The Dr. John Delony Show - What Is a Narcissist?

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Today, we’re talking to a mom whose teen son is spiraling out of control after his younger brother drowned, a father trying to understand Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and a woman at a loss for how to love and serve her family trapped in Ukraine. We lost our young son to drowning & our teenage son is struggling to grieve Is Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) a real thing or is it just bad parenting? How can I support my friends and family in Ukraine during this difficult time? Is Putin a narcissist? Lyrics of the Day: "Everlong" - Foo Fighters Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Churchill Mortgage Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. Just like many Ukrainians in America and all over the world, we also have family and we have friends that are living in the Ukraine. I don't know what to say to my friends. Saying sorry sounds stupid. Saying I understand, I don't. Your guilt will not help them. Hey, what's up?

This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Man. Hope you're doing well. Hope your family's all right. Hope you're safe. Hope y'all are doing okay. If you want to be on the show, give me a shout at 1-844-693-3291. That's 1-844- 693-3291.

Or you can go to johndeloney.com slash ask. We got a packed, packed show today, so I'm going to go straight to the phones. Let's go to Kay in Des Moines. In Des Moines. What's up, Kay? Hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you?

Good. So what's up, Kay? Hey, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. So what's up? How can I help? We lost our six-year-old son a couple years ago. Oh, good grief. What happened? He went swimming with some friends. Oh, man.

And he drowned. I'm so sorry. What was his name? Caden. Caden. Oh, man. And he drowned. I'm so sorry. What was his name? Caden. Caden. Oh, my gosh. Whew. Yeah.

It was rough. His sister was there with them. It was my younger two kids that went with, and the adult that had him just wasn't watching him. She was over sun tanning, and my kid was off. So anyway, my question is, like, my oldest will be 18 pretty soon, and he has not handled the loss that well. He has gone through a roller coaster, the lowest of his life.

And I just don't know where, I just don't know how I can help him anymore. We've even tried to send him into an inpatient treatment. He got kicked out of that. We're trying to get him into a place right now, but they are looking at his path. He is ready as can be. He wants to go, but I don't know what else I can do for him. Places won't take him, and I don't even know how I can even help him as a mom anymore. I'm so sorry. What a mess. Let me ask a couple of background questions. How many kids do you have total? I have three. Three.

So you had an 18-year-old. How old is your daughter? She's 14. Okay. And then Caden would have been eight? Yep. Okay. And is that three?

Yep, yep. And my oldest doesn't turn 18 until June. Okay. And so that's where we're coming into some issues as well. So what's been going on? Is he using? If he's getting kicked out of treatment centers, that means he's got violent tendencies? Like what's been going on? It started with drinking.

He was drinking a lot at first when the accident happened, um, like daily. And then he kind of had a scare and then he led into, um, he got really, really wasted and he, um, passed out. Like I found him in his truck, like, 1.30 in the morning. He had no, kind of no idea where I was, who I was, or what was going on. And it just kind of scared him because he drove, like, 20 to 30 miles from where he was supposed to have been staying at. And so that kind of scared him. Well, then it led him to, um, he led him to marijuana. Um, and so then he was trying to do that to cover up his pain. Um, before all of this, he,

he was a very good, a B student, uh, did all sports, had a great group of friends. Um, after the accident, he lost all of that. He had no motivation. He didn't do sports. His grades got a different crowd of kids. How did your home grieve? Is dad at home? Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so how did dad grieve? How did you grieve? To be honest, I don't think we have had a chance to. Okay. We kept pushing and pushing to be active and to be busy at all times because we had two kids that were grieving. Yeah. And we wanted to make sure that they were okay.

And so, honestly, I don't think we even have had the chance because since the accident, we both have been dealing with now our oldest and then also trying to make life okay for our daughter that has seen all of this. So I'm going to talk to you because our time is compressed. I'm going to talk real directly. Okay. I need you to hear me say you and I are on the same side of the booth on this conversation. Okay. You promise that I can hear in your voice how close Caden is still sitting.

He's still on your chest. Oh, yeah. Okay. Caden's still in your home. He's still on your chest. Oh yeah. Okay. Caden's still in your home. He's still in your bed. Right? Okay. So I'm going to speak as though you and I have talked for a couple of weeks.

Okay. And I need you to promise me something. Say, I promise. I promise. That what I'm about to say is not going to be guilt inducingucing because that's where you're going to go with it, okay? Okay. This is about tools. And what I mean by tools is I had a friend over this weekend helping me use a chainsaw to cut down a tree, and I was trying to do something with an ax, and he pulled out like a hammer hammer and I felt like an idiot because I was using the wrong tool.

Okay. And so all we're talking about is tools here. You promise? You trust me? Yep. Okay. First and foremost, you've got a teenage son who you love and it feels like you're losing another kid. I want you to own that level of gravity.

Okay. Does that sound close to home? Oh yeah. We've actually mentioned that. It feels like we lost him. Okay. It feels like you're losing your second son. Okay. In some ways you are, but in many ways you aren't. I also want to take drugs and alcohol, huge deal, terrifying deal, all that scary. And here's why I'm not super concerned about that right this second, because drugs and alcohol work. Those are the solution to his challenges. Those aren't the problem right now. Okay. You're going to have to deal with the alcohol addiction and those things when you, when, but that's for the professionals and y'all will get there. Often, often parents, when they lose a child, they double down and say, we've got to help our

other kids. And what we want to do is make things as quote unquote, normal as possible. We don't want them to lose their childhood because of this. We don't want them to miss out on these experiences. And so a very common narrative, usually it barbells, it's one or the other. It's usually either people shut down and just are encased in amber, like just stuck in syrup, or everybody says, we're going to keep going, going, going. We will grieve when the kids go to college. We'll do that later. And what can happen, not always, but what can happen is, and I'm just going to use your oldest son. I'm going to name him Tom, okay?

Okay. Tom looks around his environment, and he does not see anybody exhibiting what is going on in his body, which is darkness, which is a hole, which is the vacuum that you feel when somebody so close to you goes away. Throw in sister was there and the you should have been there. Well, I didn't know that kind of stuff. Throw in an adult was there.

An adult's job is to keep, make sure everybody's okay, right? So you throw all that complexity in there and you've got a 16 or 17 17-year-old screaming from the inside out. And the greatness sounds counterintuitive. The single greatest gift you can give that 16-year-old is not normalcy because nothing is normal anymore. What you can give that kid is weeping from the bottom of your guts and holding him, letting him see you and your husband weep and say, we're not going out this week.

We're all just staying in. Because what it does for the 16 year old is it gives him permission to go, oh my God, my feelings are normal. I'm not crazy. And what happens over the course of a couple of years when somebody's deep in grief and everyone around them looks like

they're just going on about their day or trying to have some sense of normalcy, the pain becomes overwhelming because now you're isolated. Now you're alone. And so this isn't an advice situation. This isn't a, hey, here's the things I didn't tell you. This is about, we're going to start saying Caden's name in our home a lot.

This is about, we are going to all as a family write letters to Caden. Tell him how much we miss him. And mom and dad are going to read their letters to brother and sister. And we might not be able to get through the first one or the second one or the third one. And we might write them a letter that says, I'm so can't believe I let you go with such and such adult. And you are still wearing a lot of grief and guilt too.

I can feel it on you, okay? But these family discussions, this breathability lets Caden make his way through the hearts and minds and synapses and blood and air of everyone in that home. And right now he's trapped. You hear what I'm saying? And what I'm saying sounds real, real woo-woo. And you've probably had to build some really strong scaffolding to get through the last few years.

If I'm you and your situation, where I would start is A, with my son, with my oldest son, and say, we're going to start with a letter to Caden, you and me. And I might even go as far as to say, hey, I've tried to do my best and we missed this one. And I'm going to start now by, we're going to grieve this thing and we're going to do it together. And I would let your son breathe.

And he might have, is he an alcohol addiction? Does he have a drug addiction? Yes and no, I guess. It's not as bad anymore because he's been in a treatment. Okay. And so he hasn't been like really bad. It's more of the mental issues that he has. Like if something triggers him. Yeah. Then he the mental issues that he has. Like if it's something triggers him,

then he might go and have some drinks or something like that. But it's mainly his mental and he knows he can be clean. It's just. Sure. So it's, it's this, it's that, it's that black hole vacuum of loss and it's the isolation. It's the nobody else in this house seems to be feeling this. Some kids will go get straight A's with that feeling. Some kids will turn to alcohol and weed because it just into pills because it just makes things a little less sharp. But I think your home, starting with you and husband, and this is hard because here's what I know about you, okay? And I'm not you about mothers in this situation. There's this sense that if I start crying, I will never be able to stop. If I drop my shoulders, I'm out, I'm done.

And I'll tell you two things. Number one, you're right. You will cry for Caden for the rest of your life. And you will find strength and resilience in your community and in people around you and in yourself that you did not know existed. You've got to walk towards Caden. You've got to walk towards your oldest son. You've got to walk towards your husband.. You've got to walk towards your husband

and your husband's got to walk in the middle of all this too. So what your family, I believe, needs deeply is a no more running. This is who we are. This is where we are. We've experienced this great trauma,

this great tragedy. We're going to talk to Caden and at some point, it's going to be a while, at some point, K, you and your husband, y'all are going to let Caden go. You let him go home. And right now you're hanging on to him real, real, real, real tight. I'm so, so sorry. As it goes for your son, hang in there with the treatment. Let him be a part of this grieving process. If he's struggling with deep mental health issues,

talk to his counselor about this stuff, okay? Don't give him things, don't let him be in situations he can't handle, but tell his counselor. The family's ready to start grieving this, and we have it in a long time, and we're going to start today. We'll be right back.

It seems like everybody's talking about how crazy the housing market is right now and how powerless homebuyers feel. Mix that with the stress of moving and life change and job change, and you've got a tornado of anxiety fueling one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make. This is not a good idea. So if you're a new homebuyer right now, my advice to you is to focus on what you can control, like the people you choose to help you in the home buying process. You need folks like my friends at Churchill Mortgage. Churchill is a Ramsey trusted provider that's been helping people with their home mortgages for decades. And their home buyer

edge program will help you skip a bunch of the stress. Here's how it works. Apply to become a Churchill certified home buyer and cap your interest rate for 90 days. Then you'll get a $5,000 seller guarantee to help your offer stand out. So go ahead, take a deep breath because Churchill has your back. Check them out at churchillmortgage.com slash Deloney and get the home buyer edge today. All right, we are back. Let's go to Chris in Omaha. What's up, Christopher? How are you, sir? Good to be here. Thank you, brother. What's up, man? Man, it's an honor. So I am a former teacher. I'm now an author, speaker, comedian. I work with a lot of schools in building resilient kids, mentally, social, emotional learning,

that whole realm. And I know oppositional defiance disorder. I know it's a clinical diagnosis, but myself and my wife, as good Christian parents, we like to think of ourselves. I'm looking for your opinion. Wait, hold on. You like to think of yourselves as what? Good parents? As good Christian parents. All right, good Christian. I can't wait for the... You set it up well, so what's the, I can't wait for the payoff here. I'm wondering your professional opinion, oppositional defiance disorder. I guess my question is, it seems like it's more of an excuse over the last number of years for a lack of parenting skills, at least from my vantage point. And I'm just looking to get your opinion on that, where you stand on stuff like that. Okay. So I'll give you a rundown, but I want to make sure the line is clear here. So as good Christian parents, you're raising your kids to fill in the blank when it comes to behavior and response and all that.

And since they are living up to your expectations that you're setting as good Christian parents, other kids are out of control, exhibiting these behaviors at school, lashing out, being ugly with teachers, violence, those kind of things. And the line is back to people who aren't serving as good Christian parents. Is that the line here? I wanna make sure I'm answering your question. The line is more of, it seems to me that the boundary has been moved back to kind of make an excuse for the disrespect, I guess the overall disrespect and the behavioral issues. And they've put a label on it now of the oppositional defiance disorder. Gotcha, Okay. Okay. So I'm going to start by, by answering it this way. I may have, I don't know if I've told this on the show or not. I don't, I don't know. I feel like I repeat myself all the time. Maybe I don't. So when my son was born, I had just graduated with my first

PhD and there's nothing worse than someone who just graduated to the graduate school. The worst. I was an idiot. I just put it on everything on my email signature, told everybody. I was annoying. And my wife has a PhD. She's brilliant. And her scholarship, her research was about working with kids. And so when my son comes along, we were older, we'd waited a while and then it took us years to actually have him. He comes along, and he's pretty much perfect. We were incredible. And I remember at some point at like age two or three, I was like, I think every other parent's an idiot.

Why are we even working at universities? We should go on the road and write the greatest parenting book because everyone else is stupid. And my wife in her classic way she deals with me is she just nods and just goes on about her day because she knows that she married a moron. And I really was like, man, why is this so hard? Like just have high expectations

and then have high discipline and have a high accountability and whatever. And then my daughter came along. And I don't know where she's from. It is not here. It's not here. And I realized in short order, oh, we just rolled the dice well, the first one. Actually, we've rolled the dice incredible with the second one too.

They're just different kids. So I preface it with that to tell you this. I think like ADHD, like oppositional defiant disorder, like much of anxiety, depression is out there on its own. So I'm trying to think of the right word off top of my head, label to core issue instead of representing an environment. Okay? So what your question is, I think is not really the right question because you're asking an either or question. Is this real or is this if parents would just suck it up and start parenting their kids, right? This would go away. And the answer is more complex than that. I'll answer true ODD. Yeah, you know me. True oppositional defiance disorder, right? It's a diagnosis and there is no test for it. There is no, you can't draw blood for it, right? It is not rendered lightly, to quote an

article. It's not rendered lightly. It takes a while to come to this thing. And so now, especially in schools, we do have people who throw this label all over the place, no question about it. If you've ever met a truly ODD child, you go, oh. So to answer, is it real? Yes. Is it over diagnosed? I think probably 10X. But here's where that I don't like saying that out loud.

Because it's the kids who pay for it, not their school systems and not their parenting systems and not their grandparenting systems and not their legacy trauma issues. Because when we say something like, yeah, you don't really have oppositional defiant disorder, we take a dysregulated child and a dysregulated child is just telling you they're not safe and they're not connected and they're not okay. They got nobody looking out for them. They got nobody on their team. And that can be everything from a school that starts at 6.15 AM and the kid has no sleep because mom is working three jobs and the babysitter maybe shows up most of the time and brings a half a box of macaroni, right? So you've got nutritional, you've got sleep, you've got supervision, you've got all kinds of things that as a stable parenting home of two, where y'all make enough money that things are able to happen in a certain way, okay?

So that's my loose answer to say, yes, when it's real, it's super, super real, super real, like chemically, neurologically real. And I think many kids are desperate for boundaries, desperate for accountability, but underneath all that, they are desperate to be looked in the eyes and told they are loved and to be shown they are loved through food and sleep and accountability and hard work and throwing a ball and moms and dads putting their cell phones down and grandparents not abusing mom and dad still. You hear what I'm saying now? Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of where I was leaning. I just, you know, I wanted to hear the professional opinion.

But yeah, I agree. Probably, you know, way overdi hear the professional opinion. But yeah, I agree. Probably, you know, way overdiagnosed, but there are legit cases. And so I am joining a chorus of professionals who are moving wholesale away from 95% of diagnostics because they're simply not helpful, number one. Number two, you've got, it's not like you take a strep test. You go to any number of counselors and they're going to give, or a psychologist, they're going to give you different diagnostics or depending on which inventory they give you, they're going to come up with. So the whole spectrum of diagnostics, I think is under fire here and it should be. And I think the chorus of blame,

so if you hear my show, I rarely blame, I rarely go after like, you parents need to, except when it comes to cell phones and screens, yeah, then I get after people. But it's bigger than that. So instead of saying, hey, you know what you just did? You did this. What I want to do is I want to give people a bunch of tools and say, make your kid go to bed at 7.15 until they're in high school or 7.30 or absolute max eight. And they're going to think it's child abuse. Or if you miss hanging out with your kid because you don't have community or you don't have these things. Make your kids do chores, which means this happened to me the other day. I went into my son's room.

I was like, how do you live like this? And I walked down the hall into my room and I thought, I learned it by watching you, dad, right? I have to do these things too. If I say, don't walk past the dog's bowl when it doesn't have any food and water, just fill it up. Then that means I got to stop and do it every time, right?

So I'm talking about, let's give parents some tools and grandparents some tools and communities some tools and schools some tools for wholesale change. Not just saying, that's not even real. Y'all need to suck it. You hear what I'm saying?

Yep, absolutely. All right, so that's my, it is real. It is overdiagnosed. I think the important thing to do right now is to tell kids that we love them and to show them we love them. And God, I could say that over and over again. Show your kids you love them. Show your kids you love them.

Hold their hands. Read their dumb stories. Put your phones away. Let them mow the yard with you, even though it's going to take eight times longer. Let them clean the car with you, which is going to take a thousand more years. And you can't cuss when you find old gum in the seat. You just got to take it because you're going to be a grownup. My son and daughter came and said, hey, can we climb up on top of the barn? We stacked a bunch of buckets together and I was,

how about y'all use the ladder? I didn't want them, but they need to do hard things. They need to be able to fall down. Love your kids. Show them that you love them. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to.

We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves. If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy.

You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost. Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash deloney to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Deloney. All right, we are back. Let's go to Aliona in South Carolina.

What's up, Aliona? Hi, Dr. John. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I am all right. Thank you. Of course.

How are you? So, never mind. I was going to ask you something totally unrelated. So go ahead. Thank you. Of course. How are you? So, never mind. I was going to ask you something totally unrelated. So go ahead. Go ahead. Well, first, I would like to thank you and your team and all mental health professionals for walking with us every day as we heal and so we can better serve our communities and our families.

I really mean it with all my heart and gratitude. So thank you. I am running like a podcast and a radio show. The therapists who are in there seven hours, eight hours a day, every day, they're incredible. Yeah, you are right. High five to them. Thank you so much.

So what's up? So today I'm hoping that you can share some thoughts on how I can best provide mental and emotional support to my dear family and friends who are currently fighting for their lives and fighting for their homes in the Ukraine. Oh, man. Tell me about what's going on? So I'm very lucky and fortunate and blessed to live here in the United States. I do have some family that lives here, but just like many Ukrainians in America and all over the

world, we also have family and we have friends that are living in the Ukraine and we are able to help them financially. I'm very blessed that I can. And we are sending humanitarian help. But normally, if someone is having a hard time, I can sit here and hold their hand and listen and talk to them. But I don't know how to talk to my family. I don't know what to say to my friends because saying sorry sounds stupid and saying I understand, I don't. I don't understand. So I'm hoping that I can

find a way to be there for them thousands of miles away and maybe a way to be here for my family and my community in the United States. They're also having a hard time. Oh, man. Well, number one, thank you for sharing that. And you are intimately tied to this tragedy that's going on. And you're speaking on behalf of millions who aren't as intimately tied. They don't have friends or family that are there, but they're just watching this.

And the word that keeps going through my heart and mind here is powerless. This sense that you are watching bombs and tanks roll over your neighborhoods and your homes and children being born in bomb shelters and things and this sense of powerlessness. You couldn't get there if you wanted to, right? So there's just literally nothing to do.

It's like watching somebody drown and you can't jump in, right? And it's just that sense of powerlessness. And then you label, I mean, you put on top of that, that survivor's guilt. Because y'all are living well in the US and there's a part of you that thinks, that feels bad about that.

Tell me about that. I learned this concept from you, both and. Number one, I am absolutely grateful and blessed to be here, and I'm grateful that I am safe and my mama is safe. My father is safe. And I am incredibly hurt and devastated and guilty over the fact that I'm sitting here in a nice apartment with, you know, with my dogs. I, I have a way to pay my bills and even go to restaurants. And how do you, I can't get over that. I want to fly there and fight. That's what I want to do. And that's what many of us want to do. Absolutely. Yes. If they said, hey, any folks who want to hop on a plane, we'll fly you over. Yes, those planes would be packed. Right.

So I'm going to speak super honestly with you. Is that okay? Of course. Okay. You are, man, you are a brave, brave woman. I'm so grateful that you called. So here's the bold statement I'm going to say, and I'm going to preface this with, this is a privilege statement. This is a fill in any kind of critique you want to say about this statement, but this is the truth. Okay. There's nothing you can say to them beyond I love you with a period. You will not have peace until this is over, period. Your guilt will not help them. The greatest gift you can give them is joy and living your life here.

And here's why. We often think that pain is some zero and joy is some zero. And if we've got a friend who is hurting, a friend who's in the hospital, a friend who's overseas while their home is being invaded by a foreign country, that we need to slide into that with them. And if they're our neighbor, like you said, you're dang right, man. I to slide into that with them. And if they're our neighbor, like you said, you're dang right, man. I'm going into that house. I'm gonna sit with them in their ugliest moments.

I'm gonna make casseroles and cheap cookies and I'm gonna walk alongside them. When it's one of these paralyzing, there's nothing we can do here. Our instinct is to do the same because our bodies aren't designed to know in watching real time on cell phones, something that's going on 15,000 miles away on the other side of the world. And so our bodies have a pain and for loved ones and slide into help response. And we are trying to do that now and we can't. And we think that if we

have, if we laugh, if I go to a nice restaurant, if I do something romantic with my husband, if I fill in the blank, that somehow we are taking joy from them. Right. And that couldn't be further from the truth. So flip it around. If you were there, would you want somebody who you loved, who had the cosmic blessing of being out of there to just be miserable? Or would you want them to go have dinner? I would want them to live their life and enjoy. I would want them to live their life and enjoy I would want them to live wheels off you better go out because I'm stuck here in a bunker

right you know what I mean and so I want to challenge you to put more beauty into the world in a time when millions of people are under fire and smoke and gray.

Put joy into the world. Put laughter into the world. Put beauty into the world where you can. Lashing yourself in order for camaraderie only results in wounds on your back. It doesn't help them. Do you hear what I'm saying? Yes, yes, I am. Can I give you one other hard, hard piece of wisdom?

Oh, absolutely. And this is the pot talking to the kettle here. Do you know that expression? No, but I am going to Google it afterwards. All right, here's what the pot talking to the kettle is. This is somebody who is going to be very hypocritical for a second. Actually, you know what? I'm going to make a commitment on this show with you if you'll join me.

Okay? Sure. Since this kicked off, I have been obsessed. I have followed everything. I've got a curated Twitter account. I don't even have Twitter. I go on the internets to get through Twitter, but I follow a curated feed hours a day.

I don't read the mainstream news because they're not telling us the truth, whatever nonsense I've come up with. And I am obsessed with it, talking to military people, talking to Ukrainian folks, talking to Russian folks. I'm obsessed with it. And to military people, talking to Ukrainian folks, talking to Russian folks. I'm obsessed with it.

And here's what we have to do. We have to turn it off. Right. We have to turn it off. And that sounds so ugly and evil and privileged and nonsense. We are not helping them by just absorbing this 24-7, 365. The best thing we can do is be well so that we can rally people to provide money. We can tell the stories that aren't being told. We can write letters and they may not get there.

They may not make it. There may not be a mail service that's going to get them there. We can write emails or we can write texts that just say, love you i love you i love you i miss your face not i'm sorry not um i understand what yeah none of that's true you're exactly right i just i love you and i'm putting beauty into the world with your name on it. Don't insert yourself into this combat zone. It doesn't help them. It hurts you. Can you and I make an agreement that we're going to cut back on how much we're consuming? Oh, absolutely.

My family in general and majority of our community that I am around, we have very consciously and intentionally turned off the news and we don't watch a lot of news in general because everything we need to know our friends and families will tell us. Beautiful. But one thing that we are facing, and this is a product of misinformation, we are receiving a lot. I mean, right now we're hurting. Our hearts are breaking. Majority of the people rallied around us, but we are receiving a lot of hate from misinformation, the labs information, Nazis, etc. That makes it okay to kill innocent people and children. Right.

What about that can you do anything about? Nothing at all. Right. So. What about that can you do anything about? Nothing at all. Nothing at all. You can turn it off. Right. You can turn it off. Right, right. It's like people

who are picketing outside of a funeral. Like, I'm not going to give you real estate in my head. I'm not going to give you a voice at my table. My friend died. I don't care if you liked him or not. I'm going to go in here a voice at my table my friend died

I don't care if you liked him or not I'm going to go in here and sit with my friend's family and I'm going to mourn and weep and then be about honoring him and the best way I know to honor people is to put beauty into the world and to laugh and to go dancing and to eat well and to make sure people around me are honored and to make sure that people around me are honored.

And to make sure I'm a part of a process that never allows this to happen on the dirt of where I sleep. Right. Right. And so, yeah, there's misinformation out there. It's hard when somebody says something ugly or evil about people you love, especially people you love who are hurting. We tend to flock to that. Right. Right. Cut it off. when somebody says something ugly or evil about people you love, especially people you love who are hurting, we tend to flock to that. Right.

Right. Cut it off. Turn it off. I'm going to block you. I will never speak to you again. Have a great life. I wish you the best. May the force be with you and whatever other Star Wars references you want to put in their life.

Right. I'm just going to be done with it. I'm just out. Right. Don't get a voice in my heart or my head. You know who does? My friends and my family and my community. And when I'm able to get a text message

or a FaceTime with somebody who's sitting in the middle of Kiev and we could talk for a minute with the sirens not going off, I'm gonna cherish that moment. And I'm just gonna listen. And I'm gonna say, I love you.

I love you. I love you. And I'm planting flowers with your name on them. And I'm gonna going to listen. And I'm going to say, I love you. I love you. I love you. And I'm planting flowers with your name on them. And I'm going to go plant flowers. That's a great idea. Plant some flowers. Ukrainian flower. Or whatever it is.

Put beauty into the world. Get with your community, with your family, with your friends, and just say, where can we put beauty out here? Number one, we're going dancing. Right. Why? Because Deloney is the worst. This guy, this podcast I listen to, they don't listen to it because it's not that great.

But this podcast I listen to, he said to go dancing because he's a terrible, terrible, terrible dancer and the world needs better dancers. So we're going dancing and we're going to plant flowers this weekend. So everybody, we're going to the nursery. You hear what I'm saying?

I love, love your heart. Let's just turn it off. And this is me talking to myself in the mirror. So thank you for holding a mirror up to me today, Alyana. You've been a gift to me as well. If there's something that, what's one thing you can pass along to us, to me? You're talking to people who are there that aren't on the radio that are just moms and dads and brothers and sisters trying to figure out what in the world is happening. What would you pass along to us? You know, I, the only regrets,

and it's funny you said to tell people that you love them. The only thing I was thinking of on February 24th is what was my last conversation with my sister and my brother and my nieces and nephews? And when was the last time I talked to my dear friends? And it's that right now I am trying to be intentional about seeing my family here in the United States and hugging my mom closer because her daughter is in the middle of the war and my father's son is in the middle of the war. And just hugging them closer and letting go of things and spending more time with our loved ones. And because I don't, I was terrified that my last conversation with my sister would have been an argument.

And I couldn't remember if I told her that I love her. And what will you never ever do? As long as you live again, you'll never hang up the phone without saying, I love you. Will you? Never, never.

I haven't, I still have not. Can I, can I tell you something? I'm just keeping in with Deloney wisdom, which is, I just give the same pieces of advice over and over and over again. You know,

it'd be really cool? It would be awesome if you and your mom and dad went and way overpaid for a really nice leather journal. And every day y'all wrote your brother and your sister a letter. How much you miss them. How much you're thinking about them. And when this thing's over and y'all are able to reunite and hug again, you'll be able to hand them that journal. And they'll be able to see that in spirit and in heart, y'all were with them. And y'all planted flowers all along the way.

I would love that. Sound good? Absolutely. All right, I'm going to do something for you. I'm going to give you a copy of this new book that's coming out, okay? And it's not fully out. It'll be out in storage by the time the show comes out, I think. But

here's the genesis of the book is, or the thesis is, here's how to own what's the garbage that's going on right now and then here's what to do next. Okay? And you and your family can just walk through it together. Here's what we do now.

All right, this knucklehead says to do this. All right, let's do this. How do we grieve? Here's a chapter on grief. So it's just gonna be a playbook for the next five months, five years, right, as this thing plays itself out. And I need you to hear me say, Eliana, we're standing with you, we're praying with you,

and you've got my commitment to plant some flowers and to put some joy into the world. Thank you so much. 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 with... Do we have like any cool new music? We'll put it in post. Ah, sweet. All right, when this comes in, there's gonna be some rad new music for a new segment called Facts Are Your Friends. This comes from my good friend

and really one of my most important mentors in my life, Dr. Andy Young. He was a psychology professor of mine, but he's also just someone who's helped me walk through a lot in life. And he trained me on crisis response. He's the one who let me tag along for years with him and his incredible team

until he finally asked me, I could be on the team, let me join the team after I hassled him about it. But one of the most common things we would say, he would say and remind us over and over, and we would go into situations where we're doing death notifications, where we were seeing the worst of the worst and sitting with people who have just experienced their lives implode was facts of your friends, facts of your friends. And so in this segment, it's gonna be a new segment that we're gonna start doing. These are simple conversations about complex ideas. What's this diagnostic? Earlier on in this show, somebody called about oppositional defiant disorder, right? So we'll

have different things about diagnostics, different things about, hey, in this movie, it said that, so it's gonna be simple conversations about pretty complex things. All right? And so today for the first inaugural facts of your friends, man, I'm really, I'm crushing it, huh? We're going to be talking about narcissism. Narcissist. That guy's a narcissist. Oh my gosh, she's such a narcissist. My mother-in-law's a narcissist. The number of emails Kelly gets about somebody's mother-in-law being a narcissist or somebody's dad being a narcissist. And then most recently, is Putin a narcissist?

The leader of Russia. Is he a narcissist? Hey, is he a narcissist? Is he a, is he a? So let's take a step back and look at what narcissist is. And then we're going to get to, is Putin a narcissist? How about that? So narcissist is one of those terms that's thrown around all over the place. Super quick to throw this label on just about everything. Jerk, narcissist. Somebody says something we don't like, narcissist. Somebody calls and is like,

come on, narcissist. We just throw it around, throw it around. So let's step back and look at what actually narcissistic personality disorder actually is. It's important to know when you're dealing with a narcissist, their life is about them, not you, okay? So clinically, narcissistic personality disorder means someone has an inflated sense of importance, a need for admiration, a lack of empathy, a sense of entitlement at a pathological level. Okay, here's some common traits. Exaggerated sense of self-important, constant excessive need for admiration, fantasies of success and power and brilliance, beauty. This sounds like James.

Monopolizing conversations, not really James. Monopolizing conversations and inability to recognize the feelings and needs of others. The DSM, boy, that's my favorite book. Pervasive pattern of grandiosity, a need for admiration, right? Believes they are special, requires excessive admiration. My friend, Dr. Cloud, Henry Cloud, talks a lot about

narcissists. He suggests that they have this inflated sense of self-worth and people are always looking to feel better. And so they get what they want at dinner and they need to feel better again. And then they send the food back at the dinner table. They're not going to give me crap like this. And then they need to feel better. And so then they take it out on again. And then they send the food back at the dinner table. They're not going to give me crap like this. And then they need to feel better. And so then they take it out on you. And then I'm not driving that car. You drive. And it just, it's this constant need to get better. And it crushes people and it drains them. And it leaves everybody around them thinking there's something wrong with them. It's gaslighting. You end up feeling like you're not good enough, right? So at the core fundamental level,

a narcissist uses manipulation and psychological control to get what they want. They live in a world of denial and fantasy to avoid reality. This is an emotionally stunted person, somebody who stopped developing. I like to say it's the inner seven-year-old. They spit on things. They hit things. They lash out at things. They fantasize about Star Wars and dragons and being a rock star

and having a certain body. They're stuck at seven-year-old level, like my daughter. They may treat people bad, but their lives aren't about other people. It's about them. They are the focus of their world. Others are just fuel for that engine, okay? So here's a few important notes. Narcissists rarely seek help unless something important to them is at stake.

And even then it's rare. Also, not all people with narcissistic personality disorder bang drums all day. They're not all loud and brash and outwardly confident and socially charming. Some are shy, hypersensitive, very thin skin, very fragile, and they will drag you down underwater gently. You don't even know it

until suddenly you're gasping for air. Some come in loud and, ah, that's the one on TV, right? The one that many of us deal with is the one that's slowly underwater, right? Now, most people are not narcissists. Most people are jerks or morons or kind of an idiot. That guy is just a jerk. Or some people have just had things given to them for long enough that they don't have a psychology. They don't have a operator's manual for, y'all are coming home for Thanksgiving. Y'all going to be here at two, right? Because we're going to eat at three.

So y'all need to be here by two. Hey, mom, we're not going to come home for Thanksgiving this year actually we're going to get a cabin out in the woods and just go stay there because it's going to be better for all of our souls and then mom doesn't have an operators manual for that and so we're going to teach her

and we're going to lean into that all of us can be self absorbed sometimes all of us can be selfish sometimes that'sbed sometime. All of us can be selfish sometimes. That's part of being human. If you're not worried, yeah. If you're worried that you're a narcissist, you're probably not. That's one of the core functions.

If you think someone close to you is a narcissist, pay attention to how you feel in their presence. Pay attention to how they treat you and others. And this is, as we get into like the Putin discussion, just stop saying narcissist. Just stop with the diagnostic. It's an easier way to live. That diagnostic, I believe, is for psychologists and psychiatrists and some counselors and some family therapists, but it's overused and it's not always helpful. It is helpful when you're teaching somebody, hey, this is them doing something to you. You're being gaslighted. You're allowed to set boundaries. I like to serve people by working at what, talking to them, not about others. So sometimes

it's important to point out what other people are doing to you and to say like, hey, that's not normal. That's not okay. Or that guy's abusive or that guy. The diagnostic stuff, I just leave off. I just leave it off. Here's why. You deserve boundaries.

You deserve to have your needs met. You deserve to be loved. You deserve to not be abused. You deserve to not find yourself being dragged underwater. So when people say, is Putin a narcissist? I'm not going to give that credence. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. And that diagnostic label doesn't help anybody. You got a guy that appears to have invaded a sovereign country and is trying to take it over. And if he can't take it over, he is going to just blow it all up.

And he's going to take out women and children and soldiers and babies and infrastructure and monuments, all of it. It's going to burn all the ground. And so I am going to deal with that reality. I don't care what the diagnostic is. Diagnostics can be helpful, but they can also be used to blame. They can also be used to excuse. So I'm always going to look at behavior, right? So going back to, if you think someone's a

narcissist, what do you do? How does your body feel when you're around them? Do you get that feeling in your guts like, this is not going to, then don't go. That's on you to set a boundary. Focus on what you can control. Don't diagnose people. Just stop diagnosing people. Focus on what you can control and especially kill this fantasy. You can't change other people, period. You can't. You can change you. You can't change your coworkers. You can't change your office mates. I guess office mates and coworkers are the same thing. You can't change any of this stuff except for you. All right, so that's our first installment of Facts Are Your Friends.

We're talking about narcissism. Spend your life diagnosing people less and setting firm boundaries and loving yourself and others more. Just make that a part of your life. I think that might be the most genius thing I've ever said. Is it? That makes you sound like a narcissist. Oh my gosh.

Or at least a megalomaniac. I've never asked myself that question, James. Maybe. As we wrap up today's show, hey, listen, this is my shout out to Brother T. Hawkins, man. One of the greatest rock drummers of all time who died this weekend suddenly.

The number one, my legit number one favorite rock song of all time. It's called Everlong by the Foo Fighters and it goes like this. We'll miss you, Taylor. Hello, I've waited here for you ever long. Tonight I throw myself into and out of the red, out of her head she's saying,

come down and waste away with me, down with me, slow down. You wanted it to be just how you want it to be. I'm over my head, out of her head she's saying, and I wonder when I sing along with you, if anything could ever feel this real forever, if anything could ever be this good again. The only thing I'll ever ask of you

is you gotta promise not to stop when I say win. We'll miss you, Taylor. We'll see you soon. Coming up on the next episode. I have like 150 pounds to lose in addition to battling depression and anxiety. Sounds to me like you're drowning. Sounds to me like you're slowly suffocating.

I do feel like I'm suffocating. Yeah. I was kind of surprised recently when the war with Ukraine started. It just kind of sucker punched me and took me back to some of those major places of anxiety. So do you have major life stuff going on? Well, I'm pregnant with our fifth child.

12, 10, 8, then jumped down to 2. And here's the buddy for the 2-year-old. Ayo! Coming. And here's the buddy.