The Dr. John Delony Show - Are We Too Touchy-Feely in Front of the Kids?

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

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Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. My husband and I are very physically affectionate. Awesome. And if we're in the same room, we're going to touch. That's what I'm getting at. And so my youngest feels that we're super gross, but he's going to grab my butt. He's going to grab my chest. It's not like fondling, but there is touching.

Yeah, it is. It is. What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. I'm so glad that you are with us. Talking about emotional health and mental health and marriage and parenting and all of the relationship stuff in between. What's going on at your workplace, at your home, whatever you got going on in your life. The show is real people

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man. So thank you so much for your support, your continued support. It's just amazing. Let's go out to Minco, Oklahoma and talk to Jodi. What's up, Jodi? Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. Of course. Thanks for calling. What's up? So my husband and I are very physically affectionate. Awesome. And if we're in the same room, we're going to touch. It's what it is. We've been married for 17 years together for 22.

Wait, hold on. When you say touch, do you mean like, oh yeah, or do you mean like high five? Well, it's not quite an oh yeah, but it's not quite a high five. He'll come up, like the other day I was cooking at the stove. All my kids are at the table. We have three kids, 15, 13 and 11. And he walks up behind me, they're behind behind us and he just puts both hands on my breast gives me a hug and kisses me on the neck oh those poor kids and so my youngest feels that we're super gross and i reassure her that you know there's kids out there that their parents don't like each other you're you're blessed so get used to it. But he's going to grab my butt. He's going to grab my chest. It's not like fondling, but there is. Yeah, it is. It is. Is it okay? Or am I ruining them? Are they right? On behalf of mental health practitioners across America,

we thank you for providing us a new generation of clients. It's going to go on for a while. Okay. So here's the way I would describe this. So affection is different than sexual. And I know I feel like I'm splitting hairs here. And I go back to the same thing I teach young children. And I teach parents to teach young children, which is bathing suit parts are for private. And so, yeah, whapping you on the butt as you walk by is one thing. There's playful affection there. Hugging you and groping your breasts while your 11-year-old just sits there and her eyes falling out of her head, that has turned sexual. And so- Okay. Even if it doesn't feel sexual, it is sexual.

Yes. And just keep in mind bathing suit parts. Now, here's the slippery slope. Okay. I desperately want my kids, I don't desperately want, they do. They see me be affectionate with their mom. And I want them to have images of see me be affectionate with their mom. And I want them to have images of their head of me and their mom hugging,

me and their mom holding hands, me and their mom kissing, me and their mom being goofy, my wife having a wet towel and throwing it at me when I walk in the door. Like I want them to have that sort of affection. Yeah. I also want them to be aware my parents are sexual beings. Yeah. But them having the images in their head changes everything. So here's a out, I'm going to hit the bell curve too far. I'm going to get drama on the responses on the internets, but I don't care.

It's the difference between talking to your daughter, which hopefully you have, I'm guessing by how open and affectionate y'all are. Um, y'all openly talk about sex with your kids, right? Yeah. Okay. Awesome. There's that. And then they're showing them pornography and saying, this is what this is. No, we wouldn't do that because we don't want those images in their head. They can't handle that image. Okay. What we want them, it's the same reason that my wife, she's a reading literacy specialist for children. It's the reason why she will let our kids read a Harry Potter book.

Well, my 14-year-old is past it, but my daughter's young. Read a certain Harry Potter book without watching it yet. Okay. Because the images that she creates in her head is from a very limited bank. But when Hollywood puts an image in there, it's there forever. Yes. And so when mom and dad talk about affection and talk about, oh, we're going to go close the door and we are going to super smooch kiss and we're going to get gross.

Then the kids go, Oh, and you're, how old are your kids? 15, 13 and 11. All right. So you're a 15 year old. It's going to know what's going on and they're going to be appropriately grossed out because mom and dad just went in and locked the door.

Ew. The 11 year old is going to be grossed out, but in a different way. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. So tell me, tell me, you sound sad. Have I just ruined your day? Well, I, so I had to prepare myself emotionally for this call because I was like, of course we're going to be vindicated. There's nothing sexual in this. It's just,

and it's only in our home. This isn't like at Walmart, you know? Well, that makes you unique because I see it at Walmart a lot. Well, I went, okay, but what if he tells me I'm a pervert? No, you're not a pervert. I have to be ready. You're not, you know, but I had, I had to be ready for that. You know, you have to go swing that spectrum. Yes, but hold on. Don't put words in my mouth. I didn't call you a pervert. Okay. I didn't call you that. No, no, I'm not saying you did. I'm saying I had to be ready for that. You know how you have to go swing that spectrum? Yes, but hold on. Don't put words in my mouth. I didn't call you pervert. Okay. I didn't call you that. No, I'm not saying you did. I'm saying I had to be prepared for that. Oh, yeah. No, I'm not going to call you pervert.

In order to be humble enough to accept whatever answer you gave me. You all sound like you have a fun house. We laugh a lot. Awesome. And my kids are super funny, super amazing, and my older two don't mind. They went through the stage where it's like, ew, mom and dad are kissing. They went through that stage

and to them, it's not a big deal at all. Now they tell her that she's fine. But my youngest is, she's there and and i got pointed out that maybe it is inappropriate well i i think we often take our kids our older kids silence or acceptance or we take their silence they can't change it they know they can't change it so they've just moved on. They unplug. They don't move on, they unplug. They desensitize. They check out. So do I just sit the three of them down and say, I'm sorry. You're all right. And we will keep it at a certain level.

I honestly, I wouldn't. Just move forward. I would tell my husband, hey, don't grab my boobs in front of the kids. What about a butt? Is that okay? my husband, hey, don't grab my boobs in front of the kids. What about a butt? Is that okay? Again, there's a difference between whapping somebody and coming up.

And it's discreet. Like I said, my kids couldn't see anything. They couldn't see him touching my boobs. Yes, they can. Yes, they can. They know. But they weren't full-on watching. They know. They know. But they weren't like full on watching. But they know.

They know. You know. There's a difference between whapping your husband or wife on the booty and coming up and getting a handful and groping, right? Okay. There's a difference. And y'all know. Yeah.

And you as a wife of an affectionate husband, you know when he is being silly and when he's getting a little gropey. Everybody does. Yeah. You could feel the energy difference, right? Yeah. And that's why I'm saying it's just playful in front of our kids. It's really not in a grope sexual manner. It's playful and hey, I love you. Exactly. What a 15-year-old... Here's an example. It's going to be a little bit unique, okay? So, and I'm probably making a leap here,

but here's the example. I was a dean of students at a small faith-based university for a few years. And one of the rules they had for somebody in my position was no drinking alcohol. Now, I really pushed back on that because it wasn't, it's not scriptural. I mean, it was just this tradition and it was just this. And a senior leader gave me, and again, I was a young, loud mouth kid. And a senior leader gave me a new perspective on adolescent development that I hadn't fully come across yet. And it was,

it checks out with the science, it checks checks out everything. Here's what he said. He said, you want to model responsible drinking and modeling happens in a context, right? But when a student walks by and sees you having a glass of wine, what that student, that 18-year-old says is, he drinks so I can drink. It gives permission. And now that glass of wine or my one beer turns into an 18-pack for them because we're both drinking.

Now when you're 24, 21, 23, you can say, oh, that guy has wine with dinner. But when you're younger, the math doesn't work as it does for adults. Okay. And so I want my kids to see me and their mom be super affectionate all the time. I also want to leave some things to the imagination. Okay. I hope they don't imagine this. Well, so that when your 15-year-old gets in a situation, there's not a playbook already there. He doesn't think it's normal to behave the way

a married couple does. I understand. But, but, but, but you're doing this out of a context of a quarter century married relationship. He will not.

Yeah. Okay. He'll know affection is affection is affection and this is what fun, this is what laughter, this is what silliness looks like. Yeah. See what I'm saying? and if he's got a really great roadmap for um affection for hugs for how's your day for i love you for kisses that's one thing if he has a roadmap a visual

roadmap of affection looks like when her back is turned you slide up behind her and put both hands on your breast and you kiss her on the neck. He's going to do that to a 17-year-old who was not consenting to that. It's going to be a mess. Does that make sense? Because affection is affection is affection when you're 16, when you're 19, when you're 21, right?

And I'm overly simplifying it here. And I know that there's going to be nerds everywhere like, ah, I'm oversimplifying here. But it goes back to, um, I want them to have, uh, the context. I want them to have some images in their head, but I want to keep some things to their imagination. Okay. And I don't need to sit them down and say, we've been a bad example in this. I don't think you've been a bad example.

I don't think you're a bad parent. I don't think you're a terrible person. I think you're. Oh yeah. But I make think you're a terrible person. I think you're... Oh, yeah, but I make mistakes. We all do. I do make mistakes. We all do. And I'm willing to repent and tell my kids,

sorry, I messed up here. We'll get you therapy. Yeah, well, they may call. They may call one day for therapy. No, I think it's more, if anybody ever asks, just be like, yeah, we were super gropey and we realized that we should keep some things out of your rods and cones because it'll melt your retinas.

And you can laugh it off, but I don't think this is a sit down and have a big long luxury conversation. Okay. I do want you and your husband to continue to be intentionally affectionate in front of your kids. Okay. That is a great gift you can give them. But with swimsuit. That in my house, I wouldn't say in my house,

but that's what I would teach for anybody anywhere. Okay. Is keep swimsuit parts for behind closed doors. Okay. And just because your kid's old enough to handle it, right? Like if your 18-year-old walks in, they still don't want to see that.

You know what I mean? It's not helping them to see that. So hopefully that you're a great mom and you're a great wife and it sounds like your husband's a great guy. Is he awesome? Yes. The best in the world.

That's so good. He's in the top of the top. Awesome. He's absolutely fantastic. Well, tell him he can fill you up all he wants. Just do it behind closed doors. Okay. I'm good.

That's fantastic. Hey, it's been an honor talking to you. Y'all are on the right track. And I know this is a question that comes up all the time because there's a continuum here. So I appreciate you being bold and asking it. Do not walk away from this conversation thinking you're a bad mom. You're not.

Thinking you screwed your kids up. You haven't. Have you made things awkward? Yes. Is Christmas going to be hilarious 10 years from now when they start bringing up some stuff that they saw? No question about it. I can't wait.

But you're a good mom and he's a good dad and y'all are making it right as you go. Thanks for the call. Thanks for the call. We'll be right back. Hey, good folks. Let's talk about hallow. All right. I say this all the time. It's important to get away for times of prayer and meditation by yourself with no one else around. But one thing you might not think about though, is maintaining a sense of community when you pray or meditate. And this is especially if you don't consider yourself religious, if you question things, or if you've been burned by a church experience in the past, it's hard to want to get together with other people. And that's another reason why I love Hallow. You can personalize your prayer experience with Hallow

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of the app when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. Go right now and change your life. All right, we're back. Let's go out to Monroe, Georgia and talk to Zach. What's up, Zach? Hey, how are you doing today, Dr. Deloney? I'm good, brother. How are you, man? I'm doing all right, man. I had a question about my son. He's going to be turning seven next month. Excellent. I also have a five-year-old daughter. It's kind of about toughness. I don't want to not be empathetic towards him, but it seems like every little thing that could potentially be hurting him, it scares him, and he wants to cry about it.

The other day we were playing basketball with my daughter and him and my daughter got hit in the face, didn't cry or anything. He's like, man, I would have cried if that would have happened to me. And I'm just, I don't want to like nullify his feelings, but I don't want to say that they're okay as well. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Yeah. Can I just tell you, I appreciate you asking this question because it sounds like you really want to do this one right.

Yes, sir. Did you have a male role model in your life that hit the pendulum one way or the other? I did. My father's great. I mean, he just, I don't really remember ever being like scared of anything uh like physically like throwing the baseball like i was never had a problem being scared playing football like i was always very physical okay is this also hard because your daughter's five now and she's starting to you're starting

to notice a toughness difference in them it could be it could be all me you know no i don't think i don't think so at all i don't think so at all i think your question's good and i think it's from a good place and i think the temptation is to holler and scream at our sons, right? And tell them to suck it up and get over it. And you and I both know grown men who can't seem to do hard things. Right. And they still live with their moms and they still like get sad when someone has a different idea than them, right?

And they can't cope. So I get that, oh no, am I screwing my kid up? Or is there something wrong with my kid? Or does he need some tough love? Like those are all legitimate parenting questions. So I'm glad that you asked that, man. All right, so I want you to interrupt me at any moment, okay? Because I'm going to kind of go on a kind of teach through this.

Is that cool? Yeah, absolutely. All right. Some of this is going to be hard to hear. of this is going to be like oh, thank god And then some of this is going to be stuff that maybe you've never heard before. Okay Kids, um in the same way some kids are tall some kids are short. Some kids are stocky. Some kids are just real thin Kids are born with different levels of sensitivity And I don't mean sensitivity in the,

oh, that's a pretty butterfly or let's stomp the butterfly. I'm talking about impact, right? Like certain things hurt them more than they hurt other people. And when we try to flatten it out, is my kid as tough as your kid? It's kind of like asking, why isn't my kid as tall as your kid it's kind of like asking is my kid is why isn't my kid as tall as your kid i'm gonna make my kid taller so some of that sensitivity is just a part

of is their their makeup okay the question is what do we do with it and i've heard some great um evolutionary psychology answers like there's like it was always good for a tribe to have a couple of people in the tribe, you know, 10,000, 20,000 million years ago that was able to feel things a little bit different. That's where art comes from. Artists, that's where people who express themselves, people who are able to intuit things, right? The tribe needed that. So I've read that. Of course, there's no proof, but it sounds good, right? Here's the deal Kids will learn how their sensitivity works in the world

Okay, so here's what's important to know about a kid by not attending to him when he gets hurt or when he thinks he's hurt What he doesn't learn is he doesn't learn toughness. He learns, so you're not making him stronger. If you're like, suck it up or quit crying, you're not making him stronger. You're not making him tougher. What you're doing to him is teaching him to disassociate from himself. He unplugs from himself, okay?

And we transpose adult feelings onto kids. As adults, we need to be tough. Like this sucks, this hurts, and I've got to go get this thing done because my family needs to eat, right? Right. And we drop that on our sons or our daughters when they're really little. They're very different things, but we want it to be flattened out. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So what toughness looks like in a kid is actually a child's body realizing you are all on your own when things hurt.

I think there's a strong difference between coddling and attending. Here's coddling. Your kid gets hurt. He gets hit in the face with a basketball and y'all are in the middle of playing and you're like, oh my gosh, he's serious. And he's just crying and crying and crying. Coddling is sitting down and taking a knee and look at him in the eye and saying, oh buddy, are you okay? And he goes, I hurt my face. And you say, I'm so sorry. Go inside and get some ice cream. You are done for the day. Go

get your iPad and go sit on the couch. And just, right, you are now in control of your life. Coddling is, I don't want you to ever have a hard or scary feeling. All right. Attending is, your kid gets smashed in the face of the basketball. He starts crying. You don't think it hurt that bad, but here we are. And you take a knee and you say, buddy, let me see. And then you look him in the eye through his tears and you take your thumb and you wipe one of those tears and you say, buddy, I'm so sorry. That looked like that hurt. He says, yeah, it hurt really bad and say, can I have a hug real quick? And he gives a hug. And then you say, all right, buddy, head over to the sideline here. We're with you. We're going to keep playing.

And the moment you're ready to come back in, we can't wait because this game doesn't work well without you. Okay. One of those is I see your pain. I trust you. If you say it hurts, it hurts. And we have other things that we need to keep doing. Okay. A lot of times the kids will get, quote-unquote hurt before chores or before hard things

Right or before getting ready to go to church or whatever in the morning The temptation is just to blow it all off. All right. Well forget your chores. I'll do them just go sit down That's coddling attending is i'm so sorry Take the time you need to get ready when you're done Then you're going to get your room done. Okay. So that they're learning, yep, pain is real and it hurts, and then there's stuff to do on the back end of that.

Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. So what do you do, like, in your basketball example, you go to the sideline, what if they never want to come back because they're too scared to get hurt again? I'm not going to force them in that at the age of six or seven. Not when it comes to a game. Okay. I'm going to listen to that little body.

And it may be that your kid is not going to be a basketball guy. And I think that's okay. I think that's okay. Right. You may have to be somebody who changes their picture of what their relationship with their son was going to look like Right, my dad. Um, I think i've talked about here. My dad did one of the most masterful parenting jobs i've ever seen I played varsity football in texas and it's just like friday night lights. It's real right probably similar george. It's it's crazy Thousands of people came to my games and I played on varsity for two years.

My dad was wearing my letter jacket around town. I mean, he had his own, it was a jersey or whatever. It was a whole thing. My brother, my little brother, went to college on a cello scholarship. And I remember being really arrogant in 11th grade or 12th grade thinking,

man, I hate it for my little brother that he has to follow like a big varsity athlete running his mouth, you know, all this stuff. My dad, I remember coming home from college one Christmas and my dad was going to a hall. We were all going to the concert, the orchestra concert. And my dad was talking trash. He's like, you can't believe how amazing your brother is, dude. He's so amazing. Like he is so much better musician than you. And I was like, no, I'm pretty good too. Right.

But my, my dad was all in. And so here's the thing about toughness. Let's separate toughness from outcome. My brother's every bit as tough as me. You know what my brother could do from a toughness? He could sit and study his music for hours and practice until he got something right. I could run real fast and lift weights and get hit real hard and then get back up. Those are both acts of toughness. They're just in different arenas. Right. And so what we're going to do is we're going to acknowledge pain, and then the toughness comes from, and then we got a job to do.

And I'm going to hold that pretty loosely with a seven-year-old. It might take all day for him to go do the chores that he needs to do. Might take all day. Okay. And it might cut into, we were going to watch a movie tonight, but we're not gonna do that because you gotta get your room done he's gonna learn right okay there's things we got to do but i'd never want to sacrifice that for the sake of um creating a relational fracture with my kid

right especially around basketball now let me ask you one quick question on the side here. Is paying away he gets connection from dad? What exactly do you mean by that? In my experience, this is a select group, so I don't want this to be a blanket statement for all parents to be like, I knew it. But if the only time he gets hugs from don't want this to be a blanket statement for all parents to be like, I knew it. But if the only time he gets hugs from dad or gets dad to take a knee or gets dad to stop this flurry of activity just to look him in the eyes is when he's hurting? No, I don't believe that that is the case.

I feel like I'm a very involved father. I do everything with him. I take him to bed every single night. I I mean, I do everything with them. Okay. You know, I take them to bed every single night. I tell them that I'm proud of them. Awesome. You know, we do our nighttime prayers together every night. Dude, you're a great dad, dude. That's awesome.

So I tried, I heard it on a podcast somewhere to tell them that you're proud of them every night. Quit listening to that podcast. That's awesome. I think here I want you to recontextualize toughness. Toughness is doing hard things even when we don't think we

can or we don't want to. Okay. It doesn't have to be on a basketball court. One last question on the side does he watch you or your your wife not do hard things when it's time is he responding to how he's learned how to respond to pain from you guys I don't think so because I mean we both we both get our our just our jobs done you know whatever is needing to be

done. You know, that's one thing that I do tell him. I said, you know, and I don't know, my wife thinks I talked to him like he's older than what he is. Uh, I have been, uh, talked to about that, but like the other day we were just doing like a simple, like we were just doing like a little workout. And it wasn't even that. It was just like a polymetric workout. Just jumps, basically. And his mother had moved his chair that he was using upstairs. So I was like, well, just use the bottom stair and get it done. He's like,

well, that's like three inches further. That's so much harder. And I was like, well, it may be a little harder, but you can get it done. It's not the end of the world. And he was like, well, I'm just not going to do it. And I said, well, if you quit now, you're going to start a precedence of quitting all the time whenever something gets hard. And she was like, you're being too hard on him. He's too young for that. That's just one example. I think in that situation, I would probably do two things. Number one, I would move mine three inches too.

Okay. And so I'm going to always go first, especially with a young son. He's watching everything his daddy's doing. I'm going to go first. And so, yep, we're going to up it a little bit. It's going to be hard for me, and I bet I can do it, and it's going to be hard for you, and I bet you can do it. The second one is, if he's six and he says,

I don't want to do this workout, I'm going to make sure I knock it out. Right. And that's what, that's what we did. And eventually, uh, I, I, I told him, you know, you don't want to start quitting things because once you quit things, it's easier to quit something every time you quit something. Right. And, um, and eventually he did go back and do it on his own. Awesome. I didn't force him to do it. And I praised him for that. It's because, well, here's what you want to be careful of.

You don't want him learning that he has to achieve a thing for dad. Dad's going to hold it until he achieves a thing. Right. Right. for dad dad's gonna hold it until he achieves a thing right right we do want to reinforce it but my guess is he went back because he watched his dad do it okay not because his dad was like if you do this now you're always going to be a quitter he's six man he's not or he's eight or he's not always gonna be a quitter right he needs to learn what it feels like to be on a team with somebody and then say, I'm not going to do it.

And the teammate goes forward and does it. Right. For most of us, that'll haunt us. Right. And I want him to feel that. I want him to feel it. And he's not going to lose my relationship over that.

No way. Not at this, not at this age. Absolutely. But, um, I'm not going to create a fracture in that relationship over that. No way. Not at this age. Absolutely. But I'm not going to create a fracture in that relationship over something that small. And I watch it on literally,

I mean, just dads sacrificing their relationship with their sons over a performance issue, over how fast somebody ran, over how, I mean, just silly stuff. It's a game, right? And so I do love that you're inviting them down to game, right? And so I do love that you're inviting him down to work out with you.

And I do love that you're modeling how hard the work is. And I do love that you're inviting him into it. Let's both, let's hold, both of you hold the performance standard of it pretty loosely. Right. Because he's going to come around. He's going to watch his dad and he's going to watch his dad and he's going to watch come around. He's going to watch his dad

and he's going to watch his dad and he's going to watch his dad and he's going to watch his dad. And I think that's, I think that's a, the modeling is the most important thing here. And like you said, if that three inches gets,

on the box jump gets scary, cool, I'm going to add three to mine. I'm not doing that. All right, I'm going to, I'm going to show you how even when it's hard and we're going to go, like as Nick Barr says, we're going to go one more. We're going to add three to mine. I'm not doing that. All right. I'm going to show you how even when it's hard and we're going to go like, as Nick Barr says, we're going to go one more. We're going to do hard.

Cool. We can do that. Right. But we're going to model that. All I have to say is you're a good dad, man. Know the difference between coddling and attending. Know the difference between toughness across different arenas. And toughness just looks different.

And it has a very singular definition sometimes that I just reject. Toughness is doing hard things when I don't want to. I don't feel like doing it. And that can be across any number of things. Over time, he's going to watch his dad. He's going to watch his mom. And he's going to learn this is what hardworking, tough, get it done adults look like. And here's

what compassionate, loving adults look like in the same body. That's going to be the best predictor of what he ends up doing long-term. Not dad being like, do the workout, right? But all I have to say is he's lucky, lucky, lucky to have you as a dad. You are on the right path, my brother. Every kid's got to find their path. They got to be people of character, and they got to work really hard, and they got to be tough. Sometimes it's with a cello, and sometimes it's with a football,

and sometimes it's with a math textbook, and sometimes it's in the military. Hold the picture really loosely. Go raise tough, disciplined, caring kids. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves.

I have been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself, and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves.

If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost.

Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Diloni to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Diloni. All right, let's go up to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and talk to Kate. What's up, Kate? Hey, thanks for taking my call today. Of course, thanks for calling. What's happening?

I guess my question is, for today, I'll maybe just start with a question so I don't go off on a rabbit trail. I love rabbit trails. It'll be good. What's up? Um, I, we kind of, well, I had a bit of like an acute situation that happened with my husband. He had a medical emergency and since then I've been having a lot of anxiety, um, panic attacks a little bit. Um, a little bit of a panic attack? Oh, that's so good. Perhaps.

Perhaps a little bit of a panic attack. Perhaps a little bit of my body screaming, we're going to die. I don't want to diagnose myself, so to speak. But I'm just wondering if I need to give it maybe some time for the situation to have passed. But it's a little bit further behind me before being like, yeah, you know what? Maybe I do need to go talk with someone.

What was the medical emergency? So we were at church in between our services. And we were sitting down just talking with a friend of mine. And all of a sudden, my husband says to me something's wrong and I look over and that was the last he remembers and he started seizing. Seizing, yeah. Five minutes of a seizure? Yeah. That's a good one.

He'd never had them before. He's a good one. And he'd never had them before. I mean, he's late 30s, kind of abnormal, but I'm a nurse by background, so I've seen them before. But at that point, I put on my nursing hat. There was other nurses there, thankfully, at my church that I'm friends with. So there was a ton of hands to help and got him down to the floor, made sure he was safe. He started going blue at that point, stopped breathing, had a hard time finding his pulse. We were able to find it and then just waited for him to finally come to, which took a bit longer after all of that. So yeah, he's good right now. We're trying to pursue figuring out what happened, but the biggest thing is we don't know what happened and yeah. And the, you know this from your medical training and just what y'all are going through, the spelunking adventure it is trying to figure out the cause of a seizure can be maddening. Yeah.

Both expense wise, both it's when you peel back the curtain with certain, and I say this as, as somebody who's just in utter awe of neurologists, practitioners of the brain. And I am so in awe. And also, they don't really know. You know what I mean? Yeah. And thankfully, we were able to get a consult in with that specialty and an MRI. And most things were ruled out in his head, thankfully, because that was kind of my concern from the start. But we're now looking into things with his heart and trying to figure

out what that is. But the weeks after that, I found myself like waking up in the night, seeing if he's breathing. Right. Okay. So I want to relieve you of a lot and then I'll give you a couple of things I want you to do. Okay. And some of this is going to be annoying. Is that okay? That's fine. Your body is working perfectly. Kudos to you. You love somebody to the point that they have become part of you. Y'all are one. And in a blink of an eye, it looked like all that was going to go away. And y'all still don't know why. And so your body walking around clenched, waiting for a shoe to drop because one did is completely normal.

And my fear is in this situation that you're going to start having anxiety about having a panic attack. Right? Am I onto it? Yeah, there's been some of that. The hardest part's been, it's been the worst of it. Like the nighttime stuff has gotten better,

but anytime going back to church is once again irrational. All right. Well, hey, that was going to be one of my homework assignments. Here's what I would love you to do. I would love you to get with the church and your husband and go at a time when there's nobody there and y'all hold hands and you walk back into that building and sit back in those same seats. And we actually have, shockingly. Good. It's been a few weeks now, and the first time was really hard.

Yeah. Because your body put a GPS pin in that environment and said, this environment's where somebody I love dies. Or more importantly, this is where somebody I love is in pain and I can't do a freaking thing about it. And that powerlessness feeling is overwhelming. And by going back in there and going back in there and going back in there, another part of this that we don't talk about very much is this happened in

front of a whole bunch of other people. So whether you want to like have processed or not, there's an embarrassment part to this, right? Well, thankfully I feel like for the most part, I don't know my nursing background with it. I was kind of like, eh, it happens. And that's the hard part where I'm just like, okay, well I've seen this before and it's, it's okay. It happens. It just feels different. Yeah. But it happened to a whole bunch of people that you know. And here's the hard part where I'm just like, okay, well, I've seen this before and it's okay. It happens. It just feels different. Yeah, but it happened to a whole bunch of people that you know. And here's the other thing about your nursing background. Your nursing background, your bell curve has shifted. All day, every day, you see people who woke up not wanting to see you.

They see you because they have to, because their bodies are hurting, they're in pain, they're ill, they're falling apart, whatever's going on. And so you see a select part of society every single day. And it's very easy to begin to transpose that, to lay it on all of all of us right yeah and that gets real scary my dad was a homicide detective and he used to like all he ever dealt with was the things that never happen nobody gets murdered by their boyfriend that's super. Except in my dad's world, it happens every day. And so, when my sister wants to go on a date, he's like,

wait a minute, where's the hatchet? And it's like, there's no hatchet, dude. Right? And so for you, it's like medical emergency, the lights, the sirens.

You know what this could mean. Because you've been in the rooms when the doctors called it, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, it doesn't usually happen. And it didn't happen here. Fair? True. True. All right. So what's your, what's your, what, what is, when you're anxious and it's nighttime, what's the story your body's trying to protect you from?

I think the fear of it happening again and not having him. Yeah. I know it's healthy to love someone and to worry for them in a way, you know, and to want them there. That's normal. And I think I'm trying to balance where the normal is versus being like, no, this is taking too much in the sense of worrying to the point of not wanting to engage or to want to turn off. When did this happen? A little over a month ago. Okay. Give yourself 60 days.

Okay. Give yourself 60 days. Okay. And I want you all to start doing something called SOS, skin-on-skin contact, four times a day. When you wake up in the morning first thing, you can hold hands, you can touch bare feet. It doesn't have to be sexual at all. Right before you go to work, I want you to hold him. I want you to put your hand on the back of his neck and feel his skin,, I want you to hold him. I want you to put your hand

on the back of his neck and feel his skin. And I want him to do the same thing to you. And then right when he gets home and then right before bed, do it for 15 to 30 seconds and it will be weird and it will be oddly intimate. Okay. But here's what we're doing. We're grounding your nervous system. You almost lost him, but you didn't And your body is now busy. Uh, bernie brown calls it dress rehearsing tragedy It now got to peer over the side and for just a quick second Glimpse at a life where he's not with you and you don't your body can't even imagine that life Because you're everything to him and he's everything to you the way it should be.

And so what we have to do is we have to teach our body that he wasn't okay, but he is now. And we're going to figure it out. We're going to keep plugging along. He wasn't safe then, but he's safe now. And there is no dress rehearsing tragedy there's no way to hedge you can't practice you can't tense yourself up in anticipation of something bad happening to the person that you love because when that actually happens there's no amount of preparation that can prepare you for it yeah right what i don't want to have happen here is you end up clenching up so tight and holding everything so tight that you miss the beauty that is your relationship it's love right so we're gonna do is teach our body that we can

open our hands again yeah that makes a lot of sense is Is that fair? Yeah. And you're not crazy. God, he won the lottery with you. A nurse who also loves him. That's amazing. And who's not embarrassed when he's having a seizure in front of all of your family and friends. That's even better. He seems pretty calm about it. I mean, he had a good sense of humor. The Sunday after he was like, we should go ask the pastor if we're living in sin, because if you think I died, are the vows still there? I'm like,

not funny, not funny at all. I like this guy. I don't believe in too soon. I just don't believe in it. Good for him. Good for him. My family certainly does.

And my friends do. It might be a helpful exercise to go out together, go for a long meandering breakfast, and say the things out loud to him. Say, hey, I just need to say this out loud. I almost lost you. I almost felt like I lost you, and it scared me to death, and I hated it.

No dying. And he'll laugh. Sounds like he lost you and it scared me to death and i hated it no dying and he'll laugh sounds like he'll laugh and go okay sure all right and a hundred percent chance both of you are gonna pass at some point and hopefully it's a long long long time from now yeah but i think you trying to hold it all in and hold it together and be the rock so that he can Get well and have his seizures and be safe and all I man. It's too much to carry You do that for a living when you come home you got to be able to set that crap down and just be Yeah, is that fair? Yeah, okay, you're not broken. You're doing pretty good.

Thanks. Some of this you can't control. And chasing down, man, chasing down seizures sometimes. Sometimes it's just cut and dry. It's easy. And sometimes it is just frustrating. And then I've had several folks that I've been with, walked with it. They never found out. It just felt like a one-time thing

or it was dehydration or I mean, they're just saying, I don't know what it is. Who knows? And hopefully, that's what that was. It was a one-time deal.

And hopefully, I'll get some answers. Yeah. But, but you're, you're doing all right. Hang on the line, Kate.

I'm going to send you Building a Non-anxious life. We'll mail it up to you there in Canada. This isn't going to help like in the acute phase. But over time, it'll give you some context for you and your husband to just begin to say, okay, now that we've been to the edge and looked over, hey, you're not allowed to ever do that again ever, knowing that that's more just a fun thing to say.

There's no reality to it. And broader, all right, do we have everything in place? Do we have a will? Do we owe a bunch of people a bunch of money? Do we have other relationships that I can call on in the middle of the night when I'm sad, when I'm lonely, when I'm whatever? Let's be honest about those things, and let's plan for it. This comes for us all.

And in the meantime, give yourself some grace, Kate. Man, he's lucky to have me. Awesome. Stay with us. We've got some social media conversations coming up next. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out

or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com. All right, we're back and we're gonna start a new end of show segment here.

Talking about kind of putting some 3D imagery to some of these social media posts. So if you follow me on social media, I only know how Instagram works. I don't even know how the other ones work. And I'll post things, often show clips, but also often just black text posts in a little box or notes to myself that I write in my notes app. And almost always they're notes to myself that I write in my notes app. And almost always they're notes to myself.

And it's easy to read some of these sometimes and think I'm lecturing the world 99% of the time. Occasionally I am, but most of the time I'm talking to me and I just put it out into the world. And it's wild how it hits all different people in different ways. But we thought that for some of these that have gotten, been controversial or have spun up and just kind of taken on a life of their own,

that we might explain them a little bit. So Kelly, you went through these and pulled some of these out here. Go for it. We don't call our cars broken when they're out of gas. They just need to be filled up. We don't call our phones worthless when they're out of battery. They just need to be plugged in. Same goes't call our phones worthless when they're out of battery. They just need to be plugged in. Same goes for you and me.

We are not broken. We are not worthless. You're worth healing. You're worth rest. Yeah, that was a note to myself, man. I remember being pretty frustrated. I had quit a workout halfway through it. I had snapped at one of my kids. I had snapped at one of my kids.

I was late getting one of my kids to school and it just drives, it's my son and he drives him crazy. He's like, dad, will you please be on time? I just done several things right in a row and I was really getting angry with myself. Like what's like in that really, I can just be ugly to myself when I talk to myself, but why are you like this?

What's the matter with you? What's wrong with you? And it was on the heels of some really intense work stuff. And I'd let some things go. Like I hadn't been eating right. I hadn't been sleeping. My wife and I weren't connecting. It was just a series of things. And I thought, man, there's nothing wrong with me. I've run my car out of gas. I haven't plugged my phone in. And the car and the phone in this analogy is me. I haven't taken care of myself. And so, of course, things start to slip around the edges.

And fixing the things around the edges, like being on time, being a person of character, treating the people that you love well, finishing your workouts like you promised yourself you would, those things, you don't heal those by yelling and screaming at you, by announcing finishing your workouts like you promised yourself you would. Those things, you don't heal those by yelling and screaming at you, by announcing that you're broken or getting a five-step plan to crush your goal. That's not how you fix that stuff. Sometimes it's as simple as just plugging the phone back in, putting gas in the car.

And we don't yell at the car when it's out of gas. It's got a gauge on it. It tells us. And we don't yell at our phone when it runs out of battery unless it's like two years old and then apple has hit the screw you button and then it runs out on purpose then we yell at the phone but that's a whole other story but i guess it was just the post is about compassion be compassionate with yourself and before you beat yourself up and go on any tirades about what a loser you are i can't believe i did this again i can't believe I'm struggling with this addiction again. I can't believe back out. Just ask yourself,

where do I need to plug in? What are the things I need to do to be well so that I can go do these hard things? Really? Yeah. Just about being self-compassionate, man. And, um, that's, it's still a demon I wrestle with, but I'm getting better. Slowly but surely. 2024 is the year I'm nice to myself. We will get there. Hey, appreciate you guys. Love you all.

Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Bye.