The Dr. John Delony Show - Life Looks Different Than I Thought It Would

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - How to grieve life’s disappointments and move forward - A woman who suspects her boyfriend has high-functioning autism - A man desperate to get his father to stop smoking after a recent heart attack Lyrics of the Day: "Smoke a Little Smoke" - Eric Church Enter the Ramsey Cash Giveaway here Shop the $10 Sale here Learn more about “Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief” by David Kessler 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 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. We have a five-year-old son. Part of me wishes we could have two children. And it's like, no, I got to grieve that loss. We're going to be swimming upstream against a cultural current that is so powerful. Here's what that cultural current is. Feeling sad is something that you need to fix. Ra-da-da-da!

This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. I'm so glad that you are with us. Talking about mental health, parenting. It's a call-in show with real people going through real stuff. And here's the purpose of this show. I take all my years of training, all my years of walking alongside people when the wheels have absolutely fallen off their lives and the academic training and just sit with you. Sit with you when you're trying to figure out what to do next, whether somebody you love has passed away, whether

you're dealing with a mental health challenge, whether you're trying to figure out how to grieve, whatever's going on in your life. You're trying to figure out where to send your kids to school, what's going on at work, whatever's going on in your marriage. I'll sit with you. I may not know the answer, but I'm going to sit with you and we're going to figure out what you can do next. If you want to be on this show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291. And listen, it makes such a huge difference in this digital world we live in. If you will send episodes to your friends or a particular call to a friend, say, hey, check this one out. You've been talking about your husband struggling with pornography,

you need to check this out. Or your wife's struggling with alcohol, you need to check this out. Send these episodes to each other. Just get them flying across the country because it spins them up in the algorithm. Same for five-star reviews. Same for just hitting the subscribe button. It makes such a huge difference. Just left a meeting with Kelly, looking at the show numbers. They're so staggering. It's hard to wrap my head around. And so keep it going. We are getting people real help in real time. So thank you so, so much. Way to go. Way to go, show team. Y'all are just doing amazing work. Way to go, you.

And yeah, yeah. I'm the weak link in my own bike channel. No, we kind of need you here to do this. But while I have you, we're going to talk about... Hey, questions for humans. $10 sale. Questions for humans.

10 bucks. 10 bucks. Questions for humans. We've sold jillions and jillions and jillions of them. If you haven't picked them up, they're on super sale. Questions for humans, 10 bucks. 10 bucks. Questions for humans. We've sold jillions and jillions and jillions of them. If you haven't picked them up, they're on super sale, 10 bucks. And this morning, this isn't a sales pitch. I didn't realize you're about to do this. This morning at my weekly Waffle House breakfast with Hank, I had the questions for humans, parents for kids. And here's what's fascinating. We've gone through him before, about six months ago, and he's growing and developing so fast

that I asked the same questions and we got different answers. We had different conversations with him. It was a blast. I have one for us to do. Let's do it. All right. What's the absolute worst physical pain

that you've ever felt? Y'all go first. I'll have to think about this. I've done a lot of stupid things. Ibu, you're back there filling in for Jenna. What do you think? The worst physical pain I've ever felt. I fell off a bus in Hong Kong.

Okay, crazy. That's a great title for a movie. Fell off a bus in Hong Kong. It's a long story. I'm not going to tell right now. But fell off a bus in Hong Kong, twisted my ankle, fell on it, ripped my ligament in half. It was so gross. And I threw up because it hurt so bad.

And then did you go to a hospital in Hong Kong? I did. And they didn't speak English And it was a whole thing Did they take care of you? Ah Let's move on to Joe Joe, what's your worst pain?

Has to be when I broke my back Five back surgeries later How many? Five Wow, what'd you do? Well, the first surgeon wasn't a good one, and he screwed me up worse. Oh, man. How'd you break it in the first place?

I used to work for the cable industry. Okay. And I was going to reconnect a cable in the middle of a field with weeds up to my chest and didn't see a gopher hole. And I was carrying a 120-pound ladder, and everything just went down and stopped. If I would have fallen over, it would have been great. But it just, you know, left leg was locked.

Yeah, it's kind of like jumping into a pool that you think is six feet deep and it's only three. Yeah, ow. Oh, man, I hate that for you kelly um i'm tempted to say so having a double mastectomy not fun yes but there was good drugs correct but the worst pain by far is kidney stone i've heard this to the death yeah i i've never given birth so i will not not say it's worse than childbirth. My neighbor that came over to help me that day had three children naturally, and she said she would take childbirth any day of the week.

I've heard that repeatedly. Yeah. But it was the first and only time I've had pain bad enough that I threw up. Yeah. Yeah. And on the car on the way to the ER, my husband, I think, thought I was being a bit dramatic. And he got, I was throwing up. And then he got there and he's like, but why is she throwing up?

And the doctor looked at him and he said, the pain. He's like, oh, oh, this is real. So, yeah, that was. Andrew? I was a welder for five years. I got burns all over, John's a bad time bad time bad time so were you not a great welder that's why you're here just kidding i mean you know i'm here i'm here now that's all that matters i'm trying to think man i've had so many injuries so many surgeries and being in and out of whatever.

What I'm going to say is the truth. And the best, like when you asked that question, the first thing that came to my mind, I was at a beach with, I was like serving as like a youth sponsor. And there's all these high school kids and middle school kids at a beach. And I was helping somebody who's older and I was like a youth sponsor and there's all all these high school kids and middle school kids at a beach and i was helping somebody who's older and i was like a sponsor and they were all out there and i was doing something in the van i was like finishing something up in the van and i got out and just like an idiot i went sprinting into the water going screaming as loud as I could. And there was a railroad, like the iron piece of a railroad track. Someone had, but not the wood. It was the actual track. Yeah, the railroad track. It was in the water and I kicked it. Like I was just running going, ah, and I kicked it

so hard that my toe exploded But it was from blunt force. It was like from it wasn't there was nothing sharp on it. It just hit it so hard And I remember being in the hospital with my foot up and I had one toe poking through the paper and somebody else comes in And they're bleeding from their head. I mean it's so absurd. I was in there for with one toe But dude i've been knocked unconscious i've had stitches i've had my broke my kneecap i've had all i have never had pain like that it was so unfathomable and i've had seven six root canals i've had a bunch of those and those aren't fun either but nothing like that so my one toe kelly that's that's it america my toe. You and your broken back, Joe.

My one toe. I need better. My life is embarrassing. All right, let's go to Tim in Ventura. What's up, Tim? Hey, Dr. John. How are you? I'm good, man.

How are you? Good, good. I'm really grateful to be on. I'm a longtime listener, and you give great advice. So that's why I'm calling in. Well, you're awesome. I hope I can keep the trend going, dude. What's up?

Yeah, I had a general question, and we can dig into specific details if it helps out. Okay. But my question is this. What does it mean when you say you need to grieve. And what I mean by that is sometimes when someone like me is going through, you know, life issues and we're thinking, oh, I wish life were like this. I wish life were like that. I wish, you know, I had this kind of relationship with my family. And I listen to your show and you say, well, you're living a fantasy.

You need to learn how to grieve that loss and move on. And I'm thinking, that sounds great, Dr. John, but what does that mean? What does grieving look like exactly? Dude, that's a great question. Do you have an example of something that we could use as kind of a model to work through? Yeah. So I'm married to a wonderful woman, 16 years. We have a five-year-old son. And part of me wishes we could have two children, but even having one was tough enough. What was tough about it? So four years, it took us four years to even get pregnant.

And then we had a miscarriage in the second trimester. It took another four years to have this child, miracle child. His name's Kyle. He's a ball of energy. We love him to death. And we just couldn't go through trying another couple of years for a second. And I guess one fantasy I'm holding onto is I really wish we had a second child. And it's like, no, I got to grieve that loss, but I just don't know what that means.

Mm-hmm. So let's replace the word grief for a minute with the word experience. And when we use the word experience instead of grief, we're going to be swimming upstream against a cultural current that is so powerful. And here's what that cultural current is. Feeling sad is something that you need to fix. Wishing and wanting something and admitting it's not going to happen is for losers and quitters,

for people who don't want it bad enough. Wishing something was different is ungrateful. You should just be happy with whatever you got. And so when I say that I want someone to grieve, the purpose of grief is experience. For a moment sometimes and sometimes for a long season. Because I don't care what anybody says. If you lose a child, there's no silver lining there's no um god needed another

angel crap or whatever stupid things get stitched on pillows that people try to say in your case that now that you and this this happened to me so it took us four years to have hank okay and then we had several gnarly miscarriages this whole thing and um then Josephine comes out of nowhere okay so a similar track um as you guys were on I didn't understand that I had the capacity for love and joy like I did until I held my son I didn't get it and especially um I won't even be one of those dads it's like as soon as I hugged him I knew I didn't get it and especially um, I won't even be one of those dads It's like as soon as I hugged him I knew I didn't I mean it was just like a yelling lump of uh, screaming human It it evolved over six months nine months a year, right? and so

I've had the same thing too Like the thought of of just having had easter and we have three or four knuckleheads running around Like sounds amazing. And it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. So everything in our culture says, move on, be grateful, don't be a whiner. Grief is choosing to sit for a minute or an hour or a day or a season and just be heartbroken. Let your body catch up to your spirit.

How does that sound? It sounds good. But still more questions come up. Bring them all on. Because all the questions you have are going to be really helpful to people who are listening. Yeah. So when I hear that, I'm thinking, you know, how do I know if I'm being successful at experiencing or grieving?

How do I know? It's not a competition. It's great. Grieving is not a competition. People who compare grief. My great, he's an extraordinary therapist. His name is Link. He's a close friend of mine and he was one of my crisis team partners. He lost a pregnancy that him and his wife lost a pregnancy later on than my wife and I lost one of ours. And I remember saying to him, like I was so heartbroken and we, it was a mess and in our home. And I told him, but man, I don't

know anything about what y'all went through. And he looked at me and said, no, no, no, no, no. Loss is loss. You don't compare grief. Right? So there's, and grief as the great David Kessler says, it's indistinguishable. I'm sorry, it's unique. Everybody's grief is like a fingerprint. It's different for everybody. And that's one of the things that breaks up marriages is after six months, sometimes after somebody loses a parent, after six months, one of the partners is like, all right, I'm ready. Let's go do something fun.

And then the other person looks at him and just, how could you possibly breathe? I'm not there yet. Right. And that's hard. It's hard. So to answer your question, there's not a right or wrong way. There's a couple of practices you can build in there, but if you're looking for it to be the answer to all things, it won't be. What it does is, um, you ever been out in the ocean swimming before? Yep. So, you know, when you're swimming out in the ocean and all of a sudden you can't touch anymore and you're trying to like touch, touch, touch, touch, and it, your heart just starts beating a little bit faster. And then you start kicking your legs, you start kicking your arms a little bit. And then all of a sudden there's that moment when your foot touches the ground. That's, that's what grief gives you. It gives you solid

ground to walk on again. You're still up to your neck in water. It's not like this person's coming back. It's not like suddenly your house is going to be filled with people, but you can touch again. And then you get to figure out what we're going to do next. Okay. And then how do I know when I'm done grieving? Like I often, I hear you say, well, do you, you need to write a letter to your, to the child that is, was never meant to be, or, you know, picking up bricks and, you know, putting masking tape on it, writing your, you know, writing something on there and putting in your backyard. I'm like, am I supposed to be doing those things in order to complete the grieving process? I think it's incredibly important to have a process and a, for lack of better terms, a ceremony, something to point back to. I have the names of the babies that we lost, pregnancy, all three of them tattooed on my body. And I did it on my ribs where it would hurt the worst and my wife and i had a small thing that we did just very privately that i won't talk about anymore but all i have to say is i have a you have a touchstone now that's why every single culture has some sort of um funeral some sort of honoring of the dead, some form of honoring the passing of,

because you have to have a place to mark it. And that's why I'm really adamant that parents take their kids to funerals because it just leaves an ellipsis. It leaves a dot, dot, dot on their life, on relationships and kids. It's just, it's mayhem. So yeah, when I tell somebody to write a letter, when I tell somebody to carry a brick around, when I tell somebody to

do a thing, what I'm trying to give them is a tangible moment in history that they will always be able to point back to. This is when I put a period at the end of the sentence that was this person's life. This is what I put a period into the sentence of the sentence that was this person's life. This is what I put a period into the sentence of this job, of this breakup, of this marriage, of this whatever, of this dream I had. This is when I said, this isn't gonna happen. I'm gonna take another route, but it's good to always have a place to point back to.

So here's how I tell tell people quote unquote you're done grieving i don't know that you're ever gonna not wish that something was different here's the difference i know people are ready to move on when their bodies no longer react to the story does that make sense that makes that makes sense sense. So let's... And then... Just for people listening, there was a season when I couldn't talk about, especially after the third one, I couldn't talk about miscarriages.

Couldn't talk about them. I couldn't... I didn't want to talk about them. I didn't want to discuss them. I didn't want to bring them up. It caused my wife so much pain. It caused so much chaos in my house. I felt so inadequate because I didn't know to talk about them. I didn't want to discuss them. I didn't want to bring them up. It caused my wife so much pain. It caused so much chaos in my house. I felt so inadequate

because I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. I was trying to solve all of my wife's problems with charts and graphs. It was just a mess. And so I didn't know what to do. And so I just didn't want to talk about it. Once we sat down,

once I sat down and went through a formal grieving process. I entered into a season of sadness I thought my life was going to look different and I thought these three were going to be a part of it and they're not um Now i'm at a place where I talk about a lot from a teach I can make meaning of it and the meaning i'm going To make of it is i'm going to teach people Here's how to how to do life when it gets sideways on you So my body doesn't take off on me anymore. My heart rate doesn't start beating. I don't get that warm, weird, heavy feeling in my stomach. I don't feel like I'm going to just start crying

without it. So my body's not taking off on me. That's usually how people know. But you're never going to not wish that someone you love wasn't still with you. That's never going to go away. And what are some exercises that I can practice where if I feel myself drifting back into that fantasy, that thing that I thought I had finished grieving, if I feel like creeping up, what can I do to kind of interrupt that thought? So this is again from the great David Kessler. I think everybody who's interested in learning more about grief, the greatest book I've ever read, been a part of, seen anything, and I've been a part of it. I wasn't a part of it, but I've ever read, I've probably sold him a lot of books because I'm always giving it away and recommending it

to everybody. It's called Finding Meaning by David Kessler. It's just a masterpiece when it comes to grieving. One of the key takeaways for me in that book was this idea that culturally, we are beholden to our thoughts and our feelings. We have to do whatever they say. They get to rule our world. And so if I feel a certain way or if a thought just pops into my head, or in your case, let's say you're going to a ball field with your, you have a son or daughter? I have a son. Okay. So y'all are going to play Little League and you are walking and you see a dad pile out of a junkie minivan and he's got four little kids and a fifth one is a little bit older and your heart just drops a little bit that moment i always thought that i just i i didn't know there

was another alternative to that and so one of the things kessler talks a lot about and i've taken what he taught and i've taught it to a ton of people who are like the last picture they have of their kid is the funeral. The last picture they have of their spouse is the funeral. And like a lightning bolt, those pictures will zap into their head or somebody who is happily married. And then their spouse comes home and says, I cheated on you. They have this image of their partner with somebody else. And it just shoots into their mind like a lightning bolt. They can't get that picture. I mean, they can't get that picture. I mean, they can't stop that picture from shooting in there. The moment you feel yourself starting to feel that again,

that's the moment you have a choice. And usually the best thing to do is to have two things by your side. Number one, a picture to reinsert instead of the one that just popped into your mind. Not the picture of you sitting around an empty Thanksgiving table, but the picture of you chasing your son around the yard with him laughing and screaming in that waddling, wonky run that little babies do. The second thing is have a train of thought, a mantra, a thing that you say that is going to redirect your thoughts in another direction. Sometimes I'll be walking

through, you've heard me say on the show, I'll be walking through the house and I'll just yell out, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not having this conversation with myself. I'm a blessed guy. I'm really blessed. And so I've got to step into those thoughts and decide I want to disrupt them. It feels really good to, not good, it doesn't feel good like a massage or like laughter and joy, but it's seductive to go down that dark path and to say, what if,

and maybe if I had a different wife or if my life had been different, if I had just done these things differently, it's just seductive to go down that route for a hundred different reasons, but it doesn't serve anything because it's not reality. Absolutely. Yeah. That's something I am working on myself with, with exactly what you said. And I guess I'll end with this.

Are the five stages of grief real? Are those feelings or, you know, are those things that you have to experience for grief to kind of run its course? Or I'm not really too sure about that. Yeah, I've heard it said they're descriptive, not prescriptive, meaning it's a framework. But there's been research that suggests they're no good. For me, they give me, they're like floaties in the ocean Um when i'm grieving something Some and like we have words like for anger Well anger for me is a whole process, right? It's a whole day And then sometimes i'm grieving something little like I wanted to be there on time so I could meet my daughter when she got out

Of school i'm not gonna make it I'm, not angry. I'm grieving something little, like I wanted to be there on time so I could meet my daughter when she got out of school. I'm not going to make it. I'm not angry. I'm kind of sad. I'm kind of pissed off that I have a job that had a deadline that I couldn't, right? Or denial. Some people go through wild denial, right? They start going to do laundry of their husband who passed away and they fold in clothes and put them in the drawers, right? And then some people's denial is like, I just don't want to look at that paper because I know that's the death certificate. I don't want to see it. So I think they're good touchstones, but anybody who's like looking to do a checklist for grief is going to be disappointed because grief doesn't work like that. So maybe the best gift I could give you is this. You sound like an analytical guy. You sound like a guy who wants to make sure he's doing things the right way and honoring his wife and honoring himself

And honoring his child and honoring whatever situation you're grieving Um, and the way you do that in your work life in your regular life and I may be out to lunch here But so tell me if i'm wrong, but the way you do that is you make sure you account for all the variables. You're probably great in Excel. Is that right? Yeah, you hit it right on the head. Like Myers-Briggs on my STJ,

Enneagram 6, super security focused. There you go. So here's what grief looks like for you. Open both hands and hold them as high as you can let go what you're trying to do is control a tidal wave and you can't you gotta let it wash over you and it feels like grief will kill you and it won't it feels like it will drown you it feels like it will take you will kill you and it won't. It feels like it will drown you. It feels like it will take you out to sea and it won't. The last thing I'll leave you with is this, dude.

And again, thank you so much for these probing questions. These are really important, important questions. And they're ones that I need to do a better job of explaining on the show. Sometimes I just blow by some of this stuff because I've been through it so much. You cannot, under any circumstances, this is physiological, this is psychological, this is spiritual, emotional, whatever AL word you want to attach to this. You cannot do grief alone. As David Kessler says, grief demands a witness. So sitting down in front of somebody else and reading the letter you wrote to the kid that you're not going to ever have,

that's when the healing journey begins. Telling somebody, I really wanted this marriage to work and you cheated on me and it's over. That's when healing begins. Grief demands a witness. You got to have other people in your life that you can talk to. Thank you so much for the call, Tim. You've just helped a whole bunch of people by being vulnerable and open. Thank you so much. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever.

Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself where you can be honest with yourself

And where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest authentic life Costumes and masks should be for halloween parties not for our emotions and our true selves If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at better help better help is a hundred percent online therapy You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapist at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Deloney. All right, we are back. Hey, I missed this in the last call. So I just want to, the last call we talked about grief. If you're watching this on YouTube, go check out the other call with Tim from Ventura, California on grief. I did send him a copy of Own Your Past, Change Your Future. It's a number one bestselling book that I wrote. It's got a step-by-step process for how to grieve. And grief is simply this. The way I define it is it's the gap between what I wanted,

what I hoped would happen, what I wanted to happen in reality, what actually happened. And what do you do in that space between? I wanted you to live forever. I wanted this marriage to be forever. I wanted you to never be a person that lacked integrity. I wanted you to always tell the truth, never cheat on me, whatever. I didn't want another country to invade my country. I just wanted stability and peace for my little family.

It's that gap. And so there's a step-by-step process in On Your Past, Change Your Future. We'll link to it in the show notes along with David Kessler's amazing book, Finding Meaning. And you can pick those books up today. All right, let's go to Rose in Springfield. What's up, Rose? Hello. Hello. How are you? Incredible. How are you? I'm good.

Good. What's up? What are you doing? Well, just waiting around for you to pick up my phone call. That's what. All right. Well, I got you. What's happening? Let's do this. Okay. So I guess I'm looking for guidance on how to navigate a situation with my fiancee um uh I've I've come to realize over the course of our relationship that I think he's on the spectrum and I I don't know how to tell him because I know if I tell him, um, it's going to be an insult to him. He's, he was, he's been insulted his whole life. He had like a really hard childhood, every mean thing, any adult figure could have ever said to him, they said it, um, you know, verbally, physically abused, like, um, uh, and, and so to, you know, to, so I, I understand to like bring that up, shouldn't be an insult to someone, but it might be to him just considering he's been degraded so much through his whole life, and I'm just sensitive to that. And then the other thing is that now that I've become aware or I've come to believe that he's on the spectrum, so many of our arguments kind of make more sense in hindsight. Uh, and I'm trying to learn how to like support

him or like air quotes, argue or communicate properly. And I don't know where to start and I don't know where to get him resources and I don't know where to get resources for myself. And so then that's why I'm calling you. I appreciate that. Um, okay. So two things, well, let me ask your permission. Can I be super honest and straight and direct with you? Is that cool? Yes. Okay. Awesome. I guess one day, Rose, someone's going to tell me, no, I prefer you just tell me exactly what I would like to hear. But nobody's done that yet. So, okay. First thing here, I would, with all of my heart all my guts all my strength in mind would tell you don't be in the business of pseudo-diagnosing people that you love and care

about right i would whatever i imagine you are reaching for somebody you love how can i love you better so it's not like i'm not trying to beat you up over it. What I'm telling you is, as the great Brene Brown says, what we go looking for in the world, we are sure to find. And when we put diagnostics glasses on and we begin looking through the world,

we will see them everywhere. I could give you a series of behaviors that would suggest he has depressive disorder. And if you put those glasses on, you would see it everywhere. And I could give you another series of behaviors and responses and reactivities with anxiety disorder, and you would see it everywhere. So I always want to be careful about putting those glasses on. Okay. The second thing I want you to really be careful of as you're heading into this marriage, and we'll get to the autism conversation here, but it's all synergistic here. You cannot build a marriage on trying to hedge truth in conversations. The goal can't be, how do I do a thing? How do I respond to a thing I think my husband has, but I don't want to tell him he's got it.

I just want to start doing these things. Because that's always going to fall down at some point. So the goal is how do we come to an understanding together that the way we are communicating with one another, the way we are experiencing each other is not working. And one of the things might be because my husband has perception challenges or feels exceptionally, it feels powerfully about things right um so uh or is it lacks a little bit of empathy or is oh so over empathetic it shuts his body down right so you see the difference there um well yeah i i do know that you know uh

we can't we we need to be honest, but at the same time, like, I know that we're not supposed to, uh, like you said, pseudo diagnose and that's where I'm just kind of lost and I don't know what to do. So if I'm in your seat, if I'm in your exact seat, the conversation I would have verbatim would be, I love you so much and I want some tools so that I can do a better job of communicating with you. I'm not doing a good job of telling you my needs in a way that you can hear them and understand them. And I'm not doing a good job of hearing and responding to your needs. Would you be willing to go see a premarital counselor with me and in this situation not some

buddy who's like done a bunch of weddings and they make you go through three things in a workbook but i'm talking about a true marriage counselor who also by the way has the licensure the ability and the experience to do diagnostics and once you lay out a series of, here's where some of our communication challenges are happening, every bell in that therapist's office should go off if it's a true autistic diagnostic. Okay.

Does that make sense? Yeah. No, that sounds like a good path forward. And I know he'll like that idea. And he probably feels it deeply, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause we've, we've talked about like our miscommunications, like, um, we know there's a disconnect. Um, yeah, he knows that there's a disconnect. You know, at times we are getting better at communicating and realizing, you know, the differences. But, you know, he is a Christian and I do believe that he would love to do premarital counseling.

So, and I've got tons of friends who are pastors. I want to steer you away from just doing traditional pastoral. Oh, no. Yeah. I want to see you away from just doing traditional pastoral Oh no, yeah. I want to see someone who can diagnose. There you go. That's right. Here's where, so on one hand, I was just telling you, I don't like diagnostics.

Just as a blanket. But there's some great utility. They serve a good purpose. And here's a great place. Right now, I can imagine when the lights are low, your fiance thinks he's doing something wrong. He's screwing something up. He thinks that all the time. All the time.

He thinks he's one giant big screw up, like all the time. Yes. And he's got trauma in his background. He's got abuse and all this stuff going on in his past and a diagnosis would be able to say hey your brain and body simply interacts with the world in a different way and so since it does great you are not a kemalajuan you are not seven feet tall with a great fadeaway. You are Steph Curry. You're, I don't know, 5'8". You're going to have to be successful in basketball. You're just going to have to do different things. You're going to have to learn to shoot the ball from really far away. Cool. You're not taking you off the field. We're just going to tell you, hey, you're not ever

going to be a good post player because you're 5'10", or however tall Steph Curry is. It's a very similar situation here. I remember some piece when I was told, Hey, if we were going to do diagnostics here, here's what you would have. And I'd be like, ah, okay. It gives me a place to start from. It's not an, it's not excuse. It's just a context, right? So I think it could be helpful or for you, it could be helpful to find out. No, he's not autistic. He's not. But do you love him? Yes.

Cool. Then we're going to figure out how to communicate together. And there is, I have no qualms at all about marrying somebody on the spectrum. None. Zero. Yeah. I mean, I initially couldn't tell. I did have a friend who told me like right off the bat, but I didn't believe her. I was like, no, no, he doesn't. But I guess she had more experience

in that world than I do. So she saw it faster. It took me longer to like clue in. I used to work with actually severely autistic children in preschool, but he's very high functioning. He actually has a doctorate in chemistry. So it just took me longer to figure it out in him. If he is truly autistic, it may have been a superpower in his chosen profession. And similarly, boxers who are just innate, they're born with great hand speed. It is incredible for their job, but they have to learn a different way to interact at home. And that's what we're talking about here.

Even if some of it's going through the motions, right? Maybe he will never be able to walk home and feel how your day went. But he can learn the six questions that he's going to ask when he walks in the front door, all six of them pertaining to you and how are you. And you're going to learn, maybe it's not that he's not empathetic. Maybe your feelings are so intense, they burn his skin. It just burns

a hole through him like fire. And that's why he just stares straight ahead. And so you might have to learn how to regulate. See what I'm saying? It's just going to be a dance that y'all are going to have to learn. But dancing is so fun if you have the right spirit about it, right? Right. Yeah. Cool. So I would hold off on saying the man that I love is this, fill in the blank, diagnosis.

I would be all about, hey, let's learn some new skills. Let's go see a professional. Let's go sit down and figure this stuff out together. The focus y'all are going to have is communication, telling the truth, learning how to see, and depending on where he falls on the spectrum with intuition, and then learning about, like, some things aren't about routines, and some things aren't, you can't logic your way through grief. You can't logic your wayosing. Let the professional put that on the table.

You just show up and say, I want to be the best supporter and best friend and best wife I can be. And hope your husband shows up too. Thank you so much for the call. We'll be right back.

Hey, John. Yes? Before we go to break, I'd like to point out Seth Curry is 6'2". He's how tall? 6'2". It's not like he's, you know, I thought he was like 5'6". He is 6'2". He's how tall? 6'2". It's not like he's, you know,

I thought he was like 5'6". He's 6'2". That's how tall I am. Good grief. Well, there I go on that one. Just when you see him with his teammates. Well, when he's sitting next to someone

that's 7' tall, but he's 6'2". He's not short by any stretch of the imagination. Well, Steph Curry is a huge fan of the show, Steph. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That I made you feel small. You're 6'2". We're the same height.

I challenge you to a basketball game anytime you're up for it. Bring it. We'll be right back. All right. Uno Mas. Let's go out to Alex in Orlando, Florida. What's up, Alex?

Hey, Dr. John. How are you, sir? I'm good, man. How about you? Doing wonderful. Beautiful day here in Sunshine, Florida. I can't complain. That's awesome.

It's a stunning day here in Nashville. It's beautiful in Tennessee. What's up? Wonderful. Hey, how can I help guide my parents, more specifically my dad, to a smoke-free way of living. That's tough, man. That's real tough. How old is he?

My dad's 66 and my mom's 71. And my dad just had a heart attack a few weeks ago. He's already smoking in the driveway? Yeah. The reason why I reached out to you is because, you know, he spent two days in the hospital. And as soon as he came out of the hospital, you know, I called to follow up with my mom that night and I talked to her and, you know, I said, you know, is he still smoking? And she first says to me, no, he's not. And I said, mom, come on, what's going on? She said, well, he did just one time, just one cigarette, just three times, you know, just really trying to justify it. And my grandparents died early. And, you know, I just, we have a son of our own and I want my dad to be around and I want my parents to be around to

see him get older. Have you looked him in the eye and told him those exact words? I have not. I'm terrified to do it. That's it. I'm going to tell you right now. You've probably heard me say this on this show, not by your hand, but in your lap. Here's what I mean by that.

There's lots of problems historically that have happened that I played no part in, but they're still here in my culture and I got to deal with it. Or sometimes your house may flood because your neighbor left the water on. At some point, it doesn't matter who left the water on. It's flooded my house. I got to deal with it. You didn't cause this. This has nothing to do with anything you've done, but you found yourself in a position where you can either be terrified having this conversation. I promise you, you won't sleep for the rest of your life if or when your dad does pass away and you don't have this conversation. Right. So you didn't cause it, but it's a conversation you have to have. If nothing else, just so you can have some peace when, when he actually heads out. Right. So, um, do y'all

live in the same neighborhood? Do y'all live far away? We live far away. He lives in, uh, in Texas. Okay. Um, but they're coming to visit us very soon he actually here's another kicker for you dr john is he actually wants to help us build a fence in our house in the month of june in florida have you ever heard of the the delusional male my dad is one of the hardest working guys you'll ever meet in your life he actually had a heart attack after helping people in his neighborhood, in his area, by chopping wood for eight hours to 10 hours on end. Yes. And that's what happened.

I got a buddy, one of my best friends in the world. His dad's in his 90s, and he just got put on hospice. His terminal cancer said he doesn't want to go through all the rigmarole. And the hospice nurse showed up for the first time and she couldn't find him. And he was planting rose bushes in the backyard in Texas. That's my dad. And she was like, well, and here's the deal. At some point, I'm not going to take that from you.

Like, what's the alternative? You just sit on the couch, you'll die fast, right? I'm not going to take that from somebody who's wired that way. Your dad's 66, not 93. That's 30 years. True. That's your son being two kids into his life.

See what I'm saying? Yeah. Man, I can preach really big right now. I would have a hard time not getting on an airplane and flying to Texas to look my dad in the eye in his environment. If he's going to be there

in a month, then that's up to you. You always run the risk of these kind of conversations of him packing up and going home and it's different when you can take off

and leave. Right. But, it may be a conversation that you want to have before he comes and stays with you. It's a conversation

that has to be done face to face. And I recommend writing a letter and reading it to him because it's just going to be tough to get through

if you just want to wing it. That's a great idea. And it would start with... It's just hard enough to talk to you about it. No, yeah. It's, I mean... If you have a good dad,

like you, my dad lost his dad at 93 or 94. And he told me my dad was in his late, late 60s, early 70s. And he said it was unmooring. My dad was the exact same age as me when his dad passed. The exact same age as me when when his dad passed exact same age i am now i think that's how you start the letter

when's the last time you looked your dad now and told him these words i love you um the last time he visited me okay so y'all say that regularly yes yes sir yeah we grew up uh i grew up very close to both my parents. More specifically, my dad. And they were always in my life, every sport, all through college, all through everything. So great parents. I think that's where you start, man. So it sounds like what's hard about this is less about your dad's going to get mad and kick you out and more hard.

This means you're coming to terms with the fact that your dad's not going to live forever. Correct. Yeah, that's a different conversation. That's one about grace and love. And I want you to be here for every second, not about power and move. You see what I'm saying? This is a different conversation.

That's absolutely correct. That's absolutely correct. So I'll tell you, this will be one of the hardest things you ever do, but it will be one of the most beautiful things that, um, you will experience in your life. Even if it goes awful, it will be beautiful because you got to look the most important man in the

entire world to you in the eye and say, I love you. And I love you this much. Please stop. Please be around here a little bit longer. And if you want to play dirty, you want to play dirty, which, hey, when it comes to saving lives, I'm all about it. You can slide a photograph that you've had printed off like at Walgreens of you and your son. And you can say, if not for you, for us.

In counseling, when we have somebody who yells at their kid, one of the things we will do sometimes is ask them to get a picture of their child, one of their children. And every time they're about to scream and yell, pull that picture up and look at it and say,

I care so little about you. I'm about to let your mama have it. Or we'll ask them to carry a picture of their stepmom or their stepfather who was abusive, and they'll pull that picture out and say, hey, I care more about modeling what you did than my little boy's feelings. I'm about to do what you taught me. And literally the behavior goes away. And so that's cheating. It's not cool. Explain dirty. But in this situation, I mean, I'm all for it I would pull out every stop I have but the stop being

you're not trying to convince some bullheaded moron that won't listen to you and has been blowing you off your whole life you're trying to tell a man

who's a great guy I love you this much correct yeah dude he's lucky to have you man I'm lucky to have Both of them

You're a hell of a son man Thank you How old's your little one? He's uh Just turned 13 Hmm Ew if you wanna play Super super dirty

You can have him Run a note too Yeah I don't wanna get him I don't to get him too much involved in all that. Okay, can I tell you something, Bananas? What's up? He's involved. It's true. He's involved.

It's true. And even if nothing else, the opportunity for him to write a letter to Granddad just to say, Hey, I got scared and i love you don't even have to mention the smoking but just giving him an opportunity would be a pretty neat moment be a pretty cool idea in fact appreciate that a lot because of this conversation my son's 13 and my dad came and visited us this past weekend and just took off i I'm going to have my son write my dad a letter this week too, in honor of Alex. Thank you for inspiring me to do this because it'll be an important moment for my son too. Thank you, Dr. John.

You're awesome, my brother. Hey, let me know how that conversation goes, Alex. I'd love to share how that went. And if you want to be super dope, super brave, I'd love for you to come back on the show and read that letter to our audience. There's probably zero to less than zero chance that your dad listens to us.

If you do want to give an example to our listeners of your fellow Delonites, what a letter like this might look like, that would be incredible. It would really be an honor. But thank you for your bravery. Go call your old man and tell him that you love him

and you want him to be around for another 20 or 30 years. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious

Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com. All right, we are back. Some of you write me direct messages sometimes. You shoot me emails or write me letters, which I just love. I love getting mail. And you tell me things like, I bet Kelly's holding the whole show together.

Or you need to just be nice to Kelly because she's the best in the world. She doesn't have a tiny, cold, dark heart. You do, Deloney. She's wonderful. Here's the song she picked for today. Eric Church's Smoke a Little Smoke. And I'm the bad guy. Way to go, America.

Way to go. Turn the quiet up. Turn the noise down. Way to go, America. Way to go. Turn the quiet up. Turn the noise down. Let this old world just spin around. I want to feel it swing. I want to feel it sway. I want to put some feel good in my soul. Drink a little drink.

And just say no when it comes to smoking. Want a little more right, a little less left, a little more right now, a little less what's next Act like tomorrow's ten years away and just kick back and let the feeling flow Drink a little drink and don't smoke I set my sails for a new direction but the wind got in my way I changed my course but my definition of change just ain't the same I could get up and go get her back

No you couldn't Eric Or maybe I'll get up and go get her back. No, you couldn't, Eric. Or maybe I'll just let her go and drink a little drink, but I won't smoke because it's not good for you. Kelly, unbelievable. Hey, love you guys. Stay in school. See ya.