Caller: I Don’t Want to Screw My Kid Up

[MUSIC] All right, the marriage kit is here. This is me sitting with you and your spouse walking with you for a year in your marriage. They're only a limited number of these available. They will sell out get yours now at jondalone.com. >> We're going to have a kid here in December. I was curious on what I should expect as a first time dad. I don't know, I just don't want to screw up the kid, I don't want to do something really horrible. I just, I want to do it right. [MUSIC] >> What up, what up, what up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloni show coming to you from Nashville, Tennessee. Taking your calls on everything going on with your life, your work, your mental and emotional health, your relationships, all of it. I'd love to have you on the show, click the link in the show notes, and it will send you over to our overlord Kelly, the producer of the show, and her special form. You fill it out and she will get you on the show, would love to have you on. It's got the Salt Lake City, Utah, and talk to the mighty Joe. Hey, Joe, what's up? >> Hey, John, how are you? >> I'm awesome, brother, how are you, man? >> I'm doing well. >> Very cool, I'll just get straight into my question here. So me and my wife, we're going to have a kid here in December. So I was just, I was curious on what I should expect as a first time dad slash, how can I, you know, best be a good husband for my wife as well. >> Bro, congratulations, dude, thank you. Are you excited, are you nervous, all of it? >> Well, a little bit of everything. >> Yeah, how long have you all been married? >> About a year and a half. >> Oh, okay, was quick, did you all plan this, or is it just like, hey, oh? >> No, it was planned, we, yeah, we both kind of wanted kids pretty fast, so. >> Okay, well that's awesome, so just what should I expect is a really big question. And narrow it down to some specifics for me. >> I don't know, just like, I don't know, I just don't want to like screw up like the kid, you know, I don't want to like, I don't know, do something really horrible. I just, you know, I feel like I want to do it right, you know, and. >> What horrible thing are you worried about doing? >> I don't know, I feel like it's not necessarily like one specific thing. I think it's just kind of the whole thing in general that I just, I don't want to, you know, screw up. >> Sure, so I want to change your orientation completely from defense to offense. Defense is, I don't want to let them score. And you're playing defense already in your mind like, I don't want to mess this up. I want you to change that to an offensive strategy, which is, I want to love this kid and this kid's mom recklessly. How do I do that? You know what I'm saying? >> Yeah. >> And so, how do we pursue honoring and loving the mother of my kid, my wife, this woman I pledged my life to. How do I honor and love this kid in a rapidly changing, unspooling world? How am I going to love this kid? That's different than how do I not mess things up. So here's a couple of just first principles off top of my head, okay. Number one, the greatest gift you can give this kid out of the gate is to love his mother well. And that means you have to see her and you have to know her and who she is is going to change rapidly over the next six months to a year to two years and beyond. So the woman you know has been changing and is going to continue to change in significant fashion. And your job is not to resent change. Your job is not to pine away for the old days. Your job is to get to know the new version of your wife and love that woman really well. And that happens through conversations that happens through walks that happens through not trying to fix her problems, but to say, tell me more about that, right? It's accomplished by intentionally choosing to see and know your wife, okay. The second thing I would say is be honest about what you don't know, okay. And here's what I mean by that. I literally did not know that babies pooped as much as they do. I would change one or two diapers a day and I thought I was being a heroic, modern father. I had no idea my, my infant was pooping 13 times a day or however, 150, however many times they do it. And so at the exact same time that I thought I was being a plugged in dad, my wife was feeling like she has an unplugged husband and it simply was I didn't know. I didn't know how to warm up a bottle. I didn't know how to clean bottles the right way. I didn't know that there was different laundry soap for babies clothes than for my hunting clothes. I didn't know any of this stuff. And it caused a lot of division early on because my wife and I didn't establish a way that we could check in with each other because every time she would correct me, I took it personally and got dramatic. Oh, I'm a bad dad and then I would go be an idiot. And so coming up with a plan for how can y'all regularly check in with each other? Can you commit to not taking instruction personally? Can you commit to getting with a group of guys that already have a kid or two and then teaching you a few things? My wife had a suggestion of new dads or about to be new dads should have guys that come over to their house and just show them five or ten things. Like, here's what you need to know. And that would be really helpful if you have that, right? So it's just being honest about the things you don't know in choosing and this is a strange, I'm going to choose to not take it personally when I don't know something that I'm somehow failing existentially. And I'm just going to make that correction and get on with my life, right? Yeah. The third thing is recognizing at least for the first six months to nine months and maybe beyond that baby is essentially a bundle of nerves and it's not really, but it's just makes for a good metaphor. Those nerves respond to the heartbeat that he or she has been up against for the first nine months or ten months of its life. It responds to food, it responds to warmth. What does that mean that that little baby could really care less about you? And I, Drum, and many other men took that so personally as though I was somehow failing this kid. And so you're going to have to recognize that that baby is primed to eat and that baby is primed for nervous system regulation and you don't have either of those things, especially out of the gate. And so you're going to have to keep showing up and showing up even when you can't quell this screaming kid. And you're going to have to keep showing up when the baby doesn't want a bottle from you once mom. And you're going to have to show up again and again when you get up at the middle of the night to do bedtime and the baby just screams until mom gets up. Like you're going to have to wade through those big feelings of I'm feeling my kid. My kid doesn't love me and no, this kid's four months old. They don't have the capacity to be like, I don't like you. That's not what they're thinking at all. They're thinking food, food, food or warmth, warmth, warmth, right? And so I, a lot of dads take that stuff personal and it just starts a tiny little turn towards I can't do anything. This kid doesn't like me. I'm going to go make a bunch of money and I'll help that way. I'll go work or I'm going to sit in front of TV and keep playing video games or I'm going to stop being at home very much or I'm going to stop helping since I can't do anything right. I'm just going to quit doing anything at all and that's where the real challenge is step in. So you deciding early on, I'm showing up whether this baby likes me or not. And by the way, some babies are not like that at all. Some babies are just all over their dads and it's awesome, awesome. I didn't experience that with either of my kids. And now I've got a 16 year old and a 10 year old and we are thickest thieves all of us. So it comes around but you just as a dad have to just keep showing up. And then the last thing I would tell you is you have to be firmly committed and this is going to sound counterintuitive. You're going to have to be firmly committed because no one else will do this. You have to be in service to yourself so that you can spend the rest of your day, week, month, and year and service to your wife and to your new baby. What do I mean by that? You've got to take care of your exercise. You've got to take care of your sleep. You've got to take care of your finances. You've got to take care of these things. And many of those things you'll do with your wife but you've got to take ownership of what must be true for me to be well so that I can love my exhausted hormones out of my wife. I can love this bundle of nerves that is the two-month-old, the four-month-old, the six-month-old that can begin to offer. not sleep very much and show up at work and be fully present there. I got to do the things that I need to do so that I can be well. And you just abdicating your health, you abdicating your sleep, you abdicating your relationships and just sitting on the couch, that might help in the short term, but it has a long term cost to it. Yeah, no, yeah, that makes total sense. I think, yeah, that, I mean, yeah, the other, the other part that I was thinking about was, you know, I want to make sure to be there from, from my life the best I can so that, yeah, that helps a lot. So, but listen, ask her. Most couples in this situation, one partner knows what it would, what they would like, how they would like their partner to show up. So they try to show up for their spouse in that way. And it's not the way that their spouse needs. Right. So you regularly getting in a rhythm with your wife of how can I love you? What do you want today? What do you want this week? And now we have a baby. There's some actual needs here. We need to get the bottles washed. We need to get the diapers. We need to. We need to. How can I love you not? Here's how I'm loving you, right? And kind of trying to force feed the ways you want to be loved on into her. How open conversations for what sex is going to be like. It's going to change for a while. Expect reentry sex. Like after a baby, figuring that back out, it will feel like you'll have never even seen each other before. Yeah. Right. And it's just awkward and it's weird and it's not existential and it's not the end of your relationship and it's always going to be like this. It's not that at all. It's just awkward. Just this. So we'll navigate it and go through it and then we'll go from there. So it's it's taking the pressure off. What does this mean? What does this mean? And heading that way, right? And saying, we're in it together forever. And so how can I best love you? Yeah, for sure. And by the way, she needs to ask you how she can best love you too. This is not just a one way street. It is going to be out of whack for a while and it should be where you're picking up a ton of slack. But also it shouldn't be completely. It's not one sided forever too. Yeah. So I just do a lot at you. What questions you got? I mean, yeah, I guess the another part to this would be like, I mean, you mentioned, you know, like I work, I try to work a lot so that, you know, we can have enough money to survive and, you know, hopefully later thrive as well. But yeah, how do I balance like, you know, not only, you know, being at work, but like, how should I be at home as well? Like, you know, do I need to take more days off? I need to, you know, go and go into work early and come home a little bit early instead. Like that kind of thing. I think that's you sitting down through wife and you know, doing that on a week-by-week month, my month basis. You're going to have to, both of y'all will have to do away with this idea of that we can set it and forget it. Because like the moment you found out you were pregnant and your young marriage, that marriage you first had is over. Now you're married, you're married through a pregnancy. When the baby's born, you're going to have a new marriage again. And so it's not something to be sad about. It's something to be excited about. Like awesome. We get to rebuild this thing from the floor up. How do you, how do we want to approach each other? What does work look like? And it might be, she wants to stay at home. Awesome. There's an economic reality. There's a math problem to that. Let's be honest about the math. And here's what you staying home all day will cost us. It's me working this many more hours. Are we okay with that? And if we are okay with that, great. Knock your lights up. And three months later, she may say, I miss my husband. I'm going to take a small part-time job. Mom's going to come over and watch the baby on Monday, Wednesdays, and Friday mornings. But I want you home more in the evenings. Great. We'll solve that problem then. Right. But it's being flexible, but it's also being honest about the math problem in front of you. Yeah. I'll send you a couple of resources here. I'm going to send you the together app. For a year, for free, and that's going to keep you to aligned as things start to pull you all apart. Okay. And pulling you apart will be sleep schedules, hormones, exhaustion, unforeseen expenses. Those kinds of things will just pull you apart. The together app will bring you back together one action step at a time. And also, I'm going to give you the every dollar premium app for a year, which is a budgeting tool that y'all can use together because y'all knew as money and budget, it's going to explode now. It's over. So you'll have to recalibrate what things cost, what things need, what do we buy, what do we not buy, what do we have to budget for now. Do you have to cut streaming services because we've got to pay for diapers now. All of those questions, I'll send you that together app for free for a year. Every dollar app for free, the budgeting app, and it's fantastic. It's a great tool. But it will keep you and your spouse to union your wife together aligned on this deal. Sound cool? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right, brother. I wish you the absolute best. And last piece of wisdom. I'll give you get three dads that already have young kids. The right way to do this is to go talk to them in person. But if you can't shoot them a text message and let all of them know, you three guys are my go to guys in the middle of the night in the mornings and the afternoons when I don't know what to do. I'm going to reach out to y'all three. Y'all are my go to guys. Please respond quickly if I send you a text to this special thread. And having a group of guys that will float with you, that will be there for you. And you're like, Hey, is this rash? My wife is doing this. Is this normal? Most of the time, they'll be like, yeah, totally normal. Or it's been three nights in a row and the kids not sleeping. And they'll be like, night four, they'll fall asleep. Right? So it's just getting some guys that will norm your situation with you and for you and also point out, no, you need to take the kid to the doctor or your wife needs to go see somebody because she's really not well or whatever. So get a group of guys that can walk alongside you. It's an exciting, awesome time. And I wish you guys the absolute best. The fact that you're asking these questions before babies here puts you about 14 years ahead of where I was. And it really is going to set the tone for you being a great husband and a great dad. We come back a couple asks how to tell her traditional Catholic family about her pregnancy. We'll be right back. Hey, all of you stay at home parents out there listen up. There's a blind spot that could wreck your family's future thinking that only the one earning the paycheck in your life needs life insurance coverage. Here's the truth. Even if you don't have an income, what you do for your home is priceless. 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Get this done today by going to zander.com or call 1-800-356-4282 for your free quote. That's zanderwithaz.com or click the link in the description. All right, Columbus, Ohio. Let's talk to Peyton. Hey, Peyton, what's up? Hi, Dr. John. How are you? Awesome. How are you? Doing well. Doing well. Fantastic. All right. I'm going to bring on. Is it boyfriend? Yes. All right. I'm going to bring you laughed like you're embarrassed. I'm going to bring on your embarrassing boyfriend, Michael. Let's see here. Michael, you there? Hey, Dr. John. Thank you so much for having us. You got you got it, my man. All right. Peyton and Michael, you're both on? Yes, we're both here. Yes, sir. All right. Excellent. So whoever wants to go first, go first. Let it rip. Okay, I'll take it from here. The reason I giggle that boyfriend is because my question is how do we tell my very traditional Catholic family that we are pregnant outside of life? Come on, Michael. Look what you've done. All right. So tell me about your relationship. How long have you been together? Yeah. Okay. I can start out. So we've been together for three years now. A little over three years. We've been living together for two and that kind of was the start of what we thought would be a little bit troubling to my family. You know, we've been together. We've known each other since 2021 and have had really just a wonderful, beautiful relationship. Okay. So. So yeah, we met, we reconnected over a few years and fell in love and moved in together. And now we are expecting our first child so yeah, we were really excited but we're definitely a little bit nervous. Of course. Yeah, everything's about to change in a big way and also congratulations, man. I hope this baby is brought into the world surrounded by two parents that are just wildly in love with him or her and are committed to loving this baby really, really well, okay? So I'll give you some, some of my opinions and biases on that side of it. But the question you're asking me is a relatively easy, straightforward one and you know what that is? Yeah, to just tell them and you know whatever their answer is, their answer is. Well, so you telling them versus asking them a question, those are two different things. And so if you're wondering how to tell them and get their approval that you may not get that, how do you tell them and have them not be upset with you, you may not get that. And so you uncoupling what's the next right thing for me to do regardless of what somebody else's emotional response is going to be and you get that a handle on that now, that will change the trajectory of your life in your relationship with them, your relationship with each other, your relationship with your employer, all those relationships. I'm going to do the next right thing with honor and integrity in my value set and I can't control what you, what you, the other person do next. Right, yeah, and I think like a little bit of background, you know, I come from a really big family, there's a lot of us. As I said, like moving in together two years ago was a really big deal for us that was something that was seen as, you know, not the way that it's supposed to go per se, but it was something that, you know, we decided together to do and like figuring that out for ourselves was really important and now it just feels like this is like a big old, magnified version of that. Okay, so I'll ask you a harsh question, but I'm not meaning it to be harsh. Yeah. You've already established you don't really care what their values are. You want them to still like you because they're your family, but you know, like you're making your own decisions. Yeah, I would say it's hard because, you know, like I still do hold a lot of values that they have, but I think I think over the past few years, I've kind of discovered a little bit more of what my values are as an individual too, so I guess you're right in that sense. And so don't hold yourself hostage, re-hold yourself hostage. You've already set down and said, you all have this value set. I've got a different one. I'm making this decision. And I think for you, Peyton, and Michael, tell me if I'm wrong here, I think it's important for you to say, I often, because I've heard you say a couple of times in this call when it's, when it's you versus your parents and their value set, you use the word we. We decided, we decided, we decided. And I'm guessing with Michael, he didn't have that same value set. I'm guessing his family, is your family different, Michael? Similar in terms of values, but very different in how we, you know, enforce them, I guess, day to day. Okay. So they have some ideals, but they also are like, yeah, kids are going to be kids, right? Michael, have you told your family? Yeah, we told my family a couple of weeks ago. Okay, how'd that go? We were nervous. We were very nervous. We had no idea how they would react to it, but they responded incredibly well. Both my mom and my dad were teary-eyed. They said that they were going to retire next year in order to better support us through this. And then we actually found out too, my one of three, my oldest was also, you can see you using out of wedlock. Oh wow. That too. Yeah, so. So they have a lived experience where it wasn't how we drew it up, but it ended up being a great blessing. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. Okay. So, yeah, Peyton and Michael, the only way through this is through it. And saying anytime I have something to say that I know is going to hurt somebody, or they're going to be upset with me, or whatever, it's going to be some disruption in the relationship, a couple of the principles I follow is I'm going to tell the full truth. I'm going to tell whatever I have to say in the best of my ability in a language that the person can hear it. And I'm going to try to talk about 25% of what I would normally want to say. And so it's not like, okay, mom, so it was a dark and stormy night. And Michael came home and I could see little tufts of his chest hair above his shirt. And like that, that isn't the conversation. The conversation just sit down and say, mom, dad, we're having a baby. Yeah. All right. And we're committed to loving this baby super well, where if you want to talk about what your plans are, et cetera, from there, great, but you saying, I know y'all are going to be disappointed. And I know y'all are going to be, I know this isn't how y'all don't cast your, your, even if you're right, don't cast their future response onto them first. All right. So it's just we're going to say the thing that happened. We're going to fax our friends. Here's the situation. Here's our plan and y'all are going to be grandparents. Is that real quiet on me, Peyton? Yeah. No, it's, it's definitely a lot to take in. It's really hard not to project what, what I think it's going to go like, just like in response to what I've seen in the past from them on things. So so it's definitely going to be one of those moments where you just kind of have to step out and say it. Yeah. Totally. Please, God almighty have this conversation in person. If at all humanly possible, this is a big enough deal that you travel to go see him. This is a big enough deal. And even if they, if you know, they're going to throw you out, get out. What you have to begin to ask yourself now is who do I want to be? Who am I going to be in these moments when they're, when I have to have hard conversations? Okay. Now, I'm not your parents. I'm not. Parents, I'm just a knuckleheaded podcaster. Can I throw my two cents in here? Please. Okay. Um, Michael, Mary, her tomorrow, just go do it. You've been to get her three years. What are we waiting for? Let's do this thing. You're about to be parents. It's all good. All right. So I just solved all of your problems, Peyton. Right. Um, tell me about, tell me about your future relationship together. Yeah. So, I mean, together, I think we'd both align in pretty much always that you could like want from your partner, both hard workers. We both have good, stable jobs, our, our home is a comfortable environment. We built it up to be that way in terms of parenting or future child. I think we both align on how we want to do so. We both carry some things from our childhood that I guess we could both say weren't perfect. Um, and we want to try to write that as much as we can with our child. Um, and yeah, that's, I think we both align with that pretty much identically. Marriage is definitely in the picture. Um, it hasn't been done yet just because life has been rapidly evolving over the past couple of years. However, that it's been expedited now and I will get on that. Sure. Sure. Um, so how old are you guys? I'm 28. 28. 26. Okay. Um, here's what I'll tell you and it was, I'm going to be honest with you, it was a surprise to me. Okay. Um, the data tells me that if you all choose to get married and I'm going to, I'm saying this provocatively, but this is the truth. If you all both choose together to have a good or great marriage, which means you learn how to communicate, you learn how to fight, you learn how to repair, you learn how to share values, learn how to be honest, you are thoughtful about, um, sex, you're thoughtful about intimacy, you learn to navigate in-laws together. If you all choose a good or great marriage and people talk about marriage is like it happens to you. Like it just kind of ran its course. I just think that's bull crap. Um, if you all choose this and this is a crass way to look at marriage and I don't like looking at it like this, but this is just the data. Every single thing in your life has this magnifying ROI to it from the opportunity for success for your child, for your personal health, your longevity, especially you, Michael, um, your sex life, your finances, everything. and it magnifies in a really powerful way. And if you all are committed, y'all been together for three years, if y'all see a future together, I would ask what the holdup is. And if it's about, we wanna have the big party, we wanna have the, whatever, there's something even above and beyond cohabitating couples in the data. Couples who live together and are fully committed together for whatever reason that, and I have a couple of hypothesis, but I don't know if you could ever pull it apart in a randomized controlled trial. Like, there's something about the legal documentation, the anchor point. My buddy, Michael Easter says, it's signing the relationship in ink. This is that allows both of you to exhale a little bit deeper and to be a little more fully committed to a little bit more say that thing, to a little bit more go all in. And that has a outside. I mean, you all heard the, you've heard the things from like, put a hundred dollars in your account when you're 18 and you're gonna have $50 billion when you're 65, right? It's those little bitty steps that you take that magnify over time, that give your kid the best possible opportunity, but the kid has the best possible opportunity because y'all two are anchored in together. So that's my personal bias that y'all would choose, like let's go ahead and anchor in together and let's choose to make the greatest marriage over time together and raise this kid fully anchored in. Not just with our ideals and our words and our like lofty thinking, but like practically. Boom, we're an anchor, we're an anchor mode. So that's me lecturing you both. My TED talk is over now. But, I think you just have a hard conversation directly. And Michael, if you're a part of that great, cool, wonderful, yeah, I don't know another way to do it. Do they live in the same town as you? No, unfortunately they live pretty dang far away. How far away? Like 14 hours. Whoa, geez. Okay. Yeah. I moved here for Michael. Oh, I bet, I bet like happy Gilmore, they, you're like on a list that they have Michael. Like this Phoebe Shimmie character. You're like, your name's on a list of like what's your relationship with him, Michael? It's been great so far. I've heard her mother and I are really good friends, been thing with her father and I, we get along. Yeah, we've never had really any friction whatsoever throughout the course of our relationship. So it's been great so far. Okay. My guess is, after the initial surprise and shock and yeah, yeah, yeah, their main concern is, what's the plan for our grand kid? Yeah. Right. And what is it going to look like financially? What is it going to look like? Stability wise, what's y'all's relationship status going to be? And so having those things anchored out, so if they start asking those questions, you've got like, well, we're not wishy-washy, but no, we thought this through. We're adults. We're 26, 28. We're grownups now and we're making some hard choices moving forward. And here's what this is going to look like for us. And can I give you one more thing? Sorry. This is, again, this is very unpopular and I've just sat with too many moms and too many dads. Whatever they say, however they say it, you get to decide whether you give them some grace after their initial shock. I just talked to somebody yesterday who I love dearly and I've been in relationship with for decades. And they called me and let me know that their spouse has terminal cancer, that they thought was on the up and up and turns out the solution may not be what they thought was going to be. And there were some exchanges, some things that were said with a physician, with the medical team, et cetera. And what I told him was give everybody 24, 48 hours to say what they're going to say. Because everyone's world just got blown up and people don't say the right things all the time. Especially when they were going right and all the sudden their whole world was going left. People say things that they regret. They say things the wrong way. They say things out of frustration. They say things out of fear. And you get to decide whether you're going to hold them responsible and captive for what they initially said forever or if you're going to come back and circle back with grace. Because at some point they're going to realize that's my grandbaby. Right, so that's just for what it is. People, you know what I mean, you don't have to do that. You can disagree with me. I've just learned that I end up carrying it more and I've just developed a rule that when I'm about to blow up somebody's world with whatever I'm about to say, I give them 48 hours, just say whatever you're going to say. I'm not going to hold them hostage for that. Because people just, I mean, people get scared, man. And they get nervous and they get frustrated and they get whatever. And I'm going to be a person at grace in those moments. If I circle back in 48 hours or in 72 hours, two or three days later and you're still that way, now we got a problem, right? But I just have come to expect me and people say things out of reaction and I'm not going to hold them to them all the time. So can I tell you both congratulations? - Thank you. - Girl or boy, do you all know yet? - We don't know yet. - Okay, we don't know yet. - I'm just telling you, if it's a boy, John's an awesome name. We'll put it on the list, for sure. - If it's a girl, I would not go with Kelly, that's just me. Y'all can do what you want to do. - It's a beautiful name. - Beautiful name. - I'll say this, if you name your daughter, Kelly, you will get, I'll give you free admission to anything I ever do for the rest of my life. Okay, you'll get lifetime Deloney passes forever. - That just made a really comfortable name. - If you name your kid, John, I'll get your last name tattooed on my arm. Okay. - That's like a deal. - Good deal. Hey, congratulations, Michael, marry that girl and I'm grateful they all reached out and best of luck to you. I would though, just out of morbid curiosity, I would love to know how the conversation goes, Peyton or Michael. So if y'all can write Kelly back and let her know, we'll read it on the air to how that conversation went. Best of luck to you. The only way through it is write, through it. When we come back, a man asks how to support his wife's decision to try medication for anxiety and depression when he doesn't understand it. We'll be right back. All right, we've got less than 90 days until the full weight of the holiday season is upon us. And you know how it goes. Every year as the calendar starts filling up, you tell yourself, I'm not gonna let the holiday madness get to me this year. I'm gonna slow down and actually enjoy the holidays. I'm gonna actually be present, not just physically in whatever room I happen to find myself in. And then you're racing around the dinners, parties, kids' activities, it's madness and you're drained and the holidays become a burden. I've done the same thing, but here's one thing I've learned. One of the best ways you can slow down and work on being present long before the holiday season hits is staying grounded in your spiritual life. Hallow is the number one Christian Prayer Meditation app in the world and I use it almost every day of my life for that very reason, to ground myself in my spiritual life in my spiritual practices. Some mornings it's five minutes on the drive to work, some nights it's a sleep prayer before bed. Whatever the moment is, Hallow helps me practice presence. Before the holidays takes everything from us and makes us all super busy, I'm gonna stay committed and I'm gonna invite you to stay committed to practice being present with Hallow. You can try Hallow for free for 90 days at Hallow.com/delony. Start now and Hallow will be free for you to try through the holiday season. That's Hallow.com/delony. All right, we are back. Hey, stop what you're doing. Go to johndelony.com and pre-order my brand new book, "Building the Marriage You Want." I'm super proud of this thing. It is everything I know about marriage. It is what happened, how we got here with marriages in the 21st century, what I think the antidote is, what you can do to have and build and co-create the greatest marriage possible. And I talk about practical things like new rules for communication, new rules for conflict, new rules for repair, and I talk about the touchy subjects, sex and marriage, kids and marriage, money and marriage, all of it in one big book, it's 24.99. If you pre-order it, pre-order it now, it'll be in your mailbox January 26th when it releases. I do recognize I'm asking you to buy something a few months in advance and just trust I'll send it to you. We will get it to you. You pre-ordering the book helps me out immensely. I wish there was something else to it, but it helps me with the rankings, it helps me with distribution. It helps more people get notice of the book as the pre-order sales go up. So if you're going to buy this book for yourself, if you're going to buy it for some young people that are engaged, if you're going to buy it for family members who are marriage is struggling or marriage is good, but it could be great. Whoever you're getting it for, pre-order now, go to johndalony.com. I'll send you an enhanced audio book. I'll send you the e-book early access and I'll send you a link. a link to a talk on communication I gave at one of our big money marriage events, the marriage of treats I do every year, as a thank you. JohnDolony.com, check it out, pre-order my brand new book, building the marriage you want. It's called, oh, say right here in Nashville, we're not going anywhere, we're staying right here and talk to Parker, hey, Parker, what's up? - Hey, how's it going? - Good brother, how are you? - Doing well, doing well. - Excellent, what's up, man? - So I called in today, my question, kind of regards or as is around anxiety and depression. My wife, she struggles with anxiety and depression and she's wanted to take some medications and with those medications, I'm not exactly, I don't know, I've never really struggled with anxiety or depression, it's very foreign to me, just all that in general, I'm calling to how best support her and be the husband she needs in this time. - Very cool, man. Dude, can I just say shout out to you? - Good on you, man. It's not a common thing for men these days to say, I don't know, let me get some more wisdom. So as a neighbor of mine here in this city, where we both live, shout out to you, brother. That's an awesome thing. So be a little bit more specific for me. Tell me about what you're wrestling with or the specific medications you want me to ask questions for or I can give you the framework that I personally use. Dig in a little bit. - Yeah, so the drug, I guess the drug class that she's kind of looking forward and talked with her doctor is the SSRI, it's a selective serotonin. Reuptake inhibitors. And with that, like it's in the brain, it's going to affect your brain chemistry. And it's like, I don't know, I love my wife, how she is announced, she's absolutely amazing. And it's like, I don't want her to be sad and upset and feel like, feel these things that like, I just don't, I can't relate to as much in this. Like, if these things will help and do those things, yeah, 100%. But it's also, I kind of like, what her did not just rely on the drugs and that kind of thing. It's like, there's so many things in our days. You're like, you have a good morning routine, you work out and you drink water and see all these things, you see all these things online. And it's like, I've never struggled with it. And so I'm like, oh, I've worked out. I'm not on my phone a lot. And all these things like that. And it makes me feel like if she just tried those, it would fix it. But I think that's being very immature and thinking that one side fits all just 'cause I don't struggle with it. If she does the same things I do, it's going to work for her. Gotcha. You are a very thoughtful guy. It's an honor to talk to you. So here's a, I'm going to give you a couple of reframes and I'm going to tell you the paradigm that I have used personally in my life as a guy who's taken anxiety medication before. Okay. A couple of things, reframes that I have done, and this is after getting a PhD in this, after sitting with millions of people, after sitting with scientists and psychiatrists and everybody, okay. So framework number one is, I start with what if the anxiety is right? What if it is accurate in that? It is identifying places in my life where I am not safe. And that's safe is not a guy outside with a knife like banging on the window, that's fear. This underlying sense of safety could be economic, it could be relational, it could be physical, right? And so when you go to fight or fight, when your body sounds the alarms, you're not safe. The best way I could describe it is, if you want to get in great cardiovascular shape, one of the things you can do is go for a run, right? Well, if you go for a run, and you've got one of those tires behind you that we used to pull for speed and power, right? And you got to chain and test you. You're not going to be able to run very far. And so where I felt anxiety medication really, like be a before and after for me, the anxiety medication did not solve the anxiety at all. What it did was, is it unhooked the chain with a tire on and let me go run finally. And so what if the anxiety's correct? And I'm going to send you, and also you two copies, one for you and one for her of my book, Building a Non-Anxious Life. It is about the choices you make and ways you can drop down the anxiety alarms, 'cause that's all that is, it's an alarm system, right? And so that's number one. And so what I want you to hear me say is, you may be right and both and. Maybe she does need to drink more water, maybe she does need to change the way she eats, maybe she does need to get off her phone. And it may also be that the medication will, low dose SSRI will allow her to go do the things she needs to do to be well. That makes sense. - Yeah, yeah. - And so it's not that you're going to skip these things and it's just like a hack or a way around it. It allows you to go through it. So that's number one. I was unable to sit down with somebody and be completely honest because my alarms were ringing so loud. It was hard for me to go to the gym every day because it was just easier to stand to the covers, right? And so once those things were relaxed, then I was able to meet my buddy Slade at the gym that we did that for a year or longer. And then I was able to go have lunch with my buddy Randy and then I was able to go sit down with a therapist. So I started doing the thing that started being honest about my finances and I sold my house and we paid off six figures worth of debt 'cause my body would have been failing me if it let me sleep all night knowing how leveraged I was and how tenuous my job was, right? So all those things the anxiety was actually right. But the taken low dose SSRI let me turn the alarms down just enough so I could go do the things they needed to do. Okay. Number two is all the research is pretty clear that none of that works in isolation. So if you're gonna take medication you got to go sit with somebody also. So it's not a thing you just do in isolation by itself and everything's good and great and grand. Having a counselor that she's gonna see regularly is very important also, okay? Number three is I personally, and I can't speak to the greater psychiatric community. I stay as far away as I can from benzone dyesopines, like benzone dyesopines, like the benzos, Xanaxes and those kind of things. The downstream effects of those things are not worthy, the benefits for me in the short term. So SSRI's is the place I would start. And I guess finally the last thing I would say is where is this information, where is it coming to? Who's presenting this to her? Is this something she's researched on Instagram or is she been sitting down with a clinician who says I think this is the next right step for you? - So I think this has been something that she's kind of had throughout her life. It's like been through high school and through college. But I think she's kind of getting that spot where she's like wanting to make a change or wanting to get into that spot. I think she's also had some of the same hesitations I've had or it's like maybe not quite as extraneous. I hate taking any kind of medication and I want to get like anything I just, I don't know, it's just the way I am I guess. But so I think she's a nurse or she knows a lot about it. She's been through nursing school. I think she's been kind of more aware of like, oh, like maybe I'm kind of going through these. And that's kind of where it's like she's like, talk to like a counselor and those kind of things. And that's kind of like what to presume exactly where it's coming from. But I wouldn't say like just like looking up like, oh, how do I get happy on Instagram or whatnot, you know? - Okay, okay. That's good because she's got multiple contexts there. She's got lived experiences. She's got a therapeutic practitioner that's walking with her. And she has her own hesitancies. So this isn't just like this will be an easy work around from this way I can just keep doing not doing the things I don't want to do and this will just fix it. It won't. It will turn the alarms down a bit. And you're also right. We don't really have good markers for how SSRIs work, how they don't. There's been some of those studies that have said they wholly don't work or it's not actually Sarah talk. Like there's a lot of buzz out there. But there's also data that suggests people, there is a large percentage of people that get that are able to follow a path to wellness by being on them. So I will tell you the particular physician I worked with, I will forever be grateful that this was his approach. It's only in equals one. It was only an approach with me. So I don't know if this is the universal approach, okay? I don't know enough about psychic. I get over my skis real fast when it comes to psychiatric interventions, okay? But his philosophy with me was I'm going to take the lowest dose and cut it in half and we're going to work up. And you're already, you've been anxious forever. You're already anxious. It's not like you're acutely suicidal, I wasn't. So we're going to work up and we're not going to just go to the highest dose and work down. We're not going to just numb you out. We're not going to just make you a walking zombie and then try to fix it from there. We're going to go as low as we can and work up. And what was beautiful about in my particular case, and this is only me is I never had to move beyond that half, the half of the original low dose. And I would even go as far to say, even if it was. placebo. I don't care because I got better. Yeah. Right. I got better. And I'll say this, I'm not opposed to getting to a place in the future where I would need to go back on it for a season. The other thing I had for for me and I recommend is have a it's imaginary. You're just throwing spaghetti at the wall but have an imaginary like we're going to do this for one year. We're going to use for six months and then we're going to reevaluate. Okay. Right. So I told my doctor when I walked in, I will not put any medicine in my body that I don't have a exit strategy for. And I think I ended up on two times longer than I had said I was willing to do it, but I saw the benefits happening. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I think some of the stuff I'm just you know, you see all the side effects and things like that. It's like I'm it's so hard to like relate to her and that side of things where it's like I just don't have a lived experience and I don't have struggles with that. Like is this something I've been very benefit very beneficial not to have happened. But then you sit there and you look oh there's all these side effects, all these plaque level warnings. So it's just like that part I guess scares me enough to be like why would you try that. But I think I use like as you had mentioned earlier, it's not like you need to be on them. It's like to get the chain unhoved like that analogy made a lot of sense and kind of allows. It's like she still needs to do a good thing that you know is I guess recommended her healthy wise like that. But it's not like a just a magic pill. It's going to do everything. Yeah. The analogy I use throughout the book is all anxiety is it's a fire alarm and you and I have both been in buildings when the fire alarms are going off and there's no fire and they're just going off so loud you can't email you can't tag you can't do anything other than get out of that building. And so what anxiety medication does specifically is it just turns down the alarm so you can actually have a conversation with the person next to you. And by the way I don't want to live in a house that doesn't have a fire alarm. Right. So it's not about getting rid of anxiety. Anxiety is a net good. I need that in my life. I don't want to be in a building with no fire detectors. But it allows me to not have to deal with the fire alarm all the time. It allows me to actually deal with what's on fire in my house. Right. Health, finances, relationships, those type of things. Yeah. And so I will also say this. I think that anxiety and depression can run on the same trend line. But there's also a point when depression is a totally different animal. And if she doesn't sound like she's got major depressive disorder stuff. But there's some situations where medication is just a lifelong thing and that's a net. Think God we live in a moment of history when that's possible. Yeah. Right. Because now you're talking life or death. Yeah. Sure. And so it doesn't sound like that's where she's at. It sounds like it's just a vacillation between a constant push pull between fight or fight. But that's at this point, I got to step out and let her and her doctor navigate that together. But having a supportive partner that's with her saying, I don't understand this. How can I love you? This isn't my experience. How can I love you? And I'll challenge you on one thing. Okay. Anxiousness is expressed in weird ways. And coping strategies are bizarre, especially in our current culture. One of the ways I dealt with anxiety was working like crazy. 20-hour days, three jobs at a time when I had no business working three jobs and getting a PhD on to like, I ran and ran. And you know what I got for all of that? More money, paths on the back, promotions. Right. And so for a season, what looked like I was crushing it up at 4.45 AM to go to the gym to start my full-time job. So then I could go home and adjunct graduate classes and then I could get another PhD. I looked like I was a hero. What I was doing was fleeing at top speed. And so if you look at yourself and say, I don't feel any of this. A, you may have won the genetic lottery. And that's awesome. I know people like that. Like some of my closest friends are like, I just don't feel that at all. And it's like, dude, the economy is imploding and they're like, okay. It's like, man, I would love to have that. And also, it may be that the way you, your natural, like, your natural inclinations to deal with stress, to deal with frustrations, actually it's the same pathology. Working 20 hours a day can be the same thing as drinking too much. It's just one we put you in rehab and one we give you a million dollars and say, good boy, but they both kill you. So it may be you looking at your environment and saying, actually, I get pretty worried about stuff, but I choose to go by a bunch of crypto, right? Or I get worried about stuff. And I choose to just snort protein powder off the counter or whatever. If you can find that in yourself, then it just gives you a bridge, a compassion bridge to your wife. Yeah, right? My wife handles anxiousness by making lists and being very, very productive. And I will get this list done. I experience anxiety as a thing in the future is happening right now. And we got to run, right? And so one of those looks very productive. She looks like she's a baller. And one of them makes me look like I'm insane. They're both the same thing. Our bodies are just trying to solve that alarm system in different ways. Right? So once we had that common, common, like the ability to, like, oh, we have the same experience. It's just very different. Then, man, it was super, the compassion was easy at that point. But I've got some buddies. They're like, dude, I just, I had hate to be you, dude. I'm like, well, I would like to be you. So if that's you, awesome. But keep compassion with her and keep checking in for y'all to, how long have you all been married? A little over a year now. Sweet. Okay. I'm going to send you the together app too. Often, again, this is another bias I have from the work of William Glosser and others. I personally have come to believe that a lot of anxiety is relationship in origin, whether it's relationship with primary caregivers, relationships with yourself, relationships with spouses or close friends, work relationships. A body that feels like I have to do it all by myself is a body that should be in terror or a body that feels like I've got a guy living next to me. But I'm not connected with him or I've got a wife next to me and I'm not connected with her. That's, that sends your body into spinning out. So I'm, I'm making this as like reductive as possible in this conversation, but I'm trying to talk as least nerdy as possible. But all I have to say is anxiety, I consider anxiety most often not the problem. Consider anxiety like to quote Wendy Suzuki out of NYU as a really annoying friend. As a friend that's just trying to get your attention, you're not safe. You're not safe. You're not safe. And medication is one of many tools in a toolkit that can help turn those alarms down so that a person can go do the next right thing. Makes sense. So thanks for loving your wife really well, man. And best of luck to you. If she ever wants to call, have her give me a buzz. That'd be awesome. Hang on the line here. I'm going to send you a couple of copies of building a non-anxious life for you all to. It could be a road nap for your family as y'all are starting your new, this new thing called being married together. And I'm going to send you the together app. It'll give you some action steps towards each other, which strengthens your relationship together, like way below the surface. And it will have a ripple effect up through the trunk of the tree that is becoming your new family tree. Thanks for calling, brother. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by Better Health. Every year you tell yourself you're going to handle this year's holidays differently. You're going to stay calmer. You're going to feel more peace, but then the same old patterns show up. The same family tensions, the same challenges you have to keeping healthy boundaries. And you find yourself cranky and tired and even snapping at people that you love. Listen, this year can be different. You still have time to get ahead of all of the chaos and understand what's behind your reactions. And you can develop a plan for moving through the holidays with peace. Therapy can help you build this healthier plan before you actually need it. When you're ready to have that conversation, check out BetterHelp. BetterHelp is an online therapy platform with more than 30,000 licensed therapists across its network. This means you can find someone who can help you feel more peaceful this holiday season, help you develop a plan, or help you with whatever your needs and goals are. If the first therapist isn't the right fit, you can switch at any time for no extra cost. If you thought about trying therapy with BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide through participating providers, and eligible members have an average copay of just 23 bucks a session. Listen, you know what's coming. This year you have time to keep calm ahead of all of the holiday chaos by preparing differently. Go to bed! betterhelp.com/deloney to check out your payment options. That's a better help, H-E-L-P.com/deloney, or click the link in the description. All right. Am I the problem? Kelly, you're the problem because you're watching internet videos during the production of the show. I feel like I need to explain. There's no explanation. While we're filming this, it is Fat Bear Week for those that choose to celebrate and participate. Like I do, like Alex does. That means so many things. No, it doesn't. Fat Bear Week means one thing. It is Fat Bear Week, and you vote, and we did. We voted on the finals today. But they have live, they have trail cams. So I was watching some of the Fat Bears eat. They're so cute. I mean, they rip our throats out, but they're adorable. There has to be some federal oversight committee that regulates the establishment of weeks. We have a week or a month for everything. I agree. And there's, there is. Yes. But this is fun. You get to vote on them and you get to see how the whole thing is, they show you a picture of the bear from Earth, the beginning of the summer when they were skinnier. And then they show you a picture of them like now, as they're getting ready to go into hibernation. As you vote on who's fattened up the most. Why do we not do this with people? I think that's frowned upon because people aren't about to go hibernate. These bears are going to hibernate and not eat until spring. I guess people magazine kind of does this, like there's a lot of websites and, you know, TMZ and all that, yeah, TMZ kind of does that. These guys are doing it on purpose. These bears because they're about to go hibernate. So some just rando brown bear in where Alaska kept my national park in Alaska. It's just about to head off to the din, not knowing that you're the award-winning fatso. Probably backpack. We feel like backpack is going to be the winning bear this year. Backpack. Chunk one last year. I just think this is the meaning. Well, they call it backpack because when he was a baby, his mom carried him like all the time on her back. So some of them have names, some don't, they just have a number because they're tagged. I'm so glad I'm not the one having a tag that thing. But we're pretty sure that backpack is going to be the winner this year. How's your marriage, Kelly? It's fine, thank you very much. How's your friends? Do you have friends? I do. I have lots of friends. Thank you. I'm going to agree to disagree. All right. So am I the problem? Yes. And. So this is from Mikaela in Columbia, South Carolina. And she writes. And this is kind of a serious one. I spoke up for a child that was being mistreated by the coach on my child's baseball team. The coach was being, the child was being disciplined by the coach and it went too far. I reached out to the child's mother who took the situation to the board of the league. The league wanted to speak with me since I witnessed the incident and I told them exactly what I told the child's mother. The league's response was a two-game suspension and a public apology before the coach can return to coaching. The child's mother is insistent that this isn't enough. I feel the punishment fits the offense, but the mother wants me to push to have the board do more to do something more harsh with their decision. The board told her that she needs to drop it, that she didn't even witness the incident. The mother has asked me to quote, quote, "side with her." She plans to reach out to law enforcement. I don't regret standing up for the child, but I am afraid that this is getting messier than it needs to be. Am I the problem for telling the mom to calm down and trust the board? Oh, man. Yeah. That is a messy situation. Number one, I want to shout you out for standing up on behalf of a child. Big time. That was awesome. I think you did your part. You reported this incident to the proper authorities who did what they believe was the right thing to do. But at the end of the day, this is not your child. And if this child's mother wants to continue to push for additional things, then it's her advocacy for her kid. It's not dragging you back into the middle of what you witnessed. You reported. It's been adjudicated and we're there. But she is trying to drag her back into it. That's what I'm saying. It's not you saying drop it. Your mom is your kid. You want to mom bear this thing, knock your lights out. But I have done what my job was, was I saw a thing, I spoke up on behalf of a kid, told the proper people and the people actually found this person responsible and gave a judgment. You don't like the judgment. This is your advocacy for your kid from this point forward because now it's not about the incident. It's about, I don't like what y'all did in response to this incident. And so we're talking about two different things here. So I don't think it's, I don't, I'm not going to ever find myself telling a mom, she needs to calm down, she's trying to advocate for her kid. I would, I would have told many of mother and father, here's what this is going to look like. And here's the futility of what you're going to try to do or here's like, here's some other options. But I'm not going to ever say, hey, you just need to drop it like those, I don't usually say things like that. Right. So is Michaela in the wrong, though, for saying, I'm out. I'm out. No. I think she's exactly right. Because I think what happened was appropriate. And I'm not going any farther because now she's wanting to go to law enforcement. And that's a totally different law enforcement. Great. And if law enforcement wants to subpoena her or wants to investigate her, great. Then they can do that as part of their investigation. I don't even know if that would be necessary. They probably would, but the, the league already has the notes and their judgments and their vote and why they chose to do what they do when it came to punishment. So all that's already out there. But I think as a citizen, she did her job and the job is now not to say, I don't like the punishment. Like, but if you as a parent don't want your kid in that league, pull them out. And if you, as a parent say, this isn't far enough, I think this person created like committed a criminal act against my kid, yeah, go pursue, go pursue law enforcement. But don't force the parent who stood up for your kid in that moment. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's right. It was less about, hey, drop it. It's more about saying, I am going to exit this conversation. I played my part. I actually, I wouldn't probably tell anybody this, but I think the punishment was fair for what happened when I witnessed. And if that's not okay with you, great. You can pursue it to the end of the law, but I would step out of it from there. And I think that to me, sounds right. What do you think? I agree. Yeah. The mother can do as she pleases. Yeah. But I think, yeah, you can't tell the mother what to do or what you think the mother should do. Or here's what I would do. You can only say, here's what I'm going to do. Here's what I'm going to do. Right. Yeah. And then again, if you're subpoenaed, then you have to go for more. Sure. Yeah. Have a detective show up at your door. And then you can tell them. Tell them exactly what you saw. Exactly. Yeah. But yeah. She can't control what the mother does. And. And conversely, the mother can't control what she does. Exactly. But I think she has every right at this point say, I'm out. Yes. I did my part. That's right. Yeah. Good call. Way to go. What was that woman's name? Michaela. Michaela, well done. Thank you for standing up for kids that need adult presence. Good on you.