The Dr. John Delony Show - Imposter Syndrome, Warning Signs of Suicide, & Choosing a Better Future

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that gives you real talk on life, relationships and mental health challenges. Through humor, grace and grit, John gives you the tools you need to cut through the chaos of anxiety, depression and disconnection. You can own your present and change your future—and it starts now. So, send us your questions, leave a voicemail at 844-693-3291, or email [e-mail]. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode 2:31: I feel like an imposter most of the time; how do I break free of this? Scattered - Dr. Gabor Maté 7:14: Teaching Segment: Imposter Symptom 19:38: My father-in-law is running out of money and about to be homeless. How do I help him? 29:43: Is it better to stay in a small town that's not near family or move for better opportunities? 39:25: Lyrics of the day: Ani Difranco - "Angry Anymore" tags: imposter syndrome, ADD, ADHD, suicide, parents, in-laws, family, decisions 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.

Today we're talking about imposter syndrome and what to do when you never feel like you're enough. We're gonna be talking to a young woman whose father-in-law is struggling with mental illness, who's giving away his things, and what her and her husband can do next. And finally, we're gonna be talking to a small town girl who's living with her husband in a lonely world,

and they're both wondering, can they get on that train to anywhere? Should they move from that small town to the next big thing? Stay tuned. Hey good folks, I'm John and this is the Dr. John Deloney Show, a live show where we show up, we walk alongside hurting folks, confused and troubled people, and neighbors just trying to figure out what to do next. We talk about it all on this show, anything and everything, no matter what's going on in your heart, in your mind, in your family.

There are millions of other people across the country and across the world who are dealing with what you're dealing with. So give me a call. We're going to talk about love, loss, family issues, infidelity, finding love again. And we may talk about awesome husbands like Stephanie Spino's husband, Stephan. Stephanie wrote in about her husband, Stephan. Here's what she said. She says, Stephan Spino is an amazing husband, but he's really the best friend I could ask for. In my darkest time, he has pushed for me to get help.

I only started going to therapy for him because I didn't really even see a point in investing in myself. He saw that in me. He sees the good and the value in me even when I don't. He's my biggest hype man. He's so proud of me, and he makes me feel safe. But at the heart of it, he just sees me. He makes me feel deeply known. Stefan, if you hear this, I love you. This is her talking, but I love you too, brother, but this is her. Seven years simply hasn't been enough. I'm glad we have a lifetime more.

We're going to talk about husbands like Stefan Spino. Good for you, brother. Thanks for loving your wife, for seeing her for who she is, and for being with her. That's awesome. So this show is about all of it. We're going to put some positivity in the world. We may laugh with you, and we may laugh at you. Just give me a call. Whatever's going on, I'm here to stand with you. 1-844-693-3291.

That's 1-844-693-3291. Or you can email me at askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com. That's J-O-H-N, askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com. All right, let's go straight to the phones. Let's talk to Mike in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Mike, good morning, brother. How are we doing? Good morning. I'm doing well, yourself? I'm doing very, very good. How can I help you this morning, man? Well, thanks for taking my call. I'm uh, I'm a, I'm a business professional and I work on the business development side of things. And I I've been listening to your show and you talk about anxiety and ADD in which I was diagnosed with ADD when I was 14 years old,

hated the medication life of it. But the thing I struggle with the most now, and it really pairs with my anxiety is imposter syndrome. Um, like I just feel like I'm two steps from being caught found as a fraud or that I'm going to be, you know, that I'm not good enough. And I hate that feeling. And I got this inner critic inside of me that I just want to evict. And I'd like to know steps that I could take to get that inner critic out and get that stuff out of my head. Dude, that's awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for your trust here. Yeah. Walk me back. Where did that inner critic show up first?

You know, probably in my early 20s. Okay. I'm 40 now, but in my early 20s, I didn't choose the normal path. I didn't go to college. Okay. And so I come from where like my oldest brother is like this super high achiever right and looking at his

shoes and his path and looking at my path as well and then finally when I moved into business and started being successful in that the struggle was it still shows up like no you're going to be found out but somebody

pointed out the difference between who and your brother. Who was that? Him. It was him, okay. I think it was him. I struggled with him for a long time. We were close, but there's things from my youth that are tougher. That's what I was getting at.

So my guess is that narrative that you're not this, you are not enough or, Hey, check out what he's doing or check out what she's doing. Or if you would just fix the lawn better, whatever the things are, right. That that's been going on for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I can think back to like when I was 16, I got a birthday card form and all it said was study hard. And, uh, I was just, I can think back to when I was 16. I got a birthday card form, and all it said was study hard. And I'm just not your average student. I wasn't your average student. I barely graduated high school just because mainly for a litany of reasons.

So before we go into this, and here's the deal. I wrestle with imposter syndrome myself, and so I can talk from firsthand knowledge, and I think we can land on a pretty good place here. But I want to acknowledge your brother real quick. Is there a chance that he loves you, he just didn't know how to do it right? Oh, 100%. Huh. Like I said, I have a good, like we're close. There's certain things that will trigger me about him.

I just, I agree that he just doesn't know how. He didn't understand me. Okay, very cool. Well, hey, it takes a big 40-year-old man to be able to look at somebody and say, that hurts when you do that, but I know you're loving me the best you can. So good for you, man. That will give you a lot more peace. You don't have to carry that baggage around.

All right, so you work in business now. You're doing well? Yeah, yeah. When's the last time you colossally failed? And when I say fail, I mean just disaster, just turd-bombed it. When's the last time that happened? I don't say I necessarily have full on done that. I don't ever look at anything as just like a complete fail. Like there's, there's lessons learned. There's things that

I've done that have not been successful. And so when you feel imposter syndrome, when you feel like an, when you feel like an imposter, give me a scenario of when that plays out, like a live real-time scenario. Man, I wrote down thoughts and I wasn't expecting this question. I don't have like a, when, you know, I'll tell you one, like when, when the company that I work for, like as it's growing, if my name is not attached to a – I don't want to say like – yeah, when my name is not attached to like a purchase order or some kind of piece of the dollars that comes in, maybe it's a competitive side that comes out of me or something else that comes out of me. But it makes me feel like not good enough, not like I didn't do my part or something like that. Ah, okay. Okay. So that's actually, I wouldn't consider that to be imposter syndrome. That's a whole other conversation about worth and value. Right. But at the end of the day, let's talk through imposter syndrome and then we can talk through your specific situation.

So broadly speaking, I experienced imposter syndrome as this underlying, who do you think you are? Right? Like, what are you even doing at this table? What are you doing in this room? And for me, it is like, obviously, I haven't been able to overcome it through education. I haven't been able to overcome it through financial earnings. And the more I did the research and the more I've sat with people who are world-class leaders, people who have quote unquote one life, right? Presidents and doctors and lawyers and those are the fancy pantses. They all feel it too. And it's this pervasive sense of

what are you doing in here? You don't deserve to be here. And my experience has been those scripts start when you're a little kid. It's this chasing of perfection, this chasing of whenever I get a thing, it's going to feel a certain way, and then my feelings are going to be good forever. I'm going to see that one purchase order, and it's going to have my name on it, and I'm going to go, ah, there it is. And then the rest of my life is going to be pretty much good after that. And the reality is that's not true. That's not how the world works. Right. And the reality is that's not true. That's not how the world works. Right. Right. And so I, what I always want folks to do when they feel not enough or they feel, um, left out is I want you to, to literally, and this is going to sound cheesy and you can roll your

eyes. I want you to write those feelings down and then I want you to demand evidence from them. Okay. And so that gap, and this is less about imposter syndrome. This is just dealing with those feelings that are flying around your head. It can incorporate imposter syndrome, but when you see that purchase order coming across and your name's not on it, somebody made a big sale without you, and you immediately get that drop, right? You immediately get that birthday card and you open it up and it just says, be better, study harder, right? Same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I want you to then immediately grab a piece of scratch paper and write down what that thought means to you, what that feeling is telling you. And it's probably going to say something along the lines of, they don't need

you here. I told you, you should have got a degree. They're going to make these sales without you, fill in the blank. And then I want you to look at what you've written down and I want you to demand evidence of it. Is there anything about that that's true? And usually the answer is no. And when you can demand evidence of those feelings, you can begin over time to really quickly move through them, right? Because that script that's going to run in your heart and head that's been there since you were a little kid is going to be there. My guess is we could go back to the ADD. When were you diagnosed? I was 14. I was 14 and they put me on medication and I hated every minute of it. I took myself off like three months later.

So before a 14-year-old was put on ADD medication, you and I are about the same age. So that means you were back in the 90s. That was a big deal. That means you probably had several years of hard to focus in class, some behavior issues, not getting your homework turned in and things like that. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Okay. So there's a lifetime of up to that point of you getting a clear message from the adults in your life that you are not measuring up. Totally. That you are not, your brain is busted. And then they said, hey, we got a pill for you. You're broken. Here's a pill. And that didn't work either, right? And from those moments is when you begin to develop a counter-cultural, a counter-solution to the world.

Some people in this situation, myself being one of them, doubles down. I end up with two PhDs, and I'm always chasing the next thing that's going to supposedly fix me and make me feel better about myself. Other people walk away from education completely and they double down on themselves and they go try to win at business. And you and me, dude, we're chasing the same, they were chasing the same dragon. Other people go to relationships and any number of other addictions, et cetera, to try to fill that hole that I'm busted. The adults in my life have told me that clearly, and I need to try to fix that through fill in the blank. Does that make sense?

And so you are never going to be able to find an external solution, an external plug to an internal hole. It doesn't exist. And what you have to do is begin to heal your feelings in your heart from the inside out. And if the 19-year-old me heard the dude in his 40s say, you're going to have to heal your heart from the inside out, I would have punched my own self in the face. I get how cheesy and lame that sounds. But the reality is it's true. You're living a script that you've been living for years and years and years. And so you've got to demand evidence from those feelings. And then here's the other big thing. You've got to have other people, probably other men in your life that will be honest with you,

that you can trust and that will give you legitimate feedback up, up, down, left and right. Do you have mentors in your life and not mentors? Like I go to coffee with a guy and pick his brain, but true, true mentors that you are accountable to that you lean on that you can ask hard questions and give you tasks and wisdom and hold you accountable. Yeah. Yeah, I do. Yeah. I've got, I've got, I bought a group of five. Oh, that's incredible, man. You were way ahead of the game, brother. That's awesome. You know, the book you recommended once was Scattered Minds,

and I started reading that, and I'm not all the way through it. Scattered, not Scattered Minds. There's two different books. Scattered Minds is written by one dude, I forgot, but Scattered is written by Gabor Mate. That's the masterpiece. Oh, I think that's the one. Okay, either one.

I'm reading the one by Gamoramate. Okay. Excellent. Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the first two chapters just about draw me to tears. There you go. Oh my gosh. This is like the first time I've ever felt, you know, X like during, like walking through that process. There you go. And here's one other ugly truth about imposter syndrome, if you will. And this is just me being real and just two guys having a conversation in front of a couple million people. It's this.

There have been moments when the imposter part is 100% right. I have found myself at tables that I should not have been at. I have agreed to speaking engagements on topics that I didn't fully have fleshed out. And I probably should not have been the expert in the room on that deal. And there's some times that I sit down and demand evidence for my feelings and they're right. And it may be that there are better salesmen at your office. It may be that you have been living out of a deficiency mindset, a not good enough, a chasing dragons mindset instead of understanding I bring value to this company and I'm going to work to be a better and better business developer, a better salesman, a better whatever it is you do. And those feelings of inadequacy are right.

And so there's something about looking at those feelings and being honest. If they're wrong, they're wrong, and they usually are. But there is times when they are dead on. And then I need to go back to school. I need to shut my mouth. I need to start living and practicing what I preach on the radio every day. I need to fill in the blank. And it goes back to demanding evidence from your feelings.

And then having somebody, a group of five, you guys can go and you can be like, hey, I keep having this recurring thought that I'm not, like, I've topped out in my business and I keep feeling like this is it for me. And they might say, yeah, we've noticed that for you, man. And you're going to have to work hard and do something else. Or they may say, you're an idiot. You're doing great. Keep going. Right? Yeah. But at the end of the day, if you don't have a track record of failure, you're doing well. At the end of the day, if you have managed to figure out how Mike's heart and head works and you are continuing to read, you're continuing to grow, you've got a group of people around you that are holding you accountable. Then it's going to come down to the lifetime task of growing and learning to manage, demand evidence from those feelings and make them tell you the truth.

Make them tell you the truth and don't be afraid to share them with other people. And I promise you that imposter syndrome will begin to just dissolve underneath you. While we're here, Kelly let me know that we are going to have a discussion about imposter syndrome. So we did a little digging into it. We'll do a little nerd segment here. But the imposter syndrome, it's a psychological state of doubting your own abilities and achievements, right? It is not a diagnosis. You don't go to a doctor and get diagnosed with imposter syndrome.

It's just this fear of being found out. And I've done probably 5,000 public speaking engagements in my lifetime. Almost every one of them before I go out, I think, who are you? Who are you to be out on this stage? I can't tell you how many classes I've taught. And I can't tell you how many times I get in front of a group to teach a class and I think, are you serious?

You're the best guy they got. That's imposter syndrome, right? It's not a default. Your brain's not broken. Your heart's not broken. It's this looking for success. there's the, the bar of success moves on you. And in my life, it's because I, I have not gotten good control of my feelings. And it's because I haven't clearly defined where it is. I want to be, I continue to say, I want to be on a stage. Great. I want to be successful. Great. What does that look like? Because man, you can make $10 million. Then the next goal is a hundred million and you make a hundred million bucks. And the next goal is a billion, right? Um, that the finish line keeps moving on you. And that's the great trick of life, right? Most people believe, most psychologists believe that imposter syndrome comes from growing up in high-achieving families, and where you are

told either explicitly or implicitly, you're not really cutting it. Same as Mike was just telling us here, right? He's got folks in his home that are killing it, doing great, and there's just implicit, like, you could probably be doing better, right? Women and underrepresented groups, they feel it more. It is more prevalent in those communities, often because they have the reality and the narrative that they've got to work harder to get the same things. And so when they get them, they expect there to be a trumpet sound, and it's not, right? You get that PhD, you walk across the stage, and then the real work comes because now you got to go get that tenure track job, and now you got to go, and now you got to go, and now you got to go. The machine just keeps running. And so there's this idea that, oh, I thought I was going to get here, and when I got here, this was the ticket. And it's like, nope, that's just getting you in

the front door. Now the real work begins. It's especially prevalent in the academic communities. But it also is, I finally became a leader. I thought when I got this job where I made this money, everything would go, just fall into place. Nope. Those folks' marriages are struggling too. And those folks don't like what they see in the mirror either. And it's this perception that once I get to a place, I'm going to be good. And it's just not. So it's just pervasive feeling like you don't belong here. Right. And the last thing is, man, there have been seasons of my life where the imposter syndrome is right, where I feel like, man, I should not be in here and I should not. And so some of that comes back to me being honest with myself, me being honest when somebody asks me, hey, we did a speaking gig on this particular

topic that I don't have a lot of expertise on, that I had the courage to say, there's probably somebody better for this topic than me, right? So anyway, that's my thoughts on imposter syndrome. I really appreciate the call, Mike. Man, get control of those thoughts. Get some people around you like you do. Trust those folks, and you're going to be golden. And here's the thing. Let your little boy off the hook. That kid that was told you're not good enough, that kid that was told you're broken, that kid that was told other good boys sit in class all day,

other good kids do all their homework and they never miss one, man, hug that little kid that's still fighting for you inside. Let them off the hook. Tell them, hey, brother, we made it. We're good. I'm kicking butt in business. I'm doing good. My brother doesn't know how, but he loves me. Mom and dad love me. Let that little boy off the hook. All right. Thanks for the call, Mike. Let's go to Heather in my hometown of Houston. Heather, how are we doing? I'm doing good. How about you? I'm doing so good. Everything good in old age town? I mean, as far as, you know, as good as we can be, I guess. I love it. I love it. Well, how can I help this morning? So my husband's father is fixing to run out of money next month.

We believe he is mentally ill, just undiagnosed. Okay. And we're just trying to figure out what to do because he's planning to be homeless. Why? We're all unsure. Like he called my husband, uh, father's day weekend and said, Hey, I only have six months of money. You and your brother come get what you want from the house. The rest is going to the curb. And basically that's it. Like he's only giving them his junk with strings. Like they're not allowed to give away the junk he's giving them like it's literally stuff that doesn't work and everything has a price tag but he's giving his house back

to the bank which doesn't make sense i mean is he is he man that that that sets off a lot of alarms for me that you're dealing with somebody that's about to take their own life and that's what everyone's asked and i'm like i don't see him doing that yeah but most i don't say most folks often don't see it coming because they think that guy or would never do that or that that came out of nowhere and then when they back, one of the cornerstone moments is calling people and saying, come take what you want. And they start giving their stuff away. I've never, in fact, I've never heard of a planned homelessness. I've heard of people who sell all their things to take an RV out to the woods and they're going to live that way. But they've got a plan and an adventure.

They start selling everything so they can have cash. I even read a book about a guy who just chose to live cashless and he volunteered and ate off the land, et cetera. But outside of some significant mental illness, this sounds like somebody who's on a dangerous trajectory there and needs a pretty immediate intervention. What does intervention look like? Has your husband gone to visit with him and speak with him in person? Has your brother-in-law, have they gone really direct with him? No.

So it's a very complicated situation with them. My husband is the main one that's close to my father-in-law. My father-in-law never even actually told his other son what was going on. My husband told his brother. His dad actually told his brother that he's like, oh, I'm just cleaning out the house. And so he is not close with them. And then my father-in-law told my husband that when I can't afford gas in my car, I'll just come and park it in front of your house. And then I've been staying out of it.

My father-in-law doesn't necessarily respect either of his son's spouses or his sons, for the matter. And so I asked my husband I said so what is he going to put on a backpack and walk away like what are his plans but I feel like every time my husband or even my brother-in-law get around him it's like they become this little boy. Yeah. So here's what has to happen is your husband has to go to wherever he is. And even if he's in California or in Oregon. Oh, he's a mile down the road. Okay. Even better. I would put this at a code red intervention level.

You're watching somebody cognitively disintegrate in front of you. And either they have a really well thought out plan to take their own life, a really well thought out plan to just stop with the pain that is life. And they're going to do it by just walking down the street at which you're going to get a call from the authorities four days later or eight days later to come get him, right? And he will have not eaten and not slept and have, God knows, whatever traumas he's accumulated in those few days. But your husband's got to step up.

And he's got to take his brothers with him. And you're going to have to directly sit in the home of your father-in-law, not you, them. And they're going to have to have the conversation of what is the plan? You cannot do what you're doing. And this is either a, an extraordinary cry for help that your husband is just not responding to.

This is probably your dad, your father-in-law has history of erratic behavior, and this just feels like erratic plus one. And so unless, I'm so glad you're calling, because unless you're 10,000 feet away from it, it doesn't look as nutty. It just looks like nutty plus one, right? Just a little bit more than dad's normal chaos. And there's some real red flags here. He's been known up and down. His mom had, I think my mother-in-law said she, like my father-in-law's mom, was schizophrenic and bipolar. And when she would get off her meds, she would try to commit suicide.

And so we've all, we're all like, okay, we see this in him. But I feel like my husband has given up on him. Like I feel, and he just, he's like, I don't know what else to do. He's a grown man. He is. And you know what? He's shutting down. Your husband's right.

Your husband's right. You're, you're, his dad is a grown man. And at the end of the day, if he wants to do something drastic, he can't. And that's the heartbreaking thing about loving people. Your husband probably has a lifetime of exhaustion of dealing with this too. And I get that as well. There is a – in a safety situation. So your husband does not have a lifetime of abuse.

Your husband doesn't have a lifetime of having to ward off his old man from trauma, from painful things. Then there comes a moment when you've got to step in and save your dad from himself. And or he's got to have a safety plan at his home too, which means he needs to look his father in the eye and say, if you park your car at my house, I will have it towed. You will not be welcome in my home. And I would tell you, and I don't want to talk bad about your husband, but if he's through with his dad, he has a moral and ethical obligation to tell his dad, I'm through with you. Because it's not fair to a old guy, to his dad, who is slowly losing it, not doing well, on a significant cognitive decline, to have a plan that is not going to be lived out in reality,

and his own son won't be honest with him. And so for your husband's sake, and here's the deal, it is for your husband's sake. If your father-in-law hauls off and does take his own life, that will weigh on your husband's heart for If your father-in-law hauls off and does take his own life, that will weigh on your husband's heart for the rest of his life. If he shows up at the front door

and it turns into a whole melee in a situation and then after a mess and then you and him have to fight and y'all got kids and, and, and, and,

and then that car gets towed eventually anyway, you're going to have created a whole bunch of unnecessary chaos because you didn't plan ahead. And so if I'm you, the conversation to be had is, number one, you and your husband have to sit down and co-create a plan for the moment his father pulls up in front of your house and says, I'm moving in the backyard. Are you going to call the police? Are you going to call the police? Are you going to call social services?

I know there are several elder mental health associations there in Houston. Are you going to call one of them to come get him? Because it's not a character issue if he has schizophrenia. It is not a moral issue. He's sick. He's hurting, right? And you need to sit down with your husband and tell him. You talk to Deloney on the radio, he can call me tomorrow. But he has a moral and ethical obligation as far as I'm concerned. He must go sit down with his father and say,

what you're doing isn't a good idea. You don't appear to be well. You can't just give your house back to the bank. You cannot just give all your stuff away and wander off into the night. We're worried about you and we love you and we care about you. Let's get you the help you need. And then he's right. He's got to be vulnerable and then his dad's going to be able to do whatever his dad wants to do. But your son and his brothers need to go sit down and have that conversation. And here's the deal, Heather. That sucks. I hate that for you.

I hate that for him. I hate that for everybody in that family. Dealing with advanced mental illness in a parent is devastating. It's so hard. But that's what we got to do. So call me back after those conversations. I'd love to hear how it plays out. I want to hear how your husband, I have confidence in him.

He's going to step up and do the right thing and go sit down and have some hard, hard conversations. I know that little boy pops out every time dad shows up and that little boy's got to be let go. Your husband's got to step up and do the right thing. And his brothers need to step up there and be there with him too. So thank you so much for the call. Let's go to one more. Let's go to Bailey in Des Moines, Iowa. Bailey, how are you this morning? I am good, John. How are you? So good. So good. So how can I help this morning? Yeah, thank you for taking my call. So me and

my husband moved back to our hometown after an unplanned pregnancy in 2017 to live closer to family for help. Okay. But my question is deciding whether we should live in our hometown for the rest of our life and raise our family or maybe actually move again to get a little space from family. So my guess is you're asking that because you want to get a little space from family. Yeah. I mean, I love them and appreciate them, but both of our parents are divorced. So we have four sets of grandparents. And now we're in very close proximity to three of them, and it just gets to be overwhelming.

And I love them, so when I say this, I don't want to sound negative, but we don't want the life our parents had. I don't know how to say that without—they're not bad people. We have different values for our marriage, and sometimes I don't know if it's the healthiest to live around them. Hey, Bailey, can I stop you there for a second? Yes, go ahead. Don't apologize for that. You know what that makes you? That makes you an absolute gangster. therapy researchers who I love, Terrence Real, says that family trauma burns through a family

tree like a forest fire until somebody has the courage to turn and face it. And that's what you and your husband are doing. And so what you are doing is generational work. It is legacy work. You are literally making your family tree different because of the hard, hard choices you're making. So never don't beat yourself up for wanting a different life than what your parents had. Yeah. Cool? Thank you. Yeah.

It's just, you know, we do stuff differently. We're the weird ones. Yep. We do Dave Ramsey. We stop drinking. Our hometown is a very blue-collar town. It's a lot of drinking. Everyone knows everyone. But there's a lot of drinking. Everyone knows everyone,

but there's a lot of great things that have come from it. Like, me and my dad have got better in our relationship. We've got, I mean, it's cheaper living. So it's just, we pro and con this decision back and forth, back and forth until we're blue in the face and we just can't decide if we're holding our family back and our marriage back or are we over-dramatizing living in our hometown? It's not like the worst place in the world, but I don't know. It's just a constant conversation in our marriage. You are living on the poles, right? And so I want to give you some peace about the middle. You could move for a couple of years and try it out. And it's going to be no worse for wear. You've made your decision in either or, and life is just too twisty and

wacky and weird for anything to really ever be either or. And so a couple of things to think through. Wherever y'all move, you two will go with you. And so if your marriage has wonky things that y'all need to work through, if y'all have got relational conflicts, if your sex life isn't what you thought it was going to be, if you don't like how he deals with kids' homework or whatever, those same things are going to travel with you. Right. So will all the free babysitting.

That will go away, right? Yeah. The other side of it is if you have a very clear path of where you want to go, you say that you want different lives. You want to have a different family tree. You love your family. You love them deep. I can hear it. And yet you want something more.

You want something different. Both of those things can be true at the same time, and both of those things can be just and right at the same time. That's all good. What I want you to do is be really explicit about what you want to be different because you're going to chase a feeling, and that feeling will never show up for you. You're going to assume after we've been married for 15 years, and we're not drinking anymore, and we're out of debt, that that suddenly everything is going to materialize and it doesn't work like that.

You have to be able to know I want both a beach vacation and I need to understand that when I get to the beach, I'm still going to get sunburned and I'm still going to get itchy from dirt, right? Those two things are both true. And most people have destinations and dreams, but they end up being just feelings of what's going to be like when I get on top of the pyramids in Egypt. It's going to be hot, right? It's going to be hot and you're going to be tired. It's going to be when you get down and reflect on the journey and what we did, right? So you got to know why you're moving. What specifically? What's that picture of our life we're going to look like?

And then live into that. And then if you got to move, move, you got to move, move. I, I left a few years ago, left Texas, left everything I know, every friend I had, every family member of mine lives in Texas. We're all, everybody's there. And we left. And my relationship with my family is still super close. I don't see them as much anymore. We talk probably more often now. And I've made new great community here. And my family visits me and it's wonderful and good.

Do I miss stuff? Yeah, of course I do. And I've also found parts of me that I never knew existed, which have been great. Yeah, sometimes I just feel guilty too, like our kids getting to experience our grandparents. But then, I mean, I think I have a good idea of why we want to be different and what that means. It's just a constant. And we both had traumatic childhoods, and now we're living in the hometown where all that trauma happened. And I had a tragic incident happen in high school. And I don't know, sometimes I feel like I'm swimming, re-swimming in all of the emotions all the time. So let me, uh, let me

help you. 100% are 100% are, and there's a good and a bad to that. The bad is moving. You're still going to have those experiences unless you go deal directly head on with that trauma. Unless you get a good trauma counselor and you work through that. The good part is, yeah, some of that trauma is geographically located. When you drive down that same street and you go past that same house and you run into that same dude or that same woman in the grocery store, you're just not going to do that, right? If you live in Arkansas. It's not going to be there.

But that clock, that scanner that's still trying to keep you safe in the back of your heart and mind, it's still going to be running full blast until you do the hard work of dealing with those childhood traumas. So running from it, moving away isn't going to solve that, but it can definitely let the alarms down a little bit so you can do that healing work. I think the main thing I want you to do, Bailey, is to not live in either ors. Live in next two to three years. Okay. And if you move away and you want your kids to be involved in your grandparents' life, keep them involved in your grandparents' life.

Instead of seeing them every single week, you're going to see once every three months for a week at a time, right? The time will be batched and it will be grouped together. And about day four, you'll realize, ah, this is why we moved. And then you'll leave and everybody will be good, right? Yeah. And then if you move away and it just sucks, move back, right? Right.

I just didn't want to move my kids once they were established. When they were a little older, we have a three-year-old and a one-year-old. Hey, they're not established at all. They're three and one. They don't even know what day it is. They don't even know. I think I've told this story on the podcast, but my wife, she's a brilliant scholar. She was hired to come work at a school just outside of Sao Paulo, Brazil. I took my son with me. I was just a trailer, right? I went and my son and I had two weeks of just glorious time

together. I mean, picking fruit off of a tree, avocados off trees, like on the street, right? Toucans landing. It was unbelievable. It was like Fantasy Island. And he literally has absolutely no memory of that whatsoever. It doesn't even exist. And I thought we were doing all these great bonding moments.

And when we're old, dude, he doesn't remember any of that. And he was two, three, four, somewhere around there. So all I have to tell you is they are going to be established when you and your husband love each other deeply. Y'all are anchored in together. Kids are resilient. They will be good to go with you. Okay. And so it's you guys being together relationally, making a concrete decision.

Let's go do this. Let's just go move. Here's the deal. I can hear your voice. You've already moved in your heart. You just need permission to go. So here's your permission. Go. Right. And be prepared. One of those grandparents may pass away as soon as you move. That happened to us. One of those grandparents may get really angry with you. One of those grandparents may get super, super jealous and wish they had gone to. Any number of things can happen and any number of those things that happen

doesn't make your move wrong. It doesn't make your fresh start wrong. I just want you and your husband to be really clear, super crystal clear as to why you're going and where you're headed. What's your relationship going to look like? What are your values going to look like? What are you going to do? Whether that's going to a marriage therapist, a, um, getting a community together, a good group of friends.

What's that going to look like? That's going to get you to those values. It's going to get you to that new family tree that y'all are, y'all are planting and you're nourishing and good for you guys. Good for you. That's so cool. All right. so cool Alright Bailey You just made my whole day I'm gonna Do a curveball here I had some other lyrics planned And then We're gonna

Change them On the way to work this morning I found an old CD In my garage And I put it in And man This brought back some memories For me in college

When this record came out And it was transformative for me. It's a hard record from one of the greatest songwriters of all time ever. And she wrote hard, challenging things to me as a young guy that were pretty insightful and transformative. So the record is from the greatest songwriter ever. And this is what I think is her greatest song. And it's a gentle, it's a quiet song. And it's by Ani DiFranco from her Up, Up, Up, Up, Up release in 1999. That's the name of the record. Five Ups. And the name of the song is Angry Anymore. And she writes, growing up,

it was just me and my mom against the world. And all my sympathies were with her when I was a little girl. And I've seen both my parents play out the hands that they were dealt and as each year goes by I know more about how my father must have felt. My mom taught me how to wage cold war with quiet charm but I just want to walk through my life unarmed to accept and just get by like my father learned to do but without all the acceptance and getting by that got my father through. I just want you to understand that I know what all the fighting was for, and I just want you to understand

that I'm not angry anymore. I think I understand what all this fighting is for, and I just want you to understand I'm not angry anymore. If I could say those words, I'm not angry anymore. This is The Dr. John Deloney show. you