The Dr. John Delony Show - Should I Forgive My Mother-in-Law?

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

On today’s show, we hear about: - A woman struggling to forgive her mother-in-law for her affair - John’s conversation about grief with author and friend S.J. Dahlstrom - A man hoping to repair his life after a sports betting addiction You can find books by SJ Dahlstrom here and here. 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 Hallow Thorne Add products to your cart create an account at checkout Receive 25% off ALL orders Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately. Learn more about your ad choices. https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. Because you can sit there and tell people what to tell grieving people all day long, and that doesn't matter either. Because I guess the answer is it's going to take a lot of time, and it's a lot of hard work. And so if you choose to enter into somebody's grief, which is poison, you need to be ready to take on some of that poison yourself. Carry it with them.

What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. A show about your mental and emotional health and your marriage and your kids. What's going on with your neighbors? What's going on in your schools? Whatever you got going on in your life when it comes to being well, being whole, relationships, your mental health, we're here for you. We're here for you. If you want to be on this show, this show is about real people going through real problems in real time.

So if you want to be on the show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. It's 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K. A couple of housekeeping notes. Number one, dude, shout out to Andrew who had baby William. And Andrew normally runs the video cameras and all the YouTube-y stuff. We have his very distant replacement in here today. Nate Dog. Not really. I mean, y'all know that, right?

There's the starting lineup, and then there's the backups. I know your show more than he does. Yeah, but he sits behind you and observes and judges you. That may be true. Nate's awesome. Did you actually like train Andrew?

Yeah, I did. Very cool. Hey, we're excited. Baby William is here and safe and beautiful. And important news number two, Kelly, you're moving back into your house? Yes. Six months later, we are in the process of moving back in.

From the great Christmas flood? It was a Christmas miracle. I don't know if it was a miracle. It was something. It was coming down from the heavens, that's for sure. And then you moved in, and then what happened? Our air conditioning unit went out. So we're actually, we're moved in the house, but we're living in a hotel because it's hot.

But they're putting the air conditioning unit in today, so we'll be in the house officially tomorrow. If you see anybody on our team walking around just holding a lightning rod, it's because of that. Because at some point, I mean, Kelly, you did something in a former life to anger the gods. I did, because it has been a hell of a six months. It's been wild. That's all I'm going to say. I'm glad that I have two panes of glass separating the two of us.

And the final thing is my favorite supplements in the world, Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E. Go to thorne.com slash you slash Deloney for 25% off the best supplements in the biz.

All right, let's go out to Dallas, Texas and talk to Tori. What's up, Tori? Hey, John. It's so good to talk to you. How are you today? I'm great. How are you? I am wonderful.

All right. So you sent me, OG, a letter in the mail. I did because I really wanted to get your input on some things and help kind of ease my mind or something. Well, I get a lot. I get a ton of letters and I actually read them and they bring me joy. They're usually full of

like, hey, this great thing happened. I just want to say thank you. And your email is on my desk. It was like, whoa. So yeah, there's a lot that's yeah all right so uh let's let's start at square one and let's walk everybody through it let's do it oh gosh okay um the long story short is my mother-in-law ran off with her twitter affair and she left her kids, her grandkids, her husband of 33 years. And it was just a shock to everybody. So is this way out of character for her? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. She was the, um,

what you would picture as the country bumpkin mama. She took care of all the kids that ran around the town and everybody would show up, you know, and get their Kool-Aids. And she was just that place that you would go and trust and, you know, talk to, or like I said, just hang out on the porch and drink Gatorade or something like that. And then tell me about this Twitter, this Twitter romance. Oh, yeah. I don't even know how long it was going on. But she just up and left one day.

She left a bracelet that all the kids had caught in her. I'm sorry. I'm postpartum. I'm probably going to cry. Hey, cry all you want to, even if you're not postpartum. That's all good, man. This is, I mean, on its face, it's like, there's no way this happened. And then like this happened to a real family and this is your family. And yeah, it was, it was insane. So she left her bracelet

and her necklace that the kids got her, um, on the table, uh, and ran off with this guy. We, we didn't see coming and didn't have a clue. We thought she was out for a run, but she never came back. And yeah, all this happened like two months before my husband and I got married. I've been a part of the family for like 13 years now. So, you know, she was like my second home. When you say... Go ahead.

Y'all were dating for 13 years before you got married? No, we've been married for five years now, but she left right before we got married. Okay. So is she still gone after five years with this Twitter lover? Yes. So they made a go of it. This just wasn't like a bad decision and six months later she came crawling back or whatever um yeah another part of the story she came back three times

just in a matter of like six months and i think one of it was like you know try to put final things in order for her divorce against my husband's dad because he came home from work and the house was absolutely trash of like paperwork like deeds to the house and stuff like that so is the divorce final oh yeah oh yeah and she's she's also married to this other guy. Oh, she got remarried. Wow. Okay. So five years ago, your now mother-in-law shocks everybody and meet some dude on Twitter and runs off. And it's two months before our wedding. Right. Did she, did she come to your wedding?

Punched my husband. Did she come to your wedding? No. Okay. So, and, your wedding? No. Okay. So, but she didn't just leave. She cut ties. She left things that your kids had got. I mean, she said, I want to no longer be a part of this family, right?

Yeah. So I think it was later the day that she left, we were all trying to look for her and figure out what the heck was going on. She sends a text message to the oldest son. And the message said, I didn't just leave your dad. I left all of you. Wow. Okay, so five years later, you write me. How can I help now? Hold on.

Before we come in, I want everyone to listen to this. It's so easy when you hear the sentence, he left her or she left him. Or after 30 years, she took off. I want everyone listening to hear five years later the ripple effect that has still continued to rattle this family. The kids wondering, what was it about us that grandma left? The husband that's like, whoa, what's going on? The daughter-in-law who had a picture of her life with this woman who suddenly, right? So this thing rattles. This isn't just a matter of, oh, she left.

When anybody just leaves a family, everything burns to the ground, right? Oh, yeah. Man. Okay, so how can I help you today? I'm just, I'm so sorry. Well, there, you know, in my letter, I explained that there's a few more details, a few more details and a lot more resentment toward her. And so my question is, how do I accept her coming into my home?

You don't. I just assume her not be here at all. She does not come into your home. She doesn't come into your home. She doesn't come into your home. You don't waste an ounce of energy on resentment. She looked at your table and said, I am cashing out my seat here. I'm out.

It was her words to her own son that said, I am cashing out my seat here. I'm out. It was her words to her own son that said, I'm leaving y'all too. Cool. Okay, okay. I totally agree with that. But it is my husband's mother and he still wants to have a relationship with her. He has to put you first.

And there comes a moment when you have to say, it's not about her. She needs to be moved off to the side here where she asked to be put. It's about you looking at your husband saying, I don't want people in my house who destroyed my husband. I don't want people in my house who are of such poor character and who are so low that they would do that to their own kids.

I don't want that type of person around my children. And here's the kicker. I feel unsafe when your mom is in our presence. And then your husband has a choice. He can choose his mom who left him over his wife, and then y'all have bigger fish to fry. Or he can do the right thing and honor his wife. You see how this has very little to do with mom? This has very much to do with the marriage right now. Okay.

And this is a hard question I'm about to ask you because this isn't what you wrote about in your letter, but how's your marriage? Oh, wonderful. Say that again. It was just a little bit garbled. I'm sorry. Um, we are wonderful. We have great communication. Uh, we watch you all the, I watch you all the time. And if something comes up, you know, I'll, I immediately go and talk to him about it. Like,

Hey, let's look at this this way. Um, we've used better help. And even the therapist on there, he said, I don't know why y'all are calling me. Y'all are great. That's so good. So is your husband trying to reconcile something or is he trying to prop up a fantasy? Yes. The second. I really think

he just, you know, he had this picture of his mom and his dad and this beautiful 33 years of marriage. And it was gone in an instant. In a weird way, this may not be a perfect one-to-one analogy, but if his mom had died, he would have been able to grieve her loss.

But she asked, no, she told the family, y'all are dead to me. Exactly. Yeah, I totally agree. And so there's a ghost hanging on out there that he can't fully let go of. Yeah, and him and his siblings and her,

they've gotten to a point where they have this group chat and they're always updating each other. And I tell him, you know, you need to back off that because she doesn't care. If she cared, she'd be here. Here's the hard part. You can only control you. Yeah. And so I would just be very clear about my boundaries. And there's been a few moments in my life when I'm going to invite friends over and they're, I mean, they're not bad people. They're just crass or whatever.

But they're people I've known for years. And my wife has said, I do not want them around our kids. And I honored my wife because she was right. And there's been times I told her, I don't want so-and-so around our family. I don't like so-and-so in my house. And she has said, cool. I'm all in on us. And so you can't be, you can, you can do whatever you want.

I would not spend my energy trying to tell him what he should or shouldn't be doing. I would be very clear about your safety and your expectations for interactions. And dude, I would love to talk to your husband. I'd love for him to call in too. And I promise, if he'll call in or write in, I know he doesn't. He would be willing to do that.

I mean, like I said, we're great communicators. If he wants to come in, stay on the line and Jenna will give you direct access. That way, we'll make sure we get it.

I'd love to have him on. but at the end of the day, as hard as this is, he's got to choose his wife over his mom. And quite honestly, all of us have to do that. My mom's amazing. And my wife comes first. It's my wife. Um, it doesn't mean that I advocate my responsibility to my mom, that I'm somehow less than. No, but I made a choice. I made a lifelong commitment to my wife.

You throw on top of that a mom who is just flat out evil. You ain't going to be around my kids. And I'd prefer our family to grieve this loss finally with a period at the end of it and walk away. Now, mom shows up at your front door on her knees begging, I screwed up. I blew up everything. I ruined everybody's life and I'm so sorry. And you want to start a multi-year healing process? Maybe. But anything short of that.

Mom, I mean, she was explicit. She told you. I'm leaving y'all too. Cool. I hate that for you. Moms aren't supposed to leave I'm so so so so so sorry Stay on the line We'll be in touch

We'll be right back Alright we are back Hey this is a big deal for me So I recently had A great, great friend of mine, a award-winning, multi-award-winning young adult author and long, long time great friend. He is a rancher and an author, and he is also a creative writing teacher.

Really an extraordinary guy. And we have many, many similar viewpoints on the world. And we also disagree big time on a few big, big issues. And I love him. And he has written some of the most extraordinary books. I'm a sucker for the old, where the red fern grows and goonies and stand by me, those old stories where people are outside and they're having adventures. And his name is Nate Dahlstrom. So in the interview, you may hear me refer to him as Nate. He writes under the name S.J. Dahlstrom. And in the interview, you may, you may hear me refer to him as Nate. He writes under the name S J Dahlstrom, and he's got a wild or good wild or good as the main character. Um, and it's a multi-book adventure series. And so if you don't have a picture of what life

without screens looks like anymore, these books are the antidote. Um, black Brock brothers is just one of them. Um, they so extraordinary. And I'm going to link in the show notes to wildergood.com, amazon.com, where you can pick up these books. But I had Nate on for, we did a long interview and we ended up breaking it up into seven segments that we're going to release over the course of the next few shows. But Nate and I have been through the ringer together on a few big issues, and we share similar passions about things, and we disagree on some things, like I said. But in this upcoming segment, we're going to really go down a rabbit hole with some personal

things that I don't think I've talked about very much on this show, if at all, about grief. And he has been one of my chief educators in my life on wrestling with grief and dealing with grief and how you show up the right way. So this isn't an interview. Please don't just skip over this one. This is an important one. And this is a guy with a lot of wisdom and a guy that iron sharpens iron that I love sitting with and sharing time with and sharing space with because it makes me a better dad and it makes me a better husband and it makes me a better thinker and it makes me a better writer. And we all need people like that in our life. But also Nate showed up for me in a couple of places that will end up having a changing my family tree sort of impact. So check out this conversation on grief.

This isn't an academic conversation. This is an honest, honest conversation about grief with me and my friend, Nate S.J. Dahlstrom. I'm trying to think. There's those moments you have in your life that there's there's 10 or 15 across my life that I can point back to

and say I was different after this I was different after this so to put in context here's the story the story is all through college

I had this basset hound that I loved just was my hound dog dog slept in my bed slept in my pillow slept in your bed yeah it was not pillow. Slept in your bed. It was not great. I was not a hygienic. Before you were married. Yes.

And then when we got married, she got moved to the couch. And when I took that dog, she got sick. When I took that dog and put her down, I don't remember in my lifetime weeping that hard. Like it was from my guts. That was my hound dog. I don't remember. I lifetime weeping that hard like it was from my guts that

was my hound dog and i don't remember i mean i remember you loving that dog but it was heavy yeah it is a terrible moment when your buddy dies but then i immediately sheila and i went to the store and had a rebound dog which is always a terrible idea so we got another basset hound within a week or two and and her name was Maria. She was terrible. She was about as worthless. She was a walking football. She just was not a good dog.

And then Hank came along. So Hank comes along, and that was his dog, and they sat around, and he babbled, and she just laid there like a giant giant basset hounds do. So I took a job in another town and Sheila was finishing up her dissertation. My wife was finishing up her research. And so we were traveling back and forth. And one day our families were going to spend the day out at your ranch. And Marie had gotten real sick. And then she'd bit Hank and it hurt him.

And then I took her to the vet. And the vet was like, man, she's got, she's real sick. So I called Sheila and said, hey, today's got to be the day that I put this dog down. And I said, y'all head out to the ranch and I'll meet you out there. So I'm sitting there with this dog that I don't like. But this is always just a hard moment. It is Hank's dog. How old is the dog at that point? 10 or 11?

Yeah, something like that. And Hank was, I think Hank was four. I think Hank's dog. How old was the dog at that point? 10 or 11? Yeah, something like that. And Hank was, I think Hank was four. I think Hank was four. And you put a dog down and then you just walk away and they put it in some city incinerator. And I was sitting there and for some reason I had this strange moment and I picked up my cell phone and called you and said, hey, this is weird. It's seven in the morning or eight in the morning. I'm sitting in a vet's office.

Would it be all right if I, I feel weird about leaving my dog here and it feels like a right thing to do to take the dog and bury it. I don't have anywhere to bury it. Can I bring it out to the ranch? And you got real quiet and there was a long beat. It was one of those that feels like 10 seconds. It was probably two seconds. And you said, if you don't take this moment to teach your kid about death, you're not the father I thought you were. Something like that. Something very Nathan. And it was something impactful. So judgmental. Yeah. And so we get out to the ranch and you had set up a little shovel and a big shovel and Hank and I went out and dug a hole for that dog.

And we prayed over that dog and we talked about that dog. And I remember putting the dog in and Hank saying, hey, don't bury the head. And I said, no, Hank, the dog's died. Like it was a hard moment. But then two years, five years, 10 years as I lost grandparents and friends of mine for a little kid, we called back I lost grandparents and friends of mine for a little, little kid,

we called back to that over and over. And there was just this moment of the importance of teaching my son about grief. And then several years later, maybe, yeah, several years later, I get a call from my wife and she is, she's crying so so hard I can't hear her on the phone. And I keep saying, I'm at the law school they're working and I can't understand you, can't understand you. And she had had an ectopic pregnancy that had ruptured. And she had sat at home and we'd had several pregnancy losses and she just said, this isn't happening. It's not happening. And she tried to tough it out.

She's a tough West Texas girl. And then she had almost bled out in her living room and she had driven herself to the hospital and then called me on the way. Again, I didn't know what was going on. I didn't even know what ectopic pregnancy was. I drive up there and I had Hank. I'd picked him up from school

and I saw my wife in a wheelchair with the head of the OBGYN. And I remember looking at the doctor thinking, oh, this is it. Like this, this bad. Somewhere along the way, maybe I called your wife or somebody came and got Hank and I still don't know who came and got Hank, but I'm sitting by myself in this waiting room and they were, had taken Sheila in and we're doing emergency surgery on her. And I just sitting there by myself, I'm just sitting there. And then you walked in and just sat right by me and you said

nothing. We didn't talk. And then when the nurse came in and said, we weren't able to save the pregnancy, but your wife's going to be okay. I'll, I remember, I'll never forget. You reached over and grabbed my shoe and you had, you had tears that I wasn't able to cry yet. And that was an important, like just sitting with somebody. No words, nothing stitched on a pillow, just this heavy moment. But it was also an invitation to, this is what sharing grief looks like with people that you love. You sit with them.

And when I look back at our culture, I think one of the things we've done is we've outsourced all these things to other people and we've pathologized discomfort. We made just being uncomfortable a bad thing that we have to solve and fix. And when it comes to grief, maybe the number one question I get on this show, privately, personally, through social media, emailed in is questions on how do I grieve? What's the point? Why don't we do this? Why don't we do this? Talk to us, man, because you've been a key teacher for me

in a couple of big areas on that. The idea that you got to head into the storm versus walking away from it. Well, those are holy things. And as your story manifests, what mattered was not anything anybody said, you know? And so how do you show up to help and don't say anything? I don't know. Obviously, the book of Job teaches us that really carefully, that you sit shiva with someone, you sit seven days, and you just grieve and put ashes on your head and tear your clothing and don't give them a bunch of mumbo-jumbo psychology or from the sermon that said, what do you tell grieving people? Because you can sit there and tell people what to tell grieving people all day long, and that doesn't matter either.

Because I guess the answer is it's gonna take a lot of time and it's a lot of hard work. Jesus said, I'm a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And you didn't get that from reading a book. You know, you got that from being acquainted with grief and nobody wants that. It's a curse. It's knowledge you don't want to have.

And so to answer your question is, Solomon says, if you want wisdom, go to the house of mourning and well, nobody's gonna go to the house of mourning. They don't want that type of knowledge, but I mean, sit with people and be quiet, but to enter into that kind of knowledge, but I mean, sit with people and be quiet. But to enter into that kind of grief, I mean, it's gonna take something of you.

You ever hear the word poultice? A poultice is something, somebody has a wound, maybe like a snake bite or some, there's some kind of poison. You put this poultice, it can be like a piece of meat. It can be a bunch of vegetation. And you put that poultice on the wound. And what happens is as the poultice dries,

it sucks out the poison. It's been around for a long, long time. And so if you choose to enter into somebody's grief, which is poison, you need to be ready to take on some of that poison yourself. Carry it with them. And that's a really, really dumb thing to do. But it's the right thing to do.

It's the right thing to do. But it's not, if you really jump into somebody's grief, you're going to get poisoned from them. And that's just, you can't, in a lifetime, how many people can you do that with? Very few. That's why you look at our police officers are burned. The social workers are burned. The hospital attendees are burned. It's just exhausting.

And do it really honestly because that's, you know, that kind of grief is a madness. I've compared it to, you know, people probably don't get this, but to being in love. And when you fall in love, everything is kind of fake. You're floating along on a cloud. You're in a sub-world. And that's what that kind of grief is. You're in a sub-world. Nothing looks to you like it looks to everybody else. But, you know, the gift of animals, if you're parenting properly, in my opinion, the animals teach you that first. Your first dog you bury, and if you haven't sanitized that experience for your kid and said, oh, the doggie went to heaven and just go burn it and throw away the ashes. If you let somebody walk through that, well, they've got a little bit of a taste of what it's going to be like when you bury granddad or a family member.

And so that's a great gift that God gave us that relationship, you know, with the dog particularly, which is really unique. Like, why don't we bawl our eyes out when dogs die? You know, it's that little Edenic relationship that slipped through. But it matters and it teaches you a little bit what that's going to feel like. Because of course, life is a complete tragedy. Yeah. Just over and over again. We're just waiting for that. The way I've described grief or tried to wrap my head around a definition is it's the gap between

what you hoped for and what you wanted and what actually happened. And there's that space and we run from it. And it's been my experience that the longer you run from it, it, the clock, it doesn't ever stop. Or there's that, there's that great quote, uh, pain deferred is pain amplified. At some point, you got to turn and go in it and, um, walk through it. What's your wisdom for somebody that's been avoiding it for a long time? The wisdom for somebody that's been avoiding it for a long time? The wisdom for someone who's been avoiding it for some time. I guess you're a West Texas rancher. You just got work to do.

Let's go do it. Let's go get it done, right? Yeah. I mean, all I can say is what happened to me. And the only thing, you know, why did we survive what happened to us? I don't know. Nature healed me. It wasn't people.

And you say, well, nature healed you. That means nothing. I'll just say this. I remember one time I saw a deer in the morning in that time come out and start eating oak leaves and something kind of cracked. And I think what I figured that was, was beauty. Is you have incredible misery to go through in this life. And that's promised for sure. Genesis 3, there's a curse upon this earth.

You're waiting for cancer, car wreck. But here's the one lucky thing that happened, that beauty got in too. So while that curse got in, a little bit of the beauty from the Edenic experience is here. And so that beauty began to patch me one to the next, to the next, to the next. And so a motto I developed in those times was to find beauty, because you can for sure find ugly. You can for sure find the curse in the world. But if you find that beauty, that beauty of, I still have a friendship and it's honest. A sunset, wildflow know, those things literally began to save me. If you can make your whole life watching birds come meet your bird feeder, you know, and like

when you're about, when you're drowning, you know, the beauty of birds and singing and the seasons, all those things, it sounds trite, but when you're gasping for air, five seconds of air really matters. You're not worried about the year of air.'re gasping for air, five seconds of air really matters. You're not worried about the year of air. You're looking for the next five seconds of air. And God allowed beauty into the world and it's all around us. And if you will sit there and wait on it,

that beauty will get you through five seconds and then 10 seconds and then 15 seconds. And eventually you kind of make it through the day. Find beauty. Yeah. That's the answer. One of my favorite things is walking out of, especially back when we lived in the same community, I'd walk out of grad school with all the PhD people sitting around the table and then we'd head out to the ranch. And one of the psychological constructs they would pass along,

for instance, would be what the brain focuses on is what the brain sees everywhere. And there's neuroscience to that. And then to go sit with my buddy who's a rancher in West Texas to say, I'm going to find beauty. The answer's in nature, right? We can find it in our textbooks, but you can live it here.

Yeah. It's just there. No, those fingerprints aren't everything he did. You know, you look really, really close at a Van Gogh, you see the Van Gogh brushstrokes that are only Van Goghs and nobody else can do those. Well, you look really, really close at the footprints and the fingerprints all over our natural world,

God is, he's gonna speak to you and you have to be quiet and listen and it gives you just enough at the right time. But you know, there's no, there's just, there's no quick fixes for any of that. You got to be willing to take somebody's poison and you've just got to wait on it. And eventually, maybe you'll survive.

Surround yourself with beauty. Hey, good folks, let's talk about hallow. All right, I say this all the time. It's important to get away for times of prayer and meditation by yourself with no one else around. But one thing you might not think about though is maintaining a sense of community when you pray or meditate. And this is especially if you don't consider yourself religious, if you question things, or if you've been burned by a church experience in the past, it's hard to want to get together with other people. And that's another

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personal point to begin my day every single day with the hallow meditation on the scripture of the day. It's a discipline and it's a practice. And here's what I'm learning. As with anything of importance and meaning, prayer takes intentionality, practice, and showing up even when I don't feel like it, and even I don't want to. This is discipline. Sometimes you do this by yourself, and sometimes you do this with a group, and Halo helps you with both. Download the number one prayer app on planet Earth, Halo, right now. And listen, viewers and listeners of this show, get three free months when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. It's amazing. Three free months of the app when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. Go right amazing. Three free months of the app when you go to hallow.com slash Deloney.

Go right now and change your life. All right, we're back. Let's go to Spencer in Fresno, California. What's up, Spencer? Hey, John. How are you doing? We're rocking, dude. What are you up to? Oh, just surviving the heat. Is it hot there in Fresno? Oh, we're not close to the ocean, so it heats up a lot. All right. Well, it's beautiful here in Nashville, so ha-ha. Just kidding. We'll make it over one day.

There you go. Come on over, man. Everyone else in your neighborhood's moved in, so y'all should join. Y'all should join. So what's up, dude? My question for you is I've had a gambling addiction specifically to sports betting that's rained havoc in my life for years. As I work on overcoming it, I'm struggling to find peace in my life and also to find life fun and enjoyable to live. How am I able to do that? Oh, man. All right, so you read that question there, right?

I did. All right, so just speak from your heart. What's been going on the last few years? How long has this been going on? Close to about eight years. Okay. What's your total loss? If I'm being honest, I don't know exactly because even as I've tried to go back and look at it, it's from so many different places.

Yes. But total, my guess is somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000. Okay. When you say wreaked havoc, besides the financial losses, what does it cost you? I think I figured the financial losses have obviously played effect in other places in my life. I think I have seen it more rain havoc in my ability to wake up and enjoy life every day. And I mean that in a way of just interactions with my wife, interactions with my friends, my ability to want to go do fun things.

I feel almost a little bit numb to it, and I think the scariest part to me is as I've come back is learning to, I think I lived so much in the past from my, from my younger self, my high school self that I, uh, that I, I just wish that I could go back to a time when I remember times that were so fun living in the moment. Yeah.

How old are you, man? I'm 25, 25. So some broad, you mind if I teach for just like 30 seconds then we'll get back to your situation because i want to paint a big picture here okay absolutely um the last data point i read was 200 billion dollars in wagers over the last five to six years to put that into context, if we spent $40 billion until 2030, that would end global hunger.

No more hungry people for $40 billion a year for seven years. We've spent $200 billion gambling on sports. Or here's an even better one. It would cost about $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States once and for all. 210X we've blown gambling. And here's where it really just makes me sick to my stomach, man. Because, dude, I'm heartbroken for you. Because you're an addict, right?

Yeah, I am. But this is a different kind of addiction because you know, if you're a coke addict, you go to jail, right? You know, if you're a coke addict, at some point it kills you. Yeah. But we have the government and educational agencies

promoting this as a good thing, a way to help out your community and have a little fun too, because proceeds go to government coffers and it goes to help education. So it's kind of like taking cocaine and fentanyl sales for, and donating that to the local schools so they can get more Chromebooks or whatever crap. It's just total BS, dude. And it makes me sick. Take me back to how this started, man.

Yeah, I think in the beginning it started, I mean, it started in all fun i was in a i was in a really low point in my life what happened yeah um i grew up in a really religious family okay and um great relationship with my family and great relationship with my parents but um i ended up going on a mission with my church. And anyway, I came back earlier than I thought I would. Did you get in trouble? No, not in trouble.

Just due to mental health, just with issues with depression, anxiety, where just my body wasn't functioning like it should be. Anyway, I went home and I just felt a lot of shame and a lot of guilt in my life for not being able to complete that. Was that guilt and shame reinforced by your parents and friends? Not by my friends. I think over time, my parents have learned a little bit more of how to deal with it. But when I came home, I was supposed to be out there for close to two years and I came back after six months. And, uh, so no one was really expecting it. And, uh, my siblings, you know, they all welcome. Then I think my parents, they were just a little bit more like, what are you doing back type thing? Um, and so I think that was hard. And so instead of ever like facing anything or instead of going out, I just didn't want to leave the house.

And I ended up going over to my sisters who lived in South Carolina. And I stayed with her. And while I was over there, she was just telling me, you know, every Sunday they just bet on a football game while it plays. And I was like, that's awesome. And, you know, they were just betting a couple bucks. And anyway, ever since that day, it became my comfort. And it became the thing I went to every time because I think I felt very abandoned in that time in my life.

So over time, it just became my crutch. Can I be honest? Can I be honest with you? Please. I think you probably felt abandoned before that. I tend to, I like to start at a place when I hear somebody say, I'm really struggling with depression, anxiety, I needed to come home. I like to start from a place that your body was doing exactly what it needed to do to keep you safe.

Not that it was malfunctioning or wasn't working as it should. And that would lead me to believe that there was some sort of preparatory challenges. There was some sort of environment that wasn't set up before you left. There wasn't deep anchors and deep roots so that you can go do something really hard, like a two-year mission at 18 years old. That's tough, man. That's scary. It's isolating.

It's all that stuff. And you've got to be anchored into something way bigger than you. Yeah. Am I right? Yeah. I mean, it's hard because I feel like I had good support from my family. And I had a really good friend group. I think as growing up, I was always a really small kid.

It wasn't until I turned about 20 that I actually grew. But all through, I always felt like I was the little sibling, even in high school. And even coming out, I was always the guy that looked six years younger than he was, and so I don't think I ever really felt like I was a real friend. I always felt like I was the friend's brother. Okay. So you've always been on the outside looking in. You always felt like on the outside looking in,

and even if people invited you because they liked you, you had another story as to why they weren't really inviting you because they liked you, and you got a brain screaming at you, dude, we got to plug in, we got to plug in, we got to plug in. And then you go off to another country, you go off to another state where you know nobody and they say, go get them. Yeah, man. I mean, that's, I mean, it's a recipe for anxiety.

It's a recipe for a body shutting the system down. And then you come back, and then were you 18 when you came back? Yeah, I was. Yeah, and then your sister handed you a double Jack and Coke and was like, hey, we just do this on Sundays. And your body went,

ah, right? Yeah. Yeah, man. What do you do for a living? i work in uh cells so if you do you make a whole bunch of money or have you have you mortgaged and leveraged your soul um no i i actually make a really good income okay and i think that's the part that it's hard is i think sometimes i bang my head against the wall where i'm like it doesn't really matter what I make because it's just all going down the drain anyway. I know, but there's listeners that if they gambled $500,000 over seven years, that would mean they've taken out two mortgages and they've stolen money. But if you make $250,000 a year over seven years, you could blow that kind of money.

Right. if you make $250,000 a year over seven years, you can blow that kind of money. Right? No, it's, it's something I'm able to, on the financial part, um, I'll, I'll be out of debt here in the next about,

uh, two months. Okay. Um, tell me about your marriage, bro. Um, it's great.

My wife's fantastic. Um, I'm, I've been only married for nine months. Does she know the extent of this? Um, she has, and I've, I've been only married for nine months. Does she know the extent of this? Um, she has, and I've more, not when we first got married. Um, I had brought it up to her, but, um, I think, I think it was hard that I wanted her to pry more than she would.

And so it just kind of got left on the doorstep. And I said, Hey, I have kind of a problem with this. And, you know, she said, thanks for letting have kind of a problem with this. And you know, she said, thanks for letting me know, but she never asked any additional questions. Um, since then I've realized that if I ever want to make a change in my life,

I can't wait for somebody else to come to me. Um, well, hold on. I mean, you kind of presented like the bro flex out version. You're right. You've got to be honest about it, right?

But you can't white knuckle your way through this. Yeah. And you can't over discipline your way through this. And I'm a guy that really preaches discipline because I think in a lot of areas, man, if people would just sleep and they would have great friends and be disciplined about exercise, a lot of their life's problems would, would, would shift. This is not one of those moments.

Yeah. I think, I think recently I've realized that a little bit in the past, uh, well, a little while. And I, and I realized that I'm just so poor with, with money and where it's going. And so, um, I, my, my wife's just, I mean, she doesn't have the same addictions that I do. Spencer, the way you just said that is like saying, yeah, I just realized that I have a problem with, um, cocaine and how much of it just gets in my nose. Yeah.

You are over your head, man. And until you're ready to fully submit, this thing's going to keep growing like a dragon. Yeah. I, um, the first steps I've done is,

uh, I gave my wife all of, um, my debit and my credit cards and I gave her everything. And I said, Hey, set me up on a couple of hundred week budget Mac just for, you know,

food and gas. And then, uh, and then that way for right now, we can both see the accounts that I only have access to a couple hundred bucks. And, uh, that will work for about eight weeks for you. Nope. It won't. It will work for about four weeks for you. Yeah. And I think that's the part that I'm nervous about I'm telling you right now Spencer You are Bro dude

You are Doing everything you can to avoid the reality of this And that's totally fine That's totally fine How do I How do I not avoid it You sit down and tell your wife Honey I am a full blown addict

I haven't been fully honest with you You sit down and tell your wife, honey, I am a full-blown addict. I haven't been fully honest with you. I cannot control this. I've been gambling for seven years since I was a kid. I'm struggling with depression. I'm struggling with anxiety. And this is every bit getting drunk every day of my life. Or every bit doing heroin every day of my life or every bit doing heroin every day of my life and I've got to start going to GA

Gamblers Anonymous I got to get a group and I have to get a sponsor because I'm over my head and I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth that's where you got to start yeah anything short of that my friend you're too start. Yeah. Anything short of that, my friend?

You're too smart. You make too much money. You're trying to do gentle workarounds with a beautiful wife who doesn't know how bad this is. Yeah. Fair? That's fair.

I think that, I think that's after a while, too, you lie to yourself for so long. Of course you do. Yeah, man. And I guess, uh, I think that's after a while too, you lie to yourself for so long. Of course you do. Yeah, man. And, uh, I guess like, I don't know too, because I I've sat down with my wife and when I, when I basically said, Hey, you need to take all the cards away. I told her that, uh, you know, I was like, I like, I'm an addict and I can't control this. Um, but I know as addicts do that, even in ways that I don't know, if you really want to do it,

you'll find a way to do it. You'll find a way. You've set yourself up to commit a crime. Or you've set yourself up to really violate a core tenet of your marriage, which is we will tell the truth to one another. Yeah. Because you've put boundaries in place

without dealing with the core issue yeah and the core issue i i always look at addiction any sort of addiction as whether it's work or whether it's drugs or whether it's gambling or sex whatever happens to be it that's relational in origin and until you deal with that black hole, man, this little kid that doesn't feel like he's enough and feels like he's on the outside and feels like he's a burden and feels like he just has to accomplish and achieve

so he can get love around him and he failed this big accomplishment and achievement that everyone talked about since the day he was born until he was 18. Until you deal with that and the grief around that and the wait a minute i don't suck i'm not a piece of crap i'm a good man i work hard i love my family till you deal with those things brother nothing's gonna taste right

yeah of course you're not you're you're not gonna be able to see a vision of your life with happiness and laughter and joy i promise you it's there but you can't end around it you got to go through it how do i uh to go back, Hey, I want to deal with these issues and these core issues from growing up. Where would, where would someone like me start? Gamblers Anonymous. You have to, you have to be honest out loud with a group of people who will look square through you, who won't put up with any of you. If you've been gambling like this for this long and you're a world-class salesman,

you can tell anybody anything, right? Yeah. Yes. You are a wordsmith if there ever was one. You're Shakespeare. And so you've got to sit in a room with people who, they will sit back and look at you and you will know that they know.

And then you got to be honest. And then you're going to hear a bunch of other stories and you're going to go, whoa, that's me too. And then you're going to have people that you call at four in the morning when you can't sleep and you're out of town on a sales thing and you are logging into your computer or picking up your phone and you re you re uh download those apps and you got somebody that looks you in the eye and says i will be here for you 24 7 365 i love you that much you call me and then you're going to get to the core issue of what happens just before you get that impulse to gamble yeah yeah and that's what you got to lock in on that just takes time there is no way to think Just before you get that impulse to gamble. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's what you got to lock in on. That just takes time. There is no way to think your way through it. Because look, dude, you know, this is ruining things. You know. I do know. There's not a way to think it out. You got to just walk through and face the dragon,

and you cannot do that alone. And you especially can't do it with some wife who's nine months in who's trying to love you the best she can, but she does not know what she's in for. Yeah. Fair? That's fair. I haven't met somebody who's a full, like, full-blown, over their head into something who has fully laid out everything in front of his wife.

I don't know that guy until they're ready to get stone sober. When's the last time you gambled? About two weeks ago. When's the last time you really gambled? Two weeks ago. Like for real though? That's the last time I did gambled? Two weeks ago. Like for real though? That's the last time I did it. What was it on?

It was on a soccer match. How much? It spread out between a few different sites, but it probably would have been about $1,500 total. Okay. Are you starting to itch now? It's hard. I don't. I've gone in cycles my whole life. When I go too much into debt, then the itch wears down. But as soon as there's money, the itch just skyrockets. And I'm at a point where I'm in debt and I don't have money,

and that's when I've basically given everything over. But I think that's, again, what scares me is when money starts flowing. There you go. Now's the moment. Yeah. I had a professor one time. She told me the worst part about counseling is people, people wait till things are on fire before they go. She said, it's like waiting till you get the flu to go to the gym for the first day to start your workout program. That's the worst day you're sick. The best day to go to the gym is when you feel great.

The best time to start going to counseling is when things are awesome and you can actually hear and start practicing things and you're not running for your life. You have a moment where you don't have any money. You're broke. You're in debt. You're in a hole and you're embarrassed and you're ashamed of it. And you're not going to gamble in these moments because your body's telling you, I mean, you're lucky on that one because I've talked to gamblers who they'll borrow and just borrow until they got a steal and whatever. You're not there for whatever reason. Now is a perfect moment. So before the day is over, brother, before the day is over,

you pull out your phone and you find a local Gamblers Anonymous in your area or a local CA group or if you have to and all they have is a local AA group, go there. You have to take a knee in front of a group of men and women who have been there and can see you and say, we know, and we'll walk with you. And then at some point, you're going to have to get with a licensed counselor who knows what they're doing and start to walk back this idea that you somehow don't belong to anybody anywhere at any time. Cause it's not true. You do. You're one of my friends now. Hang on the line. I'm going to send you a copy of own your past, change your future. We're going to hook you up with that. And then brother, I will walk with you every step of the way.

And here's what that means. That means you go to meetings and you call me in 30 days I want to hear an update and i'll be willing to update everybody out there if you go to meetings every day for the next 30 days, I would love that I'll also be here if you choose to get off the line and you are about to make the call tonight. You don't make it It's six months when your wife finally finds out how bad this is, I'll be here then too. I'm in the long haul with you. I'll take your call every time you call, man. Because you got some hard choices to make ahead of you. And I hope you'll look in the mirror and say, dude, Spencer's worth being well. Spencer's worth being whole. Talk to you soon, my brother. 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 and Kelly has a special segment. That reminds me of like in the 80s, whenever we used to watch, you know, sitcoms

and there was always a very special episode. Very special. And it always dealt with like drugs. Zach Morris tried weed. Yeah, exactly. You know, when Jesse Spano took the speed pills, you know, and something like that. So it's not quite that life-shattering.

It kind of is. Here we go. So we got an email from a listener and- The way you are smiling, I know this is not going to be in my favor. Go ahead. No, it is. It's not in mine. Yes!

Who is it? It's probably my mom. No, it's not. Okay, go ahead. This is January, and she emailed in, and I'm just going to read some bits and pieces. You are calling out. No, it's great. It's a great letter.

Okay. It's fantastic. It says, your show has always helped me reflect on different areas of my life, but I found one of your most recent videos to be particularly profound, why America is obsessed with true crime. I started this video

with a false sense of moral superiority, for I seldom consume media related to true crime. I do, however, enjoy scary movies. For the longest time, I justified this interest by telling myself it's just fiction and no one is actually getting hurt. That was until you shared something that your dad told you. I just can't ever imagine thinking that

this is entertainment. That sentence struck me like a lightning bolt. I found myself re-examining my interest I've had since childhood and it made me feel uneasy. I think this is because of the extent to which I have woven scary stories into my identity. Then she goes on to talk about how she has been writing a book, kind of a horror book, and she was having trouble with the violent scenes and she thought it was just writer's block. Then she said she decided to watch a few scenes from a recent scary movie in hopes of feeling inspired. Instead, I was left feeling disgusted, and I spent the rest of the weekend trying to figure out why. I concluded that horror stories are rooted in trauma. The trauma fictional characters experience is not as divorced from

reality as I once believed. While Freddy Krueger may not exist outside the silver screen, there are plenty of monsters in the real world who can take away everything we have. The concept of someone losing it all is hard to justify as entertaining, regardless of whether it's fiction. So while I can't say I'll never watch another scary movie,

I will be more mindful of my reaction to that type of content. I also plan to continue to write my story, but I will no longer do it writing such violent chapters. I struggle to imagine violence as entertainment. Wow! And as the... Well, how does that make you feel? Whenever we got it, honestly, I told Jenna,

and you can tell your dad this, that sentence has stuck with me. And I even told my husband that, about I can't imagine that this is a form of entertainment. And it just, it did, it has lived rent-free in my brain ever since that day of like, ew, I don't like how that feels. Yeah, I mean, it haunted me back when he told me when I was 12

or however old I was yeah just that idea of and then there's been a couple there's a couple of really popular murder podcasts that I don't listen to because I don't

I think they're disrespectful how they talk about the the acts and I don't think it's respectful to the families and so that that's something that's I've been a little more aware of

but still. So, I mean, it's... Way to go, January. Yeah. Way to go, Kelly. I thought that was... Kelly getting all grown up. I know.

Okay, the challenge is, I think, because I love scary movies. I grew up on them. I like that. Is where do I go for that shot of adrenaline or that shot of, yeah. And I'll just, I mean, if we're being honest here, I'll be honest. Recently, a conversation with my counselor,

it helped me to realize, and it's something I say on the show all the time. It's just hard to see it when you're looking in the mirror. I'm having to practice not being so spun up all the time because I've been spun up for 35 years. And what I thought was felt normal, I've come to find out shocking. It's a lot for everybody around me. And so when I'm feeling at peace, my body feels sleepy. My body feels depressy and it's not, it's just finally operating at a low. So I'm not feeling that same need to go get jolted out of everything because I'm finally in a different physiological state. You know what I mean? Oh, I do. Because I've been, as everybody knows, we deal with a mentally ill daughter at home. And so I've been working with my doctor,

work on my cortisol because I'm high cortisol 24 seven because of our situation. And because of the show. And well, it doesn't help. But, and so I'm more aware of that now and we're working on, like, actually I just went yesterday and had some tests done for the cortisol so they could figure out what we could do to bring it down. And so I like those kind of movies. My son and I, we watch them together. The Black Phone is one of our new favorite movies that's ever been out. But I like that.

And even as I've been more aware of, wow, this isn't healthy for my body to live this high cortisol all the time, I've been more cognizant of, well, maybe isn't healthy for my body to live this high cortisol all the time, I've been more cognizant of, well, maybe I won't need that, like, something. That there's a reason that I go looking for that because it keeps me up here because otherwise I don't know what to do with it. And the, like, the what do I do, it's, oh, just go to sleep. Yeah, just be. I don't have to. Sit down and read a book

right right which might be about murder too so again i have a lot of things to work on i'm not i saw somebody recently on instagram said uh i would do anything for eight hours of sleep and somebody's like would you just go to bed early and or exercise and go to bed on time and they're like not that not that right so good for you, Kelly. Way to go. January? Shout out, man. Mad respect. That's big time. And to my old man, look at you dropping pearls of wisdom when I was a little kid that hung in there. He probably has his top 10 list and I don't remember any of those. I just remember that line. That was a good one. Well, it's true that sometimes the things you say that you don't think your kids catch. Oh, they catch it all.

They catch it, and then one of these days that comes back, and, you know, it's that whole ripple effect because look what he's doing now. Man, look at that. All right, hey, everybody, stay in school. Don't do drugs. Joe, let's kick the music up. A little jangly, jangly, jangly.

Hey, I love you guys. Appreciate y'all being with us. We'll see you soon.