The Dr. John Delony Show - When Things Fall Apart (Bonus Episode)

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

You can't change what’s happened to you, but you can choose a better future. In my new book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future, we’ll walk through a not-so-complicated approach to mental health, relationships and wellness. Enjoy listening to the first chapter in this special episode. Preorder your hardcover book before April 19, 2022, and get one month of free weekly therapy sessions: https://bit.ly/34dxq9u

All right, so this is a very special podcast. I can't tell you how many people across the country, across the world, reach out and say, hey, would you do private coaching with me? Would you do, do you still take clients? Are you actually a licensed therapist? Here's the deal. I wrote my new book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future for you. It's a conversation between me and you sitting across the table from each other and

saying, hey, let's walk through what's going on in your life, what's going on in your marriage, what's going on in your family. And let's own that, let's hold it, and then let's be about what comes next. So today I'm giving you the first chapter of the audio book of my brand new book On Your Past, Change Your Future for free. It's just for you. This is for the people. Y'all have been with me since day one.

I'm so grateful for you, everybody who listens to the show. And so here you go. Part one, the stories are the problem. Chapter one, when things fall apart. Part 1. The Stories are the Problem. Chapter 1. When Things Fall Apart I quietly slipped out of my bedroom, careful not to wake my wife or young son. I grabbed a cheap plastic flashlight from the kitchen and silently undid the deadbolt on the back door. Wearing only my boxer briefs, I stepped outside into the backyard.

It was pitch black as I waved the faint light back and forth in the rain to try and help my eyes focus. We were coming out of the hottest Texas summer on record and clawing our way out of a devastating statewide drought. There was a historical loss of agriculture and farming, and many of the lakes were holes of clay and dust. Everywhere I went, all anyone was talking about was the heat and how bad we needed rain. Secretly, I was the only guy in the state praying for it not to rain. I know, selfish, lame. Of course, I didn't want the drought to continue, but I couldn't afford to have my house collapse down around me either. I probably should have led with this. I was certain my new house was falling down. Shortly after my wife, infant son, and I was certain my new house was falling down.

Shortly after my wife, infant son, and I moved into our new home, I began to notice cracks in the sheetrock walls, spidering cracks above the doors, and tiny little concrete cracks in the foundation. You had to look close to see them, but if you knew where to look, they were everywhere. I figured if it started raining, the sudden shift in soil moisture could split the foundation of my home, pour in through the cracks, and wreck me financially. For years, I'd been

jolting awake in the middle of the night, never sleeping uninterrupted for more than a few hours. I was exhausted but used to it. This was just life. So on this particular night, it wasn't a surprise when my eyes popped open at 3 a.m., my heart pounding in my chest. But I was surprised to hear the water banging the roof and windows. The rain was here. I stuttered, stepped through the darkness on my toes, making my way to the side of the house. When I'd almost reached a far corner, I dropped down on my hands and knees behind the cheap suburban boxwoods framing the flowerbeds. I shoved the flashlight in my mouth and crawled the rest of the way on all fours through the mulch and the weeds in the mud. My head near the ground, I was tracing the line where the concrete foundation met the flower bed. Inch by inch,

I crawled through the rain and dirt looking for any sort of cracks in the slab and anywhere the water could be pouring into the house. We'd moved into this beautiful red brick ranch home about a year before. It was a quintessential suburban track home in a new development where many of our friends lived. The country was still relearning how to breathe following the 2009 economic collapse and I'd been nervous to buy anything. But my wife fell in love with this house and I believed my family deserved a home. So we bought it and I promised myself I would try and love it too. Shortly after moving in, that's when I began to notice the cracks. Started when I noticed little splinter cracks around the doors and the windows.

I could see grout chipping away in the kitchen and paint flaking off in the living room. Then I spotted what looked like fractures in the foundation. In a few places, the concrete itself had tiny hairline cracks and the exterior corners were beginning to crumble. I was filled with rage. We had just bought this house. It wasn't even 10 years old yet. Why hadn't the previous owner disclosed the issues? How had the inspector missed such an important problem? How had I missed it? My wife didn't think this was a big deal. In fact, she said she didn't really see the cracks, even though I repeatedly pointed them out to her.

It was maddening. So I went to the internet where I learned dozens of explanations and theories. Maybe the cracks were from the dry, shrinking clay soil, poor craftsmanship on the foundation slab, or cheap 2x4s milled from new forests. According to a number of different websites, my house was a disaster. The internet would tell me anything I wanted to hear. Over the course of a few months, I invited several different buddies over. I'd show them around and point out every crack.

There, and there, and over here. And they would always mumble something about, settling's normal, man, or your house looks really great. I called different contractors out. They would always mumble something about, settling's normal, man, or your house looks really great. I called different contractors out. They would show up with a mustache and a dip cup and an extended cab truck, and they'd walk around, measure things, and sigh heavily. But they found nothing.

They all gave the house a clean bill of health. One told me to call back in a few years. The contractors wouldn't take my money. They were idiots, incompetent. They were liars. Or maybe they felt sorry for me. After all, I was a young husband and a father who'd been suckered into buying a broken-down house. I was an embarrassment.

Maybe they just didn't have the heart to tell me. Finally, I called Todd, one of my best friends in the world. His dad was an architect, and Todd had grown up on construction sites. I was confident he'd know what I was talking about. Todd, one of my best friends in the world. His dad was an architect and Todd had grown up on construction sites. I was confident he'd know what I was talking about. He loaded up his family and drove three hours in the nightmarish heat to come check out my house. I walked him around the house and out to the driveway.

He listened quietly and soaked up my rambling explanations. After a while, he turned, looked at me and spoke directly and firmly as only a good friend can. Deloney, your house is good. It's strong. What you're seeing is cosmetic. The cracks are completely normal and there's not even that many, he said. Dude, this conversation is over.

I was deflated yet resolute. I trusted my friend, but I knew that even the smartest people could be wrong sometimes. I could see the cracks in my house and no amount of disbelief from experts or friends or my wife could convince me that I wasn't seeing what I knew I was seeing. Problem was, I wasn't just seeing cracks at my house. I was starting to see cracks everywhere. Coming unhinged. Outside of the problems with my house, my life was a chaotic blur. I was a human hurricane held together by a dress shirt and a tie. I was a senior student affairs administrator at a remarkable little university. One of my roles was leading the

housing department, which meant I was responsible for the dorms, millions of dollars, countless employees, and thousands of college students. Every year, parents dropped off their kids on campus, and it was me and my team's job to take care of them. We taught them how to get along with strangers, how to turn the corner into adulthood, and we worked hard to create community and a home away from home. We were good at it.

But when thousands of young adults from all over the country move away from everything and everyone they know, and they all pile into a giant brick residence hall together, things get messy. When they did, I was often the guy who got called. Students got wasted and ended up in the hospital. There were drugs and fights, sickness, attempted suicides, car wrecks, failing grades, getting kicked off the team, rape and sexual assault, students or their parents passing away, massive paralyzing amounts of debt.

These kinds of challenges don't have office hours, and neither did I. My job never ended. I lived on a merry-go-round. When the ambulance showed up, when someone needed to call mom and dad to let them know their child was hurting, in jail or in a psychiatric ward, I was often the guy to make that call.

I was the guy people wanted around when the wheels were falling off. And I liked being that guy. I liked being in the know, and I liked figuring out ways to point people to the help they needed. I was both good at my job and pretty arrogant about how good I was. I loved speeding through town at all hours of the night. I was honored to meet with police officers for drug searches and talk with hospital staff in the wee hours of the morning. I was gifted at sitting with hurting people

and walking them through their darkest moments. And then I would roll out of bed the next morning, check my phone, squeeze in a workout, and start the whole thing all over again. In my day job, I was the one bringing the chaos. It was always budgets or personnel issues or student concerns and yet another board meeting. I felt like my head was on fire. Quick side note, during the writing of this book, I sent a draft to a few old friends who were with me during this part of my life. One of the guys,

my great friend Kevin, told me that he got goosebumps when he read this line. He said he distinctly remembers me sitting with him and a group of other guys one morning more than 12 years ago and telling the group that I felt like my head was on fire. I don't remember the conversation or even saying that, but I find it fascinating that more than a decade later, I use the same exact words to describe the chaos in my heart, in my mind, in my soul, and in my body. So my head felt like it was on fire. I said yes to everyone and everything. Want to go to a leadership program at Harvard? Yep. Can you leave your brother's wedding early to deal with a student death? On it. Who can lead this new department? I'm your guy.

Can you teach one more graduate course? Done. Interested in a second PhD? Absolutely. Want to present your research at professional and academic conferences? For sure. Texting, more texting, emails, clicking, notifications, grade the papers, write the papers, pick up diapers, keep moving, keep fighting, run, run, run, do it all. And it was a lot. I was married to a brilliant professor and scholar.

She did her best to both live life with me and strategically avoid me. I was like living with a taser. After years of struggling with infertility, we finally had a new baby, and we were trying to figure out how to be happy. We were juggling kid and careers and not sleeping and setting up childcare all while trying to be present for each other. And by we, I mean her. Sheila did most of the juggling. I was just plowing

ahead. Around this time, I was also done with my faith. I didn't really believe in God anymore, and I was through with any sort of organized religion. But I worked at a faith-based university, so belief and organized religion were part of the job. I was trying my best to muscle through the motions in order to keep my job, my wife, and my community. Every day I put my head down to grind it out, often struggling to believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. I was a fake, a charlatan. Oh yeah, and my physical body? From the outside, I was in great shape. I ran, lifted, supplemented, and tried every diet under the sun.

Vegetarian, raw vegan, keto-only protein shake, super high fat, fasting, Atkins. You named it, I dragged my poor wife through it. Side note, my wife was such a trooper. Eventually, she just began asking me at the beginning of every month, what are we this month? And I'd throw out some random fad diet, and she'd head to the grocery store and try to make it work. Or sometimes I'd offer to go to the store, and I'd end up with a shopping cart full of barely edible nonsense, like noodles made from fish hair or hamburgers made from Scottish goats with hyphenated names that slept in

monasteries with late century monks. Or gummy candies. I often got off the rails and just bought a clinically insane amount of gummy candies. Anyway, I was never consistent. I was always believing I just needed the one magic program or diet or combination. I'd often end up mainlining a box of cereal and a bag of gummy candies only to declare that tomorrow I'd find the new right plan. I'd spend 10 days on a new program, quit, and move on to the next. And like I mentioned before, I didn't sleep very much. More accurately, I couldn't. Years prior, I'd started taking sleep meds

after my mixed martial arts training sessions went late into the night. I could train until 10 p.m., get home, take a pill, and slip out of consciousness with very little effort. But being unconscious is different than restorative sleep, way different. So after years of pushing my body to the edge and then chemically knocking myself out and pretending it was sleep, my body had started to eat itself. But I kept getting promoted, and I kept getting more responsibilities. I kept getting recognized, and I kept getting more responsibilities. I kept getting recognized. For the most part, I was pulling off my attempt at living a frenetic, nonstop life. Or I thought I was. This is right around the time when I started noticing the cracks

in the foundation of our home. I was noticing cracks in the walls and foundations of my friends' homes, and in the buildings at work, and in my faith heritage, and in my marriage, and in the walls and foundations of my friends' homes, and in the buildings at work, and in my faith heritage, and in my marriage, and in the economy, higher education, politics, everywhere. I became obsessed with cracks. They haunted me. Nobody else wanted to acknowledge them, so I felt it was up to me to figure them out, and I needed to figure them out. The more I looked for cracks, the more I found them. And this is how I ended up in the middle of the night, soaking wet, crawling around in muddy flower beds in my underwear, looking for the water seeping into the foundation of my home. Except there was no seeping, no leaking.

I was on my hands and knees, and I couldn't find water rushing into the cracks. There were cracks, but they weren't what I had thought they were. My house wasn't falling apart. I was. I'll never forget sitting down in the mud that night and taking the flashlight out of my mouth. I blinked my eyes for a moment, trying to clear the rain that was dripping from my eyelashes. I started to laugh, and then I started to cry. I was laughing and crying at the same time. I was so exhausted and so tired of being tired. As the guy who got called when people were melting down in the middle of the night, it was not lost on me that in that moment,

someone might've called me about me. Yes, the irony, cue Alanis Morissette. For a brief second, I worried that my neighbors might be watching, or that my wife might be wondering where I was. I was always looking to see who was watching, like I was living my life on a theater stage. But nobody saw me. Nobody was watching. My wife was sound asleep. I was alone. And as the guy who had a PhD, a highly visible leadership role, a young family, and all

the answers to everything, I found myself in a scary place. I knew I wasn't well. I wasn't having a psychotic break, far from it, but I couldn't keep going like this. I had lots of friends and people who I trusted, but I had no idea what to do next. I was sitting frozen in the eye of a hurricane of my own making. When you suspect it might be you. I know your life is different than mine. We look different, think different, have different experiences, and have different opinions.

But as the great theologian and writer Frederick Buechner once said, the story of one of us is the story of us all. My story is your story, one of us is the story of us all. My story is your story, and your story is my story, and we are bound together. Maybe you've never worked for a university, you're not married, or you don't have friends who tell you the truth. Maybe you're rich or poor. Maybe you have a law degree, or maybe you dropped out of high school. You're a Democrat or a Republican or a pacifist or a multi-tour veteran. You may be

black or brown or white, seventh generation or a recent arrival. Maybe you're 24 or maybe you're 64. My story is your story and your story is my story. And everyone is struggling. I've spent the past two decades researching, teaching, and serving thousands of people in different capacities. I co-host a nationally syndicated radio show and my own caller-driven podcast. I speak to thousands of live event audience members across the country, and my family and I are involved in our local community. I'm hearing it from all angles. Our lives have been turned upside down. Everyone is struggling. You are trying to make your marriage work, trying to hold things together during the pandemic, trying to make

sense of wild economic news or fires or someone you love passing away. Someone labeled you with anxiety or diagnosed your kid with autism. The bank foreclosed on your home. You're angry all the time. People treat you as less than because of how you look. You don't believe in your work anymore. You were horrifically abused, and years later, you still can't breathe. It feels like the structure of your life is crumbling. Real or imagined, cracks are showing up everywhere. That's the bad news. But here's the good news. The cracks are a sign, not a conclusion. They are the GPS, not the destination. Whatever pain, fear, anxiety, disruption, or chaos you have in your life, no matter how much it hurts,

it's not the final answer. These cracks are shadows of something deeper going on in your life. Cracks can signal the beginning of the end, a windshield, the mortar between the bricks on a decaying old house, a shattered window in an abandoned building. Or cracks can signal growth, old skin making way for new skin, a butterfly leaving a cocoon, a bird breaking free from the egg. Cracks allow light into the darkness. And even though I didn't know it, my moment in the mud was the beginning of something new, a new adventure towards strength, health, and healing. In the years following, I became determined to figure out what was wrong with me,

my friends, my students, my family, and my country. I became obsessed with getting to the bottom of the lies and nonsense you and I have been told about mental health, wellness, relationships, happiness, and what makes the good life. In my search to find out why everyone is struggling, I found out that almost everything we've been told is wrong. This book.

This book is about stories. The stories you were born into, the stories you were told, the stories that happened, and the stories you tell yourself. Make no mistake, these stories have a physical weight. We carry them everywhere we go, and they impact our bodies, our minds, our communities, and our family tree. They become our mental and physical health, our family systems, our faith, and our future. These stories are both the problem and the solution. I wrote this book to offer clear and simple insights into our deepest hurts. I also wrote this book to teach you

how to live a better life, how to be well, and how to have incredible relationships. As you read, you will learn how to examine and own your old stories, how to heal and write new stories, and how to change the rest of your life. I want you to begin living a strong, whole, well, resilient, and connected life starting now. The path to being well and changing your life is simple. Just five steps repeated over and over and over again. The five steps are own your stories, acknowledge reality, get connected, change your thoughts, and change your actions. That's it. I know, I know.

Don't roll your eyes. Don't move on yet. Yes, these steps sound simplistic. They are simple. But this path is hard to walk, incredibly hard. And most people never try. And of those who try, few keep going. And if we're speaking statistically,

you probably won't go for it. I hope you will, but changing your life is not for the faint of heart. You have to come clean and be honest. You have to face and discover things you don't want to. You have to both own your past and be decisive about changing your future. You have to do new things and think new things. There will be times the path to healing hurts deeply. But if you'll start walking, you will change your life. You'll find freedom, peace, laughter, forgiveness, great sex and connection, deep sleep without medication, physical health, purpose, joy, and so much love. You will change your family tree.

This journey isn't easy, but picking up this book was an act of bravery, an act of strength. I see your strength even if you don't see it in yourself. So from here on out, I'm assuming you're all in. Working through this book will change you and I'm right here with you. You can own your past and change your life.

The cracks are your new beginning. Here we go. All right, that was the first chapter, chapter one of my new book, Own Your Past, Change Your Future. As you keep reading, we're going to walk through just common sense. We just take all the mystery, all the drama out of everything, all the different approaches and theory. We're just going to cut through all that nonsense and get back to the basics of true mental health and wellness, including how to get connected, how to actually change your thoughts, how to actually change your actions and move you closer towards the person you

want to become. And here's the thing. Some of you don't think I have mental health challenges or I'm well, I'm fine. Things are fine. If you're exhausted all the time, if you're angry all the time, if you cannot put down your phone, if you keep doing the things you don't want to do over and over and over again, this book is for you. You are ready. It's time. Let's do this. I want you to pre-order own your past change your future today here's what you get you get a free copy of the audio book you get a free copy of the book on the internet it's like the digital version the e-book they call is that what they call it james yeah the e-book and you get one month of free therapy with better help here's the thing i was really sweating what happens if people put this book down and they think, all right, it's time. I need to make some major changes.

Where do I go now? BetterHelp stepped up. No more excuses. No more hurting. Let's start today. Go to johndeloney.com for more information. See you soon.