On today's show, we talk to a young man who surprise girlfriend is pregnant and he doesn't know what to do next. We also talk with somebody dealing with suicidal thoughts and dealing with their own family trauma and a husband with PTSD. Stay tuned.

Hey, what's up, what's up? This is Deloney with the Dr. John Delonas show, taking your calls about your life, your relationships. I don't care who you are. I care where you're from. I care what you're going through in a world gone mad. We're going to take your calls on mental health, on relationships, on your marriage, on your dating, on kids, all of it.

And we're going to walk together to help figure this out. And in the process, I hope to teach you how to reconsider challenges right now to reconsider relationships. I hope I hope that we can teach one another how to say I'm sorry, how to say, man, I thought I was right on that and I was super wrong and I'm gonna do this one again.

OK, we can teach each other humility and teach each other how to do the next right thing. I'm so glad that you called. It's awesome. If you want to be on the show, if you to be on the show, give me a shout at one eight four four six nine three thirty to ninety one. That's one eight four four six nine three thirty to ninety one. Or go to John Delaney dot com show, fill out the form, it goes to Kelly and she creates the shows from there.

And so I feel like it's important to start the show with. This is my confession. I just need to be honest and open, this is it, no, Usher, this is my confession. This is all today started out.

I woke up super early, started my morning routine, went through all my crazy stuff when I sat down in my little basement on my little rug and did my gratitude journal. All that stuff copied my thoughts for the day. Then I went and worked out and went for a run. It was like thirty five degrees in Nashville this morning. I went for a run, then I got done. I did come inside. I went straight and sat in a cold tub and it was super cold.

It was good. Went upstairs, so the kids got ready for work. I'm in the middle of an intermittent fast I wanted to fast through lunch, so I had made some more coffee and then I thought, no, I'm going to have one these little, I don't know, package Kaito Barres. And that led to a second package to ketubah, at which point I was like, well, I'm already into it, so I'm going to dump some really fancy some of doctor asks Ash.

Josh asks some of his ancient nutrition, kitto collagen powder, whatever shenanigans into my coffee.

That devolved and then about half hour later, I was sitting there working on some work stuff while I just crushed a sleeve of Whitcombe Thin Mints.

Dude, I dominated Thin Mints. Then I got up and I went into my bedroom to grab something and my wife had some of those Samoa's stuff, which evidently they make with caramel and crack cocaine. So I had some of those and then I felt bad. So I went back to do today. Just it devolved. It started so good. I fell off the wagon. I didn't fall off a part of the wagon. And I got out and I laid underneath it and it ran over me a few times.

And so then I had to get back up and I had to tell everybody the truth on the show. I'm person two and I screwed up today, but I'm just going to get up, shake it off and move on. And here's the thing. That old that old meditation quote from back in the day, every breath has a chance to start over.

I may start over till this evening. Let's go and finish today with both ice cream. I got to I got to be better than that, but I already feel like a box of crap on a stick.

And so we're going to just power through today. We're going to get it done. All right, let's go let's go to the phones. Let's go to Patrick in Oklahoma City. What's up, brother? Patrick, how are we doing?

Hey, Dr. John, nice talking to you. Can you hear me? Yes, sir, I can. How about you, ma'am? Oh, I'm doing well. Good deal. So, hey, hold on.

Would you have for breakfast today, please tell me Girl Scout cookies is what is this called a honey bun.

So just as.

Yeah. Patrick, can you totally redeem yourself? I don't even know where to go. Oh, that's awesome. Good for you, Patrick. You just made my whole day. Listen, we got to be better than that, right?

Yes, exactly. All right. Tomorrow we're to the. So what's up, brother? How can I help?

Yeah. So I like I'm with the girlfriend of almost three years and we just found out that we were pregnant.

All right. How old are you, man? Almost twenty three. Almost twenty three.

OK, cool. And for freaking out, you say that so joyfully as though if I don't continue to laugh my way through this, I will spontaneously combust.

Is that where you're at.

Yeah. Yeah, man.

So she's with you right now.

No, she, I'm, I'm on my lunch break right now.

OK, all right. So twenty three. You've been with same girl for three years and now y'all are having a kid. How far along are you.

Just a month or two. Really early on.

OK, so you haven't even got past. So you're just at four or five weeks. Six, seven weeks.

Right. OK, very cool.

All right. So you're freaking out. What does that even mean, man? That means something different to everybody. What is freaking out? Me. Yeah.

So basically whenever we took the test, we just were like in disbelief, like, OK, this is actually happening and we're kind of just at kind of lost at what to do next. Honestly, we've been doing a lot of talking on, like whether we should keep it or not put up for adoption. We just don't know really where to begin. So we're looking at guidance for that.

Gotcha. So. Three years with the same person is this somebody's going to be the rest of your life with. That's the plan, yeah. I mean, you're three years in, bro, you know, right? I know. Yeah, yeah. We're yes, we're talking about marriage, of course.

OK, so what about having a baby's freaking you out?

The simple fact of being a dad. And also tell my parents, what do you do for a living man? I'm a banker. One of the local banks here in Oklahoma.

OK, so you're a banker. You go to college. I am taking a hiatus right now, OK.

That was awesome. Management's restructuring, man. All right, so you're taking a hiatus. All you have to say is no, I'm not going to school. You don't even have to explain it to me. Like how you have a built in fancy, fancy excuse for not.

I dropped out for right now, but I'll go back at some point, hopefully. Right. So what's your wife do. Mhm. Our girlfriend. Sorry. Whatever girlfriend.

Future wife as she's a manager at a clothing store.

Manager at a clothing store. OK, so when you number one take your parents off the thing, you're twenty three and you're a banker. What does that even mean by the way, are you a loan officer or are you a teller. Basically, teller type, do you use big language to make people think you're more than you are? No, not really, because you said you're a banker and hiatus. Those are big. Like, ah, you're a pretty good guy, huh?

I don't like to talk about myself, honestly. Why not? The main main thing, you just called the show with about a million listeners to it like I know. So why why are you self-deprecating? Not in a funny way, but in like the serious way, why are you undermining yourself? I think that more or less just has to do with I'm being honest. I have no clue. Honestly, I'm just trying to come up with something on the spot.

But I'm not sure why does a 23 year old guy with a full time job care of his mom and dad thinks right now, looking around you, what are they going to do is to live with them?

No, no, no. We're we're living together, OK? My girlfriend.

OK, so y'all have been together three years. You're playing married on TV and. Now, you have are pregnant, she's pregnant. What about this freaks you out, other than what I'm getting at, like you've got your No. Twenty three year old Hutzler life together, but for a vast majority of them, you're on your way, man.

You got a job.

You are learning a trade in a a madhouse of an industry. Right? Your wife or your fiance. I keep calling your wife. Your girlfriend is a manager at a clothing store.

You all are living together. I mean to get something deeper, man, because you're not selling me on why this isn't. Yeah, this is out of order. Yeah. This is our plan. Yeah. Is it going to make for hard conversations with our family. Yeah, but you're not selling me on why this is worth freaking out other than. Yeah. This is different than we thought and now we're in it. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. I think that's the main thing is just about having hard conversations and really kind of going going from there and what to do next and everything like that exists all of a sudden just everything sped up like a million miles really quick.

Yeah dude. OK, yeah. So I'm going to give you the opposite. I waited. My wife and I dated for off and on for five years. Then we were married for eight years before we had our son. And I was not ready for it then. I was dramatic and it was like, oh, my gosh, what what's up? And I had all this drama and all of this. I'm not ready and shut up and that's me telling myself to shut up.

Right. So I don't know very many people who are ever, quote unquote, ready.

And if they think they're ready, they're they're super not because you have no idea what's coming. Right. Both on the hey, this is more exhausting than we thought. It's more expensive than we thought. And more importantly, on the other side, in a million years, I would not have waited eight years to have kids. Had I known what it would do for my capacity to love, to to experience love, to experience parts of myself I didn't know existed to fall deeper in love with the person I'd been with for, what, 12, 13 years up to that point had no idea.

And it was this idea, like this master idea that was life isn't about your plans, it's about who you are, what you do and who you choose to be when life happens at you. Right.

Right. So you probably had when were you thinking about getting married to Joel? Like talked about it. And you have some dream schedule. Yeah.

Yeah. We we did a lot of talking before, before this and we're thinking about getting married about another one or two years out and having kids three to five years out. All right.

You just got half a decade back. Congratulations. That's awesome.

And so here's the thing. I get the freaky part. I get that I'm not. I'm laughing with you, dude. I get that, like, everything just got turned upside down. It got life. Got real serious all of a sudden. Right. And also you're twenty three and it's time to be for life to be serious. OK. Right.

Never, ever, ever make. Massive decisions against a hard conversation. OK, what I mean by that is too many people make themselves clinically insane, clinically insane.

They shorten their lifespan. They endure pain and trauma for years.

Less than that, they they endure less than a great sex life with their with their partner.

They endure less than a good job because they are scared of having a hard conversation. And they just punt and punt and punt and punt. And so I want to flip this around on you. This can be not in your plan, but one of the most extraordinary things that ever happens to you, my brother.

You're going to be a dad. And there is no greater honor on planet Earth than to be a dead nun. There's no harder thing to do.

I mean, her husband's pretty hard, but being a dad is the hardest, greatest thing you'll ever, ever do, right? It's it is the top of the mountain, man. It is. And you've got a lot to learn and a lot to grow up on.

I want you to get this is not a decision that you and. Well, let me let me back up. When you say you're like you're putting all these options on the table, like, be honest, are you all just talking because this is a crazy season or you probably can have this kid like, where are you guys?

Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for asking that. We kind of were talking about not having it, mainly due to the timing of it and everything like that. Yeah, but there's just this like ever aching like echo in the like the back of my head and my heart and everything like that. That's just basically saying. But what if you know that what if thing is just like just driving me insane, like what if in the future now we won't be able to have kids?

What if X, Y, Z, X has been. Really, really heavy. Where is she? We're on the same page of basically not having it. But. I'm just afraid for what the future will hold and what things will happen are possible, things will happen, like will it impact our relationship? Will it impact her chances of getting pregnant the future? You know, all of that stuff, whenever we, quote unquote, are ready to have kids.

And I know that if I say, hey, what if we have the kid completely and it'll be ours won't be anyone else's. We won't put up for adoption or anything like that. I know that she'll be like I know that she would say, OK, I'm OK with that. She's kind of indifferent on what to do. And that's just kind of the most nerve wracking thing about it.

I have a hard time believing that she's indifferent. Yeah.

And are you gonna ask you this? Are you hard to be firm around?

No, I'm one of the most outgoing people that, like I've been told, that is like people who can't come to me for things like that are different or weird or weird situation. I can kind of help point them in the right direction on what to do next and. But I do for a living brother, and I've got people in my life to do that for me because it's hard to do it with the mirror, right?

Right. So say that out loud. I'm going to be a dad. I'm going to be a dead. What did you feel, man? Besides the existential terror that every new almost soon to be dad is going to feel. I feel whenever I say I'm going to be a dad. I don't know, I kind of feel, of course, scared, but more or less, just like, OK, we'll kind of figure it out more or less awesome.

All right. So here's the deal. Everything in your life when you have this kid, I hear it in you, man, I hear it in you. When you have this kid, everything's going to change and you are going to find yourself walking six inches taller. You're going to find yourself exhausted. You're going to find yourself thinking, I'm going back to school or I'm going to get more. All those things are going to change, right?

There is a before and after. There you are at that point. Now I want you. But but before I move on. But, dude, let me just tell you. Let me tell you. And you're not asking my opinion, I'm giving it to you. I can't tell you what it's like to hold that kid. I can't tell you what it's like when that tiny little hand grabs your finger and squeezes so hard that you think your finger is going to come off.

I can't tell you what it's like for my friends who have adopted when they bring their kid home for the first time. And you sit down in that in that glow of terror and joy and love you didn't know you were capable of and fear.

And you look at the person you're married to and you're like, what did we do? And here we are.

All of that, OK? I can also hear it in you. You want to be confident so hard any which way. And you're not in that freak you out. You're probably a confident guy who just taking a hiatus.

Right. Or a confident guy. And then suddenly this happened. I would be willing to bet my car and it's not nice. Right? So you're not going to get a lot out of it. If I'm wrong, I would bet that your wife, your girlfriend can't keep calling your wife Sahba. It's not that I'm not trying to be subliminal or anything. Like I'm trying to be tricky. I just keep going with that.

I can't imagine that your girlfriend's indifferent. Yeah.

She has to have some feelings and thoughts on this that either she is uncomfortable saying out loud to you or she's afraid of what you're going to say or if she is inside of her, so thrilled to be like, oh, my gosh, but if she's not getting that from you, she's going to soft play it and downplay it and lo lo drive it because she's worried. Does that make sense?

And so if you can go home tonight and hold both of her hands and look her in the eye and say, I'm going to be a dad.

Like, we're doing this right, and you can make a journey to Nashville from from Oklahoma, will Mary over here, like Anthony Neal is an ordained minister of some sort. He'll marry you here. Will do it for free. And, you know, I'm saying like, let's get this done and we're going to figure this out and then we're going to have a conversation with our parents and they're going to be like, oh, my gosh. And they're going to be that way for about two seconds.

And then they're going to realize we're about to be grandparents and then the game's on. Right. And then everybody rallies up.

You're going to get more nonsense advice and more like, well, you know, all that stuff is just part of the deal.

But before if that's not in the plan, if you are uncomfortable with that, I want you to you and her go talk to a professional therapist tomorrow, OK?

This is red alert for your relationship.

This is red alert for your mental health, for her mental health. This is red alert for everybody, OK? Yeah.

And they will give you some tools on how to move forward, how to have these conversations with people that you're scared to have these conversations with, how to wrap your head around.

Hey, dude, we're going to have we're going have a child. Right. We're in this now.

But I want you to hear me say you're not crazy for thinking everything went sideways. It is. It did.

I don't want you to think you're crazy because you guys had a plan and suddenly your plans just went up in smoke. And now you've got some major things, one of which is we're creating a human right.

I also want you to realize you're twenty three, you're going to have to start having hard conversations, that's a part of your life from this point forward. This is going to be the hard conversation to have. Right.

I also want you to.

Not minimize this one awesome thing, brother, you're about to be dead. You're about to be a dad. Your girlfriend's about to be a mom, and this is big, big stuff, right? Thank you for calling. You're right to freak out now. Go make the right decisions. On getting the tools you need to be a great mom, it could be a great dad, it could be a great husband, go get connected here. Thank you for the call.

Let me know how it goes whenever you have your conversations. I want to hear how that goes and what the next steps are going to be. Thanks for your call, Patrick. All right. Let's go to Victoria in Nashville, Tennessee. Victoria, what's going on?

I'm gonna go on you, John. I am going well as well as you can go right with a breakfast, a Girl Scout cookies. So how can I help?

Hey, what did you have for breakfast? I can't remember. That's what I'm doing. I know I have a baby. I can't remember what I did an hour ago. Well played. Well played. Well played. All right. So what's up?

So I should preface this call by saying I'm not suicidal.

However, I'm not laughing. I don't know who I am. I'm not laughing at you're laughing with you like men. Not funny. No, no, it's not funny. I'm just the number of times I've had that conversation prefaced with that. And my career has been a lot. And it always the follow up is here we go. All right. So I got my I got my I don't know, my hard conversation. Let's do this. All right.

So you're not suicidal, but.

Right. I have a lot of suicidal thoughts while I'm doing just super mundane things and they come just super random, like I'll be driving. And I'm thinking I just so badly want to just swerve my car and crash when I need to pick up peanut butter. Yeah, OK. So give me another example. Yeah, so sometimes when I'm doing dishes, I'll be putting them away and I'll pick up a knife. And I just think, like, what if I just got myself at this right now, like, everything would be over and done with and I'd be OK with that.

And then I put it away and, like, feed my baby, like, OK, it's just super random and. Yeah, what can I do to control that? We're like, would that classify me as suicidal. Like what? I'm just I need help.

No. One, thank you for trusting me with this one.

Like beyond like I hear I hear you're somebody that approaches hard conversations with laughter. Right. I'm I'm a similar way. Are there moments when this is scared you?

Oh, absolutely. Yes. OK. All right. So transitioning from me, laughing and carrying on and understanding like this is a scary thing. So what I am grateful for your bravery to call most people in your situation that I've worked with over the years, and they think they start to think they're crazy, right?

They think they're nuts and they think I'm wrong with them and that if they will just speak this out loud, someone's going to take away their baby, someone's going to institutionalize them or whatever is next.

Right. So it's Bree that you called.

And I appreciate that when you say I'm going to walk you through it and I'm going to start this whole thing off with the idea that you have these intrusive thoughts, is that where the nerds say I'm right? So these are lightning bolts to just shoot into your mind. They just pop in there and you will go, whoa, right.

That's not nuts. Happens to everybody. Intrusive thoughts about self-harm, particularly in moments where you could actually do it. It's not like you're just walking around the thing at Target.

You're like, man, if I had a knife, I could just get myself. It's when you're holding it right, I'm going to tell you those aren't abnormal, but they're not great. Right. They're not healthy. And so I want to get some more information from you.

So where if you had to just mind your life, right. Mine, the life of Victoria, where are they from? How long have they happened, where do you think these have shown up? That's a great question. So I was actually thinking about this the other day, and it's been going on for as long as I can remember the first time that I can actually remember, I was probably like nine or 10 times like this. I just popped in my head, but I kept it to myself.

So I'm like, oh, everybody must have these thoughts. And it wasn't until recently that they started getting worse. And I actually started like formulating or what if I did exactly this like that? I started thinking maybe I should talk to somebody. Yeah.

Yeah. So how old's your baby? She is one one, OK? Did you have any postpartum with this baby? I probably I just was never treated OK.

OK, so tell me about growing up. Did you experience trauma as a kid? Yes, my mom is an alcoholic, some verbal and sexual abuse as well. I was just a lot of things that no kid should go through. I went through. You're exactly right.

Yeah. Has when you were pregnant, when you found out you were pregnant and over the arc of your pregnancy, did that stuff circle up more than it normally has? No. Same old, same old, were you excited to be pregnant? Yeah, yes, my husband, she was she was planned. So we were very happy when we found out that we were pregnant. Very cool. All right.

So in in you're like, let's I'm just going to pick one up where you work. Yes.

OK, so you're at work.

How do you handle a stressful customer or if your boss has to have a hard conversation with you and have to talk to you?

How do you handle that? Well, actually just started my job yesterday so I could deal with that. What I have here, you cope with challenges and it really just depends on what the challenges.

I try to remain calm, but sometimes I just I get so angry and I just have to walk away, like I'm just not able to. To hide how upset I am that they're upset with me, have you ever tried to hurt yourself before? Yes. OK, if you ever made a suicide attempt before.

It's kind of OK, what's that mean? One time I did actually crash my car, OK, intentionally.

Yes and no, I was going fifty five, I saw gravel and I just slammed on the brakes on gravel, gravel and twisted my will potentially like swerving. It was like, I don't know if I had the intention of, like, doing any harm, but I would consider that.

Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever ever since. Have you ever struggled with disordered eating or self cutting yourself?

No. No. OK. Have you ever been diagnosed with any mental health issues? So I've been to a couple of counselors through the years, and I just I've never liked any of them. One said that I was bipolar. Another said that I was depressed. Another said that I just needed to practice gratitude.

And so I just just just laid a candle and take a warm bath.

That'll fix it on Monday, just all over the place.

So I just I don't I don't trust any of those because there would be one session and they're like, you're obviously bipolar. And I'm like, what am I, though?

So tell me about your friends, your community that you hang out with, people that you go to when things get bananas.

So I actually just moved to Nashville not too long ago with covid. We really haven't been able to hang out with a whole lot of people, but we are in a church back up.

So we do a couple for Nashville, the Gever, a gang where you came from. Yeah, yeah, I had a couple of close friends from work. When you say close friends from work, there are people that you went and had drinks with or people that you have talked about your childhood trauma with. I know I never really talked to anybody about my childhood, OK? And so that would be my differentiation of friend versus buddies at work. A friend is somebody that can be.

I can tell the good things to. A friend is someone I can tell the bad things, like when I violate my values, right, and a friend is someone I can tell who's hurt me and my past.

And do you not have those folks? I have my husband, right, you've got your you've got your husband beyond him.

Yeah, actually, I do have a really close friend that I do talk with on a regular basis.

Is it a she? Yes. How would she know about these things, these thoughts that you have? Yeah, I actually just opened up to her about it not too long ago. Gotcha. Oh, so here's here's my.

This is not, for what it's worth, having intrusive thoughts is it happens to everybody, especially especially I walk through several things here, folks with sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse from childhood, folks with no friends or with a small community and a perceived burdensome ness. And this means that I bring a room down when I hang out with folks or I'm not going to tell them it's just going to ruin their day. And people begin to feel like they are a burden to other folks.

And you'll see this with kids. You'll see this with, you know, adults like my kids would be better off without me.

My husband would just be better off if he or I'm so exhausted and worn out. And it would be better if I fill in the blank. Right. Then there becomes this escalating thoughts. Right. So that my favorite, Dr. Joyner, is my favorite suicide researcher, talks about practice.

And it can be risky behaviors. It can be cutting, it can be speeding a car and pulling out just before something bad happens. And it can also be an escalation of practicing thoughts. Right. So it goes from man, if I was just not here to I'm holding this knife, I could just write, which turns into I'm just going to cut myself a little bit, which turns into I man, that relieves some pain. I'm going to cut myself again, which is an escalation.

Right. So all those things that would tell me is this. You've got a little girl you have to look at.

You said that, right, little girl? Yeah.

OK, you would be somebody that I would say if you were my friend hanging out at my house and we're just sitting on the front porch having barbecue and your husband's over. My wife's over and we're cook and hanging out. And you told me what you just told me. I would tell you, you need to go see somebody. You need to go talk to a counselor who you're going to be plugged in with for the long haul, and they're going to really frustrate you, they're going to annoy you, they're going to drive you bananas.

But they're also going to teach you some new tools on how to handle these thoughts if and when they begin to increase. Because my guess is these thoughts or one of several hard coping strategies. What's something else that you how you process things, how you interact with the world that you don't tell other people.

I know they're there. I just I shut people out, like sometimes I'll intentionally get angry with my husband over silly things to avoid talking about other things that are bothering me.

Why do you do that? Because I just. I just don't want to talk about some things, and I feel like you just want it understand, because we come from very different backgrounds.

And give me an example of something that he wants to talk about that you just bail out on. I don't want to talk about. Well, sometimes when I when I am having some of those suicide or suicidal thoughts, and, yes, because I hear what's wrong and I'm like nothing. It's like I just don't want him to worry. I don't want him to go to work. And then thinking that he's going to come home to a dead wife.

Right. I just don't want him to worry about that because they're not his problems.

And so when he looked you in the eye and said, I do, they became his problems and he will go to work and he will worry about you and he will develop scenarios and then he'll try to solve those scenarios that may or may not be accurate. And over time, his attempts to re bridge that gap, that connection, that that disconnection that he feels from you is going to get harder and wider.

Does that make sense? Yeah, and so I know you were trying to take care of the people around you. That's what I would mean by perceived burdensome ness. This aren't his problems. These are mine. I'm going to sit on them and be quiet. And you got a guy that told the universe, I'm going to be with you forever and you don't want to put stuff in his backpack that he's got to carry to work with him. Right.

Hmm, that's the perceived burdensome this. That's when I would tell you, yes, you're walking down a dark path in the woods and I don't like the direction that you're heading. Does that make sense? And you are too smart and you are too lovely of a mom and a wife to not value yourself in the way that the little girl does, the way your husband does and the way other people would if you would let them in.

Who hurt you as a kid? Was a grandfather OK, did mom and dad know, did they go to war on your behalf? Did they cover it up? How are they involved? They covered it up.

OK, so here's what you got in your heart. And more specifically, in the tiny little part of your brain that's now spidered across your entire neurology.

Is the most important thing to you as a child is the safety that comes from your parents relationship extended to your grandparents. And that relationship was severed at a young, young age. It's a fireplace, right, and what your brain knows is if you get too close to somebody else. They're going to hurt you, too, and it would rather make sure you avoid that close connection that you should have got from them.

It wants you to avoid it because we're not going through that again. That hurt and we will never do that again. And so you end up with a I mean, you love your husband, don't you? Yeah, he's a safe guy to you. Absolutely. Yeah, he does not fully in, though, is he? No. What about that baby girl? What about her, like you love her, too, right? Oh, yes, of course.

Does it freak you out or make you hold that how much he loves you or how much he needs you? Kind of freaks me out. Because like I do, like you were saying, like I often think that she would be better off, like if she had another mom.

OK, so Victoria, she wouldn't be. She's best off with you. And as I'm saying that if your first impulse, your first thought is you don't know me. Or whatever, if that's your first thought, I want you to hear me say. If you attack somebody. Will you promise me that you will? I was afraid you're going to see if I promise here's who deserves it in this order. Number one, you. You've been carrying too much crap in your backpack and your heart for way too long.

And I want you to sit with somebody who over a period of time and, hey, you got a lot of junk back there, it's going to take a season. OK. And. Over time, you will walk taller and you will walk stronger than you even knew you were capable of.

You've heard me use that analogy bricks in your backpack. What you don't realize is when they start taking those bricks out, when you start processing those and feeling those and then taking them out and setting them down, you don't realize how strong you've become carrying them around. And suddenly when those things aren't in your backpack anymore, you realize I am a force to be reckoned with in this world and you find a strength that you didn't know you had because somebody else had dropped cinder blocks in your back.

Listen to me. Your granddad shouldn't have done that. And your mom and dad should not let that happen. And you deserved somebody to go to war on your behalf, and they didn't, and I'm so sorry. I'm. And now you've got a husband who loves you. He didn't even know how because he's trying you've got a baby girl is dependent on you and you're a extraordinary woman here in my hometown who's worth being well. And the beautiful thing that I can tell you about Nashville is there is a world class all star folks that can walk alongside this with you if you'll let them.

And so I'll ask you again, you promise you'll go see somebody? Yes, OK, I promise, will you bring your husband into this, let him listen to this episode and in fact, there's usually a delay here. We'll see if we can get you an earlier cut, OK, as soon as we can. And this will give you an entry point to talk with him. OK. OK, and I want you to know that your bravery today, there are going to be thousands, if not tens of thousands of people listening to this.

Who have those intrusive thoughts, they just husham away, they don't want to burden their wife with them, they don't want to burden their their best friend with them. So they just sit on it and sit on them and they escalate and they get tougher and they get tougher and the voices get louder and louder.

And as your daughter gets closer and closer to the age you were when the crap happened to you, as a kid starts, those voices will get louder and louder. And so by you taking the first step to making the call. I'm so proud of you. The next step then what you do today is to reach out to somebody. And I want you to not just go once and be like, oh, they suck that go again. And then I want you to go again and I want you to go again.

And I want you to start that conversation with. I'm having suicidal thoughts, I'm not going to hurt myself and I have a plan have no imminent danger. I'm a childhood abuse survivor. My parents didn't step up when they should have. I've got a one year old daughter, I've got a husband who loves me. I need to learn how to let this stuff I need to be able to set it down and heal and I need to learn some new tools.

And if they say, well, you know, you need to have a warm bath, walk out, walk out, smile, say bye, Felicia, I'm out and then walk out. And then go to the next and I promise you, there's some great folks here in the city, I've met with them myself. Right.

Thank you so much for that call. Anybody out there? Anybody out there, if you are thinking about hurting yourself, you're thinking, my husband, my wife, my kids, my work would be better off with me, not here. Even if it's not an immediate emergency, I want you to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline one 800 273 8255, or you can text the crisis line. You can text home to seven four one seven four one.

That's not a Ramsey affiliated group. It doesn't have anything to do with us. This is a national hotline for folks who are thinking I'm gonna hurt myself today. Right. I'm going to take my life today, I'm to attempt to step out today. Text home to seven four one seven four one 24 hours a day, seven days a week, please. And if somebody in your world says anything, I hurt myself. Get them the help that they need.

Call in the Calver if you got to. We are all in this one together. All of us are in this together. And we're going to heal together, too, as couples, as friends, as communities, as a country.

David, thank you for being brave. Victoria, appreciate it. Let us know how that first session goes and we'll check in with you. All right. So let's go. Let's take one more call. Let's go to Lily in Dallas, Texas. Lily, what's going on?

Hey, Dr. John. So I have been with my boyfriend for two years, about two years now.

And we have a one year old and he is a military vet. And I feel like I'm putting too much pressure on him. He is struggling with PTSD and he had a breakdown around the Texas ice storm. We had a very rough few days where we didn't know if we were going to make it out, if he was going to be OK. And I feel like I'm the one that's been putting, you know, that extra pressure that's maybe taking him to that tipping point.

And I just don't know. I want him to know he is loved by not only myself, but my son and that he has.

So when you say your you're really to keep going. Yeah.

Well, thank you for loving your husband when you when you say that you're putting extra pressure on him and that you're the cause of his breaking point. What do you mean? So I'm a first time mom, so this is my first go around, so I feel like, you know, I want the best for my son, so I want us to focus on getting our first home. I want us to be stable financially. I know for some time it was the vehicle.

So I my vehicle I gave to him and I wanted a bigger vehicle for my son. So I put that extra pressure on him. So it's just it's been a lot like I feel like, you know, he works a lot. He works very hard. But I'm you know, I'm with my son 24/7. I also work from home. So I feel like sometimes I want that extra help. Yeah, for sure.

Where does your picture of this. Perfect. Set up for your one year old son come from. So I I'll tell you. So I'm asking the question from this, my wife drives a 2010 Prius that we shove two kids into. I can't even fix my son's humongous. I drive an 06 truck with a hundred fifty thousand miles on it and they just had to be in the shop.

So now we've got an old house and we've had to rent a few houses here and there.

And we've had. My kids are resilient and they love life and they are up for wild adventures, and my son asked the other day, Hey Daddy, no matter what, please don't ever move me again.

I just want to be wherever right here.

Right. So I ask you that to tell you I have my son has moved more since he's 10 than I did, I think, till I was like 30 or something.

Where are you getting this picture that we have to have this car, this house, this set of furniture, this environment, or there's something's going to happen to our kid? Where is this coming from?

The instability I had growing up? Oh, OK. Well, look at you. I come from right where we both come from. Broken homes. Yep. We both come from instability. And we see you grow. You realize how unstable things are and you start seeing it from a bigger picture. But you're you're young. You don't know. You only see what you hear or like what's happening at that moment. And so a lot of it comes from that instability that I had.

So I went to multiple schools. There was no consistency. It was it was a lot of turmoil within our household. So it was a lot. And I guess that now that I'm a mom, it's like you want everything. Not so much is better, right? You just want that stability for your child.

And so can I tell you. Yes, a significant temptation is to to take that sort of instability and to find it in stuff. And when you try to find stability and stuff, you inherently start that cycle all over again. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Yes. So you moved around a lot, did your parents get divorced or was there abuse fighting in the home grown up? So there was abuse, there was fighting, there was a divorce, and as soon as I could leave, I left.

There you go. OK, so you know what?

Grown up. You got PTSD, too. I mean, PTSD, too, by the way. OK, you're both trauma survivors and yours is more long term and acute.

And his may be I mean, yours is more long term and cumulative. His his acute. Yours is probably cutie pie.

I saw some stuff that no little kid should see as a fair. Yes, yeah, and so some people escape that with addiction, some people escape that with relationships, some people escape that with.

I'll be damned, this is going to look like this. I've got a picture of something in my head, and I will make sure everything's in order in place because this is what stability looks like.

Does that sound right? Yes. OK. Anything less than that is feels like a slippery slope towards what you had in. Unfortunately, the way we have to get to those pictures is by complaining, poking, prodding, continuing to fight, because those are the only tools we have.

That's only tools you learned. And so you're trying to build a new home with the same tools. Does that make sense? Yes, and what's going to happen is you're going to end up building the same house over again. And what happens with veterans especially, is they learn a whole new set of tools, they get they get rebuilt with a new set of tools. Right.

And they have to learn how to not apply those sets of tools everywhere, especially in their civilian life, especially in their marriages, especially in their parenting.

It now you and your husband have a dance. And as you've seen, this dance doesn't end well, right? No, it doesn't. So before we get to him, here's what I want to challenge you to do. I'd love for you.

Is he a good dad? Oh, yes. Is he a good husband?

Besides the fact that he's a veteran with PTSD and he does military things?

Does he love you like his combat boots?

Oh, geez. Does he wears combat boots to mow the yard in shorts, combat boots? Oh, yes. Oh, come on, guys. Come on. I'm staring at a veteran right now in short shorts, combat boots out in the lobby, his smile. And he's like, yep, guilty. He does, doesn't he? Yes.

And tell me, did you know tell me this. That man would set the world on fire for you, too, wouldn't he?

Yes, he would.

Somebody I know the day somebody would mouth off to you in a public place with him there. Right. Yes, I feel like it would be both of us. He would smile on the way to jail because. Right, hey, here's the thing.

Here's what's beautiful. You're both coming from a place where you are tethered into one another. So now it's not about, hey, I don't love her. It's not about I don't love him. This is about we love each other so fierce and we keep opening our tool bags. And all we have is like a screwdriver and a hammer. And we're trying to saw wood with a hammer and we're trying to roof the house with a screwdriver in. All that means is yogurt's got to double down on getting some new tools.

And that's going to start with both of you recognizing that you come from a really traumatic childhood, that that little girl, that little Lily got to heal from. Because she's going to keep stand and watch to make sure nobody gets to Lilly's heart, nobody, because we know what happens when someone gets in your heart, they can hurt you.

And he has seen stuff that people are not supposed to see and he's going to make sure that will not get to my wife, that will not get to my baby.

And he'll see it everywhere, and then all of a sudden the state's electric grid goes out, right. And then it becomes real. All right. And then you saw what happens when it becomes real. Was that scary for the whole house? Oh, yes. Yeah, it was it was it's one of those where you don't want you don't want to expose your child to see you even as young as a year old. Yeah, but, you know, life kind of happens and you can't there's no way to filter that.

That's right. So I want to tell you. In a used Honda Civic, your baby is going to be great. In a old 97 Camry with three hundred thousand miles, it gets you ready to go for a couple of years, we all pay off your debts and while you get on your feet financially, your is going to be fine.

You're going to be embarrassed. You're not dating anymore anyway. You got the guy, right?

What do you care? Right.

And you're going to be great, Mom. And your baby's gonna have a great life in a used bassinet.

And with towels from Wal-Mart. And your husband's going to need to go through a season of getting well and that's hard and that starts with you looking him in the eye and say, I love you, baby, and I've put a lot of pressure on us to accumulate stuff because I had this perfect vision picture in my head of what my of what life had to be.

And I realized, man, I was trying to squeeze the squeeze, all of the joy and love and excitement and adventure out of this family in pursuit of something stuff. And I want you to tell them I'm going you are going to do the hard work of going to meet with somebody to talk about your childhood and that you were going to be the power you made.

Brave step, powerful step number one when you got out of that house. Powerful, powerful, brave. Step number two is you are going to face, turn and face that generational trauma. You're going to stare that forest fire in the face and say, not my family. No baby, no husband in this one, no, you can't fight with fists and you can't fight with guns, you got to fight it with vulnerability. Humility, tears, learning new skills.

And for him, he showed you he's struggling. Your husband is he's not he's not doing great. Is he still in or is he gotten out?

So he's out. You're still after care access. I'm sorry you all still have access to Tricare. No, no, OK, no, I want this. Go ahead. I'm sorry that so the the I think the struggle that he's facing is, you know, you're right, the military restructures its soldiers, right? You become a soldier. Yeah. And then whenever you deployed, you know, you go on your missions, you you know, you do everything that you're told to do.

You're told what to do in the morning. You're told what to do in the evening. And you have all of your days planned out and you have some form of you create a family within your barracks, you know, and you have to. And then once everything's done, you're thanked and your throat is thrown back into civilian life and you don't know you know, you're not you know, it's like you're told you're taught to make bombs, but you can't put that down on your resume.

Right. It's like that's that transition. So I feel like it went from I'm a soldier. I'm back to being civilian. I have a partner now in life and now I'm a dad.

And here's what's beautiful about that. It doesn't sound beautiful, but it is here's why he learned how to do those things. And that means he can learn. He can learn how to experience home life, and it's a process and it's something you go through and there's a number of veterans resource services there in Texas, there's a number of national veterans resource services all over the country.

There are groups that meet in the evenings. There are groups that meet in the mornings. He learned how to be a soldier and he learned how to create family inside of barracks overseas. And he learned. That when he came home, he's got to do things differently and he can learn to love you guys the way he wants to and the way you all deserve the same way as you can learn. How to love to, so I want you both to commit to getting the help that you need, either together by yourself, at some point you are going to do this together because going to learn new skills together, you're both coming from trauma.

You're both going to heal from trauma, and you're both going to create a new family legacy together. And it starts with your bravery and vulnerability for your call. Lily, thank you so much to your husband. If he's listening to this, I want to thank you for your service. I want to thank you for what you put your heart mind through. And I want you to know that this entire communities around you, even when it feels like we're not and there is healing and learning on the other side of this.

He's going to walk with your brother and you're going to walk with him. Thank you so much. All right, let's so we wrap up today's show.

Let's do you know what?

Let's don't do any lyrics today. I'm going to end it with this. I'm looking here at the camera. And if you're just listening to this, listen to me close every single one of these callers today. Has been faced with something that they didn't ask for. They didn't sign up for or maybe they did a little bit, it just came to. Don't be alone, don't live your life by yourself, reach out to other people. Don't be.

Don't ever look in the mirror and think you're not worth being love. You are. You're worth getting well, you're worth being loved, and if you've got people in your sphere, if you're listening to this and this isn't you and you know people are hurting, I want you to reach out to them today. Let them know you're loved.

And I got your six. This has been the Dr. John Doe on show.