The Adult Chair Podcast: Men and Emotions with Ted Klontz

Today's guest is Ted Klontz, and we're kicking off with a big question about men and emotions, but I guarantee you there are some surprises in store from there! Ted shares his personal journey to understanding, learning to feel and experience his emotions. Along the way, he teaches us some important lessons on men and women and how we experience our emotions in different — but powerful — ways!

Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome to the adult chair on RashPixelFM.

I am Michelle Shelfa and today I'm thrilled to have a conversation with,

I would consider this person one of my mentors for sure,

With someone named Ted Klontz who's actually been on the show before and we're talking about emotions specifically with men.

But also women too,

But specifically with men.

But before we jump in,

You can find out more about the show on theadultchair.

Com.

You can subscribe for free by signing up for our mailing list or find us anywhere the finest podcasts are served with a quick search for The Adult Chair.

You can join the conversation on Facebook or Instagram and make sure to request to join the Adult Chair private Facebook group is a phenomenal way to learn more how to live in the healthiest version of yourself,

Which is what I call the adult chair.

And that is growing by leaps and bounds every day.

I'm thrilled about that.

So thank you to all of you who are joining.

We're having a blast in that group.

Last bit of information,

There is on April 28th and 29th here in Nashville,

Tennessee,

There is the Level One Adult Chair Weekend Intensive.

So that is coming up.

We are just four weeks away from that.

So make sure you sign up for that,

That there's more information on my website.

I even put an itinerary of what we do every day.

So basically what we learn how to do in that class is learn how to live in the adult chair.

So we go over everything from codependency to addictions to boundary setting and relationship issues.

We really delve into emotions,

Meditations,

All these kinds of things to help us really get in our bodies and in our adult chair.

So all right,

Here we go.

Ted Klotz is our special guest today.

And he is,

Gosh,

He has a 40 plus year career in counseling,

Consulting and advising that has included authoring,

Co-authoring and or contributing to six financial psychology related books.

He is a published researcher,

Professional speaker and trainer with corporate groups focusing on communication,

Skill development and anxiety management.

He has served in expert roles as an advisor to congressional committees and is regularly quoted in national and international media,

Including The Today Show,

CNN,

Good Morning America,

Larry King Live,

Oprah Winfrey,

NPR,

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Ted Klotz,

Welcome to the adult chair.

Thank you so much for coming on today.

Hi,

Michelle.

Great to be with you.

I do have one question of you.

Yes.

At the very beginning,

When you mentioned the word men,

You started laughing.

I did.

You busted me.

When I hear men in emotion,

I do.

It makes me giggle a little bit.

I'm not going to lie.

Yeah.

Well,

It's quite charming.

Anyway.

Yes.

Well,

I just want to give everyone the backstory of how you and I are even on the show today.

Just a little bit of the of course,

I've known you for years,

But specifically why I invited you on this show,

I want to tell everybody what happened.

I don't even know that,

You know,

I think actually because I emailed you,

You may know this.

About a month ago,

I taught one of my adult chair weekend intensives down in Florida.

For those of you that don't know the adult chair,

It's a model that I created and it's about basically it's learning how to love yourself,

It's living authentically and living in the healthiest,

What I call highest version of yourself.

Over the course of the weekend,

We really dive deep into the self.

We examine and work through things like codependency,

Addiction,

Relationship setting boundaries.

We go into childhood issues.

We do multiple guided meditations to really take us deeper into the self.

Well,

A big part of the work is getting in touch with our emotions and our truth and what we feel in the body.

So in this class,

And it's usually women that come to these classes,

Which men are always more than invited,

But we had two men in this weekend intensive that I taught.

I'm already giggling,

Ted,

You see.

And these men challenged me all weekend about emotions and what they're feeling in their body.

And I have to say these men came with their wives.

So their wives knew all about the work that I do.

And they were on vacation and they just decided to bring their men.

And they were lovely men,

I have to say.

I talked to them both individually throughout the course of the weekend,

Loved them.

They were great guys.

However,

They challenged me all weekend.

So when we would do,

I would do something experiential or a meditation and I would go around the room and I'd say,

Does anyone have anything they'd like to share?

And on occasion,

I would call on them and they'd say things like,

Men are not as emotional as women.

So I really didn't feel anything or no,

I didn't feel anything in my body after that guided meditation or maybe a tingle,

But not really anything.

And they were kind of like,

This is not for me.

It was the attitude that I felt,

That they just weren't in the same place as women.

So I came back from that class.

It was burning on my mind.

I'm like,

I need to do a show on men and emotions,

Which is when I emailed you,

Ted,

And you said,

You emailed me back and said,

We need to have a phone call about this one.

And then I emailed you back and said,

I think it's a podcast,

Not a phone call.

So here we are on the show and I really value your opinion on this.

And you're someone that I know is so in touch with his emotions.

And just as a teacher and a speaker and all that you do,

I know this is such a part of what you teach and work with people on.

So I've actually heard you say that men are more intelligent than women.

So let's start right there.

Let's just dive right in.

So please share with us that men are more emotional than women,

Please.

That kind of blows my mind.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's an important thing that I didn't say.

Emotionally intelligent.

But biologically,

Men have a greater propensity for feelings.

They can feel them longer,

More intensely and sooner than women do.

And not that they can,

But that's what happens.

And if you look back in our historic biology,

It was a significant advantage for them to have that kind of sensitivity.

And so the only people who don't know that are men,

By the way,

That we don't know.

And I was probably,

I would guess maybe 40 years old.

And I didn't know what a feeling was,

Really.

I had detuned myself so well to fit in to so many places in the adult world and not be influenced or affected by anything that went on outside of me.

I actually coached baseball and I was accused by the people who watch me,

The parents of the players,

Of not caring.

Because I could sit through the most agonizing moments as if I didn't care.

And basically what I was doing,

I learned very early is by watching my brother,

Who was quite emotional,

My mother who was quite emotional,

That when people got emotional,

They lost.

My brother was a much better athlete than I was,

But if I could make him angry,

I was better than he was.

And so it was an incredible advantage for me not to have any feelings.

And it was a way of saying safe.

If I didn't emotionally react to a situation,

Nobody would make fun of me.

When you're being bullied and you have feelings about it,

It just makes the bullying go on further.

So I literally detuned myself.

And it was only in my early 40s when I had the sense that I even heard the word feelings.

I didn't even know what it was.

And for a couple of years,

I went around asking people,

If this happened to you,

What would you feel?

And they would say,

I'd feel angry or scared.

And I go,

Hmm,

That's interesting.

So I have a question that were you asking other men?

I was asking everybody.

Nobody would listen to me because I didn't know what it was.

I literally didn't know what it was.

And it seemed like a curious thing to me.

Yeah.

Then I began looking at like,

What do you do?

And after a while,

I realized that I had had something on the inside,

But I didn't know what it was,

Whether it was a tightness or whatever.

The signals were there,

But I had detuned myself from so far.

So you said you were 40 when you had this realization.

But so as a child or growing up,

Did you find yourself to be more emotional and you turned it off or were you just never really,

Really had access to those emotions?

I turned it into an intellectual pursuit.

Right.

I remember a girl,

A girlfriend hurt me when I was 12 years old.

And I thought to myself,

No one's ever going to hurt me like that again.

And they didn't.

Because I didn't like how I felt.

And there was no processing of it in the family I grew up in.

My mother had huge feelings,

Which were all over the place,

And she looked ridiculous.

And I didn't want to be like that.

My father was the model of the non-feeling,

Non-emotional,

The most angry I ever saw him was my brother and I set our house on fire.

He came upstairs and he threw the mattress out that was burning out the window.

And he just looked at us and shook his head and walked away.

How cool is that?

That is so cool that nothing can affect you and then you're safe.

And that was my model.

And I believe that even though I don't know that I was an extreme case,

But I do know that in our world,

Men are conditioned like that from the very beginning to not have certain kinds of emotions.

And I have a four-year-old grandson and I saw him being parented and adulted,

Let's say,

In a way that certain kinds of reactions are not rewarded.

They don't get mom a smile or daddy's laugh or,

You know,

It's like,

Okay,

So I won't do that again.

So he falls down and he's rewarded for not hurting.

He's rewarded for not being afraid.

He's rewarded for not being,

You know,

Jealous or,

You know,

Whatever it is.

And in other words,

Just turn it down,

Turn it down,

Turn it down.

And I think we learn it is not a natural thing.

There's not been one baby ever born that I know of who hasn't cried,

Male or female.

And at some point in time,

Some of us just turn that off as much as possible.

Now,

It doesn't go away,

It does go inside.

And it has an effect on us men.

And I honestly believe that,

You know,

The parallel that we see with young men who are shooting other people on a regular basis,

You know,

That it comes out in some way.

You know,

It eventually comes out.

We either attack ourselves through a heart attack or,

You know,

We get ulcers or whatever it is,

Or we move that energy out in an explosive way that nobody really can anticipate.

It just sort of happens.

I did have one moment in college when I,

And I couldn't tell you this day why it happened,

But I was walking back to my dorm and there was this dresser that somebody had set outside because they were getting rid of it.

And for some reason,

I picked up a board and just beat that thing to smithereens.

And when I got done,

I thought,

Where did that come from?

You know,

It seemed so out of character for me.

But it was really everything on the inside,

The rage,

The sadness,

The grief,

The sense of loss,

The sense of safety,

Whatever it is,

It all came out in one really big bubble.

And it really made me afraid.

It made me afraid of myself.

And so I was even more convinced never to let that show.

In fact,

One of my friends just before I started finding out I had feelings,

We had this agreement that neither of us felt anything.

And if we did,

We would probably kill somebody.

And that's why we wouldn't allow ourselves to feel anything.

I mean,

It was that kind of thing.

You know,

It's just we pay a terrible price.

Our culture pays a price and men pay a price.

And of course,

Any woman in our life pays a price also.

So when you saw that piece of whatever you saw in college,

Nothing had triggered you.

It just was all these built up emotions.

So it just sort of came out of the blue for you when you're walking across your college campus.

Absolutely.

There wasn't anything else going on.

I just saw it was an opportunity and I just I beat it to smithereens.

And it scared me to death.

It scared me to death.

It was scary because it was so out of control and like out of left field that these emotions just hit you sideways.

Yep.

Like I didn't know what that was.

Interesting.

And I another thing too,

You know,

That there are certain kinds of movies that men tend to like.

And a lot of it,

I believe,

Is a vicarious expression of the anger,

The rage,

The sadness,

You know,

All that kind of stuff.

It feels good.

And so we get to vicariously release it that way.

So we don't have to own it as our own.

It's a movie.

It's controllable.

We can.

It has a start,

A middle and a finish.

And,

You know,

We just love it.

That's fascinating.

I never thought about that because men do typically like the more like aggressive kind of movies or like video games.

Think about the kids with these video games.

They're killing people on these video games.

But maybe this is the way you're saying to get these emotions out that they can't get out any other way.

And I can't prove this,

But my hunch is that there are many more boys who play those games than there are girls.

I know that there are because I have two boys,

Teenagers,

And they both for sure.

I don't hear girls that play these games.

I mean,

If there are,

They're very few in front of me.

But what so what makes a man more emotionally intelligent than a woman?

Just well,

You know,

Again,

They are capable of greater emotional experiences.

In fact,

They do have them,

But they're not intelligent.

Intelligence means I'm aware that I'm having them.

I'm aware of the nuances.

I'm aware when they come,

I have a vocabulary.

I have an ability to hear someone else's and hold it gently and without feeling I have to fix it or talk them out of it or all those kinds of things.

We have a greater emotional experience.

Men do.

But we are totally ignorant for the most part of the depth and weight of it all.

And as I said,

Our culture sort of supports that.

I think to some degree that women buy into that too.

The male thing,

It's sort of an unusual woman who would be attracted to a man who's sad and who cries and who shows himself as being susceptible to being hurt by other people and all that kind of stuff.

There's a certain kind of man we look for,

A man who can be our anchor,

Can be our support,

Our pillar,

Whatever it is.

And I think women are restricted to and what we would call the masculine energy,

That women are.

An angry woman has a reputation and there's a word for her.

An angry man,

We don't have the same word.

Right.

Because it's normal.

It's normal and it's very accepted for men to have anger.

That's just part of who they are.

I used to say that as men,

We have two acceptable depositories for our emotions.

It's sort of like a funnel.

Out at the edge of the funnel are all these wide range of emotions,

But down as that goes down into the funnel spout,

We can be angry,

We can be sexual.

That's it.

So if I'm a husband and I'm feeling insecure or lonely or whatever it is,

I can say to my wife or course or whatever,

Be demanding of sex and attempt to feel better.

Because I'm looking for a feeling that sex can't give me,

Then there's never enough of it.

I think women too,

They're sort of a funnel,

The acceptable emotions for a woman.

Simply if she's having a very strong emotional experience,

She can cry or she can be depressed.

But for her to get angry and to be an angry woman,

That's not considered to be a good thing.

Let's put it that way.

I like when you said all babies cry,

Male or female.

All these babies are crying and then something changes in the way that we're raised.

That's what causes us as,

Again,

As boys to learn how to push those emotions down or not be in touch with their emotions.

But I don't think that parents raise girls in the healthiest way either.

Because again,

As women now,

We're happier,

We're sad.

There isn't a lot of,

Gosh,

I don't feel like I matter.

Until we really start exploring the emotional world and all that we can feel,

We use words like I'm really happy or I'm sad and that's about it.

We're very limited with our emotional intelligence,

I find.

But I like also hearing you say that when you were 40 and then you had this realization,

So you were able,

Because I didn't know you when you were 40,

But knowing the man I know today,

You're incredibly emotional and very in touch with what you're feeling.

So you started asking people,

But how can people change?

I get this question often.

People male or female will say to me,

I always ask them,

Especially,

How does that make you feel what's going on in your body?

Oftentimes people say,

I have no idea.

I just don't know.

So how would you help someone learn how to feel?

Well,

I start with the belief that they're already feeling.

So I would start gently with probably the most scariest thing to ask a man who isn't in touch with himself is,

What do you feel in your body?

He doesn't have one.

We only feel,

Men tend to feel things only with one part of our body.

So you're asking me what's going on.

I don't know what's going on inside,

But I think I would ask a person,

So tell me what moves you.

Tell me when you see it makes you feel really sad.

Tell me things that incite you.

It just really bugs you to see it or hear about it or whatever it is.

And to introduce them to the idea that these feelings sort of pop out,

They leak out in various ways and to sort of follow that path.

What happened for me,

It was a very specific thing.

I was in a couples program and part of the couples program,

They asked us to draw a map,

A symbolic map of our life before we met our partner.

So then they would have us stand up and share with our partner in front of a group of other couples our story of our life before we met our partner.

My wife had heard this before,

But I'm showing her this and this and this and this and this.

And I noticed that somebody got up and left the room in the middle of my,

And I thought,

Well,

That's rude.

But then they came back and then another person got up and left and came back and like three of them in the five or six minutes.

And the group leader stopped everything right then when I was done.

And she said to me,

How do you feel?

And I said,

It's my story.

There's no feelings about it.

And so she went around the room then she said,

Could I have permission to ask of the other people what they experienced?

And the first person said,

Terror.

And the other person said,

Horrified.

And the third person who had been the first person to get up and leave said,

I had to go throw up.

And it's like,

I thought to myself,

What's wrong with these people?

By the time the eighth person came around and they all had the same reaction,

I'm thinking,

I'm missing something here.

Like,

What am I missing?

And that's when I thought,

I don't know what's going on because I had terrible things happen.

Like my uncle would pretend to shoot,

I'd be moving the cows to the barnyard to milk them and from the top of the hill,

He would shoot a 21 at me,

A rifle.

And the bullet would go whizzing by and hit the ground or a tree or whatever.

And I would just keep walking as if it didn't happen.

And to me,

That's a matter of fact story or my tractor turned over on my uncle.

And when I got there,

He was begging me to save him and yada,

Yada.

And I'm just telling you a story like,

Well,

It's raining outside kind of thing.

And the people were reacting to that.

So that's when it happened for me.

It's like,

Well,

There's this whole other thing.

I don't know what it is.

And it was really,

And I call it sincere denial.

In your work with people,

I'm sure you've come to the point like,

How can they not see this?

How can they not notice?

And it's really,

They literally,

They can't.

And so I would start there in terms of,

You know,

What are the things that really move you?

What are the things that are really hard for you to watch?

What are the things that inspire you?

Tell me what's inspiring to you about that,

All those kinds of things.

It's interesting when you were talking about feeling,

Because I've asked my clients too,

Like how does that feel in the body?

What's going on?

And I find we're so even disconnected from the body.

We're just,

We don't know.

And many people say,

Oh yeah,

I feel it in my head.

Like,

Well,

What happens in your body?

They're like,

Nothing.

Like we're just cut off.

It seems like to me.

Yeah.

And language doesn't help us either.

It's so much like a feeling is one word.

It's not a sentence.

It's not a sentence.

It's not a phrase.

But our language sort of permits us to be very loose with that word feeling.

I feel like you,

Or,

You know,

I feel that this or,

You know,

Like what's about to follow is a thought.

It's not a feeling.

So our language is very confusing too.

So a part of,

You know,

A part of what I do is I'll say,

You know,

You get four choices.

These are the four words,

Which ones are you closest to feeling and on a scale of zero to 10,

How much and where in your body,

Because if you ask a person,

The average person,

How they're feeling,

They feel almost obligated to give you a reason why.

Yes.

And when we start talking about why we're no longer feeling,

You know,

And so I intentionally say,

You know,

All I want to know is find someplace in this continuum,

Mad,

Sad,

Glad and afraid,

Go stand someplace closest to where you can relate to that.

Tell me zero to 10,

How much and where in your body and what kind of sensation is it a fluttering,

Is it a tightness,

Is it a heat,

Is it a coldness,

You know,

Where is it?

And that's one way for people who voluntarily show up in places where I am.

That's how I helped introduce or integrate them into the body and feelings and stuff like that.

And a lot of people think that,

You know,

Well,

I'm a crier,

So I'm really emotional and I'm thinking that's not true.

Just because we cry does not make us emotional.

Well,

It means that we have given ourselves permission to have one outlet that is acceptable to us and probably acceptable to the people around us.

The way I did my feelings is I would isolate,

I would go into isolation and still today when I get really emotional,

I just want to be alone.

And it takes a lot for me to stay there and to engage in those raw feelings in real time with a real person.

Interesting.

So does a man with healthy emotions,

Does it look,

Again,

I hate to say women and men are so different.

There are some men like you that are very in touch with their emotions,

But is an emotionally balanced male look similar to an emotionally balanced female?

Yeah,

Because,

You know,

They're an emotionally balanced human being.

And the whole thing about men and women,

Feminine and masculine,

It's artificial.

As I said,

At the beginning of our life,

We're all the same.

And our culture has a particular way that it believes that men should be and we train our men subconsciously to be that way.

The same thing with women.

As you know,

There are only four mammals who display pathology.

And those are zoo animals,

Lab animals,

Pets and human beings.

And in all those,

We restrict their natural being.

We control who and what they are.

And one of the ways that you have created profession is you help them become go back to their humaneness.

At no point in time does a baby hate themselves or think that they're ugly or they think they're too fat or they think they have too much hair or whatever.

They don't judge themselves that way.

At some point in time,

Our culture begins teaching them that certain things about being human beings are acceptable and certain things aren't.

And I think that's a problem.

What we're teaching them is a problem.

And for some of us,

We have a profession helping people come back into their humanity.

It's called therapy,

Right?

Which is what you're saying.

To become who you always were,

At some point in time,

You got the message that you shouldn't be that.

And then that only goes so far.

And then the quality of our life is camp.

So as parents in today's world,

Then what can we do differently?

Because we do get these messages from outside of the home,

But oftentimes inside the home.

So I have a lot of parents that ask me often,

Oh my gosh,

I'm learning how to be healthy now.

How do I raise my children?

And is it too late?

How can I raise healthier children?

And my question for you would be,

How do we help our children stay connected to their emotions?

And what I always say is we've got to learn it first.

But in addition to that,

What else can you say about that?

Well,

I would support that.

Once I realized how shut down I was,

I realized my kids didn't escape that.

Their mother was just like my mother,

Quite emotional,

Quite exotic in her expression of them.

And their dad was like my father.

So I'd replicated the whole thing.

And I was scared,

Like,

Oh my,

My kids are going to be wrecked.

And I got some really good advice.

And it was like,

You fix yourself.

You take care of yourself and your kids will be just fine.

That is not what I wanted to hear.

I wanted to send my kids to a workshop,

Right?

But I found that to be true.

And the other thing,

You know,

We can only allow in other people what we allow in ourselves.

So even if we want to allow our son to cry,

We can only allow as much of that as we can allow ourselves to cry.

So at some point,

Well,

I'm letting them cry,

But boy,

You've cried long enough.

It's like,

Get over it.

Right.

But again,

I think if I were to advise someone,

You know,

Become as emotionally intelligent as you can yourself,

And you will begin providing that space and time without intending to,

Without knowing it,

Without even trying to that other person because you have that sense of compassion for yourself.

You know,

It's okay for me to feel sad.

And I don't have to be over it in two or three minutes.

Right.

So sadness will inform me if I pay attention to my tears.

One of the exercises I have used for years is if your tears could speak,

What would they say?

You know,

They're trying to tell you what moves me.

One of the exercises,

One of the things I ask people sometimes is tell me what your favorite movies are and tell me what the theme is.

Tell me if you can think of a theme,

You know,

Like there's a story and,

You know,

My list has always has families coming together in this magical moment at the end of the movie.

And that's what I always wanted and never had.

However,

Without really knowing that by being informed by that,

I've created a family where that's true.

I mean,

When we come together,

It's beautiful,

It's loving,

It's,

You know,

Something I never had or even imagined was possible.

So it's by paying attention to those things which are attractive to us,

Things which we're afraid of.

They're all very informing of us.

We're having emotional reactions to those things.

Yeah.

Again,

I don't think it matters how old the children are,

Teenagers are,

Young adults are.

It's our job to keep working on ourselves and that will help others.

It's just where we have to become models for everyone in our world,

Really,

Not just our children.

So thank you.

My father was 83 on his deathbed and I had this feeling,

I had this thing.

I said,

Dad,

I'm really proud of you.

You've shown me how to do the last part of life.

And for the first time in his life,

He said,

I don't think I've ever told you how proud I am of you.

Oh,

Wow.

And I got to tell you that,

You know,

I was 50 some years old and it's like that made a difference.

So it's never,

Never,

Ever too late.

So that had an impact on you even in age 15.

Wow.

I've been waiting to hear that and given up hope that I would hear it for 50 years.

Wow,

That's incredible.

So you know,

Are some people that just seem to not get rocked by anything that are just sort of not like flat,

They're just genuinely happy and they don't get rocked or anything.

They don't really have bad days,

They don't,

Does that really exist?

Because I know people like that and they're like,

I just don't have bad days.

I'm just not really affected by much.

I just am happy.

They don't really have like restaurant preferences.

Let's just say we go out to eat.

I don't care wherever you want to go.

Like they don't really have a lot of preferences and they're also very,

What they call,

In balance,

But they don't really have bad days.

Like is that healthy or normal or like what are we striving for here?

I'm just wondering because I'm like,

Damn,

I'm not like that.

I'm not that I used to be way high and low.

Reviews

Highly recommend listening to this. Very informative.

Really interesting insight. Thank you 💜x

Interesting, informative, awesome as always. Thankyou :)

wow so interesting and helpful, thank you so much for this 🙏👌🌈

One of those sessions where I will have to listen to again to capture what was missed. Very informative and inspiring.

That was excellent. The man-to-woman dichotomy as well as the humaness of thought-emotion-physical perceptions. Wow! I learned a lot today.

I can’t even begin to describe how I feel after listening to this podcast.
I’m in tears, I’m upset but I’m also nodding my head thinking yes indeed. I’ve been in a relationship with a man who had “split” from his emotions at the age of 12,13.
He said to himself “I’m never going to feel anything again.” He stuck to it even through 15 years with me, and then one day he fell apart and told me why.
Has it helped? No, he started self-destructing, even worse then before.
Now he won’t speak to me- and he’s tucked me into a compartment, as so many men are so good at doing .

It’s so sad that some who really need to hear things like this don’t.
I meditate and pray for his healing often, but I’m on my own journey to heal 17 years of emotional pain from him.
Thank you for this excellent podcast Michelle. 🙏🏼💐💔🌸🦋🐾🕊