The Dr. John Delony Show - Helping Family: a Teen Pregnancy, Distance Learning, & a Hoarding Mom

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU!   Show Notes for this Episode   My 16-year-old is remote learning. He doesn’t complete his assignments. How do I navigate this? Do I stay on him or let him fail?  MY 17-year-old son and his 16-year-old girlfriend are expecting a baby. How do I parent through this? Teaching Segment: What am I currently reading? Lost Connections - Johann Hari Atomic Habits - James Clear Treating Trauma and Traumatic Grief in Children and Adolescents - Judith A. Cohen The Biology of Desire - Why Addiction Is Not a Disease - Marc Lewis PhD The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients - Irvin Yalom Lonely at the Top: The High Cost of Men's Success - Thomas Joiner Ph.D. My mom has hoarding disorder. How can I help her? Lyrics of the Day: "Free Fallin'" - Tom Petty (John Mayer Cover)   tags: parenting, boundaries, technology/social media, family, OCD, counseling/therapy   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 mom who's struggling with remote learning and her teenage son. We also talk to a great mom whose 17-year-old son is about to become a dad, and she wants to know if she can love her new grandbaby. We also talk to an awesome son whose mom's a hoarder and he doesn't know what to do. Stay tuned. Hey, what is up everybody? How we doing? I hope everybody's doing well, loving life, being kind to one another, enjoying their families, enjoying their friends. And if you're sitting at home by yourself, if you're sitting at home by yourself, just listening to a podcast, you might be a serial killer.

Hopefully you're out walking in the neighborhood or something. Kelly just cheered. She's like, I love serial killers. She doesn't. She loves serial killer podcast. Okay. So on today's show, we got a lot going on. First and foremost, we're glad you're here.

On this show, we talk about relationships, mental health, wellness, all those things. Give us a shout at 844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291. And I'm having a moment of conscious here and a conscious, is that how you say consciousness? Conscience. There was no vocabulary section in grad school for me. I'm having a moment of conscience, so I've got to pay up. As you remember, we had a big football game. I don't know, it was a month or two ago now. A big football game between the GOAT, the 88-year-old quarterback in Tampa Bay, and as a former Texas Tech guy, Patrick Mahomes.

It's just disturbing how guys, grown men like me, claim college kids as ours, and then we follow them through their professional career, and we chain our self-esteem to them. But that's what I did. I love Patrick Mahomes as a student and as a student-athlete, and then he went on to become the Chiefs quarterback, and clearly they were going to dominate the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. We have an engineer back here. Engineers are the guys that make all this happen.

And Kyle should call the show every once in a while because he's psychotic. And he's got some challenges in his heart and soul. And he is a diehard. He has worn a Tampa Bay Buccaneers shirt every day since the Super Bowl, except for a few days when he wore the Tampa Bay Devil Rays shirts, right? But here's the thing. I bet Kyle some money. I lost.

I need him to pay up on camera. So here you go, Kyle. I am paying you $20 that I owe you because your old man beat my young kid. He's a big man. He'll bet a month later. Listen, we don't all make the money that engineers make. It took me a while to save up that $20. I appreciate you being grateful and not charging me interest.

That's hard for me to do, guys. Tom Brady, at some point. Do you want to do a debt-free scream? I'm debt-free! Way to go, Kyle. That's actually-free. Way to go, Kyle. That's actually pretty funny. Way to go, man. That's why you don't bet engineers. They're always right. They always are right.

Cannot believe Tampa Bay won. Hey, at some point, you just have to tip your hat to Tom Brady. He's just better. He's just, he's magic. He's got something, man. What a stud. That's awesome. So, I am debt-free. I no longer owe this engineer money. And now my soul feels lighter and free. That's magic. He's got something, man. What a stud. That's awesome. So I am debt-free. I no longer owe this engineer money. And now my soul feels lighter and free.

That's awesome. All right, so we have a packed show today, so let's get right to the phones. Let's go to Lisa in Charlottesville, Virginia. Lisa, what's going on? Good morning. How can I help? Good morning, John. How are you?

I'm good. How's everything? It's good. Doing good. Waiting for springtime. Yes, ma'am. All right. So what's going on?

How can I help? So I have a 16-year-old son who is doing his schooling virtual at home right now. They actually have the option to go back two days a week, but I wasn't quite sure how the protocols were going to be. You know, of course, they tell you how it's going to be, but, you know, until you experience yourself. So I just went ahead and kept him home. He's doing really good in most of his classes, but there's always one class each semester that he's fallen behind in, and he claims that he's just, he's bored with it.

It doesn't interest him. And I'm just wondering if maybe if he were actually in class and having to see that teacher face to face, if that would have potentially made it better for him. So I'm just kind of wondering if I made the right decision, they're not sending him back, or if there's some other things I could do to help him. So I'm just kind of wondering if I made the right decision, they're not sending him back, or if there's some other things I could do to help him. He's really into video games, so he wants to actually be a video game programmer, create video games when he gets older. So the pre-calc that he's failing right now just doesn't interest him. Oh, so he's struggling with pre-calc? He is. He's a sophomore in high school. He's a

sophomore in pre-cal? Yeah. Ever since elementary school, he's been ahead. He's been in honors classes or been taking high school classes in middle school. So he has the potential. It's just the want. Yeah. So are you not sending him back because of your concern about his health? He actually, you know, I talk with him about it. I don't just make the decision. I also include what he feels because, you know, in this uncertain time with the virus, you know, I would feel terrible if I sent him to school and then he got sick. So we did discuss it. We did discuss it. And he said, well, I think until we get, you know, a vaccine, because, you know, the teachers at that time hadn't been vaccinated as well. They have been now. But of course, he can't go in in the middle of the semester and change it up to partially virtual. Oh, so he couldn't go now?

He couldn't, if you decided I'm going to send him in, he couldn't go? I don't know. I would have to look into it. I don't think so, but, you know, I can certainly look into that. So I'll give you, I'm going to tell you not a medical answer. I'm going to tell you what I've done in my own house and then give you some broader context. Okay. And then interestingly, I struggled with one class in high school and that was pre-cal. And it was a, and I'm now I'm old and I've got two PhDs, right? So it's not an indicator of how dumb somebody is. As you mentioned, it was a hundred percent want to.

Some of it was foundational. I had skated through my early math classes, and I hadn't really spent the time learning the constructs there because I could get by on the tests, right? And some students who can test well or can float through some of those things end up missing some of those foundational concepts. And then pre-cal, man, it separates the sheep from the goats, right? And if you don't have a history of algebra, you don't have a history of some of that linear thinking, man, it can be really challenging.

It was 100% want to in my case, right? Right. And what ultimately got me around the bend was I couldn't play if I couldn't pass. And you're talking about I didn't get Cs. The first C I ever got was in pre-cal and it was the war of 1812 in my house when that happened. And so the other thing is, is I, my wife and I, man, we are as cautious as can be. And I've stayed on top of the data as much as I could. The decision we made in our house was the pros far

outweighed the cons about keeping the kids out of school. So I actually put both kids are back in school. And we're a cautious family. We just are. Some of our friends think we're comically too cautious. But the benefits of the science on the kids being out of school just hasn't been backed up by the data. So if there's a chance, I won't tell you what to do. I'm going to tell you what we did in our house, okay? When it comes to that messy situation that you're in, which is you've got a kid that clearly has the academic capability, right?

He can do it. And he's got that things that he loves to do. And then when he loves to, when he gets lasered in, he can knock him out of the park, right? And he really has something that he loves, which is video games. And he has something that he thinks he wants to do someday, which would be a video game programmer. And then he sloughs off one class. Those to me are actually easier to deal with because you're not dealing with a capability issue. It's just a want to. And that's when mom and dad and child can have some pretty simple consequence and decision consequence actions or conversations, right? So you get your pre-cal done, which means you have to put extra time in and then

you get this video game box and if you don't you don't it's pretty simple and what i love to do with young people is make sure they understand a hundred percent of this is their choice they get to choose in or they get to choose out right that's it it's simple and if you want to choose to have access to this video game thing then you're gonna choose to knock this stuff out of the park and then they just get to own that and they more importantly they get to own the consequences of it right the one thing i want to make sure you do is don't weaponize connection the other thing i want to make sure you do is COVID does not mean no boundaries. All these kids are so exhausted and they are fried and they have had to create alternative ways of living.

And so as a parent, I've found myself just being like, ah, it doesn't matter. Ah, it doesn't matter. And it super does because when the boundaries at home start falling apart too and then it becomes, I just stay up, whatever, do whatever you need to do. It's just this one class. They are begging for some semblance of normalcy, some semblance of boundary. And that falls on us as the parents, right? So when you tell this really smart, bright, good young man of yours, hey, you got to do – you got gotta pick it up in pre-cal what's the response what does he say well many times he will say that he didn't see the assignment um which you know

that's inaccurate right yeah well and and i mean i can understand because they have so many different platforms that they get this information from. But if I can access it, I know he can. Well, and he's a gamer. He can see somebody in Call of Duty shooting him from eight screens over, upside down, right? He can get that info, right? Yeah, it's definitely a want in this situation. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a want in this situation. I'm like you.

I think being back in school right now for kids is the best thing as long as it's safe. That's right. And I think if he had to face his teacher rather than facing me with an answer, I think he would step it up a bit. Well, and if you're not able to, if y'all choose to not put him back in school, if you're unable to put him back in midstream, I think that I want him to have that same relational connectivity with you, right? And so it's important for parents to never weaponize that connection, right? You're not going to take away your morning breakfast with him. You're not going to take away time y'all spend together. He just loses something of significant value. He's got to feel that pressure, right? He's got to feel that boundary that he chooses,

right? And so if you choose to not go find this assignment and make sure you are 100% caught up and not only 100% caught up, but you're doing the work, then you are choosing directly, not even as a byproduct, you are directly choosing. You're telling us as a family unit, I don't want to play video games. I don't want to be connected with my friends through technology in these ways. Right? That's cool. You're choosing to hang out with mom and dad and do puzzles tonight because also you can't just go plug hole up in your room either you are choosing to um have a lip sync competition with me and your other brothers and sisters and your dad in the living room instead of playing video games we love that you made this choice probably would have been a

lot better for your heart and soul to have done your pre-cal homework because now we're going to record this uh lip sync contest whatever whatever the thing is, right? So your job is to help him be encouraged and to set up those boundaries firm and strong. And his job is to make sure that he lives into those boundaries and that he understands choice. He understands consequence. And then he gets to make his deal, right? If he chooses to fail, man, that's going to be really hard because there's going to be some really strong consequences there. If he chooses to disrespect his teacher and his class by not going to check out what the communication is, man, that's hard. If he can get back in class and y'all think that's a good idea for your family, awesome. I think that's great.

But at the end of the day, he can choose to fail. All high school kids can. And it must cost him dearly. And this is going to be hard because it falls on you. It falls on me. the day, he can choose to fail. All high school kids can, and it must cost him dearly, right? And this is going to be hard because it falls on you. It falls on me. It falls on us parents. And wow, this has been a season, a hard season of trying to find the right thing to do, right? So I appreciate your heart. For whatever it's worth, if he doesn't like pre-cal and he struggles with it and it beats him upside the head a little bit and he has to learn some hard lessons, he can still be successful. You're looking at a guy that had that exact same trajectory.

So good for you for caring about him, Lisa. I'm grateful that you're out there in the world and in the community loving your kid the way you are. And tell him to give me a call. I'd love to talk to him, just see how he's doing. And I haven't had any high school kids on the show yet, so tell him to give me a shout and we'll talk about pre-cal i'm not going to be able to help him with it but we can talk about it that'd be great all right let's go to kelly in kansas city missouri kelly what's going on how's it how's it happening hi dr d thanks for taking my call um thank you for calling thank you i have a 17 year old son and he and his 16-year-old girlfriend are expecting a baby at the end of next month.

Oh, wow. So it's right here, huh? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. I'm just trying to figure out how to parent through this. I've not been doing a great job, and it's going to be here real soon. So how do I help support these kids to the best of my ability? I love that you asked that question and that you're vulnerable. I really do. Thank you for making this phone call. And for whatever it's worth, if I look at the data, there's several hundred thousand parents across the country this year that are going to be in your same situation. And so you're helping out a lot of other people too.

So thank you for making that call. So when you say you haven't been doing a good job, what does that mean? Well, I'm just so confused as if I should be happy and excited and talking to these kids, like, in an exciting way or just trying to prep them. And I know that they're getting a lot of information, just trying to prep them, steer them, make sure that they're doing well in school and doing what they need to do. And, but then there's, you know, it's like, am I, should I be excited or should I be, you know, pounding on them and just making sure they're doing what they need to do to graduate school? I mean, they're both juniors and they still have one more year of high school. So they're going to be living with one of us.

My son's dad and I are divorced and then the girl's parents are still together. But it's like maybe staying and how do we do this? I love it. Okay, so a couple things. So they are going to continue some sort of romantic relationship together and raise this baby. That's the goal?

Yes, that is the goal. Okay. And they're going to move in with either you or ex-husband or her parents? We're not sure. Right now it sounds like we're on a rotation since my son goes back and forth between his dad and myself yet. But I don't know that that's the healthiest. Right. It's not. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. don't know that that's the healthiest right it's not yeah yeah okay okay so are you have you sat down and had some sort of conversation some sort of connection with her parents a little bit um

mainly her mom her dad's an alcoholic okay um but her mom seems super giddy, very excited. Sure. But she also is drowning in her own problems. Yep. Okay. Are they cool with their daughter and their new grandbaby moving in with you guys? I don't know that. Okay. We have not really had that discussion. Okay.

And I don't know that she really could move in to either my home or my ex-husband's. Um, I mean, I probably have the most space, but at the same time, I have a lot of pets and whole bunch of stuff, okay? And if it gets too much to write down, in fact, I'll say don't write this down. You can circle back whenever this episode airs, and then you can pass it along to everybody involved here. And this will give you some, hey, this guy on the radio recommended that we do some of these things together and I want to follow that lead right so I'm going to give you a a tip of spear here like a a way to engage in these conversations that might otherwise be a little bit messy but your your son and your new grandbaby and your I don't even know what you would call her the the mother of your grandbaby, right? Because it's not going to be your daughter-in-law or anything yet. They need an adult to step up and help guide what's coming, okay? So, to answer your original question, yes. Be as excited and cheer. This is a baby. I don't want your son welcoming in a human being under a cloud of

negativity and regret. And they will need somebody to cheerlead them, to teach them how wonderful and exciting and beautiful this new human being is going to be. And they need somebody to help guide them on. I mean, the government just said a year ago you can drive, right? So they're still kids. They're still children. They need somebody else to help guide them on the responsibilities that they have no idea are coming their way, right? So it's a both and, but if you lean too heavy on the fire and the brimstone and everything in this moment, and this sounds so cliche, is led by love.

Love, love, smiles. You are going to have to let go of this fantasy. It's gone, right? Your life took a left turn. You didn't expect it. It wasn't how you would have drawn it up, but it is what it is. Now you got to choose, I'm going to love this grandbaby till I'm going to love this little baby. Like she's never been loved before. And I'm going to model for my son and his girlfriend, what this kind of love looks

like. Right. Um, everybody's got to be involved in that way. If that grandbaby goes to one of these homes and is bathed in shame, bathed in, you shouldn't be here. Your daddy screwed up. Man, you are talking about legacy changing shame. You're talking about family tree altering self-hatred and that baby doesn't deserve that. Okay. So everybody's got to be on the same page as much as possible. This is going to mean that somebody, and you called, so I'm appointing you. Somebody's got to call a meeting with the parents of these kids. That means you might have to get back in the same room as your ex-husband, or at least get on a Zoom call. That means her mom, if dad's not functioning, then her mom's going to come over and y'all need to come up with a game plan.

And I'd recommend six months to a year, and then we're going to reevaluate. I hate to tell you this. Your pets come a distant, distant, distant third. Number one to grandbaby, number two to your own kids, number three animals. And if yours is the only place these children can help, it can be together and they're not going to be in the home of an unsafe alcoholic and they're not going to be in the home of your ex-husband who for whatever reason can't do it, then that means you're going to have to make some hard, hard decisions. And you're gonna have to

make some hard decisions not to regret, not to resent and not to get into that loathing cycle, man. This is all for this little baby, okay? All the focus here is on the future. So you're going to have to help your son stay involved with this child. You're going to teach him how to be involved. He's going to have to grow up real quick, and he also is going to have to have connection with other people, right? And finding that balance is going to be so tough. You didn't sign up for this, but it is in your lap, right? And my guess is just how you just tough. You didn't sign up for this, but it is in your lap, right? And my guess is just how you just explained her parents and your ex-husband, this is going to disproportionately fall on you. So you're going to have to be extra intentional about self-care for yourself.

Whether you need to get a counselor, whether you need to get some friends in your life that can help if you got to recruit some of your buddies from you know your local group or local church whatever that can be on babysitting duty because you need a break too this is going to fall on you and what's going to happen is you're going to start hating ex-husband even more you're going to start getting frustrated at her parents you're going to start poking and crying and then suddenly the the the human being that gets sacrificed at the edge of that resentment is this little baby. Okay? All right. Right. So you've got to do whatever it takes to help your son and this young lady graduate high school. Because now you're playing a statistics game. And that is if they don't graduate high school, there's a pretty clear trajectory unless they become that one in a five billion person, right?

Those things are going to be really tough on them. They've got to go to high school. And then they either have to go find a local college that's close, they can continue this, or they're going to have to find a local trade or whatever. But the goal is they've got to continue and finish this education. It doesn't mean that their future is over. It means it's going to be way more challenging out of the gate. And getting everybody together, making a plan for six months,

and then we're going to revisit. Then the next six months, then we're going to revisit. And then the next six months, then we're going to revisit. We're just going to have to take it a semester at a time or a year at a time. A year for a 17-year-old is 1,000 years, right? You remember those days. Right, yes. So I'll tell you something that happened when I was a dean of students at a university. I had a young woman come in, and she was pregnant, was not part of the plan.

She was a young college student. She came in with her head held down, and she walked into our dean of students' office. She was trying to figure out how to take a leave of absence, what she could do because and she just had this demeanor about her that she was defeated and I stepped I heard her talking to the admin I stepped out and said hey come in my office and she I said what's going on she said well I'm pregnant and I cheered I said you're gonna have a baby and she looked at me and got wide-eyed and I said no you didn't this isn't the way you drew it up but you're going to have a baby. And she looked at me and got wide-eyed. And I said, no, you didn't. This isn't the way you drew it up. But you're going to have a baby.

And I, at the time, had a two-year-old, I think, or a one-year-old, three-year-old, something like that. And I just talked to her for a second about, this is the messiest, craziest, most bananas adventure. And I've never known love like I know right now with my little bitty girl. And she just started crying. And she said something that was heavy. She said, you're the first person to talk about my baby as somebody to be loved. Her mom called me later that night and later that evening and said, I want to thank you for challenging me like that. Because nobody, everybody has met my daughter's eyes with, how could you? I can't believe you. Oh my, you did what? Your life's over. You're this. And her mom just said, man, I'd fallen into that trap. And so thank you for reminding me. I'm about

to have a grandkid, right? Is this going to be so hard? Yes. Did you want your son to grow up and go to college and be in a fraternity? Yes. And be all silly and be goofy. And then you meet that, your grandkid when he's 27. Yeah. That's how you drew it up. And it's not going to happen that way. And so the quicker we can turn that dial to laser in on, man, we're going to have to be real specific about what life's going to look like. Real specific because you got kids raising kid now but also bathe everybody in love right so when i say that how does that ring true to you it feels good you're validating that it's okay to be happy and excited about this i mean abortion or adoption were never on the table yeah and so um it feels good to know that I can support them and be happy about it. So thank you for that. Well, I thank you for your heart. And I think it could be a lot of fun.

This might be cheesy, but it could be a lot of fun because now you can give parenting classes, you can give diaper or whatever, putting and changing class whatever you get to do something that i can imagine many many moms across history have wanted to do which is your son still lives in your house so you can teach him how to love the mother of his baby and you could teach him what getting up at 3 a.m to get a bottle looks like and you can teach him what not going to the movies looks like, and you can teach him how to do what cleaning bottles with those little bottle scrubbers that were made by Satan, what that looks like, right? All that stuff, because he has to, because he still lives with you, right?

And you get to teach him what honoring grandma looks like, and you can teach him what honoring that little baby looks like. Man. So, is this a mess? There's no question. Am I being Pollyanna about it? Yes, I am. I know it's in store for you for the next three, four, five, six years and it's hard. Hard, hard, hard.

And you're going to be a grandma. Right? There's this little baby that's about to show up. And it's going to be a disaster it is you know it is yes absolutely

but mine was a disaster not this bad of a disaster but mine was a disaster I don't know anybody who's like this is just smooth sailing so yes this is about love love your kids love her love this little baby. Is it a girl or a boy?

It's a girl. Oh, my gosh. You're going to have a granddaughter, right? Yes. Mm-hmm. And you're going to get in spittle fights with this young woman's parents. You thought you and your ex-husband fought. Oh, man, it's going to be awesome

right right um but it's all for the sake of this little baby it's all for the sake of this little baby so get an architect man get up someone who's going to help you map out what this is going to look like parenting classes every saturday for the next the next two years right high school class how can we get them graduated quick? Can we get them into a local community college quick? You may have to tell some of your cats and dogs and chickens and frogs and birds or whatever you got in the house. They got to find new homes because my granddaughter's moving in. My granddaughter's moving in, right? And be the first to volunteer. Tell the other parents involved, I'm going to let them live here.

That baby's going to get to go see mom. As long as she's safe in the home of an alcoholic, we're going to make sure everything's safe. And then we're going to figure it out as we go. And make sure you take care of you during this time. Because it's going to be tough. Because you're going to be carrying a lot of this load. I'm so grateful for you. And for every parent listening,

your kids will do things not as you drew them up. They'll do things not as you drew them up. They will. They're going to do stupid things. They're going to do heartbreaking things. They're going to do mind-numbing things. It's okay to circle back to love every single time. Every time.

Every time. All right. Thank you so much, Kelly. All right, so I brought some of these with me. Throwing a curveball here, guys. Let me grab these. Oh, man. All right, so some of the most common questions I get are, what are some of my favorite books? What am I reading? What

have I read recently? So I just grabbed a handful of these out of my office and out of my, the little place where I read at my house and let you know a couple of books. I'm going to show you here a book, probably my favorite book of 2020, 2021 is Johan Hari's Lost Connections. This book is incredible. It's awesome. It is a journalist who goes down a rabbit hole to try to figure out, if we've got all these solutions, quote unquote, to depression and anxiety, and it's a disease, why can't we just solve it, right? Like strep throat, we can take an antibiotic and it goes away. What's the deal? And man, he pulls a ribbon on this. This was super annoying because this is the book I was prepping to write. And then he does a way better job than I could ever do. So Johan Hari, check

this book out. This book is, man, I am late to the game on this one. I met James at an event right before COVID canceled everything. He's a really remarkable guy, very kind, very, very intelligent. This book, Atomic Habits, is remarkable. It's simple. It's clear. It's very humbly written. He does one of my favorite things that an author can do, which is tip his hat to all the other people who've played a role in the research on habits, but this is really good. It's sold millions and millions. This will be one of those books that's on the bestseller list forever, right? If you are a little bit of a science-y nerd and you want to learn about working with kids

who've got challenges, Judy Cohen, Judith Cohen is the guru on trauma, TFCBT, trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, working with children. This book is heavy. This book is heavy, not scientifically, but heavy. There's a lot of hard, dark stuff in it, but it's really, really good. This book is one I'm almost finished with now. It's by Mark Lewis. It's called The Biology of Desire, Why Addiction is Not a Disease. It is extraordinary. It's extraordinary. It's a well-done book.

He peels back some myths again. We have taken all of our pathologies, and we have all the things that we struggle with, depression, anxiety, addiction, and we've just labeled them all diseases. We've labeled them all diseases, and one by one, medical researchers, doctors, pedagogical experts, learning experts are saying, it's not a disease it's something way

bigger and way deeper and more importantly since it's not a disease that means we can change, we can grow, we can learn and we can begin to do new things and that's exciting and if you're a counselor if you're interested in mental health, this is the masterpiece by Irvin Yalom. One of the most important guys.

I had a chance to spend a minute with him in San Francisco a few years ago. He's like talking to Yoda. It's really extraordinary. But it's called The Gift of Therapy. It's a letter to young therapists. And it's extraordinary. And I just finished this book the other day by Thomas Joyner. Thomas Joyner is the best.

He is my favorite. He's a suicide researcher. He's the top of the game out of Florida State. This book is kind of all over the place, but it talks about, it's called Lonely at the Top. Yeah, Lonely at the Top by the High Cost of Male Success. It's a new perspective on loneliness, a new perspective on what's going on culturally. I imagine it's controversial. It's got some stuff in it that I raised my eyebrows and I was like, man, I can't believe this got through a publisher.

But I liked it. It's a new way of looking at problems, but it's stuff that I've been researching and I experienced myself, which is, man, when you make achievement, when you make chasing money, when you make chasing a next job title, next thing, your goal, man, you just implode. And he's got some stuff in there that talks about the nexus of there are no, men run everything and they have for a long, long, long, long time. And men lead the way in every demonstrable disease. Cancer, heart attacks, strokes, obesity. They are... Diabetes. So it's this nexus of men are in control and men are dying.

And what can we do about it? How do we back out of this thing? So it's this nexus of men are in control and men are dying, right? And what can we do about it? How do we back out of this thing? What are some things we can do? And he does not just say, you know what you need to do? Get a warm bath and a candle. He gives some very practical advice. And so check out any of those books.

That's just where my head is at these days, what I'm reading. And by the way, if someone's like, oh, this book has really, I don't agree with anything. I'll put that right at the top of my list because I want to read stuff. It's going to challenge me that I'm going to mark up and disagree with. And I love going to war with authors in, in a book. So, all right,

let's, let's take one more call before we wrap up the show. Let's go to Curtis and Anaheim. Curtis, what's going on? How can I help? Hey, Dr. John, thanks for taking my call. It's a pleasure to be able to speak with you.

You too, brother. What's going on? My mom essentially is a hoarder. She's 67. She has a 700 square foot apartment, small two bedroom apartment. She's just allowed it to become a disaster zone. And her apartment complex is threatening to kick her out, and she needs help. I want to help her.

I love my mom. You know, she's not perfect. She's made a lot of mistakes, but she's loved me my whole life. And I want to help her. I want to help her clean it out, and I want to help her with tools so it doesn't happen again, and I want to help her I want to help her clean it out and I want to help her with tools so it doesn't happen again and I want to help her get therapy and I just I really just don't know how to approach that how I'll go about doing that man I love you Curtis thanks for

calling thanks for loving your mom man and hoarding is embarrassing and it's gross and it's hard and you're doing a brave thing leaning into that man and i'm grateful for you dude so um when did this kick off often hoarding behaviors start early in somebody's life you can trace it back but sometimes they just something happens there's a death in the family there is there is some behavior that just flips a switch and then things pile up like real quick. Well, so her parents were hoarders, my grandparents. Okay. And so she kind of grew up in a home like that.

And, you know, she grew up broke. Her dad couldn't hold down a job. You know, she didn't know, you know, where money was going to come from. Yeah. If they were going to be able to buy groceries and clothes and so forth. So she kind of grew up in that environment where her parents had that scarcity mindset. And so they just accumulated everything because they didn't know if they were going to be able to buy something in the future. And so that's kind of like a script that was built into her, kind of like her subconscious, I guess.

But it started for her maybe 10 years ago, probably, when she really started doing it herself. And what does it look like? Is it newspapers and magazines and old food, or is it a specific type of collection that's gotten out of control, or pets? What does it look like? Paint a picture for me. Yeah, so it's the magazines, it's old food. Okay.

She's a very avid crocheter, so she has mountains of yarn. Okay. I'm not embellishing. No, I know you're not. They go to the ceiling yeah um and just just old male okay so if you go to her house walk me through if you knocked on her door today and you had a buddy with you and y'all were wearing gloves and you said mom we're cleaning up today what would happen she probably wouldn't let us in. Okay. She would say, get out. This is

my house. Right. Okay. What is she protecting herself from? She's embarrassed. Okay. She's, she's ashamed of what's going on. She doesn't want people to judge her. Yep. And that, that shame leads to more coverup behavior, which leads to more loneliness, which leads to more cover-up behavior, which leads to more loneliness, which leads to more cover-up behavior, and so it goes, right? Right, yeah. So before I kind of walk through what you can do, are you experiencing this? No, not at all. So you have no hoarding tendencies, no hanging on to things, or no sentimental that you feel is maybe a little bit high,

a little bit on the high end? No, completely opposite. You're a minimalist, right? You live in a – Yeah. There's nothing on the walls. Well, my wife takes care of the walls, but I try to have as little as possible. Okay.

And I think, too, because I grew up seeing my grandparents in their house, and so I saw just how horrible of a life that is. And I just don't want that to happen to me. Yeah. Okay, so you know this, that hoarding actually can be considered a disorder. You all know how much I disdain the DSM. But it's just the excessive accumulation of objects that lead to a mess, and there's really not a reason to have all this stuff, right?

There's not a reason to have 17 years of magazines and old food and old dog food, etc. It doesn't make rational sense, if you will, why these things are being kept. And then number two, there's an unwillingness to part with these things and number three is is where where the kicker is is there's an interference with healthy functioning right there's an inability to have people over that's that like you talked about that shame and then it just loops and loops and loops and suddenly you are trapped right so here's the tough news for you. The true hoarding, right, is this nexus of impulsivity and it sounds like a really awful word, but neurotic

is the word. People are not functioning out of their rational mind, right? And that impulsivity is very, very hard to treat. And so, this is just me. I've always thought there was an anxiety, OCD, addiction component to hoarding.

That's just me. That's just how I read some of that literature. I haven't actually done a big deep dive into the literature, but it's this looping. I need to solve this problem, and then I'm just going to keep this, and then I get stuck on it. And then when someone tries to help me with that, then I grab even tighter. This isn't like TV. These are really hard to treat. I don't know a situation unless somebody just flips a switch.

Somebody can probably write into the show and let me know of a situation. I've never heard of a situation that doesn't require professional intervention. There are people, there are mental health professionals who do this work exclusively. This is what they do. And they will work with people inside and outside. Exposure therapy is the top line here. And what that is, is you just have to slowly teach somebody

how to experience throwing something away. Similar to if someone's got a phobia of snakes, they'll show you a picture of a snake, and the next time you come back, they'll show you a couple of pictures of snakes, right? And slowly, the goal is eventually they're going to show you an aquarium with a snake in it, or you might go to the zoo together. Eventually, you're going to hold a snake, right?

And what you're doing is you're teaching your body that this isn't a threat, right? That this isn't going to do the thing that your amygdala is telling you or whatever part of your brain is telling you is going to happen. And so exposure therapy, some cognitive behavior therapy, that's the way that works, right? That's what you've got to do, but you've got to get a professional to do that. The thing you can do, and it's going to be mind-numbing and so hard, is to continue to let your mom know how much you love her. And at the same time, you've got to draw really strong boundaries, right? Real strong boundaries, meaning you can't get drawn into that rabbit hole, right? If you go to her house while she's gone and you just clean the whole thing up, you're going to implode a human being, right? From the inside out.

And so, will she come out and visit you? Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. And does she have those tendencies when she's with you? Or when she gets out of that environment, is she able to come visit you? Yeah, if she gets out of the environment, yeah, she's different. Totally different, huh? Mm-hmm.

So that's a great place to start. Would she go see somebody? Does she know this is a problem? I know she's seen a therapist in the past for different things. I think she would see a therapist for what's going on now. Do you live in her area? I don't, no. So my mom lives about four hours away.

Okay, all right. Some of these exposure therapies can be done in intensives, meaning a four-hour session with a therapist in a group. I wonder if, and this may be a conversation for you and your wife, I wonder if y'all could have a family therapy session with your wife and you and your mom, if your mom felt that was a safe situation, or if you have brothers and sisters. And the idea being this, not that there's something wrong with mom, but that you ask mom, tell your mom, I want to do a better job of loving my mom. And I see you mom are struggling and I don't have the tools to help in a way that I want to. And so I'm going to go meet with a counselor so I can learn some new tools. And I would love, love for you to come with me because then she can speak into how do I love my mom better? And that's going to help me love my wife

better. That's going to help me love my kids better. But mom, would you join me and brothers and sisters so we can get some more tools? And that might encourage her to come do one of those four-hour intensives. They're expensive and they're heavy. But man, they can be healing when a family gets together that way. And remember, this isn't, hey, mom, I want you to come down because you're jacked up and we're going to get you healed. No, you are talking about how you can get some more tools so you can love her better. And you want her to be a part of that process. Man, she's going to

feel deep shame, deep regret, because she grew up in this with her parents, right? And she knows what it's like to be embarrassed that nobody can come over. She knows what it's like to be trapped and so lonely, and you can't have anyone come over and have coffee with you. And how you're always hiding this other part of your life, how you're never going to find any romantic partner. She knows that. She doesn't need to be head upside to head with it. What she does need is a gentle introduction to somebody who is safe,

who can begin to walk alongside her in a healing journey. So brother, I'm so grateful that you are one of the guys who loves his mom enough to keep himself well, keep his family well, and to want her to just live the last years of her life joyfully, thriving, and able to just simply move around her apartment, right? Things that most of us take for granted every day. Thank you so much for that call. All right, as we wrap up today's show, let's go here. Let's go with this one.

I love this song. And can I say this? This is going to get me in trouble with the cards and letters and the internets. There is the rare occasion. The rare occasion. When somebody does a cover of a song and I think, oof, that might be better. And I recognize

I am treading on super thin ice. I'm going to fall through that ice and get trapped under it. I get that. But on the Full Moon Fever album, Tom Petty, the great Tom, the great TP, wrote a song called Free Fallin'.

And then a couple of years ago, I was doing something, and I found myself humming along to a song. And I'm just going to say it. John Mayer's cover of Free Fallin'. Man, he changed the key. He changed the swing of that song. He did it live. Just him and two other dudes and acoustic guitars. Man, check out John Mayer's cover of Free Fallin'.

But for today's show, we're going to go back to the OG, old TP Tom Petty, Free Fallin', and it goes like this. She's a good girl. She loves her mama. She loves Jesus and America too. And she's a good girl, crazy about Elvis. She loves horses and her boyfriend too. It's a long day living in Reseda.

There's a freeway running through the yard, and I'm a bad boy because I don't even miss her. I'm a bad boy for breaking her heart, and I'm free, free falling. And all the vampires walking through the valley move west down Ventura Boulevard. All the bad boys are standing in the shadows and the good girls are home with broken hearts.

And I want to glide down over Mulholland. I want to write her name in the sky. I'm going to free fall out into nothing. I'm going to leave this world for a while. I can't sing that. I was going to hit it, but I missed it. I'm going to leave this world for a while because I can't sing that. I was going to hit it, but I missed it. I'm going to leave this world for a while because I'm free, free falling right here on the Dr. John Deloney Show.