The Dr. John Delony Show - My Husband and I Don’t Talk

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

On this episode, we hear about: -       A wife frustrated that her husband only has important conversations via text -       A husband struggling to accept how his wife has changed -       A woman wondering how to avoid seasonal depression Next Steps 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or click here. 📚 Get Building a Non-Anxious Life. 📝 Take the Anxiety Test. 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future  ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards  💭 John's Free Guided Meditation   Offers From Today's Sponsors ·      10% off your first month of therapy at BetterHelp   ·      3 free months of Hallow  ·      25% off Thorne orders  ·      20% off on Organifi products   Listen to More From Ramsey Network 🎙️ The Ramsey Show   🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership   Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy https://www.ramseysolutions.com/company/policies/privacy-policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. Instead of talking to me and having a difficult conversation face-to-face, he told me via text. And it's really frustrating to me that there's those lies and deceit. But hold on, do you respond to him in text with that? Yeah, I do. Yeah, that's on you. That's on you. You're the one responding with the emotional stuff. He's just giving you data. What up, what up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show,

taking real calls from real people about their mental and emotional health, their marriages, their relationships, whatever you got going on in your life. If you want to be on this show, we get hundreds and hundreds of emails a day from all over planet earth. Go to johndeloney.com slash ask ASK or give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291. We'd love to hear from you and get you on the show. Let's go out to Salt Lake City and talk to Emily. Hey, Emily, what's up?

Hi, thanks for having me. Of course, thanks for calling. What's up? How can I help? So my husband is, so we've been married for eight, nine years now. And my husband ends up, whenever he has something difficult that he needs to talk about or any confrontation, he texts me instead of talking to me. And it makes it difficult for us to build our emotional intimacy. And so I'm basically trying to understand what I can do because obviously I can't control my husband. But what's something that I can do to build that emotional intimacy and help him to feel safe. So then that way he can talk to me instead of texting me if ever there's

a difficult conversation yeah that's my first my first my first impulse is one of two things either my goodness after a decade how are we just now getting to the fact that your husband is as emotionally immature i had a conversation with my child like my my middle school child about text etiquette and in fact this we went on a long long ruck me and my son this weekend in the woods like for miles and we talked about like um hey don't ever text something important those are for in person don't text somebody hey i like you like that's an in-person conversation to have and it's just me trying to teach him how to be like a grown-up right um so it's either that or you have helped co-create a world where man he better not tell you what he needs or have a hard conversation because you blow up on him or you get cold on him or you change the dynamic which one is it maybe it's a combination of both. I think it's a little bit of a combination of both.

I think what happens is that he tells me he kind of like blindsides me a little bit. One example is like he has so he has a porn addiction and he was really clean for quite a while. And then he relapsed. And so instead of like talking to me and having a difficult conversation face to face, he told me via text. And so I honestly believe the opposite of addiction is connection. And so I was basically just trying to say, hey, I love you. I'm here for you. Like, you're not alone. At the same time, though, I wanted to express my feelings. And oftentimes he takes that as like an attack.

And it's not that I'm attacking him. But basically, I'm saying like, look, like, I don't like the lies and the deceit. Like, it's not like the addiction itself is the thing that, like, is underlying, and it's really frustrating to me that, like, there's those lies and deceit, and so maybe it's my approach to, like... But hold on, do you respond to him in text with that? Yeah, I do. Yeah, that's on you. That's on you.

Yeah, yeah. yeah I do yeah that's on you that's on you yeah yeah so I mean if if he has the courage to uh and again I I'm using courage very liberally here right but I'm thinking of a guy who has no skills and um on on how to how to say out loud hey I screwed something up or hey we've been we've been working on something I've been working on. I know we've been down this road before. Here we are again. Right? And having a wife, it's like, well, oh my gosh, if you, like, I'm just going to text it. I'm just going to text it.

Hey, I slipped up and screwed up. If your response is, thank you so much for telling me. I can't wait till we can talk about this in person. I'll get the kids to bed tonight. Let's plan for nine o'clock. That is a much different than you. You're the one responding with

the emotional stuff. He's just giving you data. Yeah, you're right. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so I guess if I'm you, this is going to sound backwards, you might get pissed at me. So if you do like come back, okay. Tell me I'm an idiot. But if we're trying to solve this, if this issue, okay, under is the intimacy issue. And by the way, the opposite of addiction is connection. That's some great ideas from Johan Hari. I love the idea. It's more complex than that. I think it's a good place to start,

but it's not apples to apples, right? But I do think, yes, getting rid of secrets in our home is a good place to start. And people who struggle with pornography are often struggling with not just wanting to get off. They're struggling with being completely alone

or having a life where they are dead. Like they're not living, they're not alive in the life they have, right? And so it's a way to get your heart rate up and also not blow your marriage completely up, right? Or so they think. So yes, I agree with you, but I would, so let's do this.

Let's solve for the connection piece. And the only way you can connect with another human being is to be vulnerable with them, period. Whether you're using words to connect vulnerably or you are shoulder to shoulder both digging a hole and you're both sweating and you're both exhausted and you see somebody getting after it and you're getting after it. That's how men often show vulnerability to each other. That's still vulnerable. That's still like, I'm putting myself out there, right? So you call them or get in touch with them in person and say, hey, I'm sorry. Like I've made having this hard conversation. Are you admitting something? Are you telling me something hard? I've made it really difficult on you and I'm sorry. Yeah. And I'm going to ask you if you

need to text something cool, but, um, I'd love you to text, Hey, we need to talk tonight at nine o'clock. That would, that would be better. How does that sound? Yeah, no, I, I think that that's something that I can control. And I think that that would definitely improve our emotional intimacy. And it's something that I can, you know, I can handle that and I can change kind of the story. It will feel like you're not winning though. Yeah. Because when he puts data on the table,

I looked at porn again last night and I'm so sorry. And you can bomb him with emotional reactivity. It feels good in that, in that little moment, right? It feels like it feels righteous. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so you're going to have to let your power go on this because the goal is not to, I told you so, or you should have, the goal is a safe, warm home. Yeah. And if he continues to violate you in that same that same like your agreements your values

if he continues this isn't a free pass it is a safe and warm hey i'm not going to be a part of this yeah but it's it's it's understanding that emotional reactivity almost solves nothing ever right ever ever ever i'll also say this probably five to ten times i'm thinking back just real quick over top of my head i have written a letter and read it to my wife because i didn't want my thoughts to get all jumbled up and me to start spinning and if you've listened to this show for more than one episode you know i just can kind of ramble sometimes. So I've written it down, but that allowed me to get all my thoughts out. And then I set the letter down and now we're, now we're connected. And so I think that can be a helpful tool. Sometimes it just can't be used in exchange for actual human connection there. Yeah, no, definitely. I, I appreciate the honesty.

I'd rather you be honest and not sugarcoat things. And that's one of the reasons why I just love listening to your show. I appreciate that. I would love to see you respond with, let's talk about this tonight at nine o'clock. You put a date on it, you put a time on it. Thank you. And that also gives you some time to get really, really mad and fired up and angry. I don't want that part of you to be gone. If you're a fiery person, you're a fiery person. That's why he married you. But it's not helpful when somebody is feeling ashamed about something. Yeah. And it may be that—

I never want him to feel like I'm fueling that shame or that guilt because I love him and I want to connect with him. But yeah, I can definitely see how I have been kind of fueling that instead of taking ownership and saying, hey, look, like, let's talk about this later tonight. I also want to throw something else out there. Is this cool? Yeah. I want you, I've been hearing this more and more and more and there's some calls that i take that don't make the air because i botch them in some way or they're it just it doesn't work out but in their private conversations that i have too this idea of my husband's a

pornography addict that's how you introduced him to me. Yeah. And it can create a world where, you know, it's just kind of just the way he is. And I reject that. And so I think it's fair to say, if you're going to stay on my husband, you're going to stop looking at pornography.

That means we get rid of the internet connection in this house. If that means we cancel every subscription, that means you get rid of your smartphone. I don't care what we have to do. If you're going to be married to me, this thing matters to me so much. It's not an option for you. Yeah.

And if you have to go to 30-day inpatient rehab, whatever you think you have to do, you see what I'm saying? Because the way you described it to me sounded like this inevitable passivity. Yeah. Well, he's just a guy that hits me sometimes when he gets mad, and I don't really like it.

Like, no! Don't do that. So, well, he just has got an addiction to this. No, he's a guy who is struggling with X, Y, or Z. Can you get addicted to pornography? Absolutely. Is that an excuse? No, it's not. It's not.

No, I definitely appreciate the candor and the honesty. And I think that that is a difficult conversation I need to have. I know he was clean for about a year or two, but then I'm, I'm noticing like some signs and I kind of addressed it to him. I said, Hey, I'm kind of noticing X, Y, and Z. Like, have you been looking at porn again? And he's like, no, no, I haven't. And then a couple of months later, he's like, actually I have. And that's when I was feeling like, oh my gosh, like i'm more mad about the fact that he lied to me when i confronted him about it rather than him relapsing so but i do need to but hey you're allowed to be upset about that you're allowed to be royally pissed off about that thank you don't don't don't be think that i'm telling you not to be yeah but and he's gonna have consequences right like that's part of it also but um that anger is simply pointing you to a place it means you care about something

right then the next question is what are we going to do about it and so you get to look him in the eye and say if you lie to me again you have to leave yeah because it makes you question everything right it makes you question that relationship that he has with that co-worker that's kind of funny and kind of flirty but you just blow it off makes you question how he spends Because it makes you question everything, right? It makes you question that relationship that he has with that coworker that's kind of funny and kind of flirty, but you just blow it off. It makes you question how he spends money. It makes you question everything. Yeah. Way more so than him going to website X, Y, or Z. Yeah.

Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So the takeaways for me here are you stop responding to him in text. You give him a date and time when we're going to talk about this in person. Yeah, absolutely. If he starts talking and you feel yourself getting emotionally reactive, say, from this point forward, I've made an unsafe place for you to talk and I'm sorry. I might put my hand on the table and say, any five minutes, I'm going to go walk around the house. I'm going to go outside in the backyard and just take a lap around the backyard and then I'm going to come back. But you can't leave me either. Right?

And so let's just set some ground rules up for communication and some back and forth. But I think that's, I think y'all are on the right path. Do I think you need to apologize for the fact that he is struggling with pornography? No, not at all. I think an apology will get you a, I've created this part of, I've participated in this context where you can't put stuff on the table and I'm going to quit doing that. I get so mad at you for talking to me in text and I respond to you with these long, massive texts. I'm going to quit doing that. Let him know this behavior is stopping and this one is beginning so that everybody's on the same page.

Man, I think you rock and roll from there. Good on you, Emily. Thanks for the call. Your call is really going to help a lot of people. Your candor and just your honesty. Thank you so much for that. Hey, everybody, we'll be right back. Hey, good folks, let's talk about hallow. All right, I say this all the time.

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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 are back. Listen, money and marriage is the getaway the the marriage retreat of the century is back we have sold out of vip we've sold out of platinum we only had a very few um seats left and then they opened up a few more and now those are almost gone super rad listen october 24th through 26th here in Nashville, Tennessee,

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There's an over-the-top date night experience that's incredible and if you want to stay one more night um on your own and just make it go downtown and enjoy nashville just an amazing amazing city tickets are 799 dollars it's amazing um it's about half the price or more um one-third of the price of some of these other marriage retreats and i promise i promise I promise, dude, it's just amazing. RamseySolutions.com slash getaway. All right, let's go out to Columbia, South Carolina, and talk to Cody. Hey, Cody, what up?

How you doing, Dr. John? Good, man. What are you up to? Man, it's so weird to hear your voice and not be able to see your face. Most people would say that you're getting the better end of that deal. Not a handsome man, Cody. I'm not a handsome man. I got a face for radio.

So what's up, dude? Oh, not really. Well, this is kind of a hard one. So I'm sure you read my question, and my wife has BPD. I actually haven't. I haven't. Go for it. Okay, okay.

So my wife has BPD, if you're familiar with that. Borderline or bipolar? Borderline. Okay, okay. So my wife has BPD, if you're familiar with that. Borderline or bipolar? Borderline. Okay, very cool. So when we first met, we were both very clear on what was important to us in our relationship. Do me one quick favor, Cody. Let me tell everybody, if you're listening to this, just a quick way to understand uh borderline personality disorder Borderline your emotions feel a thousand x Of what they may be in reality. And so when you when you're upset with somebody

you Hate them and when you like somebody You are they're the greatest person who's ever lived you're in love It's everything is so deep and it is this vacillating back and forth. And it's very tough to live in that body. And it's also very tough to be in relationship with that person. Does that sound familiar, Cody? Yeah. Yeah, that is exactly it. And my, my therapist says that it's like your entire day, there's just sticky notes falling from the sky and you're trying to read every single one of them. Ah, it's a great way to, it's a great, that's a great analogy. The borderline folks that I've, I've been with over the years, I love them.

Love him. And whoo, man, man, right? So, okay. And like you said, it's like when they love you, you are the only thing in the entire world. But when they're mad at you, like, oh my gosh. Like, I think I may get murdered. Right?

Both ends. Yes, exactly. Yes. But again, I think the message I want people to hear from Borderline is, therapeutically, they're one of the toughest clients to deal with. And in a relationship, like, man, some of my favorite people on the planet and man, it can be tough. It can be tough too. All right. So you're, you married somebody with borderline. Okay. Go for it. Yes. Um, and, and early on in our

relationship, um, you know, we, we just, we just kind of said that cause we're, we're both divorced and I was barely divorced, but so we were like, listen, we've both been, we're both been divorced. We're divorced. We just want to be clear because I'm 34 now and she, she just turned 30 in December. Actually we had the same birthday, but so we were like, listen, we don't want to do this again. We want to be very clear on what we want in our relationship. So we just kind of sit down and went over some stuff. Well, recently, she has started DBT therapy. Perfect.

For those listening, it's dialectical behavior therapy. It's the gold star for – actually, it's one of my favorite therapies, period. But it's the go-to gold star for people struggling with borderline. Okay, good call. Yeah. And if I ramble, reel me back. No, you're good i i i i'm tracking with you i just want to make sure somebody who just picked this up and doesn't know anything about um dbt or doesn't know anything about borderline can track with us so keep going okay um and just a lot of the things that like

earlier in our relationship like were fantastic like fantastic. Like, like the sex, the sex was great, you know? And that was one thing like we talked about early in our relationship because that was a problem that I have with my first wife. You know, it was always like, like it was supposed to be there, but it wasn't there. And you know, all this stuff. And we were like, yeah, like we're both into it where, you know, it's just, it's going to be crazy. And it was pretty good. And then she started the DBT and it's brought up so many things from her. She has a, I guess like a lot of other

people with BPD, she has a lot of trauma in her past. And a lot of that she had suppressed. Okay. Well, now the DBT is bringing a lot of that back up. But then I get caught in the middle of this weird cycle that is she can want to have sex, but then in the middle of it, her trauma kicks in. Yeah. But then if I see it and I stop, then she also gets this, I'm not good enough for him. So Cody, this is less about, this is less about, this is about being in love with somebody, being married to somebody who is a sexual trauma survivor.

This is not unique to borderline. This is somebody in real time working through their stuff and also seeking intimacy with their husband. Yeah. I guess, yeah.

And like, are we talking multiple years? Are we talking the last six months? It was when she was in her earlier 20s. No, no, no. I'm talking about you and her right now. Oh, me and her, me and her. Oh, well, she, we've been together for about two and a half years. Um, oh, and I forgot him. We actually have an 18 year old, uh, little girl, 18 month old little girl. Yeah. I was going to say y'all got married and then had a baby real fast. Didn't you? Yeah, actually, actually she got

pregnant about six weeks after me and her man. Okay. And then you got married and then you had a kid. Yes. Okay. Um, well we actually had a kid and then we got, we, luckily we actually fell in love with each other. It wasn't one of those deals that turned into like, Hey, we're going to get married cause we have a kid. We actually ended up falling in love with each other. And we're like, you know what? We have a kid. We actually love each other. Let's just get married.

Awesome. Okay. I, I take, I totally don't believe you, but I'm, I'm tracking with you. That's it. I totally love that. That's your story. each other let's just get married awesome okay i i take i totally don't believe you but i'm i'm tracking with you that's it i totally love that that's your story so good for y'all okay so here's i'm gonna tell you right now you're gonna have to exhale brother you're gonna have to have some loving and compassionate patience yes okay this isn't the end of time. And this is not... You are so terrified of this replaying what happened in your first marriage for whatever reason. And I mean, I get that. That's your lived experience.

But I want to tell you, you are married to somebody who's experienced what my guess would be with some really significant sexual trauma. Yes. Multiple people. And there will be all kinds of starts and stops and guilt and trying, and I want this to be right, but it's not, and my body's doing this, but my mind wants this, and my heart wants this. She's going to need you to hold her hand and look at her and say, I'm with you every step of the way.

As wonky and as weird as this is. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that as weird as this is. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that some of my thing is like, I don't want her to feel forced, but then I also don't want her to have that feeling of, she let me down. Right.

And it's like, it's stuck in between those two. Both of those things you just said, you can't control either of those things. Yeah. That's not true. You could try to make her feel forced you could you could you could put that on her um but you trying to get inside the the emotional um reactivity of somebody with borderline personality disorder much less any sort of trauma survivor and you try to mitigate and control that man that's like staying in the middle

of a hurricane and trying to tell the wind where to go. You can't. What you can do is to create reinforced structures around knowing things are going to get tough. There's going to be times I really want to be intimate with my wife, and we're on the way, and then all of a sudden, like, something catches fire, and it stops.

Is that going to be frustrating? Yes. Of course it will be. And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. And when you start making her healing about you, oh, and me, and I want, dude, that's when you get into some dicey land. Oh, yeah.

Okay? So I think, how long has she been in DBT? Because it's pretty systematic. About three months. Okay. I would give it another 90 days about another three months and then i would see if her therapist says it's okay maybe 60 days 30 days i would ask her therapist when it's okay for you to start participating because what y'all are going to do together is learn. So for those listening, DBT is basically that it's learning and your body is telling you everything opposite of this.

That's what makes it so hard. If you truly have borderline, that everything is black and white. He hates me. He loves me. And that basically you have to teach your body that the way you're feeling something is not accurate. And that's really hard to do. Right? So imagine you're touching a stove and your body's like, this is hot. And you have to teach yourself. No, it's not. Right? So you're teaching yourself that it's, everything's not black and white, but that two things can be true at the same time. We're having a disagreement and he still loves me. Right? That's what you're doing. Right? Or I'm woke up today and I'm in a bad mood and I don't like him. And he is still my husband and the one I chose and I'm going to love him

forever. Both of those can be true. And for the DBT body, that's, it feels insane. Right. Yeah. Y'all are going to have to learn how to communicate with each other as this

thing, as her treatment and her healing moves forward. Yeah. And I guess that's what I'm trying to, it's just everything, I guess everything, what happened, I guess when we first met, we went over all this stuff where we're like, hey, this is who we are, this is this.

None of it matters. None of it matters. No, at this point it doesn't, you know, and that's the- Bro, listen, you had a baby. I guess that's what I'm trying to navigate. You had a baby. You got married. Y'all both have your divorce shame.

She has a diagnosed, I'll go as far to call it a mental illness. She's got a personality disorder, a very challenging one. And underneath all of that, she is a sexual trauma survivor. Yeah. All of it. And is a sexual trauma survivor. Yeah. All of it. And is your child boy or girl? It's a girl. Okay.

I don't know how or why. There is an extra – I mean, I can hypothesize. There's an extra sensitive radar that goes off when a trauma survivor, sexual trauma survivor, has a daughter. Yes. Okay? All of this is in a cocktail and you are just like, Hey, can we just like watch Netflix and make out? Right.

Yeah. And what I'll tell you is that day will come. Not today. Yeah. Yeah. What your daughter needs is you to be just a, I'm trying to think of the right word. Becky Kennedy used it the other day. Dr. Becky, and it was awesome.

I love the word sturdy. A sturdy dad. Not one that's a robot, but somebody who's sturdy. And your husband, I mean, your wife needs somebody who's sturdy. Yeah. And that's the hard part, I guess, too,

is sometimes, like she can't control sometimes what she does, and sometimes she loses it in front of our little girl. And I'm just like, oh, my gosh, it's just like you. And it kills me. Sure. Well, and there are certain things that as you that's why I want you to be a part of that therapy, because there are certain certain behaviors that I don't care what the illness is or the diagnostic is, you can't do that. Yeah. Right?

And so you all need to work out in the presence of a neutral third party, what are my action steps when she violates that? Because I'm not just going to sit there and have my daughter X, Y, and Z. Yeah. You can't say that in front of her, or you can't hit me like that, or you can't scream like that in front of her. And when it comes to violence and it comes to language, when it comes to sexually acting out, which is sometimes a feature of borderline,

you can't just go do just because. Right? So we have to have some sort of communication where you know there's an X and a Y and a Z to this. Yeah. And the DBT seems to be helping her with that. She's come to a lot of realizations. Right.

But you come to a lot of realizations, but then the grit is in the practice and the working it out. Yes. And that part's really hard, man. That part's super, super hard. It's a big challenge. But here's the thing. You go be in counseling with her as much as she'll allow and her therapist will allow. Okay. Now you can't be a part of the DBT training. I mean, a part of the program, but you can go for additional relationship counseling. And what y'all are doing is, okay, how are we going to practice these things at home?

You do have a responsibility to keep your daughter safe, period. You can take your daughter and say, we're going to go stay away for 24 hours or 36 hours, as we discussed would happen if you did X, said Y, et cetera. And as best you can, and this is really hard with somebody, for any of us, right? This is all people in all relationships, to depersonalize things that feel very personal. Like you're in

a very intimate moment. You don't have any clothes on. You are leaning in and all of a sudden, your wife is starting to experience panic. It's hard not to take that personal as though, because you want to be the person that brings your calm and peace, not panic. And somehow you, your body is setting this scary man and it's isolating and it feels like it's, you're doing something and it's easy to make it all about you. So the best you can, you need to have a counselor. You need to have a group of buddies that you can go talk to and hang out, not to just unload on, but just do stuff with, man, just to expand your world a little bit.

But I think you're on the right path. Hang in there. You are married to somebody. You love somebody. You've created a human with somebody who's experienced some profound trauma, and her body is in the process of trying to learn it wasn't safe then, but now it's safe. It's okay now, wasn't okay then. And that is a tough, tough road to navigate. But if you'll hang in there, I just have too many,

too many success stories on the other side of this. Be sturdy. Be for her. Take care of yourself and keep that kid safe. Thank you for the call, my brother. 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. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our

emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at Better Help. Better Help is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere, so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Deloney. All right, let's go just north of Oklahoma to Ontario, Canada and talk to Laura. Hey, Laura, what's up?

Not much. What's up with you? We're partying, dude. We're more than just north of Oklahoma. Barely, Barely. Barely. What's happening? So, I originally wrote this as a budgeting question to be read as like the email of the day on the Dave Ramsey show

and I sent it in. Okay. But I guess Jehovah Sneaky has another plan and Taylor caught me on with you. So,

we'll see where we go with this. I'm not really sure what... I have learned I can get nothing by Taylor. Kelly, no problem. No problem. Kelly's about as held together as Swiss cheese. Taylor is something else. So she caught you. You're busted. What was the call? So last year I was diagnosed with depression and I also deal with generalized low-level joint pain that comes and goes. And the medical profession isn't sure why, but it has been an exhausting four years trying to figure it out. Sure.

So while I'm generally stable and medicated, I do have seasons and usually, let's be honest, in the deep, dark, cold Canadian winter where the wheels fall off of all of my best laid plans. So there are worse days. The worst case is on the weeks or days when I don't want to shower. I go through drive-through, skip the gym, do a little bit of retail therapy, and I end up spending all of my available energy on going to work and walking my dog. But beyond that, I have really nothing left over. So I'm single and in the helping professions. So there's not even anyone at home who can kind of scaffold me into getting some of that basic stuff done. So what I've done is I've put a few key things in place, such as house cleaning and grocery delivery. And during those

times, I also prioritize sleep and make sure I do things like get touch from a massage, haircuts, and simply to remain feeling like a human. So all of this is in the realm of reasonable based on my income, but inevitably, I spend more on random stuff than I intend. And so by the time the end of a season, like March or another downtime rolls around, I usually have a bit of a mess to clean up. Usually that's like emotionally, functionally, like making sure my car is got its brakes checked and stuff like that. And sometimes work-wise. So I have amazing supportive friends, but I always end up feeling like I'm starting fresh all over. So I'm just curious,

what are some structures I can put in place to proactively protect myself from myself? That is a great question. How long have you been wrestling with this? So I got diagnosed last year, but if I look back, I probably, um, I had a very good friend who identified that every summer I would lose my job because over the spring I went a little loopy and, you know, productivity or tardiness or any of that kind of stuff. Um, and so we put things in place. I make sure I go visit friends and stuff like that during February and March. So I would say probably my whole life, but specifically and psychologically, like diagnosed last year after a pretty rough season.

Was there an event that led to you going to see somebody to get diagnosed? Yes. So our family has been going through some pretty tough stuff. Um, I have a, I have a sibling who's, um, dealing with some pretty heavy mental health stuff himself. Um, and then I had sort of a situation shit blow up on me, which, um, is never fun, but it was, it was like the, it was sort of the beginning of hope and, you know, I'm 48 and single and, you know, they're talking about like perimenopause and all that kind of stuff. So there's a lot going on. Um, and so just last year, I think I really just hit a wall, um, and realized just because I have a job where I'm doing crisis intervention and all that kind of stuff, it's emotionally heavy.

Um, and so when, by the time I get home, oftentimes I would just come home at four o'clock, walk the dog and go to sleep. And then we sleep all day Saturday and sleep all day Sunday. And so that's not a good way to live. So yeah, that's sort of where I've been dealing with. And has medication helped? Tremendously, both for the anxiety and the depression, as well as all the other medical stuff. Has it helped? So sometimes the medication will serve as a dampener, right? It just takes the hurt away, but it also takes away all the good stuff too. And sometimes it, it feels like it gets your head above water so you can start swimming again. And so when you start saying,

now I am setting these things, these safeguards in place, I'm going to get massaged and get my hair done. I'm getting up and showering just so I can feel like a person again. Um, that tells me that it's more the latter, that it's actually helping bring you back to get your head above water so that you can go do the things that you know you need to do. Totally. Yes, totally. Awesome. That means it's been life-changing. I'm a big advocate for it in those situations.

God works in pharmaceutical ways, right? I mean, man, that's going to be a slogan for somebody. Well done. Well done. Right. It's my slogan, but you can use it. I will never, ever use that slogan. That's good.

But yes, I love being alive in a little sliver of humanity where if I need the help and it's what I – the help I actually need, man, it's there. It's amazing. It's amazing. My season with medication allowed me to go do the things I needed to do to go heal, not to avoid feeling bad, if that makes sense. And there's definitely a difference. Absolutely. Anytime somebody tells me that them and their sibling are struggling with a diagnosed mental illness, I always want to make sure I at least ask what is the ecosystem from where you both came? Yeah, it was, it was pretty unstable. It was, it was, it was emotionally

unstable and chaotic. Like, you know, you hear lots of stories and it certainly wasn't that, and I know we're not comparing traumas, but it was like unstable, um, very emotion, high emotional. I had an extroverted father or an introverted father in sales and an extroverted mother who stayed home with the kids quite reluctantly. So we, and my brother has always had challenges. So it was pretty unreliable emotionally as well as like logistically, even though it was, you know, we never did without food. We never did without, you know, all that kind of stuff. Tell me about your reluctant mom. Oh, I didn't want to do that.

No. Yeah. My mom is, my mom is a bit of a force of nature. She's extroverted and she, you know, just the time of history when I was born. God, you are talking so many great circles around this. Just tell me. Tell me about your mom. No, I'm just saying. So she wanted to work and my dad didn't want her to. And she wanted to be more than just a stay at home mom. And so, um, and she was,

she and my mom, my dad are both, um, they find it very difficult to talk about emotional things. And I almost died as a baby. So I think that really, um, got into the ecosystem and the DNA of the house. And my brother was a bit of an emotional terrorist for all of us. So it was my mom. Yeah, my mom is a bit scattered and capable, but not really doesn't think ahead. And so that put us in some, what I felt were precarious positions, even though they really weren't when I look at it. But as a six-year-old thinking you're going to go to jail because your mom didn't buy tickets to the train because she thought she could do that on the train. And then ends up she can't, so she gets off the train at the next station. And then the train starts moving, right?

So that's pretty scary. Well, and the way you mitigate that is to grow up with some very clear plans on how things are going to go. 100%. And if you're working in medical trauma, that means you're very smart. And in combination with very smart, you worked your butt off. Mm-hmm. And you made it happen. You checked every box and you dotted every I, crossed every T. You solved for every variable. Right.

Except for that one damn one about I'm going to have a family and be married and it's going to look like this. Yeah. And often in that home that you just described, the one thing nobody's allowed to do is grieve. You're not allowed to be sad. And when you're sad, when you just are just, when you just spend a season grieving, it was supposed to be this way or I really wanted it to be this way

and this is what it actually is. You end up with frantic activity. You end up with over, I'm going to strip the world of every variable possible so that I can control everything. And both of those end up with people around you completely burned out. And if you don't spend time grieving as a regular spiritual practice or emotional or psychological practice, eventually you put it in just a deep, dark enough environment, it will shut you down.

Your body will. It'll turn the lights off. Yes. Is that fair? Yeah, that was my fall last fall. Okay. It was very much lamenting and grieving and doing all that stuff. So what if we flipped around?

You have a narrative that your body's busted. Yeah. It's not working right. I don't think that's accurate. I think your body's exhausted. Because it's been propping up Laura for about 42 years. Eight, but yes. No, no, no.

I'll give you like you were about six until all the wheels started falling off. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. At six, you learned, oh, mom just gets off the train. Mm-hmm. I've got to be in control here. Mm-hmm. And you've heard me say this

a million times on this show, Laura, that was never your six-year-old youth's job. Your job was to hold mom's stable, sturdy hand and be bonkers on that train. Being in a relationship has been hard romantically, hasn't it?

Yep. How come? Oh, probably going after emotionally unavailable men and not having that many options because what's the most terrifying thing to six-year-old laura well that that the people who are supposed to love me aren't going to prioritize my needs. What's the most terrifying thing to six-year-old Laura, though? Emotions. Feelings.

Demonstration of. Yeah. Anger and disappointment. So you go after robots. Yeah. And yeah. And that's really, really lonely, isn't it? Yeah.

And frustrating and hurtful and all that stuff. And so here we are, right? And you're like, I just asked you a question about freaking my budget. Can you get to it? Hey, I mean,

Jehovah's Nikkie and Taylor had a plan, right? Right. Here's the thought I want you to at least hold it loosely. And you're in the care of a physician and a mental health practitioner

so this won't interact with that at all. I want you to hold very loosely this idea that your body's working pretty dang well and that you're 48 years old and you've spent almost every moment of your entire life, child and adult life, caring for other people's emergencies.

And it's cost you sleep. It's cost you late night anxiousness. I bet you have a hard time. I bet you can spin up, can't you? Yeah. Yep. So it's called. I bet you can spin up, can't you? Yeah. Yep. So it's called... Like, what do you mean spin up?

Like... Lay, put your head on a pillow, and all of a sudden you're like, what about this? What about this? And oh my gosh, I forgot about this. Or do you take care of a patient and then you leave the room

and for the... Like, did I put the... Did I put it in? Did I put the pick in? Did I... Right? Over and over. Listen,

your body's working exactly as it should. And then eventually it goes, oh, she's not getting this message. Shut it down. She's still going. Activate sore back and hurt knees and hurt shoulders. Go. Right? Right. Your body's so amazing if finding ways to slow you down

oh she's living a completely isolated life and she says she has good friends but mostly they just share emojis and text we will get her in front of a doctor and that doctor will have high touch and we'll look her in the eye and we'll listen and we'll connect and we'll communicate right or wrong um yeah the the key the details the details aren't but the key the underlying my my friends really truly are amazing okay that's good okay that makes me happy yeah all right yeah yeah all right so here's if you just called me cold and you're one of my buddies and we've already talked about all this stuff and we're just eating nachos, having a drink,

whatever. Here's what I would tell you. Some things that have saved my life in this transition. And I probably don't overuse that, but I don't underuse it either. Um, is I'm surrounded. I got so many this year.

My wife's like, wow, I wake up every morning in a, in a baseball stadium. Um, but I'm surrounded by those 10,000 Lux light boxes. got so many this year my wife's like wow i wake up every morning in a in a baseball stadium um but i'm surrounded by those 10 000 lux light boxes oh i've been in my bathroom i've got multiple ones in my kitchen i've got one down in my gym i've got one in the morning when i write i've got them everywhere okay that's number one um and that's a whole other podcast you want to listen to it

in fact huberman talked about it more but you know about those things. The basic challenges that and this is just from James Clear stuff is let's put as many hurdles for unhealthy decisions and let's clear the friction. Let's clear the path for the easy ones. What does that look like?

Maybe in February, you have your friends over who are amazing, and you'll have a party, and you log into your Amazon account, and one of them changes the passcode until April 1st. And if you want to buy something, you got to go through them. And they have a series of questions they're going to ask you. Right. And it's so annoying, and it's so frustrating.

There was a season I gave my debit card to my wife. I was out of control. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. And you don't have that. Cool. So we're going to have a party where we invite everybody over and it's like, it's going to be the winter hurdles. Right.

And I've lost my whatever card or my bank card or whatever the thing is, right? Mm-hmm. I'm going to have a friend that will go shopping with me. And we're going to make sure I don't... I can get some jelly beans. Some, some, Laura. Right? But not...

Always the jelly beans. Not tons. Right. Do you write in the winter? Yeah, when I'm not doing school stuff, I write in the winter. Yeah. Like you journal to yourself? Um, yeah, a little bit, not as much, but yeah. Okay. I want you to practice something for me. Just try it for 30 days and then write back in to Taylor. And if it's terrible and you're like, Taylor, this is the worst. Then she won't tell me.

And that way I can just go around with the illusion that everything I say is awesome. Actually, she would, she would love to come running in and be like, you're wrong. You were wrong. I want you to write a letter to yourself on a daily basis.

That's not a letter. It's not true. Five, five, three to five statements. And it's not going to be gratitude this time. It's going to be, dear Laura, our body's taking care of us like this today. And when your body, when you start to get up and it's like, no, I'm not.

What I want you to begin to do is you're going to slowly, minute by minute, inch by inch, line by line in this journal over 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, is I want you're going to slowly minute by minute, inch by inch, line by line in this journal over 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, is I want you to begin to separate yourself from how you feel and what the next right move is. And the way I've learned to do that personally in my life is to say out loud or to write down, my body's trying to love me right now. My body's trying to keep me safe by keeping me in bed. And then I will say, thank you so much, but I got it from here. And I'll get up and, but it's a conversation where I'm separating myself from this intense feeling.

And what I know will, right? In someone who's been diagnosed with depression, most people don't understand that isn't just like a feeling. It is like you're stuck in concrete, right? Yeah. It's worse than concrete. It's like being stuck in honey. Like you're moving, but it's just, right? Yeah.

What I have found during the clear moments is when I separate myself, and it was a long arc of a practice, years, of, okay, I feel this way, but I'm going to do this. Right. And as I begin to peel those apart, that's awesome. And by the way, some days I just sleep in. Right. And I don't be like, you suck, you piece of crap, you should have. I think, man, my body must have really needed that.

Mm-hmm. And then I'm on to the next. But that only happens when you stop waking up every moment of your life thinking something's wrong with you. Instead of thinking, no, my body's trying to take care of me. Right. You see what a shift that is? Yeah. Yeah.

I've been fighting my body for a long time. Yeah, man. Your body's pretty awesome. Since the moment I was born. Do what? Yeah. Since the moment I was born, because I was very ill. Yeah, dude.

So think about this. Your body kept you in the game when you were very young. Yeah. When you were really little. Your body kept you in the game with an unstable kind of family situation. Your body's helped you navigate showing up for people in their darkest moments, day after day after day after day.

Your body's kept you afloat until last year, living a life, then you had a different picture for what that life was going to be. And that last thing is, at some point, and this isn't today,

this is probably with that, no, this is 100% with the help of a mental health professional, especially with your depression diagnosis. You're gonna have to grieve this picture. I was going to have, my life is going to look like this at 48, at 45, at 40, and it doesn't. It's hard, scary. It's, it's hard scary it's it's just crushing and once you metabolize that and you get back in the driver's seat your body will begin to know okay it was supposed to look like this but it doesn't now we get to paint a new picture all right what's 58 gonna look like what's 55 gonna look like how do i learn to love men who show emotion and my body doesn't run

screaming for the hills because it remembers emotion as unstable, going to leave me on the train. And then you're going to run into some knuckleheaded guy there in Canada and he's going to be like, what do you think about this? And you're going to, your heart's going to flutter, right? Because he's going to have emotion and feeling and laughter and joy. And it's going to just begin to shift. But it starts with this idea of, I'm not broken, but man, it didn't work out like I thought it was going to. So given that reality, what can it look like now? And what do I need to do to get me to that place?

And I'm not playing. You guys, you got money. If you're impulse spending, I'm calling your bluff. How seriously do you want to stop? Give your debit card to somebody. Give a friend or a spouse your Amazon login. Give somebody your internet code, for God's sake, if you have to. But do whatever it takes to put some hurdles so that when you start to impulse by, you feel it, you acknowledge it.

I need to go for a walk. I need to go do 15 pushups. I need to go get in a cold shower. I need to do something because the feeling is what I'm trying to get rid of. I don't need new junk. I just need that feeling to burn through. And since I've got some hurdles,

it's going to be really tough. What are some easier paths forward? Laura, you're awesome. Thank you for the call. Hang on the line. I'm going to send you a couple of things. I'm going to send you Own Your Past, Change Your Future,

my number one book about dealing and metabolizing and doing the next right thing, dealing with hard things, and then what do we do next? And I'm also going to hook you up with Financial Peace University, my company, Ramsey Solution,

the flagship product. It can walk you through these steps on, okay, how do I get a hold of my money? I've made a mess this winter. I'm going to clean the mess up. Then I'm going to head on to the future. And by the way, with FPU will come the EveryDollar app. We're going to hook you up with that for a year,

the premium version. You're the best, Laura. Take care. Bye. 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're back with cool crap that happened. What's up, Kelly? What'd I do now? All right, this is from Rob somewhere. I don't know where. Rob Bass. What was that song called? It Takes Two. To make a thing go right. Yeah is from Rob somewhere. I don't know where. Rob Bass. What was that song called?

It Takes Two. To make a thing go right. Yeah, it does. Yeah, dude. All right. After hearing about your goal-setting retreats with your wife, my wife and I were inspired to do the same. So we downloaded your planning sheets from the show notes a while ago. We did our homework, and we have completed the first two days.

What a revelation. We are the parents of nine kids. We did our homework and we have completed the first two days. What a revelation. We are the parents of nine kids. Whoa. So our communication with each other has suffered over the years. Yesterday we had more serious, enjoyable, positive conversation than we have had in a long time. My wife has never been able to answer me when I asked her how best can I love you today. That changed yesterday when I told her how important it is for

her to give me a roadmap to her heart. She finally understands it's okay to tell me what she needs and it is not selfish of her to do so. We've got a lot more to discuss but the weekend getaway certainly is shaping up to be a transformational to our marriage.

Dude, way to go, man. That's pretty awesome. And by the way, A, good on you for that. But also, my wife and I, we've got our place out in the woods, and we're looking for a place in town. And my wife has been looking at houses, looking at houses, and I'll go look at houses. And we've been looking at maps and looking at schools, a whole thing.

And she was gone the last week. And she came back into town. And I had some time just with just me and my knuckleheaded little dog. And the kids were gone. Everybody was gone. And I said, hey, I haven't been super clear as we're looking at these things. I don't think I'm a this kind of person for this particular neighborhoods,

these particular suburbs. I'm either a this or this. And I watched her just go, oh, thank God. And she said, if you noticed, I've been looking at only houses at the very end of X and Y and Z neighborhoods, whatever, because I really want to be here. And so I tell you that to tell you this,

this isn't something you just do once and you nail it. This is something that becomes a part of the rhythm of your home. And I do this for a living and I teach this for a living. And I still almost made a really expensive decision just because it was easier than mining. Why is my body reacting to this so bad? Why does it not want to live here so bad? And so rest assured, you're going to have this conversation. I'm so proud of you, dude. What was that, dude? Rob? Rob Bass. Rob, it does take two to make nine kids. Golly, that's a lot of kids. But it's going to be a part of your, if you allow it, it's going to be part of your marriage on and on and on.

And quite honestly, that's what makes marriage so rad is the constant learning and more learning and more learning. And then you get to go do it. It's awesome. And I didn't mean that kind of do it, but you know what I mean. You just going to eyeball me on that one, Kelly? I don't really think there's a lot for me to say. Man, that was a clutch. Leave me hanging there.

Well done, Kelly. Well done. Love you guys. Bye.