I Used to Be an Escort
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Coming up on The Dr. John Deloney Show. I struggle with having to need acceptance and, I don't know, just constant reassurance from people. When you tell me you're 33 and you're married to a great guy and you're clean and there's still this nagging sense that I don't belong here and I need approval, I'm going to say yes. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. What up? What up? This is John with The Dr. John Deloney Show. Man, I'm so glad you're hanging out with us today.

I am confident we've got a doozy of a show here. Today's show may not be for the young ones in the house, and there's some heavy topics on the lineup today. So that's just a FYI, FYI. On this show, we talk about real people going through real challenges, man. We talk about your emotional health, your marriages, your mental health, whatever's going on in your world. And I'll sit with you when it's hard, when you're trying to figure out what's the next right move. And I'm also going to tell you the truth.

And I love you, and I'm going to tell you the truth. If you want to be on this show, I'd love to have you. Go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K, or give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. Let's go out to H-Town, home of the first place Astros, Kelly, and talk to Andrea. Hey, Andrea, what's up?

Hi, nice to talk to you. I'm a huge fan, super nervous like everyone else. I hate to be like everybody else, but it is how it is. Thank you so much for calling. What's up? Of course. So my question is, is how do I, I struggle with having to need acceptance and just being

I don't know, just constant reassurance from people. And I am married. And so that's basically the question. Okay. They gave me a little bit of a heads up about your story. You've got a story that you've told on national TV a couple of times. Talk us through it.

Yeah, so I'm adopted. I was born in Peru, Lima, Peru. My parents are, my dad's a doctor, he's a pathologist, and my mom's a nurse midwife. She's director of her clinic in Pasadena. Your adoptive parents?

Yes, my adoptive parents. And they came to adopt me at about five months old. And unfortunately, the U.S. consulate wouldn't allow them to adopt me. And so they had to come back to Peru. And I was five months. I was obviously not a baby. Baby, baby. And so my mom tried to keep me. My biological mother tried to keep me for five months. Unfortunately, she was taking care of a lot of her family members. She was the only one able to work. And

And she loved me very much because she wanted to keep me. And I know that. I know that. This is a fact. And so she had to come back from her little village. I think it's outside of Cusco. And she had to, like, I don't know how far it is, but she had to get on the bus that amount of time, see me again after saying goodbye to me. Hold on, hold on, hold on. And Andrea, let's don't go through the whole thing. I want you to get right to it so I can help you right now, okay? Okay.

Uh-huh. It rolls back into like a pattern of all the way, like walk me through your story from you got adopted and you got brought to the States. How old were you when you got to the States? Um, I was eight months. Eight months. Okay. Let's, let's never doubt or question again that your mom loved you. Correct? Your bio mom. Right. No. Yeah. I kind of just like, I've told this story so many times. I know. I can tell. It's just, you just jumped right on the loop there. Okay. So stay with me present. Okay.

Yeah. All right. So you come here at eight months old and then where do things get sideways for you?

Um, my parents divorced and they separated when I was four and they divorced when I was six. Okay. So you had the second massive, massive, massive trauma for a little kid. Yes. Okay. Okay. Um, fortunately for me though, um, I'm very self-aware. I've always been self-aware. You were four. So I'm not going to buy that. Keep, keep going. Keep going. That's true. Um, um,

So after four years old, my family, my parents tried to stay in the same home for about up until...

Probably about like seven or eight. That probably wasn't the best idea. I will say my mom tried her best at keeping the fighting under wraps. I only remember one fight, but I'm sure, I don't know what I've pushed underneath, but I only remember. A lot. You pushed a lot of it. You had a chaotic divorced family trying to live in the same house. Two very wealthy, two very smart people trying to intellectualize something, right? Yeah. Yeah. And fortunately, my dad is...

He's a little bit different. My mom thinks more with her heart and my dad. I mean, he just started, his heart recently started beating, luckily. But yeah, but anyway. So take me into your teenage years and into your young adult years. So when I was about 12 years old, my dad, he hit me in the face. And I don't recall like abuse, abuse. I recall like being scared a lot.

I don't... That's the only time, the one and only time I remember him hitting me. And he grabbed me out of my bed. And we hadn't been... We weren't able to communicate. It's really hard to communicate with him. And so he...

Basically, the story was we went to grocery shopping and I grabbed orange juice. He likes to put everything in the fridge himself, so I didn't put it in the fridge because I didn't want to upset him. I just left it out. Then he came in my room and said, hey, did you get some orange juice? I threw it all out. I thought it was open. Then he came out and threw me out of my bed and said, you don't deserve anything. He turned off the electricity, took the radio, everything, said you don't deserve it.

How did he turn off the electricity to his house? Like, like not electricity, but like turn the light off, like turn the AC off, turn the radio off. Like, so you're 12 and he threw you on the floor and he punched you in the face. Yeah. It was more like a, like a hard, hard slap. And he threw me on the floor and said, you don't deserve anything. And that next morning we drove the car to my school and he was good.

He kept saying, like, don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody. You don't deserve food. You don't deserve anything. It was his weekend. When do you come? Because it was going to be his weekend. You know, you just wait. Hold on, hold on. Stop, stop, stop. You just got this train track. So you get on the story. You've told it so many times. And you've told it so many times, you don't feel it. But I can hear it in your voice. It comes up. Yeah, probably. Bio moms aren't supposed to be in a situation where they can't hang on to their babies.

I'm sorry. Yeah. And then parents who do remarkable things and adopt young kids, not supposed to come home and their world blows up and they get divorced and I'm sorry. And dads aren't supposed to hit their baby little girls for being 12 or for any reason. And dads aren't supposed to tell daughters they don't deserve things because that's not true. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Hold on. You just blew by it again. Sit in it for a second. Okay. Yeah.

All right. So let's don't go through each one of these little things. I know you and I could talk for hours and hours and hours and hours, but get to when things got sideways. Well, kind of like a little brief. I started cutting myself around that time, obviously. And that day I told the counselor and my mom wanted to press charges and stuff, but we just decided it was just best that I just not go back.

And he didn't try to talk to me for a year. I just feel like that's like a big part of it. He didn't talk to me for a year that I know of, that I remember. I don't remember being reached out to. I don't remember, like about 14 months.

And later on we go to, you know, all this therapy my whole life. And then about 15, I was sent to, well, I was meant to hospitals up until that time, really because of the cutting. My mom was always, you know, she's my mom and my best friend and she's always been, unfortunately, I always wanted my dad's attention. And so like the only way I would get it would be negatively. Yeah. And by the way, by the way, you're not supposed to be best friends with your mom when you're 14. You're not. Right. That's not strong parenting.

Right. That's codependent parenting. Yeah. You're supposed to be their kid. Yeah. Unfortunately for her, she's treated me like a... I know. I know. I'm just telling you. Yeah. Just you and me. That shouldn't happen that way. Because then you find yourself really desperately, desperately seeking, trying to ask your dad as a 12-year-old, 13, 14-year-old, what did I do? Why don't you love me?

You came and rescued me, and then you don't love me, and then you're also burdened at the same time with propping up and holding up your mom's friendship. And that's too much weight for a 14-year-old. It's just too much. You're supposed to just be a 14-year-old girl. Yeah. Right? All right, so go ahead. So I go to a rehab, like behavioral long-term for a year in New Mexico. I come back. Were you actively suicidal? No.

I mean, I wasn't like, I wouldn't say that. And my mom never believed that either. I just wanted attention, I think. I truly believe that. They don't send away young kids for a year-long inpatient treatment program just because they want attention.

I was also like fighting in school and I was getting, I'd been kicked out of three schools in one semester once. So it was a lot. It was more behavioral. Yeah, there you go. Okay. It was more behavioral. Okay. Sorry. And so, um, I started dabbling in drugs when I was about, I mean, um,

When I was probably like 14, but it was very light. Like before I went to that school for a year, I just wanted to, it was just around. It wasn't really anything. When did you start using heavy? When I was about nine, about 18 or about 19, 1920, 1920. And then what happened when you're 1920 and you're, you're, you're, you're over your head with, with using. I started getting abused again from a boyfriend. Okay. And by the way, this is going to sound nuts on the show,

But it makes sense to me that a 15, 16, 17, 18-year-old started using drugs in increasing amounts based on what you'd been through. Because at some point, your body cannot metabolize all that's going on around you, and drugs work. They take that pain away. They take the edge off. They give you energy when you don't have it. They make you feel like you thought you were going to feel in a loving, caring relationship. And so how old are you now?

I just turned 33. Okay. It's easy for a 33-year-old to harshly and tragically judge her 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21-year-old self. Because I know that comes along with that. A beautiful young woman who's from Peru who has no dad in the picture is going to be an open season target on young men.

Four young men and someone who drinks too much and uses a lot. And the things you have to do to get the drugs in increasing amounts haunt you as a 33-year-old, right? Yep. Yep. Give that girl some grace, okay? That girl was trying to survive because she had a mom that she couldn't prop up. She had a dad that was absent. She had a bio mom that just couldn't hang on. She was shifting cultures all over.

In and out of like just screaming to any adult who would listen. Do you love me? And do you see me? And every adult said, nope, we're sending you to New Mexico. You're sitting out where you can't even sleep in this bed. That's a child who was desperate for adults in her life to be adults. And you didn't have that. And I'm so sorry to hear that. I don't blame that little Andre. I don't blame that little girl. My heart breaks for her. So what happened when you were 2021, 22, you're in abusive relationships and then things really got sideways.

Yeah, I was in and out of jail, obviously. Luckily, my mom only, she was an enabler for a very long time, but eventually she was able to stop. She started going to her own classes. But I mean, I was about, my first case, it was a prostitution and a possession case, and it was terrifying. And were you escorting for money or for power, for what?

For money. Okay. How long did you ask for it for? For about four to six years. Okay. Does your husband know? Yes. Okay. What did getting clean look like? Oh, gosh. Ten rehabs later. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah.

I wanted to get clean so bad, and I think that's why I was on shows, because people could tell. I have a story, I'm different. But I was at my 10th rehab, and also what prompted that 10th rehab was I got an internal abscess in my spine, and that almost... That'll kill you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

How long have you been clean? About five and a half, six years now. Are you fully clean? I smoke weed. Okay. Do you still drink? No. Well, like at restaurants, but like drinking to me, in my opinion, drinking has never been like a thing for me because I've never really cared for it. My mom was a big drinker. Okay. Are you done with heroin? Yes. Yes. Are you done with meth? I've never really cared for meth. Okay. Really? Yeah.

But my heroin was my drug of choice. Yeah. You know what heroin is? Trash. It's a cheap replacement for love. Biochemically, it's a cheap replacement for love. Never thought of it that way. That's what it is. And so all that to say is, I want you to hear, like, we're not together. I can't see you. I can't hear you. But as much as possible, you sit here in front of me as a 33-year-old woman. Do you have kids? No, thank goodness. Okay. You're married? How long have you been married?

Less than a year, last November. Is he a good guy? Yes. Is he safe? We actually met at rehab. Oh, that's just great. Yeah, I know. Is he safe? We've been together, yeah. We've been together for seven years, though. All right, he treats you right? He's a great guy, yeah. He honors you? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So here's the challenge that's before you. You started this call by saying you have a need from approval and validation. Yes. And I want to tell you, yes.

Because there's a little girl and they're still looking at bio mom saying, where's my mom? Where's my mom? Why these two Americans take you away? And then your dad is screaming and yelling at you and hitting you over a thing of orange shoes, for God's sake. And there's a little girl and they're screaming, what did I do? Dad, what did I do? And there's a mom who treats you like a friend because she doesn't have any of her own. And that turns into catastrophic enabling. And there's a little girl and they're screaming,

Will somebody please be an adult? And you hit a kid at school and you're crying out, will some adult protect me from myself? And you start cutting because that pain feels like it's welling up inside of you and the whole dam is going to burst unless you let some of that steam out. And the whole time you're screaming, will somebody be an adult? And nobody showed up, man. And so when you tell me you're 33 and you're married to a great guy and you're clean and

There's still this nagging sense that I don't belong here and I need approval. I'm gonna say yes There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken the story ahead of you is this you have to choose that your adoption becomes the least interesting thing about you you have to choose that seven or eight years of hard heroin use and Prostitution is the least interesting thing about you because you have a ready story of

Already like bound and ready to hand like a business card to everybody you meet says this is me. And it's not. 10 rehabs. You know how badass you have to be to get it back on a horse 10 times? Yeah. When I was sparring with professional fighters, there was this guy named Jack and he kept just annihilating me. And after like four or five sparring sessions, I quit fighting Jack. You didn't. You got back in the ring again and again and again, 10 times.

So you hear somebody who failed 10 times. I hear an absolute gangster. And that is way more interesting to me than you doing whatever you could, including using your body to have somebody on the planet tell you that you were worth being loved even for a short period of time. But that means you're going to have to decide to forgive Andrea, especially little girl, Andrea, and then decide what I'm going to, what am I going to do next? You know what I mean? Yeah. You survived. You made it. You're here.

So what do you do for a living now? I was a manager of a restaurant for the past six years. I quit that restaurant and I'm about to start another restaurant now. Okay. Do I love it? No. What do you love? I've always wanted to be in LCDC. Okay. Why don't you go get your certification?

To be honest, because we've decided that it's more important for my husband to go to school. We can only afford for one person to go to school at a time. Okay. What's he studying? Right now, he's just going for his basics. We're both kind of in... Well, he's more so in that situation that he's really good at school. I'm unfortunately not. I've always told myself. That's not true. That's just a stupid story you told yourself.

Probably. At HCC, I'm fairly certain that you could get, do you have a degree already? No. Okay. I'm almost 95% sure. It's been a minute since I've lived in Texas, but at Houston Community College, that entire network or the Lone Star system has basics for you that you could get an associate's degree for virtually nothing at the same time with your husband. And sister, you went to 10 rehabs. You can freaking do social studies 101.

Never thought about it like that. And my wife was doing a PhD while I was doing a PhD while we had a kid. You and your husband can figure it out. And our love life was still pretty damn good. Okay? Y'all can figure that out if you want to. Yeah. But you have to decide, I'm going to make what happened the least interesting part. I, in 10 years, am going to have a thriving life.

counseling practice where I take care of folks who are struggling with addiction. And I'm going to be one of those LCDC counselors that sits down and looks across the room at people and they go, oh, she knows. She gets it. You remember sitting in front of some of those counselors and your whole body just felt safe for the first time? Yeah. You're going to be one of them. But you have to stop leading with the story of survival. It will be redeemed someday. I have no question about it. But it's not the whole of you. The whole of you is strong and gritty and streetwise and...

Unstoppable is the story. You just have to decide that's it. Here's your homework assignment. Are you ready? Okay, here's your homework assignment. I want you to write eight-month-old Andrea a letter. And I want you to honor and shout out and praise that little girl for making it from Peru out of the hands of a mom that loved her deeply but just couldn't find enough food for her baby and let her baby go.

Write that eight-month-old girl a letter. And then I want you to write 12-year-old Andrea a second letter, the one that got beat up by her dad for orange juice being left out on the counter. And tell that little girl, you've got it now. You've got it now. She gets to go play now. Because when she was unsafe and unloved for that time, so sorry that you went through that. And then your last letters, I want you to write 22-year-old Andrea a letter.

The one who's discovered heroin and how it feels like just warm honey and a hug. That hug that you needed from somebody else for so long. And that one that realized, I can use my body for money and that will get me to the next day and the next day and the next day. I want you to write her a letter and tell her, I see you and I love you. And in her 30s, I'm going to redeem this thing, this story. And then your final homework assignment, and this is a fourth letter, I want you to write 50-year-old Andrea a letter saying,

And tell her the things that you're going to start doing at 33 so that 50-year-old Andrea has the life that she deserves and has been dreaming of, which is a thriving practice, a great marriage, a couple of gnarly Houston dogs, some more Astros championships on the wall, right? But let's start looking towards the future instead of stop identifying yourself with that past. Only you can make that call. I'm talking to a warrior, Andrea, a survivor.

Before the day is over, I want you to call Houston Community College and Lone Star Community College and see if you can set up at least one class for this upcoming session, maybe two classes to start. And you're going to blink and you're going to open your eyes. You're going to have a degree. You're going to start your LCDC practice and you're going to start redeeming this story. Thanks for the call, sister. Call anytime. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Jeloni for my friends at Helix, makers of the best mattresses in the universe.

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All right, let's go out to Columbia, South Carolina and talk to Nate Dogg. What's up, Nathan? How we doing? Hey, Dr. John. Doing great. How are you? I'm good, brother. What's up? First of all, I wanted to just thank you for what you do and your show. It's had a huge impact on me and my personal life and career, which ironically is why I'm calling. So I just wanted to thank you for all you do. I appreciate you being with us, man. Yeah, of course. I guess I'll just start with a question and fill in some holes that I've written down based off of that question.

So my question is, how can I manage the stress and anxiety for my dream job, which I currently have that I've pursued for years so that it doesn't negatively impact my home life and recent engagement? Uh, and I've started to see some of those, uh, negative impacts at home, uh, and on my relationships, um, there, and I can kind of fill in what that, what that looks like and means. Um, uh,

I'm a school principal. All right. What ages? Elementary. Fantastic. K-5. Yeah. I've been doing it for a couple years, and it's what I've always felt like I wanted to do.

I've, you know, it's, it's been a lot of, uh, hard work that's come through getting to this point. And, um, with the natural stresses and things that come with that, I have, uh, seen, especially in the last year, um, some effects on my home life and, uh, relationships at home. Not, you know, not with my fiance in a argumentative or angry way, but, um, more, uh,

like quiet sensory overload really quickly because of that feeling of anxiety, exhaustion at home. Um, you know, it tends to, I almost feel like I find myself recoiling and wanting to, uh, lie in the bed, um, be distant. That makes sense. And, um,

Thankfully, my fiance is extremely supportive and, um, is very understanding. But the last thing, uh, that, that I want to do is, um, have what has been my dream job for years, negatively impact a, um, relationship that, you know, we're planning to be together forever. And so I, you know, any advice, uh, questions you have for me, um, yeah, you got it, man. Well, dude, thanks for, uh, thanks for the call. And I, man, I,

I'm just proud of you for having this, getting way upstream on this. You're in a couple years. You kind of got a rhythm. This is kind of the job. And now I'm about to say I do, which is going to transform your life in a number of different ways. Most of the time when somebody says they've been chasing their dream job and they're a few years in, there's a season of grief. And here's what the grief is. Not always, but most of the time. I thought this was going to feel different. Mm-hmm.

Have you experienced that? Absolutely. I don't know if you're, I'm sure you're familiar with Gallup and StrengthsFinder. My number one strength is competition followed right closely behind significance, focus, achiever, and futuristic. So here you go, brother. Here's your golf clap. You made it. Congratulations, right? Yeah. And then you're either...

Within six months already looking to how do you be assistant superintendent or you're trying to exhale and realize, okay, this is this job. Yeah. And every minute you're sitting there exhaling saying, okay, this is this job. You have 35 teachers that all report to you, which by the way, in no other planet does somebody have 35 or 40 direct reports. That's insane. Yeah. Except school principals do all of them and all of these students. Right. Um,

And they're coming and they keep emailing you and they keep texting you and she won't show up and that guy didn't do whatever he's supposed to do. And now you're right. All that. Yeah. It didn't feel like I thought it was going to feel. Yeah. And most of the time, especially if you've got significance is number one. I'll just ask this directly. What was this dream job going to solve in you? Who are you showing that I could? I think, yeah,

I kind of anticipated going like this direction. I think a variety of individuals, myself when I was 15 and, uh, some peers at 15 family. Um, I, I, when I was in school at a young age, like I was not academics, education was not my focus. Athletics was. And, um, so this was, you know, I think this was my direction of, uh,

kind of saying I can do it. And, um, who was the first call you made when you got the job? Uh, my, my principal at the time when I was an assistant principal, actually. Okay. And I mean, I, yeah, I, I remember exactly where I was when, when that happened. It was a Sunday. Um, it's, I mean, this has been how I have defined myself up until, um, this relationship and engagement. And I think that's part of what

I'm feeling is that this career, this profession has been how I've defined success. And I feel that now conflicting with what is most important. So make no mistake, your feelings and your senses during this transition time is right. Because you will be defined moving forward as a husband and as one day a father and as a community member, followed by

What you do, and our culture's got this whole thing backwards. Yeah. And so the challenge is you get significance when your school gets recognized. Right. And you get another certificate on the wall. It was a moment of deep reflection for me. I had my wall of certificates when I was the chief student affairs officer at a billion-dollar university. It was a whole wall of

All my graduate degrees, my Harvard certificate, all of the award, all of it. And then I came to this job and I said, hey, where do I send my transcripts? And the head of HR was like, I don't know. I don't care. And I was like, no, I don't think you understand. Like, I've got a 500 degrees. Like, where do I send this stuff? And he said, you can send it to me. I'm not going to open it. I'm just going to delete it. And I jokingly said, no, no, I need you to need this.

Yeah. And I went through a, uh, it was somewhat of a spiritual exercise. I threw almost all of those awards away because they're not me. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They're not me. And this job is not you. Now you are a person who serves this community. You are a person who hopefully puts children first. Absolutely. You are a person who takes care of teachers who are just getting run over.

Mm-hmm. You are a person who has compassion for parents who are told on a daily basis that teachers are trying to kill their kids, schools are failing their kids, the cafeteria is trying to kill their kids, and you know when you look in the mirror, no, we're not. Yeah. And so you show up and you listen to Angry Parent after Angry Parent after Angry Parent. Mm-hmm. And so when you go home, by the way, it's right to be exhausted, dude. Yeah. You're not broke and you're not crazy.

The things that my wife and I had to do, and she worked in elementary education forever, both as a leader and as a teacher. And I was in education forever too, both at elementary school and at the high school level and then at the university level for most of my career. Here's what we had to do. We had to split the year up into seasons. So for instance, August 1st, we would go on a date, and it was a big, long, drawn-out affair. And jokingly, it was a goodbye date.

Yeah. And I will see you September 1. Now, of course, we lived in the same house and yada, yada. Sure. But we both knew it is going to be 6 a.m. till 7 p.m. till midnight for the next 30 days. And then in September, we had another big getaway day on the calendar. And it gave us a kind of like being in winter. When it hits January 15, you just know for the next 60 days is going to be

Heavy. Yeah, just is. It's okay. We have to shovel the driveway and we're gonna have to clean off the, off the windshield. That's just part of it. But that this season ends most of the time in education. If you know, if you're not intentional about seasons, you just go from crisis to crisis to crisis to thing. And it's a slow drip of, of death.

And it really like, that's where I feel like I am right now. And it has like manifested itself into, I call it like decision paralysis. If that makes sense. Like just this, I know what I need to do and I know what the right decision is, but getting going is it's that paralysis feeling. Often that is somebody on the outside of the building isn't taking care of themselves. Do you have exercise routine? Uh, not like I have now. That's gotta be a, like, so I want you to start reverse engineering. What is important to you?

I got to feel good. You're going to have to get control of what you put in your body because your body's made up of what you eat. I wish it wasn't the case. It just is. That sucks. I hate it, man. And dude, schools are the worst. There's donuts everywhere and there's candy everywhere and there's mashed potatoes and those chicken fried steaks that I just want to rub on my face because they're so good. Right? All that. You have to decide.

You also, if you and your fiance, as y'all get married, if y'all have a bunch of student loans, you're not gonna be able to breathe. Here's why. Because you're going to deal with hell after hell after parent after parent after this after teacher drama. And there's that little sense, that little nagging, I don't like this anymore. But if you have a bunch of student loans and you have a suburban and you've got the new Tahoe and you finance the whole thing,

You can't quit. You're trapped. And the artists I talk to, the physicians I talk to, and the educators that I talk to, the ones that don't owe anybody anything are actually able to repel and stay in those jobs longer. And they can love them more deeply. And they can look at associate superintendents and be like, yeah, I'm not doing that. You know what I mean? Or I can just not respond to that email because you know they're going to send you a new email

strategic, whatever, initiative in six weeks and who cares? But when you owe money, you can't, right? And all, we can just keep going down the list here. Sure. But you have to decide I'm worth being whole and good and not defined by this thing outside of the classroom, outside of this little building so that I can repel in here and do the hard work. And by the way, bro, we need, we just really need good principals, good leaders. We need them. Yeah. We need them. And so I'm begging you to not quit, but I'm also begging you, like, just, just,

Brother to brother, like begin saying I'm worth loving as much as I love these students. I'm worth loving as much as I love my fiance, these teachers. And I'm going to, I'm going to love me enough so that I can get in there and do this hard work. Is that fair? Very. Okay. Very. Yeah. Are you in?

Yeah, absolutely. All right, here's the deal. I'm gonna hook you up. You ready? Yeah. I'm gonna hook you up with my book. I'm gonna send you two of them for you and your fiance to read together, Building a Non-Anxious Life, okay? Okay. I'm gonna send you that for free. Second thing is I'm gonna send you a code to my buddy Lane Norton's Carbon app, which is a weight loss app. It's how to track your food. It's a pain in the butt for the first two or three weeks, and then it becomes pretty easy.

I'm also going to send you a code that you can get any workout program you want on with my friend's mind pump. Okay. Any workout. Thank you. And I want you just to print it off and take it to the gym with you and just decide I'm going to do this. Or they've got one that you can just get some dumbbells and kettlebells and put them in your garage. Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that. In 60 days, I want you to call me back.

Absolutely. It's okay. I've done this. I invested in this. By the way, eat the donut when your teacher brings it. I mean, we're not talking about people. It's an obligation in the building from time to time. It kind of is from time to time. It really is. And if you don't, everyone's like, oh, are you better than us? I was 100% a culture killer for sure. It is. It is. But you can eat half of it.

Mm-hmm. You can eat half. And by the way, if you can eat half a donut, you're kind of a serial killer, but that's fine. Right? So true. But here's the thing. I want you to begin to take care of yourself and love and honor yourself outside of the classroom so that you can get in there and do the hard stuff. Absolutely. Is that fair? Thank you. By the way, in order, are you a person of faith? I am. Okay. You're a child of God, followed by. That means you are loved eternal, followed by. Mm-hmm. You're about to be a husband. Mm-hmm.

A woman is about to hitch her entire life to yours and you to hers. One day you're going to be a dad. Then whatever it is that you do for a living, right? In that order, man. And so I'm going to be a steward of my body and my finances and my resources and my ability to love and impact the world around me. That's who I'm going to be. I'm going to take care of myself and be a good steward of stuff so I can be the best husband I can be, so I can be the best dad I can be and be the best employee I can be.

And every teacher out there, every principal out there, every superintendent out there, please, please, this upcoming school year, get with a couple of your buddies and decide, I'm going to honor myself. I'm going to honor my body. I'm going to honor my mind. I'm going to honor my sleep so that I can get in there and do this really, really hard job. It's so hard. And if you're somebody that complains and yells at teachers and administrators, stop. Stop. They're working themselves to death on behalf of your children. Make it happen. Love them well. We'll be right back.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes, and if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever. Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest...

A lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life, and it's the worst thing.

If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself, and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties, not for our emotions and our true selves.

If you're considering therapy, I want you to call my friends at BetterHelp. BetterHelp is 100% online therapy. You can talk with your therapist anywhere so it's convenient for just about any schedule. You just get online and you fill out a short survey and you'll be matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists at any time for no additional cost.

Take off the costumes and take off the masks with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Delaunay to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Delaunay. All right, let's go out to Manitoba, Canada and talk to our friend Britt. What's up, Britt? Hi, Dr. Delaunay. Thank you so much for taking my call. Of course, you got it. What's up? Well...

Last week on Tuesday, I called my doctor to tell her if you do not, and I feel bad about this, but I told her if you do not speed up this maid process with me, I'm just going to do it myself. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Why, why, why, why, why? Why are you calling for maid? I mean, I do have a physical disability that can be pain. So what? So what?

Britt, how old are you? I'm 26. 26. All right. For people listening, MADE is a government-supported and in many ways a government-encouraged program of assisted suicide in Canada, claiming the lives of thousands and thousands and thousands of Canadians. What got you here, sweetheart? Well, there's just been a series of...

just being taken advantage of by so many people. Tell me about it. So the most recent thing, this was last summer, and so it's kind of the anniversary passing of it. There's this guy, he promised to be my boyfriend and date me, and he then asked me if I could do some work for his show. He has a podcast.

And I did hundreds of hours of work for him all summer. We eventually, late August came, we were going to have this big, exciting meeting. This was going to be my first date, first handhold, first kiss, first everything. It was going to be super exciting. And he found a reason to end things with me because I asked him in September if we could have a phone call. And he was telling me...

You are the most nagging person. You're quarrelsome. And he threw Proverbs 21, 19 in my face. And then I was doing a lot to just...

get him back because he's been live on the air saying he finds it super hot when a woman is super obsessed. So I was telling him things like, I'll give $10,000 to meet my boyfriend. I'll do anything because I wasted my whole summer working for this guy. Hold on, hold on. Britt, Britt, Britt, Britt, Britt. I know. So you get taken advantage of by a complete and absolute scumbag. Yeah. And let's forget the money and the hours part.

He robbed you and took advantage of you. But beneath that, he promised you something you've wanted for a long time, which is connection, right? Yeah. Which is physical intimacy, right? Mm-hmm. And he absolutely sucks. Yeah. So how in the world do you go from this absolute clown of a human determining the value of your life? Mm-hmm.

Well, it's more what happened after that. After that, I was really upset about it. So I went out and found some connection and then things went way too far. And I realized I just had non-penetrative stacks. And now I'm having, I don't know if this is somatic pain or

or if this is actual pelvic pain, but I've been having this for months since the incident. And I'm no longer excited because the one thing that was somewhat keeping me alive was I wonder what sex will be like. Sure. And now it's like, well, I already know what this is like and I didn't like it. No, you don't. You know what assault feels like, right? Yeah. Yeah.

That's not the loving embrace of sexual intimacy. Yeah. How long have you wanted, have you been considering dying by suicide? By suicide or by me specifically? They're the same thing. Well, the thought of suicide came to me when I was 11. That was your first brush? For about 15 years. Okay. It's been intrusive since I was about, I'd say 14, 15. Okay.

And the time I've been looking specifically for MAID has been after my major suicide attempt. When was that? This was in 2018. And it was, again, because of a person who took complete advantage of me. He was actually a former high school teacher. And we were just talking about philosophy.

And then what he did was he started talking to me about suicide. And he was my only friend ever. He would tell me how much he loved me. He would tell me, I'm your knight in shining armor. You need a problem, just call me. Like, he does... I never... No one ever told me these things.

I was 19, and I noticed that the more I talk about suicide, the more I made it seem like I'm super depressed, the more he talked to me. So, of course, I just sort of started to practice saying this, but I started to feel this way more and more and more and more.

And then eventually he just stopped talking to me. He just cut the cord. It became very addictive. So one day I sent him these petty messages being like, I hope that you have a horrible life with your wife and yada yada. He responded to those super petty messages in a way that he knew was going to provoke me to the point where I started to say, okay.

worse and worse things because I noticed the worse the things I said, the more he would talk to me and I just wanted to talk to him. He then threatened me with calling police for harassment and whatnot. And I carried that guilt for about six months. And then I one day just decided to jump and I jumped two stories and

And I woke up in the hospital. I thought I was in heaven. And then I heard the beeping and I thought, oh, I have to fight my way out of here. So I lied to all the doctors to the point where they actually are not sure if it was a suicide attempt or not. And I got out of there and I have been looking to probably every time I move

city or anything, the first thing I do is find a suicide plan and I just look. I'm like, oh, there's a building. Oh, that building's higher. Oh, there's water underneath this bridge. What has kept you with us for the last six years?

I don't want this to be public. I don't want to traumatize anybody because I think about jumping in front of trains or jumping off of buildings. But the issue is if I, um, I recognize if I do that and I hit someone's car, that's a really difficult insurance claim. And I also realized that I could, uh,

tell someone in the process. I know some people who have done that and then cars get into accidents and whatnot. But that tells, here's what this tells me. Here's what's real important. This tells me that you have deep compassion and empathy for other people. So much so that you don't want to inconvenience other people. And at the same time, you've come to believe some kind of insidious lie that you're not worth that same love and compassion.

And I'm just telling you, with the same way that you care about not hurting other people in the process of you dying, I care about you that same way. Legions of people care about you that way. And I also get that I've sat with people over the course of my career. The thought of not being here anymore is a constant and present drumbeat. And it sounds like at some point you just get tired of that drum beating and beating on top of people pretending to love you and then not really loving you. Is that fair?

Yeah, I think so. Okay. I have a friend named Kelsey and she's kind of an expert on the MADE program, but more importantly, she also has struggled with her own challenges and been pretty open about it. If I brought her on this call, would you be willing to talk to her in addition to me? Yeah. She's a Canadian too. Oh, cool. Us Texans don't identify with Canadians all too well. It's too hot. Yeah. Hang on a second. I'm going to bring Kelsey on. Okay. Thanks. Kelsey, you here?

I'm here. Hi, guys. What's up? All right. So did you hear that conversation with my friend Britt? I did. Hi, Britt. How's it going? Hi. It's going. All right. For those of us who are rather culturally insensitive when it comes to geography, where is Manitoba in connection with Vancouver? She's a few provinces over. She's more in the middle. So kind of just run through real quick. What's a province?

It's a state. Ah, now we're talking. USA, USA. All right, okay. So it's a few states over. All right. So Kelsey, I know you work with a lot of women and you've also been down some of these roads yourself. As you're hearing Brit stories, a young woman who's in stage of 11 or 12 has just kind of been haunted by that voice and then is running up against people taking advantage of her. She's got chronic pain. And then all of a sudden she's got a government that's like, no, we'll help you out.

Walk me through what you were hearing when you were hearing her talk. My heart's breaking for you, Brett. My heart is breaking in my chest and I'll tell you why. Sweetheart, you are just, you have just gone through circumstance after circumstance of people who are unhealed, who are bleeding all over you. And frankly, it's not your weight to carry. And John says this constantly. Those people who mistreated you, those bricks they put in your backpack, they're not yours to carry.

But here's what I can tell you. I've been right where you are. Everywhere you look, you want to die. Where every building you see, you want to jump from. But I can promise you right now that you can get through this and I will help you. I will be near you next week. I will be in your province next week. And we can meet. And we can sit and talk about this. Because MAID is suicide, honey.

Made is being sold to you as a solution to a problem, and it is not a solution, honey.

It should never even have been brought up to you. You are not a candidate for MAID. The fact that you've had a suicide attempt means you are not a candidate for MAID. The fact that you are feeling this way because of an assault means you are not a candidate for MAID. And any doctor, nurse practitioner, or GP that is telling you this is lying to you.

And there are better ways that we can work through this. I have counseling programs that I will get you on the phone with today.

You do not need to take your life. You are full of life and you have so much to give. You just have been around the wrong people. And I'm here to tell you that right now, for the first time, you are around the right people who want to see you thrive. And I can also tell you right now, we have better ways of managing that pain you're going through because death is not the answer. It is permanent.

We can heal you, my love. I just need you to be willing to stick with me a little longer and let me get you to the next level of healing, okay? Okay. Are you in? Britt, are you in? I guess. I do want to say, though, that if anything, the doctors have been, you'll appreciate this, the doctors have been incredibly discriminatory over this. Good. I hope they're discriminating the crap out of you, Britt. Good.

Well, the psychologist literally diagnosed things I did not have simply so that I couldn't get this. Good. Good. I'm going to be honest with you, Brett. They're telling you right now that MAID is painless. It's not. It's horrific to go through.

Okay. Yeah, I did. I heard that it was, yeah. So Britt, these doctors are actually trying to talk you out of it. What is making you pause? And you started the call saying, hey, I'm going to call. I told my doctor, if you don't get me this, I'm going to find another way. Well, I've already signed up for the Switzerland one, which is a lot more. No, the $20 pod thing. We're not doing that. No, Britt. No, we're not doing that.

We're not doing that, Brett. We're not leaving a free nation to go to another one so that they will kill you. We're going to keep you right here and we're going to heal you so that you can live a life that you are worthy of living. Okay. It's been a long... I know. Yeah. And I also have this fear that life insurance will become incredibly expensive if you...

Get all this. Hey, Britt. Hey, Britt. Britt, Britt, Britt, Britt. That's just anxiety trying to keep you safe by projecting fear into the future. And here's what I know. I know the thought of staying alive is as scary as it is for most people, the thought of dying. I get that. What I'm asking you to do in as simple and as obnoxiously unrelated as this,

I did not want to exercise this morning. I didn't. And yet I knew that my feelings don't get a choice today because I know the right next move. And I told Kelly when I got to work, it's really annoying that I become a better dad and a better husband and a better dog owner and a better like coworker when I put in the time in the morning. So here's what I'm asking you to do. I'm asking you to listen to two people that you just met that in this moment care about your life more than you do.

to not let your feelings run the show, but to trust us. Are you in on that? Yeah. Yeah. And sister, I know you're tired, man.

Yeah, it's almost funny. Like, it's almost funny. Like, oh, I'm going to die. Yeah, it's not. It's very calming. It's very calming. I know. Sometimes that helps me sleep, just thinking of being in a coffin and relaxing. I know. I remember when I attempted suicide, I was in a coma for three days. And I just remember that. I just remember feeling, well, I didn't even know I wasn't here. It's like, so what does it...

Brett, I'm going to tell you something, honey. The hole that you will leave, your family members will never, ever, ever be able to fill. And the amount of family members that I have counseled who have lost their loved ones to maid, they never get over it, honey. They don't. They don't understand. They can't understand.

I need you to stick around a little longer so that we can show you that this life is really worth living. Are you in Brit? Yeah. Okay. Do you have your promise? Yeah. Say, I promise I'll be around. I appreciate it. Thank you. No, no, no. Say, I promise I'll be around. Oh, I promise. Oh, wait. Okay. I promise I'll be around. Okay. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to connect you two.

Thank you. And I'm going to connect you to the resources, okay? And if Kelsey's in your area, you can tell on the phone. She's a human hurricane. She will surround you and she'll love you. Okay? I really appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Thanks for reaching out, Britt. You did the hardest part already. The hardest part is done. Now we can start to heal. You in? Thank you. Yes. All right, Britt. Hang on the line. Kelsey, hang on the line here. It will... Yep.

We'll get y'all connected off air. And for anybody listening to this, two important things. You can Google the MAID program, M-A-I-D in Canada. And it's an atrocity. It's disgusting. It's one of the grossest appeals to humanity I've ever seen. And I've got my own theories and biases on what it all is. And it's,

Not assisted suicide for people in chronic pain or people who have been, you know, have Alzheimer's. It's not like that. That's a different conversation. This is young men and women who have a comorbidity who, I don't want to get on the road. It's just gross. But that's secondary to this. I promise you, if you're listening to this and you think that the world will be better with you not here, you're wrong. You're not right. I promise you.

and I've sat with those moms and I've sat with those brothers and I've sat with those sisters and I've sat with those dads, the world will not be a better place with you not here. And I know it feels like you'll finally get rest and you'll finally get peace and you'll finally be able to be calm and I get it. And you're wrong. You're wrong. Make the call. And if you know somebody in your life who's struggling with the thoughts of dying by suicide, make the call. Call your friends. Call people that you know. Call everybody. Call everybody. You're worth being here.

We'll be right back. Hey, good folks, let's talk about hallow. All right, I say this all the time. It's important to get away for times of prayer and meditation by yourself with no one else around. But one thing you might not think about though is maintaining a sense of community when you pray or meditate. And this is especially if you don't consider yourself religious, if you question things, or if you've been burned by a church experience in the past, it's hard to want to get together with other people. And that's another reason why I love hallow.

You can personalize your prayer experience with Hallow, and they give you three free months to do it. You can pray or meditate by yourself, or you can connect with friends, with family, a prayer group, or some other community that you choose. And this way you can share prayers, share meditations. You can even share journal reflections to grow in your faith together with others.

And with Hallow, there are other ways you can personalize the app. They have downloadable offline sessions and links ranging from one minute up to an hour, and you can listen where it works for your schedule. You can choose your guide, your background music, you can create your own personal prayer plan and more. I've made it a personal point to begin my day every single day with the Hallow meditation on the scripture of the day. It's a discipline and it's a practice, and here's what I'm learning.

As with anything of importance and meaning, prayer takes intentionality, practice, and showing up even when I don't feel like it and even I don't want to. This is discipline. Sometimes you do this by yourself and sometimes you do this with a group and Halo helps you with both. Download the number one prayer app on planet earth, Halo, right now. And listen, viewers and listeners of this show get three free months when you go to halo.com slash Deloney. It's amazing.

Three free months of the app when you go to hallowed.com slash deloney. Go right now and change your life. All right, we are back. We're back. We're back. Hello, Kelly. Hi. So I picked this actually a couple of days ago, this social post. I saw it and I marked it. Are we going to talk about the internets? We are. I thought we were just going to sit here and sing old Billy Joel tunes. I picked this a couple, like I said, I picked this a couple of days ago and marked it. You don't prepare for this show.

No, some of us do. You don't prepare for this show. And so, but not knowing at the time what the calls were going to be. And it's not specific to the call we just had, but it's kind of along that same line. So I think it's apropos. All right. Never make final or important decisions in the middle of the night. Never go down, thought spirals, or Google WebMD rabbit holes after midnight.

Don't reconsider your marriage, career, parenting, state of the world in the wee hours of the morning. Go to bed. Sleep. Read a book with a blanket if you must. But leave the thinking and worrying and deciding to the daytime. It is easy to forget that the sun always comes up in the morning, and sunlight has a way of helping us see the truth. Yeah, so early on in the show, people would write in and kind of make fun of me all the time because I always took people to go to breakfast together.

And there's something about the clarity of going to breakfast is in the morning and there's neuroscience. Huberman has made this like this kind of a household conversation about the importance of morning sunlight for your mood, for your mental and emotional health, for your physiology. So I know sometimes I come across just a goofball, like just go to breakfast, but it actually has some, it has some psychological weight to it. But more than that,

There's just not a lot of good conversations that happen after nine o'clock. And I know that makes me sound like an old man, but there's something about the fatigue of the day, the weight of the day, the darkness outside, the exhaustion with the kids, all of it just feels heavy in the middle of the night. And that's when we start Googling stuff. That's when we start going on these rabbit holes and there's just nothing productive that's discovered. It's fun to sit around a campfire, to sit on a table and wax philosophical and talk deep and,

But those aren't solution times. Those are community bonding times. And so if you have a scary conversation to have with your spouse, wait in the morning, do it in the morning. If you have heavy decisions to make, are we going to buy this? Are we going to move? Am I going to quit this job? Make that decision at 10 a.m. at a local coffee shop or on your kitchen table with people who love you. Don't do those things at midnight. If you just feel a lump in the middle of, you know, at 10 o'clock at night,

Go to sleep. Lay down. Lay down. Watch TV. Don't start web MDing stuff until you can talk to a medical provider the following day. And here's the deal. When we get scared, our bodies are designed to run, to flee, or to start fighting. And

At 10 p.m., there's nowhere to run. There's no one to fight. And yet the internet shows up here and gives us this pseudo-solution feeling. We have a lot of energy we can expend by Googling and going on sites and getting more scared and more fired up. And it just dumps gasoline on a small fire. So that post I wrote after...

It was the middle of the night and I was worried about something and my wife and I just had a disagreement and I was about to, and I was like, go to bed. You will solve no problems tonight. Go to bed. Let's get back on the horse tomorrow. And of course, in the morning, it took 15 minutes and we were, we were gone. Ta-da. Ta-da. Ah. The heavy show today. Thank you all for being with us. Go for a walk outside. Take some happy drops. Go Organifi. Love you guys. See you soon.