When the Past Parents the Present: How Early Histories Shape Parenting and Co-Parenting

Join us as we sit down with Psychologist and Author, Gloria Vanderhorst, to discuss how our early histories can jump into the present without our awareness and undermine our interactions with our children and co-parenting abilities.

Gloria, who has practiced for 50 years, explains how the brain stores every experience—both accessible and hidden—and how these memories can suddenly emerge to affect our present-day interactions. The conversation explores gender differences in emotional expression, the impact of technology on children's communication skills, and practical strategies for divorced parents navigating co-parenting challenges. Gloria also introduces her journal book, "Read, Reflect, Respond," designed to help adults access deeper emotional insights through visual and written expression.

If you would like to speak with one of our attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.pacificcascadelegal.com.

To learn more about Gloria can help you, you can view her website at: https://drvanderhorst.com/

Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.

Transcript

Speaker 2  00:00:31

Hi everyone. I'm Steve Altishin, director of Client Partnerships for Pacific Cascade Legal, and today we have Gloria Vanderhorst to talk about our early histories, jump into the present without our awareness and undermine our interactions with our children and co-parenting. That's a mouthful. But before we start in, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself, Gloria?

Speaker 3  00:00:56

Well, I'm a psychologist in private practice, and I have been doing this for 50 years. That's a long time <laugh>, and I love it. I cannot see myself stopping this work ever, because when I see change in people, right, take a set of parents who have decided to separate and divorce, but they have to share the parenting process. They start out distant, irritated, uncomfortable with each other, and as they learn how to focus on raising their children, rather than focus on what irritates them about the other person, there's a a magical change that takes place in their comfort level. And the same thing happens with my individual work and couples work. I love to see people change.

Speaker 2  00:02:03

I love that. We were talking a little bit about before, you know, you were, you were talking about the awareness of your early histories or lack of awareness, both in the children's and in your own. And can we talk about that a little bit? About, about why that's an important thing to understand?

Speaker 3  00:02:20

Well, it's true for all of us. Alright. And that's why it makes it very important. Our brains hold onto every experience that we have ever had. Now, that's kind of a hard thing to sit with and realize that the brain inside your skull is like a giant computer. It keeps every thing, and because it keeps everything, some of it is easily accessible to you. You can remember memories of the swimming pool at your grandfather's backyard and the hot dogs that were cooked on the grill and all those fun things that you did. Some of them are hidden, like the time that your cousin held you under the water in that swimming pool for so long that you thought you were going to drown and it terrified you. Now that memory is probably in some kind of a tight little box, and you don't know that it's there.

Speaker 3  00:03:31

You don't page back to it. You don't reflect on it. But when you go to a family gathering and you see that cousin for some reason you don't wanna talk to him and you, you don't know why. You just think, okay, yeah, you know, he's not my favorite cousin. He could be as an adult, a perfectly nice, important person to interact with. But that piece of history stops you from investigating, building a current relationship with that person. Our history does this to us all the time. It jumps into the present and it influences how we respond to the world around us. And if we, if I could help that man uncover that piece of history, then he would go have a conversation with that cousin and he would replay that with him. Do you remember the time that you almost, you scared me to death and almost drowned me in the pool. And they would build a new relationship around that memory. That's traumatic for the one of them, probably not traumatic for the cousin, but now they can build a new relationship. And so that's the goal for all of us, is healing those emotional injuries. And it's possible. That's the other great thing about our brains is it's possible to find those injuries and to heal 'em so that we can become a, um, um, become kind of more of the person we were originally designed to be. Right. Because those are roadblocks.

Speaker 2  00:05:23

Yeah. Is that the same for boys and girls? I mean, is it, is it different

Speaker 3  00:05:28

Or Yep. Your brain does the same thing for boys and girls. The difference, however, is what the culture does for our boys. Actually, this is a little known fact, but boys come into the world with a broader range of emotional expression than girls do. So infant babies gather male have a broader range of emotional expression than girls do, but by and large infants are

interacted with by women. And so women have this narrower range of comfort with emotions. Boys have this broader range of comfort with emotions, but infants are brilliant emotionally as their only survival mechanism. They have to read the people around them, they have to read the room, they have to understand the emotional dynamics that are happening around them in order to survive. When the boy gets more excited and escalates more than mother's comfortable with, mother doesn't do this intentionally, but, uh, she'll move back, she'll withdraw, she'll look away, she'll send a signal to that boy that, Hey, I'm not comfortable with your going that hot. Yeah, I don't like that. Right. And this brilliant baby will take that immediately and engage in a change because he's looking for survival. Yeah. And she has just said to him, if you go high intense with emotion, you're in danger. And, and so he's gonna narrow the range of emotional expression. It happens to everyone that's a male

Speaker 2  00:07:23

That we had kind of talked about that a little bit. The kind of the range of expression, the communication and how that is, how it might becoming more difficult today. Because you were saying, you know, part of communication is talking and seeing each other and there's not so much of that.

Speaker 3  00:07:41

Oh, that is absolutely true. Right. We are into an environment where our children, and I'm really talking about even at the elementary school level, children are using cell phones. Yeah. And when they use the cell phone, they actually stop interacting with each other. More than 90% of communication is nonverbal. It is facial expression, body posture, movement, muscle tone, coloring, all of that is critical for communication. And today, our children are getting little to none of that because they're sitting next to each other, each one with a cell phone in hand, and they're typing and they're talking to each other. They're sending messages right to each other. Right. They're not facing each other. They're not getting kind of the full emphasis of communication. They've cut themselves off from that. That to me puts us at risk. Right. Because if I'm getting an emotional connection with you, then I am going to be distant from you. There's an increase of possibility of misunderstanding. You, there's an increase of possibility of being irritated and angry with you. It's disastrous.

Speaker 2  00:09:14

I I was reading an article, um, yesterday, I think about there are AI only schools forming mm-hmm <affirmative>. And getting state registration, I mean, to actually be a school, an AI school. And it's, that's got to increase that trend of not being person to person.

Speaker 3  00:09:40

I've not heard of that, but it sounds terrifying. <laugh>

Speaker 2  00:09:44

Sounds terrifying does to me too.

Speaker 3  00:09:47

Right. It will just completely diminish who we are as people. So let me give you an illustration with a voice again. So when boys start to walk around, we continue to narrow their emotional resource. We don't like boys to cry. Right. We don't boys to be what we'll call upset or tender. Right. We don't like boys playing in the doll corner. Yeah. You can't go to the dress up corner unless you're gonna get a cowboy hat. But you can't put on a scarf if you're a boy. And so we train our boys from preschool age to abandon access to the more sensitive feeling states that all human beings are capable of. And then when they grow up, we expect them to be able to develop an intimate relationship with a female or with a male friend or a male lover. It is not possible. It doesn't then. Right. That's why our jails are filled with men instead of women because they get into trouble when they cannot express what their feeling states are. So they use their bodies and they act out and they get loud. Instead,

Speaker 2  00:11:20

You would think that the kids being in this state, when you get to something like a divorce, which is a very emotional time, and they're, they are having trouble expressing emotions, it's gonna be much harder on the kids to, I think, relate. Right. It is. How could it not be?

Speaker 3  00:11:41

Right. So particularly if you're looking at the boys in the family system, we've already trained them to shut off access, ignore full range of emotional expression. And now we have distressed them probably beyond belief to have your parents separate and then have that loyalty conflict that would be natural for a child. Parents don't even have to contribute to that. Yeah. Right. There's a natural loyalty conflict of how do I continue to relate to dad? How do I continue to relate to mom? And of course parents contribute to that. Yeah. Most moms and dads go pretty hard on wanting to solicit the child to understand them and their particular perspective about relating to the other parent.

Speaker 2  00:12:36

And that kinda leads, it at least led to me to a book you wrote because you sort of, you were advocating that it's not, you know, we're talking about kids, but we're not just talking about, you know, our kids that are now nine or 10 or 12. We're talking also about ourselves. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And if we don't somehow figure out why we're doing what we're doing and learning about ourselves, how are we going to ever be able to figure out our kids?

Speaker 3  00:13:08

We do have to be reflective. And, and I do have a book that facilitates that. It's a journal book. It's called Read, reflect, respond, the three Rs of Growth and Change. And it's a unique journal book in that it has an essay on one page and the facing page is blank with a couple of stimulating questions, but you don't even have to read them. And the facing page is blank for a very good reason, because we store information in terms of site sound and language. And most journal books only think that it's important to access language. So they have lines on the page where you're just supposed to write. Right. That's not realistic. We hold so much information in terms of visual images, in terms of sounds that have been important to us. And so the facing page is blank so that you can draw, you can scribble, you could be intense with pressure. You can tear it if you want, lose the essay on the other side unless you tape it back together. But it is a way to access more information about what you're holding in your brain that has emotional significance and that you need to pay attention to. So it is a fabulous book for parents who are going through a divorcing process. It's a great book for any adult who really wants to learn more about themselves.

Speaker 2  00:14:54

I love the idea of having it blank because it is, like you said, it's much more emotional sometimes to like draw something

Speaker 3 00:15:03 Right.

Speaker 2  00:15:03

Or write a word it, you know? Right. It's four inches tall and you know.

Speaker 3  00:15:08

Right. And not have it Right. Not have it fit in the lines. Yeah.

Speaker 2  00:15:12

And, and I, and you had used a term that change requires emotional insight. And so you gotta get that emotional insight to yourself. You do.

Speaker 3  00:15:20

You do. And, and so this is a way for it to magically, if you will come outta your brain, this is an invitation to your brain to show you more than just words, to really show you feelings and earlier experiences through drawing and through the pressure that you would use on the page. And it works. Wow. That's the other great thing, <laugh> about

Speaker 2 00:15:46 It,

Speaker 3  00:15:47

Is that it really works well.

Speaker 2  00:15:49

Is the written page that you have just telling people what to do, like the doctors and blah, blah, blah? Or is it like stories or stories? How does it inspire them?

Speaker 3  00:15:59

The, the facing pages are one page stories. All right. They're reflections on pieces of history, their challenges about the future. They're just pretty simple stories collected from the blog that I do. So they, they can run the gamut from visits to your grandparents to exploration of the future that you might have done as an adolescent to think about who do I wanna be when I go to college and go into the workforce? They're, they run the gamut just to collect essays.

Speaker 2  00:16:41

I like that. I like, I like the idea of reading because especially something like that, 'cause it sort of unlocks your brain.

Speaker 3 00:16:48 It does.

Speaker 2  00:16:49

And the more you sort of read and then start to write, the more you kind of remember and That's right. Comes out.

Speaker 3  00:16:56

That's right. Yeah. These essays, some of them throw you back into the past in early childhood. Some of them throw you into the future. Some of them ground you right in the present with what's going on in the present, socially, culturally. So some of them just face you with happening now.

Speaker 2  00:17:17

Yep. So relating that again, back sort of to co-parenting, which mm-hmm <affirmative>. You know, we're a family law firm and, and co-parenting is a huge deal with our clients. And it can be, it's something that's just sort of like thrown on them and

<laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative>. They, everyone reacts kind of differently and not sure how to react. And so I really like something like this. And you, and you are, you, you were saying a, you do therapists work with co-parents in co-parenting?

Speaker 3 00:17:47 I do, I do.

Speaker 2 00:17:48 And, and parent

Speaker 3  00:17:49

Coordinating work. So I see parents who are court ordered into parent coordination to learn how to continue to raise their children in separate households. Um, and it is a incredibly difficult process to master that you can master that. That's the good news. You can learn how to do that and how to do it well and raise children who will describe to their college mates or to their workmates that they got a benefit from moving back and forth between these two households. That they were really able to build a relationship with each parent. Whereas when mom and dad are in the same household, sometimes that doesn't happen because one parent is kind of out busier than the other. And so parenting tends to fall to one, not to both. But this requires that both parents are front and center for relating and building relationship with their children. It can pay off big time for both the child and for the parent. And that's my goal is to help parents see this, this is an opportunity not, not to fight with your ex spouse over parenting Yeah.

Speaker 3  00:19:20

But to, to take full responsibility for this is the way I want to parent. Educate yourself. Because there's tons of ways to educate yourself about doing good parenting, whether it's reading or taking a class or getting a coach to help you. There are tons of ways to improve and challenge yourself to do a really good job of parenting your kids. And that's what you want in the long run. These people are going to grow up. They're either gonna stay in relationship with you and build a stronger

bond and a better friendship. Or they're gonna send you a card once or twice a year. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Not answer your phone calls, hope and pray that you never come to visit <laugh>.

Speaker 2  00:20:15

You get a lot of that, you get a lot of that. A couple things. One, one is on like parenting coordination. But that's a, that's a really interesting thing because in, in a lot of cases that's ordered by the court and you're appointed and you're, you're given some power.

Speaker 3 00:20:34 Yes.

Speaker 2  00:20:34

And so there is a little bit of a carrot to stick mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I think that's gotta help. But I, I see come and time again where we talked about visiting your childhood or, or opening it up, but it seems like a lot of co-parents are stuck with visiting the last six months.

Speaker 3  00:20:53

They are very stuck <laugh>. They're, the reason that they're ordered into parent coordination is they can't figure it out together. Yeah. So not everybody is ordered into parent coordination. These are the toughest parents. These are the ones who have said, I don't really want to cooperate with you. I don't want to share parenting with you. I would like you to disappear and I'll just take responsibility for parenting. So these are tough cases. So first you have to get them to see the value of their children having a relationship with each one. Even if one parent is incredibly difficult or disturbed in some way, there's still a value in having relationship with that person. Maybe you modify the type of visit or the type of time that that child spends with a parent. But that child is made from that parent is, has been influenced by that parent. Even if the child's been adopted, that child has been influenced by that parent for a significant period of time. It's critical that they understand who each of their parents are, how each of their parents have shaped who they are, and that they develop a healthy relationship with each one of those parents. Even if that does mean healthy for me, is that you keep this type of distance. Right. And sometimes that is healthy. Yeah.

Speaker 2  00:22:41

Oh yeah. And, and bringing the kids in sometimes, I mean, you know, there, there's family therapy. That's

Speaker 3 00:22:52 Right.

Speaker 2  00:22:52

Health therapy, there's co-parent therapy and, and sometimes it's better to put 'em all together and sometimes it's not. Absolutely. You gotta figure that out.

Speaker 3  00:23:01

Absolutely. Sometimes I've brought the kids in just to give them the voice that they need to encourage their parents and hold their parents accountable for stopping the fighting. That's a waste of time and energy for the child. The child doesn't get a benefit from that hostility. In fact, the child is harmed, is hurt, is intimidated by that hostility. So often children can do a really good job of educating their parents and changing the tone and the attitude that the parent has because they don't want to be alienated from their children. Right. Right. They want to have a relationship with a child. And if a child says, if you keep telling me negative stories about mom or about dad, I don't wanna talk to you.

Speaker 2  00:23:58

Yeah. That's powerful in a lot of of people getting divorced, feeling like we're gonna be amiable or do it together or try

Speaker 3 00:24:10 Hard to do part

Speaker 2  00:24:11

Of the thing they Yeah. Yeah. Part of the thing they say is, is, okay, we're just not gonna let our divorce involve the children. But you know, it's almost like pretending it's not happening. Right. And I don't know that that's that healthy either.

Speaker 3  00:24:25

Your voice divorce does involve <laugh> the children and, and the children are hurt, confused, hostile. I mean they have all kinds of reactions as a result. Yeah. And so you have to look realistically at what's the impact on these particular children. 'cause it's going to be different family to family, individual to individual. And you have to care air about the reaction on that particular child in order to build support, in order to provide a structure, in order to give comfort. Every child is different. You can't just do it one way. Every child is different. And so you have to work together to appreciate what does this child need in our family system and what does this other one need? Yeah. You can't get them all the same.

Speaker 2  00:25:31

That, and that's what you do to help. And I think that's just wonderful. Wow. We just blew through 30 minutes. <laugh>,

Speaker 3 00:25:38 Yipe, <laugh>

Speaker 2  00:25:39

And, and we are unfortunately outta time. But boy, first I want to thank you for being here today to talk about this you you issue of, of how, you know, our early histories, you know, come into the present and we're not even aware it's because of that. And the same thing with our children and, and how that all affects co-parent. I think it's a great topic and thank you for asking.

Speaker 3 00:26:01 You're welcome.

Speaker 2  00:26:03

Happy to be here. It's so wonderful. So Gloria, before we go though, I want to let you tell anyone how they can get ahold of you or your book if they would like to.

Speaker 3  00:26:17

The easiest way to find me is go to my website and that's www D-R-V-A-N-D-E-R-H-O-R-S t.com. So it's www.drvanderhorst.com. You'll find all kinds of resources there. You'll find ways to contact me directly. You'll find my phone number there. You'll find an opportunity to set time on my calendar, and I want you to get a copy of Read, reflect, respond, the three Rs of Growth and Change. You can get that in any independent bookstore, walk in, ask them to order it any place in the world. A publisher will send that book. And you can also find it on Amazon if you want it delivered to your door.

Speaker 2  00:27:06

I love it. I love it. Wow. Thank you again. And everyone, thank you for joining us today. It, you know, another great talk, a great topic. And if you do have any questions again about how to get to ho Goya, you can, or about this topic, you can post it here and we can help you get connected with her and the question, or again, you can go straight to her. So until next time, everyone stay safe, stay happy, and be well.