The Dr. John Delony Show - John, Your Show Triggers Me!

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A woman wondering why she is so triggered by listening to The Dr. John Delony Show - Delony’s thoughts on why our culture is so obsessed with true crime - A woman who completely loses herself in every relationship Lyrics of the Day:"Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine" - The Killers Enter the Ramsey Cash Giveaway here Shop the $10 Sale here 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. I can't be the only one who gets triggered from listening to your show. No, everybody does. I get triggered sitting in here. Like every time somebody calls in with a marriage question, infidelity question. Have you been cheated on before? Yeah. Well, you see the correlation, right? What in the world is going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show,

talking about mental health and marriage, parenting, schools, whatever you got going on in your world. Some have called this the greatest mental health and marriage podcast of all time. Nobody's called it that, but we're just going to keep saying it. Oh, hey, on the show, here's what we do. We take real calls from real people going through real stuff. And here's my promise. I'm going to sit with you and we're going to walk through it together and we're going to figure out what your next step is. Sometimes it's easy.

Sometimes it's really difficult. And sometimes these calls are funny. And sometimes these calls are really challenging. My promise is I'll tell you the truth. And I'll try to use an evidence-based insights to back up what I'm saying. It's just not some, I try not to be an idiot off the street, just making up stuff. Sometimes I do just because that makes it funny. But if you want to be on this show, if you want to be on this show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask.

And let's go out to Philadelphia. We were born and raised and Kelly spent most of her days on the playground. Let's talk to Sarah. What's up, Sarah? Hey. How we doing? How you doing? I'm partying, man.

What are you doing? What the heck? I'm incredibly honored to be on your show. Well, I am honored that you are giving us your most precious resource, which is your time. And you could be doing so many other fun things this morning. Just so you know, I've been praying for you for this moment. Oh, no. Did we used to date or something i'm that's my like biggest fear that an old girlfriend's gonna call and be like you were mean no no not even close

you're like i would never date you all right so what do you got so i felt like i can't be the only one who gets triggered from listening to your shows. No, everybody does. I get triggered sitting in here. What do you get triggered about? Like,

like every time somebody calls in with, um, a marriage question, infidelity question. I like project that onto my husband and we get in a fight. Like I'm triggered physically, mentally, everything by these shows. And it started way back when you did your,

I think it was your first marriage and money show with Rachel. Yep. Rachel, my good friend, Rachel Cruz. Way back when. Yeah. Yeah. And I saw that you're advertising for the next one in October. Hey, this good friend, Rachel Cruz. Way back when. Yeah. Yeah, and I saw that

you're advertising for the next one in October. Hey, this one's in person. You should come. Y'all should come and you can be triggered for like 36 straight hours. No kidding.

I probably would be, but I was like, I don't like that guy. Have you been cheated on before? Yeah. Oh. Well, of course. You see the correlation, right? I guess I do.

I just like, I feel like I should be over it. Like I should be okay. Like it's my problem now. It is, but I don't like to use should in this situation. Okay. Let's use a different word because should has, it just often makes our bodies go into defense mechanisms really somewhat unconsciously.

So when someone's like, you shoulda, bam, I instantly have to protect and defend myself now instead of actually get to the problem, okay? Should is often a shutdown word. Doesn't mean that there aren't tons of things that we should do.

I should take care of my kids. I shouldn't cheat on my wife. All those things are true. But when I'm trying to get to the bottom of why my body is responding in a certain way, that word's often not helpful. So think of it this way. And I want you to take full ownership and responsibility. And it sounds like you're more than willing to do that. You're really trying to figure out why can't you just listen to this goofball podcast without your body taking off on you, right? So let me ask you this question. Are you still in relationship with the person who cheated on you? Yes. Okay. So what is your body getting out of the response it's providing you when you listen to this show? Your body's trying to protect you from what?

Yeah, from being a fool. Okay, so that's one of two things. Either you have made an identity out of a person who was cheated on. That's become the way you see yourself. And when somebody cheats on us two things happen one we have that that relational violation right this core us is broken and we lose trust in ourselves because we should have seen it we should have known i should have said something earlier when i had an inkling and we didn't and we just lose trust in ourselves and that's unmooring, right?

Yeah. So that can be one. The other is your body recognizes very similar patterns over the last year or two. 30 years. No, no, no. I'm saying your body is picking up on this thing may be going on again. Yeah. And so do you think this has become an identity for you?

It's just kind of the way you see the world or are you having to wrestle with at a, at a scary, scary level? Cause you probably made some promises to yourself the last time. Is your body picking up? There's some similar patterns here. I remember this story from last time. Yeah, that's a great question. Because I'm a six on the aces.

Okay. And my husband's a six on the aces. So you've got two very highly tuned radars pinging off each other all the time, right? Yeah, always. Yeah. So, the thing is, it's like the red flags are there. Right now?

No, not anymore. Like, I point blank asked him this morning. I said, Dr. John's going to ask me if I trust you, like 100%. And he, you know,

without even finishing the sentence, he said, yes, you can trust me a hundred percent. And he even prayed, he prayed with me before this meeting. So that is a very different question, have you cheated on me again? Right. It's a very different question. And it's an evasive question that we often ask to keep ourselves safe from the truth. Right.

Right. So let's pretend that your husband's been perfect. He screwed up. What was the nature of the infidelity, by the way? Huge porn and lust and inappropriateness with customers. Okay. How long ago? D-Day was three years ago and we've been, we were married 27 years when I found out.

How long was it going on before that? Probably 27 years, if not more. Okay. And you, in retrospect, do you see where you missed it or was this just a total shell shock? Um, I feel like I didn't miss it. I was led to believe that I was crazy. Yeah. Were you, let me ask, that's a probably better way. Were you roundly deceived or did you choose to not know?

Hmm. or did you choose to not know? Probably chose to not know. Okay. All right. Because one of those, there's a level of pathology. So for everybody listening and for you, Sarah, here's what I'm getting at. Affairs happen.

One night stands happen. Go into a work conference and you meet somebody and y'all start laughing and one thing leads to another. That happens. Or texting back and forth with a workmate that leads to this, leads to this. That happens. Okay? And I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's good.

I'm saying it happens. And I've got empathy for that right. I'm not saying it's good. I'm saying it happens. And I've got empathy for that situation. I understand it. Okay. If that leads to significant dishonesty, gaslighting, why you can't trust me. It's just your fault. You never trusted anybody.

You've been doing this since we were dating. And it leads to these giant coverups. Well, now we have another layer as far as I'm concerned. Okay? And that layer of not only did I do something outside of my value system, but now I'm going to just intentionally destroy somebody else to prop it up and keep it going. Those are two separate issues to me.

And as far as I'm concerned, and I may be wrong here, and that's fine if I am, one is infinitely more nefarious than the other. Sure. Okay. And the other option is, there's this going on,

your husband's a natural flirt. He's always clicking out of the computer whenever you come home. The search history is always deleted when you pick it up, even over something silly like just checking movie times or something. And that nagging feeling inside like, oh, he is always flirting with those customers a lot, right?

And you choose to not ask. There's a participation there, right? It's not that he's hiding anything. It's just, I was going to keep my head down and we're just going to keep doing this thing. And so it could be a mix of any of all that. All that to say is when you listen to my show and we're talking, we're having real couples going through real hard things right now and real individuals wrestling with infidelity and with trust and with all those things, your body's response tells me that you haven't fully either grieved it,

you haven't fully owned it, and that it is still a way that you are viewing the world. It's still the glasses that you wear. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. And then the two, so that leaves me with two questions for you. One, why listen to the show? Like, stop listening. It's like, man, every time I touch that stove, it burns my hand. Or keep listening to the show and choose to enter into a really difficult season of healing. Because I don't know that you're there yet.

Yeah, I don't think I am either. So why have you chosen to not enter into that? What are you getting by hanging on to this thing? You know, that safety, that feeling of safety? Yeah. I just feel like I'm, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop every day. What does your husband say when you tell him that? He says he understands, but he's faithful. Like, he gets it now. Like, he wasn't always empathetic. But he says I can trust him. What have you asked him to do

to demonstrate trust? Not to just say it. What have you asked him to do? What behaviors are different now? I asked him to cherish me. He's not very good at that. I've asked him. What does cherish you mean?

To think about me when I'm not around. How does he demonstrate that to you? To bring me something that means he was thinking of me. Okay. You want him to buy you stuff? Yeah, or I don't know, just anything. Write me a note, something that makes me believe

that he was thinking about me. Okay. And be affectionate with you? Flirt with you the way he flirts with customers? Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't always happen.

I know it doesn't. I can hear it in your voice. Yeah. And what you haven't done is you haven't said, I want you to give up your cell phone and get a flip phone. What you haven't said is I'm going to start seeing customers, not you. I don't know if y'all are at a family business. I'm making something up. I want you to consider another line of work because when you go off to see clients, I still can't breathe.

Right. What you've asked them to do, I still can't breathe. Right. What you've asked him to do is something on the periphery. And I'm going to say this with all due respect and kindness and love to him and to you, I'll buy you stuff. That's fine. And I will hold your hand when we're watching TV. That has nothing to do with my extracurricular affairs. Hmm. And so what you're asking him to do and what your body's demanding are two different things.

Gotcha. You're asking to be cherished like the object of his pornography. You're asking for him to replace flirting with customers and being inappropriate with customers and pornography with you. Right. And that's not the issue. My guess is he doesn't feel alive in his own home and he's going looking for it. And that is a relational fracture that y'all got to deal with. I'm not blaming you for that at all. What I'm saying is

his heart starts beating a little bit faster when he's on the computer. His heart starts beating a lot faster when he's flirting with somebody that's not you. Right. And his heart slows down and goes, when he walks in his own front door. Right. And that's a choice he's made for 30 freaking years.

Right. And then y'all have done that dance together. See what I'm saying? Yeah. And so it doesn't surprise me at all that you hear or see these relationship challenges that your body is like, this is it. This is it right here in our house. There it is.

And it just starts going on and on and on. Right. The alarm systems's sound. Yeah. What ails me? The truth. I don't know that y'all have done the work after what happened.

Okay, I'll just cut to it. I think you think other things happened and you haven't full you still don't believe him is what i think and y'all have moved on down the road and he's just trying to get quote unquote back to the way things were and you haven't fully let him know that there will never be a going back that what y'all had for 30 years is over now. And if y'all are going to do anything, you got to build something new going forward. You haven't told him that.

And you still think he hasn't told you everything about what happened. And you haven't given him a path for regaining trust in your home. So if nothing did happen, he doesn't have a way to show you that. He just has to keep saying it over and over again he's told you things for 30 years right so you see there's where it just gets in a figure eight loop over and over and over again

yeah and then eventually he's going to get tired of coming home and expecting you to read his mind I'm sorry expecting him to read his mind. I'm sorry, expecting him to read your mind. Right. And then somebody is going to make him laugh, and now we're off to the races again.

Or a buddy is going to send him a funny email that's not so funny that he's going to be down a rabbit hole again. This isn't your fault. I don't want you to hear me say that in any shape, form, or fashion. He's got a ton of work to do and I wish he'd call into the show because I would tell him he needs to shut his mouth and start acting differently. He's not doing that. Right.

But I think y'all got to get to the core healing here because you just aren't there yet. That's what I think. I could be out till lunch, but that's what it sounds like to me. No, I think you hit the nail on the head. I'm sorry. I wish I was wrong. I wish I was wrong.

No, it's good. It's all good. This is a divine appointment I was praying for. I wish the divine could have been kinder to both of us. So here's the path forward. You have to own reality. You have to choose reality. And I don't think you're there yet.

And so often when folks get stuck and they are in this loop like y'all are in, and I say this over and over and over on this show, I think it starts with a letter that you end up reading to him. And in the letter, you got to be honest. If you still don't trust him, if you think he had an affair, wasn't just contained in pornography or in being inappropriate, as you said, if you think he did other things, you have to ask point blank. Write that in the letter. I still am unable to trust you. My body is still telling me you're not safe. You have to give him a roadmap of your choosing back to, not back to, to a new level of trust somewhere. What will that look like? What does he need to do to earn that trust? And then he, as a grownup, gets to make a choice. I'm not doing that. I'm out. Or I'll do anything in the world to show you that I'm working on it. I'm changing. It could be marriage counseling.

It could be getting rid of phones. It could be no more computer access, whatever the things, how crazy is you want to get. It's up to you. And then y'all have to decide, how do we recreate life inside this house? What do I need to do to help you feel alive? And what does he need to do to help you feel alive? You've told him, I want you to cherish me. I want you to buy me gifts. I want you to think about me.

He needs to be able to say, I need this and I need this and I need this. And then y'all spend the next 60, 90, 120 days, two, three, four months practicing meeting each other's needs and meeting each other's needs, all with a goal of re-earning this trust back, building something completely new. But it has to start from a platform of reality, honesty, truth. That's where we got to start, Sarah. Hang on the line. I'm going to send you a copy of Own Your Past, Change Your Future.

You can go through it and man, he can go through it with you. And that can be something that unifies you two together that y'all use as y'all begin to build something new. Give me a call back. I'll walk with you every step of the way. We'll be right back. All right, we are back, and it's time for Facts Are Your Friends. There we go. All right, today we are talking murder podcasts.

Kelly's favorite. Our true crime, murder podcast, Kelly's favorite. Our true crime murder podcast, all these shows, is it psychologically healthy? That's what we're talking about today. And I'm going to tell you right now, I'm going to make everybody mad. So as the great T Swift says, shake it off already. So here we go. We have a culture that is obsessed, obsessed with true crime, particularly women obsessed with true crime. Kelly is smiling as though I'm speaking directly into her soul.

Correct? I feel very seen right now. Let's just go with that. Now, we've always had true crime stories told orally about gods and monsters and quote unquote others, right? True crime stories and storytelling in general has been wired into us. We are storytelling and story making beings. It's how humans communicate, have always communicated.

We tell stories. Story is how we make sense of the world. And it's how we participate in the world. It's how we experience things without actually sleeping with the neighbor, without actually dying, without actually being in a car wreck, without actually whatever is through story. Somebody tells us a story. This thing happened. We watch a movie. We get to see it happen, but we don't have to actually experience the full weight of that tragedy or that, ah, but we get to kind of participate when he hits the winning home run or when Rocky comes back and Rocky IV and wins or whatever. We get to be a bystander. This is how we are wired. And then modern media hits the scene

and we are captivated by serial killers, murder, Freddy Krueger, Alfred Hitchcock, all this, all this stuff, right? And it taps into a very natural, a very wired into us survival instinct, which is to always be looking for threats, to identify threats, to see them, to be able to predict ahead of time what they might do, what you might do. This is what makes humans humans. This is the frontal lobe, right? This is being able to say,

okay, if X happens and Y happens, then I'm going to do Z, right? So it kept us alive because we couldn't fight bears, but we could anticipate bears. We could strategize about bears. And then in recent years, with the proliferation of true crime shows, Alfred Hitchcock, Twilight Zone, War of the Worlds, and then Ted Bundy, and then NYPD Blue, CSI, NCIS, Signs of the Lambs, Cops, Law and Order, the line between true crime, fiction, the unknown the dark forces and your neighbor who looks nice but might actually be luring old people over to eat them and skin them alive and use their skin as a dress

it all is getting blurred together and fantasy and fiction and reality and your neighbors and your co-workers it's all turning into the same river, right? All these different creeks and tributaries are dumping into the same river. And then podcast hits the scene. And the internet opens up a never before trove of interviews, insights, police files, interviews with detectives. My dad, my dad got flown. My dad's a homicide detective for years and was a SWAT hostage negotiator.

Nancy Grace flew my old man to New York and to do a cold case. And when Nancy Grace's producers called my dad, like, hey, do you remember this crime? And he goes, yeah, that one still haunts me. They flew him to New York and he was on the show, right? It was awesome. True crime has become braided together

with celebrity culture and our ability to participate in a ringside seat to what happened. So think about when Ted Bundy was on the scene. There would be a news article at 6 and then again at 9 and then a newspaper. Well, now suddenly there's troves of Ted Bundy movies, Ted Bundy interviews, Ted Bundy poetry. We can read it all. We can look at his pictures. We can read all the transcripts of the conversations he had with police officers.

We got it all, right? And it's the ultimate rubbernecking. And it's messing with us in ways we have not fully metabolized yet. So make no mistake, I will go to the mat with any neuroscientist on the planet, any social scientist on the planet. The media you consume affects you. It affects the way you see the world, the way you experience the world, and the way your body reacts to the world. There's a great book by Don Cecil. It's called Fear, Justice, and Modern True Crime. And Don writes, by connecting facts from the real world with a fictional style narrative format, true crime stories naturally blur the line between news and entertainment. The melding of facts entertainment is commonly referred to as infotainment. If you're a true crime junkie or a modern murder podcast junkie. Like, I don't know, Kelly and Jenna and their friends.

You are being entertained by the death, murder, investigation of something that really happened packaged in an entertaining way. That's crazy. And I think, Kelly, tell me if I'm wrong. I think the first podcast, it was Serial. Was that the first one that kind of set all this off? Yeah, probably so. That was the big one that kind of kicked off the podcast. So I met Sarah Koenig and like going down, like that felt, and I haven't kept up with it in all the other seasons, but I remember her, she came in and met with my law students and did a great presentation, but it sounded very altruistic. Like she got, she got, had a question and kept asking and kept asking, very journalistic endeavor into this thing. Oh, I think so. Yeah.

Now there was other podcasts, I believe before that that that were kind of one-offs, but hers was the first one where you're telling a story in a 10-week arc or whatever. But yeah, hers started off with the story that she had heard about this guy, and it was like, I don't think he's guilty. And then it just goes from there. But it's

the music swells, and then the wait till next week. It uses the best parts of Alfred Hitchcock and the best parts of like Friends and then A Real Murder. And it braids it all together. And we're like, and what happened? And then there's that little bit of, could this happen in my town?

Right? In this, in my neighborhood, maybe? Allegedly, right? That's my favorite, allegedly. And so, and then I remember being so bummed out by S-Town. Do you remember that one? Yeah, that was one county over from where my husband's from. So that explains so much.

Yes, it does. About where you went manhunting. But listen, here's what was so frustrating about that. I waited through that entire podcast and I got to the end and they explained it. And it could have been a 60 minute. This guy was doing this particular thing.

I think it was smelting or whatever he was doing. And it affected his brain chemistry. Right. And he was mad. He was crazy. Yeah. But that's not how they told it.

They kept me hooked for. Oh, same one with that one. I kept waiting for like there was going to be this big thing. And yeah, there really wasn't. Oh, man. Okay. So why do we consume this madness?

Why do we do this? Some experts say we consume these shows as a way of quote unquote learning or mentally rehearsing what we would do. So it's about preparation. It's a dress rehearsal. So we watch Silence of the Lambs or we watch even and I know this isn't true crime but for a lot of adolescent males

it kind of is like the John Wick movies okay so this is what I would do I'm gonna bury all these rad weapons under my concrete floor and then chip it out with a sledgehammer and then ride a horse with a sword down the subway. It all gets mushed together here. Or like if Hannibal Lecter comes to my house,

okay, I'm going to, number one, you're not going to do anything. But so it's about preparation. It's a dress rehearsal. Number two, we consume these shows, as I said earlier, as a way of participating, pretending to get inside the head of a murderer or a detective or a victim's family without getting blood on our hands. It's the ultimate voyeuristic activity when it's consumed in a podcast. It can be super powerful because, get this, your brain creates the art, the actual pictures in your mind from the words of the show. The cognitive work that goes into the imagination can be very, very powerful because your brain draws from what it already knows. And so when it says things like, and the neighbor had a shifty look about him, your brain will go looking for your neighbors. It's different than a movie because in a movie,

you see Robert England playing Freddy Krueger and it's like, oh, I got a picture of Freddy Krueger. Not so with a podcast. With a podcast, your brain has to carry the cognitive load of the story. It inserts people from your past. Remember that coach? Yeah, that coach was a little bit sketchy. He might eat children. And it begins to craft this narrative around people you know. I'm looking at Kelly. She's like, oh, I feel exposed. A little bit on that one, but not totally because I don't see people in my world where I start thinking about that.

Okay, but you don't think about it, but does your body? And I realized I said that in kind of the creepiest way possible. Thanks, John Mayer. But does your body? I said that so gross. I don't know. Now Jenna says that she does the,

like how I would handle myself in this situation. And I don't do that, but she says she does. Yeah. I think I more so started listening to them when I moved to Nashville from my home because I was like,

okay, I am a 18-year-old woman moving to a new city. And one, I'm intrigued by like the cycle, like why do they do that? Like what makes them want to do that? But also, okay,

what can I learn from these stories of like, okay, here's what not to do as a young woman living on her own in a new city. So you listen to these as like research? Kind of. I mean, like I know here's what not to do as a young woman living on her own in a new city so you listen to these as like research kind of i mean like i know i'm never gonna wear my hair ponytail when i go to the grocery store because they'll grab me from the back never you'll never

catch me doing that oh yeah things like that incredible incredible all right so this hey Incredible. All right. So this, Hey, this is the reason why, um, in education, why we ask kids to figure things out because it develops new cognitive maps instead of just presenting it to them in a picture or form. All right. So number three, some experts put out there that people listen to murder podcasts obsessively because they need to see good triumph over evil. With all the mayhem and madness out in the world, it lets us believe a little bit of good overcomes. Except, I'll say this, every podcast I've ever listened to, good never wins. It never ends well. Yeah, I don't see I mean

I don't buy that argument but maybe others do no I don't because I know that even when I listen to different podcasts I have to take a break from them I have to detox because your brain gets kind of too into that and there's all of a sudden you can't find good because even if yes they catch

the person there's still somebody murdered there's all of a sudden you can't find good because even if yes they catch the person there's still somebody murdered there's still probably multiple people and there's still this you know what is wrong with our brains what's wrong with people so no i don't buy that as an argument all right so here's what we need to sit on cecil says that consumers of true crime are being exposed to a distorted picture of criminal behavior and justice So in a true crime i've i've walked into homes where there are Unfortunately people who have passed away who have been who have died violent deaths There is no music swelling there's no like loud piano and symphony that comes. There's no ticking clocks

or dramatic pauses. It's this weight in the silence that I can't explain unless you've been in there. I've been in active shooter exercises. I've been in a building with an active shooter on the campus. It is not like it is on a TV show. It's very, very different. There's a level of haunting that is unique and it is weighty in a way that I can only explain if you've been there. It's why police officers often hang out with other police officers because there's a shared weight that they just carry because they know what goes on in the homes in their neighborhood in the middle of the night that regular neighbors don't know. And so when you consume podcast as infotainment,

when you consume murder and investigations and police work and bad guys and good guys as infotainment, it distorts reality in a pretty profound way. It also decreases confidence in the criminal justice system as a whole. When all you consume is a 10-part series, and you go to the next 10-part series, and you go to the next 10-part series, and you look over the course of a year,

and you've consumed 10 10-part series. You've consumed 10 trials that may have happened over the last 50 years, totally botched totally screwed up somebody like a police officer with a vengeance a bad cop whatever it's really easy to let those things shift your bell curve and suddenly you lose faith in everything the bad guy always gets away there's murderers around every corner eating kids and and you know murdering dogs or whatever you say some know anybody that's eating kids and murdering dogs or whatever. I don't know anybody that's eating kids. I know, I'm trying to be dramatic for effect.

Another thing, I have a cousin who is a prosecutor, has been for years, and she's talked about how the rise of true crime has made their jobs harder because people expect that there's, we always called it the magic printer when we used to watch CSI. Yeah, where's the mass spectrometer? And they think they know all these things now and like, well, that's not real life. So juries think that they're more educated

and they're not. And it's making their jobs, prosecutors' jobs harder because they don't have the evidence that you see on TV and in movies and those kind of things. Most of it because it's not real. Yeah. That technology doesn't exist. You just put it in the computer and out, you know, the answer pops. And so it has definitely affected that because people think they know more. Yes. And they know just enough to be stupid.

And they know enough Hollywood to then look over at the police officers and say, y'all must be incompetent idiots or the prosecuting attorneys. You should have done this. What about this? Right, right, right. So I am wholly with all of my guts, not compelled by the literature that suggests there is no correlation between violent media and increases in all cause violence. I also am going to expand violence. So if you tell me kids can play active shooter video games for 20 years and there's no increase in gun violence, cool. I don't believe that all cause violence, meaning a body that is always heightened, a body that is anxious, a body that is depressed, a body that is a little bit sharper,

a little bit louder, a little bit more antisocial, a little bit more isolated. I don't buy that, not even for a second. I'm wholly unconvinced by data that suggests there is no psychological toll or cost to mainlining this type of entertainment. I just don't buy it. It might not make more violent kids, but it might make them, as I said, more anxious, more depressed, more ADHD, more prone to isolating behavior, practicing of suicidal behavior. These correlative studies saying there are no problems are, in my opinion, they are highly misleading. I just don't buy them. Consuming and participating in violence is going to have an effect on the way you experience

the world, period, period. And listen, we know from other academic disciplines, the importance and strength of behavioral models. A picture of new behavior alters our behavior. It gives our brains a new map to follow. It's why initiatives to increase diversity, reputation, and media is so important. It changes our feelings and emotions and thoughts. It gives us a new model. Oh, somebody who looks like that could be an attorney. I've never seen that before. That's why those initiatives are so important.

But those same media companies then come out and say, hey, all the violence that we put out here, that doesn't impact behavior at all. And these media companies talk out of both sides of their mouth. We need to provide new pictures so that we can give new people avenues for empathy for behavior change and Ah, that doesn't alter anything It's not intellectually honest And we know that when we watch the news over and over and over again It makes us more anxious more depressed more angry more rageful

Why in the world would we think it doesn't apply to us? Over again, it makes us more anxious, more depressed, more angry, more rageful. Why in the world would we think it doesn't apply to us? So here's my three insights. And Kelly, you get the final rebuttal. Here we go. There is a shifting of the bell curve that happens. Most people don't personally know someone who's been kidnapped, beheaded, and murdered or whatever happens in these podcasts. Now we have murder podcasts and horror movies and we know so much more.

I'm personally convinced after years of hanging out with police officers, veterans, and first responders that it shifts our bell curve into things that never happened, wouldn't even enter our mind, to things that happen all the time everywhere. And the data just doesn't bear that out. It makes our bodies more alert more of the time. Podcasts, this is number two, podcasts are a new technology that affects us more than we know. We are over-informed and under-experienced. We have seen a million sex acts on TV.

That's probably a little bit. That's probably a lot, but we've seen a lot. Yet the data tells me that fewer and fewer people are having intimacy in real life. We see so many violent acts on TV. Yet we have more and more parents who don't let their kids go to their grandparents' funerals because they don't want to bother them. They don't want to scare them. And so we've got kids who have seen countless murders and deaths on TV, but they've never been in a room and felt the weight of somebody in a casket over there and the grieving that's going on collectively. They've seen a lot of sexual activity on TV,

and they've never wasted an entire movie reaching over trying to hold somebody's hand. So there's a disconnect between what I'm seeing and what my body's experiencing. And when it comes to podcast, here's why this is so different for all of us. Historically speaking, to be in a room with Joe Rogan and listen to Joe talk to his three best friends about really deep and meandering topics,

for all of human history, to be privy to that conversation, you need to be in that room. So we have bodies that have evolved over time to gather information in a multitude of ways. Sound, smell, sight, touch, eye crinkles, head movement, shoulders up, shoulders down. All that stuff is data for us when we're having interactions and conversations. And now I can just put in my headphones and head on down the street

or get on my mower and mow my yard or whatever. And I'm getting all of that insight into my mind, but I'm not there. That is changing the way our bodies interacts with the information that we get. It's all new. Is it necessarily bad? No, I'm not going to information that we get. It's all new. Is it necessarily bad? No, I'm not going to say that at all. That's one of the things we try to do on this show. We try to let you pull up a seat to a table with me and somebody who's struggling. That's the purpose of the show, but it's affecting us. It's affecting how our bodies express empathy. It's affecting how our bodies experience fear. It's it's affecting how our bodies experience fear. It's it's affecting us in ways that we don't know yet Three

And this is something that my dad told me i'll never forget this. I was all into horror movies as a kid up until my My late 20s. I saw every movie that came out. I love scary movies. I liked interesting scary movies. I liked the way they The cinematography way scared people. I liked bad guys in those movies. I liked interesting scary movies. I liked the way they, the cinematography, the way it scared people. I liked the bad guys in those movies. I watched everything. And I'll never forget, my dad walked through one day,

my dad, the homicide detective, and I was watching some horror movie on TV and he just quietly said something, which was not like him. He quietly said, I just can't ever imagine thinking this is entertainment.

And he just walked on. I remember being like, ooh, dad, dropping the truth bombs on your little... And then I started going into these homes myself. And so I'll just say this, the death and torture and murder of someone, the complete destruction of a family, I can't wrap my head around consuming that for entertainment. And that's just me. And so I know those stories exist. I know that there are people working through them. And from the journalistic endeavor, like what Koenig did, Sarah did with Serial, there are journalistic stories that need to be told about injustice, about things that are going unseen, things happening in marginalized communities. All that's important. I don't know.

It's tough for me to consume it as entertainment. I'll pass it on to Kelly for the final word. It'd be so funny if you were just like, go to hell, John. No, all I'm going to say is, for those that can't see right now, those that are listening on podcast, John is wearing a shirt that says,

The Killers. That's all I have. And with that, 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 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 halo.com slash Deloney. It's amazing. Three free months of the app

when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. Go right now and change your life. All right, we're back. Let's go out to Jennifer in D-Town in Dallas, Texas. What's up, Jennifer? Hi, Dr. John. How are you? I'm good.

How are you? Pretty good. I can't believe I'm actually getting to speak with you. I can't believe I'm talking to you. Hey, are you a murder podcast junkie? No, definitely not. I can't handle it. Good for you.

Good for you. That's a healthy brain you got there. All right, so what's up? Well, my question for you is how can I be a less controlling, significant other? So I just had a seven month relationship and because I kind of suffocated the guy and I'd like to work on that part of myself. So I kind of want to know where that comes from. And yeah, I kind of hate that part of myself. So I'd like to figure out how I can work on it and understand it.

Well, I don't want you to hate any part of yourself. Can we start there? Sure. Okay. Something about a relationship sets your body on guard and really makes your body worried about somebody abandoning you

or somebody hurting you and is trying to solve that by really tightening up your grip. And so I just want to honor the fact that your body's trying to take care of you in the best way it knows how. And you've learned that it chokes people and so I just want to honor the fact that your body's trying to take care of you in the best way it knows how and ah you've learned that it

It chokes people unconscious and so we're just going to learn a different different set of tools But I don't want you to start from a place of hate Is that cool? Cool, or as my friend ian simpkins says, um Whatever you think your hate is doing, love can do better. Okay. So let's start from that place. Is that fair? Fair. Okay. What makes you think you smothered this guy? Well, he told me. Okay. So this is a spoiler alert, and if I'm the first person to ever tell you this, I'm so sorry.

But sometimes guys make up bull crap to get out of relationships. Yeah, a lot of people who love me in my life have told me that that's bull crap. But regardless, I do still have those kind of controlling feelings, and I would still like to deal with them in a more healthy way. Teach me about your controlling feelings. Tell me about them. Well, mainly the idea of him just going off and having fun, maybe a guy's weekend or anything without me, I just kind of have a fear of missing out. Okay. I don't,

like I want to be a part of that. Let me think. Let's take him off the table. When have you done this before? Oh, in every other romantic relationship I've done this. Okay. Give me an example. This relationship that just ended, he was going to go away on a ski trip with his dad for like two weeks. And, um, I just couldn't mentally wrap my brain around

the idea that he didn't want to spend those two weeks with me. Like, why can't I come? Why don't you want to have that fun with me? Because the person I'm dating kind of becomes my whole world. And I would not ever go on a trip without him because he's my favorite thing. And I would rather stay in town to spend time with him or take him with me on a trip. And I just can't even fathom wanting a two-week break from a person. The way you're framing this is so instructive. So relationships for you are not for connectivity. Relationship for you is a drug. Who left you?

When I was a teenager. Somebody hurt you bad. Who did it? Well, how much time do you have? No, I was not hurt that bad. Um, as a teenager, um, my mom left and, um, she kind of just didn't reach out for months. I, I would call and she would answer. I think she's pretty ashamed of just breaking up our family. Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer, that's really bad. Don't ever minimize that again. Okay. How old were you? Like 17. And my guess is when somebody does that, they've usually left that relationship years before they actually walk out the door. Hmm.

Is that fair? Yeah. Did your mom struggle with addiction? Um, no. Why'd she leave? Um, she was just really unhappy with their marriage.

I think she was more trying to prove a point. She wanted my dad to fight for her, to care, to show, show her interest. She wanted, I think she wanted his attention and he just took the other road and said, you're being ridiculous.

Get back over here. And they 100% just let it fall apart. Did you have to fight for attention as a kid to get your mom to notice you? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. What about dad?

Dad's love was, I guess what you would call merit-based. Conditional. Yeah. As long as I was doing something, accomplishing something. And I will say after my mom left my dad, he had to get a second job and then he started dating and he disappeared too. And then the same thing with my older sibling, um, she kind of leaned on all her friends and I was just kind of forgotten. I mean, you just laid it out.

Yeah, but how do I fix this? So let's run through that map real quick. So you grow up and you have a picture that love is mom starts a fire and dad's job is to put it out. That's how, that's how she receives love. She causes a scene and he has to come rescue her. And if he doesn't rescue her,

he doesn't love her. I can imagine a scenario where dad gets really tired of that over the years. Right. And he begins to create an alt universe that you probably will never fully understand because they're probably not going to ever tell you the full picture. Maybe they will, but who knows? So you have this picture of you bet if you if you don't come get me, you don't love me. And love for you was a tool, right? It was the key to dad.

It was the key to mom. And then all of a sudden, they vanish and like a kid who was thrown off the back of a boat and a stick comes by that kid is going to cling to that stick as tight as they can yeah until it snaps so every time you enter into a romantic relationship

Jennifer it's not about connectivity it's not about peace it It's not about peace. It's about oxygen. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. The only way I know through this, there's two paths to take. Actually, there's one path with two action steps on it. Action step number one is you have to commit to loving you enough to go see a counselor to work through a lifetime of trauma yeah I actually am on my third

week with somebody from better help so yeah so excited about it so excited about it good I'm really proud of you because that's hard because saying something out loud got you hit when you were a kid. You don't have to answer that. And you're going to have to practice feeling overwhelmed and not making relationships some zero. Because when you enter into a relationship, it becomes you versus everybody else in the person you love's life. You versus their dad.

You versus their mom. You versus their old friends. You versus everybody. Their boss. And that's just not fair. To you or to them, right? And so you're going to have to practice when your boyfriend that you care about, you've been with seven months, says, hey, I'm going to go spend a week with my dad. You're going to have to practice feeling that wash over your body.

And then going and doing the next right thing, which is saying, it is so amazing that you and your dad still want to spend Time together. I'm super jealous of that. That's awesome And then you go home and you feel left out you feel alone I want you to sit in that call somebody write that stuff down because you know, that's not true Your feelings aren't telling you the truth because what your feelings are telling you is that guy's leaving you He's picking dad over you He's always going to leave And your body screams don't let him go

And that's a lie. It's not true He's just gonna hang out with his old man, which by the way if he has The kind of relationship he wants to go spend two weeks with his dad. He'll make a great husband Right Right You're gonna have to choose to enter into the fire for a season until your body recognizes, oh,

oh, oh, oh. They left. Mom left. Dad bailed. But that doesn't mean he will. It's going to be hard. Now, I just threw a lot at you,

and I can feel you not breathing very much. Tell me what you're feeling. I mean, I figured that I'm going to have to just muscle through that feeling when I have it. No, no, no, no, no, Jennifer. Not muscle. The opposite. Let go.

Oh. You are not muscle. The opposite. Let go. Oh. You are not swimming upstream. You are a leaf going downstream. Okay. Okay? When you feel it, you're muscling through it. That is that grip. In fact, I want you to practice this consciously.

When you feel that you're dating somebody new and they're like, hey, I just got a call. I got to work late tonight. And instantly your body's like, you're choosing work over me? I want you to look down and consciously open your hands up. Open them up. We are not muscling through anything. The opposite. We are letting go.

Okay. You don't like that, do you? No, I like it. It's okay if you hate it, Jennifer. It's okay if you hate it. No, I don't hate it. I'm just grateful for a new thing to try because, I mean, this feeling makes me so miserable. So I don't hate it. I'm excited to try. Will you write Jennifer a letter? 17-year-old Jennifer. Okay. And I want you to start it off with this line.

17-year-old Jennifer, I love you. And mom left because something was going on with her, not with you. Okay. Then I want you to tell Jennifer how beautiful she was and how sorry you are that dad weaponized love and that mom weaponized love and commit to her as older Jennifer, that you are going to redefine love for your body.

So that relationships are not something that you, are not a drug. The relationship's not dope. Relationship's not oxygen. Relationship is peace. Okay. You don't like that at all um no i i don't dislike it um i mean i'll try why are you crying um

um i don't know just i don't know it's, I don't know. It's just a lot of emotions there with talking about it, I guess. Yeah. I'm going to tell you something crazy. There's nothing wrong with you. Thank you.

You're not, I'm not saying that like in some like stitch it on a pillow kind of way. You're not broken. You're not dysfunctional. Your body's just trying to keep you safe. And the two people, the two freaking people who are never supposed to leave,

they bailed on you. Yeah. The two people who are supposed to look at their little bitty girl and say, you can burn down the tallest building in the world and you're still my little girl. They didn't do that.

They said, hey, if you run real fast, eh, I'll buy you pancakes. If you get such and such a grade, I'll wink at you. They weaponized the whole thing, man. Yeah. It's going to take some time to practice a new basketball shot.

And your basketball shot is not feeling like everybody's decisions are anti-Jennifer because they're not. When you love somebody and you care about them or you're dating them and you like them a lot and we're going to practice wanting the best for them. We're going to practice them having great relationships and them having laughter and them having joy. We're going to practice those things because that makes them better able to love me, to love you, to meet your needs. Stay, stay, stay in counseling. Okay. And at some point you may need to transition from better help to an in-person therapist, which is great. You've got a long history. Two important things, Jennifer, never again say, it's not that

bad. What you experienced is hell. I'm sorry. Sorry. Second thing is, you're worth being well and you're worth the fight. I promise to you, there's peace on the other side of this. Don't stop searching for peace. 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, as you wrap up today's show, Kelly went and got meta on all of us. The song's about killing by the killers. In case you're wondering, ladies and gentlemen, she was in honors classes.

Is that Kelly? Actually, I was. Actually, I was. That's actually where she got her first tattoo gun and it all just fell apart after that. Song's called Jenny Was a Friend of Mine. By The Killers. It goes like this. We took a walk that night, but it wasn't the same.

We had a fight on the promenade. Promenade? Promenade. Yeah, hooked on phonics work for me. wasn't the same. We had a fight on the promenade. Promenade? Promenade. Yeah, hooked on phonics work for me. Out in the rain. She said she loved me, but she had somewhere to go. She couldn't scream while I held her close. I swore I'd never let her go.

Tell me what you want to know. Come on. There ain't no motive for this crime. Jenny was a friend of mine. My gosh, dude. I did not know what this song was about. I know my rights. I've been here all day and it's time for me to go. So let me know if it's all right. I just can't take this.

I swear I told you the truth. She couldn't scream while I held her close. I swore I'd never let her go. Jenny was a friend of mine. Man, ruin that song for me, Kelly. Jeez. I thought that was about two friends who fall in love. It is not.

Mind blown. See you guys soon. Love y'all.