Daniel B. Peters: Licensed Psychologist helping Twice-Exceptional and Gifted Children in California

Dr. Daniel Peters was born and raised in Southern California where he grew up with a large extended family. In this podcast interview, we learn how his family values and ideas of becoming a man influenced not only his own family later in life but also his academic journey leading to a career in psychology. Dr. Peters shares how his education and experiences in the psychology field ignited his passion for helping gifted and twice-exceptional (2e) children and adolescents.

We explore his undergraduate and graduate experiences in psychology as well as his practical experiences to better understand how he decided on his specialized psychology career. Dr. Peters’ dad was an optometrist who owned his own business, and he admits that this influenced his decision to co-found the Summit Center, Camp Summit, and Parent Footprint. Dr. Peters discusses his businesses and projects in more detail and offers impactful advice to those interested in the field of psychology, especially those interested in opening their own business or practice.

His never-ending desire to help the gifted and 2e led him to meet with, and learn from, other well-known gifted experts in the field. He recently worked with Dr. Jean Sunde Peterson to co-author a new book titled Bright, Complex Kids: Supporting Their Social and Emotional Development which will be released in October 2021. Dr. Peters received a number of recognitions for his work as a psychologist. He received the “2018 SENG Mental Health Professional of the Year” by Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted, and the “2013 CAG Distinguished Service Award” from the California Association for the Gifted. He has also received awards for his books including the “2016 Allen Ewig Champion for Children” by Aldea Children and Family Services, the “2013 Legacy Book Award” for his book Raising Creative Kids, and the “2014 Independent Publisher Book Award – Gold Medal, Psychology/Mental” for Make Your Worrier a Warrior.

In addition to Parent Footprint, an interactive parenting education community and website that offers Parent Footprint Awareness training, Dr. Peters also has a podcast called “Parent Footprint with Dr. Dan”, serves on the Editorial Board for the 2e Newsletter, and serves on the Advisory Board for the 2e Center for Research and Professional Development at Bridges Academy.

Interests and Specializations

Dr. Peters is a licensed psychologist specializing in overcoming anxiety, learning differences such as dyslexia, and issues related to giftedness and twice-exceptionality. Author of Make Your Worrier a Warrior: A Guide to Conquering Your Child’s Fears (for parents), its companion children’s book From Worrier to Warrior: A Guide to Conquering Your Fears, and the Warrior Workbook: A Guide for Conquering Your Worry Monster (for kids).

Education

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Psychology (1992); University of California Davis, Davis, CA.
Master of Arts (M.A.), Clinical Psychology (1995); Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto, CA.
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Clinical Psychology (1998); Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto, CA.

Podcast Transcription

00:00:14 Bradley	Welcome to the Master’s in Psychology podcast where psychology students can learn from psychologists, educators and practitioners to better understand what they do, how they got there, and hear the advice they have for those interested in getting a graduate degree in psychology. I’m your host Brad Schumacher, and today we welcome Dr. Daniel Peters to the show. Dr. Peters, also known as “Dr. Dan”, is a licensed psychologist who, for over 20 years, has been passionate about the assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and families. He specializes in overcoming anxiety, learning differences such as dyslexia, and issues related to giftedness, and twice exceptionality. He is co-founder and Executive Director of the Summit Center and co-founder of Parent Footprint. He is also co-founder of Camp Summit, a summer camp for gifted youth. He has received a number of awards and recognitions for his work. Today we will learn more about his academic journey and his passion for helping twice-exceptional and gifted people. Dr. Peters, welcome to our podcast.
00:01:16 Dan	Thanks, Brad. I’m looking forward to this.
00:01:19 Bradley	I am looking forward to it as well, and usually, if you’ve seen some of our podcasts in the past, we love talking about you, where you’ve been, your academic journey, what you’re up to now, your projects and and your business, in this case. Before we get started, just tell us a little bit more about yourself.
00:01:39 Dan	Born and raised in Southern California. And ventured up, a large extended family in Southern California, on both sides of my family and, you know, we traveled a bunch, but it was like Southern California was sort of center of the universe as, as you hear about for people who lived down there and, and other places too. And then went up to college up to Northern California to UC Davis, and then absolutely fell in love with Northern California where I’ve been ever since my wife, and I met in college and she’s from Northern California and all my great friends ended up being from Northern California. So, this became home after doing different training, uh, training years in different places like Ohio and such. And uhm, what else? Uhm, growing up something was really important to me, ah, sports was very important to me. Competitive tennis became my, my focus and passion for a long-time and um and also, I think but for what ended up forming a bit of my careers, I always liked working with kids, so I worked at summer camps. I taught tennis. I was just involved in kids and groups quite a bit. And you know later looking back I could see the road of working with kids and families as well.
00:03:04 Bradley	Well, I, it’s obvious when I did all the research on you and all of your publications, quite passionate about helping adolescents, youths and even families and adults. And we’re going to talk about that a little bit more. But before we do, and before I forget to ask you, were you able to attend any of the talks at The Executive Function Online Summit over the weekend?
00:03:27 Dan	Actually, I didn’t. I usually, you know go back and view them and it’s Seth Perler puts on an amazing lineup and with amazing colleagues. So yes, not yet, but it’s on my ah, I’ve got the, I’ve got the link. How about you?
00:03:44 Bradley	I, I was able to look at a few of them. I wasn’t attending in person, live while they were doing it, but as you mentioned you can go back and take a look at some of the talks as well and I just found it fascinating. And the reason that I saw that is you, you posted that on your social media, letting everybody know that hey, if you’re interested in these topics, it’s free, go ahead and join. I, I really loved your proactiveness sharing that with everybody on online as well. Tell us a little bit more about your undergraduate experiences. For example, where did you attend and at what point did you know you wanted to start a career in psychology?
00:04:19 Dan	OK, so this is kind of a funny story that I share with, with clients at when relevant and in talks, so I, um, I didn’t know what I really wanted to do and when I was in high school, I guess I think college counseling’s they started to become a thing and I have these older cousins. And my parents said, yeah, we’re going to go to a college counselor in LA. They’re the ones that your cousins went to, they helped them think about what they wanted to do, where they wanted to go to college, so I, so I did this. Um, and I took all these tests, you know now I know what these tests were that I didn’t know if these tests were and I remember going into this, you know, office and this big building in LA and it just seemed so…we lived outside of LA, so we weren’t in LA…and it seemed all kind of, I don’t know, seemed a little overwhelming to me. Take all these tests. Come back. And I remember him sitting there and he says OK, I’ve got your plan. And this wasn’t where I was going to go to college. This is like my plan and um, and so it said you’re going to be a business major. You’re going to be a Spanish minor. You’re going to spend your third year in a Spanish speaking country abroad to become fluent. And then you’re going to go to law school and you’re going to be a bilingual attorney, and this was at the time when there was a lot of push, um, because of Spanish speaking, that the population was just booming with Spanish speaking individuals and it was like hey, this is really important. So, I remember leaving the office thinking huh? Uh, you know, I’m like semi consciously I, I remember thinking like not one thing resonated with me not even one thing. And that, and that I, I remember thinking like, oh, I guess well I guess it’s kind of like what men do. I think I guess like men are you know they’re in business and then they become attorneys and my dad was an optometrist who’s had his own business still forever. So, I, like that was my model of a guy working. So, I left, independently. I ended up at UC Davis. I visited a couple older friends there. One was on the tennis team. I was wanting to play tennis. I fell in love with just this juxtaposition of Southern California to farmland in Northern California. Just fell in love with it. Ended up there. We go back to visit this guy because there’s a follow up visit included, I guess, in the package. So, this is the end of my freshman year, and he says, oh, so what I ended up majoring is, is rhetoric and communications. I think I had already signed up for that. I, business didn’t really interest me, I don’t know what happened there. So, he’s coming, he comes back said how was your first year? And I said, actually I had a really good first year. He said, So what, what classes did you like the most? And I thought about it, and I said actually psychology were the, was the most interesting classes to me and I ended up taking one every quarter. He said what classes did you do the best in? I thought about I’m like, oh my only A’s were in psychology. And he said, you ever thought about being a psychologist? This is where all the money this is, this is where he did his job and I said no. He said OK, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go back at the beginning of fall. I want you to change your major to psychology. I want you to work in a lab to start getting lab experience. And I want you to work in a group home to get practical experience. And it was like yes, yes, yes. And it just, it clicked. So, when I think when I talk to parents and tell clients who are wondering like. What speaks to you? It’s like there’s these simple questions, and I think a lot of times we overcomplicate things.
00:07:53 Bradley	Well, it’s a good summary. That’s a, a fascinating story, and it’s always fun to hear that because you know, vast majority of time, you don’t end up in the same area that your high school, and I should clarify, your high school guidance counselor, you know, predicts that you, you will be good at, or you would love. And so. Thank you for sharing that. That’s interesting. So did you graduate with a BA or a BS or what?
00:08:17 Dan	I graduated with the BA. Uhm, science was never something that came naturally to me. Uhm, so I was definitely drawn more towards the BA. And then I was, towards the end of it and I’m like, OK what do you do now? ’cause then you quickly realize with a psychology degree you really can’t do, well, you can do stuff, but it’s really hard to like future, make a living unless you do some more in the field with education. So, I, there was a newer program at a school, a sports psychology program, and this is when sports psychology was really starting to come up. And being a former athlete and really reading a lot of those sports psychology books, I’m like this is interesting. So, I immediately went into, it was John F Kennedy University. It’s actually just changed, in Northern California here, and I have to say, I guess we might want to come back to this, but there’s always this question like do you get life experience, or do you go straight into school? I often tell people; I think it’s good to get a little life experience. Uh, I went straight in, and I was sports psychology major and a clinical psychology minor, and what I slowly found, I ended up two quarters there then I’ll say what happened, was I liked my sports psychology class. I loved my clinical psychology classes. Every time I wanted to get clinical in my sports psychology classes, they said no, that’s not for sports psychologist, that’s when you refer out. Like, oh, I like, this is what I want to do. I was working for, in a practice, for uhm, someone who had mentored me for a while and he’s like Dan, you want to be clinical psychologist, you ahh, you need to get your doctorate in clinical psychology. Now this, this school that I left ended up having a doctoral program in clinical psychology, they didn’t at the time, so then I transferred in the spring. It was the last year that the school called, it was called Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (PGSP) in Palo Alto is now called Palo Alto University. Umm, so I transferred there, fortunately at the time I was able to slide right in, and then that’s where I did my, my doctorate.
00:10:24 Bradley	So, was it a terminal master’s and then you switched to another school? Or did you go to one school for your, your master’s and your doctorate?
00:10:32 Dan	One school, so they just gave you, the master’s was just a certificate that you got along the way once you met the requirements.
00:10:38 Bradley	OK, alright. And what were some of your reasons for selecting that school? You mentioned, obviously the major, clinical psychology came into play. What were some other reasons why you selected that school versus a different one?
00:10:51 Dan	Well, I actually feel I got sort of lucky. Umm, there were um, I wanted to stay in the area. At this point I had done. Well, no, I’m fast forwarding I, I wanted I wanted to stay in the area. I really liked Northern California. I didn’t. I, I was very uhm, you know, achievement-oriented at the time and so you know I, I wanted to stay on track. And so that, there was a few other professional schools I know that, you know, with the uhm, Berkeley, the other main universities around here and other like you had to stay on their admissions cycle. So, part of it was like how do I keep going? And I had learned about PGSP from a few different people. And I talked to the Admissions Director, and I really liked him. I went down to visit the school and he says, actually, we are, we were, we have, we take a small group for spring enrollment and so I just liked what I saw, and the timing worked out. So, I feel fortunate, you know, in hindsight, I don’t think I gave it as ton of thought as I would have if I was probably five years older.
00:11:58 Bradley	So, if you, you know, in in retrospect what kind of advice would you give to those who are seeking a graduate degree? I, I know that you can differentiate between a psychology program and a school and there are differences there. You don’t, you know, one might be very strong with a program, but the school may not be known, well known, in a certain area. So, any, any advice that you have for those students who are seeking a graduate degree in in psychology?
00:12:25 Dan	Yeah, you know, actually you’re triggering a few things for me, now thinking back at the school. So, at the time, here’s another reason I think I chose it, at the time in California, the Psy.D. was a newer degree and not seen by a lot of places to have the same equity in terms of training and expertise as a Ph.D.. Now that is not the case, but this was 20 plus years ago right, 24 plus years ago and on the East Coast Psy.D.s were a thing, but we didn’t know that out here and no one cared Psy.D. or PhD and the PhDs were starting to move towards much more of a, you know, scientist practitioner model and more towards science more turns university-based teaching. So, at the time PGSP was holding firm to the scientist practitioner model and some of the other professional schools were more, if you want to be a clinician, you need to be a PsyD, and you can’t go the PhD route. PGSP was saying no, no, you’re going to do both, and we’re going to hold on to our degree, and we’re not, they were in this battle with accreditation, and I can’t remember if they were in the process of getting accredited or they were accredited and they were in a long battle to not go PsyD and to hold on to the PhD. Ultimately, they have been and they, they have been APA accredited for some time. But when I was there, there was a lot of, is it going to happen? Is it not going to happen? Can we keep the PhD? So, I guess, so one thing is to say now, now is, if you want to be a clinician, I strongly suggest the PsyD degree of our, at our center, at least 50, if not more, percent of our practitioners are PsyDs and you can’t tell the difference from any of the PhDs or PsyDs in terms of the you know, like their training and quality of work. And, in many cases, the PsyD programs get more direct training in clinical work because you’re spending less time on research. Um, so, if you want to do research and you like research, I think the PhD is a great degree. If so, what I recommend to folks is like what do you want to do? Does that school have what you want to do by degree and by specialty? And is it in a place where you want to live for four or five or six years? And what do you hear about it? And I, you know, Brad, I’ve always been a firm believer, and I’m not even to go as far as like is it nice to have an accredited university? Well, it is because it just opens some doors easier and the other thing, I think accreditation gives you is more security, more insurance because there’s more of a governing body at play. But I still am a firm believer if you work really hard and you get good training and you’re good at what you do, you are going to be able to forge your way. And so, I tell people not to get caught up in the school, in the Prestige, you know, and all of that stuff. It’s nice, it feels nice, but to look deep and just see like what can you do in this place.
00:15:33 Bradley	Very good advice. Thank you for summarizing that I was going to ask you another question regarding APA accreditation and what I’m finding. You know my mom is a licensed psychologist and so I grew up with a licensed psychologist as a mother and an English teacher. So, imagine that I’m bombarded two different ways growing up. I, I really enjoyed it now that I look back. Ahh, but back in the day, everybody was so focused on you have to attend an APA accredited school. You have to because it, to your point, it opens up more avenues through which you can apply for different types of jobs. However, nowadays after talking with more and more of my guests on the podcast, that isn’t necessarily the case. It really depends on what do you want to do after you graduate? Where do you see yourself? And do you want to open up a business? Do you want to stay in the academic field? What do you want to do? That would help determine whether or not you should, you should go for an APA accredited school. So, any other reasons why you should or shouldn’t concern yourself with APA accreditation?
00:16:38 Dan	I think you hit him, yeah, right there.
00:16:40 Bradley	OK? And so, when did you graduate with your doctorate degree then?
00:16:46 Dan	Uh 1998.
00:16:48 Bradley	OK so ‘98. What did you do between ‘98 and 2009 when you co-founded the Summit Center? So, give me. I looked at your timeline and that’s the difference. I didn’t really find much what you were doing between those two dates.
00:17:04 Dan	Yeah, so that that 10, 10ish years felt like that felt like a long time so I, umm. So, what was I doing? So, uh, 1998 graduated. Then I was working in a private practice for this, with this mentor of mine and thinking I would go straight into private practice. It’s something that I always imagined I would do, and I think part of that was the influence of just different people I’ve got to know, and I liked the idea of private practice, seeing my dad have a private optometric practice for years, I just, I felt like that was what I was going to do, so I got into graduated. Now I’m in this suburban town in a private practice and I immediately felt isolated and unprepared, I’m like I, you know, I’ve done all, I have all this stuff coming at me and my mentor, ’cause I was a psych assistant, a psychologist, he was really busy, excellent psychologist. He’s running his own practice. He had, you know, several kids of his own, like he had his whole life. And you know, I got my one-hour week of supervision. And trying to get him in the lunchroom while we’re eating a piece of pizza. And I actually just felt totally overwhelmed. I’m like I’m just not ready for this and I’m not sure if this is what I want, at least right now. I then did a postdoc up at Shasta County Mental Health in the North state. I had, I was also married about that time and my wife, sister and brother-in-law, and little kids lived up there, so it was a way to be with family, but also, even though we were away from the Bay Area. And so, I got great training there in a county mental health setting. A child, child unit. So great training all the way around. And then I was like, OK, I don’t want to do private practice. I want to work for an organization. I loved working in the community. I loved working with multi disciplines. You know social workers. I mean you name it. You just, you know, had you have the whole community-based work. And so, I applied and got my first real job in Napa at a nonprofit that was a multi service agency foster care, clinical work, medical, clinical work development, disabled adults, residential treatment, day treatment for youth and really found a mentor there. The executive director had been doing it for decades. Small town. We moved there, um, and really had a wonderful experience. The challenges for those of you know with nonprofits, you can’t get paid, you don’t, you don’t get paid that much. Northern California, a very expensive place to be. So my the executive director, my new mentor said, hey, I’ve had a one-day a week private practice for years. That’s how I subsidized my income. I encourage you to do the same. So, then I started a private practice in town, and it felt right. It made sense. I started as their first paid staff psychologist. It was a large agency of social workers, licensed clinical social workers and MSWs and MFTs now LMFTs, um, and they had contracted people to do testing. And so, he’s like it’s time we have medical dollars. I’m investing in you. And I remember meeting, so he hired me. He said that he introduced me to the CFO, this wonderful British woman. And he said, uh, Jill, this is Dan. He’s our new psychologist and she looked at me and it was at a big Victorian and she says, well, I don’t know where we’re going to get the money for him and she walked up the stairs that I was like, there’s a vote of confidence, just moving my, ourselves over there. So, I stayed there and then shortly after the clinic director left, and like six months in of the of the clinic, the outpatient clinic, and it didn’t really work. I thought I was going to work for him. I let, it turned out I was working, going to work for someone under him and then so he said to me I’m like who’s going to be the director. And he said, well, if you don’t want it, I’m hiring someone else. And now I’m in my late twenties, 28 – 29, thinking how am I going to run a clinic of 20 people medical from, and, uh, so what I did, but I’m like I don’t want anyone else to. I don’t want to work for someone else again, like the experience I had. So, I said to the leadership team, there was a psychiatrist had been in forever and there was another person, oh, it was Alan and I said, how about the three of us form a leadership team for a few months and we jointly lead this together. And then I’ll let you know when I’m ready, and we did that for about 3 months and then I said OK, and I stepped into being the clinical director while also being as, as still this day, a practitioner. So, it’s both you know, direct or practitioner, and I just got so much experience, um, and so I was working there doing testing, doing therapy, learning about budgets, learning about medical, learning about audits, quality assurance, working with the community which I really loved. All the other nonprofits. And then. We moved back and now I’m commuting an hour. We have three kids, eventually three kids under 4, and my wife is a nurse working the swing shift. And it was like, oh, and, and my responsibilities were just growing and growing and growing. Um, and I felt I needed to make a change. I needed to for a lot of different financial reasons and for us to have some more stability in our house and our kids weren’t sleeping through the night. Anyways, this is a long winded, but what did I end up doing? So, I ended up going back to the private practice ’cause I wanted group practice with the guy that I left. We developed a little center and what I wanted was to create the nonprofit collaboration with the private ability to pay your bills with less bureaucracy. So, I was there for five years while I still consulted with the, the Agency and I ended up being on their board. I like stayed involved because it was really important to me with the organization and then eventually after there was a five-year contract with that one, I fell into this idea of giftedness. I fell into this idea of twice exceptionality. I was looking for a change and I knew that there was something in my life that something was missing professionally, and all of these forces came together to create Summit Center, which was my private practice merging with our co-founder and creating a center. That’s a lot. I just. I just talked a long time.
00:23:46 Bradley	You did I, I had to, I had to remember like two or three follow up questions. I probably remember one or two of them. One of them being, you know, from the very beginning of our discussion you’re, you’re highly competitive in sports and so part of me was thinking, oh my gosh, maybe you went into sports psychology for a while and that isn’t the case, even though could you see yourself doing that or incorporating that now? Probably not now, but back then. Why did choose going…?
00:24:15 Dan	No, you know once I left it, I, no I…I liked the clinical, I just liked the clinical work and, and where I appreciate, um, and at sports psychology, I believe is evolved ’cause I’ve been away from it in terms of maybe the parameters, but it was a lot about, you know, peak performance, managing anxiety. Uhm, but all the trauma, the depression, the anxiety you only could touch it as it related to the sports psychology realm. So no, I, I never thought about going back to it.
00:24:46 Bradley	OK, well that’s a good summary. Um, we do have on our website kind of a summary of each of them and you’re exactly right, it has, all of these areas have evolved throughout the years and even into business psychology back then that didn’t even exist. And so, you know, a lot of them didn’t even exist back then. So now in July and you gave us kind of how it led up to, you know, creating Summit Center. I’m going to share my screen ’cause you did mention. You should be able to see this screen with all of the about team on it, is that right?
00:25:18 Dan	Yep, Yep.
00:25:19 Bradley	And as you mentioned, you know if you’re glancing through, we have some PhDs. We have a lot of PsyDs, so it’s a good combination of, of that as well as a Master of Education as well. So, a good variety of PsyDs, PhDs, MAs, EdDs. A wide variety and what I liked about the Summit Center compared to some others out there, you are almost taking more of a holistic approach, and you’re looking at some of the different ways that you can help your clients, and not only that, but you have multiple locations. And I assume the first one was the Walnut Creek, and then you expanded to the other two later on. So, tell us a little bit more about Summit Center.
00:26:04 Dan	Yeah, you know, uhm. It’s, it’s just like looking at all those wonderful faces. It’s like, it’s hard to believe. I mean, it literally started as this idea of, um, I met Susan Daniels. Well, I fell into a get through, uh, a professional who was a parent who, from Napa, who had these gifted kids and the school district, highly gifted, the school districts weren’t understanding their needs nor the related mental health issues that can go with it, especially if their needs aren’t being met, and asked me if I wanted to be. He said we were looking for, and she’s a wonderful community activist social worker, so she’s like we’re flying a guy out from Kentucky who’s an expert in giftedness, a psychologist, and we want a local expert. Would you be willing? Ahh, are you interested? You know anything about gifted and I thought well yeah, those are, all the gifted was all the tests I was asked to take. Then at classes, I never got into, but all my kids, all my friends were in those classes. That’s all I know about giftedness and, um, and so she said, well, he’s coming, and would you like to train with him? I just intuitively swiped my schedule clean for like 3 days. And I met Ed Aymond who, um, has, became a friend and is a friend and colleague, and I became like just so intrigued with giftedness. And how you, just learning more, reading all the books, then learning about twice exceptionality gifted and ADD and autism spectrum and dyslexia and realizing all the kids that I had over the years and, um, and how we’re only focused on pathologizing and diagnosing and what’s wrong with you. And all through the years, I had this problem with, you know, positive psychology started to happen, which was great. ’cause I had this problem with how is it that we tell people what’s wrong with them and expect them to quote get better and feel better about themselves? Like how is it that we write reports that basically you know, say all of their weaknesses, all of their deficits, and then all of their diagnoses, and oh, by the way, has above average intelligence like Oh well. And so, um, all this coalesced for me, and I started going to all the giftedness conferences, the, the national ones, the, the state ones, and then at my first state one, California Association for Gifted, I met Susan Daniels, our co-founder, who’s an educational psychologist, specialize in giftedness, education on creativity. And I went to her talk on overexcitabilities ’cause I was reading about overexcitabilities and how is overexcitability different from diagnoses and I went to the booth of Great Potential Press where Ed said, hey, here’s my mentor and my coauthor, and my publisher, Jim Webb, introduce yourself ’cause he wants to know all the people who are interested. So, I said, hey Jim, I’m Dan, Ed told me to say hello, he said, oh you should meet Susan, and Susan was the talk I just went to. We sat down for 2 1/2 hours, and it was the beginning of visioning a Summit Center. So again, what I’ll tell people listening and looking back, you know hindsight, is like showing up and meeting people is, has been the key to so much of the creativity and the evolution of things that I’ve been fortunate to be a part of is just being a part of things and meeting people and talking to people who you’re interested in. So, all this is to say we wanted to create a place, Brad, where people, it’s strength based. It’s about helping people realize their developmental potential. And yeah, we need to deal with diagnoses and with challenges, but it’s a lens by which we’re focusing on, you know what’s right with you? While we’re figuring out the weakness profile and when you come up with a support plan like how do we emphasize the strengths? Uhm, those prevocational things that you’re doing, or you know you have, you’re inventing things, you’re having, you’re not, you’re a little entrepreneur with your lemonade stand. Um, while also it’s like yeah, we need to help you with your executive functioning, and we need to figure out a way for you to learn how to read and write better. Um, and so it started with myself, a psych assistant, and then, and Susan, it was three of us. It was, I went from never having my own office. I always shared an office with someone two days a week to we have the suite that we left a couple doors down and then we got back a couple years ago once we left it. Um, there were four offices and, and then we took on another psych assistant and she, she says she remembers saying. I think. I said, like, oh my gosh, not only do I have one office, we have four offices, how are we ever going to fill it? And when she tells the staff when we go around and say how long have you been here, she says, yeah, my first day of work I went home because we had no clients and so it’s all been organic. So, you know 11 plus years later. Susan and I talked about it for a year or two before it happened, but then it’s, it’s been organic meeting people like-minded people at conferences locally and it just grew. There wasn’t a business plan.
00:31:05 Bradley	I’m going to share this, the site again. Very good story and that brings up a couple pieces of advice that I think I’m hearing a theme whenever I’m talking to our guests is networking is very important. going out meeting different people. If you’re interested in a certain area, go out and meet those people. If you’re interested in somebody’s work and they’re a professor, reach out to them. Don’t be afraid to say hey Doctor Peters, I’m really interested in your work. Do you have a few minutes to talk and, and going down that road. If you can see the website, I’m still on the about page and I did notice that your newest addition is, is Jenna here, which just was added as well. You have a lot of different services. You know. You look at the website and you look at all these different services. And my question to you is how is Summit Center different than your competitors? Or a different practice? Here’s your time to kind of sell the Summit Center for me and, and our audience.
00:32:04 Dan	Well, I feel like, from a professional perspective, the goal and mission was always in terms of the business was to create that community based multidisciplinary group in a private practice model. So, we can focus on the work and doing the, with besides following, you know our ethical and legal and practice guidelines, we wouldn’t be tied down with a bunch of the other bureaucracies that unfortunately that you have to, and that I’ve spent plenty of time doing in my career. We are always collaborating so for, and this is for both sides professional or for client. So, you know we’ve been doing it more virtually, and hybrid-like, since COVID, but there’s a lot of us always around. Hey, can I talk to you about this case? We have in services we have case consultation so we’re always growing. We’re always reaching out to 15, maybe 20 people. Hey, I need some more information on this. Hey, I’m dealing with this. Any ideas? So, you have, even though you’re working with generally one practitioner, you have a team of heads behind you for the families and on our informed consent we say that you know, like you’re going to have confidentiality. However, you know we do consult with each other to provide you the highest quality of care. From a client perspective, we just really believe in being strength based and we believe in relationship. We are not more powerful than you. We are not better than you. We, um, from our information and services coordinator, basically an intake coordinator, to our assessment coordinator to our receptionist to our billing coordinator and operations manager. Everyone is so person-oriented, uhm, we just we want, people come because they’re in need and we want people to feel like they’re at home with people who respect them. And so, I would just say there’s just such a humanistic way that we work with people in a collaborative, strength-based way. And I’ll toot the horn of our we just have phenomenal clinicians, just phenomenal clinicians.
00:34:19 Bradley	Well, it’s a good variety, as we mentioned earlier, a variety of education specialties that sort of stuff as well. I’m sharing the screen on Camp Summit because about a year after you founded Summit Center in June of 2010, you opened Camp Summit in the Marin Headlands which is in the heart of San Francisco Bay Area just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. So, tell us a little bit more about why you created and opened Camp Summit.
00:34:47 Dan	Well, so this conversation came out of the initial conversations about Summit Center and that Susan had a close friend and colleague named Wendy who was in education and ran a lot of programs and they would run programs together down at Cal State San Bernardino, where they both worked. And part of the reason of opening a Summit Center is gifted and twice exceptional kids aren’t understood. We don’t get trained in these profiles and so there’s a lot of misses, a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of pathologizing, a lot of misdiagnosing, um, or missed diagnosis, and that’s why Summit Center came from it’s like hey, we want to have a place where people know they can pick up the phone and we know a lot about your child’s profile, and we’ll figure out more. The same thing goes with summer camps is a lot of these kids because of their being misunderstood, their quirks, called, you know, bright and quirky. There are developmental asynchrony. They’re really advanced in some areas, they’re really not behind in other areas. Uh, a lot of these parents just wait by the phone to get the phone call like hey, this isn’t working. Come get pick your kid up or kids get bullied so we wanted to have a place where these kids could be theirs was kind of our, our tagline, uh, for kids to be with others like them and be with adults who understand them, and so that’s how it started. And it was, it has been up until COVID, this unfortunately was the second summer. We had 10 summers I believe, and then our last two or maybe with yeah 10 summers in our last two we haven’t been able to do were started with, I think, the first year was 32 kids. Most of them were gifted homeschoolers of the 1st 32 ’cause we had a lot of support from that community. And then in our largest year we got to, I believe 65 – 66 and then we always hover somewhere in between. Uhm, so a magical place, just a magical place of these kids getting it’s like I would say it’s like Chewbacca, I’m a big Star Wars fan. You never see Chewbacca except with one of the newer movies he had, like finally gets to see another Chewbacca and a lot of times. These kids are like their own Chewbacca not, not like they just not validated. They just feel so different and so all of a sudden, they’re together and you just see them like just loving it.
00:37:06 Bradley	Flourish and open up and everything else. So yeah, we keep talking about gifted and twice exceptional. So, one of my questions is, um, how would you describe gifted or twice exceptional? And we’ve all heard of gifted, probably years and years ago but this twice exceptional or twice exceptionality idea is, is relatively new compared to the word gifted. So, in your own words, kind of tell me a little bit more about what is meant by twice exceptional. And while you’re describing that, I’m going to bring something up to share with you and the audience.
00:37:41 Dan	Ah ha, you’ve done your homework. You are good.
00:37:43 Bradley	So yeah, here is yeah, so here I found this, and I love this and I’m going to share this on our website for your podcast because back in 2012 you attended this conference the SENG conference and I love this piece because you provide definitions of giftedness. You not only provide definitions, but you talk about different aspects of it, common criticisms and then this one focuses on misdiagnoses and then characteristics of twice exceptional. And then I love this part where you started going into having the do’s and don’ts of how you deal with gifted children as well. So, I, I probably stole some of your thunder here, but I, I was so excited to share this with you.
00:38:26 Dan	Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, I can’t, I can’t believe it’s been so long so just a shout out for SENG for people to know Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted is a national organization, uhm, that came to be, I want to say probably late 80s maybe. Or yeah, maybe late 80s and it was unfortunately after a highly gifted teenager took his life and the parents donated, someone donated a lot of money to Jim Webb, who is the publisher, unfortunately, now deceased publisher and he was on the Donahue show, going way back, and it, really talking about the, um, the emotional needs of giftedness and so that is a wonderful organization that has a conference every year. Educating parents, educators, anyone who will listen about the emotional needs of gifted. OK, so what’s the gifted as quickly people know it’s for you know smart kids to be in smart classes. Think of it as advanced, ahh, advanced ability in a number, one or a number of areas, academic, intellectual, could even be leadership, visual arts, performing arts, even though that’s not focused on much these days. Or potential for advanced cognitive potential. And there’s a debate in the field I’m just going to say it quickly here is like, well, are you gifted if you haven’t produced anything yet? You know that’s the difference. Kind of like gifted and talented. A talent is you’re now talented at something. Gifted you can’t be talented, but there are a lot of these kids, particularly a lot of the twice exceptional kids that we’ll talk about, who they’re yet, they’re not yet talented, but they’re cognitively advanced and they have advanced cognitive potential. So, we can’t lose those kids who don’t find it when they’re 10 or even find it when they’re 20. Twice exceptionality, so we think of the bell curve. So, on one end of the bell curve let me do. Let’s see, I think it’s the opposite for you. If I’m doing so, so this would be your high end of the bell curve. So, the high end of the bell curve is, let’s say, this top off and they say that like the top 2%, ahh, 95th percentile, and there’s vary, but let’s just take that bell curve so you’re advanced in your cognitive ability or visual spatial ability, your reasoning ability, your math, your English. The other end of the bell curve you have another exceptionality. You might be very have a lot of challenges with attention and executive functioning, with reading, with writing or dysgraphia, fine motor auditory processing, visual processing, autism spectrum, and usually it’s not just twice exceptional, we now say thrice, or multi exceptional, so you’re on both end of the bell curve and one of three things happen. Either your strengths outweigh your weaknesses, so you perform above average, and you’re frustrated. But everyone says you’re fine, so you don’t no one knows you’re dyslexic or what we call stealth dyslexic or have something else, or it doesn’t emerge till much later, high school or college. Or your weaknesses outweigh your strengths so everyone is focused on you can’t sit still, you can’t concentrate, you don’t read really well, and no one can read your handwriting or you’re just having trouble making friends understanding social stuff. But no one’s focused on you have advanced reasoning ability and you have all of this other stuff that’s being missed ’cause we’re just focusing on the problems and a lot of times it goes, it collapses in the middle so you have a really bright person who also has challenges who performs at grade level and everyone says they’re fine, they shouldn’t get any services they don’t qualify for anything, and they’re miserable, they’re struggling, and they feel stupid. So, the twice or multi exceptional are all of, a huge, many of the people in history that we know to you know the Albert Einstein’s, the Richard Bransons, the Thomas Edisons. These are all twice exceptional people. You look at their stories. They all had trouble in school, socially, behaviorally, and they all of course, had advanced cognitive ability.
00:42:20 Bradley	Very good description and, and one question that I’d like to ask is I haven’t asked a psychologist yet, is it, it seems to me like a lot of the gifted or twice exceptional or multi exceptional people may or may not fall on the continuum of of Asperger’s, ADHD, dyslexia, anything like that. Tell me what your perception is or what your experience is with, with some of them falling on that continuum or some others that aren’t even included in those areas.
00:42:53 Dan	So, there are a lot of people who are gifted and not, don’t have another exceptionality they might have what we call asynchronous development, so it’s like they might still have advanced reasoning, age-appropriate social skills, and maybe a little behind in, let’s say, writing or something. And it’s still not enough of a gap to say, OK, that’s an actual other exceptionality it’s, it’s that you know you can’t be across the board high on everything as a human being, most people aren’t. With the twice exceptionality we see lots of different categories uhm and it also depends on you know what people come in because of what other people see. So, a huge a huge misdiagnosis is ADHD. But it also is a very common diagnosis when it fits. It’s just often over diagnosed. If people are bored in school, they’re going to be inattentive and check out and be fidgety. And especially a lot of the boys are really good at getting in trouble because they’re just trying to stay interested. Uhm, we also see a lot of Asperger’s ASD both misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis ’cause some people like, oh, they’re just quirky. And then it’s like, well, they might be really bright and really quirky, and we love quirky people. But as time goes on, if they have a light dose, you actually see with the older that they get that they still have these challenges that really cause problems with social interaction with school, with work. And so that’s another big area. We see lots of dyslexics or what we call stealth dyslexics, or what Brock and Fernette Eide of the Dyslexic Advantage, they have a wonderful organization and book, have coined the phrase after working with a lot of these bright folks that you can read in the average range and still be dyslexic. But you still have all these other fundamental underlying challenges with dyslexia, slow processing speed, trouble with writing, trouble remembering wrote facts. Uhm, trouble with sequential and procedural memory, but your intelligence is off the chart and so then you have this big discrepancy and school can be hard for you without accommodation. Visual processing most people don’t get checked visual processing. We see a lot of you know you go to the optometrist and it’s like, OK, put your hand over here and can you see that letter as the stimuli come closer to the developmental, optometrists are looking how your eyes track and a lot of learning issues are because of an undiagnosed visual tracking issue. And then finally, I’ll let you talk, auditory processing. We always say person can’t pay attention. We sometimes don’t pick up unless you get an audiological exam and a good one that it’s like Charlie Brown’s teacher going wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Come on and it’s like why aren’t you paying attention? Didn’t you hear what I said so I’m not sure if I completely answered your question, but we see all of these different categories.
00:45:46 Bradley	You did answer my question and more, and I’m sharing the screen. You’re going to let me talk for a little time here to let you catch your breath. Uhm, I noticed that you also offer this twice exceptional newsletter, and for those of you in the audience and have some families and or people that are…would fall into the gifted or twice exceptional, I found this very interesting and even some of the previous information on the blog and other information on here such as the YouTube channel for the twice exceptional as well. Very beneficial, so a good starting point to find out a little bit more about twice exceptional. In 2016, you co-founded the Parent Footprint, which is a website and a blog and a podcast, and so tell me how and why you created the Parent Footprint.
00:46:40 Dan	So, uhm, I met a man named Payman Fazley, who’s a technologist and he told me about his idea to create UM, he was working on his book, uh, which is almost complete now and he, his idea was to create a video training or a video experience of sitting down with like sitting down with a psychologist with technology that you could interact with it almost like a choose your own adventure book. Where we come, we came up with some pillars of what we felt was important to, his term was parent footprint, to leave a healthy footprint just like a carbon footprint with a big idea of like we need to be aware as parents, which is what the website, the podcast is all about and with increased awareness. We can be purposeful about leaving a healthy footprint on our kids, and I just thought it was brilliant. First, the, the visual, the image and, um, I’ve always wanted to step into technology a little bit. There wasn’t anything that I really knew about technology. Um, and so we spent a lot of weekends creating this interactive training where we have these modules and after a module which can then be anywhere from like 3 to 5 minutes, I ask a question and the question is A, B, or C and depending on what you click you get a different, um, a different video which is speaking more to you based on your current state of affairs. The whole idea was as you progress and as you grow and as you work on yourself, you can take the training again and choose a different response because you’re feeling like you’re in a different place. So, the whole idea was to create this parenting revolution, to have mindful and aware parents, and that’s where the podcast came from. And that’s where I’ve been spending a lot of time and really enjoy it. Going on almost five years so you know the, you know the joy as a fellow podcaster Brad, like it’s, it’s just really getting to speak with, to wonderful people and learning from all your guests. So yeah, that’s how that that’s how that that happened.
00:48:56 Bradley	You’re, you’re keeping yourself very busy, and one question that comes to mind for me is you’re wearing multiple hats. Psychologist, business owner, you probably did a little PR at the beginning and, and still coordinate with your PR team manager or your person as well. Um, what were some of the big challenges starting a business and what are some of the challenges existing now that you’ve had this business and been running all these businesses and projects? What I’m leading up to is what are the challenges and then what advice would you give students, graduate students who want to start their own practice or business? Loaded question, two questions there.
00:49:35 Dan	Great question. I’m having like a flashes of all these experiences, so I guess I want to start by saying I’ve always been a naive optimist. I think I’m getting as I’m getting older. I’m much more of a realist, but naive optimist so I always have so the positive aspect of that is, oh yeah, I’m going to do that like how can that go wrong, right? And, and there’s, there’s been a lot of good that’s come out of that, because it allows me to, like, I have a vision, I wanna do it? I don’t have any business training. I don’t like spreadsheets. I, that stuff, I was never good at that stuff in school. I, I always went by intuition. So, on the so I’ve always trusted my intuition, um, and it’s right a lot of the time, but it also when it comes to business and it comes to taking on expansion and taking on more overhead, it’s not always right ’cause there’s these other market factors that you can’t control. So, I guess what I would say is like believe in yourself and go in the direction you want to go, but you can do it in bite-sized ways. So, for example, if you want to have a private practice, it doesn’t cost a lot to rent one-off, one day a week, one afternoon a week, and you have your shingle out and then you have your website and nowadays you know Psychology Today like, you don’t even have to have your own website, but you can have your own website for, and it doesn’t have to have a lot of bells and whistles, so I would say you start small. My, the, the lessons learned were sort of over expansion from a financial perspective. Like biting off more than I could chew or let me put this way. Creating stress that in hindsight I didn’t want to have. So, what I’m really mindful of now, as we can actually continue to grow organically, and you know, partially because we’ve been around for a long time, and partially because more and more people unfortunately are needing services with the pandemic. It’s always the thought now is about how can we do this in the simplest, most cost-effective least stress, stress inducing way? Uhm, So what I don’t want anyone to experience, which I had plenty of times experiencing over the years, which is extra financial stress because now you have all of the stuff you’re carrying and you have these loans and you have this and that and that and when you’re in private practice you can work as much as you want when you have a team, you’re reliant on that team. To be able to do a certain amount of work to help cover all of the costs. Because as you grow you need more stuff and more space and more technology and blah blah blah. So, it’s just being mindful of the, all of the different factors and balances, and I still am a proponent of organic growth. Whenever we’ve tried to force grow or, I’ve tried to force something professionally, it’s never worked out. When it was organic, and it seemed right with the right person at the right time, it’s worked out.
00:52:53 Bradley	Very good advice. I liked how you summarize some of the, if you don’t know the business or the PR, have somebody else do that for you basically and, and, ah, the organic growth is a nice piece of advice as well. Don’t force it. You received a number of awards and recognitions. I’ll share a few of them. In 2013 you received the Legacy Book Award for Raising Creative Kids, and while I’m doing this, I forgot to share my screen here. So, when we do that and here is kind of a summary of, of a few of those books Raising Creative Kids. Again, the 2013 Legacy Book Award in 2013. You also received the CAG Distinguished Service Award. CAG stands for the California Association for the Gifted Award and then a year later you received the Independent Publisher Book Award in 2014, the Gold Medal in Psychology and the Mental category for Make Your Worrier a Warrior. Nice title. I love that title. And then 2016 Allen Ewig Champion for Children by Aldea Children and Family Services. And then we mentioned SENG earlier, SENG earlier, in 2018 you were recognized as the Mental Health Professional of the Year by Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted children as well. And then now in a couple months, you’re coming out with a new book, Bright Complex Kids: Supporting Their Social and Emotional Development, and this is the one that you worked with Jean Peterson on and it’s due out in October. Tell us what brought you to this book and how is this book different from your other ones.
00:54:32 Dan	Well, this book feels really meaningful because Jean, Dr. Jean Peterson is a retired now professor at Purdue. And when I came into the field of giftedness and I went to my first national conference so long ago, you can go to these pre conferences and Jean was a coauthor on one of the first books, um, of counseling the gifted having different modalities of counseling the gifted. So, I read her book. She has a real systems approach and I really liked what I read and then here I am in this small room. How many years ago and I got to, um, listen to her and I went up and I spoke with her, and I introduced myself. And had a really just nice connection. She’s just this wonderful wise soul and then a couple days, a couple years later, she wrote a book about a lot of her students, a poetry book, for the publisher who ended up being my publisher on the Worrier to Warrior Books, and he asked me if I would review her book so all this time, like how am I getting to review like her book like just this honor and then we stayed in touch and we presented a few times together and it would be and she was always like come on Dan, we need to do this. Come on Dan, you know there’s not a lot of us out there, and it was always the counselor on the psychologist approach. And then she said, you know we, we talked about for years like we got to write a book together and then life happened, and life happened. And about three or four years ago, she said, OK, we got to write that book and I’m like, Jean, I’m like overwhelmed. I can’t do this. She’s like and she just Dan, come on, we can do this. We could do this a little of a time. We’ll each write some chapters. I’ll take the lead and, um, and then what I really got behind was OK. I’m like Jean’s stuff has always remained in a lot of academia. She’s like this gifted counselor writer. She trains counselors basically in giftedness and a lot of her stuff was always in the journals and always in the academic books. I’m like we need to get this mainstream, mainstream, mainstream and so then I got my energy towards, I want to get Jean’s stuff out there. And then, before long I was right in there with her, although she, thank God, took the lead on it and we’re collaborating. And we’re writing this book together on who are these people? How do you find them? How do you talk to them? What do you need to know about them? What are the reasons for underachievement? Um, anxiety? What about anxiety? Depression, existential questioning, relationships and misdiagnosis, twice exceptionality and it just came to be. And the other thing that’s special about this book ’cause Jean’s so special, she’s not only a clinician. She’s done a ton of research, and so what’s in the book is also her decades of here’s how. Here’s what she’s found over the years from these people and right here it might look a little messy, but we need to give them time. Uhm so. Yeah, it feels very special to ah to do this with her, and she just turned 80 and she’s again, she’s just this wise sage that I feel lucky to know.
00:57:57 Bradley	Well, it sounds like it, I, I, I looked at some of her other material as well and, and she’s in the same area and always so focused on how to help and recognize, assess all of that. I’m sharing one other screen with you before we end the podcast here, and I’m, I’m, I’m not saying we’re going to end in in the next minute here. I still have a couple questions, but I, I found this interesting because earlier in the podcast you mentioned how it was your goal to get together and, and, and have the supper with your family and it was difficult because you were being pulled in different directions. And your wife at the time was, was, uh, working the swing shift overnight. I, I found this one interesting because this was back in April of 2021. And you, you kind of gave the story about hey, I remember growing up and how important family dinners were in the development of children. And that was your goal as soon as you got married, but reality hit, and you really weren’t able to do that. But I liked how I think one of your kids came to you and said, you know, Dad, we got together even though you weren’t here and, and Mom wasn’t here we were able to get together with friends and family or, or friends in the neighborhood and we actually had our own family dinner. And that probably just sat well, and it warm hearted you right away because even though you were attempting to do that and it wasn’t really successful, they still were able to pick up on the fact that yes, this is our time to get to know, settle down, relax, slow down, and just share about each other’s lives. So, I I just wanted to share that ’cause I, I really found that very special.
00:59:38 Dan	Yeah, that was.
00:59:41 Bradley	So, what do you love most about your job? You’re doing a lot of different things. What do you love most about your job?
00:59:51 Dan	I, I think if I could tie it all together. I like the, so I like the ability to create. And I like the ability I. I mean I like I’m just driven by helping people like realize and achieve their potential whatever they want for themselves and just seeing it right across the board, so whether it’s with my own clients or whether it’s with our team, our staff and, and just seeing like how to be involved in creative growth. Um, that’s, that’s, I think, that’s what, that’s what drives me the most. And also, the ability, you know something that I don’t think we hit on directly, but we’ve been talking about it, is one of the other things that drew me to psychology when I actually realized what it was, was you can go in so many different directions and so that your own ability to keep recreating yourself, and that’s been really important for me because I don’t. I don’t like to be static, I just it just doesn’t feel right for me. So, I think this field and just knowing there’s so much opportunity out there. We, humans, need people that understand humans and help it, nothing’s going to get easier. Robots and AI is not going to take the place of a person when it comes to this, even though there’s a lot of stuff that can be helped with mental health. So yeah, just growth, creativity, and so much diversity and variability.
01:01:31 Bradley	If you’ve seen any of our podcasts, you realize at the end I usually ask a few fun questions and I’m going to ask you a few of them right now. What is your favorite term, principle, or theory and why?
01:01:45 Dan	I was not prepared for this. OK, uh, although I did hear you asked that I just didn’t write. OK, OK, my favorite term, principle, or theory. OK, the one that comes to me was it was based on someone who’s on my podcast. He’s a therapist on the East Coast and he wrote a book called The Possibility Principle and it’s based; his work is based in quantum physics. He’s taking quantum physics and brought it into his counseling. And so, the idea that at any given moment anything is possible. Love that.
01:02:28 Bradley	OK, I was I was glancing at my other screen here. I was trying to find that podcast, but I you were too quick. So, I’ll, I’ll move on. What’s, ah, what’s the most important thing that you’ve learned in your life?
01:02:43 Dan	It’s these small questions really small questions.
01:02:52 Dan	OK, I, I, it’s the most important thing I’ve learned is to, is to show up being an authentic person. And, yeah, show up being an authentic person and in my work and in my writing of the Worrier to Warrior based a little, little my own experience with anxiety as well, it says like to stay present because all the stuff that’s in our head and all the worries and the what ifs, they have not happened yet. So, it’s really to show up authentically and to stay in the present and to ward off all of the future tripping.
01:03:41 Bradley	Very good advice and I’m going to add something to that. Before we had cell phones and all these laptops and computers and everything else, basically a computer in your hand, you know I grew up without having a cell phone as a kid and you’re almost forced to be present. And nowadays with especially take COVID out of the equation, even the technology, you’re thinking in the back of your mind, oh my gosh, I gotta check emails. I gotta check my social media, I gotta do all of this stuff. Back then we didn’t even, you know, fathom thinking about that so very good advice on, on staying present in, in the, in the time. If you could, if you had any. If you had the time and money to complete one project or go on one trip. What would you do?
01:04:34 Dan	Those are very different, uh? OK, I’m gonna, uh. Maybe it’s going to combine those two. I think like the me, the ideal, my wife and I have been talking quite a bit about this, the ideal would be to go to lots of places to impact lots of people, um, and to be a part of a program that incorporated what we now know about gut health, the Biome, the human Biome, UM, nutrition, ah, community and with mental health. Like to have a completely holistic approach beyond mental health in our field to helping people heal and grow.
01:05:32 Bradley	Very good I, I’ve had two other podcast interviews, my recent one just before this one, she was very much into holistic and looking at mental and physical health together because based on Eastern Orthodox and eastern procedures and, and techniques, you have to look at both the physical and the mental because they are intertwined. So very good answer. The final one that I have for you is, is there anything else that you’d like to discuss or bring up in this podcast?
01:06:04 Dan	And you covered a lot of ground up. I think the only thing the thing that comes to me just I guess on top of the questions that you just asked me is just for people to have hope and optimism. Um, and again, I think it goes back to this possibility principle. Anything is possible and I think we need to believe that anything is possible in any given moment, and I firmly believe that if you vision something for yourself, um, and put energy towards it, you can make it happen.
01:06:44 Bradley	Very good last words of advice. I really appreciate your time and willingness to share your thoughts and experience with us, Dan. Thanks again for sharing your story with us. I, I will follow you on social media. I love all the work that you’re doing and, and what the Summit Center is doing as well. Thanks again for your time.
01:07:03 Dan	Thanks so much, Brad.

13: Daniel B. Peters, Ph.D., L.P. – A Well-Known Gifted and Twice-Exceptional Expert in California

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