The Dr. John Delony Show - Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) & the Aftermath of an Abortion

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that gives you real talk on life, relationships and mental health challenges. Through humor, grace and grit, John gives you the tools you need to cut through the chaos of anxiety, depression and disconnection. You can own your present and change your future—and it starts now. So, send us your questions, leave a voicemail at 844-693-3291, or email [e-mail]. We want to talk to YOU! Show Notes for this Episode 2:57: How do I move past an abortion I had last year? 25:02: What are your thoughts on paying for counseling/therapy while in debt? 29:05: How do I deal with seasonal affective disorder? 1) Go outside and enjoy nature 2) Connect with other people 3) Eat well, sleep well, exercise 4) Have things to look forward to John's nerd things: Morning routine: meditation, feet on bare ground, exercise Wim Hof, cold thermogenesis, ice baths Vitamin D/K2, magnesium The Human Charger 42:56: Success email: Wife is proud of her awesome husband 44:29: Lyrics of the day: "Friday I'm In Love" - The Cure tags: abortion, guilt, grief, depression, seasonal affective disorder, Wim Hof, cold thermogenesis, ice baths, vitamin D, magnesium, the human charger 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.

On today's show, we're going to be talking about a hard topic, so you might want to screen this one first. Beware of any little ears that might be in the room. We're going to be talking with the young woman who calls in dealing with the aftermath of an abortion. She thinks she did the right thing, and she's really struggling with grief. And so we're going to wade deep into the waters, and I want you to join us on this hard but beautiful call. We're also going to be talking about seasonal affective disorder. We're going to be talking about what it is, what it's not, and what you can do with dealing with the gray winter months. Stay tuned.

Hey, what up, what up? I'm John and this is the Dr. John Deloney Show where we are taking your calls about your life, your dilemmas, your next wobbly crooked steps. I want to help you rethink, re-examine and re-imagine your life, paint a new picture and then go get it. And then go get it. We're going to talk about how to talk about yourself, how to talk about your kids, how to talk with your kids' school teachers, how to talk to your friends who have cat families or dog families. We're going to talk about love and loss and family issues. We're going to talk about infidelity, finding love again. And we may talk about your friend who continues nine months in

to use the word unprecedented. We've got it. Everybody, we've got it. It's unprecedented from here on out. Thank you for the heads up. So whatever's going on in your heart, your home, your head, I'm here to stand with you and walk with you. Give me a call at 1-844-693-3291. 1-844- 6 9 3 32 91.

Leave a message, leave your name and number at the tone. Tell us what's going on and Kelly will reach out and set up a time for us to talk. Or if you're old school like me and you just want to write a letter, email me at askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com. That's super not old school. That's if you're old school in a new era,

you've been shoved into the 21st century and you have to write letters with keyboards and the emails and the internets, email me at askjohn at ramsaysolutions.com and let me know what's going on. Leave your name, your number, and we will get in touch with you. People are emailing and calling from all over the world. It's exciting. It's heartbreaking. It's uplifting. And I'm just so thankful that everybody's joining us for this ride. Let's go straight to the phones here. Let's go to Alex in San Antonio. Good morning, Alex. How are we doing? Good morning, John. I'm doing awesome. How about yourself? Same, same. So how can I help this morning? Okay.

So in late April of this year, I found out I was pregnant. I was about three to five weeks. So it was really early on. And I made the best decision for me. And I went through with an abortion. Okay. It's October and I'm still finding myself falling into these moments of just utter guilt, anger, and sometimes a lot of shame. And my question is, how can I move forward and hopefully forgive myself and maybe turn this into a better experience than I'm

experiencing now? Number one, thanks for calling. Thanks for your trust and for giving me a shout. So before I answer you, I just want to pause here for everybody across the world who's listening. And immediately, Alex, when you said this, the listener divided into one of two camps, which is, I can't believe this is even a big deal, or I can't believe this happened, right? And you know this. And so what I'm not going to do for you or particularly for listeners, who this is a third real topic, right, for everybody, is I'm not going to beat you up and I'm not going to give you my insights and thoughts.

What I'm going to do is sit with you in this moment and we're going to talk through this together. And so for those who are listening, who are hoping I'm going to start banging a gong on either side of this conversation, I'm not going to. I'm going to sit with my new friend Alex here and we're going to wade into the messiness and the heartbreak in their reality and then try to come up with a path moving forward. And so, Alex, thanks for letting me have a little aside there. So walk me through when you find out you're pregnant. Do you tell me who's dad?

What role did he play in this? How did that conversation go? So I have been with my boyfriend at that point for a little under a year. I'm still with him. He's a wonderful person for me. You know, he was very scared, worried, and at the time he didn't have a job. He had actually been employed for a little bit for quite some time, for a few months actually. And he was supportive of whatever decision we wanted to do,

but I definitely felt he didn't want to go through with it, which was understandable with his circumstance and his situation. He didn't want to go through with having the baby? Yeah. I mean, again, he was supportive of whatever I wanted to do, but he was definitely more adamant that we should consider going through with abortion. Okay. So you have this procedure. Walk me up the week leading up to it, what's in your heart and mind, and then walk me through what's in your heart and mind the week after? Going towards that day, it felt easier. And then the night before, I just break down for hours. I don't even want to sleep because I don't want the day to come. I don't want that moment to come.

Since it was COVID time, I couldn't bring anybody with me to support me. My mom drove me there, but, you know, she couldn't be there to hold my hand or anything like that. And then afterwards, I don't know, I didn't cry afterwards like I thought I was or had I did the night before. I just was really sad and empty is what it felt like. I didn't want to cry. I didn't want to do anything. My birthday was that same week, and I didn't want to celebrate it. I didn't want to do anything. It was hard to be happy for that week.

And gradually it started to get easier, but that week before seemed easy. Then it got hard the day and the night of, and then just felt kind of empty the day after and the week after, really. Well, thank you for sharing that. So when you talk about your – this was the right thing for you to do. like that, that generally is them verbalizing outwardly a leaning up against an internal value that may be a little bit different, right? So I'm thinking of a situation that's totally unrelated here. So if this is a bad analogy, it's off the top of my head. So I'm just kind of speaking off out of my heart here and off the cuff. But if I'm a guy who believes in just being kind to everybody, and then I see somebody at a grocery store, and they mouth off to the – they say something just insanely,

obscenely ugly to the woman who is taking our money, who is working the cash register. And I just blast that dude. I hit him as hard as I can. And he falls down. My first thought is going to be, or my first statement might be in that situation. I just had to do it, right? It was the right thing to do in that moment. I'm normally this way, but in that moment, I just, right? And so I begin this cycle of justification. I begin talking to myself in a way that's going to make what I just did okay.

But at the end of the day, it violated an internal value. And so what I'm getting – we're trying to get at with you is did this violate your internal value? Or is this – have you always been pro-choice? Have you always been situational? Or is this something you never thought of? Or have you been staunchly pro-life your whole life, and then all of a sudden you found yourself pregnant, and you found yourself in a situation that you felt like this was the best move for you? Give me a sense of your values

before this. Sure. I think I've always been a pro-choice person when it comes to, in general, every single woman in the world definitely has her own choice it's her body I just always kind of assumed that my position that if I ever came to that decision I wasn't gonna go I was I was gonna go ahead and I guess I was kind of pro life for myself for you I don't know if that yeah. Totally. And we all have theories and we all have generalizations, but then we all have to look in the mirror, right? So that's different for everybody. So you're several months removed now. You feel good that you did the right thing that was for you.

It did violate your internal code or maybe not internal code, but it violated this. It's different than you thought you were going to be. Right. And you'd always thought, man, if that ever happened to me, I wouldn't do that. I would do X. And you ended up making the decision Y. And now you find yourself several months later, we're in on top of this. And I just want to contextualize it. The world's literally on fire, right? It's an absolute mess. And so you have trauma on top of trauma on top of stress and on top of an election on top of on top of, right? So you are sitting on a pile of trauma, collective trauma, and then you are wrestling with this. Walk me through what's in your heart right now.

In my heart right now, um, it just, there's just moments in time, uh, that trigger me. It's not a definitely every day that I think about it, or I try not to at least, but there's just moments that, you know, I see posts on social media and it's people with little, little babies who, you know, they're young like me. And, you know, I kind of just think that maybe that wasn't a planned situation, but look how happy they are. And it just kind of triggers me or I just hear like success stories or I hear like stories of other people going through a miscarriage or even an abortion. And it just, it just makes me feel like I lost something. And I try to tell myself I didn't as much as I, I guess I tried to, I don't know. I just, I try not to tell myself it was,

it was not too much at the time you were so early. And I don't know. I mean, sometimes I'm happy, you know, and I know that I, I try not to say I made the right decision. I try to say I made the best decision with the whole, with everything that was going on with COVID, my student loans financially, my emotional, my emotional situation at the time. But it's just really little moments throughout the week that just hits me really hard. I cry for 15 minutes and then just try to move on. Are you and your boyfriend talk about it? Do you all talk about it ever? We do.

I don't bring it up to him for every single time that I get upset about it. And recently he said he's been thinking about it a lot more than usual. And he's been kind of sad about it too. So we do share that pain, and we do talk a little bit. But I don't tell him about every single time because sometimes it's just on the ride home from a friend's house or it's going to the grocery store, and it's just little moments. So what you're describing is you just painted a beautiful picture of grief. And that's when intrusive thoughts is the nerd term form but which is when thoughts and pictures pop into your head of what could have been, what wasn't. And then you begin to backfill that.

Either your body responds with sadness or your body responds with arguments or your body responds with this is done. It's got a period at the end of the sentence and now we got to move on, right? And then all of a sudden other voices, right? So you talk about social media and your friends and your boyfriend's sadness. Those things start to speak into this as well. And one last thing before we can kind of talk about what healing will look like. Do you have people in your life you've talked to about this? You say your mom actually took you and dropped you off. Was she in support of this? Do you have people around you that know what happened, that know you took this step, and that are continuing to love you and walk alongside you? I have three of the most or four of the most beautiful best friends who I did talk to.

And they definitely try to make me feel better about what I did, you know, and just kind of support my decision. My mom was actually the one person who was super excited. And I think that me a little bit because I didn't want her. I wanted her to support me, but I didn't think she was going to be happy about it. And she was, but she was supportive when I told her why. And, you know, she was. She was happy about being a grandma or she was happy about your decision to have an abortion? She was happy about the thought of being a grandma.

Gotcha. Okay. Gotcha. So what do you think healing looks like for you? I hope that I would eventually get the courage to go see somebody to talk about it. Because I know that this one phone call or talking to my boyfriend every once in a while or friends is not always going to make things better. I just kind of hope that one day I can look back on this and realize that making decisions is hard

and having to do what's best for yourself and for others is hard, but I can take this experience and hopefully when I look back on it, I feel comfortable. I feel at ease with it. And then hopefully when I do decide to move on and have a child someday, I get worried. I might feel guilt with it too. Sure. I don't want to feel that.

Yeah, absolutely. So here's me being as straight talk with you as I possibly can. And I'm going to walk alongside you and have truthful heart conversations, okay? So there's myths that abound on both sides in terms of the literature and the science, and here's what's going to happen, here's what's not going to happen. At the end of the day, you've got to deal with what's in your heart, right? And you are going to both be at, I won't say at ease, but you're going to be, you're going to have a period at the end of the sentence. What has happened is what has happened, right? And you're also, the grief you are feeling is situational. Every person feels it differently.

The data tells us there is a wide swath of women who go through with an abortion procedure and they have other kids, they've got a good partner with them, and they don't feel guilt or remorse or they don't regret the decision later on. That's just what the data tells us. There is also data that says a small number of folks really, really struggle with this. And then there's anecdotal evidence. These are just folks, students, and adults that I've walked with over the years that are in your situation, which feel this, they see a picture of a baby and their stomach just drops. Or you will hit a date that would be the first birthday, or you will hold your first kid, and it will flood you with, oh, this is what this would

have been, right? And everybody does that differently and everybody feels that grief or doesn't feel that grief differently. So a couple of things that are real important for you and that is to own your grief. However you feel is okay. And if you don't feel bombarded with grief, there's going to be a group of people who tell you you're evil and wrong. I might even believe that about you, Alex, but I'm not going to say it out loud. Okay? And then there's going to be other folks that if you wake up and you can't get out of bed because you're doubled over in grief, you are asking yourself, what did I do? What did I do? What did I do?

There's going to be a group of people saying, are you kidding me? Get over it. It was just a procedure. And I might think that way, Alex, and I'm not going to tell you. The way you feel about this is yours to own, okay? As you move through this, you said something that I want you to remember. There's going to be moments of discomfort. There's going to be moments of grief. There's going to be moments of flashbacks of memory, and they're just going to be uncomfortable, and that's going to be part of the decision that you made. Okay? And fighting that, trying to avoid discomfort, trying to avoid sadness, trying to avoid grieving is a fool's errand, and it's going to push you down avenues that are going to be escapist. And a fancy word for escapist. And a fancy

word for escapist is addiction. Okay. You're going to try to do things that avoid the discomfort. And what I want to suggest to you is you take those four friends of yours, you take that mom who loves you, you take that boyfriend who is grieving with you, and you'll sit in the grief and you own it. And you don't try to run from it. You don't let it overtake you. And that's why you have friends with you, but you don't run from it. At the end of the day, what's done is done.

What has happened has happened. And the first person you're going to have to forgive is yourself. The first person you're going to have to make peace with is yourself. And then over time, you're going to make meaning with this. And so people make meaning out of these sort of situations in all different ways. And what I'm going to say now is going to sound like a political statement.

Please, for God almighty, whose people are listening to this, don't go there because I'm not – I'm trying the best I can to avoid the politics of this. We had a caller who called in the other day and said that they were in California and their house burned down in the fires and they lost everything. And they would move to another house and to another house and those kept catching fire and they were moving to safe places and they were just stressed and freaked out and they were dealing with tragedy and with grief and with loss. And what I recommended they do is that they have a funeral for their house and the things they lost. I often am telling people, have a funeral for your old marriage, have a funeral for your old relationship. And so I would recommend having some sort of grief ceremony, some sort of this happened, this is done. And there's a period at the end of this,

we want to acknowledge that it hurts. It may have been the best thing, you felt it was the best thing for you at the time, but it still hurts and it's still popping up. And what a ceremony does for us is it gives us a touchstone for how to move forward. Okay. And not everybody needs to do a big ceremony or a small one, but having some sort of touchstone, you got to have other people when you do this, Alex, but it's going to put a period at the end of that sentence for you. And then you're going to have to go about healing, forgiving yourself, being in community, doing the things that you know keep you well, and really not being afraid of conversations with your boyfriend too. Hiding grief, comparing grief with each other is a surefire way to destroy a relationship from the inside out. And he may grieve harder than you or less than you, and you may have seasons where this is overwhelming and not a big deal at all. And it

will just roll like a roller coaster. And you guys have to provide space for one another to be open. And then, as you mentioned, if you continue to have this way on you in ways that make you feel uncomfortable, and I've sat with folks who tell me that this comes back and grabs them by the throat, they feel like it is months behind them, years behind them, and all of a sudden it comes back and it's paralyzing. The guilt and the frustration is overwhelming. You got to see somebody, okay? And I want to applaud your step, your courageous step for calling me. But you're going to have to get a professional to walk with you, especially if this morphs from

grief into high guilt and shame and trauma, then you've got to have somebody that walks alongside you. And again, I've talked to other folks who have been relatively dismissive. Yeah, it happened. I kind of wish I hadn't done that, but it did. And so I'm moving on my life. Everybody deals with this differently. And at the end of the day, you've got to have people around you and you've got to forgive yourself and you've got to go make tomorrow the best it can be. You're right, John. I really appreciate you saying that. It's just taking that first step I think has been the scariest part. This is the first time I've ever spoken to, I guess, a party outside of my life.

And it feels better. Well, I want to thank you for your trust, Alex. And if you hear anything, if you hear nothing else, you got to have people around you, even people who hold you accountable, even people who look you in the eye and say, I think what you did was dumb. I think that was a mistake, but we're here now, right? And there's a difference between judgmental friends and friends who hold you accountable. And then there's friends who are just going to walk alongside and say, you're allowed to sit down and just say, this sucks, and we're going to cry with you real hard. And then we're going to make sure you eat, and we're going to make sure you're sleeping, and we're going to make sure you're going to work, and we're going to walk alongside you as you heal from grief. And again, the second thing is you got to own your feelings. Okay.

And they're going to come in waves and there's going to be moments when you feel overwhelmed, there's going to be moments, and I'm just basing this off what you've told me, right? And there's going to be moments when your head's held high and you're just walking through life. And if this pops up in three years, in five years, if all of a sudden you're at a first grade graduation and you just get overcome, let that come and have a group of people that you can call and be with, right? Grief is a weird way of just showing up in different places. And then make sure you don't compare grief with your boyfriend. Don't let social media tell you the right, quote unquote, right way you're supposed to respond to this on any side of this debate.

And again, thanks for the call. Again, I want to back up and remind everybody, there are political issues and abortion is one of those things that is a third rail topic. People feel deep, deep in their bones, deep in their bones. And I want to honor everybody who's got their opinions, everybody who feels deeply powerful about the right thing to do in these situations and the wrong thing to do in these situations. I honor you. Good for you. Have hard core convictions. We live in a world that has gotten soft with convictions and everyone's gotten mushy. Good for you. But sitting with somebody in the pain, the aftermath of a decision that you disagree with is not the time to beat people over the head with your beliefs. It is not the time to drown somebody in what they did wrong.

It's time to put your thoughts and your opinions and your beliefs on the ground and you sit with them at the well and you offer them a cup of water and you say, I see you and I love you and this sucks and I'm sorry. And then you take them by the hand and then you all start walking together. That's how you help people who are hurting. That's how you walk alongside someone who's struggling. And these things that are theories and issues, they involve real people with real pain and real regret and real vulnerability and real drama and real – it wasn't that big of a deal. It's all of it.

And so when you're loving people who are hurting, love first, judge later. And real, it wasn't that big of a deal. It's all of it. And so when you're loving people who are hurting, love first, judge later. Okay. Thank you so much, Alex, for the call. That call helped a bunch of people. It's going to get everybody in trouble, but I'm gracious for your bravery there. Right. So let's go to a quick email real quick.

We'll just do a palate cleanser here. Patrick writes, what are your thoughts on paying for therapy and counseling while still in debt? So most of you know that my boss is Dave Ramsey with the Dave Ramsey organization. He is the get out of debt king. He gives people tools to become free financially. And as he's found over the last 25, 30 years, that taking baby steps together relationally helps heal marriages helps heal communities but at the end of the day it's about not being in debt it's not being slave to an owner when you owe money to somebody you have to keep doing what they want you to do which is paying them and you often end up in jobs you don't like you end up in situations

you don't like because you are in debt. The borrower is slave to the lender. And Patrick asks, what are my thoughts on paying for therapy or counseling while you're still in debt? This is a broad question and here's why. Or it's a telling question. We still think of therapy. We still think of counseling like we do back massages. Like it's nice if you can afford it. It's a cool thing to do to feel better. And I want to reframe therapy. I want to reframe counseling as not a thing that, you know, it's nice to do. Do it once a month.

If you need counseling, it is a medical condition. Think of it that way. Think of it as would you, if you were really sick with COVID, you're really sick with the flu, would you say, well, I'm in baby step two for you, Dave Ramsey folks. I still have some money. I still have some student loans. So I'm not going to go to the doctor this month. I broke my foot. I'm not going to go get a cast because I still owe. No, you're going to budget for it. You're going to make it a priority and you're going to go see somebody and get the help you need. Community outreach programs, I did my practicum, part of my practicum I did at a family counseling service, which is a sliding scale for marginalized community members who have no money. They've got very little money. They've got low income. And it was a group of interns and professionals who worked with this group for very little to no cost.

It's important for folks going to counseling to have some skin in the game. And so paying something is important. But it wasn't this $250 an hour like some care is. I also had students that went to community counseling centers. I also have a lot of colleagues and friends who did practicums as graduate students. So if you live in a community that has a college or university with graduate students there, they will often do their practicum and internship for free or for very low wages. That's a great place to go see somebody.

And if they're not good, you don't like that they think they're a good counselor, go see somebody else. But all I have to say is there are options. And if it comes down to budgeting for it, budget for it. That may mean you can't go out to eat twice and you got to cancel Netflix. Good, good. If you don't have that stuff, you'll eat a little healthier and you'll go for walks and you'll go kick the soccer ball with your neighbor, with your kid, instead of just vegging out in front of the TV. Cut the things out of your life that you need to cut, cut the extraneous stuff and figure out how to of the TV. Cut the things out of your life that you need to cut, cut the extraneous stuff and figure out how to pay for counseling.

But should you pay for counseling while you're still in debt? Absolutely, budget for it and make it happen. So excellent question, Patrick. Stop thinking of counseling everybody as a back massage or a mani-pedi and start thinking of it as a cornerstone of your physical, spiritual, emotional, and psychological health.

If you need to go to counseling, if you need to do it. Okay. And I don't think you should be in counseling forever, by the way, you should not go and go and go. I've had the same counselor for 14 years. That's a whole other issue. That's a whole other show. All right. So let's go to the phones. Let's go to Jay in Dayton, Ohio. Jay, what's up, brother? How are we doing? What's up, brother? Thank you so much for all you're doing. I love the show. Man, I am grateful for you, number one. Thanks for letting me know that. Sometimes I just talk to folks on the radio, and then James and Kelly put this on the internet, and I really don't

understand how all that works. And so I appreciate hearing from real people. Thanks, man. So how can I help you this morning? All right, man. So here's the deal. I'm sad or what I'm calling about a seasonal affective disorder. I come up against this every year. Yeah. And kind of my question to you is a two-part question. First of all, why is it happening? Is there something I need to kind of fix or review and then further, what can I do about some of the effects of seasonal affective disorder? So I'm calling for myself, obviously, and also extended family and friends that I know suffer with this. So just kind of looking to get your insight and any help would be appreciated

to kind of outline a scenario. I'm calling from the northeast of great lakes region it's october right now the leaves are beautiful but seasons come seasons go and we're about to enter winter that's right now we're losing we're losing light it's getting cool it's getting depressing winter's right around the corner and it seems like year in and year out This is a four to five month cycle So just kind of reaching out Want to get a jump on this and get your insight All right, brother, I love it

And Kelly tipped me off That we were going to have a discussion About seasonal affective disorder And so, number one I'm grateful for your call Number two, I've got a personal experience here So as I run my mouth too much And I've tried to back on this, I got all of your cards and letters from everybody listening that I talk too much about Texas. I'm trying not to mention it so much.

But when I moved here from Texas, I was about 30 or 45 minutes from the New Mexico border, which is another time zone, right? It's the other time zone. And then I moved to Nashville, which is about 30 or 45 minutes from – I think it's the eastern time zone, right? It's the other time zone. And then I moved to Nashville, which is about 30 or 45 minutes from, I think it's the Eastern time zone. And man, my first winter here, I was completely caught off guard. It was getting dark at 4.30. I found myself winding up for bed at 6.45 in the evening. It was pitch black outside. Things weren't funny anymore. My food tasted bland. It caught me off guard. And I called some buddies who had moved from the south, from Texas, from Arizona, and who had moved east, who had moved north, and they were all like,

oh, brother, that's what that is. And I'd heard about it and I'd read about it. I'd never experienced it, but it was like somebody laid a blanket over me, right? And it occurred to me about February or March that that was the longest I'd ever gone in my life without sunlight. And that was like, since I was a little, since I was born, I'd always lived in a place with lots of sun and it was a, it made a major impact on me. So I dug into it a little bit and I will walk through with you some of the nerd things I do. The super nerds call them hacks. I don't like using that word, but some things that I do is some of it, brother, may be psychosomatic, meaning I may, my brain may be playing tricks on me saying it helps and it really doesn't, but it's working

for me. And as I'm gearing up for that season, I know Ohio is similar to Nashville. It just feels like they lay this gray blanket of clouds over us, right? And it just lays there and gets lower and lower. The weather's beautiful. The scenery's beautiful. This morning on the way to work, there were deer and turkey out just eating. I mean, it looked all beautiful, but man, they just got that blanket laying over us, right? So it is super real. Seasonal affective disorder affects millions of people every year.

Some folks have mild form. Some have major depressive responses. The further we live from the equator, the more it leans on us, right? So they say more sad, right? And then you're going to throw in this year. I'm just prepping for it. This year we're going to have – I don't know if you've heard. I don't know if they've talked about this in Ohio, but we have an election coming up in a few days and, um, you guys have may have

missed, um, the Corona virus has been a thing for the last nine months. Right. So we're on tragedy on top of tragedy on top of tragedy. Right. And so it's going to, I'm expecting it to be heavier this year. And so why do we feel it? Um say that it is the sunlight is the number one thing. We are vitamin D creatures. We've got to have vitamin D. We've got to have sunlight and it regulates our melatonin release. It regulates our wake and sleep cycles. When those things get compressed, our bodies just shut down. They just slow down. It's winter, right? The same as the grass turns brown, right? The trees, the leaves fall off the trees. They just slow down. It's winter, right? The same as the grass turns brown, right? The trees, the leaves fall off the trees.

They're not dead, but they just go dormant for a while, and our bodies do something very similar. And so sunlight helps stimulate melatonin. It helps stimulate vitamin D, a whole cascade of chemical systems, right? And without that stuff, vitamin D boosts serotonin. I don't want to be a super nerd here, but it all has chemical responses. And also we stop going out. We stop being around other people.

We stop meeting. We just go to bed. It's early and it's dark and let's just call it. Let's just watch a little more Netflix, get under the covers a little further. Some have said we stop being intimate with our partners. We stop. Right, right. So you back off sex,

you start eating a little bit worse, you start sleeping a little bit more, and that's just signals to your body to depress stuff, right? To lay low. So here's a couple of things that I do personally. Actually, I'll walk through the big ones and then I'll tell you a couple of the nerd things that I do. Here's some highly intentional stuff we can do. Number one, and these aren't going to be shockers or anything, but go outside and enjoy nature. Even if it's freezing, make yourself bundle up and go outside as often as you can. I am a big believer in there's no bad weather. There's just wrong clothes. And so if it's freezing and it's snowing and it's raining, me and my kids are playing outside.

And we are running around being silly, and it may be so cold that we're jitter-chattering, but we're going outside. We're going to continue to be connected with one another, and we're going to continue to go outside. Even if it's just 15 minutes. 10 minutes, 15 minutes, go outside, right? The second thing is I – this is me being vulnerable here with you and the 17 listeners of this podcast. I put human connection on my calendar. I am a person who retreats by nature. And so I have to have intentional conversations. I have to intentionally see people. It's going to be challenging in the winter this year because I've been able to, this summer and this fall, we have a lot of outdoor conversations. We have

people over, but we eat out on the front porch in the backyard. I'm going to have to be hyper intentional in a season of COVID and a season of winter being with other people. You got to see your friends. You got to see your friends. You got to see your friends. Be hyper-intentional. Even if you have to schedule it, make sure that you are still being intimate. Make sure you are still holding hands. Make sure as you start every morning, if you've got a pet, you've got a significant other in the bed next to you, hold their hand, hug that dog, right? Touch your bare feet to their bare feet. Make sure you're getting skin to skin contact and you're feeling somebody else's heartbeat. Do everything you can in your power to eat well,

sleep a lot, and exercise. Not too much, not too little, but man, once I get the sugar rush of Halloween, usually I can hold on until Halloween, Jay, and then I get on a gummy candy binge, and I really don't recover until January, until New Year's. I just lose it, man. And then my wife stays inside, and she starts baking, and she's an extraordinary cook. Now my son's a chef now, and he's baking everything. My daughter and I just mainline sugar. It just goes down a rabbit hole. So it's making highly intentional choices about what I'm eating and then have things to look forward to. One of the things depression does to us even seasonally is it makes us – our bodies feel like, our minds feel like this is going to be this way forever. And so plan something for early March, plan something for when the, when the, when the,

like a vacation, a get out of town, even a small camping trip, but put some things on the calendar that we can look forward to. Now, here's a couple of nerd things. And I've hinted at this a little bit for the last decade, I've lived up to my eyeballs in the research literature with the outer banks of what I would call woo-woo stuff and with just basic physiology and human anatomy. Here's a couple of things that I double down on now in the winter months. Starting now is a highly regimented, no questions asked. I cannot skip it, and this is a personal commitment., no questions asked. I cannot skip it. And this is a personal commitment. Cannot skip a morning routine that involves meditation, that involves silence, that involves my feet on bare ground.

This is grounding. That's super woo-woo, but I think the science supports it. But it's 5 or 10 or 15 minutes with my feet on bare ground. It is feeling the seasons and it is an exercise program that no matter what's coming, I'm going to exercise. Even if I get halfway through my workout that morning, I'm going to do something. I also am a big Weim Hof guy. W-I-M-H-O-F, we'll link to him in the show notes. He is all about cold thermogenesis, ice baths. And these are not ice baths like athletes take after a hard workout.

This is ice baths as a way of regulating your body. And I won't get into the science here, but I have a tub that I bought from an outdoor farm supply store. And it's a metal tub that I fill with water and sits outside in the winter. And it usually has ice in it, floating in it, or it's frozen over. And I get in there from three to six to 10 minutes sometimes every morning, every morning, sometimes in the evening. And it is unbearable and it is brutal and it is beautiful. And so it is called cold thermogenesis Weim Hof. He's awesome. The last thing here, I'll talk through this for the podcast, but I will show it for the YouTube.

I don't get paid for any of these things. Thorne and Keon, those are the two supplement companies that I trust. I overdo it probably on vitamin D, K2. I've got it here. This is what I take regularly. I take a lot of it. The research on vitamin D and COVID, the research on vitamin D and seasonal defective disorder and hormone regulation and all the different biomechanical mechanisms, vitamin D regulates a lot. And so does K2 and so does magnesium. So I take a lot of that stuff. And here's one of my nerd gadgets that I love. It's called the Human Charger by Valky. It's obnoxiously expensive, but you put it in your ears and it actually shines a bright light into your ear. It's an LED light. When I show friends and family, they roll their eyes and say, that money would have been better if you had set it on fire. I love this thing.

I think it works. I use it every morning on the way to work. It cycles through two or three. It's called the Human Charger. You can look it up on the internet, so we'll link to it in the show notes. I love that thing too. But it's about bright lights. And so when you wake up in the morning, turning as bright a lights on as you can.

I've heard the investments in the sad bulbs, they call them, are worth it. They're good. And so being intentional about making sure you're around a lot of bright light, the right kind of light, and letting your natural biorhythms work even when the sun is down. Here's one final thing. You've heard me say this on the podcast often, and I'll continue to say it. We try as people for the last hundred years to power through nature. We have tried to hit the gas and turbocharge and jet propulse our way as though nature didn't know what she was doing. We've tried to – I mean, how am I going to get into it here? We've tried to out-farm Mother Nature by just beating the soil to death. We've tried to outgrow animals beyond Mother Nature. We've just lost our minds. We thought we won. And Mother Nature is proving,

as she always does, that she knows what she's doing, that she's in control. And there is an ebb and flow to the world. One of the things we can do in the winter months is just slow down, just slow down. And that's hard for us, right? But we have to remember that up until about 60 years ago, you couldn't get apples in the grocery store in February because it was winter and apples weren't growing. And we could not just get sunshine all of the time. And there was a natural pulse and a natural rhythm to life. And so I want to encourage everybody to take care of yourself, do these things, right? We got to keep showing up for work. I've got to keep showing up to the podcast. I've got to keep doing the things I've got to do to keep food on my table. And also, listen to the rhythms of nature.

Listen to the rhythms of your body. And it's okay to sleep a little bit more. It's okay to get a little more pensive. It's okay to write a little bit more in your journal or to add five or six things to your gratitude journal every morning. It's okay to read a little bit more. It's okay to slow down. And so I don't want us to spend so much energy fighting the natural systems. But at the same time, there are some cool things we can do to lift us up. All right. Let's see here. I want to shout out.

I got a shout out here from Sabrina. Sabrina Seegers. She writes that she heard one of my shows from a few days ago, a few weeks ago, and she instantly thought of her husband Now what's awesome is she didn't leave her husband's name So Sabrina Seegers, if you are out there I got your note, he has been by your side Y'all have been married for four years

You've been struggling with infertility for three of those four years. And you've had mental health challenges. You've been struggling and all that through that. Oh, there it is. There it is. Your husband, Josh, has been your rock. None of this was in the picture when y'all got married. And he continues to hold you.

He continues to walk alongside you. His number one dream has been to be a dad. And he's surrounded by all of his friends getting that, yet he has turned our trial around. This is what she writes, to be the best uncle to your family and friends. They love him and he continues to show up in their lives. He lives a quiet life and doesn't get enough credit. All men could learn from him how to live deeply in these hard seasons and how to care for their wife and their emotions, not trying to fix them, but just being with them. Our anniversary is October 30th, and I would love

for a shout out for all he has done. Josh Seegers, whose wife is Sabrina. She's calling you out, brother. Thank you for being a guy who just loves his wife and is doing the best he can to sit with her during hard seasons. What a stud, dude. What a stud. All right, so as we wrap up today's show, man, I'm just going to say it. Greatest song of all time by one of the greatest bands of all time off the greatest album of all time. This song is so good, I have no idea what it even means.

I don't know what it means. I just know it's the greatest of all time. This is the best song 100% about a calendar, right? It's the best about a calendar. Oh, man. The band has one word. It's got two words, but one's an indefinite article. It doesn't matter.

It's got one word. The album was one word. And the song's about a day of the week. The record dropped in 1992. It was called Poof Wish. And it was by the band The Cure. And the song is Friday I'm in Love.

Robert Smith writes, I don't care if Monday's blue, Tuesday's gray, and Wednesday too. Thursday, I don't care about you. It's Friday I'm in Love. Monday you can fall apart. Tuesday, Wednesday, break my heart. Thursday, doesn't even start.

It's Friday. I'm in love. Saturday, wait. Sunday, always comes too late. But Friday, never hesitate. It's Friday. I'm in love. And this is the Dr. John Deloney Show. Thank you.