The Dr. John Delony Show - My Parents' Hoarding Is Becoming a Health Risk

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Today, we hear from a daughter worried about the health risks of her parents’ extreme hoarding, as well as a husband whose wife continues to commit financial infidelity. Then, Delony teaches on some bogus misinformation that’s spreading in the media about antidepressants. Lyrics of the Day: "I Want a New Drug" - Huey Lewis & The News 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 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.

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. I felt betrayed simply because she's been keeping money secret from me and spending lots of amount of money without me knowing. And so the way I couch that is financial infidelity. She's cheating on you. She's lying on you. She's lying to you. What's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show,

the greatest marriage and relationships and mental health podcast ever recorded. And my friends tell me I speak mostly in hyperbole, and I disagree. So glad you're with us. If you want to be on the show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291. Or go to johndeloney.com slash ask.

Tons of shenanigans in the news we'll get to a little bit later here. It's rare that I get, I almost never talk about the news on this show, but in a directed way, but man. Leave it to the news media, particularly one moron in particular, to just knock it out of the park, but we'll get to that later. All right, let's go. First, let's go to Taylor in Milwaukee.

What's up, Taylor? Hi, Dr. John. How are you? Good. What are you doing? Oh, you know, partying. Yes. Excellent.

It's like 10 in the morning. I'm excellent. We should probably talk about that. That may be another call, but we should talk about that. What are you up to? Having fun? Oh, it's a whole adventure that we're having over here. Uh-oh. Tell me about it. So my siblings and I are kind of at a crossroads. We are trying to figure out how to maintain a relationship with our parents. They have a hoarding issue,

and now it's becoming a health concern. And we're wondering how we can help them stay well while still respecting their things and respecting their space. That's hard. And I know you know that. Tell me, before I jump into that, tell me some of the challenges y'all have. Tell me some of the things you've tried to do. Let me ask that way. To be honest, over the last few years, we've been pretty laissez-faire about it. And we've known that this has been an issue that they've both had throughout our entire lives. But it's recently come to light that my dad has congestive heart failure

and he's going in for a triple bypass. So it's become more of a priority to give him a clean healing space to recover that's safe for him to move around without worrying about tripping or slipping. Mm-hmm. And the challenge with hoarding is that safety comes from that environment, the perception of safety, right? Right. And so in order to make somebody truly safe, you've got to make them feel very unsafe.

How has your mom responded to this? Not well, I'm assuming? Not well. We did go up there about a week ago and we started cleaning out one of the bedrooms. Oh. And it took three of us about six hours. And that probably didn't go well, did it? How'd you know? Well, because I've sat with hoarders before. It's very challenging.

I've helped people get stuff out of their homes before. It's very, very challenging. Yeah, it's tough, tough, tough. Tell me about it. It was, I mean, the room was just piled so high with random pieces of furniture, random clothing, tons and tons of hygiene products. My brother came down with a covered trailer. It was a 7x10, and we completely filled it out of one bedroom. Dad was pretty on board with it.

There were a couple of things that they both asked us to keep. So we try to be as respectful as possible and set those things off to the side. Dad was pretty on board with getting things cleaned up. There are a couple of things that you could tell were harder for him to let go of. But mom seemed to struggle with it more. So we were trying to push the idea that this is, this isn't about your things. We're not just trying to,

you know, come over and wipe you out and take all of your stuff. But this is about dad's health right now. And that's obviously much bigger than any tangible thing you can hold in this world. And it seemed to sink in a little bit. And then an hour later we would be right back to square A. That's right.

That's right. My guess would be just based off that one little snippet. Has your mother been the driver? Has she been the one over time accumulating things, dealing with anxiety, dealing with this internal stress by just accumulating and accumulating. And your dad just kind of lived in it. Um, and then it became part of their world. Yes. Uh, dad also contributes though. No question about that. No question. Uh, mom is more of the anxious quarter, like you had said. And I feel like dad is more of a gracious quarter where it's, he buys things with the intention of giving them to people and then they get lost in

the mix and they just sit there. Right. Both of those are better intentions. Both. So go ahead. As you work through this, you have, um, are looking at this very logically, okay? And fear and panic and anxiety, those are very illogical systems. Your brain doesn't want you logically wondering how kind or nice that tiger is at the front of the door. It just wants you to get out of there, right? So it screams at you, it sounds all your alarms and you get out of town, right?

Then you come to find out that that tiger is actually your neighbor's tiger and it's super sweet, has no claws, no teeth, and it's just lovely, right? Who cares? Your brain said, tiger, I'm out of here, right? So you've heard of fight, flight, or freeze as trauma responses, as the things that your body does to get you out of a situation, stress response. There's also a fourth one called fawn, where you nuzzle up. Maybe if I am extra loving, extra close, that will help ease this anxiety I feel in this relationship. And so your mother may have one impulse that is, I'm going to accumulate in case for out of scarcity. I saw that they ran out of toilet paper. They may run out of soap and deodorant and all these things, right? And then all of a sudden the train's out of the station. And your dad may be doing something

similar where his anxiety is, I'm going to try to bridge the gap in relationships. And instead of sitting down in a rocking chair and just saying, I love you, tell me about your day. I'm going to buy stuff. I'm going to buy stuff. I'm going to buy stuff. He never actually gets around to giving it away. But it's always this idea that this is some altruistic motive. It's not really. Really, they're both the same impulse and that's covering up a brain that is screaming that we're not safe, we're not safe, we're not safe. And that's what makes cleaning up so hard is your logical brain, the part of your head that says, this could all tip over on me and I'm gonna die.

Or the one that could do the math and say, I could open a new bar of soap every day for the rest of my life. I'm only gonna live 20 more years. That's this many more days. I have that much soap in my home. This is madness. But you try to get rid of that soap and your body turns all the alarm systems on.

And it's very hard. So your mother's actually trying to do a noble thing, which is, I hear you, I trust you. And then just an hour later, her brain is like, ah, it's all gone. Like they're peeling back all of our layers of safety, which makes this really hard. So your situation is, I don't say it's rare, but it's not one that everybody's going to run into. But what everybody is going to run into is we need to have some hard conversations and some boundary conversations with our parents about finances, about safety, about their mental health, about whatever. And how do we do that? Ultimately, I think you are 100% correct. Your dad cannot go back to a home that is unsafe.

And it's unsafe both structurally, but it's also unsafe the rats and mice that will live in that stuff and the danger. Yeah, we found plenty of evidence of their presence. Yes, exactly. I mean, so you pile that much stuff anywhere and rats and mice are going to live in there and he can't breathe that,

the infection risk, all of that. So the question you and your siblings need to ask is this. How far are we willing to go to keep dad safe versus let him ride out his last days how he wants to. What I mean is there may come a moment when you have to notify the social worker at the hospital that's going to talk to him about his release. And you need to let that person know that his current home is unsafe. And either he has to go to a home or your mother has to allow a team to come in there

and clean that thing top to bottom. And that usually involves one or two of those big dumpsters get dropped off in the front yard and a team will go in there and just take everything and get the carpets redone or clean or new carpet, paint the walls. Like the house is gonna need to be really overhauled so that he's safe.

Short that, you're talking about we're just going to nickel and dime this thing and that room will fill back up with junk. Because really, you're not getting to the core issue. The core issue is not the stuff. The core issue is

your mom and dad aren't well and now they're getting to an age where their wellness is kind of rolling back on you, right? Correct. So how far are y'all willing to go? I mean, we're pretty deep into it. Mom has been pretty good about letting a couple of my siblings come over

because they live pretty far away from all of us. So we're all just trying to tag team as far as when we can make it up there to do some cleaning here or there in between our own lives and schedules and work and families and things like that. But as far as like, I guess we don't really know what all the options are. Like we've kind of taken this on as we have to figure this out and we have a very short amount of time to do this my two sisters are coming out from Texas for his surgery

which was recently put off for another couple of weeks which is almost a godsend if he is stable enough for that couple weeks for us to have more time to handle this we're all kind of all in a mad dash

would anybody take him in for a month? I don't know if any of us could, to be honest. I live two hours away in a one-bedroom apartment. The bathroom is on a separate level than the rest of the living. I don't know if that would

work for him. I don't know if my brother and his family could do it. Okay. Ultimately, here's the framework for making the decision. You and your siblings, right now, you're all trying to nickel and dime this thing, and

quite honestly, it's probably not going to work. You might create a single bedroom with some space in it, and that's cool. My guess is, especially with folks who collect hygiene products, the bathroom's wild. Is that fair? It was before I cleaned it last weekend.

Well done. Very good. Thank you. There were lots of gloves involved. Yes. If you don't deal with that core issue, it will just refill itself. And it will have clothes in there and ironing boards and stuff that doesn't, I mean, that you wouldn't traditionally put in a bathroom. It's just going to fill up that way.

The framework here is this. How far, are we going to let dad back in that house? Yes or no? If the answer is yes, under what parameters? If we're not going to let him back in there, are we all in a position, is he in a position to pay for a one-bedroom apartment he can live in while he heals for six months, just sign a six-month lease? Will one of us take him in? Do we have money to pitch in and get him a rehab home, right? This is a matter of, hey, we're all willing to get dirty and aggressive and all this.

There's a much bigger issue at play here, much deeper reality here that I think everybody's got to deal with. The other thing that you can't miss is this. You got a brother and a sister, is that right? Three sisters and a brother. Okay. Okay. So there's actually a chunk of folks. That's great. The five of you are grieving this yourselves too. Because that's scary for anybody's dad to have that level of surgery, for mom not to be well, to have to go in there and see this stuff in your parents' home.

These kinds of things bring up junk in all of us too. And if you don't deal with that, then the exercise of cleaning becomes the anesthetic. That becomes the Xanax. It becomes the thing we do to cover over the pain instead of getting to that root cause and dealing with it. And so I think there just needs to be a Zoom call of some sort for all your brothers,

for your brother and your sisters, everybody get on the same page and you can lead it. And under what conditions do we let dad move back in? If I say, let him move in, he's a grownup. He can maybe do what he wants to, but then we're going to make a formal report with the social worker and say his living environment is not safe. Somebody needs to do a welfare check is the words on his home and see if somebody, if he should be allowed to move back in. And my guess is they would say, absolutely not. And then can any of us take him for 30 days

or 60 days in our homes? Yes, it's gonna be inconvenient, but he's our dad, right? Does he have the money? Do y'all have the money to pitch in and get him a six month lease at a small apartment? Will y'all continue to drive back and forth to nickel and dime this? Or will your mom sit down

and have a really hard conversation, which is we're about to pull the trigger on all this stuff, or we're gonna hire a crew to come in there and take care of your home. And maybe she's found some peace in that bathroom. She's found some peace in that bedroom that didn't exist previously. That'd be fantastic if she did. My guess is probably not. It's probably very stressful for her to go in there, but maybe not. But man, if she did, that'd be fantastic. Then you can hire a crew, get in there and get that stuff cleaned out over a weekend. And everybody pitches in four or 500 bucks.

Of course, none of you'll have that, but you do it anyway. And then, man, now we're off to the races. Dad can come home. But I think there's a level of reality that we got to get to. And you're not the only one. Almost all of us have to get to that level of reality with our parents and say,

this is actually what we're dealing with. And then what decisions are we going to make moving forward? But thank you so much for that call. Let me know how those talks go. I really want to follow up on this one. Let me know how those talks go. Let me know if your mom ultimately comes around. And let me know how the surgery goes.

And we'll be thinking about your dad. 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

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Let's go to Carlos in, oh, great. We got to go back to Oklahoma. What's up, Carlos? Hey, how's it going, Dr. John? Good, how are you? Doing good, hanging in there. Even in Oklahoma? Yeah, it's nice and rainy out here so is

it really trying yeah man y'all needed that huh yeah good deal all right what's up man hey um yeah i mean i don't know i kind of don't know where to start so i'll just kind of get straight to the cannonball dude hey if you don't know how to jump in the lake just cannonball that's the best way yeah there you go and so um just something that has been happening between um me and my wife is simply i've i've been i felt betrayed simply because she's been keeping money secret from me and spending lots of amount of money without me knowing. And it's, it's a continuous thing. And she came back to me about two weeks, two weeks ago, letting me know about it again, after, you know, we've talked, um, two other times, you know, kind of trying to budget and all this stuff, but it just keeps happening.

And so I'm feeling kind of just, I don't know stuff but it just keeps happening and so i'm feeling kind of just i don't know don't know what to do feeling really down i know deep downside this isn't like a money problem i feel like it's a lot deeper than that yeah and so with that being said i have like some feelings about it because i know it's not a money problem but i just need some guidance need some help about certain thoughts that like I have regarding this issue. Yeah. So dude, it's,

it's, it's an integrity issue and it's an honest honesty. Right. And it's a fidelity issue. So the way I couch that is financial infidelity. She's cheating on you. She's lying to you. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. She's got secrets you. She's lying to you. Yeah. Right? Yeah. She's got secrets. And I think you're very, very wise to see this. The money is just the symptom of a much bigger issue going on. When you guys meet up, tell me how these, like, so you get together to have a budget, which all a budget means is you all have a plan for how you want your life to go. And you have some dreams of what you want your life to look like, right?

So you reverse engineer that all. That starts with, like, Sunday nights, we're going to say, how are we going to do money this week? Where does she get in this pocket of money that she's hiding from you? Credit cards. She did tell me that she got a personal loan through her bank which are things that i didn't know about she just went ahead and did it behind me yeah what was she buying so that's kind of where i wanted to go kind of just get a give you some context so we we've been together four years we're almost two years married now um we went to therapy together

um while we were dating and also when we were married but there was a hiccup there where she didn't like therapy anymore because she felt like the the therapist and i were like teaming up against her and stuff like that so that kind of came tumbling down She doesn't like accountability, does she? Um, I guess. I feel, I feel bad. You know, I feel bad because I love my wife. I know,

I know, I know. And hey, I don't feel bad, but I feel, I don't like talking bad about some dude's wife. Right? So when I ask these questions,

I'm not, it's not me being like, Oh dude, it's not like that. But it's me saying like, you're married to somebody that does not like accountability. Right. And feels trapped by that and really doesn't want people telling her what to do. And you know who does that also?

My six-year-old daughter. Yeah. It's a very immature way to navigate the world because it's not a recognition of adult reality, right? Right, right. And so going to answer your question, what it's not a reality. It's not a recognition of adult reality. Right. Right. Right. And so going to answer your question, what she's spending this on. So after that whole hiccup with the therapist happened, um, she has friends that are life coaches, you know, mindset coaches and she expressed that, you know,

talking to them was like in one session helped her more than therapy ever did. And so ever since she got, started getting involved in that, she's like, I want to become one. So that's what she's spending on. She says spent thousands and thousands of dollars on courses to become a life coach and just things like that. And so she has like this career that she wants to get in mind. And I'll support her, but she feels like I don't support her when I say, we can't buy this certain course. What I'd like to happen is let's save the money.

And then when you have the money, let's go ahead and pay that. I'm all for that. But she just wants everything now, now, now. Let me get like, make sure I'm on the right page. She is pursuing a job that helps people become whole, align their personal and professional lives, align and manage relationships, and create new identities in order to meet their goals. She's pursuing this job by lying to her husband, taking out personal loans, buying things she can't afford, putting herself and her husband in some pretty significant financial risk so that she can tell other people how to live their lives with integrity.

Correct. I mean, if you put it that way. It's madness, right? I mean, it's madness, right? Right. And it doesn't surprise me. So I actually work with a coach and very intentionally, this coach is not my friend. So of course it felt good to talk to your friend who happens to be a coach. Because you know what friends do? Friends are like, yeah, bull crap. That's what friends do, right?

Right. They swing first, and then they're like, why did we hit that guy? That's what friends do. Now, great friends will also say, hey, before I hit that dude, why are we hitting this guy? But they feel good. That's what friends are for, supporting you up. Therapy is uncomfortable, especially when you don't like accountability. And your wife doesn't like that, man.

Here's the deal. You love this woman. You also use words like hiccup. It is not a hiccup when your wife quits therapy on you you know what i mean that's a temper tantrum i'm taking my ball and i'm going home because you said hey this is important to us coming together here we've got some issues she said sure i'm in and then she's like i quit um you not supporting her is different than we can't afford this those are two different stories right and now there's some gaslighting going on where she's trying to make you feel

crazy you're looking at the math and the math says we can't afford these things and she's going to put math aside and say, you don't like me, you don't follow, right? So let me ask you this. Is there something beneath this layer? Because it feels like there is. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is my first marriage.

I'm her third. She's been divorced twice. I know a little bit of what happened and everything. Carlos, brother, next time you got to lead with that. That's super helpful. My bad. That's super helpful. Yeah, I was just trying to do the cannonball, like you said.

Yeah, you cannonballed, but you only got halfway in. Like part of you hit the lake, I mean the land when you jumped in. Yeah. So my guess is. There's a lot in there. There's a lot in there. And that's kind of where like, um, trying not to get emotional, but it's kind of hard for me because right now,

I feel like, like this career is definitely like, it's feeling like it's definitely above me. Um, and like, she's doing her thing. Like she has her own agenda. Um, even if I ask like, Hey, like I support you, but let's, let's just wait a little bit so we can make that money. Cause we're already in debt from the last time you did this. Um, but she kind of just says, well, if she did one time, come and talk to me about something about a purchase that she wanted to get. I told her let's wait. She's like, well, I'm doing it. And so I feel like she doesn't really like respect my opinion or like

respect my, I don't, I don't even know what to call it, but I just feel like. Respect my authority. Yeah. Yeah. Like,

yeah, I don't know. She, it doesn't feel like that. She absolutely doesn't care. And I know this hurts to hear that because you love her and that's your wife um but you are a springboard to the life that she wants to lead and the moment you try to partner up with her which is what marriage is she says whoa whoa whoa whoa i'm not doing the partner

thing i'm doing whatever the hell I want to do. Right. And if you don't want to be along for that ride, A, there's two more in the shadows. You can be number three. That's fine. If you don't want to get along for that ride, you're the crazy one.

You're the jerk. You're the not supportive one. You're the mean guy trying to oppress me and hold me down. Here's the, like, brother, you and I could talk for a long time. Ultimately, here's where the question lies. It is, are you in or do you have a or what moment? Do you have a line somewhere? I've been in from the start,

but with all these things happening, I feel like that line is just little by little creeping in. Yes, yes, yes. I can 100% tell you I've been in from the start. I knew what I was getting into. I knew her trauma, and I feel like it, as it, you know, as it just kept going, it just got worse and worse and worse. And I don't know. It's just, yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to be super honest with you. Like I appreciate that brother,

but it's, but that line, yeah. You can be totally in and somebody else can be edging you out. Right. Um, yes. The Yes. The other thing is this. Just so we're clear, I'm not just bagging on your wife. Dude, she may have been, I don't know. This is a whole other conversation you and I could have off. She may have been abused in these other marriages, in these other relationships. Yes.

She circled the wagons and said, this will never happen again. And she may have hit that pendulum too far. No man will ever tell me what I can and can't do because I paid the price for that. Physically, psychologically. I mean, who knows what that past is? The reality though is, y'all are here.

Right. So the path forward is you sitting down with a very clear or what moment. This is going to change or I'm going to go. Or you got to be completely honest with yourself and say, even if this doesn't change, I'm going to stay. And then it becomes much more about management on your end. So let's take it and make it much less personal for you. I hear people call and say, hey, my wife, my husband's gained 110 pounds. I love him.

I'm no longer physically or sexually attracted to him at all. And I don't know what to do. One of the starting places I always start are you going to leave and sometimes people are like yeah i'm really kind of getting like that's one track the other is i will never leave no matter what i'm here ride or die that's a different conversation see what i'm saying right and so you got to ask yourself where is that line and don't let it sneak up on you you just got to be honest with yourself and with your wife and say, here's what this line is. And then you got to be really clear about, here's what getting on the same page means, that we're doing this thing together. I'm 100% guaranteeing you that her experiences as a life coach will fail.

Because she's not living the principles that she will be taught to teach other people. And you can't, I mean, ultimately you have to live the principles that you're teaching. Right. Or you can, you can limp and prop it up, but it's going to fall over. Right. Right. And so ultimately you got to say, here's where we are,

here's what we're going to be about. And I need you involved or else. Have you, have you pictured yourself or else? I have, I have before. Okay. Um,

I don't like to think about it. I feel guilty doing it. Yeah. Can I ask you a real hard question? Absolutely. Um, do you have somebody else in mind already? Like another person?

Yep. No. No? Does she? I would say no. I don't think she does. You were less confident about that answer. Well, it's just because, I mean, I don't think it was less confident.

I feel like, I feel hurt right now that I just can't trust her, so my mind's going everywhere. There you go, okay, okay. And I'm just like, well, I don't know. I can't trust her, right? So maybe. Ah, okay, okay. I'm just saying maybe.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, and that's So maybe. Ah, okay. Okay. I'm just saying maybe. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Yeah. And that's the problem with secrets, right? Yeah. So it's a good sign then. Because often I ask that question and I'll hear a pause and then the dude will be like,

yeah, I work with her. And that, what I don't want you to do is get to a place where you find yourself compromising your values because your, you know, values because your home is on fire. I'd rather you just deal with the fire and then let's make some adult decisions moving on. So let me just ask you, man, what are you going to do? What's this look like? Well, I talked to her already when I found this out and, um, so I, I made some plans with her and she said it's like, she's good with it. So I told her like, Hey, we're going to talk about this in front of a therapist. Um, and we'll, we'll do it that way. And we'll figure things out. That's honestly all I have planned because talking about this, her career, and she's really sensitive to it. So if I say anything about it, she might take it wrong and the whole conversation just doesn't go anywhere.

It sounds like your home is one where you have to walk on eggshells in your own house. Absolutely. It's true. Your home should be a place where you can drop your shoulders and say, right, I can exhale. Because we got to walk on an eggshell sometimes at our jobs and sometimes with dealing with people that are tough to deal with. Our home should be the place where we drop our shoulders, right? Yeah.

I would recommend writing this out. And that way at the first counseling session, you can tell the therapist, I've written a letter. And I think in that letter, you should talk about, I've lost trust and I don't feel safe in this relationship.

And those are not bro things to say. Those are not very Oklahoma and masculine things to say, but they're true. Right? Right. And you can say, somebody asked me if you were cheating on me and my first thought was no, but then I say, but they're true. Right? Right. And you can say, somebody asked me if you were cheating on me

and my first thought was no, but then I thought, but maybe. Right. And that'd be a big old, oh my gosh, can't believe you would say that about, and then it's going to be a rediversion to you

and what's wrong with you. But the reality is, there's just this lack of trust and is the air we breathe. I also think it would be fair to say, if you quit therapy again, I'm taking that as a sign you're quitting on us because we're not okay. Right.

And I think that's a very fair boundary for you to draw. Right. And I have a quick question with everything you're saying. So one thing that I guess, which is a struggle for me too, is she, she tells me she's sorry, but in a, in a way she's,

she like, I don't know, the actions don't say it. So listen, listen, listen, behavior's a language. Uh huh.

Behavior's a language. My wife can come up and say, you're such a moron. While she's hugging me and giving me a kiss. My wife can come up and say, you're such a moron while she's hugging me and giving me a kiss. And her actions are way more important than her words. And she can also say, no, I'm not mad while she's slamming the cabinets, right?

Behavior is a language. Right. And your wife can say whatever she wants. But she doesn't have any respect for you more importantly she doesn't have any not more importantly but equally important

she doesn't have any respect for the unity the relationship y'all have right she seems to only respect whatever the crap she wants to do in whatever moment

she wants to do it in yeah yeah I feel like she holds this career, her coaching buddies and all that. If you take the career away, I bet a million bucks there's been things in the past. She sold Tupperware, did Mary Kay,

was going to go get another degree in nursing, was going to do something else. This is just the latest thing to distract herself. Gotcha. It feels good and there's all these promises about you can make a billion dollars and you can become an influencer

and when you're first in counseling, first in coaching, it feels like a superpower. Like, I know why everybody's doing what you don't, but it feels that way because you're learning all this stuff. So it feels good right now. And then she can start meeting with clients and it's going to get messy

real fast. That's just a prediction. Maybe I'm totally wrong. Maybe she's going to be incredible at it. And she's maybe, I don't think she's a psychopath. Hopefully she's not. But yeah, this is just the latest thing. Is that true?

No, yeah. Very true. It wasn't anything during our dating life. It wasn't anything like, you know, it just sprung forth out of nowhere. And all of a sudden, this is what she's called to do. And so. So let me give you this. So I was the, I graduated with a PhD.

I was done with school. I'm done. Got my little fancy pants doctorate degree. I was the dean of students at a law school, working with my students, taking care of people. And I really, like, in my guts, felt like I need to figure out what's going on with me, what's going on with my family,

what's going on with my marriage, what's going on with my friends, what's going on with the country and my students. So I started nickel and diamond my way. I just took a free class in counseling and I rolled up, I started in the master's program and they just rolled me up into the PhD program. When I finally was like, hey, I'm going all in on this. I'm going to go ahead and get a second PhD. That was a very hard season for me and my wife. And we had to calculate the finances of it all, the time of it all. It was something we very much had to do together.

And she wasn't on board. She didn't want me to do it. She's like, you've already done this. And I felt this drive. But the drive couldn't override my responsibility I had to a young kid, to a marriage that was struggling, to finances. We owed a bunch of people money. It was hard to do. And so we had to finances. We owed a bunch of people money. Like, it was hard to do.

And so we had to navigate that together. Right. See what I'm saying? So I had that same drive. I wanted to go do this thing and I had a path laid out for me and still had to be an adult about how I moved forward in it.

I couldn't just say, oh my gosh, really? And just take out a bunch of loans. And when I, and I've come to learn this the last five or six years, embarrassingly, or last four or five years. If I'm starting to do something, send a text, make a phone call, go to a store. And my first thought is, I haven't told my wife yet, or I don't need to tell her about this.

I definitely need to tell her about it. Because that means I'm hiding something, right? Yeah, I agree. And so I bought two water bottles like two nights ago off Amazon. I read some study about the chemicals from plastics and I was like, do you want to get some plastics?

Here it is, right? Look, I'm sitting. It's right here on my desk. And I ordered it and I thought, we have so many water bottles. My wife's going to kill me. And dude, I ordered them anyway. And that's a minor thing, but it's a thing that I did knowing there was going to be a bigger conversation. And that if I had asked my wife about it, she would have said, hey, what if we waited until we did our next budget? We had the money for it. It's not like we're broke.

I didn't go take a loan out for it, but it was just a little bitty thing. And I had to tell her, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have ordered yet another thing. Right? See what I'm saying? Yeah. I'm telling you, here's what I'm telling you all this.

You're not crazy. And you're not weak. And you're not a moron. And you're not some kind of lame, like whiny, whatever. And you're not crapping on your wife's dreams or anything like that.

Sounds like you are all in. You just want to be all in together with your wife. And I totally support that. And I think you're right to tell your wife. The line, the cliff for us is coming up really quick. So before it sneaks up on us, we're going to see a counselor, which I think you're super wise to do.

I think the next step is to write that letter out. And there's going to be a lot of anger in that letter, a lot of rage, a lot of frustration, a lot of emotion and feeling in that. I think that's good. And then you're gonna read that letter to her in front of the therapist and say, here's where I am. I'm not interested in moving forward if you're gonna continue to be a person I can't trust. Or I am gonna move forward, but I'm gonna get my own finances and you're gonna be like, right, I'm gonna have to create this world so that I can live in that world

and nobody wants to live like that, man. So do this. Let me know how that first counseling session goes. I mentioned in the follow-up there, to everybody listening, if you've, I've said it before, I've come to believe infidelity

is a much bigger thing than who kissed who, than who made out with who, who hooked up with who. Infidelity is, am I in this? Am I all in? And am I all in with my money? Am I all in with my finances? Am I all in with being honest? Am I all in with letting my needs be heard, am I all in with my actions, trying to meet my partner's needs? Am I all in? Am I all in? Do I hold things back?

And fidelity has become just such a much bigger thing to me. As I meet with couples all over the country, people are living these really fragmented, messy marriages. And then they're going to counseling, trying to fix the anxiety or trying to fix their frustration or trying to fix this or that. And man, when you try to be 17 different people

at the same time, it's exhausting and it's just melting relationships. If you're gonna be all in, be all in. Fidelity is about integrity and integrity is about, is the root is the word integer. It means whole. It means the circle never stops, right? Be all in. And if somebody that you're connected to is not all in, be willing to have the hard, uncomfortable conversation sooner rather than later. 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.

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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 churchillmortgage.com slash D'Loni and get the home buyer edge today. All right, we are back. Instead of taking a third call, I want to spend just a few minutes on this thing. It's kind of blown up and I don't normally do this, right?

Instead of being in the show. Here's where I'm kind of struggling. And so I'm just going to be honest, and I want you to hear my thought processes here. Number one, a study comes out that's called the Serotonin Theory of Depression, a systematic umbrella review of the evidence came out and it was uh published in nature looks like um and it just explodes goes bananas and everyone's like oh my gosh no way ah and then like most of these things it makes its way to the popular media press and the popular media press is desperate for one thing. And let's not ever forget this in the popular media press. When you listen to this show, A, it's free and B, I sell ads like for a mattress company, have some supplements that are coming soon. I try to sell you my book,

right? That's how I make my money, right? So I want you to show up here. When you're in one of the popular news media world, you're selling ads, you just want eyeballs and somebody else is dealing with the ads, right? So your whole job is not to give correct news, to not to give right answers. The whole job is to get clicks. And the more sensational and wild and I can make something, the more likely I am to click on it. And when there's something as complicated as depression and neurobiology and science, and you're trying to push a narrative that science is all screwed up, and no one should trust scientists, and we should all just sit at home and whatever, then this kind of thing comes out, and it's so easy to get all of your ducks in a row in one

fell swoop. I can get all the clicks I want by going, oh my gosh, yeah. And I can bash science again and, and, and. So here's that. And then here's my second problem. I refuse to participate in the clickbait. So I'm not even going to tell you who the pundit is that's running their mouth about this. It's probably not hard to figure out because this isn't a political issue. This is a, somebody's talking about something and they don't know what they're talking about and they're gonna get a lot of people hurt. And it makes me crazy when people do this. It makes me crazy. So if you hear me talk about education, for instance,

I'll talk about, hey, teachers, you need to let kids talk in the lunchroom. I'm not gonna complain about a problem until I got a solution to it. And now pundits have taken this study. So real quick, it's been 30 plus years, if not more, decades, where scientists understood this idea that you get depressed

simply because you are missing a particular molecule, right? And the pharmaceutical industry absolutely jumped all over this hypothesis, the serotonin myth, the dopamine, whatever missing molecule myth you want to jump to. And we're going to give you a drug that replaces that molecule. Then no matter what's going on in your life, what's going on in your environment, what's going on is going to suddenly be solved. And so SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, right? Has never added more serotonin to your brain. They don't do that. They manipulate how that serotonin moves and how it's bioavailable in your brain, okay? So this idea that you take an SSRI

to get more serotonin into your body is false. That's not how that even works. The second thing, or I don't know what number we're on, the 500th thing here, is scientists have known this for a long time. The farm industry has continued to push it. That's their deal. Scientists have known for a long time.

They move from that to genetics. Hey, we think there may be a depression gene. There may be an anxiety gene. Here's what everybody's come to know the last 15, 20, 30 years. That neurobiology matters and genetics matter and environment matters

and personal experiences matter. So I can have 20 light switches in my garage and all of them turn on a different light. But if nobody ever turns those lights on, they don't come on automatically. And people think that I've got all the genes, I've got all the light switches, that means everyone's going to have this. That's not how that works, right? And you can turn all the light switches on, but if the power to the box is off, if there's a windstorm outside or it's raining outside, maybe the electricity doesn't come on that day, but it comes on the next day, right?

So environment matters. All this stuff matters. That's why this show is important because we talk to individual people going through individual things because that's how you have to distill it down. That's why in my book, Own Your Past, you have to talk about what happened to you

because all that stuff plays a role here in addition to your genes, in addition to your diet, in addition to how much you move, in addition to your whatever, the serotonin and dopamine and all that stuff in your head. Here's where I have a problem. And this is a problem with the media is that there is no wisdom. There's just grenades. There's just grenades. There's just grenades. There's no wisdom, just grenades. And so as a scientist,

if you look at this umbrella review of the evidence, that there is no data that suggests that low levels of serotonin are related to the development of depression. And also you look at the bajillions of studies that suggest SSRIs help people with depression. I personally have benefited from SSRIs for anxiety. And here's why. Did it solve my anxiety? Nope. I've been pretty open about that. It doesn't fix anxiety, but it takes the alarm system and helps turn it down a bit. And quite honestly, I don't care about the neurobiology.

It worked so that I could go see a counselor, so that I could have some hard, hard conversations with my wife and my marriage, so that I could sit with some parenting coaches, so that I could go to the gym on a regular basis because I wasn't just pulsing with this all the time. And so as a scientist, you look at this and you go, okay, I've got all these SSRI studies that say these things do have a statistically significant chance of helping people. And now I just got a new piece of data that says,

this by the way is 30, 40 years old. It's not new at all. It just made its way to the popular press. Huh, it's not because of this. Well, cool. Now I've got a new piece of data. That doesn't mean you don't go throw the whole thing out. And it's funny because I'm not a medicine proponent. I am all about figure out lifestyle and environmental and trauma before you just go take meds. I'm somebody who, when I go to my doctor, when I did take a SSRI for anxiety, I said, before we do this, I want to have an end date on the

calendar that you and I agree on so that I have something to aim for. I don't want this just to be a part of my life forever. And my doctor's response was, you're gonna have to do a lot of work then, like going to counseling and exercising and changing your diet, all those things. And I was up for it, I was in. So all that to say is this, if you take SSRIs under no circumstances, should you instantly just stop taking them? Don't do that.

If you take benzos, benzodiazepines, don't just stop taking them because some pundit on some news show told you not to. Go meet with your doctor. If you are wondering, huh, I want to learn more about neurobiology, neuropsychology. I want to learn how these things. Great. You now have the internet and you can find all kinds of studies. It's incredible.

I'll even put a link to this in the show notes. Also, this is a call to scientists. The more you partner with a pharmaceutical company, the more that you stand a chance to have your messaging go sideways. And then this is the result. And the group that looks the worst here is not the farm industry. It's psychiatrists. And I know some psychiatrists

and they are extraordinary people. And they help a lot, a lot of people. There's also psychiatrists that are just idiots, like in every job. So what am I saying? Number one,

everybody relax. Take a breath. Number two, don't go to everybody relax take a breath number two don't go to a news station for your medical needs go talk to your doctor

and that's been a conversation for the last three or four or five years to my friends who are in the media stop stop with the big sensational because you're gonna get people To my friends who are in the media, stop. Stop. With the big sensational, ah, damn it. Because you're going to get people hurt.

You're going to get people hurt. Because people are going to watch that and be like, I knew it. Worse, parents are going to watch that and say, I knew it. Now my kids are going to get their kids off. There is no, well, I won't say that. I'm not going to say that. And you can tell I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated when people who don't know what they're talking about run their mouth about something and they have influence over a lot of people and people are going to every problem.

They're just simply not. And as a culture and as a country, we are, as a humanity, we are well overdue to reimagine how we live life and the pace and the scale and the scope and the maniacal pace, all of it. How we do relationships and how we try to have everything.

We need to look at that. And also to throw out all medications and drugs. It's insanity. It's madness. It's like getting rid of electricity because of electrical fires. So there's that. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up?

Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com.

All right, as we wrap up today's show, Kelly, once again, she is so, so much older than me in it. Three years, people, three years. At least 13 years, at least 13 years. She's a big Huey Lewis and the News fan. Not a big surprise, though, that her favorite Huey Lewis song is called I Want a New Drug. Figures, figures.

The song goes like this. I want a new drug. Figures, Kelly. One that won't make me sick, or one that won't make me crash my car, or make me feel three feet thick. I want a new drug, one that won't hurt my head, one that won't make my mouth too dry or my eyes too red,

one that won't make me nervous wondering what to do, one that makes me feel like I feel when I'm with you. When I'm alone with you, I want a new drug. One that won't spill. One that won't cost too much or come in a pill. One that won't make me nervous wondering what to do. One that makes me feel like I feel when I'm with you. Kelly, that's how I feel. It's not. I do feel like I'm on drugs, but nevermind. Hey, we'll see you soon.