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Tom Skotidas

Oct 5, 2026

12:32
I'm thinking about what you've learned about psychotherapy now, which you can reflect on and go, what was happening there and how did it make you feel and what was wrong? Looking back at that as the time you are now, what were you observing?
12:48
I'll give you an insight that I think there are many insights that I've learned as a therapist, but I think the biggest one is how humans operate on blind patterns.
13:03
It's actually quite scary how much of our behavior is literally replays of what we noticed growing up.
13:14
So as you grow up, you watch your parents, your uncles and aunties, your older siblings.
13:20
It's like a theater play.
13:22
And you just watch how they show up in different situations.
13:26
And you literally learn that at an emotional level and then replay it as you get older.

5 MINS LATER

19:03
So I'm curious then, now that you've done your study and you have your new practice and what have you, what's the learning now? What do you know now that you didn't know then?
24:59
What's the pathway people usually go on? What does it look like? sort of demystify it because, I mean, I'm guessing everyone's probably sitting there going, well, what does this actually look like? Do I sit on a couch like you see
25:10
on the movies and tell everyone my problem? Talk us through what does it look like for a family in business? Okay.
25:16
Firstly, yes, I have a couch in my clinic rooms, but that's only because sometimes there's two or three bums on seats, but no one has to lie down and talk about what it was like when they were one or two years old.
25:29
None of that.
25:30
It's very professional.
25:32
And these are lovely rooms.
25:33
I work in clinic rooms.

10 MINS LATER

35:26
Or any advice for, say, some young siblings getting together and working in business and how they could make it better?
13:11
And what are some other scenarios or family dynamics that you find your work really supports when it comes to estate planning?
13:21
Well, can I give you an example of which is on the other side, is when...
13:25
Well, I'll give you an example for both estate planning and the other side.
13:29
We know often that a will is prepared and then it's executed, and the family then is told about what's in the will and then there's significant conflict.
13:41
So I work both at the will formation, and my work as a psychotherapist is to help the testator or the lawyer working with the testator to determine a values-based approach to preparing the will.
13:58
And one of the th- classic things I see, and I'm not a, a lawyer by any means, but based on my work, I'll see a lot of will language be phrased as, "George deserves the farmhouse but not Melanie," or something in terms of deserving by including one family member and excluding another.
14:22
When I work with a testator, I'm working on values.

7 MINS LATER

21:13
Yeah.

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