If you don't there are other people wandering around the block who do, so give up your chair and then somebody else have it.” And I used to say that way before there were actually people, I faked it, I was just bullshitting.

 

Aníbal: So, you don't have an agenda or what is your agenda? Is just to help them to get...

 

Terry: I have a wish.

 

Aníbal: Okay.

 

Terry: I have a wish. I have passionate wishes for the people I work with. I wish they would open up. I wish they would have greater intimacy. I wish they'd be better people for children to witness and be with. But at the end of the day, it's between you and God. Is really, I'm not in charge of your fate. And I will say to somebody, “Look, you know, we're working...this is, you've behaved better in the past. You're indulging yourself. Now, I can give you, we can do work that will help you relax and shape up if you want, if you don't want, you don't. I want you to know at the end of the day, I go home to my happy family and you go home to your misery. And the reason why my family is happy is because of all the work Belinda and I have done, the same work we're asking you to do, but I don't have a gun to your head. It's really up to you.” One of the things I say to my students is “Don't be more ambitious for your clients than your clients are for themselves. You wind up with a big headache. Don't want more for them than they want.”

 

Tisha: Are there other aspects of spiritual practice that are running in the background for you aside from non-attachment to outcome? What else is present that keeps you working with couples and keeps you motivated?

 

Terry: That's a beautiful question. I'm going to say hope. And I think RLT is a phenomenally hopeful. What we hold the bar very high for our clients. We expect dramatic change quickly. And we usually get it. We often get it, not always. But you know, regular therapy kind of goes like this and we want you to go like this. So, I can teach a man who is a good-hearted guy who doesn't know a damn thing about how to cherish anybody, how to cherish somebody. I can break it down and give it to them. One of the differences between RLT and IFS is the phases. There are three phases in RLT. The first is confrontation, loving confrontation. This is what you're doing that's blowing your foot off. You will never get more of what you want if you keep doing this thing that you're doing. For example, we talk about relational stances, dysfunctional relational stances, and here's a classic: angry pursuit is a dysfunctional relational stance from in our book. You will never get more of what you want by complaining about what you're not getting. That is not going to work. And so, the first phase is this confrontation with the adaptive child part of you that is messing up your relationship. Once we have a clear picture of that adaptive child, we then take it back to family of origin. And we do inner child work, which looks very similar to parts work in many ways and in many ways not, but in many ways, yes. And then once we're done with the trauma work, and I say, the unburdening will  keep weaving. But once that phase is complete, then you move on to teaching. And we're different from IFS. Dick and I have been around the block on this one, in that we teach skills, we are explicitly educational. This is how you fight fair. This is how you identify your feelings. This is how you tell your partner that you love them here. Open up your lips. Say, I love you. Good. This is how you greet somebody. When they say hello to you, you don't just brush past them and walk into the room. You say hello back. And so, I think maybe because I work with so many men, I believe that there's a place to be an explicit mentor and to teach people how to be more relational. There's a lot of trauma work now...if you remove the traumatic obstacles to heal the trauma that people will instinctively know how to be relational. But I think, in your guys' language, I think before you do that, you'd have to unburden them from all of the societal messages that they've gotten about how you do this, because they're wrong. And I believe that along with that work, you teach them what right would look like. So, it's a three-step process. “This is what you're doing wrong. This is where it comes from. Can you take care of that little boy or girl that's making so much difficulty and now, okay, now that you're in your wise adult, let's arm, that part of you with skills and wisdom to figure out how to get this done.” Those are the three parts to it.

 

Aníbal: Terry, you also say the spirituality is the collision of two human imperfections. Want to say more?

 

Terry: Guy. You've actually been reading my stuff.

 

Aníbal: Yes.

 

Terry: Yes. What say is that we all long for the divine. Every one of us wants the perfect partner. We all want a God or goddess to complete us. And what we're stuck with is a woefully, imperfect human being, just like we are. And they're...It's all well and good to abstractly say, well, they're imperfect, but the particulars of their imperfections really stick in the crawl and make for a lot of soul searching and difficulty. I'm a big fan of the child developmental psychologist, Ed Tronick. And from him I got that all relationships are an endless dance of harmony, disharmony and repair, closeness, disruption, and return to closeness. And that disharmony phase, that disillusionment phase, it can be really raw. It's not acknowledged in our culture, how dark and raw that can be. But I talk about what I call normal marital hatred, normal marital hatred. And I like to say, I've been talking about this for 20 plus years and not one person has ever come backstage and said, what do you mean by that?

 

Aníbal: We all know well.

 

Terry: So, the collision of your imperfection and mine is the stuff of intimacy and how we manage that collision that's the character of our relationship. People try and get out of that imperfection, but it's how we manage it that is the very stuff of what renders us close. I talk to people about working with the man or woman you're with instead of the one you deserve. But there we are. Of course, we don't, it doesn't quite dawn on us that if we could find this super perfect partner, they probably wouldn't be interested in us.

 

Tisha: They might see through it all.

 

Aníbal: You'll also quote, LaTina Hunt. I guess Latina says “Women marry men hoping they will change. They don't. Men marry women hoping they won’t change. They do.” What is that?

 

Terry: Welcome to patriarchy. And women want men to be more open and connected and relational. And men want women to stay the way they were when they were first dating. And when men don't open up and learn to be more relational women close up and they get less generous. And that is the state of most heterosexual relationships under patriarchal culture, you have either shut down distant or entitled irresponsible men often, coupled with an accommodating, perhaps at times explosive, but certainly unhappy woman. And then you put a little boy or a little girl in that family and it's rife with all sorts of difficulties in the triangle. You know, for example, have you ever noticed how many men are avoidant? We talk about pursuers and distancers, talk about anxious attachment style and dismissive...

Aníbal: Avoidant.

 

Terry: I talk about the unholy triad of patriarchy, that there's a distant or irresponsible man, husband, father, that there's an accommodating, unhappy woman. And there's a sensitive little boy in the base triangle who feels his mother's pain and moves into caretaking. It isn't the way we used to think about it in family therapy that the mother enmeshes with the son is that the son of enmeshes with the mother out of compassion. But it's a burden to be a caretaker instead of a child. And so, these burdened boys grow up to be distant men because they have the trauma of their care-taking position.

 

Tisha: Yesterday, we had a big exodus of Trump and I heard that it was even to the tune of macho macho man. And yeah, that, that was actually playing. And I admire so much your work as a therapist addressing the systemic difficulty and challenges with patriarchy, but it's so striking to me how many people are behind a macho bullying self-aggrandizing man...

 

Terry: 94 million American.

 

Tisha: Yeah. So how do we approach that as a society, as a culture, as therapists? I know you're doing the hard work and I've heard you speak about the next generation, the millennial generation being more in touch with sensitivity and more able to be whole.

 

Terry: Yeah, I do believe that, but these boys have been raised by feminist mothers, you know? It shows. So, the first thing is I’m not neutral, and I don't like neutrality in the therapy room. I am an intimacy merchant. I am on the side of intimacy. Intimacy is healthy. All of the research is completely clear. The intimacy is good for us. The lack of intimacy kills us, literally, physically it has deleterious effects. So, I'm on the side of whoever is asking for more intimacy, which three out of four times, there's going to be the woman. It’s women who carry the dissatisfaction, it's women who want more. Across the board in heterosexual relationships, women are asking for more emotional intimacy than most men have been raised to deliver. And so, to help a man open up and be connected to his partner and his kids, is synonymous with moving and beyond patriarchy and beyond the traditional masculine role. Traditional masculinity rests on two pillars, invulnerability and dominance. The more invulnerable you are, the more manly you are, the more vulnerable you are, the more girly or, and of course what across the board women and children are asking, insisting on is vulnerability from their men. There's emotional connection. I want you to come to the table and tell me what you've been feeling, says a woman to a guy who hasn't thought about feelings in 20 years. And a lot of therapists will like, well, that's her opinion. That's your opinion. No. What she's asking for is legit, increased intimacy is legit. Now, the way she's asking for it may use, her delivery could probably use some work, but what she's wanting, I agree with. And so, we therapeutically side with that person and bring the other person in. We want you to step up and meet these new demands. They're good for you. They're good for your kids. They're good for your body. Let me show you how to do it. And we sell it to him. Most men are good-hearted guys, most. There there's some bad apples, but most better are good. And they're riding the cross-currents of entitlement and bewildering.

 

Aníbal: Terry, you say an inwardly shamed base, then outwardly driven men coupled with inwardly resentful and outwardly accommodating women, that's America's power, couple.

 

Terry: Yes, it is. Bill and Hill. That's it. That is, you know, because traditionally the set up...Eric Erickson said that is the hallmark of a functional culture that the roles that you're socialized into as a child fit with the roles you're going to be asked to play as an adult, that there's no disjuncture between them. And when cultures are in a period of change, there's a disjuncture. And then people get maladaptive and they start having symptoms and so forth. But right now, I like to say that masculinity is at war with itself. Patriarchy is at war with itself right now. I mean, literally at war, there are people storming the American Capitol with, you know, with arms. And it very much has to do with two versions of what masculinity looks like. All of those Trump supporters believe in traditional macho masculinity. That's why they like him. And I would venture to say that the liberals who were happy to see him gone ascribe to a more nuanced and progressive form of masculinity, but this is war and not just in America, it's going on all around the world. The strong men have re arisen. Esther Perel once said, I like the line that “The great story of the 20th century may be the empowerment of women. The great story of the 21st century may be how men react to that empowerment.” And right now, it's split. There are those who are going forward. There are those who are going backward, and they are not very friendly toward one another. It's a pitch battle.

 

Aníbal: Terry, it looks like patriarchy is the real enemy in intimacy?

 

Terry: Yes. And it's time...I know we're coming to a close but let me leave with this. It’s time for men and women and transgender folks and gender fluid folks, it's time for he, she and they to unite. It says time for us to move beyond the, what I call comparative victimology. The entitlement of men and the oppression of women is real, I call that political patriarchy and sexism is political patriarchy and has very real consequences, particularly the minute you step out of the west. Is time to understand that the system does great damage to both sexes. The system does great damage to both boys and girls, and it does horrible damage to the relationship between us.

 

Aníbal: Yeah, well said.

 

Terry: And if we are going to move into healthy intimacy, women need to move into loving firm voice and boys and men need to move into open connected hearts. And both of them are moving beyond the traditional gender roles of patriarchy. Somebody once said about RLT. It was deconstructing patriarchy one couple at a time. And I love that. That's what we're about.

 

Tisha: Can you say that one more time? Women need to move into...

 

Terry: Loving voice.

 

Tisha: And men...

 

Terry: Open connected hearts.

 

Tisha: Beautiful.

 

Terry: Because the wound to girls has been disempowerment, the loss of voice. The wound to boys is disconnection. So, the healing move for women is re empowerment. The healing move for men is reconnection. But when women are empowered, it needs to be empowered with love. And that's new, that's post-second way feminism we refer as pretty angry. Speaking up for yourself with love, I think not only breaks patriarchy, but I probably get a lot of grief over this, but I think it's the next step for feminism.

 

Aníbal: Interesting, very interesting.

 

Terry: And I consider myself a feminist. I have for 40 years. Under patriarchy, you can be connected, or you can be powerful, but you can't be both at the same time because power is power over, not power with, it’s dominance. So, if you move into power, you lose connection. If you move into accommodation, you lose your power. I want to break that binary. I want people in general and women in particular to be strong and cherishing and loving in the same breath. And those are some of the skills we teach.

 

Tisha: I so appreciate that.

 

Terry: How to, how to stand up to your partner and cherish your partner at the same...It’s the same thing as saying, “I don't like how you're talking to me,” and saying, “Honey, I want to hear what you have to say. Could you tone it down so I could listen?” It’s your way of saying the same thing, but one cherishes the relationship, the other one doesn’t, one works and the other one doesn’t. So, this is some of the skills that we teach.

 

Tisha: Yeah, it's incredible. It makes me think of a lot of clients who for them confrontation means that they feel as though they're going to be charged by a rhinoceros. 

 

Terry: Yeah, right.

 

Tisha: Righ? They've got to get into that place, but with love it softens. And that edge just softens and there's connection with firmness.

 

Terry: Yeah. Whether it's a therapist talking to the client or whether it's partners talking to each other, one of my favorite quotes and I'll leave with this. One of my favorite quotes is from the German poet Goethe and I paraphrase, but the quote went something like this, “If you treat someone as they ought to be, if you treat someone as if they were, as they ought to be, they may become who they ought to be.” If I look at you and I say, Tisha, you can do this. I know you're a decent person. Look at your partner. And with love in your heart, say that you need something different from them. And I hold that bar high. I'm reaching for the wise adult part of you and forming a therapeutic relationship with that part of you. You rise to the occasion and that's the essence of RLT. We provide an occasion for our clients to rise too.

 

Tisha: Thank you so much.

 

Aníbal: Well said.

 

Tisha: So, I know we need to wrap up, but I wanted to reflect that you're writing a new book, that you have an upcoming training for the general public on your website.

 

Terry: Yeah, I’d like to invite everybody to my website, just go to Terryreal.com, my name and make sure that you sign up. You, you know, subscribe, and we'll let you know what's going on. I'm very excited. This is my first online course for the general public coming this winter. And we expect that it will be a big course. And I've got a lot to say about how to make these relationships work.

 

Aníbal: And what about your new book? What are you putting up?

 

Terry: The book won't be out until next year, next spring. His tentative title is Us: The Power of Moving Beyond the End View. And it really is about which part of you am I speaking to? Am I speaking to the centered adult? Am I speaking to a triggered child? And it's for the general public about how to understand that and how to work with it.

 

Aníbal: So, Terry, thank you so much for having us and for helping us with your reason and experience. Our listeners will find in our show notes the link to your amazing conversation with Carol Gilligan as well. And it was a joy to be here with you and Tisha and wishing you the best for you and your work. Thank you so much.

 

Terry: Well, thank you. I wish the best for you too, as well. Keep up the good work.

 

Aníbal: Thank you.

 

Terry: It was a pleasure speaking to you. I feel deeply respected talking to you.

 

Tisha: Oh, good, you are.

 

Aníbal: Yes.

 

Recorded 21st January 2021 
Transcript Edition: Carolina Abreu