Hey, what's up on today's show, we're going to be talking about trauma and first responders. We're going to be talking about compromising in marriage. Let me talk about online dating. I'm going to be talking about self sabotaging impulse behaviors and what we can do about it. Stay tuned.

Hey, what's up? I'm John, and this is the Dr. John Delonas show where we take your calls about your life, but the things going on in your homes and your workplace and in your hearts and minds, here's what I want to do. I want to help you rethink, reexamine, reconsider your lives, how you talk to yourself, how you talk to your kids, how you talk to those you love, those you don't like.

How you learn to think about the next right thing to do and we're going to talk about love, can talk about loss. We're going to talk about family issues, heartbreak. We may talk about people who walk into a public restroom and they see a whole wall of empty urinals or empty stalls, except for one the one you're using. And they decide, I'm not going to go to the other side of the bathroom. I'm going to go right freakin next to you, right next to you, 12 inches away.

You could go to the other stall or the other stall or way down to the urinal down there. But nope. Now I want to I want to pee right next to you. So we may talk about those folks, too. You want to change the world, skip a stall. That's what I want somebody twenty twenty presidential slogan to be. Vote me. I encourage everyone to skip a stall. I would vote for that person today. Right.

I would leave the show and go vote for that person. Whatever. Anyway, whatever is going on in your home and your heart in your head, for those of you who are wondering, wow, I've never thought about skipping a stall before. I never thought about it being in the other urinal. Call me one eight four four six nine three thirty to ninety one. That's one eight four four six nine three three two nine one. Ah. You can email me and ask John at Ramsey Solutions dot com to ask John at Ramsey Solutions dot com.

Let's go straight to the phone. Just go to Brian in Wasilla. Is it Wasilla? Did I say that right? That's right, Wasilla, Alaska. This is Ryan. Oh, that's fantastic, Ryan, how are we doing? Good man. Good Doctor John, how are you doing? I'm doing well, doing well. How is it in Alaska? I'm going to just take a random guess and think cold and pretty dark. Is that right?

Yeah.

This is a nice time of year. We still got some leaves on the trees and it's getting pretty cold, but no snow yet.

Very cool, man. I have romanticized Alaska, something fierce. And so I'm just going to stay with my my fantasy of it and then we can go from there. So, brother, how can I help you? Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds awesome. I have a two part question.

I've been a firefighter for 18 years and mental health is just not something that we've ever really talked about in my career. No. And in the past few years, it's become the number one killer of firefighters and paramedics. That's right. So my question is, one, how do I personally build resiliency and help my brothers and sister firefighters? And then to is there seems to be a very small number of firefighters that are kind of using this to seek.

I don't know if it's like a medical retirement or work comp and trying to get out of the fire service altogether instead of working on the issues. And that kind of makes it harder for the rest of us to get services and help each other if we burn those bridges with the people, you know, the administrations that are there to help us and want to see us whole.

Hmm. Hmm. So let's go to the first part of that question. Not speaking for anybody else, but just yourself, tell me about your mental health journey as a firefighter for almost two decades. Yeah, I guess when I first started, I was pretty just type A personality and it was just goes with the job and all the firefighters that I worked with and learned from had been doing it for a long time. And you just see things and you move on.

You do your best. You know, you constantly say it's not our emergency, we're just going to help. And then now, after a longer time of doing it, you realize that there's this cumulative effect. And, you know, I'll find myself after bad calls or whatever, like you'll just hit these real big lows where, you know, you'll just be going about your day. And then I'll just wind up on the floor in my pantry crying, thinking about a call or especially ones that involve kids.

You know, I have five kids. And so you're trying to balance this work life balance. And so it's definitely been something that has affected me more. The longer I've done the career and the more that you see as far as at the beginning of my career, it didn't really seem to bother me much. I didn't really know, you know, one way or the other, I guess. Hmm.

So I want to talk about the big picture and then we can walk back and look at a few ways that you can help that people around you can help. And then don't let me forget here. But I do want to talk about the administrative issue here at the very end. Folks who are retiring, who are who are walking away.

So I don't know if you know about my journey, but one of the things I did, especially the last few years, was I spent time working after hours in the middle of the night with sometimes the firefighters, but with police departments, occasionally with SWAT teams doing crisis response. Not as intense and as repetitive as recurring is your job, but it was showing up to somebody's house in the middle of the night and helping with the death notification or sitting with somebody who just lost somebody or shown up to a car wreck and helping somebody's family get to the hospital where they could, you know, pronounce somebody who had passed away or.

Right. And one of the things that I became very interested in was this idea of secondary traumatic stress. And you may have heard that shortly after a couple of decades. You've heard that it helped me redefine what trauma was and what stress was. And for those listening, we often think of trauma as an acute thing. Right. You were in a car wreck or sometimes we know that I saw a car wreck and that that hurts to see that what we often don't think about is trauma can also be withholding something that's positive.

Right? It can be a neglect of something. And so you have kids whose parents don't talk to him, kids whose parents don't they don't interact with them. Don't touch them. That's a trauma, too. But that happens over time. And you mentioned it and I'm so glad to hear you say that, because that's usually a big Eye-Opener for firefighters, for police officers, for lawyers, for teachers, for folks who regularly work in the business of other people's pain is that trauma is cumulative.

So here's the analogy I use. And when I'm when I'm teaching folks when I'm describing this is that we all have a backpack and we all have our own traumas that can be cinder blocks if we have childhood abuse or they are regular bricks from poverty or they are bricks from systemic racism issues or whatever things happen to affect you. And then if you work as a firefighter, what you have decided to do, what you have taken on your heart and mind is the as a profession, as you get in the lives of other people and you take their bricks from them.

Right. You go into their worst, darkest moments and you hold their bricks. And if we don't have a plan for how to put those down, it will bury us.

Right. And so what you're describing is a textbook example of somebody who's been in something for a long time, and it has worn you down to the point that you just find yourself sitting on the floor in the dark crying because it's just way in heavy, heavy, heavy on your soul. Right.

So in your particular fire department, what's it like? If you were to tell that story, are you allowed to bring up mental health issues? Is everybody tough guys and tough girls or is it this is a culture shifting. I think we're right at the beginning of a culture shift, you know, the EFSF has created a peer support, which is a 40 hour class, and some of our people have gone through that training. But there's really nothing formal.

There's no real process other than I mean, the classic is, you know, you sit on the tail board with one of the guys or gals you work with and you just kind of talk through things as more with what happens with the people.

You're close right there, like those Taster's Choice moments, right? Like the yeah. The everybody has a coffee and a cigarette and you hug and say, oh, that sucks. We'll go get them tomorrow. Right. And then we'll all be like that. Right.

So I, I this is a passion project of mine. You didn't even know that. You just stumbled into it. But policemen, physicians, dentists, ministers, counselors, EMS folks, firemen, military business leaders, teachers, financial planners, this idea of just suck it up, this idea of quit being a baby, that's just the way this job is. You've got to deal with it. That is bull crap. And it's hurting people and here's where it hurts everybody is it doesn't just hurt you, my man.

It doesn't just hurt your family. It hurts the people that receive care from you. It hurts people that receive care from your partners and your fellow firefighters and EMS folks who show up on scenes and the police officers show up on the scenes.

We are living in a in a world of people walking around with secondary trauma all over the place. And the idea that you're just going to roll over and get over it is ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. It's stupid and it hurts people, man. So I want to tell you how five years from now I'm going to hug you, dude. I'm going to I'm going to post covid, hug you from Nashville to Alaska and say, I'm excited. I'm glad that you're thinking about this.

So here's a couple of things just to think big. And these are analogies, brother, that just worked for me. Number one is if you work in the messy brokenness of other people's lives, 100 percent chance I don't care who you are, you will be affected, period. Some people are affected and they medicate with food, with alcohol, with distance. Some people just try to grind it out. Some people have 17 other jobs that they work on the weekends and on their days off, that they try to chase the stuff down with busyness.

Some people rage out, some people fill in the blank. It will affect you. The way I describe it to myself was this. I was a sanitation worker and every day when I got done working in the city sewers, I had to go hose my boots off and I had to hose off my clothes before I went into my house and want to take that stuff inside. And I didn't want to get my bedroom all messy. I didn't want that stuff to get on my kids and my wife.

But that didn't mean I didn't still need to do the work. Somebody's got to be down there doing sanitation work and it's honorable and it's good. Can I tell you a funny story about my old man?

So he was a homicide detective and a SWAT hostage negotiator, like an absolute stud, like a bad dude. And one day during when I was a kid, I'm just going to say I was 10 or 11. I went to Little League practice in our our quaint little suburb north of Houston, and I left the back door open. When we got home, I left the back door open just wide open. While we were at practice. We were probably gone an hour, hour and a half.

We got back and I'll never forget my dad looked at me when we got back in the door was open and he had this look of just washed fear come over him. And he pulled out his gun and went and cleared the house. Room to room in our little suburban house, making sure it was safe for the family and I remember thinking as a young kid, whoa, that seems a bit much right. But here's the thing. One hundred percent of my dad's day was dealing with that very rare moment that it happens to somebody else.

Right. And so his bell curve had shifted. And so what folks who work in the messy, ugly lives of other people have to constantly be on guard about is.

Right, rattling their bell curves shift. So here's a couple of things that have helped me, brother. OK, number one, you've got to have people in your life that you trust, and I would strongly prefer them to not be firefighters.

Or police officers or EMS people, because you don't tell each other the truth, right? You minimize it a little bit or you over sensationalize it a little bit and having a professional is a really remarkable thing that you can go sit down and talk to. I also know that for certain professions, it's nerve wracking because people write that stuff down and then people are worried about the record of that somewhere. Is that going to impact something? Am I going to get sued over something?

You got to have somebody that you talked to. The second thing is, is you have to be very, very open with your supervisors. And I know that's a whole other can of worms because supervisors like to act like they're tough some time and bravado. There are some awesome folks throughout the country. I got to work for one in Lubbock, but having some folks that you can talk to, the third thing is, is really being careful about using your wife or your kids or your family members as trash receptacles, as places where you can dump that stuff.

Right.

And then the fourth thing is making sure you have a ironclad never going to move on it self care plan that you that you have before you get into some of these things, which means you've got to eat right. You've got to have a group of people. You've got to exercise. You've got to meditate and have a spiritual sense about you. You've got to have a relationship with a with God. You've got a relationship with something bigger than you. And you've got to have practices that give you resilience, that build in health so that when these things happen, you've got the fortitude and the resilience built in.

And then the final thing is this. I think I just said, final thing, there's one more final thing. You've got to be really, really graceful with my new friend, Ryan.

So, like you, I, I found myself crying some nights, I committed the unforgivable sin, I walked into a situation. I used to have a phone and I'd get a police code. It would say ten, eight, seven, which was a police code for somebody had passed away. And I'd have an address and we'd show up and it would often wouldn't know what we were walking into, similar to you guys. And I walked in and it was a young child and I had just had a small daughter.

My daughter was a little bitty and I saw the child and I looked at my partner and I committed the unforgivable sin and crisis world. I looked at my partner and I told her it's she's the most wonderful partner. Virginie Smallwood. I hope she's listening. She's a saint. She's extraordinary woman. But I looked at her and said, I got to go.

I'm out. And I left her and she said, I got you, because that's when you have a good partner. That's where that works. But I left her because I couldn't do it. I couldn't see a young kid in the situation that this young kid was in. And so you've got to know yourself and you got to know your own limits. And I know it's hard as a firefighter, but you got to know your limits. And I had to go grieve it.

I went and talked to somebody about it. I had a small that's going to sound ridiculous at a small funeral for that kid in my head. And then I was able to put a period in a sentence that was my hose in my boots off. And then I was able to go back in. But I had a process on the back end for how to deal with the stuff I just seen. I couldn't just let it go. Let it go.

Let it go. Right.

What is your when you get home from a hard situation, you get home from a messy, messy situation. You've seen somebody pass away. You guys are trying to help somebody have a car wreck and they don't make it. You guys go into a home and somebody doesn't make it or you just see the family huddled in the front yard watching their house burned down. What is your process when you get home?

I usually I just I go to the gym, I just work out until I can't see straight, right. And just really, you know, just take myself to the physical limit. And then usually that kind of helps me hit that reset. But usually there's a real big low that follows any of those highs, you know, where you're making decisions and you're engaged and you're active. And then the next day or two or sometimes a week, you know, I'll just feel this real valley that I'm in and just kind of working through that.

But the physical side of it is definitely what I go to where I find that it just makes me feel better.

So that's a super glad that that's a default setting for you. I want you to be careful about that becoming your numbing addiction, right? Yeah. It's a healthier, healthier than going to the bar and drinking it away. Right. Until you can reset that. But it can also be an addiction. Here's what I want you to to practice and then I want you to promise that you're going to email me back, OK? It is mid-October.

I want you to or it's even late October. Now I want you for the next month, the next 30 days. I want you to go to like Walgreens or whatever little stores there in Alaska. And I want you to buy a spiral notebook. It'll cost 99 cents or two dollars. And I want you to every night that you get home before you check out and you leave the station, I want you to write down what you experienced. And I want you to write down a two or three sentence little prayer for the family, for the first person and tell them thank you for your life.

Thank you for honoring me and letting me be with you in this hard, hard moment. And I'm going to pray for your recovery. I'm going to pray for your family who's still alive. And I'm going to ask for your blessings as I continue this hard, hard work. And that's going to serve as a miniature funeral for you. If you have a couple of people at your station that would do that with you, I think there would be an awesome healing moment for you guys.

But I want you to practice offloading your bricks. And then go to the gym. Or just have a good cry and go for a walk. But I want you to have a practice, I want you to email me back after 30 days and let me know if that helped or not. That was a massive thing for me. It was a gift and it was a way that I could take those bricks out, set them down, acknowledge them, honor them, and then go about my the hard work of putting my waders back on and going back out there in the sewer.

And I want to honor you as a fireman, honor all the first responders, all the folks who show up in the messy, gritty ugliness of other people's lives.

But I also want us to also remember that those folks got to take care of themselves, they've got to take care of themselves, supervisors stop with the bravado and the nonsense.

If you are a physician supervisor, if you are a police supervisor, if you are a principal of an elementary school, if you are a business leader, anough, look around us.

Look around us. We live in a culture where we have everything. We have abundance never before known in the history of time. And we are overweight and exhausted and anxious and frustrated and depressed because we have just been told to keep grine and keep growing and keep growing and do more, do more, do more. And guys, we are bursting at the seams. We're falling apart from the inside out. And that starts with leadership. You want to model for this, Dr.

Andrew Young in Lubbock, Texas. And the Lubbock Police Department, a group of people who have taken it upon themselves to set up structures for those folks to be well, who have set up structures for those folks to get the help they need and also do the right thing who've set up structures for for training and for teaching. Because we cannot keep grinding our helpers down to a. Teachers are exhausted.

Administrators are enough, enough also want to recommend the book Trauma Stewardship by Laura Van Der Sloot Lipski Trauma Stewardship by Laura Van Der Lipski Lipsky.

It's a very hard book to read. If you're a first responder.

It's a difficult it's not it's not hard to read because it's a hard science book. It's a hard book to read because it cut me right in half and it will get in your soul, but also give you some tips on how to continue to keep yourself well, how to create communities of people who keep themselves well and how to take care of the people around you as well. So, rather, Ryan, I want to thank you so much again for your call.

Thanks for letting me rant on this a little bit. This is a obviously a big deal to me. Be wary of your bell curve. Make sure you are doing the things that you need to do to be, well, leaders.

Make sure the people that report to you are well. Oh, man, I'm just going to I'm just going to be quiet. Here I am.

I'm going to be quiet about it. Let's move on. I'm scared, man. I just get fired up about this. All right. Let's go to Kelly in Portland, Maryland. Kelly, how in the world are you?

I'm doing good. How are you, John? Good.

Portland, Maine. Sorry about that. And by the way, Kelly, you caught me end of a rant. And so I want you to know I just exhaled and now it's gone.

It's off. Let's do it. Kelly, what's up? Right.

Well, I'm calling to see if I can get some advice from my husband. And I are possibly thinking about selling our place, our home now and moving back closer to my in-laws.

OK, talk to me about it.

OK, so we've been married for eight years. We have a two year old little girl for the first two years that we are married. We lived next door to my in-laws. They have a small family farm that my husband grew up on and has always worked there. It's always been his dream to just be there and, you know, work at the farm. After two years, we decided my dad passed away. We decided to move closer to my family because it was very sudden and unexpected and we were just struggling.

And so we decided to move closer to my family and my husband. He was mostly on board, but not 100 percent, I would say. And it's just always been his dream to move back and be closer to his family. And so we're kind of just struggling on coming up with a compromise of where we land.

So you're using the right pronoun, which is we when that is to be high fives and commend it. And you are doing the Lord's work talking about how your husband's heart and mind feels about things. But I also just get this cascading shadow over your words that are you don't want to move. The last thing you want to do do is be a farmer's wife. And this whole thing kind of sucks, am I right?

Not 100 percent, but. Yeah, yeah.

So what's the what's the dilemma? Are y'all not talking about it? Are you have y'all reached an impasse? Is one of you just going to have to cave and it's just going to be what it is I think.

Yeah, we've talked about it a lot. And I guess my biggest thing is. When we were there before, I always felt like I was second and I'm just really nervous that that's going to happen again. Hmm.

Have you told him that? Yeah, I could probably reiterate it, but but yes, I have in the past.

So when I say, oh, man, you're the best. OK, so when I say, have you told him that? When you are talking about what it would look like and he is putting on the sales pitch for you and he is telling you, but remember this and this is going to be this way, we can get some land right now. Interest rates are low. He's giving you the spiel.

Right. And you looked at him and said the last time we lived there. I saw you happy and I felt like I was number two in your life. I felt like I wasn't valued. It was an important. Did you say it like that or did you say I just always, you know, how did you say it?

I'm trying to think back here. You know, I think I kind of said, you know, the fire was first and then I'm number two. What did you say?

You know, he agreed that that is kind of what happened.

But not this time. Not this time. Right. Right. Yes. I mean, we've talked about, you know, like he would only work so many days a week or whatever, but I guess I'm just nervous about it and that it won't be that way because, you know, I get farm life. It depends on whether and there's animals and there's customers and, you know, things are always an emergency, but it just being on the other end of it kind of sucks to be on.

Oh, totally.

So what is it? What's a picture of him? A picture of what not being number two looks like. What is being number one, married to a farmer? Look, like I don't really know, and so I think that's where the hard work you've got to do is, is that a sentence I just said? Sounded like I said the word order. That's the work that you've got to do, is you have to come up for him and for you.

What what does it look like for me to be number one? Me to be your wife, me to be your your one and only first, and the cows and sheep second. And you've got to have a firm like concrete picture of what that looks like and be able to communicate to that to him. Because my guess is you felt like number two. But that was a secondary feeling, too. You just didn't like farming. You didn't like being away from your family.

You didn't like that. Whatever that life is, you didn't like that. And then it ended up feeling uncomfortable and that became a way you could see yourself as second. Right. So it's coming up with some very concrete pictures of what that looks like and giving him an opportunity to live in to that or not live into that. And then the second thing is, yes, it's a risk. You're right.

And your heart and mind is telling you, hey, we've already done this. It wasn't good to use your fancy words. It sucked. And I don't want to be second to a bunch of goats again. I want to be second to Attracta again. And so that reality. That fear. That risk. That's true. That's right.

There's no question about that. That's not going to go away.

I guess. I don't I don't know if that's a comfort to you that I can tell you to make that go away. If you're going to move across the country back to being a farmer's wife, that's going to be a risk. No question about that.

I think you're your model for moving forward is how iron clad is it? Like how iron clad is that picture? How how firm on the wall is it?

And making sure that you are so clear with him, so clear. I want us to spend breakfast like this. I understand that in this season this has to happen. I want lunch to look like this when we can.

I want our marriage to look like this. We will have this many dates a week. Our kids will look like this, but it's being super, super clear and giving him an opportunity to speak into that. And it's good to do that before you move, obviously. And if you just don't want to go, be real clear. I'm not going to go. Because going along partway and then being bitter about it. It's territorial, calls it power from the one down position, it leaves you in a position that all you can do is be frustrated.

All you can do is complain and end up pulling the boat down from underneath it. Right.

And if he makes a power move and says, we're going, I'm the man of this house and we're going forward, then that's the that's a power from the one up position. But often folks can just go. All right, fine. And then they're not grateful about it. They choose misery, then they choose justice, this whatever, and they end up dragging the ship down slowly from underneath it.

And so if you're going to go.

Make the absolute best of it, go with full intention, go a full plan, make sure you're fully heard, your voice is fully heard, your concerns are fully heard, ways you can hold him accountable to the shared vision you guys have. Make sure that's in place. Go feeling empowered. Also know going it's going to feel like a risk.

You're going to feel weird because you've been down this road before and it sucked last time and it might suck again. And then the third if you're not going to go.

If you're just like, I cannot do this, be real, real clear with him because he's not going to lose you. He loves you. He's not gonna lose you. But don't go half way. Just drag the whole machine down. Don't go and be like, yeah, OK is going to be great and he's going to be excited and all of a sudden it's just the relationship is slowly going to drown. So, I mean, I think you do the hard work of visioning what this could look like, making sure it doesn't look like last time.

I think that could be a really extraordinary moment for you guys. I'd love you to call me back after you move.

And you can be like you and I told you, I'm second to the goats. That'll be super fun, Kelly, but I don't think is going to happen. I don't think so. All right. Let's go to Leah in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Leah, what's up?

Hi, John, how are you? So good, how about you? I'm doing well, thank you. Excellent. So here's my question. So I've gone on about eight or nine dates with this man that I met online, and it's been great, good connection. We enjoy each other's company, all that stuff. Fast forward a few weeks. I find out that the first and last name he told me is actually not his name at all. And he's actually still legally married and has a child.

And yeah. So at this point, I'm not really sure where to go from here or what type of conversation or questions I need to even be asking him because I feel like I'm kind of caught in a dilemma. We respond really well with a good connection.

But he's married and this may be my favorite call ever. It sounds like you super, totally know what to do. But you don't want to how come? I'm just very confused. There's so there's there's super no confusion. Some guy pretended to be somebody he wasn't so he could cheat on his wife. And did he say the magic words? Did he say we're getting separated? Yes, he did.

Yes. So awesome. So, yeah, he's not somebody to be trusted is somebody who is scamming one or both of the women in his life right now, if you'll happen to be the only two. And then he lied about it. How'd you find out? So when he told me his first and last name, I did some investigating, trying to see if he was on any social media or whatever, and let's be honest. All good relationships start with an investigation.

So go ahead. Continue.

All right. So I just that couldn't find anything. So that's really weird how he's not showing up on anything. Did it again found his first and his real first and last name on his employment site? I thought, oh, wow, that's weird. And I had his picture right next to it, so I knew it was him.

This is this is it weird? This is lying and deception. You're like, wow, my house is on fire. It smells smoke. Yes. It's burning to the ground. That's awesome. OK, so continue. So you investigate slash stalked him and then you found out where he worked, what his face looked like. He had different names.

And then what happened? So I screenshot it and I sent it to him and I asked him to explain, did you do that via text? Yes, I did. Oh, jeez.

OK, so you have a guy that you're kind of falling for eight or nine and then you text him busted. Then what did he do?

And then that's when he gave me the whole spiel of, well, he's legally married, but he's going through a separation. He admitted he does have a daughter. And I asked him why, like, why not just be honest? And he said, well, I thought, you never give me a chance. Is that true? I mean, if he's married, then, no, I wouldn't give him a chance. I don't want to be dating a married man.

OK, but you are and you feel conflicted about it. So why are you conflicted about it? I guess I'm not really sure what to even tell the guy, because at this point, we have seen each other since, but he didn't bring it up again.

So I don't know if I need to be bringing it up again.

I can't imagine this is something you want to just talk about all the time. Here's a cool thing you can do. Repeat after me by Felicia. Go ahead by Felicia.

Boo yah. See, that's it. I don't do a lot of good on this podcast. I just did just then. It's it's over. The guy is not a trustworthy person. If his. How about this. Have his wife call you and let you know that. Yes, we are indeed. We've been getting separated for a long time. The divorce is just taking some while because the lawyers are slow down because of the covid and it's going to be a minute.

But yes, we are fully separated. I hope he finds happiness and joy somewhere else. Have her call you and then you can feel free to just date around the building. But there's no way that's going to happen. Right. All right, I'm super interested in you, though, because you've got yourself you got these strong convictions, you sound like you feel totally ripped off, but you have this. I wish you were having this conversation in person, because I want to I want to watch you having these thoughts go through your your mind and body.

You seem conflicted. I don't understand the conflict here. I think the conflict comes into play because he seemed at the beginning like a very genuine person. He has his life together. So I guess I never would have thought that someone like him would do something like this. There you go.

So here's an ugly, crappy part of somebody lying to you like this or getting cheated on. Is not only is there a hurt that someone deceived you, but you stop trusting you. Right, you've got to agree to the fact that you missed it or that he seemed like or she felt like dot, dot, dot, if you go back in.

Well, that's not a I was going to I was going to compare him to Jeffrey Dahmer. And that's probably a little bit not fair. But if you go back and read some of those things, the guy was a lovely, wonderful guy. Everyone liked being around him. He was fun. And everyone said, I couldn't believe that. Dot, dot, dot. Now, of course, this dude isn't a mass murderer and all that, so that wasn't fair.

But yes, people all the time think I can't believe they fill in the blank. And the disorienting part about that is that you have to look in the mirror and say, how did I miss that? What is it about me that I missed that I thought I was smart, I thought I was could read people. I thought that was my thing. And that sucks. Have you spent some time just realizing this sucks? This isn't fun. Yes.

Yeah. How'd that go? I was pretty bummed out because in the last relationship I was in, it was the same type of scenario where he lied about having his kid and then the baby mama contacted me and told me, yeah, it's just weird that the same things keep happening where it's the dishonesty. Yeah.

What apps are you using? Don't tell me. But maybe that's a good place to start with. Whatever apps you're finding folks on. Right.

Why did you see him again after you busted him and he told you this stuff and then you got back together, you met up, and then it didn't really come up and you probably had some imaginary conversations in your head about what you were going to say to him when you finally saw him and you were just going to wait until he told you and he didn't say anything and he just went on with your date and then he just dropped you off and you went home and then you were just kind of like.

How'd you feel going through that time, that space? It was very awkward. Yeah, why didn't you bring something up? Because I didn't really even know how to bring it up. OK, ready? I'm going to teach you. And instead of going by Felicia, this is another one. Let's see how we can do this directly. Yes, I got it. Why did you lie to me? Tomorrow, and then he'll be like, no, no, no, why did you lie to me?

We went out eight or nine times and I was honest with you and I told you some things about me, I was vulnerable with you and I said I liked you. And you didn't mention anything about having a kid, you didn't mention anything about being currently married. Mike, why did you lie to me? I liked you. That's how you do that. OK. And if in your gut, you know, he's not telling you the truth.

Leah, you're like you're worth not being lied to and you're worth not being cheated on, you're worth somebody telling you the truth. Yeah, that's true. You are. I don't even care what happened when you were 10 years ago and eight years ago, and you're just worth not being lied to. Here's the other thing, maybe his story is true, it might totally be true, and he needs an opportunity to turn on, come super clean.

And say, I freaked out, I thought you would never talk to me, this whole thing's been a mess. I lied to you and that sucks and I screwed up. And I'm sorry.

I just think very few people are not redeemable. But it starts with people looking for somebody that they love in the eyes, that they look in the eye and say, I screwed up real bad, I'm sorry. But if you're just going to go see him tomorrow, then you've got to make peace with, you know what I used to say? I wasn't going to date a married man. I'm cool with it. I'm cool with it.

I thought it wouldn't be the kind of person that dated a married man, but it's all good. And that may be were part of your conflict is coming from. I wouldn't recommend that. But hey, if that's if if that's what you're some of your struggles coming from, that's where some of your struggles coming from. I don't think so. I think you're tired of people lying to you and they're not little lying to you. Like, I love your cooking and it's not that great.

They're not nice. Not those kind of lies. It's. Oh yeah. I'm still married. Oh yeah. I've got kids. Oh yeah. Fill in the blank. Those are big. And you're slowly given your heart away, trying to be vulnerable, trying to fall in love with somebody and they're not being honest. That hurts and that sucks. So I'm sorry, but I also want you to trust you. I want you to stand firm in your values and stand firm in the things that you think are right.

And if somebody pulls a big one on you like that, have the courage to look at it and say, why did you lie to me?

Answer that question, we're not going to go out anymore. I'm not going to hold your hand any more. We're not going to kiss anymore. Why did you lie to me? And if they give you an answer, that's shenanigans and it's just a box of dirty bombs, then just walk away and you're going to be lonely is going to hurt. It's going to suck. But walk away. No, tell the truth, even when you do something is not smart, not right, tell the truth, folks.

Good grief.

Leah, thank you so much for that call. Let me know how the final the bye Felicia goes. I'm interested to know how that final conversation goes and somebody create an app for great people. I'm sure that exists somewhere. I don't have any apps. Create an app for people to meet each other, especially now in the corvids. All right. Let's take one more call. Let's go to Nathaniel in Columbia, South Carolina. What's up, Nathaniel?

Housing expert talk show personality doing right, I keep telling everybody that we only have like 42 people who listen to this podcast, but we're going to get their brother. We're going to get there.

You're a star in the making. How are you? How are you, man? Oh, I can't complain.

What's going on? But I think that describes most of us. So, you know, I'm not going to complain. Very cool.

So what's up, brother? How can I help? Well, I noticed that there's a lot of I would call impulsive behavior some major things, but I have a habit of doing and it's affecting my life in small ways. And I just want to know, get some advice on how to control them better.

Very cool. So talk to me about the impulsive behaviors. Well, I can think of a few things in general, in particular, one little bit of overeating I wouldn't consider myself like. An overweight person, so it's a little bit hard to talk with people about it, but for instance, if I'm out by my work, I'll visit the snack machines on Fridays. I love snack machines three times.

Oh, yeah, I love snack machines, man. I'm with you. Yeah.

Yeah. On bad days where I'm stressed eating, it's 5:00 ish, which is 6:00. I don't know. Oh, so that's one thing. And then now that I'm working from home a little bit more, you know, less than 30, I guess it's time for what's number three already. That's right. That's right. That's one thing. And another area I notice is Internet time. Okay. Especially during work. So a lot of my work right now is on my laptop and.

I get distracted really easily watching YouTube. It's kind of frustrating and so yeah.

Hmm. So besides eating and some Internet distractions, what else? Something else is behind you. Something's worrying you. What is that? I mean, other things is I think it's more omissions, like, OK, I should be exercising, but let's watch one more episode of the John Bellone show before I go. And that's five hours later.

Always OK. Always OK. So sacrifice your physical health.

I'm not what I'm trying to stop or just or stuff like, oh, I guess it's time for, you know, claim that, you know, Jenga towers dirty dishes in my sink right now. But I'll get to into the irritating stuff like that. And I guess what's compounding it a little bit is one in about three weeks I'm getting married. Oh, OK. I told my fiancee about this. Is that like I think I'm a little disappointed myself that I imagined I would be a different person by this point or like, you know, I have been trying to change behaviors like, OK, make a schedule.

So I'm putting adblock or not ad blocker site blockers on your computer, stop carrying money to work so you can't actually buy anything, you know, and that works for a week or so. And then a distraction or stress happens. I resort to those as control mechanisms back to square one.

Gotcha. OK, so what would you say brother, is that the root of your you call them impulsive behaviors? Those are really numbing behaviors. They are ways to unplug real quick or for a long time.

And usually those behaviors are rooted in some sort of. Of underlying stress, underlying feelings of, uh, what's what's underlying for you, man?

For one thing, I guess that comes to mind, what is my research, I'm a I'm a grad student, get my Ph.D.. Good for you. And I mean, I tell people to be quite frankly, I think my research is a burning dumpster fire within a train wreck. Within a meteor crater. Yes. What are you studying? I mean, I'm I'm studying organic chemistry.

Oh, that sounds exciting. OK, you actually could literally be studying inside of a dumpster fire, though, which is pretty cool for. OK, why do you say your research is no good? Oh, well, I feel like just talking to my adviser, I. If I lose my last three projects, kind of I worked on it really hard and it turned essentially my adviser said, scrap this project, go somewhere else. And that's been the case for the last few years, like, I mean, I'm still in the program, so Paré and I'm more than halfway past the halfway point, thankfully, but a lot of times I don't know if my advisor is just being a perfectionist or if I'm actually and he's just I'm actually doing OK and he's just trying to push me harder or it's.

You should be really worried right now and you need to, you know, shift gears and I guess also with the whole the big news that's happening around the world coronavirus. I got placed back on to duty. It's a whole lot more work online. Everything is slow. And I just spend most of my time grading papers as opposed to actual research. So that doesn't help the situation.

How how do you manage? Twenty five. OK, can you. Let's get in a. Let's just back up for a second, OK? Can you go global with me for a second? OK. You're getting married in a few weeks. The world is literally and figuratively on fire. We're in the middle of a pretty remarkable pandemic, an absolute economic implosion. You are in the middle of one of the most difficult Ph.D. programs on the planet. Real hard, a lot of people do a lot of gymnastics academically to get out of OK, and you're getting a Ph.D. in it, it's hard what you're doing.

Most people who aren't in the process don't know how many times you feel real good about something in your adviser says that's not good enough. Do that again. That happened to me a bunch or rewrite this or where did you even get this information from him to redo that again? And my advisers, both of them were really wonderful people and I still had to redo some stuff. You are in the middle of three of the most stressful things I can imagine.

Were you going to school to be a professor to. Oh, yes. OK, so you're also in the middle of a you're working towards a career that is evolving and changing underneath us all as we speak here. Right. So you are living literally in a true dumpster fire. Everything around you is on fire. And one of the things our brains do is they love us and try to take care of us. And so what you've got is a series of behaviors, whether you can call them little ticks, you can call them little whatevers, which are little mini checkout moments, I'm just going to click off.

I can't read one more stupid okin paper. I'm going to spend the next four hours here. I'm going to procrastinate on this. I'm going to just have one more meal because I need one more dopamine hit that's going to make that stress a little bit less. It's going to cover up my amygdala a little bit more. Right. It's going to unhook it a little bit more. And I want you to number one, first and foremost, give yourself some grace, OK?

You are in the middle of it. It's a lot going on. I also want you to realize I'm not big on sherds and have to, as I think some should, and I wish I had those can weigh people down.

But you've got to stop talking to Nathan so badly. OK, you are beaten up, Nathan. You are talking to yourself in a way that you would never let somebody talk to your fiancee. Right. Right, the fair. I think that's fair. OK, so distraction behaviors are there, they're just a ball and they're like chapstick, they're a lie. I think of them like a lie.

The key here, if you want to change your behavior, no one is awareness. When you're about to eat something, when you're about to go to the snack machine, as you start to roll your chair back because it happens automatically. Right. I want you to or at your house when you decide, oh, man, it's time for first seventh lunch. I want you to pause and say, what am I trying to protect myself from? And just let it sit there for a second.

As you're about to eat another sleeve of cookies, I want you to think. Why am I still eating this, what is my brain trying to protect me from, and it's probably from one more assignment, one more place where you're going to not feel enough, one more step towards a job that you don't even know if it's going to be there. One more step towards a forever decision, which is get married. Right. It's doing his job is trying to protect you.

And what you have to do is fill your your resiliency bucket, if you will, with positive behaviors instead of default settings. And so just getting rid of impulsive behavior is just stopping eating or just saying, I want to be super good looking for my wedding. I want to be super good for my professor. Those are always going to be trying to fill an internal hole with external plugs are going to be doing something for somebody else, for somebody else, for somebody else.

And I want you to begin talking to Nathan in a positive way to you begin to say, I'm going to eat well because I'm going to feel better. My research is going to be better. I'm going to be able to be a better husband from a wife. My head is going to be better. Not just I'm not fat. I mean, going towards something instead of away from something is totally different. And just recognizing your impulses are liars.

And then they give you a sentence that changed my life. OK. I struggle with impulse behaviors a lot, I've got a lot of tics, I've struggled with ADHD my whole life and with anxiety my whole life, and I read a sentence that was from an ADHD scholar that was really extraordinary for me.

And here was the sentence. Don't forget to remember.

And I know it sounds out of order in a wacky sentence, don't forget to remember, here's what that sentence means. It means when I pull up to my house, I for some reason I can't see. I still have CDs in my car. I can't see the CDs that are scattered all over my car. I can't see the water bottles and the, you know, the lecroy cans in the car. I don't I just don't see it. But I remember what it feels like getting into a really messy truck.

I remember what it feels like to get into a really clean truck. I forget a walk through the house and I will just leave crap everywhere. I will wake up and think I don't want to go work out downstairs, and then I will make sure I don't forget to remember how good it feels after I've worked out. How good it feels to actually put stuff away, where it goes and what it does is it takes me to the other end, not on the front end, because people who struggle impulse behavior, who struggle with numbing behaviors, who struggle with addiction, who struggle with ADHD on the front end, they they struggle with that front end impulse.

What we can control is the back end. What we can control is where we're headed. I don't want to pick that stuff up now, but I don't want to forget to remember how good it feels when the house is clean, when I say how good it feels, when my wife can just relax and smile because she's worked her butt off with our kids all day. And so don't forget to remember as a sentence that changed my life.

I hope it will change, cause I want to tell you, man, you are in the middle of it. This storm will pass, winter will pass and spring will come. Your wedding is going to be awesome. She said she loved you before you started working out, so she still loves you. I don't want you to work out for her. I want you to work out for you. I don't want you to try to get the next right PhD program for your professor to try to prove that you belong.

You do. You've got on the program.

I want you to work really hard on your research because we need some great people out there. We get a lot of problems that okin folks can help us solve.

I want you to do it because you can do it. I want you to not spend time on the Internet, brother, because I want you to get your grading done so you can go outside and go for a walk. You can go outside and call your fiance and talk about what's going to happen four or five years from now because you're worth it rather. Nathaniel.

Thank you so much for the call. That's the show today as we leave, man. Sometimes we talk about the greatest song of all time and we talk about the greatest song by the greatest singer of all time. I'm going to be honest with you, that's not today. Today, we're going to talk about a pretty good singer from a pretty good record, sometimes singers not that great.

And the song's not that great, but it just sticks in your soul and it won't freakin leave. So here I am this many years later. About to read the song that came out in nineteen ninety off the record sole provider by the one and only King Mullet himself, Michael Bolton. The song is How am I supposed to live without you? I don't know, Michael. I don't know. But I still singing that song this many years later. It goes like this.

I could hardly believe it. When I heard the news today, I had come. I had to come and get it straight from you.

They said you were leaving. Someone swept your heart away from the look upon your face. I see. It's true. So tell me about it. Tell me about the plans you're making. Tell me one more thing before I go. Tell me, how am I supposed to live without you now that I've been loving you so long? How am I supposed to live without you?

How am I supposed to carry on when all that I've been living for is gone? I don't know, Michael. I don't know how we're supposed to carry on so much we can do here on the Dr. John Delonas show.