Terry Real: Breaking the cycle of shame, anger, and depression

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode. My guest this week is author, speaker and family therapist, Terry Real. As a family therapist and teacher for more than 25 years, Terry's the best-selling author of a number of books, including I Don't Want to Talk About It, Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, How Can I Get Through to You, Reconnecting Men and Women, and I believe his most recent book is The New Rules of Marriage, What You Need to Know to Make Love Work. Terry also founded the Relational Love Institute, offering workshops for couples, individuals, and patients around the country, along with a professional training program for clinicians. Now, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, I think on at least three or four episodes, I have brought up Terry's name and his book, I Don't Want to Talk About It, and I think I've even alluded to it as probably one of the books I have gifted more than any other. I've wanted to interview Terry for quite some time now, because I just think that the way he thinks about the relationship between anger, depression, and inter-relational strife is so illuminating. And I sort of sheepishly worked up the nerve to ask him at some point, hey Terry, would it be okay if I interviewed you? And I was just delighted that he agreed to it, and he agreed to it on very short notice, like in a matter of days.
In this episode, we talk about Terry's background. He grew up with an abusive father, and that has turned out to be, well, an awful and unfortunate thing that happened to Terry, probably the greatest gift that came to many of us who have been helped by Terry, because it was that relationship with his father that really forged his path to become a therapist and to better understand male depression and anger. We talk about how trauma during a child's upbringing can shape them later in life, and how it can be passed on for generations over and over again.
We talk about why people sometimes need to be in painful situations to have breakthroughs, what it means to hit rock bottom, how to live a relational life, and the importance of living with healthy, satisfying, rich emotional connections. We talk a lot about narcissism and touch on David Foster Wallace and the idea of how we don't truly know what someone is going through in life, this idea of being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes. We talk about a lot of other things, but I think in the end, I hope you'll just take my word for it that this is worth investing the time in listening to. I enjoyed this discussion immensely and I look forward to sharing it. So without further delay, please enjoy my discussion with Terry Real.
Terry, thank you so much for making time to speak with me. It's been a long time that I've wanted to, I don't know, turn the tables a little bit and ask you the questions.

**Terry Real** (3:32)
Yeah, well, it's a great pleasure to be here. And I'm looking forward to an interesting conversation.

**Peter Attia** (3:38)
I think I just want to kind of jump into some stuff. Maybe for the listener, I'll tell a little bit of a story about how we were connected, and then jump into you telling your story. So about 18 months ago, a woman who I have yet to interview on the podcast, but certainly will, Esther Perel, who I was working with at the time and still continue to work with, said, Peter, you've got me and Lori as these two amazing therapists in your life, but you don't have a male therapist and you need one. And I'd already worked with two or three guys, but I just didn't have that connection. And she said, I want you to read a book.
And next week when we meet, I want you to tell me what you thought about the book and if the book resonated with you. And if it did, I will introduce you to the author. And if it didn't, that's okay, we'll keep looking. And the book was, I Don't Want to Talk About It.