394. Secure attachment and dads: How fathers’ inner worlds shape their parenting with Dr. Jett Stone

Dr. Jett Stone (00:00):

Fatherhood is central to dad’s identity now. And so what do you do that’s different than mom? Or how are you offering something to this family unit that’s also creating a secure attachment, but you’re just doing it in a different way?

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:21):

Modern fatherhood looks very different than it did even one generation ago. Many of today’s dads are emotionally present, deeply involved, and active partners in parenting in ways that many of their own fathers weren’t. And while that shift is incredibly meaningful for families, it also means that many men are trying to build a version of fatherhood they were never shown. They’re navigating new expectations, old cultural messages around masculinity and their own childhood experiences, all at the same time, often without language or models to help guide them. Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist, mom of two, and the host of Securely Attached. Each week, I sit down with leading experts in psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and child development to translate complex research into practical, grounded insights that help you parent with more clarity and confidence. And today I’m joined by Dr. Jett Stone. Jett is a clinical psychologist who specializes in men’s mental health and paternal wellbeing.

(01:27):

He works with individuals and couples in his private practice and writes extensively about fatherhood, masculinity, and emotional health. He’s also the author of Quiet Your Mind: A Men’s Guide that helps men understand their internal world and develop tools for managing stress, rumination, and emotional overwhelm. In this conversation, we talk about why many millennial dads feel like they’re parenting without a blueprint, how intergenerational patterns shape the way men show up as fathers, and why so many dads quietly struggle with feeling like the secondary parent, especially in the early years. We also explore how fathers can build secure attachment relationships with their children, why anger and parenting is often rooted in fear or old wounds, and how doing your own reflective work as a parent can transform not just your relationship with your child, but with the entire family system.

(02:22):

Hi, Jett. Welcome to the Securely Attached podcast. It’s really good to see you. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Dr. Jett Stone (02:35):

It’s really great to be here.

Dr. Sarah Bren (02:37):

Yeah. We go way back, so we can get into that. But before we start that conversation, why don’t we begin with telling everyone a little bit about you and your work and kind of how your clinical focus supporting men and paternal mental health really began for you?

Dr. Jett Stone (02:55):

Yeah, so I’m a clinical psychologist. I’m originally based in Connecticut and New York, so I see a lot of folks who are from the East Coast. I work with individuals, I work with couples, and my interest in working, specializing, I guess you could say, working with men, especially men who are new to therapy or have had unpleasant experiences in prior therapies, really began in the VA. That’s where I interned at the Manhattan Veterans Affairs Hospital. And I got a chance to work with a lot of traumatized men. And I just started to think about the way that gender shows up in the therapy room and how to bring it into the room with men and talk about masculinity and think about how it shapes their experiences of trauma, but also anxiety, depression, all the things we see as therapists. And one of the aspects of my training that I feel was lacking, I think it’s probably true for most people, is that there’s a great emphasis on feminism and how it became such an important part of therapy just across the board.

(04:03):

And women have spent so much time deconstructing and reconstructing femininity and talking about it and doing the same with motherhood, and that there was this glaring absence with men, masculinity and fatherhood. There’s been a lot more research in these areas, but I felt it was underdeveloped during my research and training. And so I just kind of turned that into a professional focus. I work with all different types of people, but I do work with a lot of men, dads, expectant dads. And so it became a passion project and I write a lot about it. I write it for Psychology Today, essays on men’s mental health, male, mind, fathering, all those topics, wrote a book, a skills book, geared towards men. And I just did a training for psychotherapy network at PESI, helping clinicians work more effectively and build better alliances with men.

Dr. Sarah Bren (04:58):

That’s amazing because we, I mean, I think most of our audiences is moms, but I know we have dads in the audience too. I also know we have a lot of therapists in the audience. And so I think that as a therapist and a mom who has a husband, whose dad right upstairs right now, getting the kids ready for school, I think about this all the time and I know I bring my own biases to it and my own … I project my own stuff onto it. When I’m feeling underappreciated as mom of the house and holding all this, I have to take a minute and think, am I projecting some of my stuff onto my feelings towards my husband right now, who by the way is upstairs getting the kids ready for school while I record this podcast because he and I, he’s an incredibly committed to the partnership of raising kids, which I know you talk a lot about and we can get into a little bit like, I don’t know, talking about like the mental load that everybody carries in the family, but I think it’s so valuable that you are putting more voice to this because I think actually in the parental space, dads are wildly underrepresented.

Dr. Jett Stone (06:35):

Yes, I do agree with that. And I think the first part of becoming more represented is finding the language to talk about men and mental health and being a dad. And it’s putting yourself out there a little bit because there are so many voices talking about motherhood that I do think it is important that we as men do the work of talking about the realities of fatherhood and not just waiting for someone else to do it.

Dr. Sarah Bren (07:07):

Yeah. So when your work, like you talk to a lot of dads, what is the stuff that they are grappling with, the things that they are struggling to find words for that you guys are uncovering some language about together?

Dr. Jett Stone (07:26):

A lot of dads are coming and obviously I can’t speak on behalf of all dads. I’ll speak in kind of generalities and then themes, because it is important to look at dads based on different demographic factors, family configurations, single dads, divorced dads. But in general terms, I see fatherhood as in this kind of foggy, experimental type of phase because the blueprint, let’s say for millennial dads, because I know there are a lot of listeners out there who are in that generation and as an elder, millennial myself, I am as well, it’s that the version of fatherhood that was handed down to us by our forefathers and beyond, it looks so much different than what’s expected of us today. So I’m not expecting any pity party at all, but I am thinking a lot about the dads I see who never had models of strong and sensitive fathers or they had abandoning fathers.

(08:27):

And so they’re reinventing something and it might sound high and lofty to say that there’s like a pioneer aspect to millennial dads, but I really do think so because the data does show that, that millennial dads, despite needing to step up more relative to moms, and that’s very obvious in the data, is that they’re spending as much time with their kids as millennial moms, I’m sorry, as baby boomer moms. So millennial dads are spending almost as much time as baby boomer moms or their kids, right? Still not enough, but it’s like, okay, how do I manage these expectations where the structures, like let’s say family care policies or let’s say a greedy job at Wall Street doesn’t care that I want to be an involved father. And so I think there’s a lot of competing forces happening and there’s just a lot of confusion coming in like, “How do I navigate this?

(09:26):

I can’t get it right at work. I can’t get it right at home. My spouse is mad at me. I can’t connect with my kid.” Those types of things. I say we, because I’m part of this too, we’re in this fog and we’re figuring it out.

Dr. Sarah Bren (09:40):

It’s interesting because I feel like dads can get … And listen, I’ve probably had episodes of this podcast where we’ve really highlighted the inequities across family systems, but I really genuinely believe it comes to the family system trickled down from a much bigger system, right? Like dads, whether it’s the realities of today, like a father who’s contending with more rigid expectations of their time at work, like you described, less paternal leave, or if they have it, no one takes it culturally in the office. And so it’s an opportunity cost to take it, even though it’s allowed. But even there’s been the realities of today that they’re contending with, there’s also internalized intergenerational stuff, which you talked about and I think is really important to highlight. We hold all of the stuff that came before us inside. So when you talk about the internalized, intergenerational way you could say trauma, but you could also say just intergenerational patterns, right?

(10:54):

Models, objects, the things that we take in, we have to remember that that is going to impact the way a person has to … If they’re going to deviate from what they’ve internalized and what their parents internalized and then modeled, right? So we’ve got multiple generations inside of us.

Dr. Jett Stone (11:12):

Absolutely.

Dr. Sarah Bren (11:14):

Could you speak a little bit to the sort of intergenerational piece? Because I think that that really does help explain why men are actually breaking some cycles and we have to give them support and the space to do it. And we have to name that they’re doing it so that we, as the women in the family systems can have compassion for and appropriate expectations and give up some of the resentment that we might be holding or be told to hold because we get that messaging too.

Dr. Jett Stone (11:46):

And that’s why I think psychotherapy with dads is so revealing about just what’s going on with men and masculinity in the bigger picture. But when you think about, because when you think about the generational transmission piece is that a lot of guys don’t have the opportunity to slow down and consider like, what did your father’s anger look like? Sometimes when rage comes into the room or you see it show up in a relationship scenario, it’s like, who yelled at you like that is a way of sort of diffusing it because it’s like, okay, well, this is kind of handed down to me.

(12:31):

It doesn’t excuse the behavior in any way, but I think when you slow it down and give them space, say, “Okay, I had a rageful dad and he had a rageful dad or I had a silent father and when he did show up, he came in dominant and overly doing it. ” So in a way, it’s like giving them the sense of saying, “Okay, I’ve inherited this. I don’t have to live it. ” Historically, motherhood is talked about, it’s centered as part of the parental role. And I think centering fatherhood does require us to grieve also the aspects of fatherhood that we didn’t have.

(13:10):

So there’s a trauma part, there’s a potential trauma part of it, but then there’s also like, I’ll give you an example, like my dad grew up in the 50s and as a dad, he was able to take his time to do his scientific work and be off in his silo and not be interrupted. And so my process of becoming a dad was like, “Okay, I’m not entitled to just being able to go off into a corner to live out my intellectual dreams and think. And I have to at least communicate that I’m doing that or be a part of the family system.” And so I had to let go of this idea that I could have my own time and I’m deserving of it and entitled to it. And that’s just an example of something. Other dads might learn the ways that they have to show up that their dads didn’t show up. And until you talk about it and find words for it, again, it’s not a pity party. It’s literally like language helps you, makes it take shape.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:15):

It gives you permission.

Dr. Jett Stone (14:16):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah Bren (14:17):

It gives you permission. Gives you permission to say, “Oh, I do want to show up in the family as dad.” That is a role that I value and in order to really embody that role, I have to grieve. I think it’s incredibly important what the fantasy of fatherhood that I might have had growing up that I didn’t even realize I had, because a lot of times we have fantasies about things in the future that we don’t really consciously know we’re having. It’s just implicit. It’s this, I see what I see now as a kid and that’s what I imagine it will be later and we have to grieve that.

Dr. Jett Stone (14:55):

Yes. And to add to that is that a lot of dads, myself included, have a very like impoverished fantasy life around what parenthood looks like. I’ve joked before, I was like, “Oh, when I’m a teenage boy, I’ll have kids and I’ll teach them how to throw a spiral. I’ll teach myself.” And then I have two beautiful daughters that they don’t care about spirals and it completely…

Dr. Sarah Bren (15:21):

Different kinds of spirals maybe.

Dr. Jett Stone (15:23):

Exactly right. And so if you’re talking about sort of traditional boyhood socialization, it’s like they’re not playing with dollhouses on the average, right? And so I know that that’s sort of cliche, but that is a rehearsal in some degrees of what a family could look like. And you’re thinking about it and your grandmother’s talking to you about motherhood and there’s sort of this sense of passing down a fantasy of what motherhood could at least look like to latch onto.

Dr. Sarah Bren (15:53):

Yeah.

Dr. Jett Stone (15:54):

And so fatherhood can oftentimes be pretty bare is all I’m saying. And so in psychotherapy, especially with expectant dads, you start to say, “Well, what kind of dads do you want to be? ” And they usually don’t have any language for it, but you can tease it out with them. Well, how was your dad? How did your parents handle conflict? What do you want to do differently?

Dr. Sarah Bren (16:14):

Yeah. It’s funny because I know you do obviously a lot of individual psychotherapy with dads. And I have actually a couple dads that are in my practice that I see for therapy that I’ve learned so much about parenthood through them because I’ve been able to kind of be invited into their vantage point and it’s profoundly powerful what I’ve learned, what they’ve shared with me and what they’ve grappled with. But I also, I’m privileged because I do a tremendous amount of parenting support. I do a lot of parent coaching, right? And that’s often a place where a dad will feel, perhaps a dad who is reluctant to do individual therapy might feel a little more comfortable entering into the therapy space, right? Me and my wife will come to meet with this therapist to talk about how do we help our kid, right? The kid is the patient in when I do parenting support, even though kid’s usually not in the room.

(17:17):

So I get to work with a lot of dads, with their partners, sometimes solo, about parenting specifically, right? And one thing where I see this intergenerational piece get brought up a lot, and sometimes dads don’t have the language for it and we figure out a way to create that language, but some I’m impressed that they really can articulate it. They don’t know that it’s a thing, they’re just trying to explain their experience, right? And I’m like, to be able to validate that for them and say, “This is actually sort of like the pattern that this is how development passes through, like one generation to the next, and it makes so much sense.” But I’ve had dads say specifically around, because obviously people are coming to me because their kids having some sort of like behavioral issue or emotional challenge or anxiety and we’re trying to work on how they support the kid differently than what they’ve been doing because what they’ve been doing hasn’t been working.

(18:16):

And obviously I’m generalizing a lot of times parents are, they’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, they’re desperate trying anything. It’s often the inconsistency of things that are the problem, not the interventions themselves, but a lot of times I’ll have a dad who’s like, “I totally believe and buy in that I want them to feel safe and secure with me. I want a secure attachment relationship with my kid.” I understand that when I yell at them, when I get scary, that that doesn’t help. But at the same time, I need them to respect me. I need them to respect my authority and I can’t allow them to do X, Y, Z and then defy me when I tell them not to do it and feel okay with that. And I think that right there is a massive internalized narrative of my authority as the father, capital Father.

(19:18):

And mothers do this too. Mothers have our own internalized capital M mother, the authoritarian matriarchal, “Do not mess with me. I set the rules.” And it’s hard because you’re not wrong. I want to never tell a parent like, “No, you aren’t the one in charge. You need to be the one in charge. Your kid needs for you to be in charge.” It’s just the way that we embody that leadership and that secure container, it might be different now, we’re understanding it better and it goes against a lot of the ways that we were parented. A lot of the dads that I work with were not parented with a lot of patience with their rage and dysregulation.

Dr. Jett Stone (20:01):

I agree with that. I think we see that a lot as therapists that dad sometimes default to like the no parent like, “I’m going to sort of bring my posture and presence into the room to assert order.” And yeah, actually banging a table and yelling does quiet things down temporarily, leaves a legacy of long-term damage potentially if it becomes habitual, but that is a go- to for a lot of guys because they don’t have any other skills in their toolkit to be able to handle a meltdown and so it’s go big. When I feel small as a dad, when I’m one down, I go one up big. And that is just, that’s part boyhood socialization. And it’s also like, it solidifies because sometimes parents get into their silos, like I’m the yes parent, I’m the no parent, I’m the one who is going to be permissive, I’m going to be the one who’s laying down the law, and that just calcifies over time.

(21:04):

And I do think a lot about how dads want to be, feel different than moms. They don’t want to just be deficient moms in the household or secondary parents, and they can’t be in the same age. And so I think a lot about how just the data on dads, how they really care a lot. They tend to focus more about like prioritizing entry into the real world, right? Yes. Equipping children with the confidence to take risks and build skills out there and like, you know, let them go on the playground and dangle off and not stand and not hover around them. To us as dads, that’s really important and we want to offer these skills and sometimes we do it in a very heavy handed way that backfires. And so the way to do that, and those skills are important, is not through being big and loud. We could talk about other ways to do it, but I’m just agreeing with you and I’m trying to put it in the context of like, that there is some values, value attempts when you see a dad doing their like to live out values, but it’s failing.

Dr. Sarah Bren (22:20):

So one is like, if we can … For the people who are judging the dads, I think it’s important to have compassion, to have this understanding of what, the why behind that posturing so that we can look at it with compassion and then for the dads who do it and are like, “I don’t want to, but I don’t really have an alternative.” Because yes, my values are, I need to prepare them. I need to hold my own authority in this family because it’s feel threatening not to, and that’s legit. How do we give parents, all parents, because women go through these same conundrums as well, right? How do we give parents tools? What are some things that we can help them with so that they can be true to the values? They can share these lessons with their children. They can say, “It’s totally legitimate for me to want to prepare my kid for risks in the real world and what’s going to fly and what’s not going to fly in a way that doesn’t necessarily over-leverage the big, scary suppression of it all.

Dr. Jett Stone (23:38):

” Yeah. I mean, I wish I had all the answers to present in a beautiful way here for you, but here are some things that I think about as you ask me that, is that so much of parenting, maybe this is US centric, and so much of it is around, I like to think about like shepherding our kids from one thing to the next, especially if you’re a working parent, like you’re getting your kid up in the school, you’re getting them ready, you’re trying to get their lunch together, you’re trying to figure out what homework they need, you’re shuffling them out the door. If you’re me, I’m trying to get them on a bike to take them to school. And then you’re either picking them up or you’re not or you’re working or you’re coming home and then you’re kind of shepherding them into the bath or the shower and then trying to get them to sleep.

(24:30):

And there’s no time to just talk to them about things that matter to them, right? There’s the still time or play with them if they’re at that age. And with dads, I think sometimes the antidote to coming in strong is pausing that and finding a time where, you know, handling a meltdown is one thing, right? There’s better tools than yelling to do that, but finding a time to get across the value that you care about. So if it is like you want to make sure that your kid is respectful of other kids, like carve out time where they’re still before bed or at a strike when the iron’s cold moment, right? Where you can instill that value as best you can. And more recently, I’ve been talking to dads about like storytelling and telling them stories about their own life as a way of getting through something that they care about.

(25:34):

Like, when I was your age, I also didn’t like the clothes that I was wearing and I would throw fits, but you know what I learned later on? It’s in that type of mode because kids listen to stories and so dads don’t default to that a lot. And so I’ve been trying to coach them in that way too, like, “Well, what were you like when you were a six year old getting ready in the morning? What do you remember? Tell them that story.” That sort of thing. It’s a side door approach as opposed to forward door.

Dr. Sarah Bren (26:04):

I love that. I talk about that a lot actually because I think that those are what I call the before moments. So if you think about parenting a lot of times we’re like, “Okay, my kid is losing it here.” That’s the during. Think of it as like if there’s a before, during, after, during is the heat of the moment. There’s really not a whole lot of good parenting that we have left access to. Our toolbox is so tiny in that moment, but we always want to figure out what are we supposed to do in that moment. Frankly, not much. Just keep it from getting worse if you can and let it fly, not let it fly, let it take its course, keep it safe, and then leverage the other moments. The after is a great time for like looking back on and trying to help kids understand cause and effect, connect the dots.

(26:58):

That’s where you can talk about consequences, right? But talk about it, not in the heat of the moment. And then the before the next one. Yes. The before the next one is I think the most underutilized time for like useful parenting and teaching and guidance. If we want to build skills to like reduce what’s going on in the jury and I think that’s what you’re talking about here. Dads will often say like, “Well, but how am I supposed to respond when they’re saying really disrespectful things to me in the moment?” And I would say, in the moment, say to yourself, “This is lava. I don’t dissect lava. It’s just lava.” And I’m not responsible for changing the chemistry of lava. In the before the next lava, that’s when you could do all these things to teach them all these important lessons that you feel rightly so, they must learn.

(27:59):

Yes. And I think parents feel, especially dads, because when they realize this, they still get to feel powerful, appropriately powerful. We all want to feel agentful and have power to affect change and to do what we think we’re here to do, right? Guide our kids, teach them to be good upstanding humans and to respect authority and to be kind and not to hit their sister. All the things that we feel we have to do as parents. If we can work on those skill building moments and through storytelling, through connection, through getting, understanding what your kid’s struggling with and where their skill deficits are and building those up through practice in the before, I think that’s money.

Dr. Jett Stone (28:47):

Yeah, it’s the most productive period. And I think the issue is also times is like, when do we get that calm to do it? We have to carve it out, we have to find it, and we have to be intentional around it. And for dads, a lot of times I see a frustration that for kids age zero to four when language is either not there or not quite there, it’s like much harder to reduce what you’re trying to say into language that will land with someone who’s at that developmental stage.

(29:22):

And it’s a challenge for any parent to do that. And so a lot of times it’s the physical relationship too and the synchrony of nervous systems as well. And it’s at adolescents, later adolescence where I think dads really research shows start to come into their own because they start to impart these values of risk taking and safe, risk taking boundaries, autonomy, social know- how, all these things that really matter to dads. They’re able to impart that with more clear they They feel more needed. And maybe that’s another word to bring into this, that in the perinatal phase especially, but beyond that as well, a lot of dads come in feeling like secondary, all excited to feel all the feels of new fatherhood. And then you feel like, oh my gosh, it’s this maternal system that’s so beautiful. And I don’t quite have full entry into it because of biological constraints. But also, there’s not always this beautiful oxytocin bond for either parent. And dads recognize that too. And they kind of say, okay, when does the fathering really begin even though there’s so much to do? And that’s kind of the mentality that I do see a lot of new dads coming.

Dr. Sarah Bren (31:02):

As we’re talking about the emotional lives of fathers and how family dynamics shape the way we show up as parents, I want to pause for a moment to share a little bit about the work that we do at my group practice, Upshur Bren Psychology Group. Parenthood doesn’t just change your schedule. It changes your identity, your relationships, and the emotional patterns you bring into your family. And so often the challenges that parents face aren’t happening in isolation. They’re happening inside a family system where everyone’s needs, histories, and stressors are interacting with each other.

(31:35):

At Upshur Bren Psychology Group, we work with the whole family system. That means supporting moms, dads, couples, and children as they navigate the emotional and relational challenges that naturally arise in family life. And we do this whether the whole family’s in the session or just one person. So maybe you’re noticing patterns from your own childhood showing up in your parenting.

(32:01):

Maybe you and your partner feel stuck in recurring conflicts around the mental load or parenting roles. Or maybe your child is struggling and you’re trying to figure out how to support them while also taking care of yourself. Our team of mental health clinicians offer therapy, parent coaching, and coordinated support for families navigating anxiety, behavioral challenges, developmental differences, the everyday complexity of raising kids, and so much more. When parents have a space to reflect, process, and feel supported themselves, it often creates meaningful change for the entire family.

(32:34):

If you’d like support, you can schedule a free 30 minute consultation by clicking the link in the episode description wherever you are streaming this podcast. Or visit upsharebren.com to learn more. That’s U-P-S-H-U-R-B-R-E-N.com. All right. Now let’s get back to my conversation with Dr. Jett Stone.

(33:00):

Is there a way that women can, in understanding this, this sort of tendency for there to feel like maybe like I’m on the outside looking in and I don’t know/maybe I’m a little nervous to interrupt the bonding that I’m seeing you have. And so maybe I might just quietly sit and not share that I feel this sort of longing to be included. If we understand it that way, what are some things that you’ve seen be helpful for dads you’ve worked with to find a way in to feel like they can be either … They might even not know to say it, right? We might need to invite them in.

Dr. Jett Stone (33:49):

Yes, possibly. I just feel like it’s sometimes difficult to ask moms to layer on another task for them to take on in that moment because they’re also like juggling a massive amount of stuff. But if there is something, I would say make peace with a father who’s trying to parent in his own style, so much as it’s like healthy and they’re not like reckless and like leaving the baby on the couch or something. Allow him to screw up and do the diaper inefficiently or figure out the bottle feeding or whatever it is, like figure out the swaddling in those early phases. And I think dads feel a real hit when they feel like, “Oh my gosh.” Sometimes it’s called gatekeeping, but it does feel like that to a lot of dads like, “Oh my gosh, I’m getting corrected.” And it’s frustrating to them and it’s tricky to deal with because you do need skills to learn and especially as a mom who might pick them up earlier in the process and be better at it.

Dr. Sarah Bren (35:13):

And we’re primed. We’ve been trained from like, like you said, kindergarten when we were given all the dolls and like we … Yes, we’re wired for this and we’re trained for this, for lack of a better, more elegant term, like society trains us for it. So we can get a little over protect … I very appreciate your conscious holding space for women as you work with men. But I think as a mom and as a woman who works with lots of moms, but I also feel like my patient always is the family system every time, no matter who I’m working with. I sometimes have to tell moms that makes so much sense you’re feeling resentment right now at the load you’re carrying. And if we don’t step out of our silo as a mother and look at where does the father fit into this and how do we include them and not say … It’s not like a zero sum game.

(36:25):

If I acknowledge that my husband or my partner or whomever is having challenges with this, that that diminishes how hard this is for me, right? Being a new parent, being a seasoned parent, being a mother, it’s not easy. We don’t have lots of the supports in place that we need from a societal system. But if we identify as the martyr in the family, it doesn’t help either. And we build resentment and we hold this load and we … Yes, we need to talk about redistributing the load a lot of times in families, but to do that, you need both partners at the table and you need safety in that relationship to say like, “Hey, your needs are valid, my needs are valid. We’re both overwhelmed.” It’s hard for both of us and the family system, “What does our kid need? What do you need? What do I need?” That conversation can’t happen if we’re holding resentment because we feel like a martyr and we feel like if I admit that my partner’s struggling, it diminishes my struggle, like that is a troubling narrative that I think happens too much. And I very often talk to families about, Hey, I think this is happening here and how do we break out of this a bit because it’s going to make it really hard to find equity in the family system.

Dr. Jett Stone (37:45):

Oh yeah. There are so many instances where you have to look at the family system to understand the dynamics of what’s going on with dads. So it is helpful. And if they feel like they’re outside of the system, you have to bring them in. And so to boil down, maybe my response to the previous question is like, from a mom hearing, “You got this dude, you’re doing great.” Something so simple, it’s like short, sweet, like, “Oh, you messed up doing that, don’t worry about it. You’re going to be great at this. ” I honestly think nothing needs more to be said, and same to a mom that would be music to their ears too. And I think so many dads are just out there feeling like, “Okay, I’m a secondary parent, and I feel like mom is so good at this, ” and it becomes almost like a tagline like, “Oh yeah, here I am, this parental under study, and I’m just waiting for my time when the kid’s older.” So I guess that encouragement goes a long way, especially for a dad who cares a lot.

Dr. Sarah Bren (39:02):

Yeah. I think that’s important for us to hold space for as women in the family. A little encouragement goes a very long way, compassion and patience and willingness to let go of some of the control, because it is hard to … If you’re really good at something, it’s hard to let someone who isn’t as skillful come in when it’s your baby that we’re talking about, or your toddler, or your five year old, or your 12 year old. But if you want your 12 year old to have had a deeply connected relationship with their father, by the time they’re 12, you’ve got to get out of the way really a lot earlier than that. You’ve got to invite them in. And I know we’ve talked about at the beginning, there’s a million different family constellations and family styles, and we’re talking about kind of like just a few of them here.

(40:00):

There’s different types of situations, obviously, but I think so often I hear from dads that there’s a strong desire and I don’t know where to … It’s like I’m standing in front … The visual I’m having right now is Elf, Will Ferrell and Elf standing in front of the revolving door when he first goes to New York being like, “I have no idea how do I enter this thing?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I can imagine that could be how it feels.”

Dr. Jett Stone (40:30):

Yes, Elph is a great movie. And so if knowing that there’s an elf thing going on upstairs and then it’s then also good to just give them time alone, especially in the early phases of parenthood, but later on too, that you got this, like you don’t even need a script, you need anything, let me know. But time alone to spend. I see it with dads who, there are times where they’re being kind of like, “Well, I don’t know, let’s bring in some support. Let’s bring in a babysitter. Let’s bring in your parents or my parents.” And so just letting them, as the kids say, “Cook, go out there and do the thing.”

Dr. Sarah Bren (41:16):

Yes. I also think it’s really helpful to understand for everyone in the family that like from attachment science, what we know is like each kid has a different attachment relationship with each significant attachment figure. It doesn’t need to look the same. It doesn’t need to be the same for there to be security in those relationships. And it’s okay for parents to have different parenting strategies, different parenting styles, different parents, as long as the parenting style is supportive of its own attachment strength and there’s a lot of room for error in attachment relationships for there to be a secure attachment. We can link episodes on that, but like I think people, moms and dads can be very white knuckly about like, “Oh my God, if I do one thing wrong, I’m going to destroy the attachment relationship.” And it’s like, no, it’s a really sturdy system.

(42:09):

It’s gotten us through many millennia of evolution. It’s a good system. It’s not that fragile, but we also, it can look totally different between parents and that’s okay. It’s actually healthy for a kid to have a lot of different attachment, secure attachment relationships that take different forms and have different flavors and doesn’t need to be … You don’t have to parent the way mom parents. You don’t have to parent the way dad parents.

Dr. Jett Stone (42:40):

And I mean, that psychoeducation is important for dads to hear too. I think that dads and dads want to hear why what they’re doing as a parent is additive to what the mom is doing and distinct. Yes. They like the title of dad. Sometimes they have difficulty with the verb of actually fathering sometimes, but they also want to own that and make the … Fatherhood is central to dad’s identity now. And so what do you do that’s different than mom? Or like how are you offering something to this family unit that’s also creating a secure attachment, but you’re just doing it in a different way?

Dr. Sarah Bren (43:33):

I mean, that speaks to a lot of the work you do, right? Because I think for a man, a dad, a father, to be able to have a secure relationship with their kid, they have to also be able to be present and quiet their mind and not to plug your book at all, but like there’s like … Again, like I say this a lot, the health of the family system is also related to the health of each individual person in the family system. And so when a father can take care of their own self, can work on their … With permission, with self permission to like do the reflective work of who am I? How do I feel? What type of dad do I want to be? What are the internalized father figures and feelings I have that I have to understand in order to say,” I want to intentionally recreate this or I want to intentionally deviate from this.

(44:38):

“Maybe there’s a few thoughts you have to share on that as we close out the episode, because I think this is where I think your expertise is really valuable to everyone listening.

Dr. Jett Stone (44:52):

I think there’s multiple parts, you actually use the word parts unintentionally, but I think there is like some parts work. So maybe I did say it intentionally. I don’t know, but if … Part of it is talking about paternal legacies and how they were treated as kids by their fathers, where they learned anger, where they learned about conflict, what they’ve inhaled subconsciously, it is showing up in the way that they parent. But there’s also, this is true of work with men, I find, is that you can get to the emotion that we all as therapists want to get to. When you help them see the boy within, it’s like, you can call it child work. There’s many different ways, every modality has their own language for how … But when I see these dads talk, and sometimes I’ll even have them do like closed eyes, visualizations and different ways to get at this, but it’s like when they see their boyhood self, sometimes it’s them … A lot of times it’s them alone, feeling very lonely somewhere in their house or at boarding school or at camp.

(46:18):

And there’s a loneliness that goes on in boyhood because there are so many rules that get set in place about who you can’t be, right? Crossing over into the intergirl land is dangerous for boys. And so what you end up finding is there are so many parts of a dad that they haven’t talked to, the boy, where they learned so many of the things they bring in to fatherhood, and that’s where they actually get emotional is when they can start to say,” Oh, this came from a place.

(46:50):

I’m not bad. Maybe I’ve done some bad things, but most of the time you’re not working with like a terrible sociopath or something. You’re working with someone who comes from a place and I think that boyhood is just chock full of stories and bad nicknames. I’ve written about that one. If you ask a dad about his, or just any man about his boyhood nickname, you’ll get a treasure trove because it speaks to status, it speaks to insecurities. Did they own their nickname? Was it a bullying situation? Was it … And so just the parts of the kid within, and then helping them trace it like, oh, I could see how that mentality or that kid and what he was facing and how all the things he learned to do to cope with feeling wounded in some way, all the ways he had to adapt and how that enters into adulthood and then later fatherhood. So that’s a lot of words to put into that.

Dr. Sarah Bren (48:02):

No, but it’s so sound. I think it’s so important and I think anyone can really, really resonate with this idea of like when you think about the boy, whether it’s you, the partner, thinking about your husband in this moment and being curious about like, well, who’s the boy inside right now and what are they protecting against to have compassion and to have some context for things, to invite that in more, the conversation more, but also as dads to be able to say like, “Oh God, yeah, no, there’s a softening that happens when we think about that part of ourself.” And I think dads who can do that can have a lot more empathy for the child in front of them in the moment, who’s struggling to keep it together in that moment and to say like what sometimes I’ll often describe like we’ll say if we’re really punitive to our kid for one moment, like we’ll get really hot and we lash out, we’ll say like, “Oh my God, I’m just being just like my dad.” And caveat, my dad was like the most gentle parent ever.

(49:10):

So if my parents like did gentle parenting without realizing it, this is a thing. You’re ahead of their time. I got lucky. Maybe that’s why I do the work I do today, but you know, okay, oh, that was my critical parent, right? That just came out at me. And sometimes yes, we are just parroting the things, but a lot of times what I find is when we peel away the layers, what was happening in that moment when I’m lashing out at my kid, I’m not embodying a critical parent if I had one or a scary parent if I had one. I’m actually the six year old that was being yelled at, that six year old part is actually coming out and saying like, “Oh my God, this isn’t safe. I know what’s going to happen. We need to shut this down. Stop it right now.” It’s a fear, not an anger that’s actually coming out in that moment a lot of the time, a panic that like, “Oh my God, the way you’re behaving is not safe. I’ve already learned this. We got to shut this down.”

Dr. Jett Stone (50:12):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah Bren (50:13):

And I think when we can connect with that reality, everything changes in the family home, like when our ability to have compassion for our kid in the yuckiest moments is so much more accessible.

Dr. Jett Stone (50:26):

Yes. And I think that what can hold Medup and dads up for the context of this conversation is that they say they want structured treatment, right? And that’s fine. You can be upfront and very structured about how you’re going to do it, but at some point this depth work and slowing down is the most productive thing that you can do because it translates into behavior in the here and now and as a dad in the family environment. And so I think some psychoed around that, like that this isn’t just sort of talking for the sake of talking or digging into your past for like the sake of it. It’s actually quite productive for who you are now because if you can see where this came from and who you’re speaking from, where this was modeled to you, why you adapted to the way that you were parented, like it all makes much more sense.

(51:28):

And I, with therapy with men, I always front load the clarity of these things because a lot of guys will come in saying, “I don’t even know if this is worth the money yet.” And I don’t see the value in talking my way into a better life. And so you kind of, I find myself having to sell it, sell what these aspects of therapy that we’re talking about are upfront and why it’s worth it.

Dr. Sarah Bren (51:55):

Yeah. And if parents are listening and they’re like, “Okay, I’d like to do this type of work,” can you give people just a quick description of the type of therapy they might want to be seeking out because there’s lots of different types of therapy and I think you and I are both psychodynamically trained, we’re trained in a very sort of this brand of therapy. What are some keywords? Obviously if someone wants to work with you, let’s give them information of how they can do that, but if they want to do this type of work, how do they know how to be an educated consumer to find it?

Dr. Jett Stone (52:36):

So we’re both psychodynamically trained. I did a lot of training in acceptance commitment therapy too. So I do consider myself an integrationist. A lot of us in our generation of therapists, psychologists do. So we bring in a lot of different modalities. But for someone who’s looking, I always think that like, and you might agree with this or not, but if you watch good therapy, it kind of all melds together. It’s hard. It’s just good therapy if you watch tape. Emotionally focused couples therapy is great if you’re looking at a couple’s therapy trained in that EFT, we love our acronyms. So psychodynamic, great. Even these third wave behavioral therapies, they have their place, they’re really important. And so ACT and DBT, those are all different modalities. I would say it’s much more about therapy, client therapy, patient relationship, and that if you feel a guttural sense of connection with this person on the consultation call, which you should definitely do, have multiple of them if you’re looking for a therapist, that how they explain their practice to you, I think matters more than the letters by their name or even the letters of the therapy they do. So I would decenter the specific modality of therapy, at least to some degree. If you want to work with a couple’s therapists, you want to work with someone who’s couples trained, of course.

(54:11):

And I would think more about, does this person speak to me and can they explain what they do in plain English to me because that’s oftentimes a good sign that they’ve done a lot of thinking about their modality.

Dr. Sarah Bren (54:25):

Yeah. I think that’s really good advice. I really do. And I think sometimes that’s all people need to hear just to barrier to entry is like, there’s some pretty basic things to be looking for. And actually the research really does show that the Therapeutic Alliance, our ability to have a connection with our therapist, to feel safe with our therapist is the most significant predictor of outcomes than any type of modality. So it really doesn’t matter. You just need to feel safe with the person. And I think these strategies you’re suggesting are really useful. So tell us a little bit, if people want to get to know a little bit more about the work you’re doing, they want to follow where you’re publishing articles, if they want to get your book, Quiet Your Mind.

Dr. Jett Stone (55:13):

I’ll just say that that’s the publisher put that title in there. I wanted to overthink the title and do something a little bit more clever than that, but they’re trying to be straightforward with the title. So yes, I wrote a book called Quiet Your Mind: A Men’s Guide, and it’s 24 practical tools taken from different modalities, a lot of act in there. It’s geared towards men, although a lot of the feedback could be for anyone. So there’s that book, there’s also, I’m working on my Instagram, it’s @drjettstone, J-E-T-T-S-T-O-N-E. And I write for psychology today, so I have a blog there called Souls of Men, and so I write a lot about the issues we’ve talked about today. So you could just Google psychology today and my name.

Dr. Sarah Bren (56:04):

Amazing.

Dr. Jett Stone (56:05):

And I’m trying to think of what else. I think those are the best places to look. I’m starting an endeavor with a colleague out in Denmark called Men’s Therapy Hub. And so we’re trying to build more community around men’s mental health and male therapists because there aren’t that many out there. So keep a lookout for men’s therapy hub, and we have actually a podcast called No Man’s in Island associated with it. And so we bring out a lot of different thinkers and people in this space. So those are all different ways.

Dr. Sarah Bren (56:44):

Amazing. We’ll link all that stuff in the show notes too, so people can get connected with you. And thank you so much for coming on and for sharing all of this. I learned a lot and I really appreciated it.

Dr. Jett Stone (56:56):

It was really good to be honored. Thanks for inviting me. It was a lot of fun.

Dr. Sarah Bren (57:05):

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