The Dr. John Delony Show - I'm a Jerk and It's Affecting My Relationships...How Do I Change?

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU!   Show Notes for this Episode   I have a sharp tongue and I say what I think. I am losing relationships over it.  How do I deal with imposter syndrome? I came from humble beginnings and feel guilty about my success. The Pandemic Did Not Affect Mental Health the Way You Think  Lyrics of the Day: "You And Me (And The Bottle Makes Three)" - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy   As heard on this episode:  BetterHelp Redefining Anxiety John's Free Guided Meditation Ramsey+   tags: relationships, counseling/therapy, workplace/career, family, money, culture/current events   These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.`

On today's show, we talk to an awesome woman who is tired of burning up her relationships with her sharp tongue, with her judging, her poking. We also talk to a great young man who's feeling guilty about making way more money than his parents. We've got good news on the psychological resilience front. Hey, what's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show, the originally titled show.

I don't know. I'm yelling. I don't even know why I'm yelling. I think every time I say the name of the show, I think, that's what we came up with? Man, we worked really hard for hours and hours to come up with a show that we could have just called my mom and asked her what we should name it. Nothing cool like, I don't know, after lasers or spaceships or dinosaurs or dragons, but

we do have the Dr. John Deloney Show. Hey, this is a show about mental health, about your life, about your families, parenting, education, anything that is going on in your life that we can walk alongside you. Man, that's why we're here. That's why we're here. Love to have you on the show. We get callers from all over planet Earth. If you want to be on the show, give me a call at 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291.

Leave a message. Tell me what's going on in your life and how we might be able to help. And Kelly will give you a call, and we will have you on the show. Or if you are more of the Internet's type, go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K. And we would love to get you on. So a couple of cool things. James is out of town this week. He is working at a middle school camp.

I love everybody on earth, but I think I'd rather set myself on fire than work for a week at a middle school camp, sleeping in cabins with middle schoolers. So James is a better person at the end of the day than most of us. But we got Ben Hill sitting in on the knobs, and that is awesome. And Kelly, lovely Kelly's here. We're so excited to have everybody here. Hey, listen, I want to tell you guys this. This is a big deal. So my son was in Texas, and he was with my in-laws.

And they were scrolling through. I don't know. They were going to watch Andy Griffith's show, some 18th century black and white show. And they were scrolling through on the – somehow YouTube was on the scroll. And it had my show on it. And so in my son's mind, the John Deloney Show on YouTube is like on Amazon, which puts it at par with other movies, like Disney Channel movies. So it's like Frozen 1 and 2, Jurassic Park, the John Deloney Show. Makes sense, right?

In my head, it's exactly how that plays out. So he got all excited, and he called me, and he said me and he said dad dad you're not gonna believe this well when he does that usually that means he's caught some snake or a turtle or went fishing or something like that so he calls and says dad you're not gonna believe this my daughter's cheering in the background dad you're on tv and i said i know that's what pays our rent right and he said no no like you were on amazon we were scrolling and you were on the scroll thing i said that's great i'm i'm glad that you guys get to know what i do for a living and then he said and dad you're fat and i said what and he's like saw you on TV, dad, and you're fat. I said, I don't think I am. I

don't think so. I work out a lot. I think I'm, I don't think so, son. And he said, no, dad, I saw your face. It makes it huge and mushy. That was his exact words. My face is huge and mushy. To which I said, hey, man, is your mom there i'm sad and josephine my daughter got on she goes daddy you're fat so listen um i haven't eaten in 72 hours and i'm just jogging straight through this one just kidding i'm not but it is true these cameras make you look huge and so i don't know i don. I don't think I... Ben, you're new. Does my face look mushy?

Not at all. I disagree. My son would tell me the truth. You wouldn't. You have a vested interest in lying and propping up my self-esteem. Which I'm grateful for, by the way. That is true. Oh, man.

Gotta love my children. Dude. I want to support you, and your face looks mushy. So, throughout the show, I'll be sucking my cheeks in, everybody. Old Ben Affleck style, and I think we're good. All right, let's go to the phones. Let's go to Lorraine in Miami, Florida. Lorraine!

It kind of sounds like Roxanne, but I'm going to go with Lorraine. How in the world are you? I've been better, but I'm awesome as well. How are you doing? I've been the exact same. You said that perfectly. This is kind of not my best, but it's still pretty good, right? Listen, we're standing, so we just got to go forward.

That's it. That's all we can do. I don't even know what that means, but I'm going to go with it. It sounds incredible. I'm a huge collector of sayings that if you just write them down and read them, they don't make a lot of sense, but they feel good when they come out. So you know what, Lorraine? Today I'm standing, and that means I'm just going to go forward. I don't even know.

That's it. Awesome. That's all we can do. Hey, so what's going on? How can I help? Firstly, just thank you for telling about your own personal life. It really, really, I don't know if you know this, but it really helps the listener. You know, it really, really helps. So I just wanted to thank you for that.

Well, thank you so much. It feels like a train wreck most days, but I appreciate you. Yeah, I hear you. Appreciate you. So, hey, Dr. John, my question is this. I have a personality malfunction oh awesome okay a personality malfunction tell me about it yeah yeah it's kind of deep for me so um i notice a pattern with myself that my personality can get really blunt okay and really straightforward and really like the cards are on

the table now and i don't like bs i don't like when i when somebody's saying something but their energy is different i don't like passive aggressive like for me like i'm just such a straight shooter which is awesome if you like me. But if you don't like, yeah, like if my friends that love me, like they like that part of me, right? But then I get into situations with people that I like actually love, like my little sister, two friends, now my boyfriend. Where like if I feel slighted or something's unjust in some way, like, the gloves are off. Yeah. The gloves are off.

The gloves are off. So let me just give you some context. Boynton and I had a situation where he kind of insinuated, because I had given a half-hug to somebody, after he had heard me over speakerphone talking to my girlfriend that I wasn't a big hugger. And so because she was going through something, I said, hey, I'm going to give you a hug through the phone. She said, hey, I appreciate that. I know you're not a big hugger. So he overheard this. It wasn't a big deal. Later on in the day, we had ran into an acquaintance of mine who was a guy. I introduced her. I gave him a little half hug, like, hey, nice to see you like not an

embrace or nothing and this this started a kind of snowball with him and I thought this really sucks because like I didn't do anything right and so now it's been insinuated but that plays into a year and a half ago, I was falsely accused of something at work. And it really took me out at the knees. And I lost my salary, I lost my office, I lost a lot of things. And he knows that. And so when that happened, I just was like, came like right into this space of like, whoa, this is happening again. So I calmed down the situation actually. And I was very proud of myself. I didn't react.

I calmed down. You know, we went for a drive. I gave him his space. We ended up talking after. And I said, hey, is this something I got to worry about in the future? Like if every time I go to touch somebody or whatever, it's going to be a big deal. Like I can't handle that.

Right. I can't. I'm telling you that right now. So that's my boundary. So then five days, yeah, thank you. So then five days later, he's on a business trip and he insinuated again, I'm sorry, but like, I just now, I just felt so like, like slighted, like I put a lot of energy and time and love into the relationship. And now all I can do is go back to that time at my work where it's like, I didn't do that.

Hey, Lorraine. I didn't do that. Yeah, tell me. When you were a kid, somebody hurt you real, real bad. Who was it? I mean, my mom. Okay. Okay.

Is she the only one or maybe more than one more yeah high school age like between 16 20 I think it started very young but that

definitely heightened it that was but that definitely heightened it. That was the age that heightened it, yeah. Did people take things from you between 16, 20, 16, 21, 22? I think my whole life has just been kind of a little bit tragic. I've had a little bit of a heartbreak that I've kind of carried with me. Okay. And so I see that, and I see that that's how i'm like reacting out of that yeah i guess my thing is yeah and i get that and i notice that just in the moment this alarm bell goes off and it's like holy it's like sorry pardon my language the train leaves the station yeah and i there you go i like i can't so my question is how do i get the train

not to leave the station because these are people i actually genuinely care about yeah so here's the deal go too far you um i've known and loved people just like your situation okay, like for a long, long time. And your body, your heart, your mind is on high, high, high alert all the time. And my guess is you don't sleep very deeply. My guess is you don't relax very much. My guess is that you love really, really intensely, but that you're always on alert for a slight, something's coming your way, something's coming after you, and you will beat everybody to the punch.

Yeah. And you will go to war on your own behalf. Even as you can watch your body gearing up and taking off on you, and you start, the thinking part of your brain tries to stop it, and it's already off to war, firing shots before your head even gets there, right? And so here's the thing. That is a gift. That's how all of us are made. Our brains will identify and go to war or take off running from a threat before we can even consciously see it or feel it. It mobilizes and goes. And that's how I'm almost positive. positive you had some sort of what i would call traumatic childhood or somebody or some group of

people hurt you or some sort of abuse or some sort of neglect some sort of like you mom who tried to live through you or perfection some sort of something has put your high alert so finely tuned. So finely tuned. And here's what happens is you've got this finely tuned army ready to go to war at the drop of a hat. And you have a body that has to have human connection. You have to have people who will hold your hand and touch your arm and not use you for sex, but will be intimate with you and who will laugh with you. And so you've got these two competing factions, one desperate, desperate for human touch and

connection, and the other desperate to never let you get hurt again. And so that's why folks in your situation often have, love them some opiates, love them some alcohol or weed, love them meth, right? Because that ends up being a cheap way to get that connection without having to let the Army take a break. Because if the Army takes a break, man, we may get hurt again, okay? And you didn't mention anything about addiction. That's a whole other conversation. But there's just an exhaustion factor. So here's the thing that you're going to have to

allow yourself to enter into. Okay. You've got to stop being the judge and jury of every person around you. I know it's so tiring. It's exhausting. But listen, it's so exhausting.

You can't stop doing that until you decide I'm going to be vulnerable with other people. And what vulnerability means, it's an, it's a term from the animal kingdom often that I'm rolling over on my back and I'm going to allow my soft underbelly a chance to be hurt. And that means you're going to have to stare down face to face, heart to heart, whatever your body's trying to protect you from. And it may be years of stuff, but you're going to have to let your heart and mind know

that was then, and I'm safe now. And I'm going to have to teach my body over and over and over again. I'm okay. I'm safe. And what happens when you're vulnerable, Lorraine, is you get hurt again, but it won't be as bad as the times that your body circle up the wagons on you. and what happens when you're vulnerable, Lorraine, is you get hurt again, but it won't be as bad as the times that your body circle up the wagons on you, right?

And ultimately, you're able to just drop your shoulders, and you're able to just be with people and roll your eyes instead of having to come back at somebody. Or when your boyfriend says, oh, I thought you weren't a hugger. I saw you hug that guy. You can just take whatever towel you have in your hand and whap him with it and go, you're an idiot. And then go about your day because it's not existential, right? That's what I wanted to do.

That's what I wanted to do. Like if I look back at the conversation, you know? Yes. Just be cool, Natalie. Just be chill. Just say, I'm going to kiss your whole damn face if you say that again or whatever. Exactly. But here's what you're trying to do. You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah, I. Just be chill. Just say, I'm going to kiss your whole damn face if you say that again or whatever. Exactly.

But here's what you're trying to do. You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah, I do. I do. I totally, 100%, 100% know what you mean. But until you decide to let the army have a break, your brain and your body are going to continue to go to war on your behalf.

And here's the thing. How old are you? 41. 41? 41. 41? This has been happening for a long, long time. So here's the thing. You're not broken. There's not something dysfunctional with you.

But you, think of it as a learning disorder, okay? You have learned a way to protect yourself. And it has protected you. And now it's costing you everything right yep yep and so what you have to do is learn new ways to be safe and to feel safe and you're going to do that with other people not through building higher walls around yourself so how do you have a suggestion or how to even start that i mean i felt like i was very vulnerable with this person i said i really loved myself when i in this relationship like I was very vulnerable with this person. I really loved myself when I'm in this relationship. Like I was like, wow. Yeah. Natalie, like you're doing it. You know what I mean? Okay. There's two things you can do. Number one, to heal

over time, like you're talking about, you're going to have to go meet with somebody. Okay. And they're going to walk alongside you. Here's the second thing. You're going to have to practice when you screw up, when your body goes to war against somebody who is like, what are you doing? You're going to have to be able to look at them and say, that was ridiculous. And I'm sorry. That's 30 year old Lorraine trying to protect me. And I'm sorry. I know you're just being goofy. And so I'm going to do a redo. Ready? Say it again. And they're going to say it. And then you're going to practice again. And here's what you're going to do in short, short order, Lorraine,

because you, you are a loving person, a caring person. And I bet that when you're fully firing, you are a blast to be around. Is that right? I am. I am. See, I guarantee you. And then you get one too many drinks and somebody looks at you wrong and it is World War III. Am I right? No. No. Not with that. No, no. I'm actually really cool.

Oh, okay. So it's the other way. So everyone loves three drink Lorraine. That's when sweetheart comes out. Exactly. We're cool. Like, yeah, we're cool. Oh, no.

All right. Hey, that's a recipe for disaster. I know. And it's my recipe for disaster. I know. And it's my recipe that I've kind of stirred up here, and that's why I'm calling. I love it. I love it. Yeah, now that I've hurt enough people and I hurt myself, okay, now where do I go from here? So here's what you're going to do.

You're going to get connected in your hometown, and you're going to reach out to a counselor and you're going to let them know, hey, for 35 years, I've been going to war and I'm tired. I want to learn to be graceful with myself. I want to learn to be graceful with those around me. I want to stop being the judge and jury. And hey, part of it is just stop being the judge and jury. When you feel your body looking at somebody going, oh my gosh, whatever, just literally say to yourself, stop, not your job. Your job is to have fun here and enjoy your

friends. When a friend says something or a family member who you know loves you, and your first thought is to snap at them, to be judgment, to swing at them, catch yourself. And when you don't catch yourself, say, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. And that is learning how to be vulnerable, learning how to connect with other people. Decide, I am not going to have that third drink. I'm not going to have a chemical crutch to allow me to be kind. I'm going to learn to be kind and fun and gentle on my own. And here's what I'm telling you. Almost guarantee, Lorraine, this is going to dig up old stuff.

This is going to dig up a lot of old stuff, and you're going to have to have a professional to walk alongside you. What I will tell you is you can learn different ways to interact. Think about this. Think about if people left their experience with you a little more peaceful than when they joined you. If they left their time with you a little more calm and a little more loving of themselves than when they entered your presence. that is a that's something i long for and i work towards because lorraine i'm like you man i'm judging everybody i my natural default is to just be all lit up all the time and i've worked for a decade now to make it the opposite i want people to be more calm when they come in my presence and so i'm telling you from firsthand experience, you can get there.

Call somebody today. Sit down with your boyfriend and say, hey, listen, the other day I just went off the rails and I'm sorry. Here's a couple of things. Change your identity. You're going to be a person who people gravitate towards, who they love being around, not who they who they have one eye open towards because they're nervous. They're scared, right? Number two, invite people into accountability. Invite your boyfriend or a couple of close girlfriends or your niece to be able to say, hey, that was too much.

That hurt. And then be able to say, okay, I'm going to take a walk around the house. I'm going to say I'm sorry. I'm going to exhale because I know that that was on me. Okay. Number three, when you're about to light off, when you're about to set somebody on fire, when you're about to lash out at somebody, the magic moment here is catching yourself and saying, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. What am I trying to protect myself from?

Is this person really going to try to hurt me? No. Is my boyfriend just clowning around about a hug? Yes. If a person at work keeps thinking that my hugs or my affection or my connection with them is inappropriate, then Lorraine, you got to stop. You got to stop.

Quit hugging people, right? Quit touching people, whatever the thing is, right? Just work hard to stop. Go see somebody. Make this about your identity. Seek accountability. And then for crying out loud, learn to stop yourself before you lash. Just learn before you make that comment,

before you jump all over somebody, before you judge somebody else's clothes or the way they rolled their eyes or the joke they just told. Just stop. Just stop. And man, that heart that you've been hiding for so long is going to be such a gift to so many people, Lorraine.

It's awesome. All right, thanks for the call. You are the best. All right, let's go to Chris in Denver. What's up, Chris? Hey, Dr. D. Thanks for taking my call. How are you doing today? You got it, brother. What's going on, man? I'd love to chat with you about how to work through feeling guilty and maybe even some imposter syndrome as it relates to my career, as I compare it to my parents and the income they made growing when I was growing up. Tell me about it. Great question.

I get this question a lot, man. So I'm glad you're we're connecting here. Yeah, I appreciate it. You've been a great addition to Ramsey. And I feel like the mindset part of of finance is super important. So I'm happy to happy to help me help, or you help me, whatever we're trying to do here. There you go. So growing up, I grew up pretty blue collar. My dad worked three jobs. He would be a mailman all day.

After that, he'd be a landscaper. After that, he'd be a bartender. He'd get home at 2 a.m. and then right back at it the next day. And he busted his butt to be where he was and to raise us. And now I have a really good job. I make a lot of money and I don't work nearly as hard as he does. And I don't know, I kind of struggle with that. And they still struggle. They still, you know, barely make ends meet. And I'm, you know, living a good life and they wouldn't accept my help even if I wanted to.

So I don't know. It's just a lot. What do you feel guilty about? I'm more emotional. I'm more emotional talking about it than I thought I would be. No, it's hard, man. I appreciate you being honest and vulnerable. I know millions of people, I don't know them, but there are millions of people in your exact same situation that have found themselves in a different

life setting than they grew up in, and they don't know what to do with it. And they thought this new setting would solve their problems, would make them feel a certain way, and it doesn't, and that feels, there's a disconnect there, right? So, man, there's a lot here. What makes you uncomfortable about being successful? I just was never raised with money. I never asked my parents for it. You are giving money a lot of power.

Where does that power come from? Probably insecurity about not having a lot growing up. Okay. And so money was supposed to solve everything. Why hasn't it solved everything? I don't know. That's a great question. I mean, I'm happy in my life. It's just when I look back towards my parents, they don't have that and I feel bad. So can I ask you, I'm going to phrase this in a way that's going to set you up. Is that cool? Okay, cool. Who gave you permission to judge your parents? No one. Who gave you the right to look at your parents and say, wow, they're missing out.

They should have X, Y, or Z. They could be happier if they only had X, Y, or Z. Because you have X, Y, or Z, and you're not happier. Yeah. Is there a chance that they're doing okay? Yeah, I mean, they're doing fine yeah and so what is it about you having money that makes you feel like they could or should or might have um i've just seen them make some interesting financial decisions that i think if they had money they wouldn't have done

that's fair and by interesting you mean terrible, ridiculous, stupid? Your words, not mine. Yeah, they're not my parents, man. I don't have to defend them. Good for you, though. So here's... My dad's a cop growing up. And then he quit being a cop halfway through my life and became a minister at a local church.

We didn't have a lot growing up and what i found and this is not something that my dad did this is something that somehow i internalized i divided the world up into us's and them's and when you live a life of stress whenever your body sounds the alarms and you go into fight or flight it quickly has a mechanism by which it divides up who's on my team and who's not and we're going to run or go to war with those who are not on our team and we're going to double down on those who are on our team if you look at our country over the last 30 or 40 years, one of the things that media has done so well, particularly advertising, is when they tap into the fight or flight part of your brain, you feel like you need to go do

a thing. To get a thing or to go to a thing. What does that mean in brass tacks? It means you go buy stuff to make yourself feel better. Okay? Or you go to war. And how do you go to war? You go buy some more stuff. We need some more gear, some more this, some more that.

Or you escape. You go on vacations, right? And so companies have a vested interest in you staying buzzed up. And then you look at the political landscape 50 years later. And I don't care who you vote for, Chris. But there's some things that the people you vote for, you're like, ah, it's probably a bit much, right? But since you're in an us and them, you start biting off things that the us's are doing you don't even agree with because it's not them, right? So I'm telling you that to tell you, if you grew up in a blue-collar world, there is some part of your life that is absorbed into this is who we are and this is who they are, whoever they is. And all of a sudden you look up with a great job and a great salary

and a big house and you realize, oh, no, I'm a they. And then what you have to do is either convince yourself that the us's that you grew up with were wrong. And we got to burn it to the ground and I got to fix them and help them help the us's become one of these. Right. Yeah. Or you live this gapped life where. So my last job in Texas, I put in for a promotion.

I didn't get it, and I didn't know why. I wasn't even considered. They didn't give me an interview for it. And so I asked a buddy who was ahead of me on the hierarchy, and he said, man, people think you're a politician. I was like, what are you talking about? I said, man, you always hang out with the cops in the back of the room. You always hang out with the caterers, and you're in there in a suit. It looks like you're just glad handing. And I said, man, that's where I feel most comfortable because I don't feel comfortable hanging out with the

academics. I don't feel comfortable hanging out with the administrators. And he looked at me and said, you're an academic administrator, my brother. You have two PhDs. You're looking, you are now being the jerk you've been trying to avoid. And that hit me because he was right. You know what I mean? I was pretending. And so here's what I would tell you. Be really grateful for what you got.

And don't feel like you've got to live in both worlds, okay? Be a person who treats everyone you come into contact with with gratitude with kindness make sure you acknowledge the mailman right because you know how that life is and love love love your old man he's a grown man he can make the choices that he wants to make and they're not for you to judge? But he's a guy for you to love. And have you learned? Tell me. You are, I'm trying to say this in a graceful, kind way.

I, oh, man. You can just say it. Well, I can, but man, I don't want to get canceled. So here's the deal. If we look over the last hundred years in our country, in the Western world, the stock market has done what? Gone way up. Way up. It's gone way up.

We all got rich. And I know there's people listening to this like, I'm not rich. You are. You are. And also what has gone up is diseases of despair, addiction, cancers, strokes, heart attacks, people in jail. So it's come at a cost is what I'm saying. All sorts of social ills have come at the cost of us getting wealthy. And I'm not saying that getting wealthy is bad or evil or wrong.

It's not. The pursuit single-mindedly of it is killing us. And so what I would challenge you to do, do you live by your old man? No, I don't. How close are y'all? 2,000 miles. Oh, dang, Gina. Okay, that's a long way.

So how often do y'all talk? Once a week. I come home like a handful of times a year. Cool. So here's what I want you to do. Something, one of two things are going to be weird and cheesy, all right? And just shake it off and get over it. Cool?

Yep. Yes. Okay, great. Hey, listen, when we hang up, I know you're not going to do either of these, but I just want to tell you it will be awesome if you do, okay? So here we go. I want you to ask your old man, Dad, I want to start reading a book with you. You're smarter than me and wiser than me. You have been to people's houses for 30 or 40 years.

You've met with people bartending and you have done landscape. You've done it all. I don't know what makes your head tick and I want to learn about things that you like. So I want to start reading a book with you, old man. You read the book, I'll read it and then we'll talk about it. And if he won't do that, some dads don't read, that's fine. Y'all can watch a show. I want you to start having a shared experience together where you're going to talk to one another. And in that discussion, you can either email. If you're really gangster, you can write letters. But I want you to create some sort of exchange dialogue with your dad.

We all write back and forth to each other. Often men are terrible, myself included, at sitting down with other men and just talking about, hey, what's going on in your life? How's it going? Man, those are skills that I'm consistently trying to learn. But writing, man, I've seen writing get to the souls of men in ways that just chit-chatting won't. So commit to writing back and forth, whether it's about a book, whether it's about a show, whether it's about fill in the blank,

back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And here's what I'm trying to get at. I want you to take money out of the relationship with your dad. Your dad's made choices that your dad made, man. He made choices that he made. Your choices to have a better life are, number one, built on the lessons of character and relationship building that only a bartender and a mailman can pass along to a son. And number three, doesn't matter, man. Doesn't matter. Hasn't made your life, it's maybe made your life more comfortable, but it hasn't fixed that hole in your heart.

That hole in your heart can only be fixed through relationships, man. So reach out, start relationships with your dad. And it may not look like that. It may be weird. Y'all may intentionally get together once every five months now, or I mean, once every two months now, or three months now. It's hard when you're 2,000 miles away. I get that. Could be a FaceTime conversation once a week. They may be talking about awkward. Those would be weird, man. Be awkward. And you, my brother, you, start a gratitude journal today. Every day, write down the things you are grateful for. Don't sentence yourself to a life of misery because you're financially successful.

Give like crazy. Give, give, give. Be grateful. And when you feel yourself starting to beat yourself up because, oh yeah, I'm a they now and I'm not one of the usses, it's fine. The usses and thems is a fake category anyway. Propagated by the air we breathe nowadays. Okay? Be graceful with yourself.

Be grateful for your old man. Dude. Whew. Connection, connection, relationships. All right, brother. Thanks for the call, Chris. Hey, we'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. All right, October is the season

for wearing costumes and masks. And if you haven't started planning your costume yet, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going as Brad Pitt in Fight Club era because, I mean, we pretty much have the same upper body, but whatever. All right, look, it's costume season. And let's be honest,

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

you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for your schedule. You just fill out a short online survey and you get matched with a licensed therapist. Plus, you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. Hey, good folks, we are back. Hey, listen, I always say, hey, listen, and you're already listening. It's so annoying. Oh, my gosh. I'm going to try this again. Hey, everybody, we're back so glad to have you listen i'm gonna i just did it again why

so annoying i'm gonna keep practicing at this whole um radio podcast thing and one day good folks one day so i ran across a article this week um i think that my good friend Preston sent it to me and it is remarkable. Not surprising at all and I wanted to pass it along to you. We'll link to it in the show notes. It's an article from The Atlantic written by Laura Aknin, Jamil Zaki, and Elizabeth Dunn. I'm confident that I just misspelled those names. They are researchers at various universities. Stanford, Simon Fraser, others.

Listen. All right, here's the deal. I'm going to start giving Kelly $5 every time I say the word listen because I just said it again. Five bucks. I'm all for that. Effective immediately. Just come in over the thing and let us all know.

Perfect. All right. Not you, Ben. Just come in over the thing and let us all know. Perfect. All right. Not you, Ben. Just kidding. I'll pay you. Can you give me $5 too? Everybody in the booth. $5 for you, $5 for you.

Everybody. Thanks, Oprah. Here's the... All right. The name of the article is, The pandemic did not affect mental Health in the Way You Think. So, like me, I did it, every mental health professional I knew, when the pandemic set off, we all just looked at the alleged death toll, the fear-mongering, the true and real fear,

the lockdown, the isolation, the economic disaster, the coming economic disaster, the phrase, the looming or the coming, fill in the blank, right? Whatever it was. And early on, we saw devastating anxiety numbers, depression numbers, financial numbers. It was distress, was just climbing through the roof. These researchers say it climbed dramatically, right, all over the world. And I'm going to read here. But as spring turned to summer, something remarkable happened.

Average levels of depression, this is in 2020, and distress begin to fall. Some data sets even suggested that overall psychological distress returned to pre-pandemic levels by early summer 2020. Looking at the world as a whole, we saw no trace of a decline in life satisfaction. People in 2020 rated their lives at a 5.75 on average, identical to the average in previous years. So what does this mean? It's a story as old as time, and it's based in neuroscience, which is our brains have a vested interest in looking for the worst case scenario and then trying to reverse engineer that so that we don't die. Our brains have a vested interest in saying, yeah, but this might happen. And so we need to be careful about the might, the could be, the maybes. And that is why we can't stop scrolling. That's why we can't stop watching news headlines that have disaster or looming or crisis in the titles.

That's why we can't stop watching the stock market tick up and down and down and up and up and down and down and up and up and down. The last time I saw the market a few weeks ago, it was up some insane number. But it talked about, oh, it's down 100 points because of, it was 100 points down that day after being 10,000 points up over the last few years. I mean, it's just madness, right? But our brains are so hardwired to look for the next hole in the ground,

the next thing that might jump out behind a tree and eat us. But the tale as old as time is we are incredibly resilient. We can overcome, adapt to, solve for so many things. And as the authors write, the pandemic has been a test of the global psychological immune system, which appears more robust than we ever could have guessed. When familiar sources of enjoyment evaporated in the spring of 2020, people got creative. They participated in drive-by birthday parties, mutually assisted groups, virtual cocktail

evenings with old friends, and nightly cheers for healthcare workers. Some people got really good at baking. Many found a way to reweave their social tapestry. Indeed, across multiple large data sets, levels of loneliness showed only a modest increase with 13.8% of adults in the U.S. compared with 11% in spring 2018. People are incredible. Now, here's the thing. There was deep, disastrous, real pain. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have died of COVID alone in the United States. Conspiracy theories aside, lots and lots and lots of people have suffered loss and death,

plus car wrecks, plus lost jobs, plus terrifying financial conditions, all of it. But here's what the authors go on to write. The astonishing resilience that most people have exhibited in the face of the sudden changes brought on by the pandemic hold its own lessons. We learned that people can handle temporary changes to their lifestyle such as working from home giving up travel or even going into isolation better than some policymakers seem to us seemed to assume and here's why this is super super important we've got big time challenges on the horizon big time challenges whether they be, whether they be financial, whether they be ecological,

whether they be political, whether they be psychological, whether they be whatever. Here's what the authors write. Human beings are not passive victims of change, but active stewards of our own well-being. This knowledge should empower us to make the disruptive changes our societies may require even as we support the individuals and communities that have been hit the hardest what does that mean that means that we as a society as a group as individuals are hardwired to be terrified of change terrified of it so scared and yet after what has been one of the most difficult and challenging crisis, I don't think it's over by a long shot. Most difficult crisis many of us have faced in our lifetimes collectively. Our brains are solving for it.

Our relationships are solving for it. We are figuring out other ways. We are getting creative. We are getting frustrated. We are figuring out other ways. We are getting creative. We are getting frustrated. We are charting new paths. We are slowly recalibrating relationships. We are getting rid of stuff that we've been carrying around us for a long time. We are deciding we are going to make changes in our lives.

And our bodies are saying, cool, we're safe now. And so if you've got hard changes to make, whether like today's calls, whether it's Lorraine saying, I want to stop hurting people. I want to stop being so exhausted all the time. I want to stop being judge and jury. Or whether it's like Chris who wants to stop judging people who have less than him. Or wants to stop feeling guilty about being successful in his new job, his new enterprise. Or it's you.

You want to stop an addiction. You want to get control of your health. Be good stewards of your mental health. Learn how to have relationships and get connected. Learn how to change your thoughts. Learn how to start acting differently. You can. You can.

This pandemic has been disastrous for many of us, millions and millions worldwide, but it's also shown us a glimpse of light through the cracks. We are strong and we are resilient, especially when we figure things out together. So we'll link to that in the show notes if you want to read it. It's a really remarkable read. And again, just a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel for some of us. All right, so as we wrap up today's show, listen. I'm going to dedicate this song to my good friend Kelly.

I don't know why. You're not a raging alcoholic. I just think it's funny. I might be after this show. You are correct. So I am a closet lover of swing music. I love it, love it, love it with all my heart. And the thing I love most about good swing music,

A, is it makes you shake your body. It just makes your body move. And B, they take the darkest lyrics and they wrap it around really happy music. And so I find myself just singing, and all of a sudden I think, ah, that's a sad song. And so here we are with one of my favorite songs of all time Hey listen, stop the recording Right when I say these lyrics Stop the recording and pull this song up

It will make your day better And then you'll start singing along And you'll realize, ah, it's kind of a dark song But it's a song for Kelly And it's called You and Me And the bottle makes three tonight And it goes like this. Hey, Jack, I know what you're thinking.

That now's as good as any to start drinking. Hey, Scotty, yeah, what's it going to be? A gin and a tonic sounds mighty, mighty good to me. That's got Kelly's number. Man, I got to go. It's the same thing every time. But I don't think another drink's going to make me lose my mind. So I think about my next drink, and it's got to be you and me and the Bottle Makes Three tonight. What a sad song.

You and me and the Bottle Makes Three tonight. Kelly, there's help for you too. Right here on the Dr. John Deloney Show.