429 | Loaded Guns, Unprocessed Grief, and the Dad Who Can't Regulate His Own Emotions with Seth Dahl
Episode Description
A man who can't regulate his emotions forces his wife and kids to do it for him. That's the hard truth Seth Dahl drops early in this conversation, and it only gets more honest from there. This is a raw, alumni-only Zoom call that turned into something worth sharing with every dad who's ever lost it over something stupid and wondered why.
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Seth Dahl is an author, speaker, grief recovery specialist, and emotional health coach. He and his wife have three kids and have developed a deep framework around completing past emotions, processing present emotions, and shaping future ones. Seth is a longtime friend of DadAwesome and is featured in the DADAWESOME book.
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If you can be triggered, you're identifying with something more than your role as a dad. That's an identity issue, not just a temper issue.
Unprocessed emotions don't disappear. They show up as anger, porn, checked-out dads, and kids walking on eggshells.
God's model in Genesis wasn't control. It was influence with a boundary. That's the parenting theology most of us are missing.
For teenagers, the online world is the living room. Know who they're talking to, just like you would if they came to your house.
The Wise Phone gives kids what they need without what gets them in trouble.
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This is episode 429 of Dad Awesome. Guys, I'm so thankful you're listening today. My name is Jeff Zaugg, and I'm featuring a conversation from about two months ago that when I finished having it, I knew it was more than just for the present moment.
We were hosting an alumni call for our cohorts of the Dad Awesome Accelerator. Actually, we had just graduated our 11th cohort of our coaching framework, our six-week sprint called the Dad Awesome Accelerator. I invited just the alumni to this special call with Seth Dahl. Seth is featured in the Dad Awesome book. He's a longtime friend. He was a recommended resource from our first 10 episodes, back eight-plus years ago.
We are working on a special opportunity called the Emotionally Skilled Fatherhood Course with Seth Dahl. I'll tell you more about it at the end, but this conversation kind of reveals it — it almost happened accidentally during this call. We chatted about lots of topics. It's going to be so helpful for you today on episode 429. There is an action step at the end, which is filling out an interest form for this brand new resource with Seth called the Emotionally Skilled Fatherhood Course. It's a coaching framework that's much longer than the Accelerator. It's a six-month deep dive with Seth.
Before we jump in, I've been featuring voice messages from the dads in our community. Let me share one right now from Ross.
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[VOICEMAIL — Ross from Philadelphia]
Ross:
This is Ross from Philadelphia. I've loved this book so far. I just read the introduction to part four, called Freedom. It was all about the rocks we carry and the grenades we carry and the generational trauma that we bring into our families. I thought it was such an important foundational component to our lives as fathers and mothers and people who raise children.
I lead a church in Philadelphia and we have a lot of people in the addiction and recovery community here. Almost every single story begins with: I was coping from my childhood. I was learning to figure out life because of what happened to me as a kid. If we as parents could help our children find healing and health at their age, because we're working through our own stuff, it will change lives. Thank you for writing this book, Jeff.
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[JEFF — ANNOUNCEMENTS]
Jeff Zaugg:
I'm so thankful for these call-ins. You can ask questions, share feedback, recommend a resource. It doesn't have to be book-specific. Please call in — the link is in the show notes to leave a 90-second voicemail for Dad Awesome.
Quick invitation: kicking off May 1st is the Mom Awesome Challenge. It's a 10-day challenge with a daily text message and a specific action around pursuing your wife's heart, the mom of your kids. It's for us husbands, with strategic steps every single day for the 10 days leading up to Mother's Day. We're going to pray, serve, use our words, do some gift giving — every day coming from a different angle. Many of these steps are done in a way that our kids are watching how we pursue mom, how we love well, how we speak well, how we serve well.
Join the Mom Awesome Challenge by texting the word MOM to 651-370-8618. It's in the show notes. All right, guys, let's jump in. This is my conversation from a Zoom call with about 25 of our alumni. There are questions I was picking up from the chat, and Derek asked a live question during the call as well. This is my conversation with Seth Dahl.
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[CONVERSATION BEGINS]
Jeff Zaugg:
Thanks for being here, Seth. Bringing a deposit for us men today.
Seth Dahl:
I love it. And I love what you guys are doing. It's an honor.
Jeff Zaugg:
Let me pray over our time, because we pray that God multiplies. Father, thank you for every dad who hopped on this call. We pray in Jesus' name for a deposit from heaven, from the lived experience and from seeking you that Seth has done. God, even in this moment today, bring something fresh that maybe he's never even thought about or shared. Bring your wisdom into our hearts, and may we be dads of action. We don't want to just have good intentions and feelings. God, give us one yes that we can step into with our whole hearts and bring the follow-through. In Jesus' name, amen.
Seth, could you start with a recent dad discovery? Anything you're just learning right now, something that's been helpful for you and might be helpful for the guys. And try to go the shorter version — the two-minute, not the 20-minute. What are you discovering these days?
Seth Dahl:
I'm discovering that it is too easy to either give too much freedom and not enough boundaries, or too many boundaries and not enough freedom to our kids.
I'm also learning about the power of dreams from God. I've had some challenging situations with my 15-and-a-half-year-old daughter recently, not knowing what to do, and then having dreams where God shows me exactly what's going on, exactly what to say, exactly what to do. Dreams are parabolic in a sense, but also very clear direction on how to make adjustments and bring in better boundaries when there's too much freedom — without setting them in a way that pushes my daughter away.
I would say I'm relearning, now that I have two teenagers, my dependency on God to reveal things to me where I've made mistakes and need to adjust. And also just my dependency — but also His willingness to step in and help.
Jeff Zaugg:
You don't have to be specific about your daughter, but what would you say to encourage us around that window — 13 to 15? Things to be watchful for around boundaries.
Seth Dahl:
For us, it's online stuff. She's not looking at anything like porn or anything like that, but it's online content that's exposing her to things and influencing her.
With teenagers, we want to start preparing them for full emancipation, taking full responsibility for their lives when they hit 18 or 19. So this is a season to begin giving more and more freedom while they understand the consequences of making decisions with that freedom — while also keeping good boundaries around it.
We're in the middle of adjusting right now. From now on, the computer stays out at the kitchen table. You can do online school in your room, but everything else is out here. She also has some friends from online school that we've never met. In a normal school we would meet them — they'd come over or we'd see them at sports — but she's building relationships fully online because of the nature of her school. So one boundary we've set is: I'd like a FaceTime with your friend. I just want to chat and get to know this person a little bit, just like I would if they came over to the house.
I think paying attention to that online world is huge, because some people say the moment you want your child's childhood to end, give them a smartphone.
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Jeff Zaugg:
Dating. I've had two questions come my way in the last 24 hours. One of my friends has a rule: until my child is within one year of being ready for marriage, no dating relationships. He doesn't want to stir their heart until they're actually within 12 months of being able to commit. That's radical, but I thought — okay, that's a definitive boundary. What are you and your wife currently thinking around one-on-one exclusive dating?
Seth Dahl:
Our daughter has a boyfriend from her school. He lives in Tennessee, we live in Florida, so it's long-distance. She's been really open with us, which I think is the most important thing.
Our rule has been: you can talk with him on FaceTime as long as you are driving the car and spending an hour outside every day. You have to do a couple of things before you get to call him, and your door has to be open so we can hear what's going on.
If it were in person, our rule would be you can date in the living room. You're not going in your room and shutting the door for an hour. So we've taken that living room principle and applied it to long-distance over the phone. As long as our daughter is open and he's open to me — I can ask him questions, I can talk with him — I feel a lot safer. We also know his parents well and have worked with them to create boundaries together. We're friends with the parents, and they essentially have to date in the living room virtually.
If she started shutting down, I'd start to feel more fear and would need to make adjustments.
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Jeff Zaugg:
And this leads right into a question from Brian about a 13-year-old and a smartphone. We just prayed into this with our very soon-to-be 13-year-old. What's your short version of coaching around a first phone for a child that age?
Seth Dahl:
One company I really love is called Wyze Phone. It's a Google phone but with a completely different operating system. It allows them to text, call, listen to music, and has maps — but no app store, no access to the things that could get them in trouble. Our 13-year-old son has a Wyze Phone. That's what we start all of our kids with.
You're at baseball practice, we need to call you, you need to call us — you have that. And it looks like a smartphone, so you're not feeling left out because your friends all have phones. My wife actually uses one as her personal phone. She has an iPhone for work, but she loves the Wyze Phone for her own wellbeing.
If you go straight to a smartphone, make sure to learn the current ways to set it up safely, because that stuff changes all the time. A friend who runs an online school told me: you think you've got it figured out, set up so they can't access certain things, and then Apple does an update and it's all different.
There's also a new mobile company launching on Easter called Radiant Mobile. They're working with T-Mobile to cut off all harmful content at the cell towers. T-Mobile agreed to it and they'll be blocking harmful content right at the source, which is really cool.
My overall counsel: err on the side of caution and give more freedom as they demonstrate they can handle it — rather than having to backtrack and tighten things up later.
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Jeff Zaugg:
Let's go upstream for a bit. Here's a hard truth you've shared with me before: a man who can't regulate his emotions forces his wife and kids to do it for him. His kids walk on eggshells and his wife carries the entire emotional weight of the family. Take us into this area — experiencing healing and wholeness in myself so I can show up and bring strength to my family.
Seth Dahl:
That is a huge statement. A huge hard truth for dads.
Another way to say it: sometimes when we're trying to get our children to regulate their nervous system, what we're really trying to do is get them to regulate ours, because ours is out of whack too. We're trying to control the situation, force the situation, because we think, if you just do what I say, then my nervous system will calm down. So I'm asking you to regulate mine, not yours.
Emotional health and wellbeing is a massive topic. I could teach on it for six months. I've done six-month courses just on emotional health for parents — processing present emotions, completing past emotions, and shaping future emotions. But ultimately, regulating your own nervous system comes down to anything you've identified with.
If I've identified with the Cincinnati Reds — because my kids love baseball and we love Elly De La Cruz — and one of my kids interrupts the game, how do I react? If I react with anger, I've identified more with watching that game than with being a self-controlled dad. The Holy Spirit wants us to nourish our families with self-control. We grow this fruit called self-control, our family gets to eat from it.
Every emotion inside of us generates based on something connected to our sense of self, our identity — the ego or the flesh in Christian terms. If you can trigger me and I react in a way God wouldn't be pleased with, that's a flesh issue. Obviously there is righteous anger. We should be angry about certain things for sure. But a lot of times we're getting angry at stupid stuff. We've forgotten our kid is six years old. We're treating them like they're supposed to be 35, and we're angry because they don't know what a 35-year-old knows.
Once you see how emotions connect to identity, you get a lot of power. You get a lot of self-control. As dads, we typically tend to control other people instead of controlling ourselves.
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Jeff Zaugg:
Seth, I am ready to make a commitment. You and I have chatted about this for years. There have been layers since my dad passed away five years ago. I struggle many times a day with what we're talking about. I'm ready to commit to six months. Personally. And I think I can get 10 guys from this community. I'm planting a seed and committing publicly that I'm going to take a journey around being a different kind of present, steady dad.
Seth Dahl:
Jeff, if you guys want to do this — I wasn't planning to do a six-month course, but if we can get enough people in it, I'm in. Because six months is a massive commitment for me, I do need a certain number of people for it to be sustainable. But if you want this, I would take you through the whole process. We'd meet weekly for six months, two hours at a time.
We'd start with completing our past emotions, specifically around our own moms and dads. Because if I'm not healed from my own upbringing — if I've idolized or demonized my parents instead of humanizing them — I'm in a really bad place. Sometimes we idolize and say everything was fine. No, it wasn't. Or we demonize and say not all of it was bad. You can't do either. We have to humanize.
So first, complete your past emotions. Then, learn to process your present emotions, the day-to-day stuff that's happening all the time, and show your children how to do the same — so they're processing emotions, not storing them. Because stored emotions turn into destructive behavior. For dads, it shows up as porn, anger, shutting down, checking out. All stored emotion instead of processed emotion.
Then we move into shaping future emotions — going into your identity, looking at what you actually believe about who you are, and moving things around so that stuff doesn't bother you as much.
My favorite analogy is the gun. If I have a loaded magazine and you trigger me, something is coming out. But I can unload my gun by racking the slide. If I rack the slide, everyone can see I had a loaded gun, but I'm safe with it. If I let that trigger get pulled and start blowing holes in my family, everyone's injured. Everyone's deaf. Pull a trigger in a house and everyone goes deaf. One moment of anger can cause long-term effects of them not hearing you, not listening — they're too afraid. And if you blow out all the windows, I don't care what your thermostat is set to, the outside temperature is coming in. You'll wonder why your home feels like hell when you have the thermostat set for heaven.
But if I can learn to rack the slide, everyone knows dad was mad, but dad didn't hurt us with his anger. Dad unloaded that anger safely and showed us how to do it too. And now it still feels like what I want it to feel like in my home. Not like hell. Like heaven.
As a man of God, I think self-control is one of the most important things. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. If I've lost gentleness, patience, kindness — where did I put the Holy Spirit? He's in me. I'm just not letting Him out. I've got something blocking Him from operating in my life. And now my kids are living in fear instead of in love. They're walking on eggshells.
I've been on a three or four year journey on this. The best thing I ever did for my kids was heal from my own upbringing. I'm not done, but I'm way more healthy now than I ever was because I put in this work — just like I'm more fit now than I ever was because I work out every day. Most people don't look at this stuff. They just go to work, do their home life, and get stuck in habits — which is really just another word for stronghold. What I think consistently, how I act consistently, becomes either a stronghold for the Holy Spirit or a stronghold for another spirit. I don't want strongholds for any other spirit in my home. I want the Holy Spirit, and that's it.
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Jeff Zaugg:
Seth, every time we chat I've moved. But now I've made a commitment in front of these men that I respect and love. I'm in for six months. I'm putting in my money and my time. We're going to end it in Flagler Beach — get you over for a couple days to close it out, and get the guys to fly down. Derek, come off mute and ask your question about arrows and the quiver.
Derek:
Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Seth. My question: how do you navigate preparing polished arrows and not just filling quivers with your kids? Specifically, helping them be launched — not safe and insulated — around sharing the gospel and inviting their peers to follow Jesus.
Seth Dahl:
One thing we do is take some of our money and go looking for people who could use a little help. We pray and ask God to lead us to the right people, then we go to Walmart and watch for someone to bless.
One story from not long ago: we walked in with money set aside specifically to be generous with. We found this woman, approached her, and I typically lead because the kids are a little nervous at first — but watching helps them. I said, hey, we're here and we know God wants to bless somebody. We offered to buy her groceries and she just broke down in tears. Her husband was outside in the car, he needed surgery, the insurance wouldn't cover it, he couldn't walk. Just overwhelming. And we gathered around her, my kids all laid hands on her and we prayed over her. Then we took her up and bought her groceries and gave her a couple hundred dollars.
We debriefed after. We said, we gave some money, and the money opened a door. We weren't asking her for anything. We were giving. And that generosity opened her heart to receive something even more valuable — the kingdom, prayer, ministry.
Arrows need to be released into enemy territory to hit the enemy, but you have to aim them. You can't just release them randomly. You've got to be locked in and paying attention. We go out together, we ask God to lead, and we follow Him. And we've seen some amazing things. The kids come out of those moments pumped because they're learning so many things through one experience.
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Jeff Zaugg:
You moved your family to this land with a dream God gave you, and it turned out the house was full of mold. Challenge after challenge, you're still working through it. How do we prepare to walk through hard valleys as a family? And what helped anchor you guys in these past couple of years?
Seth Dahl:
I'm so glad I was a grief recovery specialist when I had a massive season of grief. Two years, and I had to put into practice everything I'd learned about the loss of a dream, the loss of a home, the loss of finances, the loss of safety. I almost didn't make it. I almost didn't survive these last two years. But the only reason I did is because of the emotional work I had already done, with God helping and guiding.
Challenges are going to come, and they might look totally different each time. A lion, then a bear, then a Goliath, then leading a kingdom. The more we can work on ourselves emotionally, the better prepared we'll be. For me, that preparation was the emotional health work.
Jeff Zaugg:
You mentioned kettlebells and getting into a very disciplined physical rhythm. Talk about false comforters and what we're drawn to in those seasons.
Seth Dahl:
I knew I had to have something consistent in my life because everything else was totally inconsistent and unknown. So I said: I've got my kettlebells and I'm going to work out every single day. That will be the one area — along with food — where I can have control, because everything else is out of control. Physical fitness also helps process emotions. It's important. I made sure that was dialed in and I didn't lose it when I lost everything else.
In the grief recovery world, we call them STURBs — short-term energy relieving behaviors. In Christianity, we call them false comforters. Sometimes sitting down and watching a movie is exactly what God says to do. I've had God say, Seth, you guys just need to watch a movie tonight, just rest. Other times He says, don't go to a movie tonight because you're going to it for comfort — you need to engage with your family instead. Following the Lord in that is huge.
When we're not doing well, the tendency is to go somewhere for comfort. Where are you going to go? A lot of times it's TV, alcohol, porn, or social media. For me, I have to watch social media because I use it for work — I own a social media company. I have to be aware not to spend two hours consuming without creating, and not to check out from my family. For me it's not alcohol, not drugs. It's more like watching a movie when I'm stressed, or social media when I'm stressed. I have to watch those tendencies.
One definition of addiction: an attempt to have intimacy with a substance or something other than God and people. If I'm going to a false comforter, I'm replacing God and replacing the intimacy I'm supposed to have with my family. I don't want to go to any false comforter. I want to process emotion for real, not just relieve it short-term.
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Jeff Zaugg:
Give us 90 seconds on control versus influence, and then we'll close it out.
Seth Dahl:
Quickly revisit Genesis 1, 2, and 3. God says, here's a tree in the garden you shouldn't eat from, it's going to kill you. But I planted the tree, and I'm going to leave a serpent here to talk to you about it. When you look at that from a thousand-foot view, God is clearly not interested in control. He's interested in influence. He wants to influence our decision-making and our behavior, but He will not control it.
This is where people get messed up. I've been mad at God because He wouldn't make me do the decisions I know He wants me to make. He won't force me. He'll let me make the dumb decision if I really want to. But He'll influence me all along the way. He'll send a dream, an idea, a scripture, a friend, a movie. He's always talking and influencing. But ultimately I have to make the decisions.
Our theology about how God is with us directly shapes how we are with our kids and our wives. If I think God wants to control me, I'll think it's my job to control my family. If I think God wants to influence me but allows me to make mistakes and face consequences, I'll work to influence my children, allow them to face consequences for their decisions, and set boundaries while giving lots of freedom. God set a boundary and gave a lot of freedom. What you do with that is up to you.
Jeff Zaugg:
Thank you, Seth.
Seth Dahl:
Parenting theology 101 for me is Genesis — the creation story, Adam and Eve, the garden, the tree, the serpent. This is the first mention of how God talks about Himself and His first children and how He interacted with them before the fall. His heart was to influence, not control.
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[JEFF — OUTRO]
Jeff Zaugg:
As I mentioned, the intent of today's conversation was for our Accelerator alumni, but I'm so thankful to get to share it with all of you — and to invite anyone who's stirred around the Emotionally Skilled Fatherhood experience with Seth Dahl. There's an interest form in the show notes. It takes about three minutes to fill out and covers the commitment, best time of the week, and the in-person closing session. Find everything at dadawesome.org/podcast.
We have one more call-in from the Dad Awesome voicemail line. This one coming from South Africa.
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[VOICEMAIL — Ranir from South Africa]
Ranir Vessels:
Hey Jeff, and hi to the Dad Awesome listeners. This is Ranir Vessels from South Africa. I'm enjoying this book so much. I've learned so much already, and I've listened to so many Dad Awesome episodes over the past couple of months.
The chapter that hit me the hardest was chapter four on Fractional Paradise. To really understand the concept of that — not sarcastically, but genuinely living another day in paradise, seeing the small things and celebrating that in your life, being thankful to God on a daily basis — that really hit me hard.
I want to buy about 10 books and put them in dads' hands in my community, dads I call friends. A lot of dads here are not open about being a Christian, not open about having a relationship with God. I believe that is key to having a successful and flourishing family. I really hope to take this ministry further in South Africa as well. Love you all and praying for you.
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[JEFF — CLOSE]
Jeff Zaugg:
I would love to hear your voice too. Please check out the show notes to find the link to the Dad Awesome voicemail line.
Thanks for listening this week. Thanks for being dads who are taking steps of intentionality, steps of action, steps of activation. Not remaining at a pondering place, but moving into pursuit, moving into action.
One more time: join our 10-day Mom Awesome Challenge. Text MOM to 651-370-8618. We'll get you in the loop with a daily text message and a specific challenge for the 10 days leading up to Mother's Day. Thanks for listening. Thanks for leaning in. I'm praying for you guys. Have a great week.
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