The Dr. John Delony Show - Healing After a Traumatic Kidnapping

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

Today, we’re talking with a young woman whose boyfriend doesn’t know how to process her kidnapping and sexual assault, a mom who doesn’t know how to balance her career with her special-needs child, and a father struggling to help his young daughter cope after she lost a finger. Dealing with trauma after being kidnapped & sexually assaulted Struggling with my identity raising a special needs daughter How can I help my young daughter rebuild her confidence after recently losing her finger? Lyrics of the Day: "Surface Pressure" - Encanto Soundtrack Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Churchill Mortgage Greensbury Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq 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 to a woman who experienced profound trauma and she's worried about her boyfriend. We also talk to a woman with a special needs child who is worried about her career. We talk to a husband whose daughter experienced trauma and he wants to know how to help. Stay tuned. What up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. We talk about your mental health, your relationships, what's going on in your heart, in your mind, in your families, in your schools, in this country. So glad that you're with us. Quick note, if you're watching this on the tubes, on the internets, on the televisions,

you'll notice I'm slowly transitioning my entire wardrobe just to black dress shirts. This makes my life easier. And I used to just mostly have concert t-shirts, and they told me that I looked unprofessional. Not us. We loved them. Who told you that? Not you, America. My supervisor.

So, I'm trying to look more grown up, and evidently black makes me look dangerous and tough, and a lot. I don't look like I've gone outside very much in the last three or four years. My nickname in high school was Powder. Remember that show? You remember that?

Yeah. Black doesn't. It's cool. I feel tougher, and here's the thing. I don't want to make any more decisions, and so if I just have a closet full of black shirts, then it'd be good. I did that once when I was in my first working university and that show Bones came out. And I just got all the white dress shirts and all like cheap black suits.

And I just dress like that all the time. It's very Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs of you. Well, so I'm not going to be wearing black shirts anymore, everybody. Not going to be doing that because nope, I'm going to wear sparkly. I think we should go all tie-dye. I'm going all tie-dye. And no, I don't want to do tie-dye. Kelly's going to start setting the wardrobe.

So whatever I wear from this point forward is going to be because Kelly decided it. Let's go to Rose in my hometown, Nashville, Tennessee. What's up, Rose? Hi, Dr. John. Thanks for taking my call. Thanks for calling. What's in the world is going on? How can I help? I am a fairly new listener and I'm hoping to get your advice. Welcome to our gang. You almost doubled our listenership. That's so good. It's incredible. Yeah, me and a few others. So what's up?

I am 30 years old. I am in an amazing relationship. I have a boyfriend of nearly two years. We're very, very happy. Last year, I was the victim of a kidnapping, robbery, and sexual assault. Oh my God. I'm so sorry, Rose. Thank you. Is that here in town? It was out of town. So we moved afterwards and tried to make Nashville a new home. Yeah. So it's been a journey and I am very fortunate and grateful to have found an amazing counselor that has started helping me on my healing journey. Excellent. And I was wondering how I can encourage my boyfriend to seek counseling to help him process this trauma for himself. Yeah, that's hard, hard, hard. First off, if you're comfortable talking about it, kind of paint me in context.

What happened? Sure, sure. So I was a ride-share driver, and I picked up a passenger, and that passenger was really volatile. I didn't know and held me at gunpoint and just for, you know, throughout the evening just forced me into situations I was very traumatizing, very uncomfortable with. And thankfully, I consider it a miracle. I survived. I didn't have a scratch on me. I wasn't shot.

I wasn't shot. I wasn't beaten. I wasn't, um, like physically, um, harmed in any way other than, than the sexual assault, which was, you know, a big deal as well. Okay, good. I'm glad to hear you say that. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel very, very fortunate to be in a situation that I'm in and I have a great family that has been, you know, helpful. And I've found a counselor that's been fantastic for me. And so I feel like things are starting to move in a very positive direction. And I've been able to start that healing journey. Excellent. So what's your boyfriend going through? Yeah, I think he knows, you know, the gist of what happened.

I haven't been able to share in detail the story. And he's kind of asked that I don't share that with him until he feels ready. And I want to be respectful of that. But also know that, you know, this was a very big, you know, it was a very big situation for both of us. And he was the first person I called. And he was there on the scene with me as the police were coming. And, yeah, so he was very involved. His family was very involved with everything. Obviously, everyone went to the hospital with me and just felt so loved and supported.

And I'm so grateful for that. But also understanding that this was such a big impact to our relationship. Yeah. And knowing that, you know, that there's pain in the trauma. Is he showing signs of depression, anxiety, frustration, anger? I mean, is he demonstrating things or are you just proactively reaching out on his behalf? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So he does have depression. Um, like he's been clinically diagnosed with depression and he's kind of just asked that I take it slow in terms of, of sharing this experience and the details of what happened. And so, um, whenever it kind of comes up in conversation, um, he gets really depressed and kind of shuts down. And I can tell that there's hurt there. And he hasn't, you know, we briefly talked about him pursuing, you know, accounts, like seeking a counselor and seeking some advice. And he's just like, yeah, I'll get to it when I get to it. And knowing that, you know, in my experience of trauma,

the longer you let it sit, the bigger it grows. And so just wondered how I can, you know, lovingly encourage him, um, to, to seek help. Yeah, man, he's lucky to have you. And I'll say on behalf of a guy who's got a wife and a mother and a sister and a daughter. And he's just one of your neighbors. I'm so sorry that you know this, but I need to say it. That should never happen. And you're a brave, courageous person to go get the help you need. And I'm proud of you.

And I'm glad you're one of my neighbors now. I'm glad you're one of my neighbors now. I'm so glad you're with us. So I'm gonna paint some broad generalities here, okay? And if he's got existing diagnostics, I can't get into those, right? I'd have to talk to him. But broadly speaking, I've seen this play out multiple times. One of the most common things,

and I'll take it out of this area completely and put it in a different context, but the same general idea will apply. I've seen parents whose kid gets hurt somewhere, like in a sporting event or in a car wreck or something. And the parents are haunted by, I should have stopped this. I should have been there. That's my job. I got one job on the planet is to keep my kids safe. And I wasn't there for whatever reason. And 99.9% of the time, there would have been no reason to be there.

It would have been insane for you to be there. But that's where our heads go, right? And so using that example and swinging it back, if he's like most boyfriends rightly or wrongly there's this overly i've got my duty is to protect and like that kind of stuff right even though you you could possibly beat him up in a fist fight that's it's not about strength and muscles it's more about role and disposition and i been there. I should have kept her safe. I couldn't even, I can't even, right?

And there's these moments, these traumas, these tragedies that happen that make us feel so small and really throw the curtains back. Like, you know, it's like just ripping the covers off the bed. We don't have control of much of anything. We're flying blind in this deal,

right? The woman I love can be doing something as benign as taking somebody from IHOP over to a concert hall, and then this bad thing can happen to a net? You know what I mean? It makes us feel small and powerless. And some of us, when we feel small and powerless, we try to grab power everywhere we can, right? I'm going to join a CrossFit gym and crush it and kill it and listen to Pantera and Slayer, and this will never happen again. And then often the other happens. I just fold up and I can't, I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to hear it. I can't hear it. My body reacts, overreacts to the point it swamps my system. I can't do anything. So here's the powerless truth on your part is this,

you can't make him do anything. And that's for a woman who lost control, who is going to try to, I want you to watch this in yourself. You're going to have a tendency to grab control where you can have it because somebody stole it from you. Okay. And is that, am I, am I onto something with you? Totally. Okay. Calendar, this, you'd be on time, you'd be on like, you'll find yourself doing that. And one of, part of your trauma healing will be being able to, A, remember what happened, talk about it without your body re-experiencing it. That's the big one. But also you'll be able to contextualize it. A bad thing happened to me for little to no reason. And yet I'm going to go about my day and learn how to be graceful and learn how to roll my eyes,

learn how to laugh again, learn how to sleep again, right? To teach my body that it doesn't have to be on 24 seven. That thing happened. And statistically speaking, it's never going to happen again, but it did. And you hear what I'm saying? Right. That's part of the journey. You can't make him do that. And so here's what the, what I would suggest is one or two gifts you have. You're seeing somebody right now in, for mental health care. I would invite him. I would let him know, I really would like you to come to this with me. You don't have to say anything. You were a part of my life. I want you to be a part of my future.

And so I want you to be a part of my healing. Not make this about him, but this is about you because you're the only one that you can deal with. You're the only one that you can control. So invite him to this and I would let your therapist know, I want him to come.

I need to tell him this story as part of my healing. I need him to be a part of this with me and he's unable to hear it right now. And so I want him to be a part of this process. And what you'll hear is y'all will have to negotiate back and forth for a season. As part of my healing, I need you to tell you what, so you'll know, fully know me. And he's going to say a part of my healing as I need you to tell you what, so you'll know, fully know me. And he's going to say a part of my healing as I need you to be quiet. And you're going to have to navigate and negotiate that together as you move forward. Having a counselor do that with you is really helpful.

Not every relationship needs that. This one sounds like it does. Okay. And that's a good thing for you guys. Because what you're doing is you're learning a new language on how to have hard conversations with each other, how to be graceful with each other. And then both of you need to have that courage that you have right now. He needs to be courageous. And also you need to respect his boundaries and there goes the circle, right? What you don't want to have happen, which I see happen all the time in this situation is you guys start comparing trauma and you start comparing grief.

He's going to have something happen. He's going to get grief. He's going to have something happen. He's going to get COVID. He's going to lose a part-time job. He's going to have something and he's going to get down about it. And you're going to think, oh yeah, you want to know what bad is, right? And your body's going to turn him into the bad guy. Or you're going to start comparing grief. You're going to start thinking things like,

good God, I'm the one this happened to, and even I'm moving on. And he's going to be stuck in it. And he's going to be saying, I think you're psychotic. I think you're a robot. I think you've got problems. If you're already working on your healing, right? So you're going to start comparing grief.

You'll have to be really intentional about not doing that. Owning each other's grief and owning the fact that y'all are going to heal differently. And here's the kicker. Y'all both got to get up and make your bed. You both got to get up and go to work. You both got to get up and do things that are going to keep y'all well. Does that make sense? You both got to go back to church. You both got to do those things that are going to keep you well and healthy. And so I think that can start with him coming back to coming to therapy with you, not coming back, but going to it. And here's one other thing. You've heard me say this a million times

and I'll say it a million times more. I would love for y'all to, you can't have these conversations. Sometimes with someone who's struggling with depression, the conversation overwhelms the systems, but writing it doesn't. And if y'all kept a letters journal to each other that y'all share,

I'm gonna write what I'm feeling right now. I'm gonna hand it to you. You can read it on your own time, in your own place when you feel safe and you owe me something back. Even if it's, I can't even right now or this is so hard for me to even read. It overwhelms me.

I'm not gonna write anything back today. That's fine. Then we're still communicating and slowly but surely, you might not be able to speak in the same room with you and see you and remember back to the flashing lights and you in the hospital, but I can write it. And we're gonna slowly communicate back and forth that way.

And this journal may be 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 50 years from now, it'll be something your grandkids read. It'll be worth its weight in gold. Does that sound like something y'all can do? Yeah, that definitely sounds reasonable for us. I think that's fantastic. And I think those two things will get y'all down the road. There may come a moment where you say, I can't move forward with us. And this happened with

somebody close to me. I can't move forward unless we sit down and have this hard conversation. You tell me when, but it has to happen. It has to happen soon. Or I'm taking that as you choosing to not be in relationship with me. And if he can't hear about it, then, and you tell him, this is a part of being in relationship with me is processing this trauma together. Then he has to go get the help he needs so that he can have that conversation with you. Or by not getting help, he's choosing out of the relationship.

And that's going to be hard for everybody. Okay. Let's start with the first two first, with the journal and with inviting him to therapy with you, to your counseling, for your challenges, for your healing, not for his, for yours, and see if he'll be a part of that. We'll be right back. For too long, we've avoided the hard conversations about mental health, relationships, and the food we eat. And I don't want it to be true either, but it is. The quality and quantity of the food that we put into our body, it matters. And oftentimes, we're forced to decide between cheap food that's good for our budget or expensive food that's good for our family. But there's a company that solved the problem. Greensberry is a family owned meat provider working with farmers and fishermen all over

the country. They sell organic grass fed beef, free range poultry, pork, lamb, bison, and sustainable seafood. Their meat is less expensive than what I can get at the grocery store right down the street, and they deliver it to my door. Now listen, I'm a lunatic about meat quality, and this is the stuff I feed my family. So go to greensberry.com slash deloney, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase.

Check it out today. Your nutrition is worth it. Greensberry.com, that's G-R-E-E-N-S-B-U-R-Y.com. All right, we are back. Let's go to Mankato, Mankato, Minnesota, and talk to Chelsea. Did I say that right? Yes.

Mankato? Yes. Oh my gosh, I'm incredible. I should do this for a living. All right, so what's up? How can I help? Okay, so I'll just start with my question for you. My husband and I have a special needs daughter, and she's completely dependent. And I guess I've been struggling between wanting

personal accomplishments in a career and devoting myself to her. And I guess I'm just looking for some insight on how I can find a balance that's most beneficial for everyone in the family. That's tough, tough, tough, tough. What's the special need? She has kind of a multitude of different things. She has a really rare uh syndrome and in addition to that she's autistic she's non-verbal she has a feeding tube um

um yeah it's just kind of new since last year that she lost her hearing after meningitis. So there's a lot of different things that we have to do for her on a daily basis just to get her through the day. Yeah. This is a hard question. So tell me, say, I don't really want to talk about that. And that's, that's no problem. Um, what is her prognosis? Is this terminal? How long does she have? Um, it's, it's more of a mental or, um, psychological and neurological. Yeah. Um, so it's really unknown because there's really only about 20 people in the entire world that have her syndrome.

So there's just not very much science behind it as to where, you know, where her life is going to lead. And they all have a variability of, you know, disabilities and abilities. Okay. Man. So how old is she? She is eight. Okay. Man. So how old is she? She is eight. Eight. Do you,

do you struggle with guilt? Do you struggle with, we did this? I guess I, probably not guilt, but maybe a part of me hasn't fully accepted all of the things that she has to go through every day. And it seems like when she gets over one thing, it'll be another thing that adds on top of it.

And it's not something that I guess I feel guilt with, but I just didn't expect it, really. And so, you know, I'm just trying to arrange my life in a way that is conducive to everybody in the family. So you hit on something so important. And if you haven't done this yet, it would make you just like most every other parent in your situation I've ever talked to. But I think it's the cornerstone. And again, this isn't, I don't have any neuroscience to back this up

or anything like that. But I think this is the cornerstone to turn that corner and deciding what comes next. And you've heard me say this on the show, but grief is simply the gap between what I hoped for, what I wanted to happen, and what actually is happening. It's that picture that I thought was going to be when we found out we were pregnant and we found out I was going to be a little girl versus the reality at eight years old. here's this kid and all of her struggles and all of her pain and all of her hurts

and all of her frustrations. And I'll say it for you, I'm so pissed off and I'm so annoyed and I'm so frustrated and I'm exhausted and I miss my husband and I miss just kicking my feet up and watching TV and I miss random sex on a Saturday afternoon. I miss all those things because I've got, it's all of it, right?

And there's that gap that we never stop and grieve and sit in it. We just run to the next thing and run to the next thing. And what happens is we run for 8, 10, 15, 20 years on adrenaline and cortisol. And eventually our health takes a dive. Our relationships melt. As you mentioned, these dreams I had for myself, these career goals, these things I wanted to do, I just let it all kind of slowly drain out of the bathtub

because I never stopped to say, I wanted this, I had this picture, and then this is what I've got. And now what, right? Most of us won't do that because we feel like we're abandoning our kids or we're bad parents for saying, I wish you weren't wheelchair bound.

I wish that you could get up and run around and play. I wish I didn't have to do all this stuff because you have hearing impairment and you have vision impairment and you have an inability to eat. I wish that we feel like if we say that, that we're dishonoring our kid and we're not. If if we say that, that we're dishonoring our kid and we're not. If we don't say it, we're dishonoring our own bodies.

Okay. And so I think it's important to spend a moment, a season, some time in that gap. And that gap is hard. It hurts. It's brutal. Sometimes even saying it out loud will set off every mom alarm you have every in your husband joined every dad alarm you have um how is your marriage through this it's good um my so my daughter um she came into our marriage i had her before i married my husband okay Okay. And so he knew about her issues and things, obviously, before we got married. And he's really just kind of, he dived right in to help me out with everything. And pretty awesome guy, huh? Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Very cool. Very cool. So I would love to see y'all get together No kids, no nothing

Y'all have other kids together? We have a five-year-old son Okay, normal, just maniacal Bouncing off of things five-year-old? Yes That's fun So I would love to see y'all get together And do a marriage checkup

How are we? How are things? What do you miss? What do you not like? Often folks on either side of this equation, mom, dad, whoever, get really invested in accomplishing a bunch of tasks all day. And couples can accidentally find themselves as great co-managers of their household, but really distant from one another. So I'd love to see y'all go spend some time together and just say, where are we? Check up, how are things? We got another diagnosis.

We got another challenge and then we got meningitis on top of it and we thought we were gonna lose her and now she's lost her hearing. So now we have more challenges. Where are we? And then grieve together. And that might be grieving together

might be you writing a letter, him writing a letter and y'all reading it to each other. Here's what I wished. I wished this and it didn't happen. And then y'all can write that next one together. And I'm saying that one's more if you don't really have to write a letter together, but then y'all say what's next. And often, I'm glad you're not suffering from guilt. Often what I hear from parents of kids, especially, they feel guilty for wanting to go to work. They feel guilty for, well, I want my career. I feel guilty. wanting to go to work they feel guilty for well I want my career I feel guilt they feel I guess there is a little bit okay so you do have a little

bit of that I mean I left my career um I was a lab tech and it just wasn't working because she has to go to therapy and things and so it's like I don't, I had to have the flexibility. And so I almost felt like I was choosing between like having the income or the success or whatever I envisioned for myself. And I, it's like, I had to give that up. It sounds selfish, but. No, no, see, and that's, here's what I want you to be really weary of. And when you do some writing on this for yourself, when you start writing yourself letters, you start grieving this, you've got to be curious, not judgmental, okay? You have to say, huh, why do I get so mad when I think about the career I gave up?

Not, I shouldn't be mad about my career, right? I don't want you to start labeling morality to these thoughts you're having. They're just your thoughts, man. And they're a thousand percent valid. You're allowed to have those. It's gotta be, I can't imagine. I get frustrated when my kid's like four minutes late to a thing, right?

When they won't find their shoes. I can't imagine having to quit my career that I loved or that I wanted to go far in because, right? That is natural. It's normal. Hiding that and squashing that and trying to shut it down will eat your body from the inside out. And that brings me to this. If you choose, ultimately, after you sit down with your husband, y'all talk about what is and what's going to be. If y'all say this is the season that we're going to try some in-home care and I'm going to go back to work. Well, I am working.

Okay. I took a huge pay cut. Yeah. So I guess that's where I'm feeling it. So I want you to look at the math of this. Like if we have to get some in-home nursing care or some in-home nanny care or we have to ultimately send our daughter to a home because we don't have the resources or the skillset to care for her, then let's have that conversation. Let's have that hard conversation that will be brutal and gut-wrenching and all that,

but is this the reality of where we are? I would suggest you sound like someone who would really struggle if, no, she absolutely knows where she is. She knows who we are. She knows all that stuff. I just don't really want to deal with it. You sound like someone who will really struggle with that.

Is that fair? Yeah. I mean, it's constantly on my mind. Like, I'm not completely opposed to it. I've had to get used to the idea of it. Just the fact that maybe she's not going to be in our home when we're not able to take care of her anymore. But I've been trying to accept that, I guess.

Okay. Lean into that discomfort and lean into the discomfort of, I may need to get some help. Three days a week, I may need somebody else to help drive. And we are in a privileged financial position to be able to do that. Or we work really hard and save on other things so that we can make this happen. And that's going to give me some space in my marriage. It's going to give me some space with my five-year-old. It's going to give me some space in my professional career. But have the hard conversation. Most of the time in these situations, those conversations stay very hypothetical and one person sits on all of that until they implode. And then the house is just covered in contempt

and resentment and ash. I would love to see you have those conversations. Like, I really want to explore getting some help. Even if it's five hours a day for somebody to come in, skilled babysitter or something to come in and help. Or I want to have the conversation about a home. I want to have that conversation. If you ultimately get down the road and you say,

there's no way I'm leaving my special needs kid just so I can go sit in meetings all day. I'm not doing that. That's insane. Don't apologize for that either because I've heard that side too. Like, I feel like I should be back at work, but I actually like being here

and I had to give a lot up, right? So it's both and. I want to push on your one word though. You're probably not going to find balance. That's mostly a myth. It's not real. You will find what works for you in particular seasons.

You will never find an outfit that will work for 365 days a year Sometimes you have to put on a coat. Sometimes you have to Just wear a t-shirt. Sometimes you have to go inside because it's hot You'll never be able to find a system that will work forever And so letting that myth of quote-unquote balance go between work and home That's just not real What's real is in this season for the next 24 months,

I'm gonna double down and try to go back to work full time and make a jillion dollars. And I'm gonna try the skilled nursing thing if we can afford it. I'm gonna give that a shot in this season. And then if she has another medical setback and she needs her mom, then for this season,

I'm going to go back to part-time and I'm going to stay at home. And if you look at it seasonally, nobody says winter's broken when summer shows back up. Or nobody says summer's broken when winter shows up. It's just the cycle. It's just the way it goes. I want you to think of what's happening in y'all's world the same way. What is the next 24 months? Think in short-term cycles. What's the next 24 months? What's the next 36 months? What's the next year? What does that look like for us right now? And then what can I do right now to be successful in that area? And that might mean you got to say no to some stuff. That might mean that I'm going to spend

less time with her and push over to somebody else. I would lean towards that road and I would let the word balance, just let that go. It's a myth. It's a vapor. It's not real. And we kill ourselves trying to get it. We buy a bunch of stupid day planners with millions of ribbons in them

and all kinds, whatever. Let it go. Let it go. You're a good mom and that baby girl's lucky, lucky, lucky to have you. And it sounds like your job's lucky to have you too.

Go out with your husband. Y'all pick this thing apart. Spend some time in grief. Spend some time in the pain of, I wanted that. But this is, and then y'all can make some hardcore decisions about what comes next. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, October is the season for wearing costumes and masks. And if you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going as Brad Pitt in Fight Club era because, I mean, we pretty much have the same upper body, but whatever. All right, look, it's costume season. And let's be honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind costumes and masks

more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social setting. We do this around our families. We even do this with ourselves. We do this in social setting. We do this around our 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, 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 learn to be honest with yourself and you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic, direct 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 your schedule. You just fill out a short online survey and you get matched with a licensed therapist.

Plus, you can switch therapists 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 to the city that destroyed my childhood,

St. Louis, Missouri, and talk to Michael. Hey, Michael, what's going on? Hey, Dr. John, how are you? I was an Astros fan. I could never get out of the playoffs because you guys, Albert Pujol, y'all ruined my childhood. So I hope y'all are happy. You guys and the Braves. Hope that was fun for y'all ruined my childhood so i hope y'all are happy you guys in the braves

hope that was fun for y'all so what's up man um so a couple weeks ago my daughter had an unfortunate accident where she lost part of her finger oh no what happened uh she got it stuck in the spin bike um downstairs so they weren't able to yeah. So. Gosh, where is it? Which part did she lose? Like one knuckle, two knuckle? The top knuckle. Okay. That's part of it on her ring finger.

I'm so sorry. Is she okay? Yeah. She's doing fine physically. Okay. It's going to heal fine. She's going to have most of her mobility with it. But I'm more worried about her mental state than anything with it. Um, because, um, she's five and, um, you know, it's, it's hard for me to put myself in her shoes as how she's actually dealing with the, the, you know, the trauma. And, and so, you know, when we were in the ER,

we were honest with her. We kind of talked to her, kind of gave her what was happening. And I don't know how that resonated with her. And so, um, when we did the vaccine shots, she was very petrified of the getting the shot. You know, she built up this in her mind as far how scary the needle is, but she has a high pain tolerance. Like when she runs, she falls, she gets up. I mean, she wasn't like screaming because she lost her finger. It was when, um, she kind of built up that in her head of what was kind of going on. And so, um, what really kind of sparked me to kind of reach out to try to figure out, okay, how do I, how do I talk to her? How do I help her through that side was when we went to the follow-up appointment for them to look at it,

they took the bandages off. I mean, she was screaming her head off for, uh, with, without really any pain that you could tell. Cause I mean, they weren't even touching her hand. And so it's, and when we put the bandages on at home, um, it's a huge ordeal. It's a lot of pauses and breaks and stuff like this. It takes both my wife and I to, to do this. And that's like, we try to talk to her through it. Like,

Hey, we're just changing the band-aids. So I don't know what's going through her mind. And I think there's, there's anxiety there. And I just don't know how the five-year-old mind is thinking about it. And so what I should be doing and how to and how to relate and how to talk to her. You're a great dad, man.

She's lucky to have you. It's awesome. Thanks for the call. So from this point forward, I want you to get the idea that a five-year-old is thinking about things out of your mind. Okay? Okay. You and I, at our age, would be thinking things. She's five, and essentially she's responding.

So she remembers people around her body. Let's go there. Her body remembers that hospital, what happened. It goes in, those lights, that tile floor, those sounds, those beeps. Everything in her body screams, run, get out of here, because remember last time. And the last time mom and dad were huddled around her finger saying, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, and kids absorb our attention.

Here's a great example of this. It worked beautifully. It's one of the times me and my wife were on the same page. My son was outside running around. He was probably four maybe or five. And he tripped and dude, he face planted on a brick planter box outside, right on the corner, just drilled him right in the widow's peak. And if you've ever seen a picture of me, I look like Eddie Munster. I got a dope widow's peak. He nailed it and comes inside and you know, head wound, it was spurting blood everywhere. And I, he'd watched UFC fights with me. And so we had already talked about, he had a little bit of language, understanding that head wounds just bleed naturally. Cause

it's your body saying, Hey, watch out. This is important stuff up here. This is where the eyes in my brain are. Right? So he walks in, his head's got blood dripping on his head. And my wife and I both looked at him and without even saying anything, we both started cheering. We both went, yeah. And so he instantly stopped crying and kind of froze there for a minute. And I was like, dude, you got a head thing. And he's kind of like smiled and was like, ah, he was just confused because there's blood coming down his face. Right. And we went and looked and we wiped it away. And like most head wounds, it was a teeny tiny little thing, but it just bled profusely, right?

But both my wife and I, we knew kids absorb the adult energy in the room. And your daughter remembers when last time, when this thing actually kicked off and it hurt, I mean, that searing pain, and remember how scared and terrified mom and dad were. And every time y'all are going to do the Band-Aid thing, she can feel mom and dad tensing up for the fight. And that sets off, I'm not safe, not safe, not safe, and here we go again. Okay? So I want you to not think of her.

And I need to tell you, dude, I've made this mistake for years until I sat down with some child therapists, and I felt terrible. I felt awful, especially for my son. He got the brunt of it because he was younger. By the time my daughter came along, I had learned some new things. I would blame him for thinking things in his three-year-old brain or his six-year-old or seven-year-old brain, and take that out. So coming back, this will take some time for her to heal, and I would just say be patient. Be patient and not overwhelmed. This is going to happen, and she needs to understand

we've got to change these bandages. Here's a couple of things you can do when it comes to the bandage changing. Kids crave boundaries. They crave autonomy, and they crave safety. And those things don't often work together, right? Kids crave boundaries, they crave autonomy, and they crave safety. And those things don't often work together, right? Boundaries make a kid feel safe, but autonomy, I get to choose, that doesn't always align with, well, yeah, but you can't run down the street, right? Because you're going to get run over.

So here's a quick thing you can do. You can offer two things and let her choose them. Would you like this Band- bandaid or this one? And do you want to pull it off? You want dad to pull it off or do you want the puppy dog to pull it off? She gets to choose. We're still pulling that thing off, but let's give her a little bit of wiggle room in there. Have y'all tried that? I mean, we've done, we've given her the option of, hey, do you want mommy or daddy to do it? Okay? Do you want to sit on daddy's lap and those kinds of things? Sure. Cause that's, we've, we've gone down that path. So maybe pick which popsicle do you want? And I, man, we're dealing with some trauma here. And so I don't mind putting a popsicle up there or which music do you want to

listen to? Um, or when we get done with all of this, do you want to dance to this song or to this? Like whatever the things are that work for her and just know that those aren't going to be magic fixes. It's going to be kicking and screaming and clenching and mom and dad helping. And then mom and dad are going to instantly drop your shoulders and y'all are going to start cheering and you're going to grab a popsicle and all three of you are going to have one and you're going to celebrate a popsicle and all three of you are going to have one. And you're going to celebrate this thing together and we're going to go to bed. And dude, in about two weeks, you're going to be so annoyed by this.

In about two days, you're going to be annoyed by all this. Can we just please change the freaking bandage so I can get back to my show, right? This is a long arc on this deal and it just sucks. It just is. But she's been through some trauma. A lot of the trauma is because of the pain. A lot of trauma is because of the blood. A lot of the trauma is because of the pain. A lot of trauma is because of the blood. A lot of the trauma is because of the hospital stuff.

But I'll tell you, some of the trauma is also, she's never seen mom and dad scared like that. She's never seen mom and dad cry. She's never seen mom and dad terrified or tensed up like that. That's new. She didn't know she had that kind of power, right? And that's scary for a kid.

And so you guys coming in with, you know, you got to hold tight and you got to, but we're going to do it not, we're not going to prep for war. I want to back out. You know this, and so this is just two dads talking here. Kids are ruthless with each other. Brutal. They're the worst. Right. The worst. And some of your concern now, I'm guessing just as a fellow dad is projecting, you know, what's coming for her. You know, some crappy little kids are going to make jokes about it. They're going to peg her as the girl with the, you know, they're going to just say all kinds of mean, crappy things. And you know, that's coming. And so we can do one

of two things. I can shield her from it, or I'm going to get on Amazon. I'm going to find some books that are written for kids who have limb loss or have some sort of physical exceptionalities. They're going to look a little bit different. I'm going to read her those books so that she can see herself out there, right? Because right now she feels like the only kid with.

I'm going to show her. No, there's other kids out there with. I'm also going to trace our hands and I'm going to trace my finger down like hers. And we're going to show how cool hands are and how beautiful she is. We're going to teach her how to tell the story. And here's why we're going to tell that story.

We're going to tell that story at home. You're going to maybe ask her more like, hey, tell me what you remember about that. Do you remember what happened? Have her tell tell that story at home. You're going to maybe ask her more like, hey, tell me what you remember about that. Do you remember what happened? Have her tell you that story. And if she says, I don't want to, that's fine. But we're going to teach her to tell that story so that when she's nine and she's by herself

and two idiots on the bus, she's going to say, yeah, dude, I got my finger stuck in a bike and it tore the top off. I'm freaking hardcore. Or, you know what I mean? We're going to teach her that resilience. And the resilience doesn't come from flexing.

It comes from storytelling. It comes from, dude, mom and dad love each other and they love me and they think I'm beautiful. So I don't care what you think. You hear what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, so I have, I've started reading a book called The Whole Brain Child. And it basically talks about how building like you know talking about those past memories and bringing those things up but she seems to shut down yeah when it when we try

when we try to have that conversation is that just because it's so new in her mind that we need to kind of let that you know like let that pass a little bit to to start engaging in that to to talk about that everything yeah everything about her finger is chaos everything in her finger sets off every trigger she has in her sweet little brain mom and dad aren't safe house isn't safe i go to the hospital i don't want to talk about it i don't i want out of this thing every time mom and dad look at the finger, they squint their eyes. They go, they go, they go, ah. Everything about it is, is, is, is, whoa. And that's where story helps norm things.

Like it just is. It is. And so maybe y'all can color together and you can begin to trace your hand where you have tucked under one of the same fingers she has. And you could say, man, my hand is not near as cool as your hand. Or look, my hand's like your hand. Look out, like we're cool, right? And so what you're doing is you are talking the story. We're not laughing at all.

We're not making light of, we're not minimizing. We are simply saying, I see all of you and I still love you. Both things. You don't have to hide anything from your ding-dong old dad because I love you. Right? And even so, I'm going to continue to talk about this. Eventually, she'll talk about it. Eventually, she'll hear you talking about to your wife.

I cannot believe how strong and resilient and gritty and beautiful that little girl is. She's going to hear those things and hear those things. And then when y'all play, you can reenact it. That's child play therapy, right? Where, you know, one of her dolls gets her finger caught in a thing and you can look at your daughter and say, what do we do? And then her daughter can help be a part of the healing process of that little doll.

And she begins to gain autonomy over this thing, right? So you hear what I'm saying? We're going to slowly norm it in the house. This is a new is in the house. We're not going to shy away from it. We're not going to shuck away from it. It's just going to be a new is. I just would be really careful about forcing her into things right now. That finger is just radioactive. It's trauma. And let's let mom and dad be the big ones around there. Understand this this kids are going to be ruthless they're going to get on to her all children suffer from body image from i'm different and this idea of wholeness i'm no longer a whole person and that's where you teaching her that wholeness doesn't come from your body parts wholeness comes from the inside out and cards

and little gifts and let's go serve other people show her that she's got function in the world that she's got purpose that people need her around and man that's just going to become a story for her you know what i'm saying okay yeah and what what about like you know the the joking of it like if you know if you can joke you know i've heard people talk before you if you joke about yourself others can't make fun of you. Like, is there anything there? That's how I handle problems. That's not how my wife handles problems. Yeah.

And part of my humor is a defense mechanism because I'm pretty insecure. Some of it is because I just naturally, I mean, that's just how my body handles traumas, by cracking up and laughing about it. My wife doesn't. And so maybe you laugh about your role in this. Can you believe daddy cried when his little girl got hurt? Can you believe daddy cried? Right? Maybe that's the joke.

But if she's not down with laughing at it, I wouldn't make it a joke. I would let her offer that as a joke. Okay. If you get hurt at some point, which you will, you'll hurt your knee at noon ball or you'll, you know, I don't know, I'm a lawnmower. If you do and you choose to make jokes, that may give her permission to. But I wouldn't force her into jokes about it. I wouldn't tease her about it. No, not yet. Not as a six-year-old.

Right. Okay. Yeah, it's just been like we have an older child and he's more logical he's very emotional and so if able to have more direct conversations with him about things with her it seems to be on that emotional track and it was trying to get i'm just getting on the same playing field with her as far as like how to relate to her and communicate with her has been also kind of i felt like a struggle for me like i feel like i'm missing something when with her has been also kind of, I felt like a struggle for me. I feel like I'm missing something with her is how she reacts to these things,

which is how I've seen him react to things. We are all about, we're very few conversations, a whole lot of hugging. Very, very few conversations, a whole lot of, like I'll just tell you what I did last night. I crawled, my daughter set up this wolf den under our kitchen table and i was on all fours under the kitchen table with my daughter and some little animal she had and i was the wolf king and she was the wolf queen and we were protecting the baby from i don't know what armadillo i don't know what was going on outside the cave um that's

connection right that's she doesn't need me to lecture her on how much i love her she needs me I don't know what was going on outside the cave. That's connection, right? She doesn't need me to lecture her on how much I love her. She needs me just to be. And I would tell you this about your son. One, if he hasn't experienced trauma, you'll see emotions when he has that trauma. And the second thing is often highly intellectual young children are hiding behind their intellectualism. Okay. And so in the same way that you want your daughter to slowly start to come around with those, like what's actually real here.

Like I hear your feelings and we still have to change this bandaid. I want you to lean on your son the other way. So you have some very logical reactions to this. What's happening inside your body right now. How do you feel about that? Right? And lean on him the other way because we were looking for balance in our kids.

We're looking for they can do both, right? But I tell you what, brother, man, your kids are lucky, lucky, lucky to have you as a dad. All dads out there. I hope you'll, man, step up to the plate like Michael is. You're a good man.

Get on Amazon and find some of those children's books and you'll, I don't know. I don't know if there's one called So I Lost a. Get on Amazon and find some of those children's books. And you'll, I don't know. I don't know if there's one called So I Lost a Finger, but you'll find some that have some sort of loss like that. And there are pictures of kids still playing ball, still running around, having fun, still laughing, still going to birthday parties.

And that social norming for a kid is everything. Everything. We'll be right back. 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 are back. Man, if you've been listening to this show, you hear me ranting and raving about my new book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future, that is out and into the wild. And man, the feedback has been, again, I keep saying that I never could wrap my head around this. This is the most nervous I've ever been about anything, putting it out there. And the

reception has just been something else. I'm so, so grateful. I want to take a second, something I touch on in the book here, and I've gotten some pushback on social media, some, a lot of accepting, exception, accepting whatever on social media. Then I found myself, why am I, why am I even checking in and out with social media? I want to talk about where we are as a society, as a country, when it comes to this idea of friendship. And I think we get lost in social media and this and that and the digital and the tech and all that and the metaverse. I just want to drill it down until literally until like 15 years ago. Friendship, the idea of tribe, the idea of of community the idea of we are in relation with one another That had to take place

With people in a room I could write letters. There is Ample evidence of people writing letters throughout history. They're beautiful and great and loves reading books, you know old letters. That's all great but all of those interactions pointed people back to when we are back together. And so I had to, if I was going to be friend, if I was going to be in a tribe, if I was going to be in community, if I was going to be a neighbor, I had to endure the awkwardness and the ugliness of human interaction and choose to remain anyway, or I had to remain anyway. One of my great mentors, Dr. Richard Beck said,

what if we lived our lives as though we could never move? How different would our conversations be if that my neighbor was always going to be my neighbor? If the church I go to was always going to have to just be my church, how different would my conversations be? Would I be less ragey? Would I be less judgmental? Would I be less angry and running around and like, I'm out of here, I'm going to the next? If that was the only restaurant I could eat at,

would my conversations be different, right? And now, instead of hanging out in person, disagreeing in person, you know, and never questioning whether they're going to show up tomorrow, boom, overnight, friendship changed. We moved the whole enterprise online, and we traded quality of friendship. We traded this interaction for quantity, and we're drowning in shallow water now. And again, I'm not jumping on the, I hate social media bandwagon. I've, I think I started, I never got on the wagon in the first place. It's redefined the word friend for us, right? And now a friend is a curated person to reports,

hating the same things I hate or, you know, carrying the same bag I carry or liking the same workouts I like, but we engage with them on their terms and they engage with us on our terms and from far away. And our relationship is made up of comparing and sharing and judging without the discomfort of doing it in the same room. And that discomfort is iron sharpens iron is really, or I didn't really mean it like that. I meant it like this, or let me push back on that, right? And that's not to say that some online interactions aren't real and deep. In fact, there's some studies that show

people are willing to vomit more. They're willing to be more honest online quicker, right? There's just not a lot of gas in the engine of that relationship over time. Those meaningful interactions, me telling you a whole bunch of stuff about myself or me texting you a bunch of pictures of me with no clothes on while they're giving you information about me that

you wouldn't otherwise have had, it's not real friendship. It's not real relationship. Real relationship is showing up. Real relationship is being present. It's being fully seen and fully loved. And the story that digital friendships, digital relationships are equivalent to real life relationships, it's not real. It's not real. And I've heard this. I'm going to hang out with Gary Vee one day and we'll have a good discussion about it, a good debate about it. And I've not met him. People in the building are friends with him. They say he's great. He's an incredible human. Where I disagree with him on this issue is he says that, man, people have been saying this forever. Like, oh, you know, the kids and the phones and the,

you know, the tele, once they put telephones in every house, kids are going to just all go to, and all the way back in time, man, if we give these kids books instead of just the oral traditions, they're going to be ruined. And then now with the metaverse, right? We're going to move all of our, I'm going to take out loans or use credit to buy imaginary curtains and an imaginary piece of real estate in a fantasy land, like in meta, in a thing that's not real. And he says, oh man, and he's not the only one, I'm just picking on him, but he's not the only one, but it's just the same old thing. And In 10 years, we're going to wish for the simplicity of our cell phones because then we're going to be wearing those XLR headsets, and we're going to be living in the metaverse.

We might be. That might be true. We might be. But here's where I think it's different. All of those other things, letter writing, books, this telephone in the house, it all pointed back to real people getting together in a real room. I got on the phone so that I could tell people when I was going to be at the mall. I got on the phone so we could talk about that guy so that when we were at school tomorrow, when we all showed up

on the same team, when we all showed up at work together, it all was about going back to the same room, to the same place, to reconnecting. Now it's about, hey, we're doing this whole other thing where we never have to be in the same room. We never have to connect. We're going to outsource all, we're going to wallpaper over all the discomfort and feelings and create a whole new universe. I don't feel like I'm winning in the real world. So I'm going to create a imaginary fantasy land where I think I can compete and win. And don't feel like I'm winning in the real world. So I'm going to create a imaginary fantasy land where I think I can compete and win. And don't make, make no mistake,

competition is wired into our DNA. It just is. Comparison is wired into us. That is who we are. It's how we survived. And so it will translate here. There will be people who've got cooler imaginary curtains and imaginary cars and cooler imaginary houses

and cooler imaginary muscles that you can buy or upgrade or whatever, whatever the thing will be. So hear me say this in no uncertain terms. Being well involves real people in person, someone to sit with us when we're hurting, bring us a meal when the world's on fire, laugh with us until our stomachs hurt. Someone who shows up when our kid has passed away,

when our mother's sick, when our wife is in the ER, and they say nothing. They just show up. They just sit with us, right? If we're not intentional about cultivating those relationships, look around. This is what we get. Half of the country in some sort of clinical

diagnostic with anxiety, depression, half of the country screaming at the other half of the country, people blaming, yelling, screaming. That's what happens. I will go on record as saying, I believe the chief enemy of our time is loneliness, is lack of connection, period, full stop, end of story. The rest of the stuff, all the pain, hate, anger, frustration, all of it stems from that. We got to cultivate those things. If we're not intentional about it, look around. The loneliness will poison us.

And so in my book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future, I talk about this, but more importantly, more importantly than just labeling the issue, we walk step by step. Here's how to go make friends. And I know that sounds trite and lame and silly. That's where we are. That's where I am.

How do we go make friends? How do we stay connected? How do we build those relationships? How do we say, okay, I buy it. I get it. The what I'm doing isn't working and going further down that is not working. What do I do now? Can we lay it out?

Goodbye, Kevin. Man, this book is for him. It's for me. It's for him. He said, Deloney, I turned all the screens off and now I'm just sitting in my living room staring at my three daughters. What do I do now? My buddy's all moved away. What I do now? This book is for that. This book is for him. This book is for you, right? I'm going to cover this

story and a bunch of other stories in this thing. If you pre-order today, you'll get a ton of bonus items, a ton of stuff. I think, are we still in pre-order here? Yes. Okay. So it's not out into the wild yet. It's almost out into the wild. Still can pre-order it here, even up to a month of free therapy with BetterHelp. It's good stuff, man. They've stepped up to the plate here. It is time.

It's time. Go to johndeloney.com to pre-order Own Your Past, Change Your Future today. I believe in this one. Go check it out. All right, and as we wrap up today's show, my good friend, Randy Lynn there in Oklahoma. Yes, ma'am, this is for you, my sister.

This song is for her. It's called Surface Pressure off the Enkento soundtrack. Is it Elkento or Enkento? Enkanto soundtrack. Is it El Canto or Encanto? Encanto soundtrack. We actually got married, me and Randy Lynn. She was the stand-in at my wedding for my wife, and we couldn't see each other, but we were in rehearsal. We didn't really get married, but that's a whole other weird story.

So, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the genius, genius, genius. Song goes like this. I'm the strong one. I'm not nervous. I'm as tough as the crust of the earth is. I move mountains, I move churches, and I glow because I know what my worth is. I don't ask how hard the work is.

Got a rough, indestructible surface. Diamonds and platinum, I find them and flatten them. I take what I'm handed, I break what's demanded. But under the surface, I feel berserk as a tightrope walker in a three-ring circus. Under the surface, was Hercules ever like, yo, I don't want to fight Cerebus. Under the surface, I'm pretty sure I'm worthless if I can't be of service. A flaw or a crack, the straw in the stack that breaks the camel's back. What breaks the camel's back?

Get connected, y'all. We'll see you soon.