My Emotions Are out of Control
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Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. My wife just has to take the brunt of the lion coming at her. And I'm just looking to try to figure out how to take the step back. I love my wife more than anything. You don't, but we'll get there. Most man-child anger, which is what you have, comes from a little kid still trying to protect himself. What's up, what's up, what's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show.

So glad that you are with us talking about your marriage, your mental health, your trying to figure out what's going on with your relationships, dating, emotional health, all of it. All of it. On this show, real people from all over the world call in with stuff they're going through, man. Challenging moments, challenging seasons, abuse, figuring out that their dad's not really their dad, all types of situations. And not everybody goes through the situations in the extreme.

Right? Not everybody finds out their dad isn't really their dad, but we all find out our dad's human. Right? And we all find out that our mom didn't have the tools. And we all find out that we don't have the tools to deal with our kids and schools and all of it.

And if you're like most people, you have found yourself utterly alone. Nobody to ask these questions to. Nobody to say, hey, I need some support. I need some guidance. What do you think about this? And that's what this show is about. For two decades, I've been sitting with people and the wheels have fallen off and we figure out what can you do next. If that is you, I'd love to talk to you. Give me a buzz. 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask.

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And we want you in all of it with us. Thanks for riding with us. Thanks for being with us. Like subscribe, send the show to somebody that needs it. And thanks for being in our gang. All right, let's go out to Boston, Massachusetts, where they got Harvard boss and talk to Ed. Hey Ed, what's up? Hey John, how's it going? We're getting there, brother. How are you, man? Oh, you know, I can always say I've been better. Probably all of us can, man. Probably all of us can. So what's up, dude?

Uh, so recently me and my wife have, uh, I shouldn't say recently it's been going on for years, but we've been going through it, sludging through the crap. Um, and I, I have a, you know, temper that is, that is all over the place and type of person that I feel emotions is incredibly strongly, whatever the emotion is. Um, and I've gotten to the point of self-realization of when I am, um,

starting to, you know, lose, lose control when me and my wife are arguing. And, um,

I've been able to take a step back and like control myself, but only for a short period of time. It's like that, that build up inside of me when I feel I am righteous, wrong or right, that I feel I need to get my point across and my point is more important. And my wife just has to take the brunt of the lion coming at her. And,

And I'm just looking to try to figure out how to take the step back and gain control again. I will say that was not an easy thing for you to say out loud, was it? No. And I need you to hear me say as, um, a guy who's done a lot of work, uh,

And also a guy that has like a, I can't stand it when people are out of control with their anger, especially towards women. I have an inner response to that. And I want you to know that I'm feeling that and I'm honoring you at the same time. Okay. Appreciate that. And you know, this ends today, right? Yeah. Because I don't want to keep going. I don't want to talk anymore. If you're not committed, if you're like, no, I'm going to give it a shot. It has to end today.

Yeah, I mean, I'm fully committed. I love my wife more than anything. You don't. You don't. But we'll get there. You're close, but you don't yet. Okay? Okay. Where does your anger, what's the root? Where does it come from? John, I wish I knew. Here's where most of the time it comes from. Most man-child anger, which is what you have, comes from a little kid still trying to protect himself.

He's just now has a grown up body and he's 35 or however old you are. But that little kid comes out to protect him because the little kids had to protect his whole life. Fair or not? I could say that's fair. And I think about think back to when I was younger, I can see physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. When did you feel trapped as a kid?

Emotional abuse. I have family members that, I guess, for lack of a better term, feel righteous. Yeah, but it's not about that. You got squashed because this rage, this anger, anger points us towards something we care about. That's not a bad emotion, but you weaponize it and you get out of control, right? Emotionally, like a child. Yeah. And when your wife challenges you or quote unquote disrespects you, you know how you feel that, or when your kids don't quote unquote obey you,

And you feel they're really, you feel powerless again. That's when your body overrides the systems. You override love. You override connection. Like the old Dr. Phil saying like, you want to be right or you want to be in love, right? You want to be married. None of that matters because you're going to smash out of this cage that you've been put in. And so when's the first time you got shoved in that cage, dude?

You know, I can look back and think about one family member in particular that I spent a lot of time with. And I can't put my finger on the first time, but I can lay my hand on a handful of times. You know what I mean? I can think of...

Times where it's like I'm expressing, I express something to this person, a belief or anything along those lines. And if it doesn't align with what they believe is right or how they think something should handled, it was not like there was no validation for how I always felt. Yeah, it's deeper than that.

Because I think there's something else, but let's just go with what you told me. It wasn't a matter of, hey, I think that we should all vote conservative as a nine-year-old, right? All nine-year-olds have opinions. It's awesome. And the adult didn't say, no, in this house, we vote Democrat. That person looked at you and said, you're stupid. You freaking moron.

What kind of idiot would say we can vote this way? Are you dumb? Honestly, you say that and I can literally think of him saying essentially the same thing but worded differently. A phrase I remember hearing when I was younger was, I know more, I've forgotten more than you'll ever know. Say it again. It's the, it's... No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't contextualize it. Say it again.

They have forgotten more than I will ever know. No, no, no, no. Say it in first person. Become that person for a second. Okay. Ed, I have forgotten more than you will ever know. Say it again. Ed, I have forgotten more than you will ever know. Gets me going. I know it does.

It sucks. This is a person that I have one of my closest bonds with because it might be just because of the amount of time I spent with them. It might be because you latched on because that's the only way you could survive. Yeah. And if I put my mouth on the exhaust coming out of my car and someone pumps a little bit of oxygen into it, it's not good for me. Yeah. I know. Yeah. And listen.

Those voices we got as a kid over time become the voices we talk to ourselves. They become the things we were told. They become the things we tell ourselves. And now you're repeating those same lines, not to your family yet, but to you. You think you're a piece of crap. Why? Yeah. That's the ESPN ticker tape under the story of your life. Why? What have you done that's so bad, man? Besides be a kid that didn't know stuff. Yeah, pretty much. What is it, man?

Listen, I want you to take your... Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I want you to... I feel it in you. Take your shoulders, and I want you to tense them up as hard as you can up by your ears for a second. I'm going to count to three. Do it as tense as you can. One, two, three, and I'll drop them down. And if you were in my presence, you would feel how still I am. I'm not fighting you. I'm not coming at you. I feel that on you. I feel it coming. Okay? Yep. Same team. My wife always says that. We're the same team. I know, I know.

But here's the deal. You have a little kid, little Ed is still running around trying to prove to everybody that you're not as stupid as that person says you are. And I'm telling you right now, until you unshackle yourself from this other person, from this narrative, from this story, it's a part of your nervous system now. Then your children will carry the weight of that pain. You will pass it on to them. Your wife, if she doesn't leave you, um,

will avoid you at all costs. And then what really sucks about it all is your alarms inside that say, uh-oh, they're leaving again because that's what this other idiot did to you for all those years, would use relationship as a weapon. Your alarms are going to go off, and the only tool you'll have in your five-year, seven- or nine-year-old toolkit is more rage, more righteousness. Fair? Yeah, it's fair. I mean, I hear what you're saying, and I've never really...

Thought about it. I know you presented it. Um, and you're not trapped really. Yeah. It, it, it, it, I think about it in, I end up in situations, you know, I'm 32 years old and there are times where I walk into a room with, I work in construction, you know, I walk into a room for a meeting about a job and I feel like a 12 year old in a room full of adults before a word is said. Yes. Yes.

And then your only response is to alpha up. Yeah. And you go into a construction meeting and it's a bunch of dudes who can piss higher on the fence. And you're hyper aware of somebody kind of dismissing an idea or kind of tossing a report you wrote. And that little boy goes, did you just, that guy disrespect me? Right? And that whole cycle starts over again. You're not 12, you're 32 years old, bro. Yep. Right? And here's what I want for you, dude, more than anything in the world. I want you to have peace.

I'd love some, man. I would love some. You have to decide I'm unhooking from that relationship. I don't even know who it is, and I think it's better for me and the audience to not even know who it is. It doesn't matter. That person's poisoned you your entire life. You are still trying to prove to them. Is that the person you call when you get a raise or you get promoted? Yeah. Yeah. Am I enough now? Am I enough? Am I enough? I've forgotten more than you'll ever know. Or, hey, look, I got promoted. Yeah, I did that once, too. They're going to screw you.

Yeah. So this is a man who I actually haven't spoken to for about a month because of how they treated my wife last time we were around them. Okay. How long, how long are you going to have this person in your life? They're burning you down. They burned your wife down. Their kids are next. How long? I've been waiting for a apology for how my wife was treated. You're never going to get it. You're never going to get it. That will never come.

And here's what I want you to see what's happening. You are outsourcing your life to this person. You can't emotionally move until they do a thing. Quit giving them that power. You're free. They don't have that kind of power over you. Who cares? They don't get a vote. Who cares if they apologize to your wife? Their apology isn't worth the breath that they speak it on. But you, my brother, can forgive them because you're not carrying their crap anymore. Have you heard me talk about bricks and backpacks?

I'm not sure I've heard that one. All right, so here's the deal. All of us are born with a backpack on, and all of us go through stuff, whether it's someone puts little pebbles in our backpack or bricks in our backpack or cinder blocks. This person put a cinder block in your backpack, and then they made you feel weak when it hurt your shoulders as a kid.

And they've continued to add stuff in there and continue to and continue to. And you're walking around with all this weight on. You have no margin. You have no, you're exhausted because all day you wake up and you're carrying this bag before you even get up. And then you're running up to this guy and saying, look how strong I am. And he's like, you should see how heavy my backpack is. And he walks off and you're like, okay, I'm going to get some more weight. And here's what I want you to visualize. Stop carrying this dude's bricks around. Set them down.

Yep. Right? This is freedom. And then when your kid says something stupid to you like all kids do, when you and your wife get in a disagreement, you have margin. You can go, man, she is mad. We need to solve this. But she is mad is different than I'm a piece of crap again and I'll show you. Right? Yeah. I got to step on my back and stand up straight. No, you don't, dude. That's just another bro town.

You need to drop the backpack, man, and sit down. You can't outflex this. Okay. This is not because you are weak. I was just in Vegas last weekend. There was some big fights, and I ran into Chuck Liddell several times. I met Chuck a long time ago. I don't care how tough Chuck Liddell is, the light heavyweight champion for years, but if I just followed him around and hit him with a baseball bat over and over again, it doesn't matter how tough or strong that guy is. Yeah, you'll beat him down. Right? Yeah.

Now, I'm going to give you some practical tools. You can throw all these away, but if you do them, they will change your life. Are you in? Yes. Okay. The first one is from Dr. Peter Atiyah, and he has talked very openly and eloquently about him dealing with his own personal rage and some things he had to do. But one of the things the therapist asked him to do, and he said he rolled his eyes at it, that he then said was transformative, and it took a few months, is this. I want you to say, I commit to doing this. All right.

I commit to this. All right. Every time you start talking to yourself in a stupid way, you beat yourself up, you suck, freaking Ed. Gosh. You have to pull your phone out and leave a voice message as though you were talking to a friend who just made the same mistake. Okay. Okay? Every single time that you start talking to yourself as though you're an idiot, you're a moron, you're weak. And I'm going to add one more layer. Every time you hear that other dude's voice, I've forgotten more crap.

Hey, dude, Dan, man, that sucks. Yeah, dude. Yeah, I didn't know that either. You'll figure that out, man. Yep. Right? Yep. And we're going to change the way we talk to ourselves because the way we talk to ourselves is amplified in how we talk to other people. You cannot learn to love and connect and treat your wife with dignity and respect if you don't respect yourself. You can't give what you don't got. Okay? Number two, you are going to write nine-year-old Ed a letter. You're going to tell that kid,

He wasn't safe then. And I want you to be really honest. And I know you're kind of hedging it because you've got a relationship with whoever this dude is. I want you to write in that letter real honest. This guy did this. He said this. And I'm 32 now, Ed. And I want you to know I'm taking it from here. You've kept us safe long enough. It's time for you to go, run, and play. Yeah. It's a lot. It's a lot to take in. I know it is. And I've had grown men who are big bad dudes, man, sobbing while writing that letter.

And I want you to visualize you sitting across a desk at your nine-year-old little self and your feet don't touch the floor and your feet are kicking underneath your chair. I want you to visualize it. Little red hair, yellow hair all stuck up everywhere. You got it. Little redhead Ed. There you go. Little redhead Ed. The third thing is I want you to write this person's name down in one of the sentences they told you. I want you to use the one you told me. I've forgotten more than you'll ever know, you idiot.

And I want you to put that on duct tape on a cinder block. And I want you to walk around your backyard or up and down the street with it for a while until it burns. Sometimes it's 20 minutes. Sometimes it can be an hour for somebody like you who's strong. And when you've had enough, I want you to throw that thing down, set it down, tear the tape off, and say out loud, I'm never carrying your bricks again. And you'll get pissed off in the future. You'll get angry. You'll say stuff to yourself. And you'll record that little note to yourself on your phone.

But then I want you to say out loud, yeah, I'm not carrying that. And here's what we're doing. It's going to take you months, okay? Yep. You're just teaching your body. You weren't okay then. You're okay now. Does your wife love you, Ed? And I'll tell you how much. Okay. I want you to sit down and probably take a knee and hold her hands as though you're getting engaged again and tell her that she's getting a new husband and that we're going to fight this thing together. Okay? Yep. All right. Last two things.

I'm not done yet. And by the way, when this thing, I'll see if we can get you a rough cut of this today so you can start on this today, okay? Okay. I want you to start changing the language from I to Ed, from first person to third person. When you get angry, I want you to start saying out loud, Ed needs to go for a walk instead of, I'm getting really mad, right? Yeah. Because when you say I, there's research about this, but I...

triggers up some different chemical pathways to make it simple than the third person, than Ed. You and me can be at a Red Sox game and we can look over and be like, dude, that guy's getting really mad. And we have distance from it and our brains and bodies can see that at a distance. But when you say I, and you're just going to have to say, hey, honey, I'm going to be weird. I'm going to talk like The Rock sometimes. And ask her. Don't say you.

Because when she says you, that little boy comes out swinging or spitting, right? So when she's referring to me, have her use my name too. Hey, I see Ed's starting to get upset. All right. And you can go. Yeah, Ed's starting to get upset. I'm going to go for a walk.

Okay. And we're just creating a, just a tiny fraction of an inch of space. Does that sound cheesy and stupid? Yes, of course it does. That's all right. It does. And it doesn't because I've had this view of if I can get, like I view angry Ed as behind a closed door and sensible Ed on the other side. There you go. And sensible Ed just needs to get that door cracked, crack it open. And then I'll be able to open the door and I'll be able to get

to angry Ed and calm him down. I don't want you to calm angry Ed down. I want you to open the door today. Stop farting around with it. Open the door today and go hug Ed. Cause that's all anger is man. Do you love me? And do you see me? Yeah. That's what angry Ed's yelling about. And by the way, angry Ed, you see him as a raging adult. He's not, he's nine because adults don't have control. Adults don't talk to people like that. Adults have control of their emotions.

Yeah. I have to be there. So when you bust that door open, don't expect a big hulking, frothing at the mouth, angry, grown up Ed. C.A. fighting with every inch of his life to hold back tears. Fist clenched, nine-year-old Ed. And what would you say to a nine-year-old who was scared to death? Dude, come here, little buddy. Come here. You're all right. I got you. That's angry Ed. You hear what I'm saying?

Yeah, yeah, I'm just taking it in. I know, it's a lot. Taking it in. And I know you've never considered that before. You are trying to take on adult, raged out Ed with kind, sensible adult Ed. And that's not the fight that's taking place. All right, last thing. You have to be determined to get upstream from this. Okay? What does that mean? Sleep, exercise. If you owe a bunch of money, little Ed is going to be terrified that he can't provide for his wife and his kids.

Do you have weekly meetings with your wife to say, hey, what are we going to do this week? What's this week look like for us? How can I love you this week? Because what you're doing is you're practicing connecting way upstream and you're not waiting until something's on fire and then someone yells, run! And you don't like how they yelled run and now we're in a fight. So what practices do you have to have upstream? Honey, I just have to start going to bed a little bit earlier. Honey, I can't do dessert and fried foods every night. Honey, I've got to go see a counselor, which by the way, you should.

I got to go talk to somebody, another person on the regular and practice these things that this, that this Deloney guy told me, honey, I'm going to go away for three weeks to inpatient because I'm just going to be surrounded by it so that I can get well, whatever you got to do. Hey kids, y'all don't have the power to make me mad. Y'all are 12. I'm a grown man. I'm 32. You can't, you can't make me mad. Y'all just don't have that kind of strength and power. I love you. And I'm going to quit choosing rage. Just gotta let that little guy go, man.

Let him go play. He's supposed to be out with his friends, trading baseball cards, getting in shoving matches, playing baseball on the street. It's time. Find a man that you trust that's a little bit older than you and I want you to sit down and tell him everything you've told me. Grief demands a witness. You're going to have to grieve this thing. You have to sit in front of somebody else and say, dude, I've been through hell and I've been dragging loved ones through hell. It's going to hurt. You need to say it out loud. Then I'm going to be about being well. You can't do any of this stuff I told you about yourself. You're going to have to get a gang and you're worth every single step of the way in.

Hang on the line. I'm going to send you a copy of both Building a Non-Anxious Life and Own Your Past, Change Your Future. It's my gift to you, brother. I want you to read them. I want you to read them with your wife. You're not going to build something completely new. You're going to let Ed finally go play, man. That nine-year-old you, he's done fighting. We'll be right back.

Let's talk about Organifi. I just got home from a week in the woods with family and friends and a few hundred high school kids at a summer camp. And as you can imagine, I ate camp food for a week, I didn't sleep great, and high schoolers aren't the most hygienic creatures in the world. And now that I'm home...

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All of it. Invest in yourself with Organifi. All right, let's go out to Enfield, Connecticut and talk to Carrie. Hey, Carrie, what's up? So I have a two-part question for you. Okay, let's do it. So the first part is, how do I keep my struggle with anxiety and depression from affecting my kids? And then the second part of that is, how do I explain it better to my husband so he can help me with that too?

Okay. Give me a context. Tell me about, tell me about home life. Um, I am a mom to five kids. They are eight, seven, six, four, and two and a half. And we homeschool. So we're together all the time. Carrie, Carrie, Carrie, Carrie, Carrie. Who told you you have anxiety and depression?

Doctors. I had kind of a short spell in my early 20s with some depression, and then I was able to work through that. But right before we had our oldest, we had a baby who was born at 20 weeks. And that kind of kicked up.

One, the depression because he passed away. And then also the anxiety, especially postpartum with my kids kind of following that because, you know, I was worried about them. I was worried about the pregnancies and all that kind of stuff. And then a lot of that kind of quieted down, but then it's become...

okay, am I going to be good enough for them? Am I going to teach them enough? Am I going to, and it, God, you're not homeschooling all that to them too. Are you? I am, which I love. Oh, here we go. But I love it. Okay. What, um, what, um, where's dad? Uh, dad works. He's home with us though. Um, whenever he's not at work, he's with us. Okay. Um,

All right. I want to reframe something for you real quick and then run through a bunch of things. Okay. Sounds good. And when you get off this phone, you could say that guy's an idiot. He doesn't understand. And all good. And I might tell you some things you've never heard before, which makes me sad, but it may be the way it is. Okay. Gotcha. How old were you when you got married? 29. Okay. Okay.

Was that before or after your first, like, whoa, your first dance with Feeling Low? This time, yeah. Depression. That was before. Okay. So you got married before or the depression was before? The depression was before. Sorry. Okay. All right. I don't think your body is broken. I don't think you're malfunctioning. I don't think things aren't working right. Okay. Okay. I think you and I could talk for a long time and you could paint me a picture of...

growing up and into your 20s and the way you expected the world to be and challenges physically and romantically and your body put a blanket on some things. And you went and talked to a doctor and they said, you have how many symptoms for how long? This is some sort of depression. Here's some medication and go get them. And then you got married and y'all had a kid and that kid is no longer with us.

And your body put a GPS pin in hopes and love and dreams. Because if you're like me, if you're like my wife, the moment you found out you were pregnant, you started imagining pictures about this guy coming home from Christmas and bringing somebody home. Yep. You started imagining what that room was going to look like. And your body put a GPS pin in, hey, this particular thing, this relationship gets us hurt.

And like most moms who experienced some sort of pregnancy loss or some sort of short-term, you went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what you did. Oh, yeah. Right? And blame turns into shame, turns into this will never happen again, which is projecting a false sense of control into the future. That's anxiety. And so every time you got pregnant again, there was that joy, that

And there was that mixture of, all right, and your body said, what are you doing? We got hurt real bad last time. And it sounds the alarm louder and louder and louder because it's just trying to keep you safe. I don't think you're broken. I think your body's working really well. It's frustrating as all get out, but I think it's working well, right? I got in my car this morning and I was dropping my son off at school and he took his seatbelt off early before we got right to the drop off.

And that stupid thing started beeping so loud and it wouldn't stop. And we both started laughing and then it got like miserable. The car's not broken. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do. Right. It was my job to figure out, like, my son's not in danger. We're going less than one mile an hour. Nothing's wrong, but the car's working perfectly. Right. Now I'm going to cast some judgments your way. I want you to tell me if I'm wrong or right.

Okay. Okay. And you are not allowed to say I should, or to let mom guilt override any of the things I'm going to say out loud, which I know is ridiculous, but here we go. Okay. You are dreadfully lonely. You are being buried under the care of five emotionally unregulated maniacal little people under the age of eight.

Your body has been a playground, a cafeteria, and an energy receiver. Some husband comes in, he's like, are we going to party or what? You're like, okay. For a decade, 10 years, you have not had, in the nerd world, we call it agency or autonomy. And that is, I have control of my body. You haven't had that for 10 years.

How old are you? 42. Okay. 25% of your life. And my guess is if we talked about your life from zero to 18, you didn't have a lot of control during that either. Yep. So let's go with 30 years, 75% of your life. Okay. And it's just alarms ringing off the hook.

And by the way, you know what we should do? We should also be a school teacher, a chef, a janitor, a disciplinarian. Right? Yep. So you're not broken. Your body is telling you this is, we're past the capacity of what we can do. Yep. And what was your, what was your baby's name who passed at 20 weeks? Caleb. Okay. Caleb, just like with Caleb, you had plans.

And you probably, if you're like me, had some judgments about other parents who don't have these kind of plans. I'm going to have a bunch of kids. I'm going to homeschool. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And then your body said, yeah, no, we're not. Right. Okay. And are you on the medication merry-go-round? I am. Okay. Hey, don't apologize for it. Don't be like, no, you're getting through it. But do you also feel like you're missing a big chunk of your life?

I do. Like you're witnessing your own life with sunglasses on indoors. Yes. That is a perfect description of it. I see my kids. I see them, but I feel like there's a barrier between all of us. Okay. Am I wrong on any of that stuff or am I right? No, you got it. Okay. When I get backed into a corner created by the way I said things should be, have to be, ought to be, will be.

And I cement those shoulds and haves and wills with judgments of other people who don't. Right? I'll never do that because I'm this kind of dad. Then the world has a funny way of being like, oh, really? Okay, watch this. Right? Here's the way I handle this. I take my arm, and this is all metaphorical, and I wipe the table completely clean of everything that I knew to be true and that I swore on and that I promised everything.

And I put all the variables back on the table one at a time. What does that mean? Everything's off the table. Am I in love and dedicated to my husband? Yes. And him with me? I'm going to assume yes. Okay. We love these five kids, even though they're maniacs? Yes. Those are unchangeable, immovable. In fact, when I tried to swipe them off the table, they stayed. I can't move those. They're there. Right? And if you have a faith practice, that one doesn't move either. Okay? So then...

You pick up one off the floor that you knocked on the floor and you hold it. Do I have to homeschool? I want to. I think it's the best thing, but I'm drowning. And I would rather have to maybe explain some things that my kids learned in school. I'd rather have to explain some things than have to pass on a dysregulated, unregulated nervous system to my children. Right. Right. When do you ask for help or support?

I have family around who comes over, but... When do you ask for help and support? When I'm drowning, when I'm starting to cry over nothing. You don't want to, but you have to. And so you're going to pick up off the floor, I can do this. And you have to say, I can with help and support. Fair? Yep. You're going to have to grieve this superwoman picture where you can do it all because, and I'm going to tell you the truth, you can't.

And that's okay. You never could in the first place. You just told yourself you could, and you created a big story about women who didn't. And now we're choosing reality. And here's a weird thing. When you choose reality, you're forced to choose boundaries. That's when you look at your eight-year-old and you say, I am unable to meet need X right now. I'll be back in 30 minutes.

I need you. Like yesterday, my wife was out of town and I was just, I mean, I was just, it was several days. I'm over my head. And I looked at my son and said, can you please make your sister a lunch? Cause I'd forgotten about it. And he's like, I got it, dad. I was embarrassed. I'd asked my 14 year old to help me get two kids out the door. It's not that hard, but I did. And he was amazing at it. And it gave him a sense of purpose. All I have to say is you have to choose reality. And when your body realizes you're driving your own life again, when you have autonomy again,

Even when you're breastfeeding, even when your husband comes home and he's like, we got five kids. I've been thinking about let's party all day. And you're like, oh my gosh. Like even when you feel being pulled in all these different directions, you're driving. Hey honey, here's what I need today. Here's how you can love me today. How can I love you today? See what I'm saying? Yeah. What's the state of your finances? Pretty good. We are working on, our debt is almost completely paid off. Awesome. You're going to find some peace after that.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And he, he's really nice and he takes care of, he gives me updates, but he takes care of most of that for me. So I don't have to carry that too. Well, sometimes in an effort to help and be supportive, we take things off people's plates and there's that little bitty voice in your head, especially if you come from a financially insecure home that begins to wonder if everything's okay. So I don't really care who pushes the button to pay the bill every month or who writes the check every month.

But it does help for everybody to put their eyes on something. Gotcha. And all that is, is a 30 minute meeting once a week. Hey honey, can we talk about calendar? Can we talk about, what's he do for a living? He's a funeral director. Cause why not? Right. Why not come home to somebody who's glassy eyed because he's been sitting in other people's pain all day. Right. Well, that's what I was going to say. I was like, I understand like for him. So he hasn't dealt with that kind of,

He's never gone through anxiety or depression. No, but he's had business capacity issues before. He gets capacity and he gets boundaries. Right. Right. And then when he comes home for him, when I'm crying over, you know, normal stuff that just goes, just the volume.

You have no margin. Right. But he's been with people all day who have lost someone and it's life or death all day long. And you're right. Like he sits in their grief, he sits in their pain with them. And then he comes home and he doesn't have margin. Very similar in the same way your kids have, have drained your margin from you. And I want you to take your margin back. You and those kids get your good, get his first fruits, not his job.

True. The people who come to him get what's left over after you're whole and those kids are whole. Okay? And that's his journey to figure that out. And I had to learn that one the hard way. Yeah. Okay? Because if you don't, you're going to start to resent him. And that's not fair for him. That's not fair for you. Right. And he's going to come home to a crying, sobbing wife who wanted five kids and wants to homeschool. And he's going to start resenting you and himself. And that's not fair either. Right. So...

All that to say is I don't know that you need to explain what anxiety feels like. Okay. I think you need to be able to say, here's what I need right now. We're both busy. He's got a team. If he's a funeral home director, he tells his team, here's what I need. I need you to make these phone calls. I need you to answer these things. I need you to call. He's got a team. So the director does. I need you to take on that role in your home. Here's what I need.

Here's how this home needs to operate and not, well, all the kids need this, this, and this. No, no, no, no, no. You go first. What do you need? You need some help. You need sleep. You need to put intimacy on the calendar. You need to put feeding schedules. All your kids need chores. You probably need to look at a local school because while you have a zero and a one and a two and a three and a five and a six and a seven, that's a lot. And you'll have to grieve the fact that your kids are in school because you had a different picture.

Or they can go to a homeschool co-op. I don't know. I don't want to get a bunch of hate mail, but I'm just telling you this. You can't keep going as you're going. And I don't want you to tell your husband, hey, this is how my body's broken. It's not. This is my body letting me know I'm over capacity. And we got to do some things differently. And that's okay. We had a plan. It's not going to work. It's the beautiful thing about getting older is you kind of get to decide what it looks like.

here's how all this begins you and your husband go out and i want you all to have breakfast and i want you to hire a babysitter and probably you can't afford it because you have five kids it's gonna be a million dollars an hour just be where that is but i want you to hire a babysitter i want you to go out and say okay 10 years 10 years six pregnancies six kids one kid's passed away how do we want this house to feel like when you get home from work how do i want this house to feel like when i wake up in the morning i want to i want to be so excited you're home

I want to be so excited to be a mom of five maniac kids. And here's what has to be true for these things to work. I'm going to send you a copy of Building a Non-Anxious Life. I want you to read that book. I want you and him to read that. And I want you to use those six daily choices as a guidepost, as a map for your family. And just talk through them together. Most of the funeral directors I've met in the past are very pragmatic people. They're very spreadsheet-y kind of people. He may be perfect to look at this roadmap and go, okay, we can do these things.

Really grateful that you're out there loving those kids the way you are. Keep at it. Have those hard conversations and you get to decide what this thing looks like. That also means you're going to have to decide what help and support and care that you need. You're a great mom. We'll be right back.

Hey, you guys, it's me. Now listen, this fall's Money in Marriage getaway just sold out really, really fast. So we decided to surprise you all with another date. That's right. Over Valentine's Day weekend 2025, Money in Marriage is coming back.

Now, we all know how busy life can be between work and kids and loads of laundry, so focusing on your marriage can feel like the last thing to do on your to-do list. But let's change that. Join me and Dr. John Deloney for two and a half days to get the tools to strengthen your relationship and win with money. Plus, ask me and John your questions during our live Q&As that we do that weekend. They're so fun.

And get your early bird tickets for $699 while they last. And hurry to get the VIP tickets because those sold out especially fast for our fall event. So get yours today at ramseysolutions.com slash marriage. Hope to see you there. All right, we are back. If you are doing something and listening to this podcast in headphones, I want you to take a minute. And this is something I don't ever talk about on the show.

And there's 0% chance I'll get all the way through this. And so just want to put that out there. If you got kids in the room, you probably want to pause it or usher them out. The one thing I don't ever talk about on the show is the people whose lives I still interact with on a daily basis. I don't take, I'm not, I'm not licensed in the state of Tennessee, so I don't take therapy clients. But I do walk alongside people behind closed doors.

And it's usually friends that I know or family members or sometimes whatever. A year ago, I think it's about a year ago, a family reached out, a husband and wife, amazing couple named Andrew and Stephanie. And we talked and they let me know that they just received word that their four-year-old little girl had terminal brain cancer, had an inoperable brain tumor. And they had, I don't know, between nine months and a year.

And they wanted to do this right. And they didn't know the path forward. And I didn't either. But I said, I'll sit with you and we'll figure it out. And over the last year, it may have been 18 months, but the last year or so. And again, I've got their permission to tell the story. I don't ever tell these stories publicly. I mean, you don't ever want to sit down and have a conversation with the dad about what dress should we bury our daughter in, right? Right.

What music should we play? How do we invite people to speak at? I mean, it's just hard stuff. And this is extraordinary little girl named Adeline McGuire. And I got to know her. I got to know them well. They were coworkers, but I got to know them really well. And I continued to be amazed at the strength and capacity of this little girl.

to be tough and to smile and to head into treatments and to head out of treatments and head back into treatments. And she was a big sister of two other little, little girls. And to see the strength of an incredible husband and wife. And as Adeline got sicker and sicker and sicker, I had a conversation on the phone with the two parents. And I just want to tell you the story that happened because I think it's a magical story.

They were asking about how do you even plan? How do you plan a funeral? How do you plan a memorial service? And we're thinking about doing this and we're thinking about doing that. And everyone just keeps saying, just do whatever you want to do, but we can't even wrap our heads around this. And as part of the conversation, I said, you know, if this was my daughter, we'd probably play a Taylor Swift song or two, even though it's inside of a church building, because my daughter's pathologically obsessed, like probably needs to be on medication, obsessed with Taylor Swift right now. And...

They said, oh, we're going to play a song from the Frozen soundtrack. Adeline loved Dressing Like a Princess, was always dressing like princesses, and was really just all about Frozen. Well, it just so happens that my son was the lead with his friends in an eighth grade play, Frozen. Hang on a second. All right.

At their elementary school, I mean, I'm sorry, at their middle school, the play Frozen, my son was the lead in the Frozen play. And I said, well, that's this weekend. Would y'all want to go? Or can Adeline still see? Can she still hear? And he goes, oh, yeah, she can see. She can hear. She's not talking well, but she can still see. So I said, I know all the shows are sold out. Let me see what I can do. So I called a woman named Rachel Hansen.

who if you don't believe in modern angels, middle school theater teachers, God help them, right? She was the director of the Frozen play. And I reached out to her and said, hey, here's the story. Here's the situation. And this will be the last thing this family does together. Could you find them some seats? And she said, you bet I will. And then she texted me back and said, what's her name again? And I said, Adeline.

And I didn't know any of this was going on. I just knew they were going to have four seats. And I talked to my son that night and I said, I need you to hear me directly. I'm going to ask you something really hard. My son's 14. And I said, there's a family that's going to come and she's going to be in a wheelchair. And it's tough for her to swallow right now. It's tough for her to hear. And I want you to do some very specific things with this young girl. I want you to make sure that she's honored and taken care of. I want you to make sure you hold her hand.

I want you to make sure that you put your cheek next to her cheek. And it's going to be tough. And I'm asking you to do a lot, even though you're in eighth grade. And my son said, I got it, Dad. And what I didn't know is Ms. Hanson. Hang on a sec. And what I didn't know is Ms. Hanson, the teacher, had pulled together a meeting of all the theater students and all the kids that work on the set crew.

And in just a few short hours before the family showed up, Ms. Hansen had pulled together. They'd made some signs with her name on it, and they gave this little girl a full tour of the castle, got to take pictures and sing songs with the actors. My son told me that she told them, if any of you kids start crying, y'all are out of here. And so the kids, Hank said, the kids would go to a side room, and these seventh, sixth, and eighth graders would just weep, and then they would come back in.

Because they knew they were giving this daughter and this family a magic time. And it was one of those moments where you wonder what kind of good comes out of this kind of tragedy. That this extraordinary little girl whose life was cut short by this evil called cancer. And now there's an entire middle school theater department worth of kids that understand the value of sitting with hurting people. And crying and feeling scared and going in and doing the right thing anyway. And...

the power of song and joy and finding some little little candle light worth of light in the darkness a little lit candle worth of light in the darkness and at the funeral which is a beautiful thing i saw a bunch of people wearing shirts that some artist had made that had adeline drawn into the frozen

And so I was like, oh my gosh, I want one of those shirts. And I got into the office today and they had made me one special and put it on my desk. And so I thought instead of taking a call, I wanted to tell the story. And one thing that has come up every single time, 100% of the times I've sat with moms who've lost a child, I've always, 100% of the moms have said, I don't want the world to forget their name. I don't want the world to forget they were here.

And so for my friend, beautiful little girl, Isla McGuire, this is me doing my part that the world won't forget you. That we're going to remember to say your name. We're going to remember the light that you were. We're going to remember you got two amazing parents and two amazing, beautiful little girls. And I'm super glad you're not hurting anymore. I wish you're still here, but I'm glad you're not hurting anymore. And I'm glad that I got the opportunity to meet you and walk alongside you for a little bit. And for everybody out there listening,

Whether it's somebody's kid who's sick, whether somebody's marriage has fallen apart, whether it's somebody who's not doing well, somebody's got some sort of emotional health or whatever's going on in their life. You hear the calls on the show all the time. People are hurting out there. We think we need the right things to say or we have to have some sort of expertise. People just need you to show up. Just show up. And if you get the call, hey, could y'all make something special happen? Make that something special happen. Because you never know what's going to be a family's last time together.

To Stephanie and Andrew, y'all are angels. To Rachel Hansen, you're an angel. To all those kids, y'all are angels. Take care of each other, please, and show up. We'll be right back.

Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point. In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com.

All right, we're back. Man, I'm not going to do anything cute to end today's show. Just want to tell you, if you got little ones, stop and hug them. Just stop today. Stop now and go hug them. If you got loved ones, stop and hug them. If you got somebody that you've gotten across with, that you've got a long-term relationship with, just call them. Just call them. And if you're hurting, just call them.

And you need somebody to sit with you. You need somebody to just pull up a stool and say, I don't know, but I'm here. Make that phone call too. I love you guys. And I'm so grateful that you continue to show up and do life with us. I'll see you next time. Take care of each other. Bye-bye.