The Dr. John Delony Show - Everything Came Undone

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Countless people are struggling with anxiety, angst and stress. Despite the advancements in safety, communication, and technology, people are lonely, exhausted, and angry. Here's the good news: Anxiety doesn't have to have the last word. The chaos, the feeling of being overwhelmed, and the anxious lives we've built can change. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, we'll walk through the six choices you have to make to find peace in the chaos. Enjoy listening to the first chapter in this special bonus episode. Pre-Order your book before October 2nd and get $75 in free bonus items. Visit JohnDelony.com to order now.

Hey guys, this is Kelly Daniel, producer of John's show. John did about 85 takes of this and couldn't get it right. So here I am to do it for him. Welcome to my world. Anyway, this is a bonus episode exclusively for listeners of the podcast. This is the first chapter of John's new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life.

It's called Cannonball, and it explains the anxiety-ridden world we live in and why we have to make a change. Building a non-anxious life is available for pre-order now at johndeloney.com. The book comes out on October 3rd, but order it now and you'll get $75 worth of free bonus items. You'll get instant access to Smoke, Fire, and Freedom, the talk that John recently did for a couple thousand business leaders. Trust me, I heard this talk and it was amazing and you want to hear it. You'll also get the Building a Non-Anxious Life ebook

and audio book, which as the producer of the audio book, I can say without a doubt, it's pretty incredible. So sit back and listen and take the next step to build a non-anxious life for yourself. It's not hard to fall when you float like a cannonball. Damien Rice, 2000. The first time I ever took a call on live radio was in front of millions and millions of people

on the second largest radio program in the country. And I had no experience in radio, zero. I didn't know how to speak concisely, how to come in and out of commercial breaks, any of it. I was totally exposed, like the bad dream where you're giving a presentation in high school and you look down and suddenly you realize you're not wearing any clothes. It was a call and advice show and I completely tanked my first call. I still remember freezing when the person asked me a comically

simple question. For the rest of the broadcast, I was a spastic mess. Sometimes my answers didn't make a lot of sense, and I developed weird vocal tics. One person called into the show to complain about me, saying I was like a worm on hot coals. I played the recorded complaint for my kids, and they thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard. But the train kept moving, and with some great coaching from Dave, James, and the production team, and some of my other colleagues, I started to get the hang of it. It was a lot like changing the oil in the car while the car is still flying down the highway. This was in the summer of 2020, and people were calling into the show about how anxious, worried, and burdened they were. Everyone seemed to be anxious. About COVID, about the lockdowns, about masks or no masks, shots or no shots,

social passports, and rising death tolls. About the countless jobs that evaporated overnight and losing their livelihood, their income, their sense of community, and in many cases, their basic dignity. And since millions and millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and have few, if any, relationships outside of work, people were anxious about their very existence. They were scared about their struggling kids, crumbling marriages, how to juggle a second job as a homeschool teacher, giving birth in the hospital all alone, or being unable to visit aging family members who were passing away. Millions and millions of people were told they weren't essential. Life was chaotic. The world was electric and crackling. And this wasn't a projection or an exaggeration. I felt it too,

in my own home. With no time for romance or connection, my wife and I quickly became co-managers of our house. I watched my kids get buried by Zoom school. And as someone who spent my entire pre-radio career studying and working with young people and their families, I was troubled by the disastrous effects this would have on their educational and social development. I was also dreadfully lonely myself. I could text and share memes, but I desperately missed my friends, and hugs, and punches on the arm, and laughing so hard I couldn't breathe, and in-person disagreements over hard life issues, and who was going to pay for the chips and salsa.

I was withering. I did get to know my neighbors. We had socially distanced cookouts, driveway hangouts, and we picked up groceries for each other. But underneath the pleasantries, and after all the pivoting that life required just to get through another week, my anxiety and depression alarms were ringing off the wall. Yours were ringing too.

Everything came undone. COVID didn't give us all anxiety. It poured gasoline on a growing fire that's been burning for years. Depending on what data you examine, anywhere from a quarter to half of the U.S. population reports their lives are affected by anxiety, stress, or burnout. Anxiety is everywhere. Before we go any further, I want to make sure we're using the same language. When I say anxiety, I'm talking about all of it.

Yes, I'm referring to clinical anxiety, phobias, and social anxiety. But I'm also talking about debilitating worry and fear and chronic stress and burnout and how our lives have been flooded with constant heightened levels of threats and chaos. Anxiety is no longer just a clinical term. It's now part of the cultural vernacular. It encompasses everything from panic attacks to feeling lonely, angry, scared,

or buzzing from the low level of home that something big and scary and unseen is coming our way. So for the sake of this book, instead of playing diagnostic word games, I'm going to call it all anxiety. And make no mistake, things are happening. Big changes are coming. Most of us are right to be scared sometimes.

The world will always be changing, both in massive leaps and in bumbling, crooked ways. But this is not why everyone is buzzing, anxious, and stressed. We're buzzing, anxious, and stressed because we've created a world our bodies cannot exist in. We weren't designed for digital yet physically distant relationships.

Our bodies can't handle the countless pressing emergencies and life tragedies, the onslaught of never-ending global trauma, and the incessant bells and clicks and dings of notifications, murder podcasts, online learning, and an artificial intelligence arms race all at the same time. We humans have never had to live in an endless sea of information, opportunity, mating choices, food, and mobility. It's a tsunami of both great and terrifying things. We just have so much everything. We're trying to stay alive on a concoction of cortisol and adrenaline and unearned dopamine. And as the great Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says, the body is keeping the score

of all of it. In this new world of everything all at once, we've missed the mark about how to respond. We don't know what the elusive, quote unquote, good life even looks like anymore. Consequently, the things we've been doing to reduce or resolve our anxiety aren't working. Instead of freeing us to thrive like we'd hoped, our efforts often aren't even keeping our heads above water.

We're putting Band-Aids over bullet holes. No wonder things feel like they're coming apart. Not the issue. One day while I was co-hosting the Ramsey show, a caller wanted to know how to get rid of his anxiety. He was scared and had a lot of things going on in his life, and he kept talking about himself like a broken machine that needed to be fixed. After listening to him for a while, I finally told him, Sir, with all due respect, anxiety is not the issue here.

During the commercial break, I took off my headphones and turned to Dave Ramsey, the co-host, and said, Everybody keeps asking about anxiety. Anxiety isn't the problem. Anxiety is just the alarm system letting people know that things are off the rails. People have created very anxious lives and their bodies are trying to get their attention. For years, I've been telling this to anyone who would listen,

students, counseling clients, colleagues, even myself. Anxiety is just a smoke alarm letting you know that something in your house is on fire. The alarm is not the problem. The fire is. Dave replied, you need to write that down. That's your first book right there. And so it was. In the summer of 2020, I wrote a 65-page quick read titled Redefining Anxiety. My friends called it a pamphlet. My mom called it a masterpiece. My young daughter simply laughed and said,

Dad, that's not a book. By the way, I'm learning in very real time that few people can humble you faster than a seven-year-old daughter with an opinion. Redefining Anxiety was a to-the-point look at what anxiety is and isn't and how to deal with it in both the short and long term. I wrote the book because people were hurting and I knew that yet another scientific treatise on this topic was not going to help anyone.

We all needed, especially me, a quick and simple understanding of the myths surrounding anxiety, the truths about anxiety, and ultimately how to get our lives back. Redefining Anxiety Took Off. The book touched a nerve and found its way into homes, purses, glove compartments, and classrooms across the country. I heard from counselors, psychologists, medical doctors, and business leaders who bought cases to hand out to their patients, clients, and employees. I heard from parents of teenagers, active duty military personnel, and senior citizens. Everyone seemed worried about what was happening to their minds, bodies, and families. And most people were grateful for a new paradigm, a new way of looking at anxiety and what they could do next. Here's the deal. I knew people were anxious. I knew because

I'm always nose down in the latest mental health research and because I have two decades of experience working with people in the messiest, most chaotic experiences of their lives. I'd also recently been traveling the country sitting behind closed doors with construction workers, moms and dads, university executives, business leaders, teachers, students, and multimillionaires. I was hearing it everywhere. The world felt like it was burning down around us. And for the first time in years, I was feeling that way again too. I clearly remember being buried by my own anxiety, unable to sleep despite increasing levels of exhaustion,

sharing a bed with a woman who loved me, yet still feeling completely alone. Paranoid that everyone's coming after me or it's all coming down, while feeling the shame and despair of, this is my fault and I can't do anything about it. I talk so often about anxiety because I see it everywhere. I see it in my friends, my family, and in the mirror. I hear from you and how much you're hurting. And I remember how anxiety burned scars through my family, and in the mirror. I hear from you and how much you're hurting. And I remember how anxiety burned scars through my marriage, my relationships with my kids, my work, and my

belief in myself. And here it was, coming back from the dead, like a horror movie villain. A different kind of book. So you and me, we're in this one together. I'm not talking at you. I'm walking with you. I left out all the counseling and psychology jargon and the endless theoretical propositions. Okay, all right, most of the jargon, not all of it. And personally, as a former academic nerd, I find great value in theories and ideas.

I believe they have their place in the world, but not here. They are great for contemplation and inquiry. I don't find them helpful when my friend is weeping or I'm sick to my stomach with fear and stress. What you're about to read is not yet another pop psychology piece or a work on how to be less anxious in the moment. My book, Redefining Anxiety, however, is geared towards helping someone who's experiencing anxiety or acute stress right now. This book is about exploring the foundation beneath the house. We're going to get to the root of the issue in a straightforward way. As the world has become increasingly complex and chaotic, our biggest worries are morphing.

I used to frequently get questions like, how do I help my son with his ADHD? Or can you help me and my husband get back that love and feeling? Now people are asking in quiet, wide-eyed existential fear. Will I ever be able to sleep through the night again? Has democracy run aground? How do I stay sane in a world gone mad? What hope can I offer my kids for their future?

Everyone is anxious. In the pages to come, I want us to address the root of concerns like these that have become such a part of everyday life. And I'll address hope. As you listen to this book, do not forget. This is a book about hope. Hear me say loud and clear, I am profoundly hopeful about what comes next in your life, in your relationships, and in our world. So if you're wanting information about diagnostics,

brain function and chemistry, or the bio-social-psychological mechanics of anxiety from brilliant researchers, scientists, and clinicians from all over the world, I invite you to take your pick of the few million books, articles, and podcasts out there covering everything from anxiety and diet to anxiety and grief, anxiety and health, anxiety and medicine,

and practically anything else you can imagine. But I found that explaining the interplay between cortisol and epinephrine is not helpful to the exhausted single mom of three who can't get her heart to stop beating out of her chest. An elegant discussion about the HPA axis, serotonin reuptake, and dopamine modulation, and an overactive amygdala is the least of worries for the over-the-road truck driver who misses his kids so much he can't breathe. Or for the nursing student who can't stop the hurricane of ruminating thoughts. Or for the man who finds himself yelling

at the driver ahead of him for going too slow, too fast, or too whatever. He's just mad. At the end of the day, though we're told the anxiety numbers are going up and up for everyone, everywhere, anxiety is not the problem for the vast majority of us. The fire that's setting off all the smoke alarms is the problem. And all our attempts to cobble together the right combination of podcasts, self-help books, prescription drugs, and bi-monthly counseling sessions in order to stay sane or to even simply stay alive, are not putting out the fires. We're trying to float like a cannonball. I'll say this directly because there's too much at stake.

What we're doing is not working. What will work is the real world scratching and clawing for truth and rediscovering the old roads taken by millions of weary travelers over centuries who, while moving from place to place, took their circumstances and created something a little bit better than what they inherited.

What will work is exploring the choices each of us can make day by day to create a more peaceful, joyful, and non-anxious life. Chips and queso. In all of this, I'm walking with you, not talking at you. I won't be lecturing you. I'm still figuring out some of these things myself. Think of this book as a conversation between you and me over chips and good queso. You and me figuring out the next right step, reimagining where we go from here and what our lives can look like if we stop ignoring the smoke alarms and start fighting the fire with honest questions like, why are my anxiety alarms

going off all the time? Why do I feel like I'm in an endless cycle of blame and anger and impatience? Where did my addiction to comfort and avoidance come from? Why are the people I love most melting down around me? I don't care who you are, what has happened to you, what you've done, or where you think your life is headed. It's never too late to change your relationships, your environment, your choices, or your life. And the change can begin right now. You are worth making changes. It's time to start solving for freedom. You will have to make choices both simple and deeply challenging, but those choices will allow you to build something enduring and new, a non-anxious life. By deciding every day to deal with your relationships, your personal

environment, your health and healing, your mindset and emotions, you can quit running. Stop fighting. Stop hiding. You can acknowledge the alarms, identify their origin, and believe it or not, turn and stare down anxious threats with the assurance that you're capable of responding in ways that will deliver a new kind of life for you, your family, your community, and beyond. We're talking about changing your family tree. We're aiming for a life that faces and accepts the pain and heartbreaks and grief, and yet finds joy and community and possibility and hope, regardless of what comes next. Are you in? Let's go.

So what y'all think of that? I personally think it was pretty awesome. Do yourself a favor and pre-order the book now at johndeloney.com. Remember, you won't receive it until October 3rd, but you will get $75 in free bonus items. I've already read this book a few times and I've started the hard work necessary to build a non-anxious life. I'm not gonna lie, it kind of sucks,

but I know it will be worth it because living with the alarms blaring all the time isn't working anymore. So join me on this journey and pick up your copy today. Thanks y'all.