The Dr. John Delony Show - Anxiety Medication, Family Drama, & Dealing With Past Abuse

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode I’ve recently started taking meds for anxiety. I haven’t needed medication for anxiety/depression in about 10 years. How do I get over the feelings of failure and brokenness?  19:50: Teaching Segment: Let's talk about medication 31:36: Wife and her mom are not speaking. How do I help my wife navigate the holidays? 37:46: We have both been unfaithful. One of our children is not mine. She is heading toward another affair. Do I call it quits? 48:17: Lyrics of the Day: "Keeper of the Flame" - Nina Simone tags: anxiety, guilt, marriage, family, disagreement/conflict, infidelity, parenting These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.

On today's show, we talk about a lot of heavy topics not appropriate for kids, so please watch out for the little ears in the room. On today's show, we talk about psychotropic medications, and a mom talks about the shame she's feeling for having to go on anxiety medication. We also talk to a young husband who loves his wife and is trying to navigate her broken relationship with his mother-in-law, and we talk to a young girl who opens up about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her brother and how her mom just turned her head. It's a heavy show.

Stay tuned. Hey, what's going on? This is John, and this is the Dr. John Deloney Show A live show where we show up and walk alongside people who are trying to figure out their life Trying to figure out what to eat, how to love, how to move Are they going to a job that they hate every day Working for people that are dishonest or disinterested People learning how to be human beings again We talk about all of it on this show Anything and everything

No matter what's going on in your heart, in your mind, or your family Everyone is struggling Everyone's got joys as well So we're all walking along together So I'm taking your calls. The show's about you. It's for you. It's by you, right? And we talk about infidelity. We talk about past abuse. We talk about figuring out what's the next right thing to do for our husbands, for our wives, for our girlfriends, our boyfriends, where we go to the office every day. And we might talk about people.

Listen, I'm going to step into it on this one, and I don't even care because it's driving me crazy. As many of you know, I have not been a part of social media ever. I had like a Facebook account when I was in college, and then my grandpa, literally my grandpa friended me, and I was like, nope, I'm out. And that was years ago. And so when I took this job, I had to also join the internets. And one thing I've noticed that is driving me crazy is the number of people who get science and medical advice from Instagram influencers, from Facebook posts, people listen. The FDA, a total cluster. Modern medicine has many challenges and it's in need of

some major paradigm shifts. No question, right? What we were told about diet and nutrition is almost entirely wrong. Almost universally incorrect. Modern mental health care needs some major paradigm shifts. Got it. And internet influencers who are writing provocative one-liners and just repeating other one-liners that they heard from other influencers are at best idiots and at worst dangerous.

Stop getting your science. Stop getting your medical information from internet influencers. Listen to real doctors. Find a doctor who will partner with you. Read books by medical researchers. Learn how, and you can even do this. There's YouTube. It sounds ridiculous that I'm telling you to go to YouTube

to learn how to read science articles. Find somebody in your local community, in your family, in your home. Find somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody that can teach you how to read your own medical journals. Subscribe to people who know what they're talking about. But for God's sake, stop getting medical advice, vaccination advice, doctor advice, economic advice from an internet influencer. Talk to people who know what they're talking about. Good God almighty, dude.

Please, please. That's all I'm going to say about that. Call us. 1-844-693-3291. That. 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291. We're going to give you real information. Actual real things that are going to help you in your life. And here's the thing.

If I don't know something, you know what I do? I call experts. And here's who I define as experts. Not just medical doctors and not just medical doctor researchers, but people who are practicing and seeing patients and who are doing research and who are closely collaborating with those and those who know how to read research and those who know how to practice things and those who are living these things in their own lives. Let me give you one quick hint. I wasn't even going to talk about this, but lives. Let me give you one quick hint. I wasn't even going to talk about this, but I'm going to give you one quick hint. Years ago, I realized this when I was working in higher ed. Everyone around me, everyone that I worked with had PhDs. They'd studied a particular thing.

They'd studied molecular biology. They'd studied protein synthesis. They'd studied climates. They'd studied water. They'd studied any number of things. They'd studied theology. They'd study climates. They'd study water. They'd study any number of things. They'd study theology. They'd study religion. They had PhDs and things where they had spent years and years and years studying these things. And if I asked somebody the question, hey, what do you think about? They would give me a dissertation. They'd give me an article.

They would give me, here's a way to think about it. Here's a way to think about it. Here's how this author thinks about it. Here's how that author thinks about it. And then I would notice, yeah, but that's not what you're doing in your life. And so then I realized I was asking these researchers the wrong question, not what do you think, but what do you do? And so for instance, one time I was walking out of a doctor's office. She was the head of the OBGYN at the university where I worked. My wife saw her and I was joining my wife on an appointment. As we were leaving, this woman was a scholar, a world-class researcher. She ran some major grants and made some major advancements in the field. And she was a practitioner. And as we were leaving, I asked her, hey, by the way,

do you spray your kids with bug spray with DEET? And she hung her head. She knew exactly what I was doing, exactly where I was going with this. And she said, yeah, I do. And DEET's going to kill us all and neurological issues and blah. She rattled it off. But she said at the end of the day, I'm more worried about West Nile and I'm more worried about mosquitoes. And so I take the easy route and I spray my kids. And then I went like this, got it. Cause she knows more about it.

She's a practitioner. She is brilliant. And she told me what she actually does. She sprays her kids a bug spray before they run out into the woods That is the difference between Reading an internet influencer And going straight to the source What do you do with your kids? That's how you find out what people Really believe What they're really doing

What they're really putting into practice That's where you get information Not from influencers Alright so again give me a call at 1-844-693-3291. Or go to johndeloney.com slash show. Fill out the form, and we will check it out. And I know the influencers are going to light me up, say, yeah, but you know what? I read a – I don't care.

All right. Let's go to Kelly in Philadelphia. Kelly, good morning. How are we doing? I'm good. How are you doing? I don't care. All right, let's go to Kelly in Philadelphia. Kelly, good morning. How are we doing? I'm good. How are you doing? I am doing, to quote the great Dave Ramsey, better than I deserve.

How can I help? So I've struggled with anxiety for a while, but haven't needed medication in years. I've recently started taking meds again to help with the increased anxiety of 2020. And I'm struggling with feelings of failure and brokenness. I'm not quite sure how to navigate that. So you say you haven't taken medication in a while. When did you last take medication? About 10 years ago. Tell me about the circumstances surrounding that. We were, my husband and I, at the time, we were engaged and moved to Florida away from family and friends, and we're planning a wedding at the time, too. So there was a lot of stress going on, and we saw a doctor, and they thought it was a good idea. Since I had a history of depression as well, that medication would be the best thing for me to be on

to get through all of the stressors. And so how long did you take medication for, just to get you through that season? Yeah, I think it ended up being about a year. Okay. And then what are the things you did to help heal during that time? In addition to medication? Um, I guess I kept busy with, you know, with my job at the time, socializing with friends, getting out of the house, going on weekend trips with my husband,

and just different things to keep my mind off of what might be going on that wasn't so great in my life. So fast forward 10 years to right now, what finally pushed you over the edge and said, I need to go see a doctor again? I mean, I know we're all in the same position with the pandemic and some people are... Hold on, hold on. I don't want you to compare your situation to others. I want you just to tell your story because your story by itself has value. And I know other people's got it worse. I got that. I want you to tell me what, what happened in your life that made you one day open your eyes and say, I got to go see somebody.

Um, I, I try not to watch the news, but, um, I have continued to go to the gym to exercise throughout everything and there are screens everywhere there. So you see it's getting worse. Stay home. Don't go anywhere. Don't see family for Thanksgiving. And it was probably about two weeks ago that I hit rock bottom. But what besides the news?

Something else. My mom, I love her um she recently retired i get calls every day from her asking how are cases down where you are are you guys okay what you know what's going on so that kind of triggers the oh my gosh like this is this getting bad, this is crazy. And that just, you know, I see her name pop up on my caller ID and it just freaks me out because I know we're about to talk about stuff that gets my anxiety going. So back up a little bit.

Do you have a good relationship with your mom? Kind of. It's not great. Okay. So the answer to that question is no, I can answer that for you because you're a good human being and you're going to say kind of, so I appreciate that about you. Walk me back to when you were a teenager. How did you and your mom get along? Not great. What does not great mean? I wasn't really given a whole lot of choices in how my life was going at the time i was required to do these certain lessons or required to take these courses in school so i didn't really feel like i had a lot of flexibility or freedom or voice in, you know, day-to-day choices. It was kind of picked for me. What about your dad?

How'd you get along with your old man? Growing up as a teenager, he and I fought all the time. But now he is probably my favorite person in the entire world. That's awesome. He's meant more to me as I've become a parent. I have a lot of respect for him. And tell me about your kids. I have one little boy.

He just turned seven. We would have loved to have more, but he's the one we were given, and I'm so proud of him. He's amazing. Okay. So I'm going to answer your question in a bigger funnel than the one you initially called me about, but I will get to your question directly. Okay. Okay. So a couple of things to note. Number one, anxiety and depression are on the same trend line. They are not distinct things like a broken ankle and cancer are.

Okay? So they usually work in tandem together. And one leads to the other one or one will push you towards feelings of one or the other. Okay? So I don't want you to think that you've got all of these quote-unquote things. Your body has a particular way of taking care of you, and it will usually start with an alarm system, and it will usually start with another alarm and then another one, and it will get louder and louder until one of the safest, most comfortable ways of shutting those alarms off is turning the lights off and getting under the covers and watching Netflix or drinking or fill in the blank with any number of numbing behaviors, working 120 hours a week. The second thing is, and you've probably heard me say this a hundred times, I'm going to say it a thousand times more. All anxiety is, is an alarm system. And the alarms go off generally when someone is out of control they don't have control over their situation when they are disconnected or in their body a meat

is fearful of not being safe and so when you back me up to your life situations you grew up in a house where you had no control. People didn't care what you had to say about things. They dictated to you the way you were going to be and what you were going to do. Then you entered a season where you packed up and left everyone and everything you know to a new adventure where you were totally disconnected. You had little to no control. You were signing up and your husband may be incredible, he may be the greatest guy ever, but you were still hitching your wagon to somebody else, right? That's an unknown entity. How's this thing going to work? Starting a new job, you have a history of depression, and then finally your alarms get so

loud that you go see a doctor, which I'm proud of you for going. Good for you. And then we reach this new place where you've got this new moment in history, and it's not a new moment, but it's new for us, where literally we're entering, we're leaving a, or we're still in the middle of it. We're a couple of days out from Christmas and people are still throwing crayons at each other about the election. But you realize we don't control much of anything when it comes to democracy. I get my vote and that's it. I control very little when it comes to a pandemic sweeping through.

I control very little when it comes to the economy and who's telling me I can work and can't work. And then you throw on top of that infertility challenges that you've experienced for years, which then lead to identity questions. Who am I? Why isn't my body working for me? Why can't I be the fill in the blank? My husband's identity is included in this. And suddenly your alarms are ringing off the hook, right? And so here's why I'm telling you these things. Number one, I've experienced everything I've just told you about, except I experienced infertility on the other side of that. I've been crippled by anxiety myself, where my alarms are just yelling and

yelling and yelling. And it's almost always environmental in nature. It's almost always about our ecosystem. What is the world we've created for ourselves? And what is the world we're inheriting, right? What is the world we are just simply in? And I'm telling you that because I don't want you to believe for one second that you're broken, that your body's not working, that it's revolting, and that there's any sort of shame about what's going on with you, okay? Okay. Your body's working exactly how it was designed to.

And then you layer on top of it all of the complexities, a mom who still loves hanging on to you and controlling you and giving you advice. And it's not because she's ugly or mean or hateful. That's her way of showing you that she loves you, right? Yes. You've got that little boy. I've got a 10-year-old and an almost five-year-old. And so you and I are both looking at this world our kids are going to grow up in going, what in the world, right? And my alarms are going off too, okay? So you did something brave and you went to talk to a doctor. Here's what anxiety medication will do for you. It simply turns the alarms off.

It shuts the alarms down. It turns the nozzle down on those things, turns the knob down on those things and makes them not so loud anymore. And here's the important thing about taking anxiety medication. It's only as good as the work you do getting well when the alarms are off, right? And so what that's going to look like for you is figuring out boundaries with your mom, maybe for the first time. Maybe it will be a conversation with her where you say mom you call every day and i love you i will not talk about the covid numbers in my area anymore i'm done with that conversation it may mean that you sit with your husband and you say the words out loud that are in your heart

about how many kids you wish you'd had versus the beautiful, extraordinary son that you do have and putting yourself out there being vulnerable to hearing what your husband has to say about his thoughts. And y'all may have never had that conversation. You may have, but you may haven't. All that to say is there are boundary conversations, there are intimacy conversations, and intimacy is just letting your thoughts finally be heard. It may mean that you're going to go see a counselor and learn how to engage and be in deep relationships with people that are close to you, how to create new relationships, which is a skill none of us have, myself included,

that we've got to learn how to do those things. But there is no shame in going to see a doctor and saying, I need help turning these alarms off for a season so I can come up with some new skills, some new strategies, some new moments, some new conversations, some new boundaries that are going to help me be well moving forward. Is that fair? Yes, very much. You are worth an environment that supports and sustains you. You're a good, good mom, Kelly.

And you're a good wife. And you're a good wife and you're a good citizen. And while we're on this topic, let's just have this conversation. People have asked me about it a lot. I'll probably end up doing an entire show on this someday, but here's the conversations we need to have about medication. Over the past 40 years, 50 years, and further back, and everyone's going to try to nitpick this thing, so let's just be open and honest and exhale. I'm going to give a 50,000-foot overview of this. We have become enamored, obsessed, addicted with psychopharmaceuticals, psychotropic medications, meds for mental health issues. And this stems from a narrative that's been given to us from doctors, from medical researchers, and most importantly, from pharmaceutical companies. And it's a myth that your brain chemistry is broken. Just like some people are born 5'8", and some people are born 6'2",

some people are born with low serotonin levels. Some people are born with wacky dopamine levels. And by some people, maybe 25 to 50 freaking percent of the population are born with altered brain chemistry. And here's the thing. It allows us to pass the buck on relationships, on life circumstances, on trauma, on tragedy, on systemic issues like poverty and racism and sexism and abusive relationships. It lets us pass the buck on all of that. And I go to the doctor and I say, I can't get these thoughts out of my head. And many doctors won't ask you, what's going on in your life? Tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your situation

right now. Are you safe? They say, yeah, you may have altered serotonin levels. Take this. And if you're just broken, then you didn't do anything wrong. Your environment doesn't matter. You don't need to change anything. You just need to take your pills on head on down the road, right? We take so many psychotropic drugs as a nation that they are now lacing our drinking water. We pee them out in such mass concentrations that they're in the water that we drink. As one writer said, we're awash in them. Literally, it's in our drinking water now. One in five U.S. adults, I think it's one in four women, are on some sort of psychotropic medication for anxiety, for depression, fill in the blank, fill in the blank.

And the numbers are continuing to increase, increase, increase. And so to put that in perspective, you would think that if we had stumbled on a quote-unquote cure for an illness, for a disease, for a dysfunctional part of the human body, with one in five, one in four people taking these medications, that the numbers would go down. They would level off. Yet they're not. They are skyrocketing.

And contrary to what you probably believe and understand about how research works and how the research companies work, this isn't conspiracy nonsense, blah, blah. This is truth. Okay. This isn't me becoming like an internet influencer and exposing. This is just factual. Okay. Most antidepressant studies are paid for by pharmaceutical companies. And what that means is they own the positive results of those studies and they own the negative results of those studies. And there's an economic incentive to open a drawer and put the negative studies in the drawer and shut it. They write the reports and present the info at scientific journals. And here's the thing, as we bag on higher ed and we continue to defund colleges, college is way too expensive. That's a whole other conversation. But as we continue to defund the public good, the drug companies come in and

they pick up the slack, right? So if we have the University of Texas or Texas Tech University or Texas A&M, those are the three big kids from where I'm from, Rice University, whatever. They hire their own scientists. They do their studies. They get grants from the federal government, from the state government. They use tuition dollars, and they do a study on something, and they put it out to the world. And the scientists bat it back and forth. It's called peer review. They fight back and forth over the results. And over time,

consensus comes to the top. And you have to put forth the studies that don't work. You have to put forth the studies that do work, which lead to new studies. When a pharmaceutical company runs those things, they hire their own doctors. They hire their own doctor researchers, medical researchers, and then they do the studies. And they just need two. They need two to go right, meaning they can do a study. As Johan Haredy says in his book Lost Connections, which is an extraordinary read, they can do 1,000 studies. 998 of them on a particular drug fail. But two of them, one of them with a population of 16 and one of them a population

of a hundred. And the population was 16, nine or 10 of those people for whatever reason showed some trend towards positive. This pill helped them. And then in the study of 100, 52, 53 people got some help, a little bit of help here and there, or maybe a lot of help, right? 998 studies said this drug has no effects, or it may even be hurtful to you. You just need two. And the FDA will stamp it and say that that drug is good to go to market. And so here's the deal. There is none, zero evidence for the low serotonin myth, that your brain produces low serotonin. Some people are just born that way, and taking pills will raise it and fix you.

As Dr. Moncrief says, there's no evidence there's a chemical imbalance in depressed or anxious people's brains. The DSM, this manual, they call it the psychiatric Bible. It's a real thick book that's got all the diagnosis, right? You've got this, you've got a that, you've got this. The manual that supposedly determines a person's diagnosis, it's a mess. It's a big mess. And it almost exclusively never takes into environment, context, being at a really controlled work environment, in an abusive relationship, from a traumatic childhood, in a system that's traumatizing you, those things don't matter. It's all about this diagnosis in your brain. Here's the truth. Almost entirely, we don't know why medications work. I'm talking about psychotropic medications. We don't know why they work. We simply don't know. There are a number of

people who have incredibly positive results and they do well. It could be from placebo. That could be from actual support and help. And here's the deal. I am one of them. I got bent low by anxiety to the point that I was spinning out all over the place. And I took anxiety medications for a season and they worked awesome. When I'd ask my doctor, why do these work? He'd say, I don't know. They were originally designed for congestion and people were reporting, hey, I'm feeling less anxious. And so they are a whole class of drugs that are prescribed off-label, off-brand. But they worked.

So here's the broad picture of medication. For folks who are dealing with major depressive disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar, medication is magic. It can be extraordinary, particularly if you are doing it in partnership with a great therapist, with good community groups, with skilled practitioners who know how to teach you how to do relationships. And there are mental health issues, again, like schizophrenia, bipolar, some of these things that have brain lesions.

Your brain is actually different. Okay. There are others like myself who took anxiety medication for a season and it worked wonders. And I took it for a season for a specific season. And I partnered with a doctor whose goal was to teach me how to take ownership of my own health. He didn't tell me, and I had two doctors, one holistic doctor and one medical doctor. Neither of them told me I was broken forever. Neither of them told me, hey, your brain is just dysfunctional and it's always going to be that way, so you need to take medicine. The analogy I got was, hey, you were training for a marathon and you stepped off the curb and really messed up your ankle. And just so happens your ankle's in your head.

The alarms got going for so long and you were eating trash and not sleeping and isolating yourself for so long that your alarms just took over, right? They just took over. And so for a season, we're going to ask you to not run. Don't run. You need to go to a doctor and get your leg taken care of. And then you're going to have to go through rehab, physical therapy, and then you're going to have to start walking, and then you can start jogging,

and then you can start training for whatever race you want to run again. And it just so happened all that stuff was in my mind. So for a season, I took some medication. Don't know how it works. My doctor would tell me. He was honest. Dude, I don't know why. My holistic doctor gave me some supplements and she, she actually knew more about what those were doing than the, the pharmaceutical. And we started with the lowest possible dose first. This was my arrangement with my doctor. You get your arrangement with your doctor. I'm not giving you medical advice.

I'm telling you what worked for me. And then we decided, hey, we'll move up later if we need to. We never did. And he worked with me on a plan to get off and stay off. And that meant I had to go see a counselor. That mean I had to be really honest with my wife. That mean I had to be really intentional about getting friends and getting connected in my local community. A person is not a person without their environment. It's one of my favorite quotes from Hari's work. A person is not a person without their environment.

Medication can help a person's body turn off the alarms, shut down the yelling and screaming and fear responses and trauma responses. And it did that for me. And it's done that for countless other people, but it is not the long-term solution for most everybody. And so just like we just did with Kelly, she is brave and she is strong, and I'm so proud of her for having courage, for being a great mom, being a great partner, and for recognizing I'm not doing well. But seriously, seriously, the goal is not to be on medication forever. The goal is to use meds as a bridge to get your life back. So Kelly, thank you so much for your call, for being brave. No shame. No failure. Strength.

I'm proud of you for doing the work that you need to do to get well. This is step one. Step two is going to be boundaries, relationships, and connection, and finding ways you can control what you can control in your little bitty universe. I'm proud of you. All right, let's go to Kevin in Keene, New Hampshire. Kevin, what is up? Hey, Dr. John. Thanks so much for taking my call. Hey, thank you for calling. What can I do to help? Sure.

So my wife and mother-in-law haven't spoken really since about February, March of this year. And this is the first kind of holiday season without them talking to each other. I want to try to be the best husband I can for my wife. And I, I know that my own mental capacity, I try to fix things all the time. So I'm trying to see what's the best thing I can do. How's the best way I can be supportive for her. So why aren't they talking? Um, well, it kind of goes back a little ways but my um my mother-in-law struggles with alcohol abuse um this kind of spring and summer um she went into a couple rehab facilities i think about i can't remember how many different ones, but, um, the first one

she was kind of forced into by my sister-in-law. Um, and because she came over to our house when we set the boundary of not, uh, having any alcohol in the house and she brought alcohol into our house. So we kind of cut off communication there because we have little ones yeah you don't need you did the absolute right thing there i'm proud of you for that good for you thank you good for you um so bring me to how can i help you guys right now is is your wife just struggling crumbling under that broken relationship or how are you caught in the middle of this so we've we've gone and we've helped her her set up a couple counseling sessions with a Christian counselor. It's been going good, but I noticed around Thanksgiving that it was eating her.

It was eating at her a little bit, that she wasn't seeing her mom. I don't know if it was a part of guilt. I don't know if it was a part of guilt. Um, I don't know if it was just missing her. Um, but I know that it was, it was eating her and, um, and I know that Christmas is coming up around the corner. Um, so I just, I want to be as supportive as I can. So Kevin, you are husband of the year. Good for you, brother, for just wanting to be there for your wife and for recognizing you're an advice giver and a fixer, and that's not what's going to help in this moment. Awesome. All right. So here's what your wife is feeling. All of that. She is grieving a fantasy

that is dead and gone. And the fantasy is most people's wish, what should be, is that our moms are there for us. They're whole. They're connected. They show up to a warm house with a fire and great food over Thanksgiving. And your wife's mother is in rehab, again, is disconnected because she brought alcohol into your home in violation of the boundaries you drew for her. So your wife is grieving. She is sad. Her fantasy is busted up.

She misses her mom, and that just sucks. And then you are astute, man. Christmas comes on the same day every year, so here it comes. So here's what I want you to do today. I want you to tell your wife that you want to have a conversation about Christmas and her mom, and you want to do it in a couple of days. And I want you to ask your wife

to write her mom a letter that she's never going to send, a letter about how she feels, a letter about how she misses her, a letter about what she's missing with her grandkids, and a letter that says, I hope that we can reconcile someday but not now. And I want your wife to write that letter and then she's going to read it to you. She's going to read it to you. So she's going to be vulnerable and open with you. She's going to read that letter to you. And then you guys are going to make a plan for Christmas together. And your wife is going to inform that. Of course, you know where you want it to head, where you want it to be, but she's going to inform the season.

And it's not going to include her mom. And you're going to hold her hands during this process and just look her in the eye and say, this sucks and I'm sorry. And what you're doing for her is you're creating space. You are moving things out of the way so your wife can have space to grieve and just be sad. And here's the thing, Kevin. This may just be a sad season. This may be the season where the fantasy, the luster, the shine is wearing off. And this is just going to be what this is going to be, at least for 2020, maybe for 2021, maybe forever. And so by writing a letter to her mom, she gets all these thoughts that are weighing her down. She gets them out of her head and on paper, they're directed to a person. And

by saying them to you, y'all are going to have a connection, a vulnerability connection and intimacy connection. And she's going to say the words out loud, mom, here's how I feel. Here's what you're missing. Here's where I'm pissed off. Here's where I hate what you have done. And here's where I hope deeply that we can come back together someday. And then y'all are going to plan on what Christmas is going to be. And then you're going to have to make space for your wife just to be sad this season. She'll be joyful, but this is going to be a season for sadness. And what we're hoping, we're going to plan, we're going to hope that that plan will help, but you're going to have to work on sadness. And what we're going to plan, we're going to hope that that plan will help.

But you're going to have to work on you this season, Kevin, because your wife is just going to have to grieve this. So the greatest thing you can do is create space. Give her the opportunity to. Tell her you're there for her. Tell her that you love her and you're supporting her. Take a deep breath, drop your shoulders, and then head on into the season. Kevin, I'm proud of you.

You're a good husband. Good for you. And let's get through this all of us together. Let's go to, let's take one more call. Let's go to Michelle in San Luis Obispo. What's going on, Michelle? Hi, John. How are you?

I am doing all right. How about you? I'm doing all right. All right. How can I help today? I was, when I was younger, I was sexually abused by my brothers, by both of them. And, um, my mom knew what was going on. And, um, my brothers, they apologized to me about it later in life.

And my mom admitted that she knew what was going on, but she didn't know what to do. But my issue is what I still... One of my brothers still continues on his behaviors. He was watching child pornography, and he's done really messed up things with my dog. And he's also physically assaulted me three years ago and I ended up having a miscarriage. But I'm sorry, I'm like, I can't actually catch my breath. I really, you know, I only have one mom

and I really miss her. And I haven't talked to them in like a year. I moved out of my house, of my parents' house, and I just don't know where to go from here. Yeah, this is a lot, Michelle. So this is awful and evil on a bunch of different levels here. And I'm going to speak real directly and honest with you, okay? Okay. Are you hearing me? Yes, I'm hearing you. I'm going to be real direct with you. Number one, right when this call is over, you will hang up the phone and you will call the police on your brother for watching child pornography, period.

Okay? Okay. That isn't a negotiable thing. We are going to call somebody here, and so you can beat us to the punch. But when I know about something, about children being hurt, children being exploited or abused, I'm making that call, and I expect every person, whether it's your mom, your brother, your dad, your husband, I don't care who it is, to make that call. And so right when we get off this phone, you're going to make that call. Okay? Okay. This is about you reclaiming control about what's right and you taking, quote-unquote, the power back in your life.

Number two, your other brother apologized to you for sexually assaulting you as kids. Good for him. That does not mean that he has permission to waltz back into your life, that you owe him any sort of relationship, any sort of connection, anything like that. You, Michelle, are in control of the story. You, Michelle, are in control of what happens next. Okay? Okay. Okay. And for somebody who's been abused in the way you have been, your whole life people have taken from you and taken and taken and taken. And you're going to have to get with a professional immediately.

Okay. Immediately to begin walking back that trauma. When it comes to your mom, your mom committed what I think is one of the most egregious evils a parent can do, which is she let her child be hurt and just watched it happen. Yeah. I'm not going to judge your mom because I don't know what her life history is. I don't know what evils were done to her. I know there was something super toxic going on in your home for this to be going on the way it has been. And I'm sure we could talk for hours as you unpacked your childhood, but what your mom did to you is wrong. She not only abandoned you, she set you up for a lifetime of hurt and trauma and pain and evil. And of course you miss your mom, but you miss the fantasy of your mom more than you miss your mom.

Yeah, I do. I miss having a mom. You know, when I always pictured a mom to be there for me. And here's what really sucks, Michelle, and I told you I was going to, having a mom. You know, when I always pictured, like, a mom to be, you know, to be there for me. And here's what really sucks, Michelle, and I told you I was going to tell you the truth. You didn't get that mom. You deserved that mom. You should have got that mom, and you didn't get that mom. And so as you sit in the ash of that, and you've been sitting in these ashes for a long time, you just thought those ashes were trees and grass.

They weren't. They were grit and concrete and bloodstained dirt, ash. And now what you have to do, the work you have to do is to get with a professional today. And this call is happening between us in the morning. And so you've got all day to find somebody. Go find a professional who's going to walk a journey with you, and your journey is going to be longer than most. I have a question, John.

Yeah? My mom, she apologized. She said... Excellent. Good for her. I'm glad she apologized. Good for her. I'm glad she apologized. Good for her. And I'm all about redemption. I'm all about people changing and growing and moving on.

But she hurt you in a way that your soul and your brain and your body are going to be recovering for years and years and years. Because if you can't trust your mom to show up and stop evil, who in God's name can you trust? Right? I don't know a lot about the world, but I know the world's a crummy place sometimes. And that's why moms and dads are there to protect children. And your mom didn't show up. When my brother, when he assaulted me three years ago, when he physically assaulted me three years ago, my mom, I called the police. And I was living at my parents' house at that time.

Good for her. Good for her. Hey, listen, listen, listen. I want you to hear what you're doing, which is classic abuse survivor behavior. You're trying to make everyone else okay. You're trying to come up with excuses and reasons why you shouldn't hurt so bad, why they're not quite as bad as it seems on paper. And here's the thing, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, maybe your mom is a radically different human being.

She's a vigilante now. She has high support. She has take no crap off anybody, burn all of them down who hurt my baby girl. Maybe that's the way she is. Awesome. Good for her. You still have healing to do that you cannot do if you are tethered to her right now.

That doesn't mean that your relationship is over forever, but it does mean for a season there's got to be some space and separation. Because you don't even know what healthy love looks like, feels like. You don't know what that sidewalk feels like when you walk on it and it's totally firm and it's safe. You don't know what green grass and trees feel like and smell like. Your body has never experienced a flower because you've been living in ash. And so today you're going to call the police on your brother for continuing to perpetuate child pornography. Today, you're going to call a therapist and say, for the first time in a long time, I'm going to take care of me.

I need help. And what's going to happen over time is you're going to work to establish relationships with the women in your community that you trust, that will become surrogate moms to you, that will lean into your life, that will honor you and will cherish you and will protect you, will give you wisdom, give you safety. And then when you get tethered into those relationships, then you will be safe enough to maybe, maybe invite your mom out for coffee and say, hi, how are you? Because you're going to know strength then, you're going to know safety then that you have never felt, never known. Brother's job is to burn the world down for his little sister. Not to abuse her. The other brother's job.

Is to knock the teeth out of the older brother. Who abuses my sister. Not to join in. And the mom's job. Is to burn it all down for my daughter. Not to turn my head the other way. Michelle. I'm so sorry. You deserved more than this.

And I don't mean this trite and I don't mean this disrespectfully. There is healing on the other side of this. And it's going to be a hard, exhausting road, which means you got to get people around you that you trust and will care for you. But there is healing on the other way. and it starts with that phone call to 9-1-1 it starts with that phone call to a therapist it starts with you finding a friend or another woman in your community where you work at your church letting her know here's what happened to me here's my childhood and i need someone to lean on in the next year, in the next two years, because I got a long road to walk. So as you make this journey, Michelle, as you make these calls, as you start leaning into the future here, we're here for you. Shoot me an email, give me a call. We'll have you back on the show, talk about how your progress is

going. Make no mistake, it's going to be ugly ugly and messy your mom doesn't get a vote, your brothers don't get a vote your dad doesn't get a vote none of those people who hurt you get a vote it's time you put on your oxygen mask Michelle and start taking care of you and it starts today thank you so much for calling so as we wrap up today's show

I want to go back to a 1967 classic one of the greatest voices in the history of Earth. Miss Nina Simone, most beautiful voices, beautiful, truth teller, crass, hilarious, gorgeous. She wrote a song called Keeper of the Flame. And in this 1967 classic, she writes, I'm the keeper of the flame. My torch of love lights his name.

Ask no pity, beg my shame. I'm the keeper of the flame. Played with fire and I was burned. Give a heart, but I was spurned. All these times I've yearned just to have my love returned. Years have passed by. That spark still remains. True love can't die.

It smolders in flame. When the fire is burning off and the angels call my name, the dying love will leave no doubt. I'm the keeper of the flame. Make your day better and go listen to some Nina Simone. This has been the Dr. John Deloney Show.