The Dr. John Delony Show - My Sister & Her Husband Have Become Swingers

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

In today’s show, we hear from a youth center employee seeking to better help the teens from troubled backgrounds, a wife whose husband’s extreme misophonia is triggered by her voice, and a woman struggling to cut ties with her sister who became a swinger. Lyrics of the Day: "Sultans of Swing" - Dire Straits "Chandelier" - Sia 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. You were born in the late 90s and into the 2000s. Your ecosystem is climate change is going to kill us all. The government hates you and is trying to kill you. The healthcare system wants to kill you and murder you. And they don't have humans to walk through that with them. We've just handed them cell phones. It's nine o'clock on a Saturday.

Regular crowd shuffles in. Hey, it's the Dr. John Deloney Show. What is going on? It's not even Saturday. Maybe it is, but probably it's not. I'm so glad you're here. I'm John and we are getting into the messy lives of other people on the best mental health show ever, ever. We're talking about relationships, mental health, school, work, whatever's going on in your hearts and minds. And if you want to be on the show, give me a call at 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844-693-3291. Hold on. Someone's taking my picture out in the lobby.

I'll just wave. What's up? All right, cool. Very cool. All right, let's go to Katie in Fort Wayne. What's up, Katie? How we doing? I'm good. How are you, Dr. Jelani? You just called me John. Good, good, good. What's up? Well, I have a little bit of a more broad question, but I think it's something that a lot of listeners can relate with. So I work at an afterschool program with middle school students. So they're between 11 and 13. And the large majority of them bring in a lot of emotional baggage and trauma. So I guess my overarching question is, how do we come alongside them and meet kids where they are

and help them work through their trauma in a way that they can trust us? Oh, that's so hard. That's a lot. Right out of the gate, I want to tell you, that's a tall order that I might shift the focus there. Yeah. It's very hard in your limited one hour a day or one and a half hours a day in three months, if you will, to take a child's brain that's being traumatized on the regular by the very people who are supposed to love and connect and give that brain peace and healing so that that kid can drop his shoulders and breathe and his body can stop going to war and then he can start practicing relationships

that's hard um right out of the gate the first the most important thing I could tell you is to absolutely stone love those kids. And love those kids like stop them when they walk in the building and make them come to you or you go to them and you look them in the eyes and if you're

allowed to hold their hands or hold their face and say I love you. I'm so glad that you're here. This place is better when you're here. And this is not a one-time fix. This is an everyday, week after week, month after month, year after year. And their bodies will learn that place is safe.

She's safe. See what I'm saying? And that's so hard. The trauma healing can't be done in an after school program. It's going to be a piece of a larger healing picture, right? I guess along with the idea of the larger healing picture, we are mandatory reporters. We do have frequent contact with CPS and whatnot. So how do we communicate that people like CPS or counselors that the school has connections to the kids with, different things like that, how do we

present that in a way that isn't harmful? Because a lot of these kids have told us that CPS only makes everything worse and whatnot. So how do we, I guess, show that people are trying to be advocates for them? You have to build trust outside of the event, outside of the moment, right? It's, I'm trying to think of an example. Like I have lived my life in a way and done my life in a way

and supported people in front of, in front of, on stages and behind closed doors in a way that if somebody accused me of X, Y, or Z, it would be obnoxious, right? Because people would go, no, their default setting in these areas would be trust. Now, if somebody came forward and said, hey, this guy made a really inappropriate diarrhea joke at a funeral, everyone would go, yeah, I could probably see that. That was really not cool, right? I would not have the benefit of the doubt on that, right? But when it comes to something, some big egregious thing, people's default setting would be no way, right? And so trying to win the battle of – here's a great example. This one's hard.

I was working with a kid at a center that dealt with traumatized children, and I was giving a trauma assessment to this child. And it was – in fact, the intake form, and we're trying to gauge the ACEs, and we're trying to gauge where they are and how much trauma they've experienced when they came here. And this was a really important moment. I was with Dr. Robinson, and she is an important mentor for me. She was watching me do this, and so I did the intake, and their trauma score was basically zero. And their parents had left. I mean, there's maybe one or two. Their parents had left them and their grandparents were now taking over. And granddad got in trouble, got a DWI or something like that.

And then the house got stormed. Like police officers showed up. It was a big whole thing. They took the kids out, put them in a van and took them out. And I looked at the trauma scores, not what I was expecting because usually when I did it, they were relatively high. And I looked at her and she looked at me and said, and now their trauma begins today. Their trauma begins now. And I was like, oh, they're going to be worse off because of the system.

We overstepped. We system. We overstepped. We being our community overstepped. And the answer was yes, right? So we took kids that were – their lives looked very different than ours, but it was a mess. And then we stormed their house, dragged them out of their house, put them in a car, and then dropped them off at a residential treatment center. And now they're going, oh, no, right? You see what I'm saying? So you have to earn trust for these kids

and understand that CPS might have shown up and made everything worse. And worse than their mind is, they took my mom away. They took my dad away. And they don't have the wisdom and the context to know your mom was hurting. Your mom was an addict.

Your dad was struggling. Your mom was struggling. They don't know that. They just know because that person came in my house kicking and screaming or yelling, I don't get to see my mommy anymore. And there's nothing you can say to that other than I'm so, so sorry. I know you miss your mom, right? So on the other side of that, you can show up every day, tell them that you love them. You can play pool with them. You can ask them how their homework's going. You can hold them accountable, which is a huge thing. You're

not allowed to talk that way here. If you choose to talk that way here, you are choosing to leave. And I don't like that because this place can't work without you. Same as I talk to my kids, right? So that when you say, I have to make this phone call because it's in your best interest, they're going to kick and scream and be mad, but they're going to trust you. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, for sure. And that's so hard. I know. Do you think that the aspect of accountability is bigger than like the idea of doing something

on their behalf almost, like holding them to that higher level or helping them like slowly change their behavior and their reaction is bigger than maybe like calling cps like in the long run like what will make the bigger difference in their life well cps is going to protect the children from adults in their lives who are not living up to their responsibilities yeah accountability is Accountability is going to be, this is who we are and this is how we talk to one another and we don't hit and we don't swear at adults and we don't lose our temper. And if we do need to take a break, so what you're trying to do is give them a gap. The more traumatized a person is, the thinner the gap is between stimulus and response. Between you just came at me, I'm firing back

because I've not fired back before and it's gotten me hurt. Or my mom's about to leave because you took my mom away. I'm coming, hell's coming with me, right? I'm coming swinging because you took my mom away. And what we're trying to do in those moments, what love does, what connection does, I know it sounds so cheesy, but it's true. It provides a little bit of a gap between the stimulus and the response. And that's what we're trying to teach in those moments what love does what connection does and that sounds so cheesy but it's true it provides a little bit of a gap between the stimulus and the response and that's what

we're trying to teach these kids yes somebody just step to you breathe is it worth not being able to be around me and your friends is it worth going to in school suspension is it worth going to jail no the answer is always no right and so what we're trying to do is build that gap there Is it worth going to in-school suspension? Is it worth going to jail? No. The answer is always no. Right? And so what we're trying to do is build that gap there. So CPS and accountability are going to be two different conversations usually.

Yeah. How are you doing? This is a hard, hard, hard thing. I'm good. I think that learning how to navigate the conversations with the kids has helped me navigate a lot of similar conversations in my own life, which has been really influential. Like getting a love on these kids has taught me how to help family problems or just my own personal life. And so slowly but surely we're getting there, I think. That's awesome. So one of the things I wish I could go back and do differently is this. When I worked similar jobs, I worked at camps, I've worked at day camp, summer camp kind of

things I've worked at with all different groups, right? So similar. I've never worked at the particular group, a youth center, but similar. I really overshot the mark. And what I mean by this is I was using these kids as a way to quote unquote change the world, to affect the system. I want things to be different at a global level and then a national level, then a state level and a community level. And I wish I could go back and do that over. The way you change things at a global national level is you love really intensely at the local level. So instead of, I want to give you your heart piece right now, because you're doing a hard, hard job. I'm so grateful you're in your community doing this in Fort Wayne.

What I want you to begin to do is to walk into this building and we're not trying to solve global problems. I'm trying to love these 14 kids as deeply as I possibly can in the hour and a half that I got them. Yeah. Does that make sense? And it takes a lot of bricks out of your backpack. You're not carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. You're carrying the love of these 14 kids. Yeah.

And before they get there, I'm going to write them each a letter. I'm going to hand it to them before they go because they're going to hold something that they got from me that just says I love you and I'm so glad I got to be with you today little things like that change family trees because they're going to have for the first time in their life

they're going to have a picture of what love is they're going to have a picture of what connection is they're going to have a picture of fill in the blank and by the way not all these kids' parents are terrible. Some of them are just working a lot, right? They're trying to figure out life and they got great parents who are duct taping four and five jobs together

just trying to put food on the table because everything's so expensive. And so they don't have terrible whatever, but they can find connection and love in you. That's hard, hard, hard. And those kids are suffering, huh? Yeah, it's, I think it's fully gotten worse too. Like just the quality and the quantity of abuse and trauma and the bricks that those

kids are carrying in. And I think that COVID and just the whole quarantine in the school system has just made everything so different. So working through that's been challenging. Yeah. Well, I'm so grateful you're there. We'll be working through that for years and years and years. That's going to ripple through our communities for... I don't like it.

And I'm glad you're there. I'm glad you're there, Katie. For everybody working with and in the lives of young people, whether you're a teacher, whether you're a social worker, whether you are working at an after-care program or weekend program or Big Brothers program, seek connection first. Seek how do I plug into this kid first

and how do I make this kid feel safe? Peace. 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 churchillmortgage.com slash D'Loni and get the home buyer edge today. All right, we're back. Hey, along the lines of that last call, James gave me this survey right before the show started it's uh by miranda dixon lunenberg is i think it's published at vox here says the mental health million project queried over 220 000 people on well-being across the

world and it writes the results are worrying one standout finding was a worrying decline in mental well-being in the 18 to 24 year old age bracket this is a surprise because usually they're at a u-shaped curve right people are feeling better for most of their life with the youngest and oldest groups fararing best and people in middle age are like is this what my life is and they're concerned because on the front end of this scale the numbers are are terrifying says that while concerns about the state of youth mental health have been growing in the u.s that four in ten adolescents reported feeling persistently sad and hopeless. This is a global issue. Global issue.

And we'll talk about this in another episode. We had a planning meeting the other day. We talked about, we'll talk about this. Just for a second, think about what we've done to these kids. And this isn't just, I mean, the pandemic made it way worse. Make no mistake, it made it brutal. Locking these kids down, not being able to see each other, knowing that their grandmothers were dying alone in a hospital

and they just had to watch it happen on Zoom. Like all these things were torturing young people. And I'm not even going to say we didn't need to do it. I'm not doing all that. It's, we tortured young people. But before that, these kids have grown into an ecosystem. If you were born in the 70s, 80s, even into the 90s, you were born into a narrative of we can do anything. We can change the world. We can solve all of these things. We can go to the, we just got back from the moon. What's next, right? Let's go to... These kids, if you were born in the late 90s

and into the 2000s, your ecosystem is climate change is gonna kill us all tomorrow. The government hates you and is trying to kill you. Your teachers are stupid and they're moronic and they're terrible and they're ruining everything. The healthcare system wants to kill you and murder you. Terrorists are trying to kill you and murder you. Terrorists are trying to kill you

and murder you at every turn. Countries are just gonna lob grenades and roll tanks into each other's neighborhoods. That's their world. And they don't have humans to walk through that with them. We've just handed them cell phones. And so if you go and look at some of the great research on kids who have

grown up in war zones, it's the human connection. How are they even functioning? It's because they had people. And there's a physiological balancing of this teeter-totter of pain and connection that keeps a kid stable and whole. And these kids do not have this at a global level. This article goes on to say, the trend was already present before the COVID-19 pandemic, but worsened significantly between 2019 and 2020. One factor is truly universal, rising smartphone use and internet access is crushing these little people. They speculate the key factor may not be the internet itself. It's not. I love watching videos with my kids. They're funny. But it's the statistics that suggest that they spend an average of seven to 10 hours a day online. At the global level, young people are spending seven to 10 hours a day online,

which crowds out in-person interaction, which is the key to building a strong social self. I think a lot of the unrest and conflict may be related to because at the age of 18, you have the same experience of interacting with people as a seven or eight-year-old in the past. 18-year-olds have the same social connective tissue as a 7- and 8-year-old from the past. We've stunted them by a decade by handing them computers. And I also want to point this out. I had a hard conversation with my son, and I'll just be as high level as I can. But he came at me pretty good, and he's in middle school, and he came at me, and he has the right to do so. And I gave him permission to do so. But he said, dad, you're telling the whole world, no cell phones, and I'm not allowed to have any cell phones and fine. I get the social medias, blah, blah, blah. But dad, because you've made

this rule and here's his quote, I have no one. I don't have anyone to text. I don't know when the birthday parties are. I don't know when all the guys are getting together for whatever. And I thought about that, my wife and I thought about it. And we used to have the phone on the wall in the kitchen, right? We could have the curly little cord to it and we could call each other and find out what was going on. And it's gone. It's gone. So here's what I need.

Here's what I'm asking. I'm asking for a group of parents to step up and say, let's change the way we're doing this. Let's not hand every kid a cell phone and let's figure out ways that we as adults can communicate. Because I'm not going to hand my kid poison. I'm not going to hand him a loaded weapon and say, make good choices, young man. I'm not going to do that. And at the same time, he's looking at me saying, dad, I get this. And I'm completely and totally alone.

What do I do? And that's one of the few times in my own home I didn't have a good answer. I don't know. I don't know. But I know that wealth doesn't matter. Countries and cultures, the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

had the worst scores of mental health. A culture where we each for ourselves and judged and sorted by performance may be good for economic growth, but damaging to our collective mental wellbeing. We've got to do things differently. And these are the kids showing up to Katie's afterschool program and saying,

can you help me please? Oh, what a mess. What a mess. What a mess. All right, let's go to Sana in Seattle. I'll stop there. Let's go to Sana. What's up, Sana? Hi, Dr. John. Thanks so much for taking my call. You bet. What's up? So, well, first, I just want to say, I know you call yourself a knucklehead a lot. And this morning, I heard you kind of take that back. You're working on the positive self-talk, which is great. I'm trying, I'm trying.

I just want you to know that like what you are doing is so important because there's so many of us who grew up in situations where we just have no concept of what healthy relationship, healthy communication looks like. And I've personally gone through some counseling for that. But I know that there's a lot of people that like watching their show, they're like starting to make those connections for the first time. So thank you so much for that. Thank you,

love. I'm grateful for your kindness. I really appreciate that. Um, yeah. So what's up? How can I help? Yeah.

So, uh, I'm calling because, um, my husband has severe misophonia. No, really? Yeah. Is it for real or is it just kind of like, yeah, yeah, you know what I mean?

Like people just throw that around social media. Is it for real? Yeah, no, it's for real. Like it's not, you know, like, yeah, no, like you hear people on social media saying like, oh, I hate the sound of people chewing. It's like, no, like this is like actually like a daily struggle for him. Like he. Okay, let me just, let me tell everybody what this is. So misophonia is.

Yeah. It is. Oh gosh, it's the worst, the worst. Sounds, repetitive clicking noises, chewing, sometimes people's voices, little things that most of us don't hear on a daily basis. Are we here and can tune out? The last I read on it, there's some sort of connection between that and a fight or flight response. It's something connected to movement. It's like a shortcut in the brain that is, is a wrong, it's a shortcut to the wrong place. Right.

And it's like trying to take a shortcut to Chick-fil-A and you end up at Burger King. Like we got to a restaurant, but it's the wrong one. And the smallest thing can send a body into a panic or into a rage. It's just this constant, and it's little like, or, or whatever a rage. It's just this constant, and it's a little like, or whatever. Like the way people say certain words can make, it's annoying to us. It is severely debilitating for folks. And the reason why I asked you,

is it real, is none of us like to have somebody chewing gum in our ear, right? And it can be like, ugh, gross, whatever. But there are others that it's a totally different physiological experience. And you're telling me your husband's full on, right? It's really bad. I hate that for him, man. Yeah. So it's a daily struggle. The way he describes it is like once once he hears the sound and it's the

littlest things like i'm i have like mild to moderate hearing loss so some of the things i physically can't even perceive and they are driving him nuts um but like once once he hears the sound it's like it he said he gets all this pent up energy and it's like, he needs to leave the room. He needs to get away from it. Or like he says he'll get, um, all of this energy like stuck in his jaw. And there've been times that he's like bit in his own arm or he'll, um, if he can't get away from it, he's like scratched himself. So my, my, my physiology may be off. Okay. So for you endocrinologists who listen to this, and let's be honest, there's a bunch of them. Not really. I may be off here.

My understanding, which is very, very limited, I'm in no way an expert on this, is that there is a connection between the auditory signaling system and the fight or flight response. And so think about that energy that he feels, that the way he's describing that is a perfect way I understand it. And again, I may be wrong. I'm not a neuroscientist, but that his body will flood with adrenaline, cortisol, fight or flight chemicals. His body is ready for a fist fight. His body is ready to take off sprinting for its life. And he's sitting there at the dinner table with his in-laws just chewing, right? And so there's this toggle between go now and dude, be cool, man. That's your wife's parents. Chill, chill chill chill right and it just it's it it's

maddening right it's maddening yeah oh and you have you have hearing loss and you're like i i have no idea what's happening here that is the worst son oh man okay so how can I help? I'm so sorry. Yeah, so he basically, so his job right now, he's in a car with his coworker for a lot of the day driving from job site to job site. And so by the end of the day, he's already like, you know, at a certain stress level from doing with that all day. And then it's the worst, uh, my, some of my own speech sounds are triggering to him. Oh, I swear like four or five days a week. He's like, I just want to be able to hear my wife talk. It's like we can't even pray together without it, like, just ruining the time together.

And so I guess I have a couple of things. One, like, how do we cope with those moments? Like, we know a little bit of sign language and we're kind of like learning more out of necessity just because it's so frequent yeah um but then we run into like the frustration of not being able to fully express ourselves too yeah um and then so like how do we cope with that and like the you know we will be having a perfectly good time. And then all of a sudden it's like a brick wall dropping, you know? And then the other thing is like, for me personally, like, you know, we want to have kids someday and I'm like really worried.

Like how are we going to handle that? If we can barely like get through like just talking to each other some days, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Those are all super real. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. All right.

So again, I'm going to preface this. I'm not an expert at this. Has he gone to see a doctor before? No. So when he was in high school, he had a psychiatrist who wasn't very helpful and medicated him for anxiety and i think that they you know i i don't know that they listened very well because that wasn't the problem and so we're looking for a counselor i would start with a medical doctor actually

yeah i would start with a medical doctor um i don't know what pharmacological interventions look like here, but there may be. And so that's where I would start. And I would be super open, super honest, but I would be, I would, that's where I would start. I wouldn't start with a counselor. There's going to be some relational things that y'all got to work through. And I'll talk you through a couple of those now, but I would start there. So you mentioned it and I'm glad you mentioned it in the way you did. This is going to be a both and situation. One, he has to own, own, own. He has to own his global wellness ecosystem. He's got to give his body a chance to, not if, but when things set off his alarm systems, he's got some resilience there. That may mean he's got to have a different job.

This is just the way, think of this as, or let me put this at, he's not making this up. Okay. And for you to not be able to see it and to just want to say, Hey, I love you. And for that to be what sends your husband into a panic, that's disorienting. And it's it, right. It's, it's really awful. So I want to tell you if it's real, it's real. And it is, nobody wants this man. It's people feel like they're losing their minds, right? Like they, they go to war with their heads. He has to be responsible. So I want you to think of this as though he lost a foot or he has some mobility challenges

as he's in a wheelchair for a season. Like what would you have to do? You'd have to do things very, very differently. You couldn't just kind of limp through your normal regular life. Everything's different now. And so I want you to think about or him to think about, is he exercising? Is he sleeping? Is he eating right? Is he reducing his overall inflammatory response? Is he, he may have to wear headphones in the car.

He may have to tell his coworker, Hey, this is ridiculous, but I can't talk in the car. Or I've got to wear these headphones. Like he's got to be, start being very open and advocating for himself. The same as if he worked at a place that didn't have a wheelchair ramp and suddenly he found himself with mobility issues. Okay. That very same.

Yeah. And he's going to have to be brave about it. He's going to have to just suck it up and do it. And this sucks and it's hard, but that's just what we got to do. The second thing is, is you are going to have to, this is hard.

You're going to have to continue to lean into different ways to communicate or y'all are going to have to come up with some signals or some gentle ways to lean into one another in a different way. And I know that's frustrating for you. That's frustrating for him. It's frustrating for everybody. And that's where y'all are. And that might mean that he's going to wear earplugs. And so you're going to have to talk a little bit louder, but it will take some of the sharpness off. It'll take some of that burn that happens when you say the vowels or the consonants in the wrong way, right? Is that what it is? It's usually pieces of words. Yeah, it's usually the consonants in the wrong way, right? Is that what it is? It's usually pieces of words. Yeah, it's usually the consonants.

Okay, all right. So it might be that you're going to start working with a vocal coach, and I have to work with a vocal coach because I talk so much, literally. It may mean that I'm going to, y'all are going to continue to lean into, instead of this being like a beating, you're going to lean into becoming super fluent in American Sign Language or whatever the sign language y'all want to do. We're going to

do some of these things because our life is super different now. I would also recommend try a weekend babysitting job. Not now, but wait for a couple of months when he's got his wellness under control, when y'all are working on different ways to communicate.

And then I want y'all to have a friend let you keep their kid for a weekend or an in-law or relative let you keep their kid for a weekend. And you can begin to practice because this isn't going to be whether he loves his kid. Of course he is. And whether he loves you, of course he does. This is going to be, will his body allow him to have a child in the house? Right? And so let's just practice that.

Let's not overthink it. Let's just practice it and see what that's going to be like. And it's going to be really tough. You're all going to have a different set of challenges. The same as if he had another more visible disability. The same as if you had a more visible disability, right? Can you do those things? Because a part of me wonders, are you out?

Are you not interested in going through all of this? Oh my goodness. No, I'm 100% in. Ah, that makes me happy. Good, good, good, good. So what if y'all reframed this? Have a weekend of grief, write a letter to misophonia. Dear Misophonia, you ruined our life. You suck. We hate you. You've screwed up everything. And we're not going to let you ruin our marriage. In fact, we're going to use this as a springboard to be the best married couple we could possibly be. And we're going to raise a dope set of little crazy saunas in the house. We're going to have an awesome life. And you're not taking this from us. Have a couple of days of grief and then have a couple of days of planning. Okay, what does this look like? Here's our reality. The reality is you can't do this job for 10 hours a day and then come

home and be a present husband. Period, right? And how are we going to work around that? You can't do this job 10 hours a day and not have boundaries at work and come home and be a present father one day. It's just not the real, it's not the card. So either you got to do something different. You get your job different, whatever. And then y'all are going to start working on new ways to communicate together. And I think if y'all change the, oh my gosh, we're just dragging ourself through this instead of, instead of that attitude, turning and facing it and running directly into the middle of the darkness saying, ha ha, we're turning on all the light switches, suckers. We're going to be able to talk in multiple, right?

If you enter with that sort of attitude, we're going to storm the gates of hell together. Man, this could be really fun because you're all going to develop your own way of communicating that nobody else has. It's going to be a beautiful, interactive way. So that's the best I can do. Please, you all go see a doctor together

who might give you some like, oh yeah, you can take this one thing or there's a couple of supplements that help with the auditory response system. Who knows? I don't know where any of that stands. Definitely worth going to see a medical doctor. And then as y'all are working through

new ways of communicating, it's gonna bring up old stories. Then you may wanna loop back and meet with a counselor, okay? But I'm proud of you. It's going to bring up old stories. Then you may want to loop back and meet with a counselor. Okay. But I'm proud of you. Thank you for loving that guy. Thank you for being 100% all in.

She's got to live a different life now. It sounds so, so dismissive. I just change everything. It's cool. And yet that's what you got to do. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume,

seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst.

If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself, and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule.

You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash Diloni to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney.

All right, we're back. Let's take one more. Let's go to Chad in St. George. Man, hey, Chad. Yeah. How we doing? We're doing good. I'm glad to be on. Thanks, man. Hey, I drove through

St. George last year on the way to a speaking engagement. What a stunning, beautiful place. I just continue, the more I travel across the country speaking to groups, I am just blown away by how beautiful this country is. And that St.

George area is something else, man. It was stunning, stunning, stunning. And I almost died. That's another conversation. All right, so what's up, brother? How can I help? Okay, so I've got to give some backstory before I get to my question or my advice. So our father died The end of July

Oh man I'm sorry What did he die of? Well it would be What you call your long tail suicide Oh no man Basically drank and smoked himself Into he's not recovering They started failing

I'm sorry brother That's hard man hard hard Hard, hard, hard. It's really hard. So right after that, my sister, my younger sister, she's two years younger than me. I don't know if it's

a trauma response to these things or her and her husband decided that they are now going to be swingers. Hey, oh, yeah, just a swing in. I know. So at first, nobody really cut it. Everyone was just kind of like, oh, this is just midlife crisis. You kind of stuff or Let me pause you.

Yeah. If my wife came to me and said, hey, John, I got an idea. What about you and me just start knocking around with the neighbors? You in? And I was like, I'm in, honey. The last people on planet Earth I would call is my brother and sister.

So how do you know that this is happening? And I'm not laughing at, I'm laughing with you. Like, how would you even know, man? Did they announce this at Thanksgiving? This is kind of how she is. She wanted the attention of it. Oh. And, you know, other people, like, we'll see friends that I've known for years, middle school, are all of a sudden they're friends. And I would have had no idea because they don't advertise it. But she does.

She wants everyone to know. And it's just weird. Yeah. It's super weird, man. I love my sister with all my heart, and there's just parts of her life I don't want to know about. That's cool. Right.

But you know about your sister. All right, so how can I help, man? Yes. So in doing all this, she has a 12-year-old son, my nephew. Okay. Freaking raddest kid ever. He has kind of just been,

I mean, he is either locked in his room when it happens or, or he goes to other family members or friends' houses, but now everyone else has stopped taking him because they feel like they're enabling her to do this. Or when he's at their house, he's saying he wants to be at my house with my boys and wife. So now I'm stuck in the middle of, do I, I feel like by taking him, it enables her to do that. It doesn't. Dude, Chad, she's going to do it anyway. I know. You're not enabling her.

Here's the deal. Take her out of the equation. Take her completely out of the equation. Okay. You're taking care of a little 12-year-old boy. That's it. Okay. And you're the kind of guy that would take care of a 12-year-old boy

because that's who you are. You're a good human being. You got your kids of your own. You're a guy who loves his community and loves young people. Take care of that 12-year-old little boy. You're not – your sister is going to figure out a way around this until it burns itself out, and make no mistake, it will. It will lose its smoke and steam,

and the disco ball eventually stops spinning. Right. And so it is what it is. Or that 12 year old boy is really, really close to independence on his own. Right. Right. And y'all are going to all lose him.

And so somebody's got to love that kid and care about him. Yeah. Okay. God, can you imagine the book being written? My mom locked me in my room while she hooked up with my dad's middle school, I mean, my uncle's middle school friends and my, that's going to be a great, a great autobiography someday.

Jeez. Frickin' hell. Well, the weirdest part about this whole thing is... Yeah, tell me the weirdest part because so far... Well, the whole thing's whole thing is... Yeah, tell me the weirdest part, because so far... Well, the whole thing's weird, but... Yeah. So they have an older son that's 22, 23.

We have older sons, and they all kind of grew up, and we took him all the time, too. How old are you? I'm 43. How old is your sister? She's 42. Or 41, sorry. I've had in my head this whole conversation, you were like 25.

This makes this whole thing way more disturbing. Go ahead, man. Just like 40-year-olds just cruising like, what's up? All right, so they have an older, older son, okay? Yeah, they have an older son. He's in his early 20s. And apparently, he is the one that suggested to them that they do this. Why not?

They let him into that part of their life. Why not? I don't think he's doing it with them, but to have that conversation. Dude, she already told her brother. So why not bring your kids in? She probably sat down all the pets, just sat them all in a row and told them too. Yeah. Dude, who knows?

Who knows, man? Yeah, a 22-year-old's a grown-up, and he's old enough to have his own boundaries and to make his own choices and decisions. It is what it is um right yeah when my son's 22 we're gonna well i mean i'll share everything with my son but we're not talking about that because i love him you know what i mean i don't know i'm gonna melt him but i here's the thing man you have to decide in your heart and mind, this is me being serious now, the people you choose to associate with. And this is hard because she's your sister.

And there's some point when she becomes not your sister, but I think, I mean, we talk about swinging and all that kind of stuff. We can make jokes about it. This is bigger than that. You've lost your sister. Not just because she's sleeping with other dudes and her husband's sleeping with other women. That's not it.

She is searching so hard to be seen and to be known and to not feel dead in her own skin, that ways she can fire off firecrackers underneath her own skin to prop herself up is to go get her heart rate racing for 30 minutes with a stranger, to try to get a rise out of you and the other family members. Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. And that's a little girl in that little body saying, somebody tell me you love me.

Somebody see me. Right. So the whole thing is heartbreaking and it's easy to point to the one thing that's like swinging just because it sounds funny. Right. But you can point to that, but this is a, this is the story of a brother who's losing his little sister. Yeah. Right. And that sucks. And it's heartbreaking. And it puts you in a position to say, here's my boundary. While you're trying to figure out love, this is what connecting with me looks like. And if you want to opt out, I'm going to be heartbroken, but you're free to do that. Because this is how I'm going to raise my kids.

This is how I'm going to raise my family. This is how I'm going to fill in the blank. Right? Right. And by the way, if she circles back and joins the fold, and I say that like with a smirk on my face, like if she circles back and says, hey, dude, I kind of lost it. And her and her husband,

she used to still do this once a month. I still wouldn't have a problem with her eating dinner at my house. It's my sister. My kids are all going to know, yep, that's aunt so-and-so. My kids call my sister Tia Loca. They don't know her name. My sister gave them that name. That's Spanish for crazy aunt. They gave, like, my kids think that my sister's name is Tia Loca. So, I mean, they

just know like, yeah, that's aunt so-and-so, right? They get that. This is about, I've got to draw boundaries. And my guess is she's talking in ways that you don't want around your kids you're worried about the fact that she's locking her their 12 year old son 12 is old my son's 12 right locking this kid that knows what's going on in this house in his room i mean that whole thing is a mess man and so this is about a brother who's losing his little sister this is about a guy trying to take care of a 12-year-old kid. Take all the big flashy stuff and the signs and the, oh, my gosh. Take all that off the table, man.

Grieve the loss of your sister. Come up with your boundaries there. And then love and take care of this little 12-year-old kid. And if it crosses over into, hey, she locked him in there for a day, call CPS. Yeah. Call the authorities because you can't lock a child in a room and not give them food, not give them water,

all that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Well, I don't know how many times that's happened, but I do know that, like, hey, here's an Xbox. Have fun in there. Don't come out. You know? Right, right, right. And again, that's different than I put a padlock on the door while we're in here. And I'm going to put a padlock on the door.

You can't come out. There's difference there. Right. But, um, ultimately you have to grieve the loss of your sister and you have to make some choices. Am I going to accept this new behavior? Am I going to accept this new relationship that she's choosing?

Or am I going to draw the boundaries for me and my family? And how and when am I going to love this 12-year-old little boy? And I wouldn't let any of the other nonsense cloud it, okay? It's just going to make it more complicated. You can also tell her when she's like, oh, yeah. And then last weekend, you can stop her and say, I do not want to hear about your sexual exploits. You're my sister. Stop.

Yeah. I don't give it any attention. She'll say it and I just pull. She wants the attention. I'm not giving it to her. Well, but she can see your eye crinkles. She can feel the energy in the room change. And that's power. It feels powerful. There's something about stopping that conversation as it's happening with a firm boundary Right, stop just stop talking about your sex life with me. I do not want to know Period let that tension hang let that because that is you reclaiming the room energy

That's you reclaim reclaiming your boundaries and it changes the dynamic of it. Oh my gosh, you think you're so much better than me? Didn't say that. I said, stop talking about your sex life with me, period. Right. And with that level of authority and force and it has a way of really pushing back on people who just like to lob fireworks

and grenades at people and be like, oh yeah, look what I'm doing. Look what I'm doing. Could care less. Do not tell me that. If you continue to tell me that you are choosing to not be in a relationship with me. And I hope you don't choose that because I like hanging out with you. And now she owns all the cards moving forward because you have put your boundary in concrete, right? And that's an awesome, awesome thing. It's a gift to her brother. And it's a gift to you and your family. Thank you for being a guy that takes care of the little kids in your community and in

your family. It's beautiful. 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. As we wrap up today's show, the song of the day is a choose-your-own-adventure. Pretty excited about this. Behind door number one, this is the Boomers song. So if you want to hear the Boomer version, just stay put. And if you want to go to the Millennial version, just hit the fast-forward about 15, 20 seconds,

and listen for the bling-bling-bling. And that's how you know to turn the page. And here we go. So for the boomers, the song of the day is from the Dire Straits, Sultans of Swing. And it goes like this. You got a shiver in the dark. It's raining in the park.

But meantime, south of the river, you stop and you hold everything. A band is blowing Dixie Double four time. You feel all right when you hear the music ring. Now step inside, but you don't see too many faces. Coming in and out of the rain to hear the jazz go down. Competition in other places. Give your kid an Xbox and shut the... It's not really in the song.

All right, the next song is from Sia. The lyrics to her masterpiece. I don't think it's a masterpiece. Chandelier, and it goes like this. Oh, boy, y'all gonna get me in trouble. Party girls, don't get hurt. Can't feel anything. When will I learn?

I push it down, push it down. I'm the one for a good time call. Phone's blowing up, ringing my doorbell. I feel the love, feel the love. One, two, three, one, two, three, drink. This doesn't sound like a great, healthy song. So I'm back till I lose count. I'm gonna swing from the chandelier.

That's what we do on this show. We swing from the chandeliers. We'll see you next time. Coming up on the next episode. So in the process of trying to frame up my question neatly, which is kind of difficult. Yeah, I was going to say, disordered eating and addiction are never summed up neatly.

So give me the whole messy mess. So my mom, she's been married three times. She just goes from boyfriend to boyfriend. She likes to spend time with my two-year-old, which is great. But the boyfriend is always around in some way. Either he lives there

or she has to do something. Nope. I'll solve that one for you. Answer's no.