The Dr. John Delony Show - The Aftermath of a Horrific Violent Family Attack

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

The Dr. John Delony Show is a caller-driven show that offers real people a chance to be heard as they struggle with relationship issues and mental health challenges. John will give you practical advice on how to connect with people, how to take the next right step when you feel frozen, and how to cut through the depression and anxiety that can feel so overwhelming. You are not alone in this battle. You are worth being well—and it starts by focusing on what you can control. Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show. We want to talk to YOU!   Show Notes for this Episode Followup email: Grieving the end of a relationship My family has been torn apart by my sons' violence against their mom and brother My "brain chatter" is loud; how do I learn to achieve peace and quiet? Lyrics of the Day: "Ring of Fire" - Johnny Cash   As heard on this episode:  BetterHelp dreamcloudsleep.com/delony Conversation Starters Redefining Anxiety John's Free Guided Meditation Ramsey+   tags: grief, divorce, relationships, behavioral problems, parenting, kids, trauma/PTSD, anxiety   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 have a different show. We talk to a husband and a father who's experienced unspeakable tragedy with his wife and with his kids, and we help him pick up the pieces, figure out the next steps that he can do in his heart and in his home. Stay with us. Hey, what's up hey what's up what's up this is John with the dr. John Deloney show we talk about relationships and mental health and life and just the bonkers world that we live in friends James and Kelly are here with me and we're so glad that you joined us on this podcast and on this YouTube show.

Literally, there's a trillion other places you could be, and we're glad that you came over to hang out with us today. We are glad that you are here. So, hey, I always tell people, hey, send me a follow-up email, how your world's going. Shoot me a letter. Give us a call. Let us know. And we get those from time to time. Not as often as I would like, but we do get them.

Sometimes people are upset with me. Sometimes people, actually, that's really rare. Kelly, we got like one of those, right? Just one. Yeah, we don't get a ton, but we've gotten a few more lately. You'll be hearing a couple more of these coming up. Where they don't like me? No, that's just James and I, but the other people, they do.

So this one came in. Here's what it says. This is Jane, formerly of just James and I. But the other people, they do. So this one came in. Here's what it says. This is Jane, formerly of Louisville, Kentucky, who called last December because my husband wanted to transition to be a woman. This Thursday, our divorce goes before the judge in Kentucky. Chris moved to Hawaii and is fully leaning into his transition. And we relocated to my hometown of Tampa, Florida in April. It's been hard.

The hardest part is that Chris is reckoning or revoking the friendship we had, which is all we had and what got us through the last four years. Now Chris is turning the tables on me saying I'm dumping him. I'm dumping her. I'm dumping everything. It's all very frustrating, and I'm grieving losing my friend even more than the final death of the marriage. Now Chris is saying we never had anything in common anyway, even though we've been friends since we were 14. Just wanted Dr. John to know that his advice has been so helpful to me

to make these tough decisions. The final straw was when on the show the other day, Dr. John said that kids growing up in a home with negative vibes would affect them and they would absorb it. Well, later that night, I caught myself making a snide, bitter, jaded comment about a cute married couple on HGTV. My daughter got upset and started crying. I knew right then that we had to end the marriage so I could stop being bitter because at this point I was choosing that path. And I want my daughter to grow up in a clear and bright and happy vibes home. Thank you. So, number one, man, just the heartbreak surrounding this whole thing.

I know this has been hard on everybody in this relationship. And if you go back and listen to the call, I'm going to put in the show notes when the original call was back in the day and that way you can just go click and find it. This is a tough call.

This couple have been working through this for a long, long time and they had not had much of a marriage as much as a really close friendship and then things got sideways. Ultimately, they just appeared at the end of this sentence. But I wanted to point out a few things in this.

Number one, Jane, thank you so much for writing back, letting us know. Sometimes, not sometimes, often, these shows are just in a vacuum for me. So I get to spend 10 or 11 or 9 or 7 intimate moments with somebody. Then it's just gone into the ether. And I wonder sometimes what's going on. Second thing is, man, this is heartbreaking. Heartbreaking. You lost your best friend.

You lost your husband. And now you've recognized that your daughter's absorbed this too and that she is taking your bitterness and it's encoding in her DNA literally. And so I know this has just been a hard season, hard several years for everybody involved. And the challenge that Chris has been going through, your former husband's been wrestling with this stuff and just how hard that's been for everybody. And now you're literally across the world from your best friend, from your partner of so many years, and just tough.

But I want to say a couple more things. The first one is this. You mentioned now Chris is saying that we never had anything in common anyway, even though we've got to make a final call, whether that is the marriage is over, or I'm leaving this job, or I'm not going to that restaurant anymore, or something small, like I'm not using that yard guy anymore. We often are so unsettled, uncomfortable in the hurt of the end of a relationship with anybody for anything that we made. This is our decision that we are putting a period at the end of this sentence, that we often make ourselves feel better by dumping on those other relationships. So, you know, we quit a job and we go take another job, whether it's a good one or a little bit worse, but it's closer to

family further away. It's so easy to cast that former job in a negative light. Well, I didn't even like working there anyway. They're crazy. They like make you do that. And it was fine when they were paying you. You know, it was great when things were good. It's when something else came along or they let you go, they fire you. And we look back and go, well, I didn't even like him anyway. Especially this happens with relationships. When people have been dating a long time, they fire you. And we look back and go, well, I didn't even like him anyway. Especially this happens with relationships. When people have been dating a long time, they've been married for a long time and they get to the end and they turn back and they just look back and burn everything in reverse. Man, I'm so glad I'm not there anymore. They used to smack every time they would eat dinner and it'd drive me crazy. I'm so glad to be out of that

marriage, whatever it happens to be. So if you've just had your heart broken, if someone has just left you, if someone has just upended your world, if you've just lost your job, fill in the blank, and somebody says, now he's saying we never had anything in common. Anyway, even though we've been friends since 14, rest assured that that's part of somebody who's hurting and trying to grieve and you're just a casualty of that grief.

You did have a lot in common. You've been friends for years and years and years and years and years. Have a child together. You had a life together. You shared laughs together. You shared grief together. You went to performances together.

You were intimate together. There was a life there. And often when we look back and say, you know, we never had anything in common anyway, you feel crazy because you think, I thought we did. I thought those laughs were real. I thought that sadness and heartbreak was real. It was. It was. I thought that we had a good working relationship together. And I know that person wants to quit now or we had to cut them loose but all these negative things they're saying about us

in the press or at home or through mutual acquaintances or mutual colleagues I thought we things were good they were they were so the challenge here is twofold number one if you're transitioning out of a relationship

you're cutting it off you are breaking up you're leaving you're quitting you're getting a new dry cleaner whatever whatever it is. Be honest about the good stuff too. And steer clear of these grenade comments like, there was never anything here anyway. Yes, there was. I never liked you. Yeah, you did. I never thought you did. It's okay to no longer feel a certain way about something and not nuke the past. And the second thing is if you're on the other end of this deal and you're receiving some of this out of the blue, just caustic grenades, rest knowing they're not true.

You're not crazy. There was a connection there. There was some connection there. There was some community there. However weird or twisted or sad or heartbreaking or whatever it happened to be at that job or whatever it happened to be with your yard person or whatever. You're not crazy. There was something there. It's not anymore. Or maybe it is, and people are just trying to amp themselves up.

They're trying to flux their way through this relationship. But you're not nuts, and it's okay just to be heartbroken for a season. The second thing is this. Kids absorb tension and I don't want us to forget that. It doesn't always mean you got to end your marriage. This one in this particular case, if I remember correctly, it's been a long, long time since we we took this call but Jane was saying they had been technically married for four years but they were

just best friends and they hadn't had a romantic relationship of any sort they hadn't had anything other than a good friend relationship in years she knew it she wanted to be out of that relationship and she realized she's just choosing it most people I don't I'm not recommending you end

anything. I'm recommending that you take a good hard look at your partner and say, we deserve better than this. Our kids deserve better than this. We could choose joy other than yelling. We could choose to lean into laughter and intimacy and starting all over and building a relationship that is going to be great for both of us. We could both choose that if we wanted to. We could choose a house where people chose to be curious and chose laughter other than yelling and slamming things because your kids are absorbing every single second of it, all of it. And I say this all the time and I'll keep saying it. When kids feel that tension, their bodies react

and their reaction may be ADHD, it may be anxiety, it may be depression, it may be any number of things. Their body is gonna try to solve that problem of a chaotic household. It's going to respond. The alarms are going to go off. And the kids will be on a lifelong mission to make mom and dad okay. And that will ultimately lead them to make sure their marriage partner's okay and their boss is okay and their neighborhood's okay

and fill in the blank on and on and on and on. Stop it. Choose peace for your home. Choose peace for your heart. Choose peace for your kids. And if you got a partner that just won't play, like, no, I choose anger. I choose yelling because I'm awesome, whatever.

I choose slamming things. Play this for them. Sit down and say, I want to choose peace. I want to choose laughter. I want to choose joy. And with all the chaos that's going on in the world, what better place than inside of our homes? It's one of the last places on earth we can actually choose to

do anything. We can choose joy. It just takes a decision. It takes a partner. It takes a, here we go. Choose joy. We'll be right back on the dr john aloni show this show is sponsored by better help all right october is the season for wearing costumes and masks and if you haven't started planning your costume yet get on it i'm pretty sure i'm going as brad pitt in fight club era because i mean we pretty much have the same upper body but whatever all right look it's costume season. And let's be honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind costumes and masks more often than we want to. We do this at work.

We do this in social setting. We do this around our families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where

you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can learn to be honest with yourself, and you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic, direct life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy, and you can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for your schedule. You just fill out a short online survey, and you get matched with a licensed therapist. Plus, you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with better help visit betterhelp.com slash deloney to get 10 off your first month

That's better help h-e-l-p dot com slash deloney And we're back, all right, so before we go to aaron in sacramento, I'll let everybody know this is a different show today, um, this is a Yeah, i'll just leave it at that. This is a different show. Hang with us. It's going to be incredible, but

we're going to take this in a little bit different direction than we normally go. Aaron, this is Deloney. How are you, man? I'm doing pretty good, Dr. John. How are you? Given the circumstances, that's pretty incredible, man. Well, I'll have to give you an update at some point, but yeah, given the circumstances, it's been the worst month of my life.

Yeah, absolutely. So for the listener and for you, this is your story to tell. And so I'd love to you hop in here whenever. Kelly, let me know last week that you had reached out to us and had had a hurricane and an atomic bomb and everything else you can imagine go off inside your home. And you reached out and wanted to spend some time together. And man, we cleared the whole deck. And this show is just going to be me and you that's it and um i can recap what i know or if you feel comfortable i'd love for you to tell your story i know you've rehashed this a million times um in court and in the public and all you know partridge in the pear tree but

if you're comfortable i'd love for you to tell your story and give me an update of where you're at and then how i can help yeah sure yeah i can Yeah, I can kind of give you the backstory just in my own words. I haven't had to tell it in court yet, thank God. But yes, I was taken back four weeks ago today. Just a regular Monday day, I was at work myself with my daughter. I'm a owner-operator trucker, so I had Daddy-Daughter Day. I have five kids, by the way. Oldest is 17. My youngest daughter is eight. There's three boys in between, 16, 13, and 10. And my oldest boy was at college. And so my mom, my wife, was home with my three middle boys. And just a regular old Monday, nothing was going on.

My wife was just sitting at the dining room table in our house. And little did we know that my, uh, my older two boys at home, 16 and 13 year old had premeditated, um, an attack on, on my wife and, uh, carried out just out of nowhere. Um, no one saw any signs coming. No one, no one would have expected it still is baffling four weeks later. It makes no sense. Um, but they did they they're in their little minds. Their plan was to attack mom and I think escape, you know no sense. Um, but they did, they, they're in their little minds. Their plan was to attack mom and I think escape, you know, leave the house, take the van. Cause the older one has a driver's license and, and leave, leave the state and who knows what they were going to

do, but that was what was in their mind. Um, my older son took it upon himself. I don't think this was, this was pre-planned, but he went into a murderous rage and actually tried to kill my wife. And very nearly did. And then he came at her with knives and a baseball bat. My oldest son had a baseball bat. Again, unprovoked. She was stabbed quite a few times. She was being over the head with a baseball bat. My 10-year-old, who was not in the same room,

heard mom scream and came running to see what was going on. I went running for help. And he got taken down by my older son with a baseball bat, took a really, really bad head injury to the back of his head. And it lasted about 45 minutes. I moved from different room to different room. My wife escaped to this and that and ended up in our bedroom. And she ended up talking, getting my 16-year-old to talk and getting to talk and getting to talk.

And she started praying for everybody and asked us for more time, you know. She thought her life was, you know, she told me that she thought her life was over. And she just started, you know, asked for some time to pray for him. And she started praying and got him to talk and asked, you know, what he was planning on doing and why he was doing this. And he was murderous.

He stated outright he was planning on murdering her and he thought he had already killed my 10-year-old son. Turns out it wasn't true. But he got him to talk, got him to talk, and eventually, after 45 minutes or so, he called 911, confessed to what had happened, told them my wife was hurt, my son was hurt. And they told him to give the phone to my mom. I keep doing that. I'm sorry. No, that's okay.

My wife. And so 911 was on the phone with my wife. They put the weapons down and went outside and cooperated. Deputies came, and they arrested my two sons, and they took my youngest son and my wife to the emergency room and immediately went into surgery. Life-threatening injuries, both of them. I got wind of something funny going on because my son actually sent a message over the internet to a friend. I still don't even know who that is, who called our church, who called me and said, Hey, I got this really funny message about your son. And so I actually raced home. So I was only about a half hour away and I couldn't get ahold of my

wife. And I showed up and there was a dozen deputies around my house. And, uh, they wouldn't tell me what was going on, but I knew it was bad. You know, asked, is anyone dead? I figured someone had to be dead for all that thank God that wasn't quite the case but it was close it was very very close so I don't know where you want me

to skip to from there but that's what happened let's stop there for a minute I don't have any words man you've obviously listened to the show and you know that's a rare moment I mean, I don't have any words, man. And you've, you've obviously listened to the show and you know, that's a rare moment, but I've had a word.

But brother, my heart's broken for you. Yeah, I didn't either. I spent the afternoon in that hospital. Both my wife and my younger son were in emergency surgery at two different hospitals, by the way, which made it. Oh yeah. I did the complications down the hospitals, by the way, which made it. Oh yeah. I did a complications down the road, but, um, I, I just, I was pacing around the hospital, not knowing all I knew in the moment was my son was completely not responsive. His pupils were dilated. He had no response whatsoever, but they took him into surgery and they, you know, he had traumatic

brain injury. Sure. And, um, but I knew my wife going into surgery was repeating my name and my phone number over and over and over trying to get them to call me so that I knew what was going on. And so I, I, I was hopeful that she, I knew she wasn't dead. Yeah. Um, but I, um, when I got, when I got a debrief from the doctor after like five hours of pacing the hospital about my son, without using the words, they basically told me he was not going to survive. Yeah. They lowered expectations. They said it's not good.

It's not good. Yeah. They have some sort of scale they use when they bring him to the hospital. It's like a 1 to 15 for brain injuries. Right. He was a 1. Wow. They had no hope that this kid would survive.

And so, I mean, Lord willing, none of us are ever in this situation. Yeah. Give people some words about the disassociative effects. I mean, the lights are brighter and things feel like you're in a video game or you're not real. Walk people through just pacing the hospital. All the text messages start coming through. This is in the media.

This is all over the place. It wasn't that first day, first night, you know, not in the first hours anyway, you know, that took a little while. Okay. You know, in the first hospital, I'm pacing the hospital. I got a hold of my son that was in the college, and the sheriff's, they had a PR person on site by the time I got there. He actually, in civilian clothes, he actually drove me to the hospital and my daughter, who was with me. Oh, that's great. And then he went and picked up my son. So the three of us were at least together in the hospital, but I had no idea what was going on.

I had no idea what to tell my kids. And I felt like I should be sitting there broken down crying, but I wasn't. I was just kind of, I don't know, which is one of my kind of questions for you long term. I still feel kind of just numb about that. Absolutely. It's kind of weird. Yeah. We'll get to those questions.

Yeah. But in the so yeah it's just completely numbing and it's just you know you don't you don't plan for something like that obviously no one does this is something you read about on a you know in the news or something and all of a sudden you're in it oh man so three or four weeks have gone by now walk us through what the last three or four weeks have been like maybe the best three or four weeks have gone by now. Walk us through what the last three or four weeks have been like. Maybe the best three or four weeks of my life. I mean, I'll skip right to the end. My wife is out of the hospital.

Wow. I hadn't heard that, man. Oh, yeah. And my son, I'm in the hospital with him right now. Well, not with him. I'm in the next room over. But he's going to be discharged in the next couple of days. Stop dude. Really? Yes. It is absolutely a miracle. No one can really fathom what has happened to, like I said, I had faith my wife would make it out of this

in some fashion, but I thought four weeks ago that I was going to lose my son. And four weeks later, they're literally talking about discharging tomorrow or not tomorrow, Wednesday. What's his cognitive capacity? Amazing for where he is. He's walking, he's talking, he's eating. I mean, they took the feeding to him out last week because he spent the whole week eating everything they would put in front of his face. He's got the appetite of an amazing 10 year old little boy. Of a 10 year old, yeah. Yeah.

Can I have a snack? Can I have. Yeah. Can I have a snack? Can I have a snack? Can I have a snack? Yeah. I mean, so the last four weeks, or sorry, for a week, he spent completely sedated. He was in the PICU, the Pediatrics ICU at the Children's Hospital here, and completely sedated. He had monitors everywhere, breathing tube, feeding tube, the whole nine yards.

They were drains out of his head for excess blood. It's just that whole thing, you know? And after the first couple of days when it was apparent, he wasn't going to die, which that's what we all thought. I mean, you know, the nurse is everything, but after a couple of days, the swelling wasn't getting much worse and it was looking like, okay, this is going to be okay. But even at that point, then there's, you know, you have no idea what this kid's life is going to be like, you don't know if he's going to come back at all. He might be brain dead. Even if he comes back, we were getting warnings over and over from nurses about how, um, I don't remember the

terminology, but they had terms for different kind of outbursts that they would have or different personalities that they would come back with sometimes. And, you know, they were telling us this kid's not going to be the same kid, even if he makes a recovery and they're looking at six to nine months in the ICU and all of this stuff. And so we spent about a week there. And after a week, his body was good enough that they could take the sedation completely down. And then he started to kind of wake up.

And after a couple of days, he could kind of communicate a little with his hands you know he could give a thumbs up or he'd get you know one finger for one two finger for no or sorry one finger for yes two finger for no kind of thing and so he could communicate just little bits like that and then you know a week and a half later I mean he was getting better and better and every day

the doctors were just amazed they finally took him out of the ICU and moved him to a regular hospital room because there wasn't any need for that level. You know, took him the breathing tube out after a week and a half or so. And he was in the regular hospital room and, oh, I got to add in just the whole, this whole COVID nonsense. I mean, I'm in California, dude, it's crazy out here still. And so they only let two people on the visitor list total. You can't change it around. It's not two at a time. It's two people total.

And so it's been basically myself and my mom, his grandma, are like the only two people that have been able to see him this entire time, which is just crazy. And adds the whole emotional toll of it all. Absolutely. But he was in that hotel room, and I can't tell you the excitement. One morning, my mom was up visiting with him in the morning and I was going to come relieve her at some point and I got

a text from her saying when are you going to be here your son wants to know and I thought that was kind of a weird thing to say because I was you know at that point he was communicating ones and twos and this was like a week and a half ago I came around the corner into his room and he looked me dead in the eye and said hi dad that was the

first words I heard out of his mouth man hey I'm smiling ear to ear too aaron i can hear you smiling on the phone now that's amazing man it's been an amazing recovery and um you know that's all good i mean there's all the other stuff we're gonna deal with i got kids in court and all that oh yeah so let's the son himself is just it's just been amazing and I said, we're out of the hospital in a couple days. He was walking, talking. He's got to wear a helmet because he's got a piece of his skull still missing. Sure. But outside of that, he looks like – and he talks a little slower than he used to,

and he's got to think a little harder. But outside of that, he's the same kid that I knew and loved four and a half weeks ago. Absolutely, man. And some of that speech can be anesthetic-related even. And so once you get him out and get him into his own environment, that's – dude, that is incredible, man. Thank you for sharing that. You just made my whole day. Yeah, absolutely.

So the other side of that is you've got two kids who are in the court system for at some level of attempted murder. They were arraigned several weeks ago with both of them, two counts of attempted murder. Okay. Is anybody being tried as an adult? My older son, the state has declared they're going to attempt to. Wow. Yes. 16?

Yep. Jeez, man. And so walk me through the feelings you have on the other side of this. So you've got the trauma of, I just may have lost my best friend and partner and wife. Yep. And I may have lost my 10-year-old baby son. Yep. And, oh my gosh, incredible, they're safe. And now you've got this other side of this conversation, which is...

Yep. I've got two kids that tried to murder my family. So walk me through what's in your heart and mind there. It makes everything weird. They've appointed special lawyers that are not the public defenders because of the circumstances, but I and my wife are victims and parents at the same time. So it makes the whole legal system weird. When I'm talking to detectives, sometimes they're talking to me as the parent.

And sometimes they're talking to me as the, you know, father of the accused as a victim. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so you gotta,

you gotta walk that line. But, um, I mean, long story short, they, like I said, they both got arraigned in court.

There, there's definitely a, uh, an aggressor and a follower situation going on between the two of them. But in the eyes of the law, they both participated in some fashion. And so they're both guilty of attempted murder. And I mean, thank God for them. It's as little as that, you know, given how brutal it was. It could have been, man. I've met with both of myself.

I'm the only one that's gotten in front of them other than lawyers and other counselors that are in the juvie system. That's tough. You sit in front of them. Tell me about your conversation with your 16-year-old. That one

was difficult. I've only gotten in front of him once. I was going to get in front of him here in a couple of days again. They wouldn't let me see him for a couple of weeks given the weirdness of the situation, but they finally did a couple of weeks ago. And, um, he was very, um, reserved. I don't, I've been thinking about how to put this because I don't, I don't know the, the, the psychological mental illness world, but I do think in conversations with a couple of people that have met with him in the juvie system, there may be a burdening mental illness of some kind going on with him. We don't know, obviously hasn't been diagnosed,

and I don't want to put anything in his mind that's not there. But in speaking with him in person, I mean, he did meet with me. He didn't refuse, but he was very reserved, very down. He said he regretted what had happened, but he was so—it looked like depression to me. It looked like a kid that was depressed, and understandably so at this point. His life as he knew it is over. Yeah, yeah, and he had so much going for him. But he—just the look on his face, you know, just showed the depression.

It was a ghost, yeah. Yeah. And hearing my wife tell the story of that day, I don't know if it was some sort of, I mean, I've heard the term manic attack. I don't know if there's any media going on in that moment, but it was such a high and low between the, when that thing started and when it ended that day. And then I'm looking at him now and he's, he's not that kid that could do something like that. You know, he just looks depressed and down. He says he regrets it.

He's not sure what to do. Obviously he's a 16 year old kid. He's a kid. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know what to do with him either. I'm not, I've never had to deal with courts and judges and all this stuff.

Yeah. It's not my world. Well, dude, um, as we get into what we do next, thank you. Number one, thanks for telling your story and for unpacking that. I know that's a horrible story.

We could probably spend another few days together talking about your other two kids. You've got a younger daughter who was with you who just lost everything, and you've got an older child who's in college who just lost everything. And here you are, Dad, at the epicenter here, having to hold all this stuff together. The two kids who are in the court system now, who you so badly want to love and believe in, and who also tried to murder your wife. And you've got your recovering two traumatic brain injuries in your home, one of which is the other, I would say half,

but let's be real. You're a truck driver, so she's the other 85% of the person who runs the house. And you got two other little kids who, if they had friends that this had gone through, you'd be there for them because it'd be traumatic and it's in their own house. And so here you are in the middle holding an unspooled sweater, just a pile of string. That's what I feel like. I feel like I am in the middle of everything. I'm the dad.

I'm the husband. I'm the father. I'm the son of the grandparents that are there. I'm the point of contact for the police, for the lawyers, for everything. You are, man. So let's take some time, dude. You're still in this. You are, man. So let's take some time, dude. You're still in this.

You said it best. You haven't just fallen apart. You haven't cried. And there's that weird meta moment that starts happening thinking, huh, I would have thought if my kids were incarcerated or I would have thought

if my wife was almost about to leave us that I would act this way, but my body's acting that way, right? So you have this almost meta disassociative, was almost about to leave us that I would act this way, but my body's acting that way. Right. So you have this almost meta disassociative. You start talking to yourself in the voice behind the voice, right? Like what's actually happening. Right.

And then there's those weird nights you just go home and I'm just going to turn on the office and it's this, like, you're here, but you're not here. Right. So dude, any questions you want to ask ask I'll go there with you okay I don't know it is that weird feeling of being in the middle I don't watch The Office but I sit around

playing stupid video poker for hours in the evening just whittling away time when I have my own time that's my numbing agent I guess just killing random times staying up way too late. And then I don't sleep because, you know, everyone yells at me about getting enough sleep and eating and easier said

than done. Oh yes. Yes. Yes. So for whatever it's worth, you get a pass for a few days. Okay, cool. Good. You get a pass. All right. So man, let's, let's do this. Any, tell me what's on your heart and mind and how I can, how I can help. Again, I don't even know, John, I, I guess, I guess I need, I need a little help on just all these different, all these different pieces. I got my wife that I can't really even share everything with, you know,

with the family. I can't really talk to her about my older sons, you know, it's like, but I can talk to her about my younger son that is recovering so amazingly. And we talk about him all the time. And you know, my, my, you mentioned my 17 and my younger daughter that they're probably the easiest going about this whole thing. Cause they're somewhat removed from it. They weren't there. And my oldest son can go back to college. My youngest daughter is with family, just kind of removed from the situation,

playing with her cousins all the time. You know, she's good. I have to talk to different people about different aspects of it. It feels so bifurcated. And, you know, I can talk to the detectives about my son, but I got to be careful what I say

because I don't want to, you know, add fuel to the fire that, you know, could put them in jail longer. But at the same time, maybe I want them in jail longer because they tried to kill my wife. And I feel just very torn apart in all these different ways. And so I just, I kind of try to ignore a lot of it. You know, I don't try not to think about all those dissociative pieces, you know?

Yeah. So here's a couple of things I'll give you to walk through it. And then you stop me and ask any question anytime. Okay. So number one is you got to have one, two, five, nine people that are going to walk through this thing with you. And I want you to think of this as you're the quarterback now for everything. And you got to have an offensive coordinator and a defensive coordinator and a head coach somewhere who are those people for you rattle them off for

me oh i mean probably my my best friend but he's not in the area okay i called him in the middle of the night um my cousin growing up um he's a guy that i can just call and talk to if I ever need just to talk about random stuff like that. I have a neighbor that was a oh shoot, I don't know him well, but he was a counselor for 20 years

dealing with trauma. Aaron, counselors are the worst. Stay away from those men. No, that's great. I just don't know them very well. I guess it's a weird thing, you know? Sure. I don't know if it's a good thing, though, if I'm talking to someone about this nonsense

that I don't have a relationship with, really, outside of, you know, friendly banter. Yeah. How about work? Are you still having, I mean, obviously you're still having to go to work every day to pay the bills, huh? I haven't been to work in a month, man.

Okay. Are they taking care of you, or are you just slowly living off credit cards? I'm an owner-operator. I haven't made a dollar. But, you know, we put out a GoFundMe page and raised a little bit of money. And people have been very generous with their time and with meals and stuff. Do you have a church community you're connected to? Absolutely.

Okay. Absolutely. I've been getting a lot of input from our lead pastor. And we have a church that loves us and will absolutely take care of it. We've been there for 18 years. Fantastic. Cool. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to get out a piece of paper, and I want you to come up with who your offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, and head coach is going to be. And you're not really going to offense on one and defense on the other, but I'm thinking I need somebody to help quarterback my home, help take care of this

house. Are there going to be meals here? Is the light bill going to be paid in days when I'm going to have to be in court and someone has to help my wife go to the bathroom, whatever those realities are going to be for you with two people with traumatic brain injuries. Is there somebody you can sit down with or two people or three people or a couple, like a husband and wife team or something you can look across the table from and say, over the next 60 days, I'm going to need you guys to step into my life. I'd like to invite you into that. And that might be a couple at church that you've known for a long time and you've never been that specific, but here's the meta here is you've got to sit down and make your needs known and risk asking somebody for help. Okay. And then I want you to get, whether

it's your own attorney, whether it's an attorney at church, somebody, you know, somebody that's going to help you understand the legal jargon. Both your kids, I'm sure got different attorneys. If they're going to try one as an adult, my guess is they, is that right? They got different ones. Yep. Yep. Yeah, dude. And it's some weird moment. You nailed it. You're going to have to sit by your kids because they're minors and they can't make decisions on their own. And you're the, you're the victim, right? You're on the other side of the table. And this is going to cause some major tension in your marriage. And it's going to, you're going to have to have some, somebody be with you at all of these meetings if possible. And that might be your dad. It might be your mom, it might be a friend who's just like, man, I'm all in on this with you.

If you don't and that can't happen, take a recorder with you so you can record these meetings because what's going to happen is you're going to start running together on you. You're going to think this one meant that one and that one, I thought I was talking to this lawyer and that was actually my kid's teacher. It's going to start jumbling up in your head, okay?

Okay. And you are probably, I'd be willing to, my kid's teacher. It's going to start jumbling up in your head. Okay? Okay. And you are probably, I'd be willing to, my truck's not very nice. I'd be willing to bet my truck right now you are still in some sort of shock. Your body has taken over for your brain. Okay? That will slowly start to, you can't do it for long. Your brain, your body can't do that long term. It will start to take back.

It will start to take back. It will start to recede. And those feelings you're talking about, that rage, that anger, those tears, you're going to be sitting there playing video games one night. You're going to start crying. That will come. It will come in heavy waves. And so having your best friend, letting them know, I'm going to call you at crazy moments, okay?

Please answer your phone. And it might be, I'm going to call you and just let a string of expletives go that maybe have never been put together on the face of the earth, but they're going to come out of my mouth and I need somebody else to hear that because grief demands a witness. And they'll say, you good? And you'll be like, yep, just need to get that out. And it's 3 a.m., and they're going to hang up, and everybody's going to go back to sleep. Or it may be they just asked me if my son X, Y, and Z, and I know he did that, or I know he's got a journal, or I know his passcode to his phone,

and the dad in me wants to say I don't know where that is because I know what's on there. And the truth is I need to put that out there because he hurt somebody. He could hurt somebody again. And I need you to walk alongside with me and make sure that I make ethical right decisions, not emotional dad decisions. Okay. And have somebody that's going to walk. So I'm just, those are just a few examples. Long story short, you're going to have to have people in your life that you assigned to a post and that will walk through you, walk through this with you. Yeah. Okay. I think I, I think I have a

lot of that. It just feels like it's so many different. It is. It is. People. That's why I want you to have a head coach, somebody that will come over and this might be your dad. It might be your mom. It might be your pastor. It might be an attorney friend at church, it might be anybody, a mechanic friend at church, who will sit down with you, and this is number two, on a piece of paper, you got to map this thing out. You know, like my buddy Dave Ramsey talks about, you know, you got to make a budget. Here's all the debts I have. I got to write them out and look at them on a piece of paper. That's what you've got to do here. You've got too much going on. All right?

Go to Target or go to Walmart, get a folder that you can have and put every kid you have's name on it and your spouse. You're going to start getting medical bills out the wazoo. You're going to get legal stuff. You're going to have to be here at this place and there in that place. It's just going to,

the paperwork and the stuff and the little jargon, you're going to have to have an organization, your organization has to be top notch. So start that at the front end of this thing, okay? All the paperwork

sitting in a big pile now. I know it is. I know it is, man. That's what I'm telling you. Go get a folder because what's going to happen in four months, someone's going to say,

hey, I need such and such paper. What did you say? When you talk to such and such person on this day, what did you say? And you talk to such and such person on this day, what did you say? And you can be like, dude, I don't even know what day it was that day.

I want you to have a file folder full of all the paperwork neatly filed. It's going to help you sleep. Okay. I also want you to have a journal of some sort. It can be $5 or 10 bucks that you get at Walmart that just says, I talked to detective so-and-so at this time on this day about this. And in six months, in two years, in seven years, when this stuff is still in court or your kid comes up for parole or whatever happens,

you're going to want to look back and say, here's what this was about. All right. And what I'm telling you is if you've got piles of paper everywhere and you talk to this detective and you talk to that doctor and this bill collector and then your boss is like hey are you gonna run a route or what your brain is gonna go hyperactive on you and when it goes hyperactive you're not gonna sleep at night and we don't sleep at night you're gonna start getting really anxious you're gonna start slipping into your own depression and so what i want you to do is to keep your environment spotless. Okay?

Stay as organized. It may be the first time you've ever been organized in your life, and this is the season, okay? I'm going to take a chapter from my wife on that one because she was the organized person in our family. You know what? She's going to be so proud of you. She's going to be so proud.

And if you suck at this, and this is me talking to the mirror here, ask somebody that is a friend of yours who's a church, someone at your church, someone that's your neighbor, say, I am terrible at organization. I'd really love it if someone could make it, could come by once or twice a week and help me with this. And you will have people line up to support you who'd want to help, want to love you, and they don't know how,

and they're a great organization, but man, they're thinking, this guy's dealing with, in fact, he almost lost two family members. Boom. They're like, I can do that. Somebody can help with a meal train, so that you don't have to worry about meals

for the next 30 days. People want to help, but they need clarity, and that's where you can really help yourself and them by giving people jobs and direction, okay? Yeah, we've gotten that outpouring of support with like meals and stuff, but you're right about the clarity. I've just been trying to let it kind of happen.

That's right. Take ownership of it, okay? Yeah, if I ask for something specific, it usually happens, but I just don't ask enough for what exactly I or we may need in the moment. Yes, so that's I just don't, I don't ask enough for, for what exactly I or we may need. So that's the third thing here. Okay. We've talked about getting people in your life. We've talked about organization. The third one is going to be grief and you are going to have,

I need you to hear me very clearly. The life that you knew is now over with a period at the end. Okay? I think I know that. I know. And most people don't have the courage to say that out loud to someone they love. And so I'm telling you, as my new friend, there's a period at the end of that sentence. And a lot of grief gets hung up because people want to go back to life before the affair. They want to go back to the way things were before I gained this weight or before we had kids or before whatever the thing is. And we spend so much time trying to get back to the past instead of building a new future.

And so I want you, because the temptation is if I can just get these kids like the right psychologist, and then we can all get back home and and we get my 10-year-old healed up and get my wife back. Then we can get back to this thing, and we're just going to go back to the – your life before this is now over, okay? Okay. Everything forward is you building something new. And that should be both terrifying and scary, and it should also give you direction, okay?

Every time you think about, yeah, but it used to, you can stop and go, that part's over now. Now I am going to have the opportunity to rebuild my marriage, and my wife's going to have a lot of healing. Here's what healing is going to look like for your wife. What did I miss? What was it about me that my kids did this? How could I create kids and grow kids? That kind of stuff is going to unspool and unspool. You're going to go through that too. So when I talk about you're going to get a different wife, you're going to become a different husband. It's not that your psychology is going to be different. It's that y'all are going to be

asking yourselves hard questions about what happened in our home. And those rattle people in their core, as they should, right? Yeah, they're difficult questions to come face-to-face with, for sure. And they're not going to have real good answers. No, there's no answers that's going to be satisfactory, absolutely. And everybody deals with ambiguity differently, or that's just what happened, differently. Or maybe you're going to find a journal, or a

bunch of social media stuff, or a bunch of, oh my gosh, we missed X, Y, whatever the things are that will come out, or it may have just been totally random. And few things are scarier than random right?

it'd be a lot easier if we could point back to some abuse or to some thing oh my gosh my kid just woke up and decided to do this I almost lost my 10 year old so I want you to be hyper intentional about every time you start to lean back into it

we just need to get back to – that part's over. But you do need to ask those questions, right? I mean, that is a good thing for life. Oh, dude, for sure. You'd be a psychopath if you didn't answer those questions, ask those questions. If you're not plagued with why and what were you doing and how and what was it about – absolutely, absolutely you got to ask those questions. Why? And what were you doing? And how? And what was it about? Absolutely. Absolutely you got to ask those questions.

And that brings me to the final thing here, number four, okay? And again, I'm just pulling this off the top of my head. I didn't know where this conversation was going to go. You, my brother Aaron, have to take care of Aaron. And your temptation over the next six months, over the next two years is going to be to make sure everybody else in your world is okay. And it's going to come at your cost.

And so what I'm telling you is I want you to never forget this. The best way you can make sure everybody's okay is if Aaron's okay. And that means you may have to get serious about your physical health

for the first time ever. Is that fair? Yeah, that's fair. You got to start lifting weights and going on a walk. You're going to have to be intentional about what you eat because when I get stressed, dude, there's a special aisle in the grocery store, and it's just covered in gummy candies and chocolate and shenanigans. It's incredible, right? You have to be intentional about what you eat. You have to be intentional about going to sleep. You're going to have

to be intentional about getting a counselor. You've got a couple of years of work ahead of you at least, okay? Yeah, it's kind of a long road. It is. It is. I've been relying on my wife to keep me healthy with the eating aspect of our relationship for our entire marriage, basically. And now you're in the driver's seat. You have to change. There you go.

That's right. And it's okay to feel angry. It's okay to feel heartbroken. It's okay to not be able to get out of bed for a couple of days. And that's when you're going to call on your friends and say, hey, I need someone to pick up so-and-so from school. I can't move today. Grief is going to look different for everybody.

And you get to grieve how you need to grieve. But you got to be intentional about taking care of yourself, okay? I think I can look to that. I know you can. And I also know you're on autopilot right now. So here's the last thing I want to ask you of. Okay. In two weeks,

in four weeks, in five weeks, I want you to call me back and we'll have you back on. And I want you to let me know where you are. And it may be a season of man., people are healthy, things are good. It may be you are in a black hole of despair and I want you to give us a shout, okay? Yeah, I can do that.

And I'm going to ask you who's walking with you. Are you being intentional about taking care of yourself? Do you have a plan of grieving this? And do you have some organization going for you, okay? Okay. And last, last going for you. Okay. Okay. And last, last, last thing. Okay. Your oldest and your youngest,

don't lose them in this process. Okay. No, I'm worried about them to be honest. I told you earlier in this conversation, they're doing the best just because they're kind of removed from it. And I did that somewhat intentionally. My, my oldest son, we had, I pulled him into it for a week or so, but after he can't go visit his mom, he can't go visit his son because of all the COVID stuff. He's not, he's kind of a weight to me. So I told him, go back to school,

go back to work. You know, there's not a whole lot you can do. And he's, he's doing good. He's a stoic character. And my daughter, she's removed from it and she's happy-go-lucky, but I'm a little worried that that goes on too long and they just kind of disappear

into whatever they're going to disappear into. I've kind of lost track a little bit of both of them. Does your oldest, who's in college, live around you in any shape, form, or fashion? He still lives with us.

Okay, great. Here's how you can do this. Every week in your calendar, and this is part of your organization, you get a calendar too, I want you to plan a meal with each one of them by yourself. Okay?

This will be in a season when you can't get out of bed, this will help you get out of bed. In a season when they are so heartbroken but they're scared to call you because they know you're heartbroken too you'll get to put eyes on them so I want you to let them know from this point, and you can tell them

from now until the foreseeable future you and me are going to breakfast every Tuesday morning build your school schedule around it, build your work schedule around it The foreseeable future, you and me are going to breakfast every Tuesday morning. Build your school schedule around it. Build your work schedule around it. We are not going to miss this time together. And that's when you're going to ask questions like, how are you feeling?

How are you doing? How's your heart? Are you angry? Are you pissed off? Are you heartbroken? All those things. And you're going to get all that. And I want you to take your daughter out. Okay?

They need to see and touch dad because everything in their world is unanchored now. Yeah. And by them seeing you, you're going to see them and you're going to get anchored into. Okay. I like that idea. My, my son and I, my oldest, oldest son and I, we went to church just the two of us for the last few weeks. Um, and, uh, we went out to lunch after church two weeks in a row, and we kind of gave it up. Back on for the next eight years. Just put it in there, man. You've got a long road ahead of you.

Yeah. All right, Aaron, I'm going to let you go, okay? Thank you so much for your call, brother. And we're so happy that your wife and son are coming home. That's incredible. And we will be thinking about you guys from afar as you go through the court process, as your family heals, and as you create a new tomorrow. Keep in touch, Aaron, and we'll be thinking about you, my brother.

Be right back on the Dr. John Deloney Show. 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. I want to get an email here from Caitlin. Caitlin writes, since reading your book recommendations solve for happy, from Caitlin. Caitlin writes, since reading your book recommendation, Solve for Happy.

So Mo Gadot, G-A-W-D-A-T. If you haven't read Solve for Happy, it's an extraordinary read. Please pick it up. I've realized that my brain chatter is loud and often happens when I'm not realizing it. My husband's mind is apparently blank most days. Awesome. It's not, but that was awesome the way you wrote that. What are ways I can achieve peace and quiet in my mind to help me live in the moment? I'm aware of meditation, but I'm looking for more options during the day when

my mind sneaks up on me. So great question, Caitlin. Great question. You might have heard it said monkey brain or monkey mind or there's a thousand different ways you can talk about brains. Rumination that just spins and spins and spins. The way I've seen rumination happen is either folks have imaginary conversations over and over and over in their head. You know what I mean? Like with people that you're never going to have this conversation, but it just goes over. If I, man, if I see them, I'm going to tell it, no, you're not. You're not

going to actually have that conversation. Or if that guy walks up to me in the bar, I'm going to tell him, you're not, you're not going to actually say that. But we go and go and go and go and go, and we spin ourselves up. We get our bodies all wound up. And then we try to solve that wind up with, I'm just going to tell them this and this, and I'm going to quit. I'm going to go get another job, and I'm going to make seven figures. None of that stuff's real. The other rumination is the catastrophizing, right? Well, then if this happens, then if there's an economic correction or downturn, then everyone's going to try to cash all their money out. And then we're

not going to have any money and money's not even real. And what are we doing? We should be, I know Bitcoin, or I'm going to buy meat and wood and cigarettes and coffee. And then I'm going to have an ax. I know what we need. Bullets. Lots of bullets. We'll trade those for water and dogs and whatever. We start catastrophizing.

Or the third one is, those are the two big ones. The third one is just going all day long. Hey, what about this? What about that? Hey, look at those clothes. Why is that guy driving like that? It just goes and goes and goes and goes and goes. And we never even stop to think, what are you doing? Stop talking. Shh, be quiet. And I'm speaking from firsthand knowledge here because I have a brain that never

stops. So here are some things I have done over time that have really helped me. Meditation, the reason meditation is good is it's practice. It is practicing gently taking control of that monkey mind, the one that just goes, it goes, it goes, it goes, and goes, the chatter, the chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter.

And so meditation has worked wonders for me. It's something I do regularly and I've done for years and years and years and years. But also, recently I've tried something that doesn't involve meditation. It involves being intentional. So here's what I've come to learn, that our bodies get addicted to our stress response. It's a chemical addiction. It's a perception addiction. So when I say addiction, I mean just like nicotine, just like alcohol. Our bodies get addicted to it. And when things are going okay, when we're just driving to work or we're just walking home from work or we're just sitting down on the couch next to our husband here or our wife or whatever.

Our body wants a hit. Or I hear that in the shower. People tell me that this happens in the shower a lot when their brains just go bananas. Our brain wants a hit of that stress response, of those stress response chemicals. And so what it does is it notifies our frontal lobe, alert!

And it spins up a conversation. It spins up anxiety. It spins up a story that then our body can go, ah, stress response, let's solve this thing. And it kicks it all up. And now we're in a fight that only we can solve through our clever one-liners that we're never going to say, through our mic drop moments, or through catastrophizing future planning. Okay,

so what I'm going to do is I'm going to build a bunker and in the bunker, I'm going to have 18 years of canned foods. And then I'm going to have a gun so I can shoot my neighbor for their water, whatever. It feels like productive thinking. It's not. It's a fantasy. It's not real. How do you stop it? What I've started to do is when I feel my body spin up, It feels like productive thinking. It's not. It's a fantasy. It's not real. How do you stop it? What I've started to do is when I feel my body spin up or when I catch myself just having these mindless, nonstop, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, I will say the words, stop. What are we solving for? And I will get quiet for a second, and I will ask my body, what are we solving for here? Usually it is I have to have a hard conversation with somebody,

or I just got some scary news about the economy, about health, about physical health, about my kids at school, whatever the thing may be, it's usually my body just trying to reach out and scan the universe for some fantasy solution to some real problem I'm having. And so what I'll do is I'll stop and say, what are we solving for here? And if it is, I really have to have this conversation with somebody, then I will go write it down. I'll get out of the shower. I'll dry off. I'll get a pad and a paper, and I will write down, here's a conversation I need to have.

Here is what is going on right with my radio show. Here's what's going wrong with it. And it's not James' fault. It's probably Kelly's fault, probably. I'll write down these things that I've got concerns about, and I will stop, and I will let my body, I won't just run off with it. And sometimes this takes five minutes, that's it.

Sometimes it takes 15 minutes. I was on a plane the other night flying back from Vegas after a speaking gig, and it took me about an hour to just type all this stuff out. What are you doing? What are we solving for here? What I've tried to do over and over, what meditation does is any sort of intentional thought work is what are we doing? What are we doing? What are we solving for? What are we trying to solve for? What relationship is dysfunctional

here? And what I'm finding in short order, that when I take back control of my thoughts, back control of my mind, it goes, oh, we're good? Okay. And it literally will quiet itself. I had a weird moment on the plane after I spent some time riding that out. When I just sat there, I broke my headphones. That's a whole other story. I broke my headphones, I had nothing. I'm just sitting on the plane.

And my brain didn't take off on me. It was just peaceful. And I need you to know, as an OCD guy, as an anxious guy, I don't experience that very often, but I've been practicing hard at it. Catching myself, catching myself, catching myself. Here's another thing that's really important. I've learned that when I load up on caffeine, when I load up on sugar, when I don't exercise, I have less control of my thoughts. I have less control of my brain spinning out on me.

Or when it does spin out on me and I recognize it, I have less motivation to sit down and write out my thoughts. I'm like, whatever, dude, this sucks. I'm going to go grab a bag of gummy candy or whatever. And so take care of your body. Be intentional about going for a walk. Be intentional about taking cold showers. Don't sit there for 11 hours taking a hot shower. That's when my brain spins off on me. Be intentional about taking care of your body. Have human connection around you. And your brain feels safe. It doesn't feel like it has to solve everything. And when it does spin out on you and it's not because you're tired or because you're just eating trash all day or because you're on coffee number 14, write them down. Ask your body, what are we solving here?

And then the magic is reach out and let somebody know. Have that hard conversation. And if it's not safe to have that hard conversation because you're in an abusive relationship, that person's going to fire you. Go to somebody that you can talk to about it. Go to somebody you can talk to about it. And last little piece, Caitlin here. My husband's mind is apparently blank most days. It's not a blank mind

or a person who just sits there flipping channels or playing video games. Their brain is doing the other thing. It's not fighting. It's not running. It's frozen. It goes, I can't handle this stress. You're a lot.

So I'm out. Bye. And it unplugs. That person has to practice plugging in. Practice having conversations. Practice, what is your body feeling right now? It's actually feeling nothing. Why?

Life is fun. Life should be full of joy. You can look for beauty. What is your body freezing from? So it's the same exact process, just the other way. Okay? Same process, just the other way. Okay? Same process, just the other way. Caitlin, here's the magic.

You can learn to control your thoughts. And when you find yourself having chattered up your mind for an hour, two hours, three hours, don't be mad. Be curious. What are you doing? What are we solving for? Why are you having this conversation 45 times? Call your boss. Call him.

I can't call my boss. Not safe. Cool. Call your friend. Let him know. I hate my job. It sucks. I need to find a new one.

Cool. Go do that. Call my friend Ken Coleman. Get a new one. I'm burnt out. I'm fried. Call my friend Christy Wright. She'll help you out.

Whatever that thing is. Write it down. What are we solving for here? You can control your thoughts. All right, as you wrap up today's show, one of my favorite songs of all time, written by his wife, June, and Merle Kilgore, but Johnny made it famous. Johnny C, Ring of Fire, and it goes like this. Love is a burning thing. I can't not sing it. And it makes a fiery ring. Social Distortion's version of this.

Incredible. Bound by wild desire, I fell into a ring of fire. I fell into a burning ring of fire. We already said that, but we're going to say it again. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher. And this is the part that could be a Preparation H commercial. And it burns, burns, burns. The ring of fire, the ring of fire. We'll see you next time on the Dr. John Deloney Show.