Ep43 Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst—How to Raise a Son Who Can Actually Feel When Boyhood Teaches Him Not To

What if the wider emotional range boys are born with is trained out of them before they can talk? In this episode of The Pressures of Privilege, host Diana Oehrli sits down with Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst, a psychologist who has spent over 30 years working with kids, parents, and couples and is currently finishing a book for fathers on raising sons who are both strong and whole. Dr. Vanderhorst has spent her career studying what she calls the emotional desert: the process by which boys, who research shows are born with a broader emotional range than girls, learn within their first years of life to shrink that range down in order to survive. Together, they show you how a mother's flinch at an infant's cry, a father's hand on a toddler's chest, and a culture that hands out words like "sissy" combine to teach boys that half their emotional range is shameful. They talk about where the jails full of angry men come from, why men die ten years earlier than women on average, and what happens in the body when a feeling has nowhere left to go. Dr. Vanderhorst walks through what an emotionally shut-down son looks like at eight, at fifteen, and at thirty, and what it actually takes for a grown man to go back and reclaim the range he was born with. If you've ever wondered why the men in your life seem to feel everything through their bodies instead of their words, or if you're raising a son and don't want to pass down what was done to you... this episode was made for you. Chapters (00:00:00) - Why Girls Are Running Away(00:00:45) - Why Boys Shrink in Life(00:01:36) - Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst on Emotions in Boys(00:08:12) - We Train Our Males to Be Tender(00:15:20) - The reasons for higher divorce rates(00:18:05) - How Emotions Are Denied to Boys(00:25:15) - How a Divorce Affects Friendships(00:33:06) - Are you seeing more substance use disorder in men than before?(00:41:54) - Exploring the Psychology of Math(00:47:46) - On the Emotional Deserts of Divorce(00:56:04) - Talking About Trauma With Anaesthesia