# Not Getting Weight Loss Results? Your Body KNOWS You Have A Father Wound with Terri Cole

An episode of [Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1503897906), 26 Oct 2026, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://media.transistor.fm/91fdd06a/7428fcdb.mp3

Have you ever wondered why you feel the need to prove yourself, struggle to set boundaries, or constantly put everyone else's needs before your own? In this episode of Live Like a Girl, I'm joined by licensed psychotherapist and bestselling author Terri Cole to discuss her new book, Father Wound, and how our relationships with our fathers can shape our self-worth, relationships, and behaviors long into adulthood. Terri explains why so many high-achieving women struggle with perfectionism, people-pleasing, and overfunctioning. I also open up about my own father wound, the childhood experiences that shaped me, and what I'm learning about healing these patterns during midlife. _ IN THIS EPISODE: • What a father wound is and how to recognize the signs • Why childhood criticism can lead to perfectionism and people-pleasing • How father wounds influence relationships and boundaries • The connection between childhood experiences and nervous system patterns • Why old emotional wounds may become more apparent during menopause • How to begin healing and reclaiming your self-worth _ TERRI'S NEW BOOK, FATHER WOUND: https://fatherwoundbook.com/ _ MORE ON TERRI COLE • Website: terricole.com • Book website: fatherwoundbook.com • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terricole/ • FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/TerriColeLCSW • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/terricoleny • Podcast: https://terricole.com/itunes For more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: drmindypelz.com/ep381 Connect with Dr. Mindy: • Join the Reset Academy • Watch the episodes on YouTube • Follow Dr. Mindy on Instagram • Subscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletter Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

## Transcript

\[00:00:02:16 - 00:00:23:15\]
Hey, Dr. Mindy here and welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast where I bring you icons, disruptors, educators, scientists, and doctors that show you what can be possible when you love and celebrate the female body you are blessed to live in. Let's dive in.
\[00:00:27:12 - 00:00:52:18\]
When I went on The Today Show last December to promote my new book, Age Like a Girl, my parents watched from their home in California. Two hours after I came off the air, my phone rang. I had never been on The Today Show before. This was literally the biggest moment of my career. My dad's first question to me was, "What happened to your hair?"
\[00:00:54:07 - 00:01:05:03\]
At the moment I laughed it off. I told him a stylist had done it. I hung up the phone and realized that I felt like I was about 10 years old again.
\[00:01:06:09 - 00:01:20:00\]
I've spent a lot of time in therapy over the last couple of years going back through the wounds of my childhood. I have discovered that much of how I think and behave today started with the voice of my father.
\[00:01:21:00 - 00:01:32:03\]
I remember telling my therapist one day, "My father constantly told me I was lazy. Haven't I proved him wrong yet? When do I get to put this down?"
\[00:01:33:07 - 00:01:50:23\]
I also realized somewhere in my 40s that when I walk into a room and a man is leading, I perform. I show how capable I am. I try to become the favorite. And I finally caught myself and thought, "What am I doing?"
\[00:01:51:23 - 00:01:57:20\]
And it all goes back to a little girl who wanted her dad to really see her.
\[00:01:59:01 - 00:02:20:05\]
Today's guest has a name for that, and it changed how I understand myself. It's called a father wound. And her new book, named Father Wound, will no doubt change the way so many of us look at our behaviors. There's a line in her book that I literally cannot stop thinking about. Here's the line.
\[00:02:21:09 - 00:02:41:06\]
At its core, a father wound is a worthiness wound. It's where you learn that who you are isn't enough to earn the love and attention you need. So you become different. Do more. Be more. And it doesn't require a terrible father.
\[00:02:42:18 - 00:03:17:06\]
Terry points out that even an attuned dad raised us inside a patriarchy that planted its own seeds of limitations. When she gathered 650 women who identified as having a father wound and followed them over two years, she found something I see in my community every day. A wound doesn't stay in childhood. It follows us into our bodies, our boundaries, our careers, and our relationships.
\[00:03:18:08 - 00:03:55:23\]
This is why I have brought you Terry Cole for the third time. Terry is a licensed psychotherapist with 30 years in practice. She is one of the world's leading voices on boundaries and is the author of Boundary Boss. Her new book, The First of Its Kind on this subject, gives women a step-by-step blueprint for understanding what they received from their fathers and what they didn't. In this conversation, Terry and I talk about why the father wound can look so different from woman to woman.
\[00:03:57:00 - 00:04:11:13\]
Why it so often shows up as perfectionism, people-pleasing, embracing for impact. And why this work gets louder after 50 when the neurochemical armor finally comes down.
\[00:04:12:14 - 00:04:36:03\]
If you've ever caught yourself performing for someone who couldn't really see you, this one is for you. Her book comes out November 17th, and if you pre-order it, you'll get free access to a four-hour deep dive into the father wound blueprint with Terry on October 24th. You can find all the details at fatherwoundbook.com.
\[00:04:38:16 - 00:04:48:05\]
I am so honored, excited, and humbled to bring you this conversation. Let's dive in. Terry Cole.
\[00:04:49:15 - 00:05:05:13\]
Terry Cole, you are coming back to my podcast probably for the third time because I love your books so much. So let me start by thanking you for being here again. Thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate your support.
\[00:05:07:04 - 00:05:46:07\]
Okay, I have to start this book. You had me at the title. And then as I dove into the book, I have to start with a quote that pretty much sums up who I am. So let me read it. I know you know it because you wrote it, but I want my audience to hear this. "At its core, a father wound is a worthiness wound. It's where you learned that who you were wasn't enough to earn the love and attention you needed, and that you had to be different, do more, or somehow be more to be worthy of it."
\[00:05:47:14 - 00:05:56:12\]
What the heck is a father wound? And why does this quote hit me so deeply? And please tell me I am not alone.
\[00:05:58:04 - 00:07:09:19\]
You're still not alone. So let's just start with how the book is being received, even just in the early phases. Please. I mean, I'm gathering with women. I gathered 650 women online who are self-identified as having fathers. And it is all of us, because here's the thing. Even if you had an attuned father, which most of us didn't, but let's say you did, we were all raised in a patriarchy, which also planted all of these seeds of limitation and the weaker sex and all of those things that we're still dealing with. So back to your original question. What is a father wound? Let's just start there so that we're sort of all on the same page. Yeah, please. So this is a psychological and emotional injury that stems from growing up with a father or father figure who was absent, addicted, abusive, not emotionally invaluable to you. Perhaps they passed away, someone who was hypercritical of you, someone who was very authoritarian. It could have been a very religious upbringing, very angry.
\[00:07:10:22 - 00:07:17:07\]
No patience, judgmental of you physically or your beauty or your brains.
\[00:07:18:18 - 00:07:43:09\]
It's basically an imprint left when a daughter doesn't receive presence, protection or emotional attunement from her father and the patriarchal culture reinforces the wound, making it so easy to miss and hard to name. You said something in there that I just want to be clear. Is this the father wound? Is it deeper for women than it is for men?
\[00:07:45:12 - 00:08:43:23\]
I would say it's different. So the expectations that we have of fathers to daughters is different than the expectations we have from fathers to sons. What they're supposed to teach, what that relationship is supposed to prepare us for, they are different things. So I wouldn't say deeper, I would just say different. And when people were like, a lot of people have asked, why didn't you just write this book for both? The same reason Dr. Shepali has a conscious parenting for boys and their sons and daughters, because there is a difference in the way that you do it. I think that it's invisible though, that part of what makes this such a hard wound to put your finger on, it's very much like my high functioning codependency, that so many women, father wounded women are very successful. Because we're working overtime, we're dancing as fast as we can to prove how worthy we are.
\[00:08:45:00 - 00:08:53:23\]
So nobody looks to you and you're like, gee, I hope you're okay. Nobody looks to me being like, oh, Jared's okay. Because they know you're always okay and so am I.
\[00:08:55:06 - 00:09:50:21\]
So you don't walk around with some obvious wound and your life isn't like this dysfunctional mess for other people to go, oh, I see there's a problem there. So I think that we just keep going and going and going. And that a lot of times midlife is when we're sick of over functioning, over giving and over doing, because these are all the ways that father wounds show up in our lives. Yeah. That's so interesting you say that because I remember with, as I've recently in the last couple of years have really gone into my childhood traumas, let's just call it that. And before I dove into those, I was like, I had a great childhood, I had loving parents, everything was great. And then when I dove in there, I was like, wow, what I the messaging I received in the household I grew up in, has informed everything that I do today. And one of the things my father constantly did is tell me I was lazy.
\[00:09:52:03 - 00:10:30:07\]
And so when I was in therapy, at one point, I turned to my therapist and I was like, do you think I proved him wrong now? Like, did I, did I prove him wrong? And when do I get to put that down? Like, there's not a lazy bone in my body yet I realized it had been running me. So when you say we are high functioning, co-dependence, talk a little more about that personality, because so many of the women that listen to my podcast are going to resonate with that and not necessarily make that link back to their father.
\[00:10:31:10 - 00:10:42:12\]
Yeah, so let's talk about the symptoms, like what you might be experiencing in your life now. So perfectionism is one of them, right? This needs to be perfect because we sort of don't feel like we're enough.
\[00:10:43:20 - 00:10:50:21\]
Self doubt, people pleasing, we know this obviously, having a harsh inner critic is also part of it.
\[00:10:52:16 - 00:11:05:16\]
Disregulated emotions, right? Like having anxiety, being irritable, feeling easily overwhelmed, but still going. That's another thing is that we just, we just like the energizer bunny though, we figure it out, we'll keep going.
\[00:11:06:19 - 00:11:17:10\]
Self abandonment is a major, this tendency to abandon your own needs, whether that's your time, your finances, your body, your own emotional well being.
\[00:11:18:12 - 00:11:37:22\]
Having crappy boundaries and they can be either way, right? It could be either difficulty setting boundaries, right? Your boundaries can either be too rigid, where you're very much like my way or the highway, or they can be too malleable, where you're more like a pushover or a peacekeeper, too self-sacrifice and too accommodating.
\[00:11:39:01 - 00:12:03:04\]
Fear of abandonment, this intense fear of being left can either make you cling in relationships or make you avoid real intimacy. And then these last three that I think are really probably the most telltale sign, over functioning, which we know that means in relationships, that means feeling overly responsible for things. Hyper independence.
\[00:12:05:08 - 00:13:23:13\]
So this is difficulty trusting others or accepting help. We just don't trust people to do it. And we know when you're so highly capable, you know you can do it and you know the way you want it done. And another thing with father wounded women is often we don't want to be a burden to other people. We don't want to take up too much space. We don't want to overstare our welcome. Again, all of that is insecurity based on this worthiness wound, right? And then hypervigilance is the last one I want to talk about, which is where you had to pay attention. When you're a father wounded daughter, often you need to pay attention. So even though my father wound was a neglect wound, I had a father who had four daughters. I was his fourth daughter, a last chance for a boy. I had this whole trip. I thought I was born the wrong gender. So I was endlessly chip on my shoulder, proving how smart I was, how successful I would be, all the money that I would make. And I did, although soon. But part of what we want to look at is what is driving your behavior?
\[00:13:24:14 - 00:14:02:03\]
Choice, desire, passion, or fear, right? Fear of failure. I really feel like with father wounded daughters, we often have this very profound fear of failure because our success, at least for me, this was the one connection I could rely on with my father that if I got straight A's, if I got good grades, if I became successful and made money, he would respect me. Even though they still didn't know me. Oh yeah. Okay. So that gets with you too. Even today. Same.
\[00:14:03:18 - 00:15:48:08\]
I mean, listen, you get into recovery, but there's still a reality that a lot of these things travel with us. One last thing I want to say about the hypervigilance though is that we become these super empaths, these women with antennas that go to Mars where you're so attuned to other people, feelings, what's going on in a room. I can come in and there could be 200 people and I can zero in on the fight that is happening in the back left corner. I'm still like, "Oh, what do I need to do to stop that from escalating? Let me see." Yep. Why do I feel responsible for the fight in the back left corner? I can't explain to you, but I do because this is again the hyper responsibility that we feel. So those are some of the top experiences you may be suffering from and the symptoms. You may be suffering from it if you have an unhealed form. It's so interesting because the longer that I have been educating women on metabolic health and on hormone balancing and doing it through lifestyle, I start to see patterns of people, women specifically, how they receive the information that I'm teaching them. When I was listening to you say that list of father wound byproducts, let's call it that, I see not just myself, literally every single thing you said is accurate, but I end up with seeing the woman who's like, "How many macros did you need me to do for protein? You wanted me just to do 30, right? Was that 30 or was that 31?"
\[00:15:50:20 - 00:15:53:19\]
There are moments where I'm like, "I don't know. It's like around 30."
\[00:15:55:00 - 00:16:18:11\]
When I close my fasting window, do I close it at noon or should I do it at 1230? There's so much of that in women and I've been trying to figure out what is it in us that's so scared to make a mistake. I dove all into the mother wound. We did that with Kelly McDaniel and Mother Hunger.
\[00:16:19:11 - 00:16:43:18\]
That was really helpful. What you're saying is so potent and I'm wondering if it's because your dad is a reflection of the patriarch, so you're getting it from both sides. You're getting it in the home and then you're getting it outside the home and then you become paralyzed to make a mistake. Am I accurate in that?
\[00:16:44:20 - 00:17:10:11\]
I definitely think that the patriarchy reinforces whatever the limiting message is born that you received. Sometimes if you had a dad who died or who was in jail, you never saw him or was abandoned in the family, you still have a wound because people will say, "How can I have a wound?" But we have to think about our fathers as our first experience with the masculine.
\[00:17:11:11 - 00:17:44:17\]
If my dad didn't necessarily think that I was someone who was worth prioritizing and he didn't or protecting and he didn't, that's just the truth. That told me something about my value and about what I needed to do. It didn't matter what I looked like or how accomplished I was. You're talking about this core injuring of feeling valued.
\[00:17:46:06 - 00:17:59:20\]
Why was I out when I was a sophomore in high school with guys from the football team at two in the morning on a Tuesday because everyone was asleep at the wheel? And luckily, Korean up and God awful happened, could have certainly.
\[00:18:00:22 - 00:18:38:20\]
But those messages, whether you consciously know them or not, they're planting in your unconscious mind about what you need to do to stay valuable. What you need to do, you need to add value or you need to be the hyper-resolvable one. You need to make a lot of money or whatever those things are. So it affects us in ways when you're high functioning that again, society would be like, "You're doing great. There is no problem there." But we know that there's something else that happens, which is you get burnt out.
\[00:18:40:08 - 00:18:47:02\]
You get exhausted, you become resentful. We do all the things for all the people and then we hate all the people.
\[00:18:49:08 - 00:19:27:23\]
We're mad at all the people. Right. On all the people that we signed ourselves up to help and to do. That's definitely an old pattern for sure. Does the birth order matter? My sister and I have spent quite a bit of time talking about my dad as I've uncovered my father wound and she has a very different perspective. She's an older sister than I do. One of the things she told me that really hit home is she said, "Oh, I never respected dad." So anything that came out of his mouth, I just wrote off as he's being ridiculous. Even at a young age, she felt that.
\[00:19:29:07 - 00:20:29:07\]
Interesting. She is brilliant. She was born with photographic memory. They had trouble figuring out what schools to put her in because she was so smart. My dad just loved that. He had this successful daughter who went to Princeton and went to Yale. He loved that. He thought she would be president. She was like, "I thought he was a doofus. I just didn't respect him." Whereas I, on the other head, did everything he told me to do. Largely so I wouldn't get smacked as a young child. Yes. Because you don't need to teach kids how to lessen their own suffering. We watch. We're like, "Oh, this is the behavior that will lessen the amount of painful stuff that comes my way. So adaptive these kids are." But let's compare the sibling things because Dr. Marielle Bouquet, I don't know if she's been on your show, but she's been- A long time ago. Yeah, a long time ago.
\[00:20:30:09 - 00:21:30:21\]
She's a psychologist and she wrote a book called Break the Cycle, A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. Her quote is, "No two siblings ever have the same parents or exist really in the same household." I think that's, I quoted it in the book because I think it's very accurate. We have different stories, different wounds, different memories. Everyone lands in a different version of the household and experiences their father differently from their siblings. So it's not at all uncommon that you're like- You're weird how different. Yeah. The interesting thing though is in my situation, and I think this probably extrapolates out into a lot of families, I was compared to her. So he was like, "She's getting straight A's and you're sitting on the couch procrastinating your homework. Be like her." So I was always compared to her. And so that was a big amplification of what I wasn't.
\[00:21:32:01 - 00:25:37:01\]
Yeah, and very painful. And I'm wondering if I'd been an only child or if it had been a boy ahead of me, would that have made a difference? How do you think in doing that though, impacted your relationship with your sister? Oh, yeah. That's another great question because we've had a very turbulent relationship. And yeah, and so I've done a lot of therapy. We've had a lot of conversations about our upbringing. And to your point, we had very different experiences living in the same household. And I've done... I've chatted with Dr. Nicole Lapera has been on this podcast, and nobody was protecting me in my household. And so I had to learn to protect myself from even my sister. Nobody was reining her in. So I learned like that. I really resonate with what you said about you walk into a room and I can tell you immediately the person that's hurting in the room. And it's just an innate skill that I had to figure out because the person hurting in the room may cause the room to go into chaos. And if the room goes into chaos, I've got problems now. So I learned to try to keep the room really calm so none of the three of them blew up. Yeah. So it's all when we think about it, there's so much control, right? When you think about codependency at its core, it is a desire overt or covert to control other people's outcomes or situation, right? We don't want there to be any problems, right? And the only way to stay like we could stay safe is to be as high functioning as we are in controlling so many things. But of course, there is a better way out. That's why I wrote a whole book. But we need to identify what is this that is happening in our lives now. When you think about the way that we're handled and we're in this similar generation, for generations, we were handed like this ID, this image of father as ruler, right? He was supposedly the protector, the disciplinarian, the provider. Wait till your father gets home. Did you ever see that show? I watched that show all the time. And I
\[00:25:38:11 - 00:26:07:15\]
Yeah. So and I realized that in somewhere in my 40s, that if I walk into any group, and if the leader is a man, I will put on a performance to show how capable I am to become the favorite to be like, and I'm like, I caught that somewhere in my 40s. I'm like, what am I doing? I'm like, Oh, that was the inkling that this goes back to my dad. I just wanted him to see me. He just didn't he couldn't completely see me.
\[00:26:09:02 - 00:30:46:16\]
Talk a little bit about this blueprint. You have a father wound blueprint, because I think it's important. I'm hoping that people who are listening, you know, are at the core of what I'm trying to do with women and help women discover is how much you can love your body and how miraculous your body is. And the more the deeper I go into that, the more I realize 99.9% of women hate their bodies, and they talk poorly to themselves. And there's so much in that it could be a critical mother, it could be the patriarch. And now you are offering me another lens, which is, it could be, you know, your father, my dad, by the way, always come in commented on what I wore. He always commented even to this day, he'll comment. This is a crazy one, Terry. Do you know when I went on the Today Show in December, he watched from from his home in California. And he and my mom called me two hours. I'd never been on the Today Show. They called me two hours afterwards. And he goes, what happened to your hair? What did they do to your hair? And I said, Dad, I had a stylist come in and he goes, I know, but I didn't like what did they straighten your hair. They did something to your hair that didn't look like you. And I would, and that was the first time I stood up to him. And I said, Dad, I just went on the Today Show. That was a big deal for me. And I'm going to ask you to not critique how I looked. And he's like, okay, okay. Like he'll, he'll listen. I mean, he's 90 now, but it's just crazy how it just keeps going. So, you know, for women that are resonating with this conversation, where do we begin? How do we start to unwind this? Well, let's start with, before we get into the blueprint, just quickly, there's this block to entry for a lot of women because they feel guilty or they feel like I had a great relationship with my father now. So why do I gotta talk about what happened 40 years ago or 30 years ago or 20 years ago? So I want to just get clear that this, you do not need your father's
\[00:30:47:17 - 00:30:51:13\]
from my lens, I say welcome. That's the purpose of menopause.
\[00:30:52:17 - 00:35:56:18\]
Absolutely. And I absolutely see pre-menopause. We have too many X to give for all the people regardless of bandwidth. Post menopause, very few X to give, like less X to give. It's funny, I just did We Can Do Hard Things a couple of weeks ago talking about this and Glennon had said, yeah, they're so great. Glennon had said about her just not having the bandwidth since menopause. She's like, I still want to, because I said to me, it was more like, I can't care about the amount that I used to care about because I don't have the bandwidth. And she said, I still do though, Cherry, my problem is I basically can't. My mind still wants to control and tell people what to do, but I'm so physically exhausted that I can't do it. I said, either way, menopause is sort of sparing from this over functioning and the change in hormones certainly, as we said, maybe, I think definitely has something to do with it. Yeah. And I just want to point that out for women that are listening that are like, oh my gosh, I resonate with this now. Why didn't I see it 20 years ago? As a good friend told me, it's because you were drugged on estrogen and estrogen blocked you from a lot of things that you couldn't see. And it made you an incredible people pleaser. And to your point, a high functioning codependent. So we don't have a tendency to see all of that. So, okay, but continue, I want to know how we move forward from this wound. All right. So the Downloader Body Wound Blueprint, and this is an exercise in many people's online books. It's the same in that you don't just read them, you do them. And it's all in one place because I use all, these are all anecdotal, but it's also case studies. It's also my own life. So there's tons of stories in the book. And I did famous wound too. Kate Hudson, a whole bunch of different famous women who have been very vocal about having a body wound and then sharing sort of how they came out on the other end of it. So when you think about your Downloader Body Wound
\[00:35:57:22 - 00:41:46:18\]
Right. Like, nobody expected your father to be attuned to you. But the point is, in not studying it, then we minimize its impact. And what I saw over and over again in my therapy practice of 30 years is its impact. So I was like, why are there no seminal texts about father wounds? Well, I guess because I needed to write it, which I did. Yes, excellent. So we figure out, well, once you get your own downloaded blueprint and you sort of have a sense of what is going on, then we look to the home and we go, okay, so what is what cobold, which is also a concept that I basically created for this book, because it makes a difference. Attachment theory, traditional, and there's lots of different problems with attachment theory. We all know this. Okay, fine. But the conventional wisdom states that you have one primary attachment style. And I say it in my work that I've seen. I don't think that's true. I think that we have two. And that you are, you know, for me, my attachment to my father was anxious and insecure. That followed me into my romantic relationships. And it's not always like that. It's not always linear like that for me at once. My relationship with my mother, right? The co wounding says this, how the mother reacts and responds to the father, how they behave, what's going on. That either can make it better or make it worse. It either amplifies the wound, or it buffers the wound. So, right, that child, that original injury gets intensified and reshaped by how the other caregiver responds to it. So, you think about a father's absence or abuse or neglect that doesn't just impact the daughter directly. It also impacts the mother if there's a mother figure in there in the mix whose emotional responses magnify it or buffer it. And many mothers. So, if the mother allowed it to continue or dismissed it, "Oh, he had a hard day," or, you know, just sort of somehow normalized it, that would be a co wound. That would be an example of a co wound. Yes. Yes. Or maybe she made it
\[00:41:48:04 - 00:41:59:04\]
I just thought of this. Do you think, not to get too political, but do you think that we have a country with a bunch of father wounds for what we're tolerating in authority right now?
\[00:42:00:21 - 00:44:07:11\]
I do. I think the patriarchy is, I'm hoping it's like the last gasp of my wish. I'm not sure that's true, but I do see that how father wounds in my clients, so much of it is coming to the surface now also because of how enraged women are about what's happening politically. Yeah. And then you're starting to connect those dots of like, oh, I also felt this in childhood because I had no power over, for some of them had domineering fathers or whatever. So, yeah, I do absolutely feed those to connect. Yeah. And my other thought as you're talking, and this one's a really challenging one, I think, for a lot of women, I mean, people in general our age, is now my sister and I are taking care of my 90-year-old father. We are taking care of him financially. We are taking care of him emotionally. And this is part of why this topic is so at the surface because here's this man who, by all means, was challenging for each one of us in a different way. And we're having to be the to him now at 90 years old. And I'm watching how she and I handle this. She's like, "Peace out. Wasn't there for me. I'm not going to be there for him. I don't respect him still." And I'm sort of a little more like, "How do we take care of this man who we call dad? Like, how do we do this?" And he's got a, he's the thing that's also really hard with a lot of dads. And my dad fits in. And he's got a lot of love. He has so much love in his heart. It's just wrapped up in a lot of dysfunction. Yeah. It's interesting that you have different roles, you and your sister. And so it's like you're fulfilling the dutiful, more obligated, more of an Egypt thing. She probably was more of
\[00:44:08:17 - 00:45:27:08\]
in the family system. So she has less of that compulsion to do it. I have a lot of women in my community that are like a paid community and maximize all the things who this is a real, they're at a real crossroads. Right. It's a crossroads. Yeah. Yes. Yep. And most are very, they feel duty bound to do the right thing, even when their father didn't do the right thing. Now imagine a situation where there was egregious abuse and you're still left with someone who sexually abused you or physically beat you up often. And now you're left to inconvenience your life, spend tons of money, do all the things. And they're like, do I have to do that? And I think that each person has to come up with their own, what is the right thing for them to do morally and ethically within themselves. Because we have to live a good life after this person was gone. And it's such a personal decision. Like your sister may be perfectly fine with having limited
\[00:45:28:12 - 00:45:47:16\]
contact with him. Maybe hopefully she's financially contributing to so it's not just you, but you know, there's a sit, no. So kind of. We've split the roles though. We've split the roles. She's managing their finances because he can no longer properly do that.
\[00:45:49:01 - 00:49:30:02\]
Okay. So there is some responsibility taken off of you. But it's hard when we've been the good girls forever and ever. There's a cost though Mindy. There still is a cost to you and to me too, because even being in recovery, you're still figuring out how much over-functioning am I still doing? Like you can be in recovery and you're still kind of being hyper responsible about things. And I guess it could be worse. Again, you know, those people that are listening to this and resonating with it, you know, this will go on audio and it will go on YouTube. Put in the comments if you're resonating with this, because it's a real day-to-day struggle at this point in my life of like, how much do I give out of responsibility because he's my dad? And how do I protect myself? And that has been, I luckily have a great therapist, but that has been a real challenge on, you know, how do you, and I think a lot of people, we don't talk enough about taking care of these parents that wounded us. And everybody, it's out of childhood I've learned now without some kind of wound, but the deeper the wound, the more difficult it is when you're 57 years old and I got to turn around and now take care of the people who wounded me in the first place. How do you deal with that? Because there's a lot of conversation about cutting family members off and somehow we seem to make that seem very attractive and that's not within my ethos. I wouldn't feel good about that. There's on the flip side of that, there's a lot of conversation about what is elder abuse look like. And I think it's just important for the people who have listened this far into the podcast, like what do we do when we're hearing something like this? We're coming to this awareness that the way I think, show up in the world, even at 57 years old is a byproduct of what you created and did in my home growing up. And now I got to turn around and take care of you. And I talk about resentment. I have resentment on that. Of course you do as
\[00:49:31:11 - 00:55:38:18\]
think about where you can delegate things to other professional people. Like delegate where you can, so you can preserve your energy where you can. Don't give financially more than you actually can because you really will and it presentable. And keep talking because that changes what happens for you. We're not changing what's happening for your father. This is about the kid in you every time you assert yourself feeling happen every time. Yeah. And for people who are listening to this and say, "Wow, I've never even brought this to my dad. I've never even talked to this. I'm just having a self-awareness from listening to this podcast for the first time." Is there a question or some easy way to ease into that conversation with your father, especially when you're being mistreated as an adult by an aging parent? Yes, there is. But I say we have to do you first. We have to go in. We have to go through the process. It's a healing process based on my five pillars of transformation. It's a whole thing that you do just for you and then see what you feel like you may need to do. In the end of the book, what I did was because I knew people were going to have these questions. I knew this is from a psychological point of view, that we do the first 10 chapters, you do you, this is all for you. See it as a gift to yourself. Set up a zen-ben to do your work, let it candle like. Get really intentional, ritualistic about your own healing. Don't have it be an afterthought. It's not a frigging box for you to check. It should be the honor of your life to help this little kid inside of you feel safe and secure and relaxed and loved. It's possible, but it has to come from you prioritizing you. We do the first chapter and then I wrote this addendum because everyone's situation is so different. It's like a flow chart. If you say, "My father's alive and I need to have better boundaries with him," it'll be like, "Okay, go to page 212. My father's alive and I want to have a better relationship
\[00:55:41:03 - 00:58:11:07\]
When we say the word, when I say hyperdigilence, what am I saying? Fight, raise your phone. That's really what I'm saying, that there's no rest for a kid with a father wound. If there was fear, if your father was in your home and you felt like you needed to be on guard, it's like constantly bracing for impact. I remember if my father who, this guy, I say this in the book and it's true, I maybe, by the time my parents got divorced when I was 13, I might have exchanged 50 words with my father, five zero. That's how much he didn't talk. If I ever heard it's gorsettiated very deep, think like Barry White rumbly kind of a boy. I had three sisters and my mother and a girl dog. If I heard that rumbling voice, even if he was just saying, make me a sandwich to my mother, I would sit up in bed and be like, what's going on? What's wrong? Wow. I was in a hypervigilant state my entire childhood, I believe. Right. Then that shows up and this is why conversations like this become so important to somebody who's trying to lose weight. This is the importance to me of having a conversation where a woman is like, I'm doing all the things right and I'm not getting a result. That's what I hear from women who gets what I call stuck. They're like, I'm fasting, I'm eating, I'm exercising, I'm counting my macros, I'm listening to every single podcast, I'm reading every single book and it's still not working. I have come to this place where I'm like, okay, then we need to take your childhood and we need to start to pull it apart because it's really important to keep the score. I believe that the female body also reads the room, always is reading the room. What I'm gathering from this conversation is that if there's a father wound, you're really reading the room over and over and over again. Talk a little bit about what's just for people having an awakening right now. What's on the other side of healing this wound?
\[00:58:13:07 - 00:58:20:01\]
Putting yourself first without guilt, trusting your own instincts, your own decisions,
\[00:58:21:18 - 00:58:52:13\]
handling your emotions. There's a whole chapter on becoming fluent and really like an expert at your own emotions. Letting go of resentment and anger, which I don't call forgiveness because I'm super not into that. Forgiveness has been co-opted by religion and a bunch of other things. I like to say we can release ourselves from resentment, prison by processing this stuff. That's what we do. Forgiveness always feels like someone's getting over on me. I don't like it.
\[00:58:53:16 - 01:00:21:02\]
We stop self-stabotaging so much. On the other side of this, you believe you deserve good things and that it doesn't have to all be so hard. We're not as terrified of rejection. Feeling that you're inherently worthy, not being in toxic relationships, really breaking free from those toxic relationship patterns, finding people that you can trust and really being vulnerable, allowing people to do things for you, becoming a better receiver. How's that? Because I know we're not good receivers. That's why we become fixers. Of course. We go into professions that will help us make sure we never receive. All we do is give. There is definitely that. What about boundaries? Do you find that when women heal their father wound setting boundaries, which I know was your last book or your second to last book, your book before that, are boundaries much easier? Because it does seem like for women, setting boundaries is really difficult. Yep. It's amazing how much it changes what you think you can do. If we look at boundaries the way that I write them, it's about your preferences, your limits, and your deal-breakers. It's about you knowing those things and being able to assert them. When you understand why you've walked around being afraid, why you have tolerated the things that you've tolerated in your life,
\[01:00:22:10 - 01:01:47:01\]
it makes it so much easier to stop, to press pause, to realize you are not that fragile. That's what comes out on the other side of this book is how incredibly resilient you are. So it's okay if you're going to be a little bit uncomfortable or even a lot uncomfortable with some of these conversations, but you're not going to die. Right. Right. From that. And it's going to set you free because boundaries I have found don't come naturally to me. I've had to really work at them. And I'm going deeper in that thought as I'm listening to you throughout this conversation of like, yeah, that would make sense that it was hard to set boundaries because shamed and ridiculed for speaking up many times, especially by my father. So, yeah, really fascinating. Well, Terry, I could sit here and talk to you forever. This podcast is now named Live Like a Girl because I really believe that women should live in a different way. We do live in this patriarchal world that impacts us. Conversations like we're having today impact us, our physiology is very different. What does living like a girl mean to you?
\[01:01:50:02 - 01:03:33:19\]
Being free. Living like a girl means living free, but considering ourselves and the collective. That's what women do naturally. We're free to care for ourselves, but we'll also care for women. The rising matriarchy is where it's at, my friend. Agreed. And it's happening. I watch it and go, oh, it's happening. The pain and the rage and everything we've kept under the surface is really boiling to the top now as painful as it is to watch. And it's time to speak up, which is why books like this become so important because I if you're wanting to speak up and you can't, something like Understanding Your Father Wound seems like a really important place to start. So, how can we help you? How can we help you get this book out into the world? Well, pre-order it. That would be great. It dropped on November 17th. I'm also doing a ton of free things. Of course, free bonuses. I'm doing a four hour deep dive into your Father Wound blueprint on October 24th. That's part of the pre-order campaign. So, if you pre-order it, then you get that four hour retreat for free. So, that's really how you can go to fatherwoundbook.com. All the information will be there and you know where to find me. I'm just Terri Cole in all the places on Instagram. I have a pod. You've been on a bunch of times, of course, called the Jerry Cole Show. Now I'm on Substack. I've got a YouTube channel, same as you. So, I'm in all the places that Dr. Mindy is in. I am also in just as Terri Cole.
\[01:03:34:22 - 01:04:02:10\]
Just in a different room. You're just in a different room. It's like a big house and we're just in a different room. Well, I love and appreciate you, Terri, and I just, I always feel filled up and have new insight every time I talk to you. So, thank you for all of your books, but this for me might be, and for a lot of women, the most important one you've brought forward to so, appreciate you. I can't wait to bring you back with the next book.
\[01:04:04:11 - 01:04:05:13\]
In like five years from now.
\[01:04:08:11 - 01:04:16:07\]
Well, you're going to have to heal, maybe go a little deeper into the fatherwound to stop writing so many books. I can say the same to you.
\[01:04:17:11 - 01:04:20:22\]
Believe me, believe me. This was awesome. Thank you, Terri.
\[01:04:22:04 - 01:04:39:02\]
Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So, please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.

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