The Dr. John Delony Show - My Mom Is Trying To Guilt Me Over Our Holiday Plans!

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

On today’s show, we hear about: - A woman wondering if she needs stricter boundaries with her mom over the holidays. - What Seasonal Affective Disorder really is and what you can do about it. - A man struggling to understand why his wife left him and what he can learn from it. Lyrics of the Day: "California Dreamin'" - The Mamas And The Papas 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 Churchill Mortgage 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. My mom told me that I'm the reason she's depressed because I won't be here for Christmas. I'll be with my in-laws. You are one terrible daughter, Sarah. You know that's nonsense, right? Yeah, but... But it hurts. I know.

Woo! What's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show, the greatest mental health and marriage and parenting podcast ever. We talk about everything. We walk alongside you when the wheels are falling off or they have fallen off, and we just figure out the next right thing to do.

So thank you for joining us and giving us your most precious resource, which is your time. If you want to be on this show, go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K, or you can give us a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291. Okay, we have a couple of housekeeping things here. This is important. Somebody from Oklahoma.

I'm not going to put your address. I'm just going to hold this little brown envelope up. Sent me a piece of bubble wrap and a piece of cardboard, and here's all it said. Dr. John, we noticed you like to use G2s, which tells me right off the bat they're a pen connoisseur. And here's all it said. says, replace the ink in that G2 with this refill and thank us later, Mandy and Danny. Go now, do it. So I did. I opened up my pen.

I took out the refill that I didn't know existed. And it's a Schmidt fineliner made in Germany. And I don't know who you are, you sorcerers, Mandy and Danny, but this is the best freaking pen refill I've ever seen in my life. I feel like my G2s got upgraded in a way that I didn't know was possible. It's like you dropped a Ferrari engine in the middle of like a Ford Escort. And you don't have to go to church for the rest of the year. Y'all are good on everything. You have to, you've done all of your giving for the year, Mandy and Danny. You've changed my life.

I literally got on Amazon and ordered a whole bunch of these because I feel like I'm a better person now that I'm writing with the Schmidt insert in the G2. Thank you for loving me more than I love myself. This is really a great gift. And yeah, I'll just leave it at that. Mandy and Danny, you're great human beings. And you're from Oklahoma. Who knew? Who knew that those two could be the same together?

I'm super excited about this. Y'all are great humans. All right, let's, I had a whole other thing we're going to do, but I got too excited about this. I can't tell you guys. I'm not, I'm not, sorry's I had a whole other thing we're gonna do but I got too excited about this. I can't tell you guys I'm not i'm not uh, sorry. I'll just stop Kelly's like just move along. I can't tell you

How incredible this pin insert is? And this this is a like a a real life demonstration about how lame my life is But man, this is awesome. All right, let's go to Sarah. Let's go to Sarah in the OC, Orange County, California. What's up, Sarah? Hi, Dr. John. How are you? I was great.

And now that I got this new insert for my pen, I'm incredible. And now I'm talking to you, the home of social distortion there in Orange County. And I don't know that things get much better. So it's awesome. What's up? So my mom told me that I'm the reason she's depressed

because I won't be here for Christmas. I'll be with my in-laws. You are one terrible daughter, Sarah. You know that's nonsense, right? Yeah, but. But it hurts. You know, that's, you know, that's nonsense, right? Yeah. But, but it hurts. I know. Why did she lay that on you in that way? She, like my whole life, it's always been, um, like she'll use painful words. Like what? If she doesn't get what she wants. Ah, okay.

Give me an example of something she's told you. She'll call you condescending. She'll call you a terrible person. She'll call you bad names, all sorts of stuff like that. And it's like in a heat of rage, like a red line almost. Yeah. But then she forgets it. And then it's over with. And as long as she's gotten out what she wants,

then it's like the conversation's over. And if you bring it up, how dare you hurt her? And then it's fine. Yeah, but then it's fine the next day. Of course it is. Nothing happens. Of course it is. But if you bring it up,

then how dare you keep bringing up the past? What are you trying to do? Yeah. Has this been your whole life yeah for the most part yeah okay I need you to hear me super clear what's happened to you

your entire life is abuse and it should never have happened and I know people are watching this and they're going to give me grief for overusing the word abuse, but you have been responsible for the emotional care of an adult and an adult that is weaponizing her relationship with her daughter as a way of propping herself up. And that should never, ever happen. And I'm sorry that happened to you.

I want you to acknowledge the depth of this because this has affected all of your relationships throughout your life, hasn't it? Yeah. I did go to therapy for like five months a couple years ago when I started doing boundaries. My husband and I are like a united front. He's the one who actually told me when we first started dating. He's like, that's not normal for someone to yell at you like that about numerous different things and everything. And then we did the whole boundaries and everything. And it's worked really well, but now it's starting to seem to slip backwards.

And she doesn't like that I have boundaries. Of course she doesn't. And she says it's me putting up walls. Hey, listen. She has cashed in her votes. She gets no votes No say She abuses you Sarah

No more Okay And I know that's hard to hear Because since you were a little bitty girl You've been responsible for making sure She was okay She wasn't mad She got whatever she wanted

Yeah And so practicing this and sure she was okay. She wasn't mad and she got whatever she wanted. Yeah. Okay. And so practicing this because your survival mechanisms have been to make sure she's okay so that you could be safe and not get screamed at or hit

or kicked out or whatever the thing of the day was. That's the been, taking care of her has been the way you've stayed alive. And so you learning to be whole and well in your marriage and learning to completely break this cycle and change your family tree in a profound way is gonna feel for a season like you are gonna die.

It's gonna feel like you're being overexposed because this is how your body's kept itself safe for so long. So for me, if I tell my mom, like my mom, hey, I'm not doing this thing. I'm not going to be able to make it down. And my mom said, that really breaks my heart. I was counting on you coming. And I would feel guilty about that. Rightfully so. I feel guilty that I broke my mom's heart. And I would also acknowledge her right to have her heart broken. She's allowed to do that. She's an adult. And I would know my mom's not trying to hurt me. She's trying to tell me that she really misses me and wants me there. When your mom says, you are making me depressed and your choices are selfish and self-centered and you care more about him and his family than you do your own mom after I gave everything up

for you, your body is not going to respond like mine. Your body's going to go screaming and running for the hills. Right? Yeah. The only way to heal from this is to walk directly through the middle of it. That means put up your boundary. And when she starts firing her weapons, feel it. Acknowledge it. Be as distant as you can. Create space. And here's what I mean by that. When your body starts to take off on you after one of her email rants or one of her text message rants or one of her phone call rants, feel your body. And as though you're watching it from a ladder, look down at it and say, man, it is really trying to take care of me and protect me. But luckily, I'm an adult now, and I'm married to an awesome guy and we're creating something different. So you don't have to take care of me anymore because mom doesn't get a vote anymore.

And it's not going to be a magic switch, but you're going to be practicing this thing as you move on. Does that make sense? It does. Um, there's one, we do work at the same, um, company. So sometimes some of this stuff. Who's that? You and your mom? Yeah. Has happened there. Like that, that happened at work. What do you, what do y'all do? What do you, I forget what she does. What do you do? Um, I, I run the office. But what's, I mean, what's the, like you're an office manager. You're, okay. Um, I would do everything I can to get a new job. I would, I would create some space.

It's time. And the reason I'm telling you that is, is there's a physiological consequence to what you're doing every day. You don't know it, but you're going to work and your body goes to war it is scanning it is 24 7 hyper vigilance it is making sure mom's okay let's don't do this because mom's gonna get mad i need to go in early mom can't be there so i've got you see what i'm saying the little machine underneath your daily life is running hot if you had one of these whoop straps that i wear, I can guarantee you that your HRV would be low. I'd be willing to bet. Okay.

Because your body is running hot. Tell me I'm crazy. Be like, you're an idiot, John. It's always awesome, except when she gets mad. It is. It's awesome, unless if she gets mad i mean she's she's just an employee too you know what i mean um and so i'm i'm technically above her yeah okay all right well yeah so that might be part of well there comes a moment when you say i don't care who you are you don't like

we're at a place of work you can't talk to me like that yeah or there becomes a moment when you say i don't care who you are you don't like we're at a place to work you can't talk to me like that yeah or there becomes a moment when you report her to your supervisor or if you have the ability to say hey you can't talk to me like that or you can't work here all of that is you asserting your right to be well and your right to not be yelled at and your right to not be responsible for the temper tantrums of other adults, whether at the workplace or whether at home. You know what I mean?

Your mom is making a lot of choices. You cannot be responsible for her choices to be miserable. It's not your job. Yeah. She can choose to go have friends. She can choose to, oh, my daughter's going to be really happy for her daughter. That she married somebody incredible. And that they get to go spend time with his family.

She should celebrate you and cheer you on, even if she's sad that she's not getting to spend Thanksgiving with you. That's called being an adult. And then she can decide to have friends, or we're going to have a Friendsgiving. We're going to have a bunch of wackadoos over at our house. That's what we're doing. Thanksgiving is this week when I'm recording this. We're going to have people over. My family's not going to be recording this. We're going to have people over.

My family's not going to be here. So we're going to have friends over and they're friends that I don't know super well. And I'm excited to have them over. It's a choice we made to not just sit at home and be miserable by ourselves. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, definitely. She gets to choose that and you can't make those choices for her. The only person you can choose for is you. And here's one thing I want you to be very careful of, okay? You mentioned United Front. Be very careful about not dumping all of this responsibility on your husband, okay? Okay. I want you to practice the belief that you are worth this. Even if that means getting up every morning and writing it down 10 times.

I am worth having a life where I laugh really hard. I am worth having a life where I love my husband recklessly. I am worth going to work and not worrying if mom's gonna be in a bad mood today. And I want you to begin to practice those things. Say them out loud. Okay?

Okay, you got it. This is, Sarah, this is the hard work of breaking a cycle. God, I'm sorry this happened to you. And for those of you listening, I know we have lots of sensational calls on this show. The reason I'm so passionate about this because this is, these are deep planted seeds, aren't they, Sarah?

Yeah. Because I love my parents, you know? I know you do. I love them, but it hurts because it makes you feel guilty setting them. But then you're glad you set the boundaries, but then you feel guilty because you can tell that they're hurt, but it's because of their own actions. Yes, yes, yes. Choose guilt over resentment every time.

Okay. every time. Okay. Every time. If you don't, and let's say you canceled your Thanksgiving plans and decided to go, like, okay, I got to go be with my mom because she told me I'm the reason she's depressed. I got to go with her. And then it happened again. And then it happened again. Eventually, your husband begins to resent her and you and you begin to resent her because you do want to go spend time with your in-laws you like them they're

nice they're fun yeah i love them see what i'm saying and so you're going to begin to resent them and then it's hard to come back and so so let's hold the boundaries up. And if mom starts to yell at you, I want you to stop and say, I'm not going to allow you to yell at me today. When you're ready to talk like an adult, then I'm happy to talk with you. But I'm not going to sit here and be yelled at. Have a great day. And then hang up the phone. If she sends you a long, wild text message and you see how long it is, just reply back. I'm not going to read all of this.

We can talk on the phone later. See what I'm saying? Yeah. Begin to assert yourself and you're going to have to practice asserting because asserting has got you hurt in the past. And I will say it one more time. Parents, if you tell your kids you are making me fill in the blank you are choosing

to participate in their dysregulation and their distrust for themselves and for their inability to know where they are in space because they're too busy making sure you're not sad or you're not frustrated or you're not angry. You're not raged out. That's not their job. They're kids. They're kids. And I mess it up too, man. The number of times I've gone back to my son and say, hey, I said you made me frustrated. You didn't. I chose to be frustrated because I'm an adult

and you don't have that kind of control over my emotions. And it's hard. It's something I got to work at. But that's what adults do. Guys, we got to work at this. Stop putting this crap on your kids, man, because they grow up and they get married and they don't know who and where they are. It's not right. Let's step it up, parents. Our kids need us. We'll be right back. It seems like everybody's talking about how crazy the housing market is right now and how powerless homebuyers feel. Mix that with the stress of moving and life change and job change, and you've got a tornado of anxiety fueling one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make. This is not a good idea.

So if you're a new home buyer right now, my advice to you is to focus on what you can control, like the people you choose to help you in the home buying process. You need folks like my friends at Churchill Mortgage. Churchill is a Ramsey-trusted provider that's been helping people with their home mortgages for decades.

And their Home Buyer Edge program will help you skip a bunch of the stress. Here's how it works. Apply to become a Churchill-certified home buyer and cap your interest rate for 90 days. Then you'll get a $5,000 seller guarantee to help your offer stand out. So go ahead, take a deep breath because Churchill has your back. Check them out at churchillemortgage.com slash D'Loni and get the home buyer edge today. All right, we are back. It is time for everybody's segment. Nope. Everybody's favorite segment. I am incredible at this job, by the way.

Everybody's favorite segment. Facts are your friends. Cue the drum beats. Man, I wish I could rap. This would be a great time to like hip hop over this. It would not be great. So, alright. Today, facts are your friends.

Man, I tell you what. The number of people sliding into the old dms and sending in emails i know they weren't i kill you must slide into a lot of dms as much as that's a trigger for you just move along okay so um man i get a lot of questions, emails, calls, all of it about seasonal affective disorder or SAD as the nerds say. Actually, the nerds say seasonal affective disorder. The cool kids say SAD. So here's what it is.

All right. take a 30,000 foot view. It's the feeling you get. It's this feeling of being low, of being depressed, of being underwater, if you will, in the fall and into the winter, and usually through the winter, sometimes into the spring. This is, it has genetics in origin. It has family of origin in origin, right? Wherever your lineage comes from. All that, in all honesty, if you want to go listen to Dr. Andrew Huberman's podcast about it, you can go down a rabbit hole. He's way smarter than me on this stuff. Here's what I want you guys to know.

Number one, it's a for real shift. It is real Okay, and it's a down regulation as the nerds say in mood and it affects true seasonal affective disorder Right the actual depression Affects about five percent of the population give or take but I think infinitely more folks suffer from feel acutely that down-regulation of mood, right? And when I moved to Tennessee, so I was in West Texas, which was about 30 or 45 minutes from one time zone. And I stayed in the same time zone moving to Tennessee, but now I'm in Nashville and I'm 45 minutes from the other

time zone. And so at five o'clock in late fall and into the winter here in Nashville, 4.30, it is pitch black outside. It is night, night, night dark. And my first year I moved here, I remember about February feeling like something was sitting on my chest. I couldn't, I couldn't breathe a lot. I thought something was wrong with me. I started thinking I'd taken the wrong job. I thought I just thought I wasn't okay. And then it occurred to me one day I was walking to work. I was in, by the way, I was going to work and it was pitch black. I was getting out of work and it was pitch black. And there was just this gray that hung over, over the city of Nashville for a couple of months. It occurred to me, oh, grown up in Texas in the

South, this is the longest my body has ever gone without sunlight. I'm going to have to be really intentional about my mood and the things that affect my mood, right? So I don't want us to get caught up in the diagnostic, in the do I have officially have seasonal affective disorder or seasonal depression or let's just talk about how we feel, okay? And so I don't know if I had clinical SAD, probably not. But for the purpose of the show, I just want to continue to challenge us beyond the diagnosis, okay? Depression, feeling low, into full blown. I can't get out of bed because I can't breathe, right? Genetics, environment,

we said all that. Here's a couple of things I've done over the past few years and recently that have made a tremendous difference. Now I love the winter here. It's unique and it's different, but I love it. I did buy and I spent some money on it. Okay. So this is not cheap. I got the expensive version. It probably not the expensive version, but I did not go for the cheapest option. But I recently bought, it's a box lamp from, I wrote it down here, Northern Light Technologies. It's a box light. It's about 180 bucks. It's expensive. There's a bunch of them that you can buy for 25, 30, 35 bucks that are basically art lamps, right? That you draw, use them to draw with or to trace with.

Mine has, I think, 10,000 lux. You can get them as low as 900 or a thousand. I just turn it on in the morning and I put it 12 to 14 inches for my face. And I just have my coffee and I do my morning gratitude journal and stuff in the morning. And I just have it on. Occasionally I'll glance at it, but it has made a tremendous difference in what I call like the domino effect. And these dominoes go one way and they can also go the other way. Okay. Dr. Huberman has done a great job over the past couple of years pointing out how critical light is, especially in the morning to our eyes, into our brain function, and then our overall downstream physiology. So for years, it was important for me just to get outside in the morning. I didn't realize what a benefit that was simply because of the sunlight. years, it was important for me just to get outside in the morning. I didn't

realize what a benefit that was simply because of the sunlight. I thought it was because of the cold exposure, which I'm sure had something to do with it. I thought it was because of the grounding. I like to go outside without any shoes on. But turns out, probably the most important thing I was doing was getting sunlight, even on cloudy days, even on overcast days. And when you wake up and it is just pitch black and I get up super early, having this lamp has been a game changer for me. Also going outside is a big deal. So here's a couple of, so, so number one, make it a point to get bright lights. Even if you just wake up in the morning and turn the lights on, by the way, if you wake up and continue to lay prone, lay down and just

scroll your phone, the worst thing you can do, at least open your eyes and sit up, sit up and turn the lights on. And if you're married and somebody's just crashed out, and if you turn the lights on, they're going to stab you with the nearest sharp object, then leave the room and go somewhere where you can sit straight up and you can turn the lights on I even do my meditations after I have some time in front of this light just to get me what just to wake me up Um, and I go back and turn the lights off in the basement Um get light in your eyes get light in your eyes get light in your eyes Morning walk great bundle up and go for a walk have a lot whatever it looks like. Okay

Here's um A common thing that happens and it's and it's the dominoes going the other way, right? So you start your morning with light. You start your morning with your gratitude. You start your morning with your exercise, your caffeine. You're starting a set of dominoes one way, and that one way is going to be an optimized mind, a body that's up and at them, a positive, a more positive attitude, a more positive morning routine. It also goes the other way. So if you wake up in the morning and you hit snooze and you hit snooze in that cold room, you feel so good because you're under warm coverage in that cold room and you just stay in the dark, stay in the dark. And you're in that, there's some technical words for it, but you're in that, I call it that underwater space where you're not fully asleep, but you

didn't go back to, I mean, you didn't go back to sleep all the way, but you're not really awake. And you're just kind of there. And all of a sudden you wait until the last possible minute, you pop up out of your bed and you sprint into the shower and you take a thousand degree shower, super hot. You brush your teeth and you grab a bar of some sort and you run out the door and go to work. You have just started a domino with your cortisol, with your adrenaline, with your whole fight or flight system. And you head down, you start those dominoes and then bam, by nine o'clock, 10 o'clock, unless you're got an iron will, you're grabbing something from the candy bowl in the office. Somebody shows up with donuts and you're like, I'll have six. And then you're grabbing more coffee and more coffee and

more coffee and then a Red Bull. And then somebody's like, hey dude, you like monster drinks? And you're like, no, I like my trucks like a regular person without being 17 inches off the ground, but I'll have a monster. You start that road, you go down that road. And a common side effect of seasonal affective disorder, and I happen to be of the opinion that one begets the other, is as the days get shorter, substance abuse increases. You're drugs of choice. And so people will drink a little bit more. They will grab another drink and another drink or they'll start smoking again. It just feels like it's right because it's cold. Let's grab a cigarette, whatever it is. Go to holidays and then you drink and then it messes up your sleep. And now you're back in the morning and you don't want to get out of bed and see what I'm saying. Like the dominoes

have gone that way. I call it the underwater effect. You just slowly find yourself underwater. And then man, mid to late December, you're in the holidays and it's family drama and stuff and you're over budget and you just can't get out of bed, right? You've just locked it down. So, and by the way, you're not exercising at that point. You're just eating whatever you can get. And so it just starts a cycle. So I want to be intentional on the front end of this cycle. Here's some things I have found besides the light, okay, that keep me from going down that cycle. It's to go the other direction. And these are not going to be popular. And what I'll tell you is you get to choose your heart.

Do you want to have hard, miserable, short days that are cold and dark and just, or do you want to have hard days that you do hard things and it's, you are enjoying these days. You get to pick one. Both of them are going to be hard. Okay. And I've done them both. And I am choosing the optimistic, joyful, hard things to do. Okay, number one. I don't drink during the holidays. I just don't If I if you do Watch how you feel and make sure you don't skip your routine the next morning regardless of how much you have to drink the night before I just adds to it compresses an already devolving mood

And i've just not found it to be worth it. And then it starts messing up my sleep and it makes it hard to get up in the morning. And then I eat junk food. It just starts a whole set of dominoes. I know holiday parties and I know holiday family time. Some of you, the only way to get through holiday time is with one or two or seven or nine glasses of wine. Be really intentional about cutting back your alcohol intake. If you can't, this is a great time of year to say, I'm going to start anew and get on top of that. Cold water exposure. I won't go into all the nerd stuff about it. Whether you're going outside and I went to Tractor Supply and got a hundred dollar's, I filled up with water. I haven't done it in a while, but, um, I used to do it every single day. Um, it's transformative two or three

minutes and you think you're going to die. Um, my son used to get into in there with me for a couple, for, for several months. Um, now I rarely, rarely, um, take anything other than a, than a cold shower in the morning. And I get my water comes from a well and from a spring, like out of the side of a mountain, out of the side of a hill. And it's cold and it's transformative again in the morning. Militant about exercising, I just don't miss, especially between November and January. Unless I'm sick, I don't miss. I go do something down there. I go do, and then I stay down there in my home gym. I just have a couple of weights in my basement. Don't miss. You got to move your body. Some of you don't have any weights. You're

not interested in that. Great. Go for a walk. If you can't go for a run, go for a walk. If you can't go for a walk, just go outside and I don't know, just walk around your front yard. You got to move your body. Okay. And then I count calories. This is a whole downstream set of drama. Not in a draconian way or not like in a, like I've got a headband on and my wife's got leg warmers and we're like doing Jane Fonda and we're like, have a, like a menthol cigarette and a tab and we're like, we're going to count calories. Not like that. But I'm intentional

about what I'm eating and how much because it's just so easy to grab a cookie and then another cookie and then another cookie and then let's go ahead and grab this

and I'm going to put extra creamer in here. I'm going to get some more bacon and suddenly I am, I'm adding a thousand calories per day and that just has an effect on how I feel and how I move

and my overall mood and, and, and, um, there is some, is it kind of give or take? I take vitamin D K2. Um, I get it from Thorne and remember, um, go thorne.com slash you slash Deloney, and you can get 25% off everything. Um, I do take it I I think the efficacy is we're still trying to figure that out. But um Meaning I don't know if supplementing with vitamin d is as important as going outside and getting vitamin d naturally, but I do it anyway Um, and then i'm outside a lot. I'm a big hunter and big walker Um, I like to be outside a lot and so even when it's freezing freezing freezing cold But there's just outdoor exposure and sun and changing temperatures, all these things lift mood.

Okay. Here's an important thing before I wrap it up. Depression is very, very real and it's very, very dangerous. Okay. Holidays can be a heavy time too If you find yourself underwater And the idea of these things I just said like I can't take a cold shower I can't get out of bed I'm starting to have hard conversations with myself about whether I need to be here anymore Whether i'm ever going to get these debts paid off i'm ever gonna be able to stop drinking or stop eating And you have suicidal thoughts, thoughts about quitting life, where you find yourself looking at pornography again and again and again

and grabbing another drink and another drink. Call somebody. The world would not be better without you here. And it's very flippant of me to say, oh, it's all just a bunch of behavior. It is. You can change a lot of it. But some of you are going to be in a statistical minority of folks who are suffering from deep depression and you got to

reach out. Got to reach out. And if you love somebody who's struggling, don't just say, oh, you need to exercise. I'm going to turn all the lights on in the morning. Not cool. Model by example, lead with love. Okay. If you find yourself, you can't do anything. Make that call. So that's seasonal affective disorder. We get it all. Thumbs up. All right, cool. We'll be right back. All right, we're back. Let's go to Jack in Tampa. What's up, Jack? Hey, Dr. Deloney. How are you? I'm good, man. What's up?

Well, if my memory serves me right, these episodes are recorded about a month before they're dropped, which means this thing will drop right about Christmas time. So if you don't mind, I'd like to wish you and all the folks at Ramsey Solutions and all the listeners across the Ramsey land here a very Merry Christmas to you and all your family, and hope the holidays find you well. Thank you so much, man, and you too. Hope you guys have a great Christmas. Well, so the reason I'm calling is my, so I'm going through a divorce. I've been going through it for about two years now since my wife left me. Why'd she leave you? And we'll, you're going to make me jump to my secondary problem very quickly here.

Usually the secondary problem is hidden behind a pretend first problem. Well, I don't know why my wife left me for sure. Why has she told you she left you? Boy, you got cameras somewhere. Nope, just been doing this a long time. And you have a very evasive cadence. Why did she leave you? She told you very directly. And you don't like what she said or you don't want to believe it. Why did she leave you? She told you very directly and you don't like what she said

or you don't want to believe it. Why did she tell you she left you? Actually, it's because I can't remember why. Um, so, uh, I have a problem with blocking out, I guess, uncomfortable things. So I've asked her twice. And the first time, I don't remember anything about what she said. And the second time I asked her, I tried really hard to concentrate on what she was telling me. And my brain took me to a different place. I completely tuned her out.

Like I just, like she was talking through a pillow. Like she was talking, but I wasn't able to focus on anything she was saying. And. When did this start? I'm not sure. I didn't realize it was really a problem until that happened. And then I've been staying with my little sister through this divorce process. And we were talking about some things that happened in our childhood when we were teenagers.

And she was telling me about something that happened to her. And I was there. And she says, oh, but you probably don't remember because you're like, mom, you forget things that are uncomfortable, which I have no idea what she means about my mom. I got hung up on the whole me thing. So that's the first that was the first time you'd ever heard that. Yeah, from somebody else. And so you have, she disclosed that you were there when abuse happened or family trauma happened, but you just block it out like always and pretend nothing happened. And that was the first you'd ever heard of that? Yeah, yes and no. It was the first you'd ever heard of that? Yeah, yes and no.

It was the first. We had some things happen in our early, early childhood. So let me, absent a brain tumor or absent some significant brain lesions or absent some horrific childhood trauma, you're going to have to get real direct because there's a vagueness to how you just interact. Does that make sense? Yeah. And it's a protective measure, and I understand it, and it makes complete sense. But it becomes self-reinforcing.

And so the healing here is directly through the middle of it. So like, what are the things that happened as when you were a kid that you, that you can remember and that you know about? Oh God. Nobody wants to hear a grown man cry on Christmas. Hey, listen,

here's the deal. I love you. And I don't, I can hear it on you. But I want, how old are you? 32. Okay. I want you to be very honest with yourself about how this sort of evasiveness on the truth and the stories that you were born into and that happened to you, what that has given you, it's given you a lot of heartache. And so here's what I'm offering you, an opportunity to try to practice something different, which is, let's be very direct.

What happened? Hey, listen, if you don't, hey, listen, if you don't want to, that's okay. I'm not going to, I'm not going to bully you into it. I'm not going to browbeat you.

But I do want you to know healing will be going right through the middle of this. And you'll probably need a very skilled trauma counselor. And I would recommend if you were my friend, I'd recommend that you go get

a CT scan to make sure you don't have some sort of challenges with your physical brain. But memory and trauma and anxiety, all that stuff is wound together in a pretty remarkable way. All that stuff is really tightly braided together. And so if you got problems with memory and you got problems with family trauma, that's a brain trying to take care of you. Okay? Yeah, that's why I wasn't going to really address it because I thought maybe it wasn't

that big of a deal if I just don't remember bad things. So that's all. Because your heart remembers and your brain remembers and your body remembers the frontal lobe part, the part that just lets you go on about your day and check the, who won the game and making sure you get the TPS reports turned in. That can just go about its day, but your body keeps the score, as Vander Kolk says, and it is revving and revving and revving.

And if you've looked at the ACEs score, the Adverse Childhood Experiences score, it's a scale of one to 10. I want you to Google it after this. It's called ACEs. There's a million sites you can go to, but it's just a 10-question test. The higher your ACEs score, 5, 6, I think 4 is when it starts really changing, but 6, 7, and 8, things that happened to you in your childhood become predictive of strokes and heart attacks and cancers and dementia and other things. Because your body is at war. Okay?

And so it feels like just pretending none of this happened is the way forward. And by the way, replaying it all is not part of everybody's healing journey either. It's not like you're going to have to sit down and just like hit rewind on all the videotapes and start again. But you're going to have to sit down and just hit rewind on all the videotapes and start again. But you're going to have to make peace with what happened. And you're going to have to begin practicing being present with hard conversations in the now. Yeah. Right? Yeah, that was going to be my next question is can you even really fix? Yes. Well, you're not broken. Your brain is working perfectly. So I don't want you to, you're not broken. Your brain is working perfectly.

So I don't want you to think you're broken. Your brain experienced some stuff. Right? Yeah. Some evil craziness. And so it has learned the best way is that we unplug. And we will plug back in when the threat has passed.

And so you're not broken. There's nothing to fix. Can you be healed? Yes. I believe with all my heart you can. There's too many incredible advancements right now in all kind of trauma therapies and different trauma therapy techniques

and some of the MAP stuff with some of the psychedelics with people who know what they're doing. There's too much stuff out there. Ketamine therapy. There's too many therapies out there that are working, just doing miraculous things when done with a trained provider. So yes, I have every bit of confidence.

Okay. So when me and my sisters were very little, I was like, I want to say it was between the ages of three and six. I want to say I was in kindergarten when my parents finally took us away. God, I can't. Hey, don't. Let's just stop right there, okay? Here's what's important about what you just did. You provided a GPS pin. You know where, right? Yeah. You know did. You provided a GPS pin. You know where. Right?

Yeah. You know where. And your brain throws a curtain up and it'll allow you to dig back to that curtain. I'm going to recommend you don't go through that curtain by yourself right now. Okay? Okay. But I am going to recommend because I love you and I care about you. I want you to call somebody as a Christmas gift to yourself, man.

You've been doing this for 30 years. It's exhausting, right? Yeah. Did you love your wife? A lot, yeah. It hurts. And my guess is she loved you too, and she just went as far as she could go, right? I don't know.

I don't know. That's what I'm guessing. Yeah. Okay. Are you ready to be well and healed? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. What's the hesitation, man?

You ever think something about yourself, but you tell yourself all the time that it's wrong. But you can't stop thinking that way about yourself. Were you sexually abused as a kid? Oh, God. I don't remember. Yes or no, though? Let me say it this way. The words you are using are very common among people who were sexually abused as young children.

Okay. Not saying you were. I'm not putting that into your head. If that's not the case, that's not the case. But the words you're using tell me that you as a young child suffered terribly. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I only know what I was told.

Okay. So. All right. Let's don't go into there on this call. Okay. Let's keep this, let's keep this where it needs to be until you've got a professional in the room with you. Okay.

Okay. Are you suicidal in any way? No. No, I'm not suicidal. I just... Okay. Do you work? Do you have a job?

No, I have quite a bit of work. Yeah, I work... What do you do? Well, I work full-time as a truck driver, and then I work a secondary, full-time as a truck driver and then I'm, I work a secondary job part-time on the weekends as, uh, working in a warehouse. And, uh, So you're not scared of hard work, right?

No, no. I, I've scared of sleep apparently. I'm just working, just, uh, just working, um, and doing doing school at night just trying to get my finances in line and my divorce is pretty well buttoned up just got the hearing coming down the line and to have a judge sign off on everything. And there's a custody

agreement. I'll have 50, 50 custody with my, uh, little girl, uh, but contingent on, I have to move to within 50 miles of my wife and she lives in a bit of a, uh, expensive area. So I got to, um, I'm just trying to get everything in line to be able to do that and be there for my my daughter which is which is the the point of this call is I just don't want to screw up my kid with the the

the junk that's that's my life so I just are you abusive? no not that I'm aware of. Nope. That's not the question I asked you. This is the answer. Yes or no. Are you abusive? Uh, no, I'm not abusive. Put, put a period at the end of that sentence. One of the hallmarks of childhood abuse is that everything has a dot, dot, dot at the end of it because you're never quite sure where it's coming from because the people that were supposed to keep you safe,

the adults in your life are the ones that hurt you. And so everything is a, I think, I don't, no, you don't abuse your daughter, right? Right. Stand on that. For the first time your daughter Right? Right Stand on that For the first time since she was born Stand on that You're not afraid of hard work

Are you earning a good paycheck? A couple of good paychecks Yes you are You're a good dad Okay? Stand on that Do you have some skills to learn? Abso-freaking-lutely you do

We all do Yeah Do you have a lot some skills to learn? Absolutely you do. We all do. Yeah. Do you have a lot of healing to do? Absolutely. But you're doing, you're stepping in the right direction. Okay.

I wish, you wish it hadn't taken a divorce to get your attention. Here we are. Okay. Here we are. Yeah. The only thing you can do from this point forward is decide what happens next. You can't go back and edit what happened when you were a kid. You can't go back and edit the kind of husband you were or were not.

You can just decide from this point forward, what am I going to do? Yeah. Right? Right. And so you're going to have to practice putting a period at the end of your sentences okay and it's hard because those got you hurt man

I can't tell you enough you have you cannot do this by yourself you're gonna have to call a trauma counselor in your area okay do you promise you'll do that what is what will happen? If they're a good trauma therapist, they will sit down with you and they will walk you through

how your body responds in the present to things that happened in the past. And it will be, you will learn some skills on how to regulate your body. When it starts to leave a conversation, you will learn skills to stay present in that conversation. Even if it's a conversation that says, if you don't fix A, B, and C, I'm going to divorce you. Or I'm filing for divorce from you. And you say, what happened? And then all of a sudden your body's like,

hey, we're not sitting around for this because the last time we sat around for this when you were seven or you were three, the other stuff happened. So we're out. And you will learn skills to stay present. And a good trauma therapist will not drag you through every memory of the past

to make you dredge up the past. There's some pretty damning research about that that could be re-traumatized. That's not the point. The point is, how can I take ownership of my body in the present? That's the goal. And some of that does have some revisiting that happens,

but not in the gory graphics and all that. Okay? Okay. But what we're looking for here is peace. And you have never had that. Let me describe it. No. Let me describe it.

Can you imagine it being nine o'clock and you laughing and deciding, huh, I can either go to bed and crash or I can just watch a movie. And you just deciding that, not because you have to, because you get to. And then you wake up in the morning

and you decide, I think I want to have coffee, not because I have to have chemicals to prop me up, but just because. Can you imagine dating somebody and telling a joke and they don't laugh very hard and you don't instantly go into a shame spiral because you're the stupidest person ever and you're an idiot. You just go like, that was a dumb joke. You know what I mean? Or your boss comes in and says, your butt's going to go do this. And you say, I'm actually, I'm not. Have a great day. I've taken care of my finances. I'm good to go. I'm going to be at a place where I'm respected. Or it's that guy cuts you off in your car and you don't

go to Insta rage, blackout rage. You just let him over. You just nod and be like, all right, dude, in a square Kiaia go about your day peace you tip that waitress at waffle house a hundred bucks on christmas day because you can and because she doesn't want to be working there on christmas day but she has to and you get to honor like that's peace man peace, man. Peace. And you've never had that because your body's been trying to defend you since you were three from the people that should have taken the best care of you.

Yeah. Okay? That's what I'm talking about. And then your daughter is going to feel that connectivity and there's not going to be a nuclear reactor. She's going to be in the presence of a dad who's safe. Not who says all the right things no dad does. And not who doesn't say dumb things and mess up.

All dads do. But a dad whose presence is, that guy's somebody I can anchor into. Yeah. Right? Right. Does that sound good? That sounds, that sounds, um, it's a fairy tale, right? Yeah. It's a fairy tale. Okay. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you,

um, a copy of my book, own your past, change your future. I want you to read it. And I'll also send you, um, a digital copy so you can listen to it if you're not a reader. You can listen to it while you're driving. Okay? And the whole book is about making peace with these things happen to me, whatever these things happen to be. And then that terrifying question, what do I do next? And the second thing is in exchange for sending you the book and both versions of that book You my friend are going to fulfill your promise and call a trauma counselor today You're going to call somebody today and you're going to make an appointment today

So by the time christmas rolls around you've had one two, maybe three Sessions with them and let them know i'm scared. I don't trust you. I don't trust adults. I don't trust any of this And they'll say great. Have seat. Would you like some tea? And that my brothers were healing is going to start. And at some point you'll say sorry to your wife when the lights come on. And at some point she may see you and say, oh my gosh, there he is. And your daughter's going to want to be around more and more and more and more because peace and make no mistake my man this is gonna be a hard hard hard journey and make no mistake my friend you're worth every step of the way

thank you for calling and trusting me man i. I'm grateful for you. 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. During the break, we're also going to give

our friend Jack, he's talking about getting his finances squared up. And I'm honored to work here at the Ramsey Solutions office. For 30 years, we've helped people get out of debt. And so I'm going to send him a copy of our one-year subscription to Financial Peace where he can take all the classes and get a good game plan together and the EveryDollar app that he can actually use and track his spending. If you're thinking about changing the way you spend your money, the way finances have taken over your life in a negative and hard way, go to ramsaysolutions.com. And it's been transformative for my life. It's been transformative for millions of people across the country, me and my wife and our kids. Our lives are different because of the program. So I can't recommend it enough.

As we wrap up today's show, the mamas and the papas, man. California dreaming. I think everybody's dreaming of leaving California. I think it's more the weather. Yes. All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray. I've been for a walk on a winter's day ah seasonal affective disorder

I'd be safe and warm if I was in LA you'd be warm California dreaming on such a winter's day stopped into a church I passed along the way I got down on my knees to pray you know the preacher lights the coals he knows I'm gonna stay

California dreaming on such a winter's day. Or just get a light box. That'll work too. Love you guys. See you soon.