The Dr. John Delony Show - How Do You Help an Adult Child Navigate Mental Illness?

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

Today, we talk with a woman powerless to help her mentally unstable adult son, and a husband wondering if he is causing the communication problems in his marriage. Then, John talks with The Minimalists about everything from befriending your coworkers to what a life well lived really means. Lyrics of the Day: "With a Little Help From My Friends" -Joe Crocker 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 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.

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. We rarely see him, and he hasn't gone to any counseling. And my paralyzation comes from the fact that I'm just so afraid I'm going to say the wrong thing and cause him to feel like he's a burden to us and then cause him to take his own life. You love that boy, huh? Oh, very much. Redditor! What's up?

This is John with Dr. John Deloney's show. So glad that you're with us today. The international best mental health show ever. From ocean to ocean. It's not. Hey, I'm so glad that you're here. We talk about mental health, relationships from ocean to ocean. It's not. Hey, I'm so glad that you're here. We're talking about mental health, relationships, all the stuff.

If you want to be on the show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291. Kelly, you're looking at me with your happy face. Am I missing something? No, that was great. You've done a great job. Congratulations.

We've been on for 30 seconds. The constant judgment and scrutiny that I endure is just as a routine part of my life. First, I leave my home, which is just judgment and scrutiny, and I arrive here. And I stare directly into Kelly's eyes, and it's judgment and scrutiny. Oh I arrive here. And I stare directly into Kelly's eyes, and it's judgment and scrutiny.

Oh, I love it. And then there's America. Let's go to Carol in Tucson. What's up, Carol? Hi, John. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Well, I'm a little paralyzed with fear to take action on something very, very important.

All right, let me help you. How can I help you? Yeah, so our 33-year-old son has been hospitalized twice voluntarily as being suicidal. The first one was in November of 18 and the second in December of 2019. And he's been living with us and he pretty much just lives in his bedroom. We rarely see him, and he hasn't gone to any counseling other than at the very beginning of this ordeal, which we became aware of about three and a half years ago. So my question for you is, how do we encourage him to go get counseling and my paralyzation comes from the fact

that I'm just so afraid I'm going to say the wrong thing and cause him to feel like he's a burden to us and then cause him to take his own life I'm sorry this is happening. You love that boy, huh? Oh, very much. Yeah. Has he struggled his whole life?

He at one time said to me he feels like he's been depressed his whole life, but, um, you know, he went on to do great things. He, um, double majored in college, went on to the army, um, and became a captain. And then when he came out, went to seek a job that didn't come easily as easily as he would have thought, I guess. And so my whole thought in this whole time is that it was just the readjustment coming out of the military that was very challenging. So one of the challenges that parents experience when they have an adult child wrestling with mental health issues is a couple of things. One, they try to roll back and see what they could have done different to get to this point and they carry a lot of blame and a lot of shame and a lot of should have's or I might have's or what if's I had done this is is that any any part of that your story um well it's my story every day now not really retracing my steps but I researched the hell out of things

to try to figure out what it is that he has and what I should be doing and what I should be saying and what I shouldn't be saying, but he's treated by the VA and he has not allowed us to be privy to that treatment. Okay. So you have two paths forward here. Okay. One path is to make peace. He's just going to use your house as a hotel. He's not going to be a member of your family. He's just going to live in his bedroom and extract, I mean and then go 10 years after that he's gonna be 54 and um just gonna kind of be what he does and he's gonna be in his room on the internet playing video games or whatever and he's gonna come out for dinner that you're gonna provide him he's gonna go back in there and you're gonna make peace with it you're gonna stop worrying about it and you're gonna move on with your life the other side of it is you're going to move on with your life. The other side of it is you're going to say this stops now.

And here's what this stops means. If you're going to continue to live here, then a part of you living here is giving us access to your doctors so we can be a part of your healing. Because I'm just not going to, Because I'm not gonna sit ringside and watch my son die and wither away to nothing.

I'm not gonna watch my son maybe not commit acute suicide, pulling a trigger or taking some pills or jumping off something, but I'm also not gonna watch him commit what they call long tail suicide, just slowly fade away. I'm not gonna sit down and watch that.

If that's want to be the life that you want to choose for yourself, not that he's choosing mental health and not issues and not that he's choosing to hurt, he's not. But if he doesn't want to choose to heal, then I'm not going to sit ringside and watch that happen in my home. And honestly, you as his mom, and is dad still in the picture?

Yeah. You all two have to make that decision on which path you want to take. And there's really only two paths. The third path you could take is to let him live there and just fret and nag and try new things and get a dog and then get a pool and do all these things and mortgage your, you know, take out a second mortgage on your house and put you and your husband's retirement in jeopardy. Or you can, you could try a bunch of stuff, but what you're going to do is you're going to, you are going to drive yourself nuts. You're going to give yourself anxiety and heart attacks and strokes and all that prematurely, right? So the path forward is

just making peace. This is just gonna be the way this is, or we are going to draw some boundaries aimed at healing with the understanding that when we draw boundaries, other people can choose to draw their own. And his boundary might be, well, then I'm out of here. And you have to decide, is that better than him being in his room slowly dying? Is it better than him to go leave somewhere? Because right now he's not getting any better. You hear what I'm saying? I do hear what you're saying.

So in that conversation, if we take option two, or if we encourage option two, or we draw the boundary to go with option two, in that conversation, is it that we're making it more about that we, like you said, you don't want to see him sit around and die a slow, no. See, that's the thing. I start getting hung up on the words and then I get paralyzed. Yeah, so let me show you this. You are not going to say a thing and he's going to go, no, I haven't thought of that. Now I'm going to go kill myself.

If you have a hard conversation with him and he walks out of that room and dies by suicide, that is not because you said the wrong thing. Okay. Okay. That's because he was struggling. He wasn't well, and he made a decision. Okay. Okay. The longer you don't have a conversation, the messier this whole thing gets. And so when somebody, let me just, let me put it this way. I'm not going to tell you what to do in your world. I'm going to tell you what would happen if that was a friend of mine. Okay. If somebody calls and says, hey, I heard that so-and-so, one of our buddies is struggling. And this happened somewhat recently.

I hung up the phone, I picked him up, and I called and said, hey, I heard you're not doing okay. And they explained some stuff. And then I cut him off and said, hold on, before you keep talking, are you going to kill yourself? And you want to talk about like, no, man, my kids. And I was like, no, no, no, that's not what I'm asking. I need you to tell me yes or no.

Are you going to hurt yourself? No. Now, I didn't put a thought into this person's head that wasn't suddenly there. I was like, no way, I didn't think of that. Yeah, that's not how that works.

Okay. Okay. People do respond to boundaries, particularly if they have deep mental illness. He could respond in an extreme way. Okay, there is that possibility. That would not prohibit me and my house from having that conversation. Let me think of it this way.

Okay. Let's say somebody has colon cancer and they're on some sort of experimental chemotherapy and they're not taking their chemotherapy drugs. And we've heard about stories where out of nowhere, somebody goes to the doctor for their annual checkup and it's just gone. The tumor's gone. It just went away. And also they say, Hey, colon cancer is a bad one. Let's do lung cancer. And, um, or they just go home and just keep

smoking. At some point, I'm going to say, you cannot sit in my house and continue to smoke. And they may say, um, if you send me out of here, I'm going to die. You are sending me to my death. Nope, I'm not. I'm offering you life. If you stay here, we're going to walk alongside you. We're going to give you a place to live. We're going to give you food.

We're going to give you water. We're going to give you shelter. And we're going to have a close connection with your doctor. And that's your rent for being here. You can choose to keep smoking. I'm not going to watch you do it. I can't. And I'm willing to offer you something else.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. The challenge here is, it might be something like this. If I were you, I'd also call the VA, and I would let them know. They can't even acknowledge that he's a client there or wherever he gets it. Is he taking meds of any kind? Yes.

Okay. You can look on the pharmacy. I mean, you can look at the pharmacy, whatever doctor wrote that prescription. You can see that. I would send that doctor a note of some sort or call and say, I know you can't confirm that my son's even a client because he's 34. We're about to have a hard boundaries conversation in our home. And he has a history of suicidality. If this is a bad choice, please let me know

and put that burden on them. Okay. Okay. But that's what I would do. Okay. And then there's a ethical obligation if they know that they have a client in harm's danger, in harm's way, that this, you know, maybe your son told them, if they ever do this, I'm immediately going to do this in this way at this time, then they would have an obligation to come out and say something. Okay. You are between a rock and a hard place. There's no question about it. The question you have moving forward is, am I going to make peace with the way things are? Or am I going to draw a boundary and tell my son, I want to be a part of your healing. And I'm not going to sit here and watch you slowly fade away in my home.

Okay. As a follow-up to that, at the beginning, he had delusions. And one of his delusions was that his father was not his father. So, I don't know where he stands on that right now. The medication seems to have taken care of the delusions, but for that reason, should his father not be part of this conversation? I would ask him, tell him we have to have a hard conversation about your living arrangements here. And would you like, I want dad to be a part of this conversation, but in the past you have expressed

that you didn't know if dad was dad. Are you okay with him being a part of this conversation? Okay. And I would just have it that way. Okay. Actually, you know what? I'll take that back. I absolutely take that back.

Yes, I would have dad a part of the conversation. I would. Okay. Here's why. This is your house. And this whole conversation is a boundary where we're reclaiming our home. And we're reclaiming our rightful place as your parents. And as your parents, we're going to tell you hard truths and we're going to love you.

And so this is your dad. And if you've taken your medication and you're a part of a healing community, then you would know that or you would at least understand and trust us, right? Or trust your, anyway. Is that making sense? Sure. So I would have that.

This is a reclamation thing, but I need you to hold this really, like what I'm about to tell youlamation thing but I need you to hold this really like what I'm about to tell you right now I need you to hold this in your hand this can all go south and the question you have to ask yourself is is it worth that conversation

and what I will tell you is for me yes for me yes for the students for those folks I've walked alongside year after year yes it might be that you ask somebody from the VA to join you in this conversation at home

it might be that you have the VA on standby or some sort of other mental health professional in the community on standby. It may be that you've got two or three people that you trust that are friends of the family that maybe he trusts or a couple of his friends or maybe one or two friends from service with him. You will know best the ecosystem with which to have this conversation. And it might not be just one conversation, it might be multiple. But at some point we set a deadline and say, hey, you're not getting better. You're struggling. If you're going to live here, you're going to be a part of this family. And here's what that

looks like. And depending on where his mental illness, how severe his mental illness is, he may be just, I mean, unable to function at 100%. Great. Here's what, based on what you can do, here's what we're asking of you. We've got to have signed releases with your doctor so that we can be a part of your healing journey. Gotta know what meds you're taking.

And I get to check in on you periodically to make sure you're taking your meds. If you're struggling with delusions or suicidal, you're going to let somebody know. That's an agreement that you make. That's a promise you make to your mom and dad to live in our home. Some of those things, right? We're going to be very clear on our boundaries. And you got to have people that walk alongside you as you rev these conversations up because it's going to be hard. And he may walk right out that door. Okay. I don't envy you in the slightest bit.

I'm heartbroken for you. But I also know shying away from this is making the whole house tense and the whole house filled with smoke. Let's open the windows up and let's have that conversation. Get a professional who will walk alongside you in this, okay? Don't do this by yourself. Thank you so much for the call. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings.

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

BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. I need help kind of figuring out if and then maybe where I'm being too hard on my wife and our relationship. What makes you think you're being too hard? Some of it is whenever we have conversations specifically about harder stuff. Be specific. Or more serious things. What's harder stuff? When it comes to what our family looks like moving forward

in regards to kids, where we want to live, stuff like that, or even just any hard topics that come up in the world just naturally, I like to talk about those things, and sometimes I feel like I might force them onto her, but she tends to shut down, not talk about things, and push them away, or at least that's how it feels to me. And I don't know if I'm putting her in a position to do that. And on top of that, our relationship just kind of feels like it's been rocky since we've been married.

Okay. Well, I'll just start the call with saying thank you for being brave, man. That's a hard phone call to make. Have you told anyone else that you're struggling with this? Yeah. Some of my friends.

Okay. What do they say? Depending on the topic, you know, sometimes, you know, depending on the friend turns into a, you know, kind of comparing thing about relationships and I try to stay away from those. And then some of them tell me that, you know, things will work themselves out. And when things move forward, like, you know, with kids, for example, that, you know, people will just kind of be able to step it up cause they'll have to. And I kind of get a little bit of everything. And so that's why I don't really know where to go. Yeah. I appreciate the trust,

man. Um, so when your wife shuts down, um, when she shuts down and you ask her about it, what does she say? Not a whole lot. I think that's kind of part of the problem is she shuts down. And there are times where I know that I get a little too frustrated for it. And not in like an I'm yelling kind of way. It's just I'm clearly frustrated. And I've been trying really hard to recognize when that's happening and take a step back and maybe come back to it later.

But even when I don't do that, it still just feels like it goes nowhere. Words don't come out, and it just becomes like this circular conversation. What's your goal for the conversation? Are you really trying to get to, hey, let's go ahead and nail down how many kids we want to have? Or where do we want to live? Or is this your way of trying to be intimate, trying to connect? Um, I would say both, but probably more towards the, like actually trying to figure things out. Okay. Y'all been married two years. How old are you? I'm 27. Okay.

When I was 27, we were going to have four kids and I was cool at stopping with three. And we were going to live probably in Houston, Texas was my guess. And now I've got two kids. We're done. And I live in got two kids, we're done, and I live in Nashville.

Not even on the radar. And so what is your, what is your impulse to try to nail this down? Why do you need this nailed down right now at 27? I don't even necessarily want to say nailing it down.

It's, I just want to be able to talk about some of these things. And it seems like we can't like, like it kind of started at first as she's getting ready to turn 30. And so, you know, doing the whole, like I'm 30, 30 and getting old kind of thing. And I've got seven gray hairs and that kind of thing has been going on. And then it's turned into, I'm, on like she's brought up you know i'm on a timer now with the whole baby thing and we gotta think about this and for me i i more want to make sure that our relationship is strong enough to where when we bring a child into the

world that it's in a good place and the best place that i can make it what is that what does that look like? You know, a strong family between her and I. I know, but be very specific. What's a strong family between her and I? Because here's what I hear just in your language, is very amorphous. And some of that may be because you're nervous on the radio, but it's very, the way you communicate even with me is somewhat circular and somewhat amorphous.

Okay. Just even the way, like, tell me what hard things, you know, just things that we're talking about, what our family might look like down the road. Instead of saying how many kids are we going to have and where we're going to live and what she wants to do as a career. You see i'm saying like one of those is very direct here's i'm trying to get answers to and i can imagine if somebody's hinting around hey i'm 30 and i'd love

to have a family with you and we've been married for two years and you're like well i kind of have this thing about what the it's going to look, and I want to make sure we're strong. That's telling her, I'm still trying you out. And I don't have any clear criteria for you. My guess is she has learned to shut down. That's usually a behavior people pick up in their childhood. But it is a futile, like this conversation will go nowhere and will have no bearing on, there's nothing I can say in this conversation

that's going to have any impact on my life whatsoever, except possibly negatively. So I'm out. Okay. And I don't know what you're waiting for or what kind of metric. I've got friends in my life that said, like, I wanted to have X number of dollars in the bank before I had a kid. That was a security blanket for me. I wanted to have this level of position at a job until I realized every job is fungible.

And the higher up the ladder you go, the more likely you are to get fired. I didn't know anything. So I had all these imaginary things, but it was pretty clear, here's when we're going to start having a kid. My wife and I weren't trying out, right? We wanted to both be done with grad school. We both wanted, so we had some very clear metrics.

It doesn't sound like you have those. You just have this idea that I kind of want to, am I wrong? Kind of, maybe just a little bit nervous cause I'm calling in. No, that's cool. And that's totally fine. It's totally fine. Some of it specifically is, you know, her and I were maybe intimate once every two or three months and we're only two years in and it's been that way practically since we got married. Okay.

And I try to talk with her and figure out what's going on with that. There's a thing that always, not always, it comes up frequently where she kind of gets in her own mind and she's told me this, so this isn't like me saying it, where she gets in her own mind,

she essentially catastrophizes a lot of things, specifically like death and freaks out and goes into a spiral. She's woken me up in the middle of the night like crying and bawling i'm like i don't know what the heck i mean i wasn't trained for this um so like there's things like that and i think a really big thing that i may be conflating the two things but it's also trying to figure out. She went through a lot when she was younger with her family. And I am worried that it's kind of affecting things now and that it could affect our family going forward.

So let me tell you, both of you, both of you went through things as a child that is affecting your relationship right now. A hundred percent chance. Yes. The only question you have moving forward is, are we two going to work together to heal from what was

and create something awesome moving forward? Create something new, create something strong, create something beautiful, create something of our own devising moving forward. That's the only question you have. And the answer to some folks is no. I'm going to live in the past. I'm going to always be this person who was abused, traumatized,

neglected, left, whatever the word is. That is going to be who I am. And then, unfortunately, you as somebody married to that person have to decide, is this the life I'm signing up for? Am I going to just ride this one out? Or am I out of here? Or the other side is we're going to change everything. Have you said, hey, I want to go see a counselor together? Yes. Okay.

And she said no? She's said yes. Our biggest problem is scheduling, but that's just an excuse. A hundred percent. To actually do it. A hundred percent excuse. And so what you can do is take the lead. Because this sounds like the shutting down thing and the being hard thing, what it sounds like is a house filling up with pressure of frustration.

She's frustrated at how she responds and how she feels because she wants to feel different as your husband i mean as your wife and she wants to feel different as x and wants to feel different as y and you want to experience this you want to experience that and none of that is happening and you're walking and talking past each other and you're living past each other you're only having sex two or three times i mean two once every two or three months um and you're frustrated by that she's frustrated by that and then all of a sudden it's because baby becomes the issue or where we're going to live becomes the that becomes the volcano but man it's been churning underneath. Here's the frustrating part.

All you can fix on planet earth is you. That's it. Yes. And so if I'm you, I'm going to go sign up for my own therapist ASAP. Okay. I'm going to go say, I'm going to start dealing with me.

I'm going to start going to the gym. I'm going to start doing these things for going to start dealing with me. I'm going to start going to the gym. I'm going to start doing these things for me to be healthy and me to be well and me to be whole. I'm going to get a job that I actually feel like I'm – I'm going to start doing these things. And every time I'm going to invite my wife along. I'd love for you to join me. I'd love for you to come be a part of this. Right? Is that fair?

Yes. No, that's fair. I guess how, and I know I can't obviously force her into doing anything, but how can I maybe ask her to get help with me or, you know, alongside me or something like that with stuff that she's been through? Cause that's kind of, it all kind of seems to go back to something she went through when she was younger and is still connected to, specifically to keep it as family-friendly as possible.

Hey, we're way past that on this show, dude. We're way past that. Fair enough. Her dad and her biological dad, when she was 8th or 9th grade, went to prison for the rest of his life for recording himself with children, his niece. Okay. And so her dad, her dad was a pedophile.

Yes. And mentioned her in a recording and she says nothing ever happened with her, but that's kind of was her starting point. And she still talks to him on the phone. He is still abusive to her. Like every time she gets off the phone with him, I just hear it in her voice and I try talking to her about it. And then it turns into, well, I thought you weren't going to get, like, I thought you weren't going to make it. No, you were my dad.

And it's like, right. So here's the way forward there. If you have a conversation in that, right at the end of that phone call, you're talking to somebody who's in such escalated fight or flight, there is no conversation happening there. There's survival only. There's a conversation to be had that says, hey, I'm going to make breakfast on Saturday. We're going to do this one at home.

And I want to tell you some things. I'm not going to ask for your response in any of these things, but I've got some things that have been on my heart and in my chest, and I want to tell you. How many times would I try that? Because I've tried that a few times, I think. One time. I'd write a letter. Okay. And I would read the letter, and then I would leave it with her.

Okay. And I would read the letter and then I would leave it with her. And when you start to have this conversation, she may shut completely down, not hear a word you're saying, just try to survive. She's had to survive her whole life. And that letter, if she'll go back to it and go back to it and go back to it, she'll see this man's different and this man loves me. This man sees me. This man wants me to be whole. And you get to, she'll get to choose moving forward. Ultimately, she's going to have to decide

I want to get well. And a wellness journey for her is going to be hard. And you have to convince her that I'm going to be right here with you. But yeah. I can imagine she's got sex and intimacy for her is war. It's terror, right? It's hard.

Probably, yeah. And she may not even know that. Or it's disgusting because it was used as a way to hurt children. And, you know, there's a million different ways her body can take that. All that to say is this is going to be the definitive conversation. I need you to get well. I can't hear that man's voice in my home. I don't want him calling our house.

And if you need to talk to him more than me, then I'm going to have some hard conversations. I'm going to have some hard decisions to make. Because every time this man calls and talks to my wife, she gets hurt all over again. And I love you too much. Does that make sense? I love you too much to let you continue to talk so negatively about yourself here. I guess I'm worried that that's going to be an ultimatum. What's your alternative, man? Just keep floating along like you are? Look up and it'd be five years from now?

And she's more withdrawn? And y'all have had sex four times in five years? I mean, what's the alternative? I mean, that. And that's, I guess, what I'm scared of and why I really want to... Where this usually ends is in ash,

in resentment. Somebody ends up running into a co-worker that makes their heart beat a little bit faster, or they find some websites that make their heart beat a little bit faster,

or they start working 130 hours a week and make themselves busy, or they have one more drink and one more drink. Because when our relationships aren't whole, there's an entire ecosystem that will take that pain from us and just distract us, distract us, distract us, distract us. I'm not telling you to make an ultimatum, but you're going to get there at some point. I will not accept X and I will accept Y. The faster you can get there, the more peace you're going to have. Because right now it's just this ambiguous,

I don't know. You know what I mean? I don't know. It's kind of, the more you live there, the more your body is trying to solve it, solve it, solve it, solve it, solve it, solve it. I guess I'm just scared to be specific because of where it could lead.

That scares the crap out of me. I totally get that. But just know this, the ambiguity is killing you. And the ambiguity is killing her too. Because she doesn't want your relationship to be where it is either. And so some specificity, it's like when people are getting out of debt and they know they owe a bunch, it's like, dude, you got to write down how much you owe somebody. Or when people's eating is out of control, like mine has been

the last couple of months. Dr. Norton, my buddy, Lane, he said, dude, I've got the best product on the market. And just start measuring what you eat. I had that app for a while before I had the courage to start going like, all right, I got to just start. And dude, I didn't like it. I haven't. I've loved the app. I have not liked the reality of my eating habits. When my wife sits down, we have budget conversations. I don't like the reality of my eating habits. When my wife sits down, we have budget conversations.

I don't like the reality of my spending habits, but their reality, right? And so that specificity helps us have a starting point. And right now you guys are just living in this amorphous tension. And when you live in the amorphous, you both default to the things that your body knows. Hers knows to withdraw, yours knows to try a little bit harder and have a different conversation. And those aren't working. And so at some point we have to say,

here's the status of our relationship. We've slept together three or four times the last year. Every time the pedophile calls our home and I know he's your dad, you feel like this. Every time I wanna talk to you about the future, this happens. And I need something different. I need you. And I'll be a part of your healing journey. This can be hard, but yeah, I think specificity is really important in this season.

What do you need? And what does she need? And how can you help each other get there? We'll be right back. All right, we are back. This has been a heavy show. So we're calling an audible here. We're going to take a left turn first. But before we make that turn, we're just in the turning lane. Is that the, that was annoying. I'm sorry. That was the turn signal. I was trying to make a turn signal because I'm gonna be a conscious driver.

Hey, this book, Essentialism by Greg McCowan. Go buy it. It's been out a while. I'm way late to the game here. This book is extraordinary and I don't want to give it away other than this is the single best book I've ever read on how to make the most important things in your life

the most important thing and actually go get them done. An absolute masterpiece, Essentialism by Greg McCowan. All right, so now we're turning and here's a new segment called Deloney Was Wrong. I just made that segment up. Kelly's like, Ooh, I like this segment. I'm in for this. Yes. Um, so I am always giving advice and running my mouth and blah, blah, blah on the show. I don't think I'm, yeah, I guess I do give advice or I give my opinion on things

or what I would do in my situation. Um, but sometimes I'm wrong and I think it's important as Scientists, I think it's important as people who are um Espousing their views on things to say yeah, I missed this one and here's one where I missed it Um, and I brought some friends in to help So I have for years talked about the importance of loneliness and the I mean the important not the importance of loneliness The importance of loneliness and the, I mean, the important, not the importance of loneliness, the importance of having friends, having community and how awful loneliness is and how it kills us both physiologically and emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, we just die younger, right? We're not designed to live alone. And I also think it's, I thought it's really not a good idea to become best buddies to have your intimate go-to folks be people that

you work with. Because there comes a moment when I may have to fire you, or I may have to tell you that I blew something up in my marriage, or that I took money that wasn't mine. I did something that's going to force you to think of the business that we both share or the workplace that we both share. And you're going to have to consider my actions there too, which is going to make me be less open, less vulnerable, less honest. And that's not friendship. Then we have secrets. We have things that I don't tell here and I don't tell there. So I've always been a big fan of gotta have good working relationships.

No question about it. You gotta have people that you trust. No question about it. But your 2 a.m. friends don't need to be at work with you. They need to be out elsewhere. You don't need to be sitting around talking about work all day long,

all that stuff. And then my buddies, Ryan and Josh of The Minimalist swing by. And part of our conversation when they're here, I asked them, hey, y'all are best of best friends. And y'all run this company together, The Minimalist. And in this company, you are always giving each other opinions and advice. And y'all differ on a lot of stuff.

How do y'all remain friends and run this business and we talked about loneliness talk about friendship but i gotta say i was wrong and i've they this conversation actually changed my opinion on forcing me to rethink this idea of not being friends, close friends of people you work with. So check out this conversation I have with my good friends, Josh and Ryan of The Minimalist on loneliness, friendship,

and working with friends right here. I want to talk about loneliness and friendship. Okay? So here's the, some of this is spurred on by your book, Love People Use Things Because the Opposite Never Works, which I think is the greatest title in the last three or four years of a book. I love it. Thanks.

So we did a survey here, a national survey. It's a research-backed survey. Here's some of the data points we came back with. 82% of people say their friends and people they spend most of their time with don't know them deeply. So, 8 out of 10

believe that folks don't know they're struggling with their weight or their faith or they're not attracted to their spouse anymore, that they like Bieber's music, like they really like it, but their friends don't know that. Who doesn't? Exactly. 68% say they have three or fewer close friends, right? So seven out of 10.

More than half do not have a friend they feel comfortable calling in the middle of the night. And half, about 50% of married couples admit to struggling with sexual intimacy and emotional intimacy. They can't tell the one person that they committed, like, you're my ride or die. I can't tell even that person. So going back to the title of your most recent book is Love People Use Things because the opposite never works. I've been speaking about loneliness for years,

but after spending time with you guys, I've got a new perspective. And it's this, I wonder if it's rooted in a consumer culture it tells us i can get all the stuff that i need so that i can be okay and i can do life by myself so here's my broad questions and we can run with this wherever we want to what's your thoughts on a life well lived because that to me is the end and if we reverse engineer that to what does it look like in the in the hour by hour and minute by minute we can get to some of these answers. And what's the importance of community and friends? Let's start by talking about the commodification of love. Okay.

Because that's really what we've done. You sort of alluded to it there. We treat relationships transactionally. So the title of the book was Love People Use Things Because the Opposite Never Works. Ryan and I tried the opposite for a very long time. Loving things. And we hear it all the time. I love my truck. I love my house. But I also love my wife, right?

Same word. Yeah. We don't have different words to describe. What we're really trying to say here is I enjoy this truck, right? But also what we're saying is this truck says something about me. This couch says something about me. This couch says something about me. Nothing wrong with owning a truck. I own one.

Nothing wrong with owning a couch. I own one, right? But as soon as it becomes part of my identity, a lot of people are struggling with identity right now. And the way that we think we have a shortcut to identity is what? By heaping new masses of things. The average American household has 300,000 items in it, and that'd be great if it was bringing us more joy, more connection, more community.

However, I will say this. I want to be careful not to prescribe something because having more friends isn't better. That's relationship consumerism. And it's been amplified with social media, right?

Absolutely. I've got 3,000 friends on the internet. I just got nobody to come help me fix my air conditioner, right? Right. I've got 3,000 friends on the internet. I just got nobody to come help me fix my air conditioner, right? I've got all this, but I have nothing. I have friends in quotes, but I don't have the people who I have that intimate relationship with.

I will say this. I have two really deep friendships in my life. One is Ryan. One is my wife. It doesn't mean that I don't have other friends I can turn to, and I'm grateful for those friends, but the relationships that I have, I've cultivated in a way where I don't need a thousand relationships. Because same thing with material possessions. I own some things, and I get immense value from those things.

But relationships are different. It's not just about getting value from the people in my life. That's a parasitic relationship. It's also about contributing to the people around me. In the book, we wrote about the three different types of relationships, sort of the primary relationships in our life. Usually, you can count those on one hand. If you're Mormon or Catholic, it's two hands.

So your closest friends, your family, your kids, maybe your parents to a certain age. But beyond that, you have the sort of secondary relationships. Those are the people who are the other cast members in your film, so to speak. The people that you love, that you care for, that you appreciate. And those people, we often spend a decent amount of time, but we unfortunately forsake the people closest to us, spend time with those people. Or the third layer of people, but we unfortunately forsake the people closest to us, spend time with those people. Or the third layer of people, the sort of tertiary relationships, the people on

the periphery. We spend a lot of time with people who are coworkers and networking buddies and acquaintances, nothing wrong with those people. But if I'm spending 95% of my time away from the people that I love, that I care about. I'm not making time for them, but I'm also not making time for my most important relationship was my relationship with me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think like there's this incompleteness that maybe everyone kind of feels a little bit and we're always finding, trying to find a way to be completed and things is a shortcut to that. And we get told by 5,000 advertisements a day that here's what's going to complete you.

And I would even posit that it's not that people complete us either. I think we can have meaningful relationships once we kind of realize that we are complete by ourselves. And yeah, I mean, Josh and I, luckily, we knew each other in grade school. So by proximity, we became friends. But often, people are stuck with proximity, with friends. And they kind of start to friend people who they see every single day. And these relationships aren't always the best relationships. Right, right.

They're convenient, right? Yeah, right. They're convenient, right? Yeah, right. So, and we've talked about this in other places, but that when our brain recognizes that we're alone, it can be proximal or it can be emotional, right? And we've all probably had experiences when I'm surrounded by people that quote unquote love me and that I love, but I feel totally alone, right? Yeah. And vice versa. You can be with that one person. I was with two knuckleheaded dudes this weekend in Texas that I've known for,

and I was completely, and I think it's, I love that other people don't complete you. For me, I think for our neurologically, other people allow our brains to go, and then we can, I can look in the mirror and see the truth, right? Then I'm not trying to fight and look for the right label that completes me. I love that. So what's, you mentioned

you got two really important ride or dies in your life. What about you, man? Yeah. You know, I'm a pretty big extrovert. So I make friends really, really easy. And I live in Los Angeles, which has some amazing people. Like there's so many, I can't even hang out with them all. It's like I find myself like, you know, struggling to hang out with this person. Do I hang out with that person? But I mean, as far as like close, tight knit relationships, my wife, Josh, and then there's a couple other, they're probably more secondary.

But yeah, I do enjoy hanging out with people. And I think a lot of people would probably call me their friend and vice versa. But yeah, man, as an extrovert, I try to seek out as many people as possible. I love it. You brought up a life well lived. And it's interesting because if we're not clear on what we want out of life, we can find ourselves forging these bonds that really aren't that strong of bonds. So how do you figure out what you want? Well, Josh and I, I mean, we talk a lot about how it starts with your values. Like you got to get clear on what it is you value.

And you can go to theminimalists.com forward slash V as in values. And there's actually a worksheet there that help you unpack the different things that you want to get out of life. And that's really the meaningful life. It's our short-term actions aligning with these long-term values. And sometimes we choose friends. We don't really line those two up. And you want to unpack the... I want to be successful and I surround myself every day with folks who just want to get high, right?

Yeah, exactly. And so I'm trying, I've tethered myself here and I'm running. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to unpack the different layers of values? Yeah, sure. I mean, our values aren't what we, you know, quite often not what we say they are. I could say my health is a value. My relationships are a value of mine. But if all I'm

doing is out, you know, getting drunk and, you know, whatever it is, like however you spend your time, those are your actual values. So what we talk about with that worksheet, you have four different types of values. And so you sort of have, it's like building a house. Every house has a foundation. Every foundation is pretty much the same. Well, hey, what do you want your foundation to look like, John? No one asks you that because a foundation is- Sturdy? Yeah, right. And so everyone has similar foundational values, relationships, health, contribution, creativity, passion, et cetera. There are these

different foundational values, fairly similar. Beyond that though, what makes your house look different, makes you a different individual are the structural values. The structure of your house can be a little bit different. Your walls are going to be in different places. Some people want a giant open floor plan. Other people want six bedrooms and nothing is right or wrong there. It's what's appropriate for you, right? Beyond that, you have surface values. That's what makes your house look interesting or beautiful, right? So like, what are you gonna paint the house?

What kind of facade are you going to have, right? Now we misprioritize these things. We were talking to Dave Ramsey yesterday. I was at the airport a couple weeks ago and there was this terrible shooting that happened. And it was on the news at the airport. And they broke in, breaking news, verdict on the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial. And that's what we're doing with our personal lives right now is we're breaking news with banalities and sort of the vapid cultural references that make us feel some sort of dopamine hit in the moment,

but it doesn't complete us, right? Now, I will say a thing about the complete thing. Quite often that we experience a void, an emptiness, right? And we try to fill that void with stuff, with relationships, with chemicals, with substances, whatever it is, as opposed to realizing like, hey, I'm already complete, and the void isn't a bad thing necessarily. Emptiness isn't a bad thing. We lived in Montana for five years. No one goes to the mountains. They're like, it is so freaking empty here.

We're not gonna fill this with. The sky is too empty in Montana. You know what we need? Consumer purchases. That would be great. Put some bounce houses out here on the field. And so I think also recognizing that empty feeling that we experience. There's that Pascal quote about all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit alone in a room quietly.

And that's us. We can't sit here and be comfortable with the emptiness. So we try to fill it, not recognizing we're not filling it. We're just cluttering the space. So I have struggled with this personally in my professional career. And any tips y'all have, you mentioned earlier, we spend so much time with the people that we work with. And early on in my career, I was working with some of my best friends in the world. Yeah.

And we ended up in the same worship places. We ended up in the same grocery stores and the same movie theaters and the same, we watched the fights together, whatever. And then it comes the day when one person screws up or there's a moral violation or character violation or they lose their job. And suddenly you can't go to the grocery store you can't go to the movie theater because your circle's untethered and so i wrongly hit the pendulum too far and said all of my close relationships are going to be with people that i don't do work with every day

and i've come to believe that i screwed that up. I hit, I went too far. With, without like, this can get kind of eye-rolly kind of fast. So we don't have to do that, but how have you two managed to stay close friends and also do business together? Because there's an inherent tension there, you know what I mean? Yeah, no, that's a great question. You know, I think Josh and I, well, first off, I see him as a mentor. And I think he probably looks at me as a little bit of a mentor. So we have this very symbiotic relationship that we both hold very dear. And I think with a business partnership, a friendship, a romantic partnership, I mean, the whole goal is— Wait, we have a romantic partnership?

No, I'm talking about— Yeah, you didn't know? I'm surprised. No, but regardless... Josh, this is... This is actually what this show's about. Regardless of the kind of relationships that we have in our life,

what do we want out of those relationships? Regardless of whether it's romantic or not, we want to be understood. We want to be respected. We want to be seen. And that is really what I go out of my way to do with all of my relationships. I go out of my way to not just do that, but also add value to that relationship. There's like an us box, right? How much am I giving to this us box is something I will ask of myself a lot. And if I'm not giving

anything to it and the relationship is tumultuous, then I've got to look in the mirror and be like, okay, what have I not done that I really should probably do to get this relationship back on track? And I think the thing that really kind of screws up relationships a lot are expectations. We've got all these expectations, especially the ones where, you know, you expect, you know, someone to do something and they don't do it. And then you get mad because they didn't do it, but they didn't even know about that particular expectation. Exactly. Right. So, I mean, I think that's another piece of it too, is like, I don't expect anything of Josh. I don't expect anything of my wife. I, the only thing I expect is for myself to hold a high level of standards. And I think that's what really helps me do great with relationships, low expectations,

high standards. Yeah. John, I got to tell you that one of the biggest things that has helped Ryan's and my relationship is a lack of self-righteousness. Because he and I have different political beliefs. We voted for two different people in the last election. Can you believe it? Oh my God. And we have different religious beliefs, spiritual beliefs.

We have different personalities as well. And it'd be easy for me to stand on a pedestal and say, well, I'm right. I'm gonna drag Ryan up to this pedestal with me. And until he gets up here, I'm gonna look down on him. And it'd be easy for him to do the same thing to me. I'm going to look down at you because you're not on my level. We have different opinions about something, right? But opinions often block our ability to love other people. To love someone is to see them for who they are without trying to change them. You may hope for the best for them, but good luck dragging them,

kicking and screaming to your worldview. That's right. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still, right? Yes. And so it's not, I never want to convince him, coerce him, persuade him even. If anything, I want to understand where he's coming from.

Yeah, and that's what it comes down to, like really trying to understand. And when you have an understanding, you can have brutally honest truth with one another. Yeah. Because, you know, Josh could, you know, say to me, hey man, I noticed whatever, you know, insert criticism there. And I understand that he's trying to help me. He's not trying to put me down. He's not trying to feel better than me. And instead of me getting offended, I will look at it and try to understand, okay, where is he coming from? The problem is there's a lot of friendships where people, they do just want to put the other person down. And we've got to watch out for that for sure.

I think that's super important it comes back to that word that nobody likes that vulnerability I've got to put myself in a position where you could hurt me if you wanted to and I am going to trust that you won't

and I'm going to be open about what I need I'm going to be clear about that and I'm going to take a knee you mentioned, I'm going to be open about what I need. I'm going to be clear about that. And I'm going to take a knee here. And if you do the same thing, then we can do anything, right? If that's the way we approach one another, we can do anything, right? I would posit that no one can really make you angry or hurt you, so to say. If you do open yourself up and allow them to have that space

in your heart, then that is a decision that you make. So I allow four or five people in, and I actually called them and told them that, like, hey, I've given you permission. So if you speak into, I had one buddy, the story that he's a 50, he's the CEO of a lawn care company, right? But he's an old buddy that I trust, and he's about 10 years older than me. And somebody posted something about how what a loser I was, and I screenshot it and responded back. And I'm not going to lie, my response was hilarious. It was pretty funny.

I thought it was great. And he calls me laughing. He's like, dude, I just saw that. It was hilarious. And I was like, yeah, it was great. And he goes, take it down. And I said, no, man, that's super funny. And he goes, it's super funny. And he goes, take it down. And I said, no, man, that's super funny.

He goes, it's super funny. And he goes, that's not who you want to be. Take it down. And I got pissed and I got indignant and I took it down. And because I know that he didn't call me because I had a funnier joke than he did that day. He was just some random guy driving his mower in Texas and realized this guy thought that was funny, but it put him in this. He had my best interest at heart. And vice versa, right, if I ever called.

So it's being able to hear that, man. But you got to be careful with who you open that up to. Oh, yeah. Josh has definitely talked me out of responding to some trolls here and there, for sure. Because I used to respond and be funny and witty and make light of it. But, yeah, he's definitely talked me out of that before, too. The problem is it's always escalating. In any loving relationship, we want to de-escalate.

Yes. Take a knee. Because what he was talking about earlier, I don't have the power to upset you, John. You have the power to upset you. And that's one of the most difficult things to realize because my daughter can upset me. She's nine and she can upset me. But actually, she can't.

She only can if i give her that power it's within me to determine whether or not i react in a particular way and the same thing is true with a online troll as well and we have we could talk about that forever we have a culture that man we have just given the keys to the kids and they found themselves responsible for the emotional reactivity of the adults in their lives and they can't carry that no what a great man if if a group of if a generation of parents would just stop and be like wait a minute you're 10 we don't let you drive or drink beer so you can't hurt my feelings like go you know i need you to do finish your dishes or whatever the

thing yeah the world would change on a dime hey 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 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. So that was it. Hope you enjoyed that. And once again, I was wrong. I was wrong. I'm going to figure out how to change my ways. Kelly, will you be my friend? Definitely. Anytime somebody answers you with an L-Y word,

they're not telling you the truth. That hurt in my heart. But that's okay. That's okay. I hope you enjoyed it. And I've got some more conversations coming up with The Minimalist and others. And I'm so grateful that you joined us.

As we wrap up today's show, oh, look at this. I'm not a Beatles fan. Am I allowed to say that? The Joe Cocker version of this song is Beatles. I'm not a Beatles fan. Am I allowed to say that? The Joe Cocker version of this song is so much better. Same team right here. Song is with a little help from my friends. And it goes like this. What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?

Let me your ears and I'll sing you a song and I'll try not to sing out of key. Ah, I get by with a little help from my friends. Mmm, I get high with a little help from my friends. I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends. Do you need anybody? I need somebody to love. Could it be anybody? I want somebody to love.

We all get by with a little help from our friends. We'll see you soon. Coming up on the next episode. We talked about how I was battling, you know, being overwhelmed with my career as well as trying to balance the three bands I'm in. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you quit one of the bands? I haven't yet, but I'm working on it, I promise.

What a sucker, dude. What a chump. And I was told not to be jealous of his relationship with this person and not to come between him and his family. If he required celery at every meal and he chewed it with his mouth open so loud, hey, babe, I love you, but the celery, can we do gum? And he's like, celery stays. Don't get between me and my vegetables.

Then you would know I have a choice to make. I feel like I'm not ready to marry her. I'm not sure if it's what I should do if we're meant to be together, if I'm even fit for marriage at this point in life or ever even. Then break up with her and let her go, man. I'm not sure if I'm just self-sabotaging

and I do this in any relationship I'm in. 100% yes.