The Dr. John Delony Show - I Don’t Know How To Cry

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A man unable to let himself cry, even when he’s alone - A woman worried about her teen sister’s relationship with a 50-year-old man - Why exercise is a game changer when it comes to your mental health Lyrics of the Day: "Eye Of The Tiger" - Survivor 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 Hallow Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders 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. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. She is currently in a romantic relationship with a 50-something-year-old man. She's just turned 18 in March. She is a child under the spell of an adult. That's why they need adults in their lives to protect them from predators like this man. What up, what up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. It's a show made up of real people going through real challenges. And I'm going to walk alongside you and we're going to figure out what comes next. I got two decades of sitting with people when the wheels have fallen off in their marriages,

in their personal life, in the worst of the worst moments. When sitting with people who have lost loved ones, who are considering taking their own life, it's been where I've spent my life. And that's what we do here on the show. My promise is i'm not going to have all the answers all the time Sometimes I have to call some friends and reach out to a to an expert or two across the country My promise is i'm gonna tell you the truth And i'll sit down in the mud with you. We will figure out what to do next If you want to be on the show, we can talk about marriage. We can talk about mental health Whatever's going on this in this wild mental health ecosystem. We's going on in this wild mental health ecosystem we got going on in

this country. Sometimes talk about exercise, nutrition. Sometimes we talk about schools and what's going on in the lives of your kids. We talk about all, whatever's going on in your life. I'm here to walk alongside you. If you want to be on the show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. Leave a message and Jenna or Kelly will call you back And we'd love to have you on the show Or go to johndeloney.com Slash ask A-S-K So let's start the day show off here

Down the street in Nashville, Tennessee And let's chat it up with Ray It's a shame about Ray What's up, Ray? Hey, John I can't believe I'm on your show right now, dude I can't believe you're talking to me This is awesome

I just appreciate it I mean, you've right now, dude. I can't believe you're talking to me. This is awesome. I just appreciate it. I mean, you've saved my wife and I thousands of dollars in therapy. So just by your show alone. So I appreciate actually getting to be on your show. I appreciate you having the courage to give me a buzz, dude. So what's up, man? I mean, I don't really know where to start. So I'm hoping you can kind of lead me with, as I pose the question, kind of lead the conversation.

So I feel like there's a lot behind it. Okay. But I just find it difficult to let myself cry. Even when my body is telling me I need to, even in a quiet place, it just doesn't happen. And it's not like, you know, when I'm watching a good movie, like, or grateful for my family and all that, like I can, the tears come a little bit of that, but it's like when I'm dealing with, um, like loss or stress or like shame or disappointment in myself or just sadness and it just doesn't come.

So I'm hoping you can guide me to know what to do. Give me an example of a time when you were thinking in real time, I should be crying right now and I want to cry, but I can't. Give me a specific example. So when I, this happened actually just a couple of days ago. And it's like little experiences like this that kind of add up um that lead me to like feel that build and it just doesn't come so like my son he loves the projector we have we call it project projector night where he you know we we put it up on the wall and and all that he wanted to put up a new place

he's three years old by the way um so he put up a show and people wanted to put a new spot spot wasn't big enough to fit the screen you know but he's pushing all the buttons and i'm trying to take it down and up and i lose a little bit of my my cool not like hardcore not yelling at him or anything like that but just like like bud we gotta you know almost like i was blaming him it's like duties three but it shouldn't push my buttons like that but then i then i go into the shame cycle where i start beating myself up and i'm feel this like heaviness and i apologize to him you know so like i feel sad that I reacted that way. I chose to react that way. Sorry, but I'll be better next time. Or, um, but man, it is that. And then

I do something a little something else or like, I don't do as good at work. And I feel this, like, if I don't do a good job on a project or whatever, it then builds up and I just start to feel that. And I don't have, like, I don't take time as much as I should maybe to sit and just be alone with it. But even then it doesn't always come. Man, you are describing your life as though you're watching a movie of yourself, critiquing it. and brother I gotta tell you man that is the quintessential

that's the quintessential definition of trauma is separation from one's self who told you man that the way you do life is wrong because when I hear a guy I hear a guy that is you, man, that the way you do life is wrong. Because when I hear a guy, I hear a guy that is like so far ahead of millions and millions of men, dads, husbands, trying to do better than what they got. But there's this voice in the stands that just won't let you get better. The inner critic,

it's like the judge. Yeah, but that inner critic, that's somebody's voice. Whose voice is that? Um, I, probably my,

my parents. Um, I also had, I mean, hold on, hold on. You've been defending them for way too long. They're grownups.

They can take care of themselves. Yeah, I have been. You gotta stop. I know. But, you know, yeah.

I mean, for example, like when I was a kid, you know, when I, when I'd cry, this is something that came to my mind. My dad would be like, here comes the fire engine.

Of course. It would make you cry more. But hold on. Why did he make you cry more? Because it didn't matter to him. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not it. You cried more because when you were hurting, you needed one thing.

And that was a dad who saw you and said, come here, buddy. Yeah. And damn it, he didn't give you that. And in fact, he widened the gulf. He made that chasm between the two of you wider. And he looked at you and blamed you. Here comes the fireworks. Here comes the fire trucks.

Wah, wah. Yeah. And so it's kind of like being in the water and you realize it's too deep and you can't touch and you start panicking and your dad makes eye contact with you and swims away.

That's why you cried harder. That came from your guts. See what I'm saying? I do. And I bet that happened in high school too. Were you a kid that got good grades and the first response is, wow, would another A have killed you?

Well, I'm... I was homeschooled. I pulled out really young and and had no structure with the schooling and it was like here's a math book see i'm gonna go teach piano lessons i'm like okay i'll try to learn how to do this so had no structure really no help in that regard. But were you judged as though you did? Yeah, it was like, why, you know, you need to be doing this and it's like critical and that like, I know. It was, yeah, it was very much

like, here, set me up, didn't really set me up for success. But I mean, there were some great blessings that came from that. Here you go. Stop defending him. For sure. For five minutes. I know, dude. I know blessings that came from that. Here you go. Stop defending them for five minutes, five minutes. No, I am a,

I'm a perfect example of that. I, yeah, I also had to be there for my mom. I mean, my parents are divorced. I had to carry a lot of her worries and, or I chose to,

or she put them on me. I didn't know what to do with kids. Don't choose. You didn't. That became your job and your role. So how do I what do I do now? Like as much as it's like

okay I can I have like novel sized notes in my phone of everything of how breaking it down and you know know, trying to make sense of it all. But in the end, it's like, okay, but I can try and make sense of it, but what do I do now? It's like, I can't really, it doesn't do me much good just simply knowing what happened. It's like, well, I'm dealing with this now. So what do I do? How do I, how do I allow myself to feel again? Feel that vulnerability, like to be truly vulnerable in my own skin and be okay.

Regardless of, I don't want like validation from others to cry. I don't want to have to put on Sarah McLaughlin to cry. I want to be able to just like allow myself to cry. Okay. First, I want you to unhook yourself from crying being this magic finish line. Okay. Okay. So similar to like somebody who's been working in the real world for 10 years and they have an MBA and they're telling me they need to go back to get a PhD in business so they can learn

how to do business better. I want to tell you, man, at this point, you can just get what you need off the internet. It's a false finish line. I don't want that to be your marker because what's going to happen

is you're going to cry and you're still going to be sad. You're still going to be frustrated. You're still going to feel like the inside of your chest is cemented shut. And all of your guts have been super glued together, which is how you feel. And crying, well, crying is the result of the work. Crying isn't the destination, okay? So I'm running through my head here. i'll be as vague as i can um last week i prefer specific if you need if you're asking me no no no i'm trying to decide how much

i'm going to disclose here um i'll just, we're here. So last week, I've been seeing a counselor. Halfway through writing this last book, I was brought back to some memories and stories in my life that I had evidently buried far, far away. And I knew him. I knew.

I just didn't think about him very much. And it was, I could getting hit by a truck. And I know him. I'm writing him down. Like you have got pages and pages in my notes app on my phone and in my little diary journal things. And then for the first time in 40 years, I spoke it out loud in front of a counselor, and I felt, I can't describe it other than,

I'm still processing it, but I felt like I dropped 100 pounds, and then I went home, and I had a conversation, and I've been married to the same woman for 20 years. We've been together for probably 25, 26 now. And I had never told her some of this stuff. And yet another hundred pounds. So I tell you this, there is only one path to vulnerability. And that is sitting in front of somebody else who could burn you, who could hurt you, and you saying, here's what happened.

That's the path. Yeah. And I don't know how it works. I'm sure there's an oxytocin release and I'm sure partrogen, a pear tree and dopamine and serotonin and jumping jacks and cold tubs. I'm sure all that crap is a thing. I don't care. What I know beyond a shadow of a doubt from the research,

what I know beyond a shadow of a doubt from my own life, what I know beyond a shadow of a doubt from last week is that the thing that melts the cement in your chest is sitting across somebody and saying this happened to me

that's why every major religion throughout all of human history has a confession element to it and we've made confession about bad things we did that's not the origin of confession the origin of confession is here's what happened and I think it's been woven

through every religion throughout human history because it's got a healing element to it it's medicinal for lack of better terms it's spiritual it's a gift are there things that you've experienced that your wife doesn't even know? yeah not specifics. You know, some general, general, uh,

things haven't gotten into the dirt of it all. Have you ever sat down with a counselor and just said, Hey, this is what happened? No, no. Well, I mean, some things, but not this stuff. That's right. And what you're trying to do is, I want you to follow the pattern here. You're having a conversation with yourself that's reinforced by your younger self that then turns your body up and starts spinning. And then you've got to have a conversation to bring yourself back down. And you're in a loop-de-loop. And another word for loop-de-loop is a hurricane or a tornado and that my friend is anxiety

and then you find yourself trying to predict what she's gonna say what what's gonna happen over here if your boss emails you at 4 p.m. in the afternoon you can't breathe yeah yeah that needs to happen bro i mean uh crying's good for me crying is cathartic the other day i was um i don't mind telling we're just gonna tell all all deloney's laundry we're gonna put it all out there today um i went to texas for an event for a couple of days working with a really remarkable business. And I got to sit with a couple of buddies who have been my ride or dies for almost 30 years now. And their wives, I consider them some of my best friends. We're a gang. And we all went out to dinner. It was just me and my two buddies

and their two wives, just us, no kids. And I secretly handed my debit card to the waitress under the table, pay for the whole meal. And I've had a season of blessing the last year. It's been silly. We sold a lot of books and a lot of questions for humans cards. And my buddy, John King looked at me and he said, you will never do that again. And I said, Hey man, it's been a good season. I've had a good little run here. Y'all picked me up for years. These are guys, these two guys paid my rent. And he said, you have to have a place where you can pull up to a table and we love you because you're you not because you're buying us dinner never do that again and i was telling my wife this story when i got back to nashville and i just started weeping

in a restaurant it just came because i was overwhelmed by how much those four people love me and they don't care how famous and they don't care anything. Because they were my friends. They loved me when they were paying my rent. One of those guys I had to call one time and say, hey, I've got like a real bad issue with my health and I may need to go to the ER and I've got no room on a credit card.

Can I borrow your Southwest card to go to the ER? And he said, I'll drive you. That's how poor, you see what I'm saying? But I was so overwhelmed. But the goal wasn't to cry at that lunch. The goal was to say out loud to somebody that I care and love, my wife, I can't believe how blessed I am. And I can't believe I've got people that I don't have to prove myself to.

Yeah, I feel like I don't, I mean, other than my wife, that's the best person to be able to do this with. But I, if you talk about having guy friends, I don't have guy friends. I mean, it's been, I need guy friends too. So like when you, when you talk about that, like you'd be able to sit down with dinner. It's not about what you can offer them. You know,

it's just like you. Yeah. You are enough. We tell the same stories for 30 years. Here's the deal. How old are you now? I'm 33. 33.

You've got, I don't know. You start today and you'll be having this conversation when you're 53 and you've been riding or dying with a group of guys for 20 years. It's easier when they shove you all in a college dorm and say,

may the force be with you, right? May the odds be forever in your favor. And you don't have that luxury. But you got money now, right? You've got like a car. And it's just a matter of starting. The challenge for you is those kind of relationships burned you alive as a kid, man. And my guess is you and I could talk for a long time.

And you're trying to navigate a mom who used you like a water bottle, used you as a drug, right? You were oxygen for her. And a dad that was so critical of his own freaking son, man, that he mocked his pain, laughed at him, because your cries were annoying and too loud, like a firetruck engine. My guess is you've probably made some dumb mistakes along the way trying to

find connection with anybody, anywhere, any place, anyhow. And you ultimately learned, I'm just going to take my tools and go home. It's hard. Tears will come, but I want you to focus your energy on vulnerability on finding a person a couple of people that you can just be honest with for the first time for me that needed to be a professional

I need to sit down and say hey this stuff happened and it was just like the glue melted, man. And my dearest hope for you, my brother, my neighbor here in town, is that you'll have the courage to make those calls. Sit down with your wife and say,

hey, I have some dark stuff I'd love to tell you about, but it's also going to be heavy. So you tell me when you're ready. She can feel that disconnection between the two of you too. You're worth connecting. I'm grateful for you, my brother. Hang on the line. I'm going to send you a copy of Own Your Past, Change Your Future for free.

Read that. It'll give you a blueprint out. I'm grateful for you, man. Thanks for trying to be the best husband and dad you can be. Now I want you to take that level of care and look in the mirror and love that guy that much too. We'll be right back. Hey, good folks.

Let's talk about hallow. All right. I say this all the time. It's important to get away for times of prayer and meditation by yourself with no one else around. But one thing you might not think about though, is maintaining a sense of community when you pray or meditate. And this is especially if you don't consider yourself religious, if you question things, or if you've been burned by a church experience in the past, it's hard to want to get together

with other people. And that's another reason why I love Hallow. You can personalize your prayer experience with Hallow and they give you three free months to doow. You can personalize your prayer experience with Hallow, and they give you three free months to do it. You can pray or meditate by yourself, or you can connect with friends, with family, a prayer group, or some other community that you choose. And this way you can share prayers, share meditations. You can even share journal reflections to grow in your faith together with others. And with Hallow, there are other ways you can personalize the app. They have downloadable offline sessions and links ranging from one minute up to an hour, and you can listen where it works for your schedule. You can choose your guide,

your background music, you can create your own personal prayer plan, and more. I've made it a personal point to begin my day every single day with the hallow meditation on the scripture of the day It's a discipline and it's a practice and here's what i'm learning as with anything of importance and meaning prayer takes intentionality Practice and showing up even when I don't feel like it and even I don't want to this is discipline Sometimes you do this by yourself and sometimes you do this with a group and hallow helps you with both. Download the number one prayer app on planet earth, hallow right now. And listen, viewers and listeners of this show get three free months when you go to hallow.com slash Deloney. It's amazing. Three free months of the app when you go to hallow.com slash Deloney. Go right now and change your life. All right, we're back. Let's go out to Boone, North Carolina and talk to Gabrielle.

What's up, Gabrielle? Yes. Hey, how are you? Yes. Good. Great. Grand. Wonderful.

How are you? Doing pretty well. Excellent. What's up? So it might get a little emotional. It's all good, man. I would like to know how the best way is to go about maintaining a relationship with my sister when she is currently in a romantic relationship with a 50-something-year-old man

who I believe possibly groomed her. She's just turned 18 in March. Oh, jeez. Whoa. Yeah. So, we, this had been going

on. I personally knew the man before she did. And so she had met him and would see him on a more um and there were measures put up to where they wouldn't have any more contact and like the social setting was um done away with that way they wouldn't be seeing each other anymore um and she had told everybody in the family that she wasn't seeing him anymore that there was no conversation anymore, that there was no seeing him at all. But things got kind of funny back in, I want to say September. And we thought that there's possibility that she was definitely seeing him and talking to him. So I actually had a very upfront conversation with her about what this would look like for her life, what it would look like, like all the different possibilities.

And I also was very clear about how it would change our relationship. And then I called him and I asked him directly, you know, are you having any relations with her right now? Are you talking to her currently? She has plans to come and move in with you. Do you know anything about this? And he said, no, he knew nothing that there was no contact. They weren't talking. But some of the things that he was saying led me to believe that they definitely were talking um so yeah some time passed and went on my mother and stepfather ended up involving the police but the police said that legal age was 16 so there was nothing that they could do either freaking north carolina dude so unbelievable if you are a legislator in the state of north carolina you Frickin' North Carolina, dude. Unbelievable.

If you are a legislator in the state of North Carolina, you should be ashamed with yourself. You shouldn't be able to sleep. Right. It's disgusting. 50 years old with a 16-year-old. Yeah. God almighty. What the hell's happening to our country, man? 16 year old. Yeah. So, um,

God almighty. What the, what the hell's happening to our country, man? I don't know. God, it's so disgusting. It's disgusting.

My God. Uh, urged her to, um, Hey, here, here's the thing. You're not,

there is no conversation you can have with her she is a child under the spell of an adult that's why they need adults in their lives to protect them from predators like this man there's not a conversation you haven't had with her that where she would go oh okay, okay, I get it now. That's not going to happen. She is living in an altered reality, which is why a consent age of 16 is so insane. Golly, man. So I'll tell you this.

I'm proud of you for calling him direct I'm proud for your mother and stepfather calling the police as you were talking I kept saying hey there's going to be phone records there's going to be all the photos she sent him that he requested from her there's going to be all that crap is going to be out there

and discoverable because it's electronic but I forgot you're in North Carolina. So disgusting. Here's... That feels super helpless. Yeah. I wish I had another... I wish I had something else

I could tell you. I feel helpless for you. So I'm going to tell you something that nobody else is going to tell you. Okay? Mm-hmm. And that is, it's the great Evander Holyfield versus Mike Tyson move.

Okay? Mm-hmm. Here's what the move was. Everybody was terrified of Mike Tyson. He would beat people before they even got in the ring. And he had an uppercut that came from the floor and would knock your head to the moon. And he had a very particular way he moved his right foot

when he was engaging in this uppercut. And what happened was everybody, when they felt his body shifting, they would back up a few inches, which gave him the exact space he needed to land that crushing blow. And then he fought Evander Holyfield, who talks about how he trained for months,

that every time Mike Dyson's, went to make that maneuver, he stepped in and got really close, which made that punch impossible to land. And over time, he wore Mike Tyson out and defeated the undefeatable. And so here's what I want to tell you. Every time you get an arm's length from her, that's when you're going to get hurt.

And that's when she's going to get hurt. So I'm going to tell you to do something crazy. I want you to lean in and get real close. Would she go to a weekly breakfast with you or a weekly lunch with just you two just to talk about sister stuff? I mean, it might be a possibility to do it over the phone, but we're currently living about five hours apart. Okay. I'd set that up. I'd set up a weekly letter with her so that she gets something in the mail from you every

week. And here's what we're doing. We are never going to let her completely detach from reality. One day she's going to open her eyes and go, oh God, what have I done? And we want to give her a trail of breadcrumbs back to you. And that she will immediately turn scared and look to her left and you will have been standing there the whole time. And most advice, what you're going to get is we'll just cut her

off. Forget about her. She'll come crawling back. And I think that that's that kind of wisdom has given us the world that we inhabit now. I think it's wrong. And so I would love for you to say, hey, you're my sister. We're going to talk every week and put a time on the calendar that you don't ever miss. And you might get off the phone, Gabrielle, and just cry. Yeah. But keep showing up for her

and keep showing up for her And keep showing up for her And there may be moments when you have to put boundaries in like hey, I want you to come visit And you can say hey, you know, I really don't like I really I don't want to be around him I'd love to hang out with you. I'd love it. Love it. Love it But you know how I feel about him. So i'm asking you respect my boundaries And she's 18. So she'll probably say something like well if you don'd love it love it love it but you know how i feel about him so i'm asking you respect my boundaries and she's 18 so she'll probably say something like well if you don't love him then you don't love me and you can say you know it's dumb you know it's not true yeah right so there

will be those moments and you know those will come can i ask you a hard quick question yeah of course was there anything in your y'all's ecosystem growing up that like it's just not super common what was it what was the the breadcrumb trail that led her to this guy um she really wanted out of a house that my parents had divorced and she was the only sister, like the only girl left at home with three brothers. And- Was there abuse?

My mom and stepdad don't have the best relationship. There's constant fighting, constant. The house is constantly loud and doesn't feel very stable. And that's just what you've heard. You don't even know exactly, right? Right. I mean, there were ample opportunities like we, my husband and I made it very clear that she could come and live with us.

She had another sister who offered the same thing that she could come and move in. And I think it's just, she waited too long and then this looked like a really good option. And it's super hard now to have like to continue a relationship because I've got a five-month-old daughter and under no circumstances do I want him around her? It's really hard to see like if he was pedophile who groomed her or if he was an older man and it was like, it sounds so crazy, but like right time, right circumstances, even though it's so wrong. Does that even make sense? Yeah, I'm always going to put that, lay that burden in the hands of the 50-year-old. Yeah.

Right? Yeah. And so, I mean, if you're dancing on that line, it's just, you've got issues as is. The man's disgusting. And there's just not a way around it. And the police have said, dude, there's nothing we can do. And so I think any effort you spend trying to dig into that at this point, after the police have been involved and they've wiped their hands clean,

I don't know there's a lot more to do. Yeah. Maybe you could dig around and see if you could find out they were contacting each other when she was only 15 instead of 16 but i mean maybe but right now he's playing the letter of the law right i think and they did that very well yeah i think the um i think the energy best spent is creating a new relationship with her that is distant enough from this guy that she never loses touch with the fact that her family loves her.

And there may have been so much chaos growing up that she just can't see the forest from the trees. She can't feel it or see it. Okay. But you can break through that and invite her back into your life not him but her

right and this doesn't mean you give her money and this doesn't mean you fill in the blank pay her rent this doesn't mean all that kind of stuff right

it means I'm we're talking every week and if she wants to come down and see her niece ah that'd be awesome yeah he can't come he's not welcome so maybe the conversation come down and see her niece, that'd be awesome. Yeah. He can't come. He's not welcome.

So maybe the conversation with you and your husband is setting up boundaries for what is this relationship going to look like with her? And again, don't chase it to where you get so close you fall over the edge too. But I want you to think of ways you can lean in and get closer to your sister. Not in a manipulative way, but just in a way that when she turns her head and opens her eyes and goes. Oh, no Everything that i'm involved in right now is wrong

And I thought this was the only ticket out of a house of chaos and abuse and I was wrong And you're right there and you have been the whole way And for everybody listening out there if you've got somebody in your life who you love and you care about and making dumb decisions, find ways you can re-engage the relationship. Not, not, not, um, don't give a drunk a drink or all that kind of, you know, all that stuff. Find a way you can reconnect. Healing, changing behavior, changing life always comes with reconnection. Always. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by Better Help. 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 therapists 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.com slash Deloney. All right, we're back and it's time for another round of Facts Are Your Friends. Let's do it. All right, today we are talking about the mental health benefits of exercise.

And this will probably be the shortest facts of your friends that we've ever done. The mental health benefits of exercise. So I just went to pull up one of the top academic journals on the planet, Nature. Here's just a couple of snippets. We conclude that exercise may be a way to reduce depression and pain and improve the quality of life in adult subjects with fibromyalgia and should be a part of the treatment for this pathology that's kudo that who's the lead author on that paper another paper a small a paper by the way is another is just an inside way of saying

a journal article academic journal article a research study that was done and that was written and published at top tier journal which called a paper small study it was not a big study but it was an important study the paper is by patent who was the lead author, highlights the potential of HIT, which is intense exercises, for improving mental health in overweight women with polycystic ovary syndrome. HIT may be a viable strategy to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in women with PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome. Another paper by Mock, M-O-K, he was the lead author and there's a bunch of other authors on there. Combined

resistance and endurance interventions elicited significant long-lasting improvements in global fatigue and were beneficial to the remaining side effects. Individually, resistance and endurance interventions non-significantly improve these side effects. Resistance interventions elicited higher benefits overall. Exercise interventions have lasting clinical benefits in ameliorating adjuvant therapy side effects, which negatively impact fitness and mental well-being. And I believe this was in, and then with breast cancer, I may have got that wrong.

I think this was dealing with women who were dealing with cancer treatment, suggesting that weight training and cardiovascular exercise, cardio, doing those things together helped the entire process. Studies show, this is from Lawrence Robinson, studies show that exercise can treat mild to moderate depression as effectively as antidepressant medication, but without the side effects. Similar studies in the bajillions discuss that about anxiety. I have personally experienced a significant reduction in OCD symptoms with intense exercise on the regular. I've also felt a reduction in tics. I have several tics where I blink or I'll move my head or I'll count A significant reduction in those as well Sleep is improved

exercise improves cellular function It helps reset your nervous system Helps with chronic inflammation over the long period of time after an extreme bout of exercise or hard exercise inflammation does rise in your body and it actually has shown that it's got it serves a purpose but over time it also helps with psychosomatic issues when you feel chronic pain but doctors are telling you we don't see any reason why you should be hurting. Maybe it's psychological in origin. Lowers all-cause mortality, as the great Dr. Peter Atiyah says. Helps give us stronger bones, muscles.

You have to exercise if you want to be well. Ta-da! If you want to really nerd out about this stuff, you can check out Dr. Huberman's podcast, especially he's got a multi-series podcast with Dr. Andy Galpin, who's just a savant. You can check out Dr. Atiyah's work. You can check out our friend Lane Norton's work,

Dr. Lane Norton. You can check out the Mind Pump guys. I cannot emphasize this enough. Mental health, the way we have described mental health, and I say we, I'm a member of the mental health practitioner community. We have described mental health as simply the act of getting all of your thoughts in the right order, just thinking the right thoughts. And that's a lie. It is false. I had one professor, and I haven't verified this with data, just with a professor, a graduate, one of my doctoral professors, told me that Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychotherapy, had really bad teeth

issues. And he's got a well-documented cocaine issue and he used cocaine to numb his gums because he had bad teeth. He was self-conscious of his teeth and he was so self-conscious that he had his clients lay down and face the other way. So the whole foundation of counter-transference and don't let your patient look at you and just let them free associate may have originated, if my professor was telling me the truth, from a man's being self-conscious about the way his face looked. Why do I tell you that? That is the basis of mental health. It's just talking and talking and talking and talking and thinking and fixing your thinking and talking and talking. And we've completely divorced the body from the mind. So I'll say

this as clear as possible. Your brain can't function the way it was designed to function if it is sitting atop a body that is falling apart. The stress chemicals that cycle through your body were designed for fight or flight responses, not click and type and more murder podcast.

That was a low blow to Kelly. That wasn't very nice, sorry. Here's the deal deal Go for a walk Every day Dr. Emily Nagatsuki Talks about folks who just would look at her And say, I'm not going to exercise I'm not going to move

I don't feel comfortable I don't know what I'm doing I don't know any of these exercises Everyone's like, you should deadlift and squat I don't even comfortable. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know any of these exercises. Everyone's like, you should deadlift and squat. I don't even know what that is. Squat is something I do in the woods when I have to go to the bathroom and there's no, right? I don't know what any of this stuff is. So she recommends laying in your bed and start with your feet and squeeze your feet as hard as you can flex them And then relax and then move up your body from your calves to your hamstrings to your glutes to your

Quads all the way up neck your face and then do that several times. Is that going to be enough over the long term? No, not at all. It's a place to start You can't be well unless you have a practice of movement and exercise in your daily life Um, I haven't read the original paper so I haven't talked about it here, but um I did see a headline recently that Of all we've been talking about microplastics and all this stuff and pollution all this drama about the lowering testosterone rates globally. And there's some indication it may simply be we have moved from a movement-based society to a sedentary-based society. Our bodies have said, oh, we don't need this anymore. And it's going to stop making it because that's how

good our bodies are. If we don't use it, we lose it. All of the data I've seen over the last couple of years suggests that weight training is the single most important thing you can do. Followed by what they call zone two, which is long, steady state exercise where you can still carry on a conversation. So we're walking, maybe a little bit of a brisk pace, but we're just walking.

We can still have a conversation, talk, chit chat the whole time. You can run an exercise bike and just watch a show. Ride an exercise bike and read a book. I do that when I'm doing Zone 2 or listen to a podcast. And then once or twice a week, every two weeks, just have a

blowout session. Just go really hard for a few minutes. And if you want to go down rabbit holes on this, please go see my buddies at Mind Pump. Please go. Dr. Lane norton or dr. Tia There's really you can you can go to the ends of the earth with this stuff But if all of us would make movement a daily part of our lives what we would see in short order is a less anxious society a less depressed society A society that could think a little bit clearer, that could show

up for each other a little bit better. I have a habit of overdoing it. And I remember, this is back in 2013, I was pushing it so hard that I just swore I'm not going to lift for 60 days. And I just started walking around my neighborhood in the morning for an hour. I lost 30 pounds. Obviously, I altered my diet and whatnot too, but just simply the stress. So sometimes crushing

and killing, that's not the right season. Sometimes, let's sign up for a marathon. Let's just go do that. Obviously, obviously, obviously, meet with your doctor,

but please for your kids, for your spouse, for your country, for your spiritual life, for you, make movement, make exercise a regular part of your life. Lift weights three to five days a week, go for a walk. If you don't know how to lift weights, that's great. There's enough resources on the internet or go see a trainer for a couple times and they'll walk you through some basic things. Now's the time. Make movement a part of your everyday life. That's the platform where we can build

a mentally healthy life. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com.

All right, we are back. Kelly was talking trash during the break. Yes. Let's make it public. Bring it out. All right. So I felt a little seen with the whole true crime thing. The murder podcast? I didn't feel a little seen. You came at me. I mean, there was, you know, it wasn't like some sort of innuendo.

It was in the news today that a woman working at a Plato's Closet, which is a resale shop, I can't remember what state, but had been watching an Unsolved Mysteries and recognized a little girl that had been taken seven years ago, and she is now back home. So, ha. Sometimes true crime is beneficial. Oh, in North Carolina that we've been dogging on today, by the way. So, let's just say that. There you have it, America. There you have it.

For every thousand people who smoke and 999 of them get cancer and die, one of them saves a baby from drowning. You should all smoke. Good job, Kelly. I'm just saying, sometimes it works out. I had this thought too.

This is kind of getting a little meta here. This is picking up off that last teaching segment we did about murder podcasts from the previous episode of the show. I'm not a huge consumer of this stuff, but when I was working at the law school, oh gosh,

I just lost it. It's these great, it's a great program where they, oh my gosh, are you kidding me, Deloney? They, it's law students

all across the country work to go through old death penalty cases. what is it called innocence project good grief what an embarrassment i'm an idiot so i'm not an idiot i said i wouldn't talk bad about myself sorry the innocence project so when i was working there i always offered like hey i want to take a case home and they never gave me one because I don't know what I'm doing, but I had this fantasy of solving it. How much of murder podcasts,

especially the unsolved ones like Serial, is there a little bit of like, I bet I can figure it out? I'd say that's fair. I mean- Kind of like when your husband's like, I've been looking at this drawer, it's not there.

And you're like, because you know it is there. Yeah. And I feel like the detective was probably a man who missed the most obvious thing that was right in front of his face there you go

right so way to gender this too way to gender this too podcasts about murder are also a part of the patriarchy and Kelly's gonna bring it all down alright so as we wrap up

today's show ah geez I would say Kelly this is your least attractive tattoo. And I'm not trying to be weird, but you have a giant kind of offset tiger above her knee. It's just the whole thing. But it turns out she's a huge fan of Survivor, the band. Not the show with Jeff Probst, but the band.

And every once in a while, if you listen really closely, really quietly, out on your front porch at night, you'll hear Kelly singing from the top of her lungs while looking at her tattoo on her leg. The following.

Rising up, back on the street, did my time, took my chances. Went the distance, now I'm back on the street did my time took my chances went the distance now I'm back on my feet just a man and his will to survive again there's the patriarchy so many times it happens too fast you trade your passion for glory don't lose your grip on your dreams of the past you must fight just to keep them alive it's the eye of the tiger. It's the thrill of the fight

rising up to the challenge of our rival. And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night. That's a little bit creepy. And he's watching us all. Again, creepy. With the eye of the tiger. She's dancing.

I can see her other corner of my eye and it's giving me the heebie-jeebies. Love y'all. Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Bye.