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Aug. 7, 2025 - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
01:04:41
Family Conflicts, Difficult Children & Overcoming Resentment: Answer The Call Ep. 2
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Time Text
Pay attention to your resentment.
Determine whether that's you or the situation.
Sort out the issue.
Hand more responsibility to your kids.
Do not do anything for your children that they could do themselves.
The other possibility is that you're immature and you're not shouldering your responsibility properly.
Well, and it's not, it's not, I'm not accusing you of that at all.
Do an exhaustive inventory.
Here's all the reasons I'm guilty about being a mother.
The adversary is making his case.
Now you know what you're up against.
Next thing is, why might this be wrong?
That was way more intense than I was expecting.
The questions were very high quality and very deep and difficult.
This is where you make a decision of conscience and you decide whether you're going to stick to what you believe to be right, come hell or high water.
You have to decide what you're going to stake yourself on.
Thank you.
Hi, I'm Michaela Fuller, formerly Peterson.
You may wonder why I'm on my dad's YouTube channel.
Well, I'm thrilled to announce that given the response to our last call-in episode filmed in my studio, and because we had a great time doing it, I assume you had a great time doing it.
I had a great time doing it, yeah.
Okay, good.
We've decided to make this call-in thing a regular occurrence.
So I'll be joining my dad for our new show, Answer the Call, where we answer your questions live.
We're going to be covering a wide range of topics, and we both hope this will be useful to a lot of people.
Today, we're focusing on early motherhood, which is incredibly special to me because I had a baby about a month ago, my third kiddo.
We have a great lineup of callers ready to share their questions today that hopefully apply to you guys as well.
Our first caller today is Denit in Vermont.
Denit, are you there?
Hi.
How are you doing?
I'm great.
How are you doing?
I hear you have a question.
I do have a question.
All right.
Fire away.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I just gave birth to my first child three weeks ago, and I have a very unusual challenge that has to do with my family of origin.
So last year, my little brother came out as a woman, and he's 16 years younger than me.
So I kind of helped raise him.
So I really, really love him like he's my own.
And I'm the only one in the family that doesn't call him by his new name and pronouns.
And honestly, I don't really call him anything.
I just like use workarounds to not offend him or, you know, lie to him as per your advice.
So he thinks he's going to be called auntie.
And I'm not planning on lying to my daughter about gender.
So how do I tell him that he's going to be uncle without blowing up my relationship with him and maybe everybody in my family?
And how do I protect my daughter from her ideologically adult relatives?
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess we're going to start out with an easy question, are we?
Okay, let me ask you a question.
Why have you decided to take the stance that you're taking?
Like you said that you love your brother, and I'm not questioning that.
And an argument could be made, and people will make this that if you loved him, you know, you would go along with what he is acting out.
But you've decided that you're not going to do that.
And so why have you done that?
My intuition and you, honestly, like, I think I, you know, have been watching enough of your videos and everything that I am starting to see.
I'm starting to see things clearly.
And I don't think it's right.
I don't think what he's doing is right.
How do you know you're seeing things clearly?
Like what makes you inclined to believe that?
I think because it's the only thing that feels right.
I mean, I was, I think if you took who I was five or ten years ago and pasted it over this situation, I might still have the same reaction.
I might be a little more willing to just kind of go with it.
I think I'd be more willing to fall for the, you know, he's going to hurt himself if I don't affirm.
Yeah, yeah.
That's nonsense.
That's That's nonsense.
And okay, so let me, okay, so let me address this issue now that you've told me that.
So what I would say to you is that the truth is a medium to long-term game.
Right?
So it's the best strategy because it falls in accordance with reality, but you can game.
reality in the short term, which is why people lie and why they go along with false consensus and why they try to gather things for themselves that they don't deserve.
But that doesn't work in the medium to long run.
It's a very bad strategy.
And so I would say that your best bet for maintaining your relationship with your brother over the long run, and that could be decades, and what would also be in his best interest is to stick to the truth.
Now, you're going to pay a price for that in the short term, right?
You know that.
The price is going to be the resistance you're going to get from everybody who's going along with them.
They'll be annoyed at you because your stance runs contrary to theirs.
And there'll be flack from him as well.
But this is where you make a decision of conscience and you decide whether you're going to stick to what you believe to be right, come hell or high water, in the hopes that that's the best strategy, all things considered, over the longest period of time.
That that's what faith in the truth is.
So I could define it.
Faith in the truth is the belief that whatever happens when you tell the truth is the best thing that could happen, regardless of how it looks to you in the moment and maybe to others.
Now, the alternative would be faith in falsehood.
You could say, well, I'll go along with the illusion.
That'll make everyone happy and apparently.
And it'll reduce conflict.
And that's the best pathway.
You don't have any evidence, so to speak, for either of those because you don't know how it's going to play out.
And so you have to decide what you're going to stake yourself on.
And then you have to pay the price.
You're going to pay a price of one form or another.
Yeah.
Denit, can I take a stab at this?
Please.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for your call.
That is, that's a heavy topic.
I think from my perspective, if that was happening to me, especially after having a baby, your baby is so, so important that you want to get everything right because you're going to get a number of things wrong anyway.
Right.
And I think the political landscape is also changing enough that this might only be a problem for another year or two.
That's the hope anyway, because I think people are realizing that that is a lie and that a bunch of people got brainwashed.
And so I think maybe, hopefully, the problems with your family would resolve because of the political changes in the next couple of years anyway.
But what should be your number one priority right now is teaching your daughter what's true and what's false.
And that is objectively not true.
And unfortunately, it's confused a number of people, which is just heartbreaking and terrible.
And hopefully it'll resolve.
And I think it's already resolving, which is the positive thing.
But going based on your intuition, especially as a new mom, it's so strong.
And so I think what you're doing is definitely the right thing, saying no to that.
It's a complicated decision, but I don't think you have an option.
It'll just destroy your soul otherwise.
A huge part of what's fallen apart in the last year is all the lies that the gender-affirming care advocates have put forward as scientific data.
Yeah, thank goodness.
The large-scale studies indicate with absolute clarity, as was inevitable, that there's no evidence whatsoever that gender-affirming care produces any improvement in any of the things it was supposed to magically cure, which is only to say that radical and often surgical and hormonal intervention in someone's life when they're depressed and anxious and confused.
And a teenager.
And a teenager.
Yeah.
Right.
Is somehow not helpful.
What a shock.
Yeah.
It's also ridiculous that this has happened with the mental health crisis that's been going on.
Like, what, one in five people have a mental illness?
How are you supposed to differentiate that from this trans phenomenon?
Yeah, well, like you said, maybe we've run out the vast what?
I think so.
We've run out the foolishness on this, or at least some of it.
We'll see.
Yep.
We'll see.
Yep.
We'll see.
Right.
Right.
Just when you think things can't get any stupider, you know, they're likely to.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Well, good luck to her.
Yeah.
And that discussion of the truth was particularly relevant because it is important to understand that faith in the truth is a long-term game.
Yeah.
And it is soul-crushing if you don't say what's true.
Like she's out of options, really.
What is she going to do?
Sacrifice her soul?
Like, that's what it feels like, I think, when you know you're lying or you don't say something.
You just your soul either.
It would just you corrupt the social environment by going along with the lies, right?
That's why in the story of Abraham, you know, when Abraham is talking to the angels and to God about the potential destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, so the pathological city, God agrees to save the city if there's 10 people who still walk the righteous path.
It starts with 50.
That's Abraham's first request.
And he bargains God down to 10.
There's this very specific meaning to that.
And the meaning is that if the society in question that's headed for perdition and destruction at its own hands is still together enough to allow 10 people to say the truth, there's hope.
Right.
And so you're supposed to be one of those 10.
Right.
Well, you're going to pay for that, but you pay for everything.
So like, that's the point.
I think I was really fortunate when I was a kid.
One of my favorite things that you taught me, probably because I'm disagreeable as well, was don't listen to stupid rules.
You taught me that when I was, I think I was in grade two, and that went haywire for a while as a kid trying to interpret what on earth does that mean.
But don't listen to stupid rules, but be aware that there are going to be consequences for not listening to those stupid rules.
Well, we told, that's exactly what we told you.
Said, look, you have, you can follow your conscience and oppose the stupid rule, but you have to pay the price for your opposition.
And what that was, was a recognition that a commitment to rebellion, let's say, without sacrifice is a lie.
Yeah, it's not going to be easy.
No, no.
If it's easy, maybe you're not on the rebellious side.
Well, it's easy if you get someone else to perform the sacrifice.
You know, that's what the, that's what the activists do all the time.
Someone else has to change.
No, it's you that has to.
You have to pay.
Maybe you should.
And maybe there'll be a benefit to paying, but you have to.
You have to be willing to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
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Are you ready?
Ready?
Call number two.
Wow.
That was an intense one to be with.
Oh my gosh.
Okay.
Yeah.
A lot of people have are facing this situation.
Horrible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of people.
Up next, we've got McKay in Ohio on the line.
Hello, McKay.
Hi.
How are you doing?
I'm well.
How are you?
Good.
Let's hear your question.
Yeah.
I have five kids.
I'm 26.
I have five kids.
Wow.
Two of those are cool.
Good for you.
Two of those are foster.
Oh, yes.
Wow.
You're an ambitious, you're an ambitious creature.
Okay.
Two foster kids, three of your own kids.
Yeah.
Okay.
And my question is: what are some tangible ways to regulate your temper when dealing with young, especially young kids, and avoid feeling kind of resentful to them for the demands they make on your time and attention?
Yeah, that's a very good question.
Okay.
Are you married?
Yes.
Okay.
And okay, I have a very specific reason for asking that.
So look, resentment is an extremely useful emotion.
Okay.
It's very dangerous.
And it's one of the three things that really hurt people.
Resentment, arrogance, and deceit are like the evil triad.
But resentment is extremely useful because it only means one of two things if you're experiencing it.
One is that you are being taken advantage of and you have something to say and something to sort out.
So that's one possibility.
The other possibility is that you're immature and you're not shouldering your responsibility properly.
Well, and it's not, it's not, I'm not accusing you of that at all.
I'm just saying that that's what the emotion indicates.
Okay, so now then the question is, if you notice that you're resentful, which you should notice, and which is quite likely if you're an agreeable and self-sacrificing person, then you have to think, okay, am I being irresponsible and immature or is too much being asked of me?
Okay, now one way of figuring that out is to talk to your partner, your husband or your wife and say, look, I noticed that under these circumstances, I feel resentful.
And I need to figure out if I'm not standing up for myself enough and allowing myself to be taken advantage of, or if I have some residual irresponsibility and immaturity and I'm just, you know, trying to avoid my duty.
And that's a very hard thing to sort out, but really necessary.
And having a truthful dialogue with your husband when that happens can be extremely useful.
Your goal should be to move forward without resentment.
Okay, now let's put that aside for a moment.
Now, the next issue would be, you know, how old are your kids?
So my biological ones are five, three, and one.
And then the foster children are eight and three.
Eight and three.
Eight and three.
Okay.
Okay.
So you, so you have a handful.
You know, there, you have a lot.
You have a large number of young children.
And so you are going to have a lot of demands on you.
Now, you, it's incumbent on you to organize your environment, the environment of your children, the disciplinary environment, so that you aren't exhausted and harried.
And that's going to mean that you have to determine, likely with your husband and with your children, just how much you can be asked to provide and give.
Now, if, you know, you might say, well, I should give everything to my children.
It's like, hey, fair enough, but you have to give everything in a sustainable manner.
You can't give so much that you're exhausted and miserable and things degenerate, right?
That's just not helpful.
And you're going to have natural limits and the limits are being indicated by the resentment.
Okay, so now what that might mean is that you're inadvertently doing too much for your kids, right?
You're not requiring them to pick up some of the load themselves.
The situation isn't sorted out optimally with your husband in terms of division of child care.
You don't have enough help.
You're not doing enough for yourself.
Like any of those are possibilities and all of them should be investigated.
A good rule of thumb with regards to children and caretaking in general is do not do anything for your children that they could do themselves.
Right?
Because there's a reason for that.
It's not cruel.
The reason for that is it's going to be better for everyone, including your children, and certainly you, if they become competent as rapidly as possible.
And the way that that happens is by handing them responsibility.
You know, even an 18-month-old can help set the table, right?
Everyone's got to pitch in, especially with that many young kids and the complexity of that situation.
So, okay, so let me just summarize that.
Pay attention to your resentment.
Make a goal of getting rid of it.
Determine whether that's you or the situation.
Now, I would assume that it's the situation first and you second, right?
So don't be down on yourself.
Talk to your husband when you get resentful and sort out the issue, hand more responsibility to your kids, and work to attain a state where you're not giving more than you can.
You see, if you're resentful, it could easily be that you're doing too much for your kids and that that emotion is a marker of that.
Well, I think also, just to step in there, five kids at that, at those ages, especially with the one and the three-year-olds, that is a lot.
It is.
No sane person can handle that if they're doing 90% of the childcare.
So if that's what's going on for you, that's not a problem with you.
Now, the resentment part, like I had some issues with resentment when I had my first baby, and I only had one baby, but I was at home all the time.
I didn't have any time for myself.
I was very sleep-deprived.
And after a number of months, I wasn't resentful at the baby, but I was definitely resentful.
And I didn't, and I thought I wasn't trying hard enough.
That's kind of how it played out in my mind.
And that's not what was going on.
And that was with one kid.
Albeit, the first kid is like, it's a lot for people.
But I mean, I would say that situation, I think primarily, you probably need more help.
Yeah, that's it.
Like, you need to talk to your husband and figure out how to get somebody there for like a couple of hours a day to give you a breather.
Otherwise, I don't know how you're going to do it.
This isn't some will you can bring up, especially if you're sleep-deprived and with five kids.
Like you need a family member to come in, or you need to figure out how to get like two hours a day to be by yourself or do something for yourself.
Even that would be helpful.
So I don't think it's a you thing, but you definitely need some communication with your husband.
Like freak out a little bit, be like, this is a huge problem.
I don't want to be resentful.
I'm really tired.
Like I'm not enjoying myself.
I'm not the mom I could be if I had a couple of hours to myself.
And that's not fair to your kids either.
Yeah.
So.
Okay.
So, McKay, the key wisdom in Michaela's comment is that because you're situated, because there are a lot of demands on you and the demands are real, that the first analysis of your situation should be situational, right?
Not enough sleep, not enough time for yourself, not enough help, just too much.
Now, and so that's not a psychological problem.
That's a practical problem.
And so you should approach this, and you and your husband should approach this as if it's a practical problem first with the resentment as a marker for whether or not the problem has been solved properly.
And you want to work to work to not be guilty about trying to rearrange things so you're not resentful.
That will be very good for you.
It'll be very good for your kids.
It'll be very good for your husband.
There's nothing in that that isn't positive.
And so you're wise to address it.
And I'll just reiterate one more time.
Resentment is unbelievably useful if you use it properly because it's a marker for when things are out of harmony.
So don't be guilty at all for fixing that.
You'll do everyone a great favor.
Good luck, McKay.
Thanks a lot for the question.
Yeah, thank you.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention too.
And I'm a huge proponent of this, obviously, but not feeding your kids sugar and eating whole foods turns them from little psychos that are probably driving you crazy into much calmer children.
So I don't know how anybody would deal with five kids who eat sugar all the time and not be crazy themselves.
So that's the other thing I would probably mention is like change around their diet so they're not eating processed foods.
It makes so much difference.
It's crazy.
Yeah, you're going to flatten out the insulin drops and spikes by doing that.
And the tantrum, the random screaming fits, like Scarlett had zero of those, those.
George is this little, I like, I can't even imagine giving him sugar because I think he'd be a complete monster because he already like does what he wants and doesn't really listen.
And if you take one of those kids that's already pretty strong-willed and then feed them a high-processed food, high-sugar diet, you can't even like discipline that out of them very well.
You're magnifying the effect of their emotions by putting them in a state where they're having low blood sugar from insulin overproduction.
Yeah.
So that's definitely not good.
Yeah.
No, not doing that.
No, a high carbohydrate, high sugar diet's a very bad idea.
Yeah.
And that would help a lot with just calmness overall in the household.
Yeah.
But also getting some help.
I think there's this like kind of traditional pushback, which is totally reasonable against the hyper like boss babe.
What's the career focused?
The career focused like woman.
So there's a pushback to traditional wives, but it's the traditional wife from the 50s, which was like a decade period that after a war that I don't really know if that's particularly replicable across time.
And so I think there are people, especially Gen Z people, in the situation where they are at home with a whole bunch of kids and are like, this is not doable.
And then this is what I've seen anyway.
And then the men are like, well, that's the woman's job because there's this push, traditional pushback.
But it's not sustainable with no help.
There's a reason that human beings have the lifespan they have.
The reason we have the lifespan we have is because mothers need grandmothers.
Or mothers and fathers need grandparents.
So our species is set up so that raising children is actually a two-generation job, not a one-generation job.
Right.
And so the idea that it can just, I would, I'm an advocate of the nuclear family, the traditional nuclear family, but only as the minimal sustainable unit.
That doesn't mean it's optimal.
And when you have little kids, having someone else around to help is very useful and necessary, and you shouldn't be guilty about it.
And it's fine for the kids, especially if the additional people are, well, family members help if they're not completely out of their mind, but also stable.
So, but the resentment discussion already has been very enlightening and practical because it's the right marker.
How much help do you need?
Depends on how much work you have and how complicated the situation is.
What's the marker?
Well, if you're miserable, frustrated, and resentful, well, then maybe that's too much, right?
Maybe you're immature as well, and you want to sort that out, right?
Because you can nurse your resentment.
That's what Kane does in the biblical story.
You can nurse your resentment and you can fall in love with it and you can let it dominate your life.
And that's a super bad idea.
But by the same token, especially if you're agreeable, and so that's more of an issue with women, especially child-oriented women, it's very easy for them to self-sacrifice themselves into a state of resentment.
And that's toxic, terrible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So situational analysis before personality analysis, always, right?
One of the fundamental mistakes that people make when they're trying to assess each other's behavior is to attribute to personality what's actually a consequence of situation.
There's something to know.
Well, that puts all the blame on them.
There's something wrong with you all the time.
It's also very simple.
The problem with the situational analysis is it's complex and it's a lot easier to collapse it to a single variable.
You see this in couple disputes often.
It's like if there's tension in the household, it's easy for the husband or the wife to assume that it's the personality fault of their partner.
It's like the probability that there are faults is quite high on both sides and maybe you should look to your own damn faults first.
But one of the practical ways out of this is to learn.
Before we go at each other, let's look at what might be contributing to this situationally, right?
And that's kind of like the presumption of innocence.
Yeah, it's really useful.
You have to learn that because it's a very strong human proclivity to go to attribute to personality.
So you don't have to say, this is what's wrong with you and you were born with it.
You can say, this is what you're doing that's wrong.
Well, that's helpful too.
To say what was a joke.
I don't know if that would like smooth out an argument at all.
It smooths it out somewhat because it makes it more situational than temperamental.
But I wouldn't even say this is what you're doing.
I would say this is how we are reacting to the situation at hand.
That you've caused.
Okay.
Next question.
Okay.
Next question.
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Now we're going to Kate in Connecticut.
Hello, Kate.
Hello.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
How about yourself?
Good, good.
So tell me about your situation and tell me and ask me your question.
Sure.
So I currently have split custody of my nine-year-old son, and my husband and I are currently expecting.
I'm 34 weeks pregnant and I am grappling with the prospect of leaving my newfound career that I enjoy to become a stay-at-home mom, which is daunting.
I'm planning on homeschooling my children.
I was previously fired from what I thought was my dream job at a prestigious art museum for questioning DEI policies.
And that led me to what I realize is more akin to my dream career, but staying at home, raising the children is my true dream job.
So I was wondering how I navigate this transition in my life and be the best spouse, parent, teacher for my children while also planning for the future of my family.
I have a program called Future Authoring at self-authoring.com that helps people develop a vision for five years.
It's very inexpensive and it's very nicely laid out and it will really help you.
And I'll tell you why it will help.
First of all, it doesn't take that much time to do, given its benefits.
So it's very efficient.
But what it asks you to do, and this is what you need to do in the situation that you're describing, is to look five years down the road, okay, and to make the assumption that you could have what you want and you need if you were taking care of yourself properly if you specify it.
And then it asks you to write out a vision for that that's kind of general, like what could your life be?
What would your life be like if you had what you needed and wanted?
And you fleshed that out to some degree in our discussion already.
And then it asks you very specific questions and helps you strategize.
So the questions would be: what would you want in your family?
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What would you want from your career?
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How would you contribute to the community?
How would you avoid the kinds of temptations that often destroy people, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual misbehavior, that sort of thing?
So it differentiates it.
And so, see, the reason it would be useful for you to do that is because you're making, as you pointed out, a radical shift in identity.
Okay.
And that leaves a period of chaos, right?
The chaos is, well, who am I?
And what am I doing?
Where am I going?
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If you have an answer to that, even if it's a provisional answer, because it will be, because you'll have to learn as you go, if you even have a provisional answer to that, you will be less anxious because anxiety emerges in consequence of chaos.
And you'll be more motivated because you'll be working towards something that you truly believe in.
So it's not surprising now, and you are making a dramatic shift.
And so it's not surprising that you have concerns about it.
That's, of course, you do, because you've thrown everything up in the air.
And you've also pointed out something that's making your life even more complicated, which is that you had a social role that you found meaningful and you ran headlong into ideological tyranny and it blew up your life.
And so now I suspect that that also has something to do with your decision to stay home and school your kids.
So well, right.
So that adds an additional level of complexity.
So what are you envisioning protecting them against the ideological onslaught that's characteristic of the school system?
Like, how does that enter into it?
That's definitely a concern: making them aware that there are these things out there, but there are these ideologies that they could get sucked into.
And how do they educate themselves as well?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, you implied that the job you had was a very good job.
And my suspicions are you wouldn't have thought that if you weren't good at it.
Is that reasonable to say?
I would say so.
Okay.
So then take that professional attitude that you used in your job and put it to work in this plan that you have now.
Now, what you're going to find, if you're a person of competence and commitment, is that you'll start working for your children, but that will morph into something that's career related way faster than you think because you're already wired that way and you have a proclivity for that.
And so if you put everything that you Have to offer on the professional front into this plan, you'll solve your profession problem too.
Not in ways you necessarily predict, partly because there are a lot of women out there, a lot of families who are facing the same issue you are, and they're trying to find their way.
And if you figure out how to do that, you'll have a marketable, that'll be a marketable solution very quickly.
So try the future authoring program.
And I would say you can do a bad job of it, right?
Don't assume you're going to get it right because you don't know enough about the future to get it right, but you can lay out a map and then you can adjust it as need be as you move towards it.
That'll help a lot.
It'll help with anxiety and it'll help with motivation.
And so the goal is to write it to the point where you think, I would really like to work towards all those goals.
Like it's a dialogue with yourself, right?
So don't force yourself.
Don't convince yourself.
Ask yourself.
You get to have what you want, but you have to figure out what that is.
You have to admit to it and then you have to work toward it.
And that's a process that involves humility and openness to revelation and then some critical thinking.
And discuss it with people that you love.
Once you flesh it out.
Do you think my husband should do it as well?
It's a very useful thing for people to do, period.
It's particularly useful in a state of transition.
The most productive way of approaching it would be for him to do his, for you to do yours, for you to swap, to see where it matches, to see where there's discordance, and then where there's discordance, see if you can jointly produce a plan that's better than either of your individual plans, right?
That's the right attitude to have towards.
It's like, let's say you want A and he wants B. One way of approaching that is, well, you compromise and you pursue B, or he compromises and you pursue A. That's the wrong way to approach it.
The right way to approach it is to think, well, we're a couple, and one of the advantages is we have twice the brainpower.
Let's see if we can put our heads together and make a better plan so that we both get more than we had hoped for from the original plan.
And you can do that.
And that's a great way of conceptualizing the negotiation frame within a marriage.
You know, because you could come and say, I want this, and he can come and say, I want this.
And then you could fight or compromise or tyrannize each other or turn into slaves.
Or you could say, let's do something creative here and see if we can put our heads together and figure out how we can both get more than we wanted.
Right.
And that's, you can do that.
Like the world's full of possibility.
There are ways of solving problems that way.
And that's not compromise.
That's that, that's the production of a joint vision that you're both thrilled with.
And that's worth some, you know, that's worth some strenuous discussion.
But structuring that way, both of you write your plans, swap, and be patient and assume that it's going to, you know, you're going to work it out over time.
It's a complicated thing to map the next five years.
It's not going to be without discussion and discovery and conflict.
But man, if you can get it right, whew, the benefits will roll in.
Yeah.
Just in regards to the mapping out plans.
So I think from you talking about future authoring when I was a kid and everything, every year I've done these like year-long plans to try and figure out what do I want to accomplish by next December.
And I usually shoot as high as I can.
So I miss a number of them.
But then it's something to aim for.
Even if you don't revisit those plans, you can accomplish a lot of it just by setting the goals, which I think is how people who say manifestation works.
Like that's what they're doing is making a goal and they're just aiming reality to that goal.
Well, look, this is how your perceptual systems work.
This is an unbelievably crucial realization.
So the world you see is the pathway to your aim.
You might not even know that.
Okay, well, then that's a crazy thing.
It's crazy.
People need to think, seriously, think about that.
You know, because this, people, I don't, you know, I think there's a lot of frauds online talking about manifestation or like these kind of woo-woo things.
But there really is something to aiming at something because the opportunities that pop up that you notice guide you in that direction.
It's crazy.
You say it so casually, though.
You're like, it's literally the case.
So all you have to do is think about how you navigate.
Like your eyes face forward so you can see where you're going.
Okay, so how do you see when you look at the world?
You look at where you're going.
Okay, what then do you see?
The pathway forward.
Things that get in the way.
Things that help.
Friends, those are people that help.
Foes, those are people that get in the way.
The other element, which I think is remarkably comical, is you also see agents of magical transformation.
Those are like the dwarves and elves and wizards in fairy tales.
Why magic?
Because they change your aim.
So they're from another world, and that's their magic.
And so that's the landscape of perception.
And so you structure that landscape of perception optimally when you aim at the stars, right?
This is, there's nothing the least bit, well, there's everything and nothing mystical about that, right?
It's practical as you can possibly be.
And that's actually how the world works.
Agreed.
Yep.
This is why people online tell you you're nuts, though.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, agents of magical transformation.
Like, okay, Dr. Peterson.
Yeah, yeah.
Wait till you encounter one.
I know.
Especially.
Well, you have to notice.
Especially a dark one.
Right.
Spikes.
That's what causes trauma.
Yeah, I've experienced enough of those.
We don't have to get into that.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Dark magic, that.
Yeah.
All right.
Up next, Naomi from Texas.
You're on the line now.
Hello, Naomi.
So tell me a little about your situation and then ask your question.
I am a mother of two young toddlers, a three-year-old, 18-month-old, and I'm excited to have more children in the future.
But I feel like mothering shows me the worst parts of me, which is something I didn't recognize before becoming a mom.
And it leaves me feeling guilty quite often.
So I wondered how you don't hate yourself when you're going through the process of parenting.
I do not hate that.
Okay, so let's do a situational analysis of that first.
Okay, so first of all, you're right because obviously the worst part of you is going to emerge when you're dealing with utterly dependent creatures who want something from you all the time and need it.
Right.
So any flaws that you have are going to, man, they're going to come out.
Or your parents' flaws.
Well, yeah.
Well, that freaked me out.
Oh, definitely.
I was like, oh, I just did the thing my mom, I hate that my mom did when I was a kid.
Oh, no.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Oh, my God.
Oh, definitely.
No offense to my mom.
Yeah, yeah.
So, so, of course, of course.
And then you, you, okay.
So now, now, having said that, well, then you think, um, make sure that you're not down on yourself unreasonably because you're overtired or stressed or not taking care of yourself or hungry.
So, one of the things you want to watch is to see whether your guilt is exaggerated when you're under too much duress.
Okay, because that's likely.
Then, the next thing you might ask yourself is it's fine to be self-critical, but not too much.
So, you might have a conscience that's a little on the demanding side, and that has to be rectified.
But I would also encourage you to write down, this would be helpful.
You could write down everything that makes you a good mother.
You know, so here, here's a rule of thumb: it's instantiated in the law miraculously because it is a miracle that this is the case.
So, the rule is innocent before proven guilty.
And you have to be proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Now, so the first thing you might understand is that just because you accuse yourself doesn't mean you're right.
So I'm doing like my own jury against me.
You're definitely doing that.
That's probably the harshest jury.
So yeah, exactly.
So many people are their own worst.
Judge and jury, many people.
You know, like a narcissist is someone who never thinks they're wrong.
The typical person, the typical good person is much more likely to err in the other direction, which is to persecute themselves more than they would persecute someone that they loved, for example.
So one of the things you could do that you might find extremely useful is write down every accusation that you levy against yourself and then write out a defense.
Like imagine that you're, and maybe you have to do that as if you're doing it on behalf of someone that you love.
Like imagine that you're not defending you, you're defending your sister, you're defending your best friend or your husband, because that'll put you in the right frame of mind.
Now, that doesn't mean the defense is correct or that the accusation has no merit.
But what it does allow for is that you get to have a defense.
Now, you may find, likely, you will find that when you do that, some of the accusations will stick.
Many of them won't.
Some of them will.
Well, fix those, you know, with minimal force.
But you need to know what you're doing that's good.
And you need to give yourself credit for that.
And you need to reward yourself for that.
And you need to develop a defense for yourself.
Now, people who have more of a proclivity to negative emotion, which is a feminine tendency, they're people who are also more susceptible to depression and anxiety.
And if you fall in that category, which makes you kind of a sensitive alarm system, and which is something that has utility in looking out for threats for children, for example, if you have that proclivity, you're going to suffer more than is strictly useful from recognition of your own faults.
And so that's particularly, that is a tendency that makes this ability to defend yourself particularly useful.
So do an exhaustive inventory.
Here's all the reasons I'm guilty about being a mother.
Maybe there's 20.
And these would be ones that recur, you know?
So now you've got the adversary.
The adversary is making his case.
Okay.
So now you know what you're up against.
Next thing is, why might this be wrong?
How could I best be defended?
That's a very useful exercise.
That's what a cognitive behavioral therapist would do if they were assessing and helping you restructure your kind of automatic assumptions.
So, you know, give yourself some credit.
You've got two kids.
You want more.
You're obviously committed to being a mother.
You're not going to be perfect.
And you don't have to be.
Like one of the things that you want to model for your children is error, recognition of error, rectification of error, and persistence.
Like if the rule is that you can only be loved when you're perfect, well that's not going to work.
No, and it's not something that your kids, you don't want to have your kids observe that.
No one will love me unless I'm perfect.
Part of perfect is improving.
So I would also say, just to wrap this question up, I don't know any mom that doesn't have mom guilt.
Yeah.
It's horrible.
And it just exists.
And I don't know, like your ideas are amazing.
I don't even know if that'll fix the mom guilt thing.
I think it's hormonal.
And it's just, it doesn't matter what you do.
You could be doing better.
And it's probably to keep your kids healthy and safe and things.
But it's like, it doesn't matter.
If you have one of those days where everything goes well and you spend all your time with your kids and you're and you get your sleep, things could still be improved somehow.
And so I don't think, I think you kind of have to just deal with the mom guilt, have more kids.
You know what I found actually?
So I just had my third.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
And there's something about the third baby.
And I've talked to a bunch of moms that have had three babies.
There's something about the third baby where you have one baby and you're like, okay, I have to devote all my energy to this one baby.
Then you have two and you're like, well, I'm going to do the same thing I did with number one with two kids, but you don't have the same amount of time.
So then you're just not living up to what you did with the first kid.
So that's a problem.
And by the time you have three, you just give up.
You're like, you know what?
No one's getting enough attention.
And I guess that's how it's going to be if I have multiple children.
And it's just like this weight goes away.
So when you see those women that have multiple children, like three or four or five children, and you're like, how on earth can you do that?
Or do you have enough time for each kid?
They don't, but it's okay because they do.
Like it's enough time.
So you're probably just holding yourself to a standard that's too high.
And I feel like another baby might fix that.
It did for me.
I was like, well, they're fine.
The first one survived.
The second one's doing well.
They also take care of each other more if you set that up properly.
So, you know, it is easier in many ways with more kids because they amuse, they amuse each other then and they should be encouraged to do that.
But, you know, it could ease.
Michaela's comments are that you have an impossible, your job, it's impossible for you to do your job perfectly, but you have to.
Well, of course you're going to be guilty.
Okay.
And that guilt is part of that protective instinct.
I have to do this right.
Well, of course you have to do it right.
But you also have to be defended against that guilt becoming pathological and burdensome.
And this, so defend yourself, right?
Assume innocence to begin with and work out a defense for all of the accusations.
Yeah.
And that'll help.
That'll help.
And then if you think you've got some things to improve, well, of course you do.
And you can negotiate a pathway to that, like with a vision and in conversation with your, with your husband.
So, or someone close to you.
And yep.
You're probably doing fine.
Yeah.
Thank you both so much.
Okay.
Our last caller today.
Well, that's been fun.
Yeah.
I think.
I've enjoyed this a lot.
Yeah.
And mom guilt is real.
I don't know what you can do about it.
And I think the more conscientious you are, the worse it is.
Yeah, well, conscientious people are guilt prone.
Yeah.
That's why activists can manipulate them.
Psychopathic activists is like you might be doing something wrong.
Like I am doing everything wrong.
Yeah.
Which one is it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
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Our last caller today is Shauna in Missouri, who sent in a pre-recorded message.
Hi, Dr. Peterson.
My name is Shauna, and my question is: it seems like mothers from Gen X or before were made of sterner stuff and handled lots of responsibilities really well.
And it seems like to me, I'm a wife, I'm a mom, I'm involved in our community, in our church, pretty heavily.
And sometimes I feel like I have bitten off more than I can chew.
So, my question is: how can I basically assimilate all this responsibility in a way that's not overwhelming?
And/or what do we think is the secret sauce that older women understood that I may be missing now for how to juggle or manage all of the responsibilities that I have purposefully taken on, but that sometimes can seem overwhelming.
Thanks, and that's all.
Okay, so the first thing I would say is sometimes seems overwhelming isn't too bad.
And that's especially true if you have really little kids because that's overwhelming.
The first year in particular is overwhelming, and anything you do on top of that is going to be additionally overwhelming.
So, one of the things that you can understand is that the first year is going to be overwhelming, and that it will get progressively less overwhelming.
But the first three years are pretty overwhelming, and that's particularly the case if you have multiple children.
However, even though it seems like when you're in that, that that's been that way forever and it's going to last forever, it doesn't.
And three years is not very long.
It's a weird thing because when you have kids, it isn't very long until it seems like you've always had them, and it's always just going to be like it is with these little kids.
And that's just not true, that flies by in a flash.
And so, the first thing I would say is that your proclivity to feel overwhelmed is probably just accurate.
And the fact that it's only sometimes it's like, well, congratulations, because you know, if you were clinically depressed, for example, or had an anxiety condition, you would feel overwhelmed all the time and it would be paralyzing.
And so, the fact that it's you know, phasic, that it's sometimes, I would just attribute that to situational issues.
Do you think that back in the day, so she was saying Gen X before that?
Do you think those mothers had more help from family?
Like, you see a lot of families now that have either moved to a different city and they're the nuclear family, but they don't have any friends with kids.
There's no aunts and uncle, there's no grandparents around, so it's really just them raising their kids.
Do you think if you just look backwards, there was more help?
Because that might be what I've seen.
Yes, I do think that I think that one of the things that's happened-you know, I've talked to people like Jonathan Height about the free-range child idea.
Yeah, yeah, but the thing is, is that when I grew up, for example, or even when you grew up, but more particularly me.
Um, are you putting us in the same age group now?
Well, is this because I have three children?
We're yeah, yeah, fundamentally.
And everyone between 30 and 70 is the same age.
Yeah, yeah, so um, there were networks of mothers that were the neighborhood.
Yeah, well, that's all gone, I know, and so it's a lot harder.
Like, it was easy to let your kids out on the street when every single person on the street knew who your kids were, or maybe everyone in a four-block radius.
Well, that's all gone, that's all fractured.
And it's because it's because it's one of the consequences of women entering the workforce en masse and staying there for a long time.
Now, I'm not down on women because of that.
I mean, it's really complicated because grandparents are also missing.
Well, there's That too.
And that's partly because people are mobile, right?
And they move to where the economic opportunities are.
So, I mean, what we did when we went to Boston, when we moved to Boston, your mom and I, is we developed a network of family, of friends, other people with little kids quite quickly.
And, you know, we babysat for each other, and your mom took care of kids from the neighborhood.
That was her job for a while.
You have to, if you're overwhelmed, distributing the load is a worthwhile aim.
And you can certainly do that by sharing child care with friends.
Make some friends who have children.
Now, that often is difficult for people too.
When we were in Boston, we were the youngest people with the oldest kids that we knew.
And we didn't start having kids till, well, we were in our late 20s.
So, you know, you don't know how much the situation has changed.
And so, and were people before more resilient?
Probably not.
Well, maybe.
I'm not sure.
Torn on that.
It's very, very hard to say.
I think their expectations for comfort were probably much lower.
You know, like if I think of my grandmother, on my dad's side, as an example.
Well, you can to some degree.
I mean, she lived in a log cabin that was insulated with cardboard through the Saskatchewan winter, cooked for threshing crews, took care of multiple kids, worked as a cleaning woman for families in the neighborhood, and took care of a bunch of animals.
Plus, she split all the wood for the winter.
Like her expectations for comfort were remarkably minimal.
And that is a form of resilience, you know.
Makes you a little mean, though.
Well, there might be a resentment that goes along with that, you know.
Ah, possibly.
So I would beware of comparing yourself negatively generically to, say, women in the past.
Like the situations are very different.
If you're overwhelmed, well, first of all, you do a situational analysis.
Maybe it's expected that I'm overwhelmed because I have little kids.
And that's a three-year problem fundamentally.
And so just assume that, of course, and then look for help.
Yeah, help.
A lot of help.
A lot of these people sounded like they're expecting too much of themselves and do need some help, which I know is tricky because most of the time you have to pay for help.
We can close with another biblical story.
So when Moses is called upon by God to be a leader after he has the interaction with the burning bush, God says, okay, you're no longer now just a shepherd, which was already something useful to be.
You could take care of yourself.
You could fight off the wolves.
You could protect the innocent.
So you're a good man.
Now you're a leader.
Moses says, I can't be a leader because I can't speak.
And no one knows why if he had a speech impediment or if he just wasn't very articulate or whatever.
Doesn't matter.
And God basically says two things, three things.
He says, it doesn't matter what your problem is.
You still have to do this.
So like, that's your problem.
And then he says, and don't be thinking that I can't operate under those conditions because I made the heavens and the earth.
And so your speech impediment just really doesn't disturb me much.
And then third, he says, and like, couldn't you get some help?
Like your brother, Aaron, he can speak.
Bring him along.
What does that mean?
There's more than enough for everybody to do, you know, and you're not exactly asking for help when you reach out to other people.
You're trading help, right?
You're engaging in a Benjamin Franklin said this, for example, when you move into a new neighborhood.
He said, the first thing you should do is ask a neighbor for a small favor, a cup of sugar, something trivial.
Why?
Well, because they've done something for you and you can get the trading game going.
And so you're not asking for help.
You're developing a community where you can share resources.
And that's beneficial to everyone.
It's not a favor.
Churches are probably a good place for that.
Well, that's if you have no idea what to do.
Well, probably in hypothetically and in reality.
Right.
Yes.
Go to church, find some young families, and get the ball rolling.
You know, if you have a problem as a mother of kids of a certain age, you can be certain that 80% of the mothers have the same problem.
Yeah.
So that's, there's absolutely no reason to assume you made this comment with the trad wife movement.
It's like, well, lone woman on the prairie taking care of six kids.
Well, no.
Right.
Community.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
And with that, thank you so much for joining us today.
We'll be back with more episodes.
That was fun.
That was way more intense than I was expecting.
I was like, I can interject some for you, but that was intense.
Yeah.
Well, the questions were very high quality and very thoughtful and very deep and difficult.
And so, yeah, that was good.
So thanks very much to the people who participated.
They put a lot of thought into that.
And thank you to the people who did the screening for the questions as well, the crew here, because that worked very well.
Well, we will be back with many other shows like this to answer all sorts of questions.
That's the plan, right?
We're going to do this on a regular basis and we'll do a bunch of it if it works.
Sounds like a plan.
Yep.
Good.
Thank you to everyone watching and listening.
Do you have a question you'd like us to explore?
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