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Growing up, men are taught, either directly or indirectly, that showing emotion is a sign of weakness, and that if they do, they will be mocked. Vulnerable is almost a derogatory term for men. As a result, the vast majority of men have low emotional IQ, which correlates with low relational IQ because we need that emotional component to make the relationship more vibrant and exciting.

In this episode, Dr. Eddie Capparucci will elaborate the root cause of the problem behind the behavior and how he exclusively assists men in identifying and addressing these issues.

Dr. Eddie Capparucci is a licensed counselor and coach, certified in treating Problematic Sexual Behaviors, and is the creator of the Inner Child Model for the treatment of sex/porn addiction. Eddie has worked with professional athletes and television personalities. He is the author of several books including Going Deeper: How the Inner Child Impacts Your Sexual Addiction and Why Men Struggle to Love: Overcoming Relational Blind Spots.

In this Episode

7:24 Dr. Eddie Capparucci’s inspiration in helping men with problematic sexual behaviors.

11:24 The correlation between low emotional IQ and low relational IQ.

12:52 The root of all addiction.

15:55 Encouraging men to identify and express their emotions.

17:49 What causes character defects and how to deal with them.

28:41 The blind spots that prevent men from bonding emotionally.

33:51 How he is helping men explore their unresolved childhood pain points.

41:50 Hide and Lie.

44:56 Resources and tools to help men.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Identify and express your emotion.
• Do your own self-reflection to understand your childhood pain paints.
• Show compassion and empathy for what you are going through.
• Slow down, take a moment to reflect. Then, respond rather than react.
• Accept the fact that you have deep emotions.
• Connect the thought with every emotion.

Mentioned

Going Deeper: How the Inner Child Impacts Your Sexual Addiction: The Road to Recovery Goes Through Your Childhood Paperback (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Why Men Struggle to Love: Overcoming Relational Blind Spots (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Connect with Dr. Eddie Capparucci

Websites: innerchild-sexaddiction.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/capparucci

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About Today's Show

Dr. Eddie Capparucci, it's so nice to have you on the show. Thank you for joining us.

Well, thank you, Jessica, for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

Yes, and I know that you have several things that you could speak on, one of which is sex addiction and really looking at our childhood experience and our inner child and how that impacts our experience in perhaps reaching for comfort. And you have a lot to say about that. I know you wrote a book about that. 

And today, we're going to be talking about your latest book, Why Men Struggle to Love: Overcoming Relational Blind Spots. And before we turn into this topic and dive in, can you help people with what got you interested in really diving into this topic?

Well, it's been an interesting story. For the last 12 years, I have been a counselor, and I specialize in the treatment of sexual and pornography addiction. And what happened over the course of that time, one thing that I noticed about a large majority of the men, and I work exclusively with men. I do not work with women who are dealing with this disorder. But I noticed that men have a low emotional IQ. Actually, 9 out of 10 that come into my office. 

What do I mean by a low emotional IQ? There are three different parts to that. The first part is this inability to identify what they truly feel. They can tell you if they're angry, if they're sad, if they're happy, or they're afraid, but they can't drill down to really identify and name other emotions. 

And even for those, Jessica, who could, what they have is a very difficult time expressing those emotions, being vulnerable. Vulnerable is almost a dirty word. And part of that is because as they are growing up, they receive a message, either directly or indirectly, that sharing emotion is not healthy and not safe. So therefore, people may mock you if they know that or think that you're weak. So, therefore, they learn to keep emotions hidden within them. 

And then the last component that makes up for low emotional IQ is the inability to be able to deal with and help process other people's emotions. So therefore, this is where it comes up with that adage, what do men want to do when a woman comes to them with a problem? They want to fix it. Right? That's what we always say. But it's not because we want to fix it because, “Oh, look at me, how smart I am.” 

What happens if when a woman comes to us with an issue or a problem, our anxiety starts to rise. For those men who are emotionally undeveloped, the anxiety starts to come. It's like, “What do I do with this? I don't know what to do with their emotion. So, therefore, let me try to fix it. But in many cases, it may not be trying to fix it. Instead, it could be, “I tried to minimize it. It's not that big a deal. I don't know what you're worried about. It'll take care of itself.” Or he'll withdraw. “I don't have time for this. I can't really help you.” 

So, those are the elements of a low emotional IQ. And when I saw that, I realized, you know what? There's a lot more involved in helping men to become sober from their sex or pornography addiction. And really, in actuality, you can relate it to all addictions across the board. But it can't be just, “I'm no longer doing X, Y, or Z.” It also has to be, “I need to move away from being emotionally undeveloped to emotionally developed.

Okay, there's so much you're saying. I just want to underscore and kind of clarify. So, when you're using the term Emotional IQ, you're also using the term Relational IQ. Are you using those interchangeably? 

I am. Yes, I am. 

Okay. And is there anything you want to say about that? 

No, they do go hand in hand. If you think about the emotional IQ, having a low emotional IQ is going to correlate with having a low relational IQ because we need that emotional component in order to take relationships and make them more vibrant, make them more exciting, versus the idea that if I have a low emotional IQ, and it comes into my relationship, there's going to be nothing there that really helped me fully bond with my partner. And with that bond being disconnected somewhat, you open the door for many other destructive behaviors to come in.

Okay. That's what you're really trying to distinguish. There's a difference between abstinence and being sober and not engaging in those behaviors versus really being engaged in the development of this relational IQ and emotional IQ that you can't just omit/take out. This is so much in psychology. I think as a lot of professionals are trained to work with others, that clients or patients who are using coping strategies or defensive mechanisms, or whatever that thing is that they're doing to help them cope, that if you just take that away, it doesn't help them, right. They're still grasping for how to deal with the underlying pain. And so, what you're really saying is we can't just take away the coping strategy and expect that to be healthy, right? We need to support the development of the underdeveloped parts.

Right. Because if not, to your point, okay. All right. I've taken away this coping strategy because, again, what are all addictions? All addictions are the inability to sit with emotional distress and emotional discomfort, and therefore I need to run away and escape. 

How do I do that? Well, I find many different things—drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, porn. So, that's only just a partial list. If we remove the behavior, we say, “Okay, I am no longer engaging in that behavior.” But I have not gone deeper to identify what was the source of that behavior manifesting itself in the first place, such as sexual addiction or pornography addiction, which is basically an intimacy disorder. There are people who are looking to connect emotionally. They just don't know it. If I don't take care of that, what is most likely going to happen is that we're going to see a different addictive behavior pop up.

Yes, yes. Because, again, it's a way of trying to cope or deal with that pain that we're not maybe confronting directly or haven't had the support and the experience that it's safe to do so. And just to go back, as you describe those three components of having difficulty really naming and confronting the emotional experience, having difficulty expressing and also relationally being able to be and perceive others emotion and engage with them in emotional content. Did I have that right as I list those?

Yes, that's correct. Yeah. 

Okay. That there's such a component of what one has experienced in their life that really shapes this turning inwards, and not having these Relational/Emotional IQ skills. I'm curious about your perspective. From my perspective, I'll just say I think that there's some shift collectively for men's development in this area, so I think it is getting better. 

I will also really acknowledge that this is so pervasive in our families, like if you look at generationally, and perhaps what was supported or not supported in the way of vulnerability emotionally in a family, especially when we're talking about men or people who identify as male, and also school, society. There are so many layers here where that gets reinforced that it's not okay and it's not safe to share the inner experience.

Right. You're absolutely right. There is a shift that is occurring in our society that's been happening probably in the last 20-30 years, where men are being encouraged to identify and express their emotions. You'll realize there's an emotional aspect of you that makes you a complete person. 

However, again, in the population that I'm talking about here now, people who have addictive behaviors, they were the ones who, again, I think you had said, things that they may have experienced that caused actually this thing they did not experience that have caused it because that's what they did. They didn't get that guidance and nurturing that was required in the early stages of childhood development that would have made them emotionally whole and complete. 

I just want to make sure your audience understands. It's not that every man who is emotionally undeveloped will run off and get involved in an addiction, per se. However, what they will do is they will run to something. So, therefore, even they may become workaholics. And again, that can be an addiction if you think about it. Or they can become sports fanatics, where that's all they want to focus on. And all of that is nothing more than a way to escape engaging in intimate conversations and relationships with others because they just don't know how to do it.

And I imagine even as you're describing the different ways that we perhaps engage and avoid intimacy and engage in addictive tendencies and behaviors, that there could even be a spectrum of this, right? You have a real full-blown disorder, and then you have tendencies. Okay.

It will depend on how emotionally undeveloped you are. Again, there's a spectrum that people sit on. Some people may not be completely undeveloped. They may have some skills. Maybe they do know how to trust others. Okay? But perhaps they don't know how to be empathetic. Maybe they know how to be attuned to other people, but they don't know how to emotionally regulate.

Yes. Okay. And before we go into characteristics and what you might have to say around how this manifests, do you want to say a little bit more about what one didn't get? Because as you're spelling this out, it's so critical. I know we can really understand what you're saying. I just want to know if there's anything else you want to say about those.

Definitely. I think this is the foundation of what I talk about here as I come up with what I call the blind spots. Blind spots are those character defects. They're the things that are missing that allow us to have a healthy relationship, but it really all begins, Jessica, in our early stages of childhood development. At this time, we are supposed to be learning various aspects of emotional development from our parents.

For example, trust. That means as a child, I felt like I could turn away from my parents. I can maybe walk away and explore, but if I turn back, I know they're there for me. Or emotionally regulate. That there is someone is there to teach me that, “Okay. This went wrong, and I'm having a meltdown. I'm having a tantrum.” What's the best way to combat that? Or things went wrong, and I now withdraw. I go to hide. I don't want to deal with the situation. 

Empathy, attunement. But I think one of the most important areas is this idea to teach us how to deal with emotional discomfort. Now, think about it, a child doesn't have a whole lot of worldly experiences. They function from a thought process more from an emotional base than a cognitive base. So, therefore, they're sitting with this emotional distress. Nobody tells them how to handle it, or they criticize them before. 

Let's say the next-door neighbor took your Nerf gun and broke it. You come home crying to your dad about it and say, “He took my gun.” And the response is, “Why did you give it to him? Why did you let them have it? This is your fault. You should have never done that in the first place.” 

So now, it's not even just the fact that I don't have the toy, but now I have this sense of guilt that I've done something wrong. And it's like, “Go! Go to your room.” So, now, I'm sitting there with all of the pain. And it's like, “Okay, what do I do with this?”

Well, like, I said, a child does not have a lot of worldly experience being more emotionally in their thought process. They come up with one solution. It's an amazing solution. It's a great solution. “I'm not going to think about it.” I'm not going to think about it. Well, how do I do that? Well, too much food, too much television, too much fantasy in their own head staying in their own space, maybe too much video game, whatever it may be. Anything to distract. And now, what have we developed? We've developed the groundwork for developing addictive behaviors because now I will not sit with any emotional pain. Whenever that comes, I'm running. I've learned that running away is a terrific defense mechanism. It tucks it up and pays dividends in the long run. But in the short term, it works really well.

Especially surviving that environment, like you said that there's no one to guide and like you're saying, as a child, we are not developed. Our brain is not fully developed. Our ego is not fully developed. Hopefully, in an ideal optimal situation, we have parents that can help guide us in these ways, be emotionally attuned, help us regulate, help us understand, and help us organize and deal with the upsetting situation. And then we learn to internalize that. And when we don't have that support, and maybe even criticized along the way in how to approach that, like you're saying that's a really great strategy and that environment, and then like you're saying the long run is we continue to operate in that mode of operating, perhaps when that's not actually in our best interest and the environment is perhaps no longer needed.

Right. But that's all we know. Right? That's all we know. That's the coping mechanism that we use.

And it gets really reinforced, I think, especially in Western cultures, particularly in the US, that there's a lot in media that, you know, our devices, social media, like whatever it is that is encouraging this pacing of maybe turning towards being distracted or turning away from our emotional experience.

You're absolutely correct. That's exactly. It is reinforced all around us. So therefore, again, you start this habit with the reinforcements that we encounter along the way, the success that we see from it. That just encourages more and more of that same behavior.

I just want to also say to emphasize, as you're talking about the Nerf gun, that's one example in a moment, in perhaps an hour of the day. There might be many instances in a day, and then you put that on repeat for years. This is incredibly shaping.

Right. And therefore, that goes back to my idea, my concept of the inner child. The inner child has this storage unit of all those types of negative events that occurred that caused distress and pain. So, when something happens in our lives today, a negative event, he reaches into that storage unit, and he pulls out something that correlates very similar to what just happened. And what that does, again, we may not even be aware of what he pulled out. We're oblivious to the fact that he even exists in most cases. And what that does is it takes the anxiety that had been caused by the current negative event to increase tenfold because the kid is adding something else in there, which subconsciously is getting us to feel more anxiety, so now not being able to sit with that pain. What am I going to do? I'm going to run.

I know we probably want to move on to the blind spots and what people can do to address this. I also just want to say, as we compounded this when you talked about the relational distress or the relational problems that can get developed when perhaps one isn't able to have this developed Emotional IQ or Relational IQ, that this can cause relational challenges. And then the distress that comes from those issues. And perhaps that compounds this anxiety and stress, and pain. It's not like this is really visible in their relational dynamic.

A partner might say, “Oh, you're turning away because you don't care about me, or you don't really want to listen, or you just want to fix it.” and all of these things are very common. And really sadly, what's happening underneath is this a lack of capacity in the way of this development or this underdeveloped.

Right. That point is so important for individuals to, one, do their own self-reflection so that they could understand what were my childhood pain points that I dealt with or I didn't deal with that are still here today that want me. And to be able to then share those with their partner and vice versa. So, therefore, then we know what activates the other one. 

My wife and I grew up in pretty similar types of environments that were not healthy. In fact, it's pretty crazy how much our worlds really aligned with us as children. But through that, we developed different coping mechanisms to handle the same problem. So now, today, something comes up, and it has happened, instead of doing what we're supposed to do, we respond, we react. How do we react? We react based on that same coping mechanism we knew before. But the fact that we both understand each other or where we have been, the other one, instead of getting offended, can be, “Oh, okay. I see what's going on here.” I may not be happy with what's happening at the moment, but I can see why you want to withdraw from me because that's what you normally did. So, let me now sit here and show compassion, show empathy for what you're going through.

Wow. Right. So, there's a huge shift in understanding those inside parts that then help us be more compassionate, hold more safety, and then we can start to shift out and make choices to respond like you're saying rather than react.

Right. 

Okay. Well, let's go back to the blind spots just so people have a little bit more around what this looks like, as someone might be experiencing what you're saying is a lack of development in these areas.

Yeah. So, what I came up with, again, this is through observation in dealing with hundreds and hundreds of men over the course of years to see and identify what are those areas of the emotionally undeveloped man that causes the most problems, especially when it comes to relationship? 

Number one, we've talked about already. That's “avoids emotional pain.” I can't sit with the pain. So, therefore, I have my defense mechanism to run away. A second one that people may find very interesting is the lack of curiosity. Jessica, what we're talking about here is not a lack of curiosity about the facts of things. Like for example, you may be very interested in politics. You may be very curious about sports. Maybe very curious about the world of medicine or healthcare. What it is, is about curiosity about emotion, curiosity about people. That's what we're talking about. These men do not ask questions. They don't follow up with things and therefore leave their partner feeling like, “You just don't care.” 

Another blind spot is hypersensitive. We're hypersensitive in the area of feeling rejected or criticized. So therefore, anytime somebody maybe tries to correct something, the individual that the response is far beyond the normal response that it should be for that circumstance. And so, therefore, like, “Did you leave the milk out?” “Why are you accusing me of leaving the milk out? You know I didn't leave the milk out. That's not me. I put everything back.” versus “No, I didn't.” or “Yes, I did.” and be done. But they're very hypersensitive to it. Therefore, they overreact or struggle to connect. Okay? 

It's that ability to be able to sit and bond with people on a level that goes a little bit deeper versus a 10,000-foot view. They are inwardly focused. That happens again because of what happens in those early stages. What you do is the child again, in the way of trying to cope, that he has this sense that you know what, there's nobody there for me, so I have to do it all myself. I have to take care of myself because no one else is there to take care of me. So, they become very inwardly focused, not even realizing that they're doing it. 

There's the lack of mindfulness, which I don't think I need to really explain. You have a low Emotional IQ, which we talked about. There's one that I find very interesting, I call The Hide and Lie Syndrome. This is an individual who, despite at an early age being honest about things, found themselves getting in as much or more trouble than they would if they lie about it. Again, the coping mech mechanism of don't tell the truth or let's fade into the background. Let's hide. Let's try not to get noticed. 

Another one of the blind spots is many of these men lack interest or passion. They really have very few friends, and they are not very interested in very many things. And because of that, life seemed rather dull, which leads us into another blind spot, the lack of contentment. Is that all there is? Is this it? Is this life? This is what I got. That can lead to depression in many cases. They may struggle to connect with God or whatever higher spirit they may have. They're more prone to compulsive behaviors. 

And also, they may struggle a great deal with mood disorders, especially depression and anxiety. And then the last one is fear. They're fearful. But fear, again, if you look at all of these blind spots, runs throughout all of them. There is a fear that is involved in every aspect of their lives, which precludes them from not venturing out to be able to make themselves vulnerable to be able to connect, to be able to look for healthy ways of being able to soothe themselves.

Eddie, I appreciate your ability to name this so clearly. I'm also just feeling the heaviness of it that if someone's experiencing this, they might not even be conscious of it, right.

Let me tell you, the word that appears in my book, probably most often, Jessica, is oblivious. We are oblivious to all of this. And you may ask, “Well, why? How come we're oblivious?” Well, go back to what is it that we're lacking? We're lacking emotional ability. We're lacking the ability to emotionally bond, connect, and feel. So, therefore, you go back to all these blind spots here. Okay, the idea of being mindful, being inwardly focused, struggling to connect, hypersensitive, lacking curiosity, avoiding emotional pain. They all come back to emotion. 

Well, if I don't have that base in me, if I don't have those skills, I'm not going to know what I don't know. So again, we're oblivious to all of it, and this is the most exciting aspect of the work that I do with men, whether it be doing the inner child work and helping them to explore what are their unresolved childhood pain points or walking them through these blind spots is the awakening that takes place. It is this sense of watching these men grow before your very eyes to see them mature because they're emotionally immature. 

Having worked with hundreds and hundreds of men. I've said that to each and every one of them. I go, “You are emotionally immature.” And you know what? Not one has ever pushed back on me. They've realized that. That they realize. “I am emotionally immature. I don't know why I'm emotionally immature. I have no idea what to do about it.”

How do people even come into contact with you? What are you seeing that gives them enough inspiration or motivation to even investigate, even if they're not fully bought into all that you're describing or they're not aware? 

Unfortunately, what brings them in is if they've gotten caught. They've gotten caught in their addiction. What happened is they have hurt people along the way, especially their spouse, maybe even their children. They may have lost their jobs. They may have financial issues and many things that have happened.

So, the pain has to be strong enough to take action of trying something different.

Yes! Yeah. Now, there are people who will proactively come in to do that. But that's not generally the guy who's walking into the office. He's actually being dragged in by, you know, his wife, who is sitting there saying, “Fix him.” And so, therefore, that's where they are. But fortunately, a very large majority, by the time they get to this point, or at the place where they're saying, “You know what? I don't want to live this way anymore. I want to be different. I want to change. I can't continue to cause havoc in my relationship and in my life in general.”

Thank you. And while we have you, I know that there's so much that you offer in your books and in your work. I want to really help people understand how they can get in touch with you. But before we do that, I'm wondering, would you be willing to share perhaps some things that really helped in the transformation in the growth and the development?

Yeah, definitely. In the book, Why Men Struggle to Love, I go through each blind spot individually. I also listed what I call antidotes. What are the things that you can do to be able to help yourself there? So, for example, let's go to the idea of the low emotional IQ. 

So, if somebody anecdotes it, one, you have to understand first and foremost that you have a range of emotions. You have limited yourself, but there are many that are there. So, how can you determine what those are? Because remember, Jessica, we don't know what we don't know. So, therefore, there are tools that are called emotional wheels. 

Basically, what they are is just a sheet of paper, where at the very center or the basic core emotion, like I mentioned before, you know, anger, sadness, happiness, those types of things. And then what it does, it branches out, and it shows you a more diverse cluster of emotions. Therefore, what we do, we sit with someone, and we say, “Okay, right now you're telling me you're feeling angry about that event? Well, let's move out on the wheel more. And let's look at this cluster of emotions and pick one.” They may sit there and say, “Oh, you know what I feel? I think I feel dismissed.” “Oh, okay. What does dismissal look like?” 

And so, now they're learning new vocabulary when it comes to their emotion. I can sit here for hours talking about this. But again, the idea is to accept the fact that they have deep emotions, they're entitled to them, and that they will eventually, as they learn, help them to have a healthier relationship. 

The final thing I do with this is because, again, being a cognitive behavioral therapist, and I believe that the way we think drives how we feel and act, I try to get them to connect the thought with every emotion. So, therefore, if they're struggling to figure out what the emotion may be, I'd say go to what are you thinking? What's the thought and then bring you back to the emotion itself. So that's just a couple of the anecdotes that are in that one blind spot, and there are anecdotes for all 14.

Well, even as you're describing this, I can appreciate just the importance of being able to locate and having something externally to reflect on and to kind of resonate with can be a really great tool. And also accessing, “What was I thinking?” Right? It can be a good entry point. Particularly, I'll just say stereotypically for men, and I think the thoughts have been safer, right? Especially as we're talking, the emotion hasn't been as safe. So, the thoughts can be a really great entry point to start unpacking a little bit more. 

Absolutely. 

Even as you're talking, there's a part of me relationally that as someone who does a lot of the couple's work, some of those emotions and those wheels, right, some psychologists would argue that's not an emotion because that's what you feel something happened to you. Do you know what I mean? Like feeling dismissed. I know that there are a lot of nuances to this and how we might speak to someone else, but just for the purpose of locating and helping identify one's emotional experience and being able to help organize this, this is so important.

Yeah, agree. Absolutely agree. 

Well, since you kind of talked about Hide and Lie, would you be willing to share an antidote for that?

Oh, yeah. The thing with Hide and Lie is to understand first and foremost, you know what, we're no longer living in that world that we were in before. Okay? But again, we were very fearful and afraid that whatever we did, we were getting wind up getting in trouble. And that's one of the biggest aspects of the antidote for the Hide and Lie. It's to realize, you know what? Being truthful now, as an adult, the likelihood of you getting in trouble is not very strong. So, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to help them overcome the negative narrative or the misinterpretation they have about the various things that could go wrong with them when they get into that kind of situation. 

Remember what I said to you before? It's the fear. They have the fear that's there. So, we need to learn to overcome that fear. And then one of the other aspects from an antidote standpoint is slow everything down. Somebody asked the question, bang. Something comes right out of your mouth, uh-oh, that wasn't right. That wasn't true. Instead, take a moment, and reflect. Think about it. Okay. Let me now respond. Again, you don't have to be rushing to get your answers out. And also, what I would also like to do is I like to go back and look at what the root cause is. Where did this happen? Now there's, again, childhood pain point. Go back and look and say, you know, when did I do this? Therefore, that's what we're trying to do. At least some of them.

Thank you. Because I can just even acknowledge as you're helping them overcome and even the nervous system patterning, and as you help people look at oh, perhaps I am associating my early experiences and projecting that on my current environment. And really, can I reality check this? Can I see the likelihood of me getting in trouble or being scolded or sent to my room? Those types of things. Can I slow down? Giving the people stepping stones to perhaps create a different experience, but also feel it in their nervous system that like, oh, it is safe, that I can say what's true and I will be okay.

Yes. Correct. But again, you have to deal with the negative narratives that are associated with that. And that's where the work comes in.

How can people get in touch with you, and what would you like to direct people towards?

Yeah, I'd like to direct people to a couple of things. One, they can learn more about Why Men Struggle to Love by going to www.StrugglingMen.org. Again, StrugglingMen.org. They can learn more about the inner child process, the inner child model that I created for addiction, by going to www.InnerChild-SexAddiction.com. Again, that's InnerChild-SexAddiction.com.

Great! And what will they find on these websites?

They're going to find information for the book Going Deeper. They're going to find information more about the inner child. They're going to see the nine inner children that I developed and created. So, they're going to be able to get a sense of what that is. There's actually an online program that they can take for those people who really can't afford therapy. What I created was a 12-part program. They're about an hour each, where I walk people through the same thing that I would walk people through if they came into my counseling practice. I developed that because, again, there are many people who can't afford ongoing therapy. But this is a good resource to help them in getting started. 

With the Why Men Struggle to Love, there's going to be a lot more information in there, based on what we've been talking about today about how things go wrong and what can we do to correct it.

That's fabulous. And also, I know you're in North Carolina, and you talked about the clients you work with. Are you only working with people in North Carolina? Do you consult and do groups as well?

Yeah, no, I use my coaching certification, and I work with people all over the country. I actually get calls from people all over the world. I would say this right now. However, I am not taking new clients. I haven't taken a new client in a while because my clients tend to stay with me. However, if people want to find out more about these, what I've done is, I have trained a network of clinicians who understand the inner child model and also understand the blind spot, so I have a bunch of clinicians that I could refer people out to.

Wonderful. Would that be on your website to just contact you? How would they get that information? 

Yeah. Well, they can get a hold of me. I think my information is in there, but I'll give it now. [email protected]. Just reach out to me. Tell me what's going on. And then, what I'll do is I'll send you a referral.

Well, wonderful. Dr. Eddie Capparucci, I so appreciate you spending your valuable insight wisdom with us here today and what you've been able to bring to light with the books that you offer and the work that you're doing and training other clinicians, and I'll make sure to have these links here on today's show notes.

Well, thank you, Jessica. I appreciate, again, you having me on.

Signing Off

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