On this episode, we hear about: - A mom struggling with her difficult baby - A woman wondering if she will regret cutting off her family - A man unsure of how to share his traumatic family history with his kids Next Steps 📞 Ask John a question! Call 844-693-3291 or send us a message. 📚 Building a Non-Anxious Life 📝 Anxiety Test 📚 Own Your Past, Change Your Future ❓ Questions for Humans Conversation Cards 💭 John's Free Guided Meditation 🤘🏼The Dr. John Delony Show T-Shirts Connect With Our Sponsors · 🌱 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. · 🔴 Get 15% off with code DELONY at BON CHARGE. · 🌿 Get up to 40% off with code DELONY at Cozy Earth. · 🔒 Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. · 😇 Go to Hallow for a 90-day free trial. · 💤 Visit Helix Sleep for special offers! · 🥤 Get 20% off with code DELONY at Organifi. · 💪 Get 25% off your order at Thorne. · 🏋️ Go to Trainwell to get started! Listen to More From Ramsey Network 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 💼 The Ken Coleman Show 📈 EntreLeadership Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy https://www.ramseysolutions.com/company/policies/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What challenges do new moms face with colicky babies?
We have a seven-month-old, and we are super blessed.
You already have some deep, deep mom guilt about what you're about to tell me, and what?
And she is colicky as all sin. Oh, jeez. I'm having a really hard time seeing those around me enjoying this season.
What's going on? What's going on? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. A show about your marriage, your mental health, your emotional health, joy, laughter, fun, grief, hard, hard stuff, tough seasons, not knowing what to do next. That's what this show is about. My promise is I'll sit with you and we will figure out what to do next.
If you want to be on the show, give me a buzz at 1-844-693-3291. or go to johndeloney.com slash ask, A-S-K. Quick reminder, I get loads, loads and loads and loads and loads of requests via DMs. I don't even read those. I don't check on them. And so I do check my DMs, but if it's like a personal topic, I don't read it. I skip it and move on.
So if you want to be on the show, social media is not the place. Call 1-844-693-3291 or go to johndeloney.com slash ask. All right, let's go out to Albany, New York and talk to the one and only Abigail. Hey, Abigail, what's happening?
Hi, it's me, the one and only. The one and only. Hi, John.
How's it going?
I'm trying.
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Chapter 2: How can parents handle feelings of guilt and frustration?
I hate this for you. I hate it. I hate it for that little baby and the discomfort, and I hate it for you, and I hate it for your husband, I hate it for your marriage, I hate it for that picture you had.
It's really hard being able to see how different things could look like, if she was more comfortable, if her temperament might have been a little bit different, and I'm having a really hard time seeing those around me enjoying this season. Yeah. When there's not been a thing enjoyable.
Screw them. Forget them. Forget them. Okay? Because it's like getting married and not turning off your Hinge account, right? It's like buying a house and keeping the Zillow listings open. Like this is your baby. And choosing to enter into the space of other people's babies and what they have, it's a choice to make yourself a little more miserable in an already miserable season.
Absolutely. My best friend's baby is three months younger than mine, and they struggled in a lot of different ways. IVF, the whole nine yards. They had a really tough journey to get here, and getting here has been great now that he's here. We're going back and forth, and I'm trying to listen to her daily complaints and support her in the same way she supports me.
And I'm having a hard time not being like, man, you're not struggling right now. It's okay. All right. Can I say something out loud? I want to be there for her. Yeah.
I feel terrible. I keep interrupting you and I feel awful. I just feel like I would ask your permission to hug you if you were here and your husband. And so I'm sorry to keep interrupting. I know that's rude of me. But hear me say directly, Abigail, she is not better at this than you. She is not a better mom than you. She is not better at taking care of her baby than you. She's not. Okay?
Yeah.
It just sucks. By the way, anger is good. Being mad is good. Anger is just simply points you towards something that you wanted it a certain way and it's not or it was supposed to be a certain way and it's not. Anger is good. You're not a bad mom because you get angry that this kid won't stop screaming and that this is supposed to be some beautiful moment and the kid is ruining it.
The kid's going to ruin lots of other moments. It is what it is, right? Let me ask you this. Is your rage against the baby? Is your upsetness or is it against the way you were so desperate to have it?
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Chapter 3: What are effective strategies for maintaining a healthy marriage with a newborn?
This is like an exercise in we're just going to do it to do it because some moron podcast, I'm not saying that anymore. Some podcaster said like to do this, right? So I want you all to sit on the same side of your kitchen table together. And I want you to get a note card and I want you to write colic on it. And I want you to set it in the middle of the table, arms length away from you.
And I want you both to look at colic for 30 seconds while you're holding hands and And say no words. Just time it. Just stare at that word. That is the bad guy here. Not your husband who's getting frustrated at you getting frustrated. Not your husband who is just kind of fed up and he's got to go to work and he's got to sleep too. And why don't you, one of us has to, all that stuff that happens.
And then why can't you just be happy and he's not grieving enough and you're grieving too much or vice versa. Y'all are on the same team. Okay? That's a simple, silly 30-second exercise, but I want it to be, and then I want you all to make a plan. How do we stay together? How do we get tighter at the end of this thing, not further apart from each other? What does that mean?
You're going to have to say, here's what I need. Here's what I want. Do we have signals? Do we have plans? Do you already have that? Or do you all just fly by night?
Um, this, this took a toll on us really, really quickly. Um, we were really good at passing back and forth and trying to stay recharged, but she's so amped up that we both can't stay charged. Of course. There you go. Um, which really just was detrimental to us as a unit. Um, and in the past couple of months, we've, we've really focused on us and things are kind of better than ever between us.
Excellent.
Um, so good. So good. We're just trying to fight to stay there.
Perfect. Okay. Do you have friends that you call?
No.
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Chapter 4: How should one approach difficult family relationships?
Yeah.
Okay. So I want you to set the judgment of yourself down. I want you to set the judgment of your, your family unit down. I want you to set any of those stories that you're making up, set them down and reach out for somebody. Do you have a neighbor that will come by and hold your kid? Do you have anything?
I have someone in mind. I've got a client who's been begging to watch her. Who's amazing.
Okay. Say I need 30 minutes. I need two hours. And by the way, this kid is going to scream the whole time and I'm going to double your rate. Right. Whatever. You are less being a babysitter and you are more being a mommy savior. Right? Yeah. See what I'm saying? Okay, here's number whatever. I'm just making these things up. Instead of comparing to friends, I want you to reach out to them. Okay?
So I want you to have an open conversation with your friend. Hey, we're really struggling. Your baby's amazing. It's awesome. There may be days that I call you for 30 minutes or for an hour. It would be a real gift and I'll return the favor. And maybe your friend will get a dose of, oh, right?
And I also want to promise you this, as much as they're painting whatever picture they're painting is not true. It's not. It's not what you're going through, but it's not perfect.
Right.
Okay? I want you to begin to write down your thoughts and I know you're terrified to put them on paper, but I want you to get them out of your head because they're killing you.
Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What role does forgiveness play in healing family dynamics?
I have heard that maybe a possible potential secret, particularly if dietary things aren't changing anything, is that some kids like noise. And so this sounds counterintuitive, but maybe taking a crying baby out on the subway, taking a quiet baby out into, I mean a yelling baby out into where it's loud, sometimes quiets them up.
We live on a busy street and we go to the end of the driveway and watch the cars.
Okay, there you go. So maybe that's it. Maybe sitting in the room with the washer and dryer going and the vacuum going and you have headphones on, maybe that's it.
I'm so tired of vacuuming.
I know. I'm not talking about vacuuming. I'm just saying like, uh, yeah, turn it on, but just, just to create some noise. But yeah, I think we're past tools at this point. You and your husband are smart and y'all have got Google. Y'all can figure those things out. The bigger deal is this. You're not crazy and you cannot do all this by yourself.
Yeah.
Okay. And it's okay to be angry and it's okay to be frustrated. I don't want you to assume you said something earlier, like me and my husband have come closer together and we're just trying to hang on to it. Let's be really intentional about hanging on. Let's meet once a week. One out of 10. How are you? I'm a four. I'm a seven. No way. Cool. You just got crying baby duty early on this week.
Right. And then we'll work together, but I want you to be really, really intentional about it. Is that fair?
Yeah. That's like the only thing that helps.
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Chapter 6: How can expressing anger be a healthy part of parenting?
But my question is, my parents are now 75, and I know their time is coming soon. I dream often that if I didn't reach out and try to heal our relationship, I'm going to regret it. And I still can't pick up the phone every day. And... It's not unforgiveness to what's happened. It's more that my life is so much more peaceful without any of them in it. So I struggle with this.
It's daily and it's consuming. It's affected my immediate family because of my barriers and fears. But I just can't. The thought of talking to them just makes me physically...
nauseous and just I just can't do it yeah so you sound trapped like you can't reach out and call them you've tried you've tried you've stared at that phone and you're starting to that gnawing shadow sense that you can't not call them right because I don't want it to hold because regardless of me not having contact with them they still have the power over me even in this situation well and that's my question to you is you're not fully well yet
Oh no.
Cause they still haunt you.
Oh yeah.
So tell me what you're hanging on to.
Um, I don't know. I don't, I mean just the, um, just so hurt and betrayed and neglected and just, um, I'm 53. I should be over this by now.
No, no, no, no, no, no. Here's what it is. Can I tell you what I think it is? I may be wrong. I think that inside that little girl is still trying to figure out what she did wrong. And the fantasy you have is that one day the thing that you did, you'll finally figure it out and you can finally fix it. So your mom will say, welcome home, honey. And your dad will say, there's my girl.
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Chapter 7: What are practical steps to build a supportive community as a parent?
And I've worked with enough people who've experienced evil trauma to know it's not always possible. And so it's both. Right. But I know this. If the person who hurt you still has control over you, that reconciliation won't happen. You just fall back into the same pattern. If you have set the brick down that your dad gave you when you were young,
and I don't know what it is, abandonment, abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, who knows what it is. But if you set it down, and forgiveness, remember this, forgiveness is not, and I go around and around with colleagues who say like, not everyone is worth forgiving and my clients don't have to forgive everybody. I would say, okay, but forgiveness is for you.
Forgiveness is you saying, I'm not carrying your crap anymore. I'm setting it down. I am free. It's the great C.S. Lewis talks about hell is locked from the inside.
Right.
Right? So I am opening the prison and I'm heading out. And then I greet you at the gate because I'm free to come and go. And so you may have heard in some of my earlier episodes, I used to tell people, go to Lowe's and buy a cinder block. Put a couple of pieces of duct tape on that cinder block and get a Sharpie and write the things that happened to you by this man. Write them on that duct tape.
Hold that cinder block. Carry it around your backyard for a while. 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 3 minutes. As long as you can hold it. Until your arms start burning and your hands get tired. And then take it somewhere in the very backyard and throw it away. Set it down. But let it be a symbolic move. I am done carrying it. I've been to therapy. I've got my own family. I've got my own kids.
I am not carrying you anymore. And then tear the tape off, throw it away. And if you can do that, but you're going to feel powerless because right now you feel this pseudo weird, I'm in power because now you're following me around. Now you're chasing me. Now I'm abandoning you. And you realize, oh no, I just took the cancer baton and I'm spreading it into my family still. Right. Right?
I'm just done. I'm done.
Yeah. Because it wasn't them directly. It was what they allowed to happen. Either way. Either way. It doesn't... Yeah. I mean, and I just... You're 53. You're 53.
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