Off the Record With Dr. K: This Interview Changed My Mind

🔥 Microhabits for a better marriage. Download the Together app. On today’s episode, John talks with psychiatrist and lifelong gamer Dr. Alok Kanojia about raising technologically smart kids, the effects of porn, and why you need to “de-Hollywood” your marriage. Next Steps: ❤️ Get away with your spouse today! 📞 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 Merch Connect With Our Sponsors: Head to Beam and use code DELONY for an exclusive discount—because better sleep, energy and focus start tonight. Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp. Get up to 20% off with code DELONY at Cozy Earth. Get 20% off when you join DeleteMe. Visit Hallow for a 90-day free trial. Visit Helix Sleep for special offers! Working knives for working people—go to Montana Knife Company to see what’s available now! Explore Poncho Outdoors! Head to Shady Rays and use code DELONY for 40% off two or more polarized sunglasses. Get 25% off your order at Thorne. Visit Zander Insurance or call 1-800-356-4282 for your free instant quote today. Explore More From Ramsey Network: 🎙️ The Ramsey Show 💸 The Ramsey Show Highlights 🍸 Smart Money Happy Hour 💡 The Rachel Cruze Show 💰 George Kamel 🪑 Front Row Seat with Ken Coleman 📈 EntreLeadership Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  People say when you have kids, you don't know the meaning of love until you have kids. I didn't know the meaning of fear until I had kids. I think most of the reasons that people struggle in life is because they're not taught how to live. We've got a good thing going, right? We're in love, it's good, we've got a couple of kids. But there's a huge difference between everything that you just said and this, which is all of those things, me and you, against that thing out there.

• 0:38Dr. John Delony?

  What's up? This is John and welcome to Off the Record. This is an additional drop for the Dr. John Deloney Show, where I bring in folks from a variety of different backgrounds, experiences, people that I think are cool, people that I know I disagree with, people that I know are gonna challenge me. And I bring them in for people that I just love. And we sit down and have a great conversation. Today, I'm super hyped. This is one, it's a long time coming. And this is, I brought him on as a response to one of the most common conversations people ask me to talk about. And that is relationships and technology, technology and kids,

• 1:23Dr. John Delony?

  technology and interrupting adult relationships. I brought in, he's known to the world as the quote-unquote "healthy gamer", he's known as Dr. K. His name is Alec Canogia. He is awesome. I'll call him Dr. K for the rest of the time, that's how he goes, that's how he introduces himself. He is the best, he's a super kind guy, very relatable. And in this episode, he nailed me to the wall. He's a psychiatrist, he's a, still practices, but he also has written great books and talks at length on tons of different media platforms about the dangers of technology and the good stuff about technology

• 2:05Dr. John Delony?

  and how to integrate those things into a healthy home. It's an awesome conversation. Kelly says it's her favorite conversation I've ever had. And I think that's because he nailed me to the wall. And I walked away from this conversation, literally changing the way I do things inside my own house. And so buckle up for my conversation with Dr. K.

• 2:28Dr. John Delony?

  All right, so you, I've got two kids, you got two kids.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:31Dr. John Delony?

  If you and I are just sitting down having nachos. No, we're having papasitos because we're back in Houston.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:37Dr. John Delony?

  Which is the best. We're sitting there sharing chips and queso.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:42Dr. John Delony?

  What is, as you look ahead, what's the thing that makes you the most like nervous? As you look at, or the thing you're most worried about that your two kids are gonna enter into, in the world they're inhabiting?

• 2:59Speaker 00

  Oh, that's, that's such a great question. So I'll start by saying this, you know, people say when you have kids, you don't know the meaning of love.

• 3:07Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 3:07Speaker 00

  Until you have kids. I think what they don't advertise, I didn't know the meaning of fear until I had kids. I feel, I felt, I still remember there was one time that my kid was jumping on a trampoline and she like fell off, like, you know, she was, she had a trajectory where she was gonna be off of the trampoline. And in that moment where she like cleared the edge of the trampoline and was like plummeting towards the ground, I felt a degree of fear that I had never felt in my life. I don't think I'm very scared about a particular thing. I mean, I think, you know, our children have their own path in life.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  You know, I, I do feel, so I have two daughters, so I think there's a lot of concern about who they decide to be with.

• 3:55Dr. John Delony?

  Sure.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Right? But I, I think it's also like, all that stuff is, see, a lot of fear is about what we haven't experienced yet, right? And so I'm not scared about a particular thing, like, I guess maybe dating in general.

• 4:08Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  But in general, like, I think it's like, you know, I think they're, I'm not super scared about their future. I know it may sound weird, but.

• 4:17Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, I love that.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:18Dr. John Delony?

  Because I think, I think it, it. In the barbell that is not worried about anything and I'm terrified about everything. The ecosystem, if you just spend your life scrolling, your ecosystem is, everything is to be feared, right?

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:32Dr. John Delony?

  But when both of us get to experience real people in real lives on a regular basis. It's like, no, there's just kind of a broad human experience and they're gonna have ups and they're gonna have downs and.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I, I think what I've learned from my kids and my patients and, and stuff like that. I remember asking my mom when I was in med school. I asked her like, you know, isn't it hard? She's a pediatrician. And so isn't it hard to like, deal with sick kids and like, you know, kids who get hurt? And, and I remember one day I, I went with her on, on Christmas day, I went with her to the hospital and she had a patient who had been run over by a tractor. And so I was like, isn't that like impossible to deal with? Because these are like, you know, kids that have been just so grievously wounded. And she was like, no, it's actually like easier if you're a pediatrician because kids heal. Right? So even if a kid has some neurological problem or something like that, like there's still, there's a lot of neuroplasticity.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  There's a lot of like stem cell activation and like kids heal. And I think human beings, you know, that really struck me. And then what I've learned is human beings are incredibly resilient. And I think as long as we understand kind of who we are and, and how our physiology works, how our brain works. Um, a touch of spirituality thrown in like, you know, I, I think my kids have taught me that they're gonna live their life. And no matter what plans I have.

• 5:48Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, man.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  You know?

• 5:49Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, that's the one constant is I've been wrong every time. Like, you should, nah, it's not gonna work that way. I hadn't thought about that, but you have the, the benefit of seeing somebody in a challenging moment. Whether psychiatrically, physically, or whatever, and you've got a, um, a, like a well of people that you've seen on the other side of that.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely.

• 6:13Dr. John Delony?

  That, that, that. Their well, or their whole, or they're as well as they're gonna be and they're living full lives, right?

• 6:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think, you know, people think that like, and I'm sure you've seen this too, you know, I mean, I can see that you're speaking from experience with the people that you've worked with, but I think a lot of times, you know, we think that helping people may be hard from a medical perspective, from a therapy perspective, but once you start to see success stories, right, once you start to see what human beings are truly capable of, and for me, the biggest thing is, I think most of the reasons that people struggle in life is because they're not taught how to live it.

• 6:47Dr. John Delony?

  Hmm.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Right, so we have so much formal education in like mathematics and chemistry, we have zero formal education in emotions, we have zero formal education in ego.

• 6:56Dr. John Delony?

  Relationships, yeah.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  In relationships, right? And if you really look at like, we have zero formal education in like finding purpose, right, but if you look at like, the things that make a human being happy, healthy, resilient, we don't actually teach them that, but we'll put them in school for eight hours a day for at least 12 years to teach them everything except for how to live life.

• 7:16Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, man.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  And so I find that a very low quantity of education can help people an immense amount.

• 7:26Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. So, yeah, do that, okay, that's perfect, and here's why. I, I have, over the last 20 years, sat with an increasing amount of substance abuse with, with young people and their parents, substance abuse, pornography, all these different addictions, and one of the big meta themes I've picked up is the addiction isn't the problem, it's solving something.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Hundred percent, yeah.

• 7:53Dr. John Delony?

  It is this numbness, or this lack of skills to go do whatever's next, and then all of a sudden, we create, we keep having these increasingly vibrant, um, numbing agents that makes sense.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Absolutely, so what do you think is, what has been, if an addiction is basically a solution, right, it's a problematic solution, but it's a solution, what do you think is growing on the inside that's causing people to move towards addiction?

• 8:20Dr. John Delony?

  The aha moment I had, and I remember it specifically, I think it was in 07 or 08, when, when, I was working with college students, when somebody told, when, going to those academic nerd conferences, but that when a body is disconnected from a root set of relationships, the instant it recognizes it's lonely, that neurologically...

• 8:43Dr. John Delony?

  Sex and alcohol are somewhat substitutes for this, chem- biochemically. And I was working with college students. Anyone who works at college students are worried about sex and they're worried about alcohol consumption. And then I was like, oh, so we unplug a human being from everything they know, drop them in a box full of 200 or 400 or 1,000 strangers, and their poor brains are screaming for some sort of connection. And they have these pseudo off-ramps. And nowadays, they don't even have to leave the room. They can just plug right in and they have these pseudo sexual encounters all day, every day. And the root of that cancer is, I got a lonely 19-year-old,

• 9:27Dr. John Delony?

  or I've got a desperately alone, like frantically alone 18-year-old that's been unplugged from everything and just dropped into a box. And that humanized that kid that I had reduced to, you only need to stop having so much unsafe sex, or you only need to stop all the alcohol consumption. Instead of going, oh, no, no, that makes sense. I guess my responsibility as somebody who's working with college students is, I've got to get y'all connected ASAP. Or I've got to reexamine, what are we doing to these poor kids, right? And so loneliness, to answer your question, is a root that I keep seeing come up over and over.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  I think it makes a lot of sense. You know, I think when we're talking about addictions, there's the behavior itself. So a lot of parents, especially if we're talking about things like technology and stuff like that. I mean, I hear this all the time where, you know, how do I get my kid off of the iPad or less time on the computer or Playstation or whatever? And to understand that any behavior, if you just try to take it away, there's going to be a lot of friction, a lot of resistance.

• 10:24Dr. John Delony?

  It's like kicking somebody's crutch out from underneath them. Is that a good?

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think, I don't, yeah, I think, I think a crutch is a little bit different because I think you really need.

• 10:33Dr. John Delony?

  That's fair, that's fair.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Like if you've got a broken leg or something, but yeah, absolutely. I think the key thing that I think most professionals who work with humans stumble into is there's a fuel that's driving the addiction. And if you really want the addiction to melt away, if you want it to kind of expire of its own accord, it's really about understanding what is the fuel that's driving it. And you sort of mentioned, you know, technology and it's not just sex because nowadays we have things like OnlyFans, right? And so OnlyFans is going to activate the brain in a way that even pornography doesn't. Because there's this parasocial relationship. When you think about pornography, you're like a passive consumer. But now what's happened with OnlyFans is these people are like influencers.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  You can message them.

• 11:21Dr. John Delony?

  They say your name.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  They say your name. They know they give you shout outs, all this kind of stuff. So it's not just the sex now. Now there's all of these, you know, parasocial relationships. Social media is the reason that it is so addictive. And the reason that it grows so much is because it activates the social parts of our brain. And it satisfies us. I love what you kind of said about an insufficient off ramp, right? So you have this crippling loneliness. You have a lot of isolation. People are, you know, on the one hand, technology allows us to stay in touch, but it kind of disconnects us.

• 11:58Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  You know?

• 11:59Dr. John Delony?

  It's gas station food, right?

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right? So it's like highly processed. I mean, you can get some degree of connection. And, um, you know, I met a guy playing video games when I was 13 years old. The first time I met him in real life was the day that I got married. And he came to my wedding. So there can be very real, authentic connections. But there's no way that that person can give you a hug. You can't get the oxytocin. You know, there are some things that online relationships can't provide. And what's scary is, is all these platforms are getting better at substituting for a real relationship. That's why there's so much comments and so much interaction and things like that.

• 12:38Dr. John Delony?

  So in, in, in that regard, a comment section can almost serve as though I'm participating in a real relationship.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Uh, I'm, yeah. So, so I would say that it does serve as some kind of participation in a relationship.

• 12:51Dr. John Delony?

  It's like, it's like the candy that says low fat. Like I'm, I'm pretending that's healthy.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  So, so in a comment section, and I don't know if you've, you know, you've done this or not, but like, there's a lot of like great engagement.

• 13:01Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Right? So it used to be like, okay, if I watch a movie, I'm like, okay, that movie was great. But now the actors in the movie are responding to my comments. I'm responding to their comments. We're seeing a trend, actually, especially on TikTok where there's a lot of like video responses that really cause, um, you know. Particular clips to glow.

• 13:20Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. And it feels like I'm in it.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And so the more that they create a platform that allows you to feel like you're in it, the more addictive it's going to be, the more of your brain it's going to activate. And it'll sort of manage that loneliness, right? So when you talk about gas station food, it'll give you calories, but it may not give you nutrition.

• 13:41Dr. John Delony?

  There you go. Yeah, it'll cost you in the long run. It might get you to tomorrow, but yeah.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  And that's something that I see that's really scary is, you know, one of the things that really frightens me. So I work predominantly with about 70, 30 men, women, an average age of about 32. It used to be 24. But one of the really scary things is that, you know, when you feel lonely, like we think that that's bad, right? Like we feel like it feels bad to feel lonely. But that's our brain telling us, our heart telling us, our soul telling us like, hey, this is a signal to connect.

• 14:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Why do we feel hungry? Why do we feel thirsty? It's our, it's our organism's way of telling us, hey, you need something.

• 14:21Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Speaker 00

  So the really scary thing that I see is that as people engage with these online relationships, it, if you fill up your stomach with gas station food, you'll still develop a nutrient deficiency. And the reason you'll develop that nutrient deficiency is because you no longer feel hungry. So your desire to eat an apple won't be there.

• 14:38Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  So people are actually like shutting down that signal from within themselves, that motivation to form real connections is now being satisfied by these really shallow online connections.

• 14:53Dr. John Delony?

  And so it's, it's, it's almost like pulling out a can of spray paint and spray painting your dashboard on your car while you're driving. As though like, I'm not gonna, I don't want any of these, these lights that are telling me the status of this car. I don't want to know.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 15:08Dr. John Delony?

  I'm just gonna put my head down and keep going.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 15:10Dr. John Delony?

  And eventually that car runs out of gas and pulls over.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And that's what's so scary is that we're, we're shutting down our motivational circuitry that causes us to fix our problems.

• 15:21Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  Right? When I'm, when I'm working with someone who's got an addiction. You know, they're, they're, they're maybe drowning out. They're going through divorce, they're on probation at work, whatever, right? So they have all these problems in their life. And they feel bad about them. And once you start drinking, once you start hitting the bottle, you're no longer in all those, like, all that numbness sets in. You're not actually fixing your relationship.

• 15:45Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  You're not actually improving your performance at work. So we're, we're actually shutting down all of these negative emotions that we have are, are our motivators to fix our life. Right? Shame tells us, hey, something that I'm doing is not acceptable to the people around me. Guilt tells us, something I'm doing is not acceptable to me.

• 16:07Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Anger can tell us, hey, something that someone is doing to me is not okay.

• 16:13Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Right?

• 16:14Dr. John Delony?

  But as a, as a culture, we've said, if you feel guilty, we need to fix that. We need to take that feeling away.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:23Dr. John Delony?

  Or if you feel shame, or if you, like, we're taking, we're, we're extracting basic hu- human physiology from the playbook.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:32Dr. John Delony?

  And pathologizing it instead of saying, no, what is that trying to tell you? What's your body trying to tell you?

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, I mean, even when, when I, you know, when I prescribe medication, I'm, I'm super careful. I use medication in about 30% of my patients. And so I think it absolutely has a role. But like, the goal is to manage your emotions in a way where you can actually still feel them all. We don't want them to be overwhelming to the point that they cripple you. But we absolutely want you to be feeling anxious, right? That's how you're, you know that something is important. That's how you know what to pay attention to. And so like, what we're seeing a lot of is just a lot of whole-scale numbing.

• 17:10Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  And then once you start numbing yourself, the problems get worse.

• 17:13Dr. John Delony?

  That's why, the way I described it to one person, um, I had a season when I was, took anxiety meds about a decade ago. And the way I described it is anxiety was a smoke detector. And I ignored it so long, it was so loud. And what the meds did for me was, it didn't heal my anxiousness, which I don't want it to. And because it's, my body's trying to tell me something.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 17:32Dr. John Delony?

  It turned that alarm down enough so that I could go hear a counselor, I could go hear my wife, I could go hear these group of friends, and I could go do the stuff, right? Instead of just sitting like this, right? But, um, so-

• 17:47Dr. John Delony?

  Whether you are a wife, a mother, a husband, a son, a daughter, listening to this, everybody's impacted nowadays by this question.

• 17:58Dr. John Delony?

  You work with predominantly young men. What's the role of pornography in their lives? Give us a landscape of what's the role in their life? And I take a lot of calls on my show from wives who stumble on it.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:16Dr. John Delony?

  Or from moms who stumble on their teenage son's unclear search history. Or a girlfriend who just, or a guy who's like, I can't stop doing this and I don't know what's wrong with me.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:26Dr. John Delony?

  Paint me a picture of the problem with pornography in our current culture. And then head me towards some sort of solutions. Cause here's the other thing, talking about OnlyFans and talking about just social media. We're here, it's not mainstream yet, but we're here where there will be a undistinguishable, indistinguishable AI companion.

• 18:47Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:48Dr. John Delony?

  Pornographically that I don't, we don't have the psychology, we don't have the neurochemistry for what we got now. What's coming is gonna be rough.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. So, so, you know, I think we're seeing pornography addiction is skyrocketing. The real is scary statistic of that is about 5% of men under the age of 30 used to have erectile dysfunction. Now about 30% of men under the age of 30 have erectile dysfunction. And it's probably due to pornography or almost certainly due to pornography usage. So, so the use is skyrocketing. And I think that what a lot of people miss about that, so a lot of people think that pornography addiction is about sex.

• 19:33Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  But it really isn't. So, so the number of people, when you sit down and work with these people, there's a lot of like passive pornography consumption. So people will be like working on Excel on one monitor. And there'll be like pornography on the other monitor for hours at a time. So people don't realize what it kind of really is doing. And in order to understand what it does, we have to understand that, you know, the way that our organism is designed, it's to be able to procreate and then support our offspring so that they can procreate.

• 20:03Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Right? So if you sort of think about it, like, the prime reason to exist as a person is to engage in a sexual act. Like, that's what it's all about. Because if we stop doing that, no more kids.

• 20:15Dr. John Delony?

  We're over.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're done.

• 20:16Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  Right? So...

• 20:18Dr. John Delony?

  We're working to get there.

• 20:19Speaker 00

  So, uh... Birth rates are on the decline.

• 20:21Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Um, and so what, what, what happens is, sexual activity has a really interesting effect on the brain, which is that it shuts everything else off. So, especially in men, and this is a little bit different for men and women, but if, if you kind of think about, you know, uh, there are lots of jokes about, you know, when a, when a dude feels frisky, you know, I know you're married, I'm married, right? When we feel frisky, it's easy to ignore a lot of other stuff.

• 20:47Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  And then if you look at the physiology and neuroscience of the sexual act, when we're engaged in that act, we're not feeling anxious, we're not afraid, and unless the anxiety is so overpowering that we are not able to engage in the act.

• 21:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  Which absolutely happens. But generally speaking, it shuts down all of our negative emotional circuitry.

• 21:05Dr. John Delony?

  So we can say, with neuroscientific accuracy, he probably really didn't see the dishes. Right?

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 21:12Dr. John Delony?

  Or doesn't see the clo- the pile of clothes in the corner.

• 21:15Speaker 00

  But, but here's, here's something, here's something really interesting. So, 58% of women say that one of the top three things that increase their libido and desire for sex is men helping out with housework.

• 21:32Dr. John Delony?

  Chore play, yeah.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  And cognitive duties, like doing shopping and stuff like that. That's 58% of people say. Top three want, uh, trust, safety, and helping out with housework.

• 21:41Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  That, that's the real foreplay.

• 21:44Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  But yeah, so basically, the way pornography works is that, you know, if I'm feeling bad, there's just so much powerful circuitry to make those emotions go away. So I think the number one thing is about emotion management.

• 21:57Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  And so then what we're starting to see is that, um, you know, I was, I, I remember earlier when you said, like, the smoke detector was, the alarm was going off, but, you know, if I were to ask you, why didn't you deal with whatever was on fire? Like, what was your experience then? Like, so you started medication, then that started, you know, started a path. Maybe you were on it for a little while. But why, why weren't you able to fix the problem before that?

• 22:22Dr. John Delony?

  So, in my particular life,

• 22:27Dr. John Delony?

  I, a lot of these things that my body was saying, hey, you're not safe. Hey, hey, hey, hey, trying to get my attention, were actually things that were what I would call socially normed.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 22:38Dr. John Delony?

  It's normal, just to look at pornography. It's normal to, meh, that's just my wife. It's normal to have six figures in student loans and a mortgage you can't afford and two house, like, two car notes. It's normal to always worry if you're about to get fired because you and your boss are cross. And so, all these things that everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. My body's saying, hey, you're not okay. Like, we're not safe here.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:02Dr. John Delony?

  And so, I didn't even know that those were fires.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 23:06Dr. John Delony?

  And so, when I went looking for, hey, what's wrong with me? And you walk in and see the first, the first, just out of grad school, and again, I'm talking, I'm talking negative about my own community. The first, just out of grad school, just got their LPC or their LMSW, and you, you, on a chart, have a set of symptom clusters for six months, then I can tag you, oh, you have a, your brain's malfunctioning. Instead of saying, no, no, your brain's working perfectly. Let's look at your environment here. All right, let's start looking through what's on fire. I didn't even know that there was a fire.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Makes a lot of sense, yeah. So, so I, I think, you know, being well adjusted to an unhealthy society doesn't make you healthy.

• 23:45Dr. John Delony?

  That's it, right?

• 23:46Speaker 00

  Right? So, you're normal, it's normal, but it sure as hell ain't healthy.

• 23:50Dr. John Delony?

  Exactly.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  You know? And so, I, I think what I see is something really similar with people who struggle with pornography is, there's a lot of stuff going on, on in their life where there are two conditions. One is, they don't know it's a problem, right? So, so men, um, there's a, there's an interesting phenomenon called normative male alexithymia.

• 24:10Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  So, normative means it's normal. Male means it happens to men. And alexithymia means color blindness to your emotional state. So, we're actually conditioned, some of it is, is biological, hormonal, but we're actually conditioned to suppress our feelings. So, we don't even know when there are fires going on, right? Everything in your life is burning down around you and you're, you're just numb to it.

• 24:34Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  Just because you're numb, right? So, let's be clear about the term numb. So, if I, if you go to the dentist, And you get numbed up and they remove your tooth. Just because you don't feel your tooth being removed doesn't mean that there isn't damage taking place.

• 24:49Dr. John Delony?

  It's a five alarm fire to your body.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right? So this is what really a lot of people don't understand. Is just because you feel emotions does not mean that emotions are not active within you. They're actually turned on, but you've got lidocaine in there, so you don't feel them. And they are controlling your behavior.

• 25:07Dr. John Delony?

  Golly, yeah.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Right? So there's a lot of numbness, but there are fires going on, just like in your case. The second thing that I think is almost sadder is that many of the men that I work with have problems in their life that they feel like are unsolvable. So when you can't solve a problem, right? So when I'm working with, you know, couples where, you know, the wife does discover pornography. You know, I recently was working with someone who's, who basically went through a divorce and their pornography use had a huge part of it. And this, this person, unfortunately, we weren't able to help them in time. Like, things were too bad and so the divorce proceeded. But over time, you know, what we discovered is that there are all kinds of problems they have in their life.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  They don't know how to communicate these with their wife. And since they don't know how to communicate, you know, the wife is like, well, why are you doing this? Can you please stop? It's making me feel XYZ. And they don't even know, you know, they, they feel so powerless to actually fix these things because now your wife is upset with you. You don't know how to make her happy. You try to stop pornography for a little while, but that fuel is still burning, right? Those emotions are still active. And then you don't really have anything to deal with any alternate coping mechanisms that are healthier. So, so there's an immense feeling of powerlessness. And so if you feel, if you're a dude out there or a woman

• 26:33Speaker 00

  and, you know, you're, you have a problem with pornography, the most important question to ask yourself, because everyone thinks it's like, oh, you're a sexual fetish, whatever. It's not, it's, is there something in your life that you feel is unsolvable? And, and really working on that problem, really starting to feel empowered, right? So a lot of addiction treatment is about. I can't win against the alcohol.

• 26:59Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  But if you go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, there's something really beautiful about, "Hi, my name is Al Oak and I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober for 30 years and I'm an alcoholic." You sort of, it's kind of this weird paradoxical empowerment where you start with, "I can't control this."

• 27:15Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 00

  Fingers crossed.

• 27:16Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  "I'm gonna do the best that I can."

• 27:19Dr. John Delony?

  Which is a tiny reclamation of autonomy.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 27:22Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  I don't think it's tiny, I think it's huge.

• 27:24Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Right? To admit that you are not perfect.

• 27:28Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  And, and once you admit, right? And we're parents, and hopefully you've got parents listening to this. Like, once you acknowledge that there's a problem.

• 27:36Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  Right? Like, if you've got kids who are struggling in school or going through a breakup or something, and like, if your kid comes to you, "How do I make sure that my ex starts dating me again?"

• 27:45Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  You know, you gotta say, "Hey, there's nothing you can do to guarantee that outcome."

• 27:49Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 00

  But there's a lot of stuff that we can do, right? So I, I think that empowerment becomes really important for addiction.

• 27:56Dr. John Delony?

  It's letting your hands open up.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 27:59Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can be about solving the problem. So it's, one of the hardest things for me is to communicate to, let's just take, I'm just gonna take a generic wife who finds pornography on generic husband's computer.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:14Dr. John Delony?

  This deeply personal, like, "I feel like he's cheating. That's an affair."

• 28:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:22Dr. John Delony?

  That deeply personal wound. And if you said, if you, it is, right? All those things are real, and it's hard to say, "But probably that's not about you." Is a, is a, is a hard truth to metabolize.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 28:39Dr. John Delony?

  This super big pain, "You just stuck a knife in the middle of my chest? And you're telling me that's not about me?" And it's hard to compassionately say, "That usually is a man who's drowning in front of you." Does that make sense?

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So I, I, I think there's like two sides of this coin, right?

• 28:54Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  So, so absolutely that a lot of men will use pornography to cope.

• 29:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 00

  A lot of men, because it's such a powerful, it's like the most endogenous drug we have. It's produced by our body, right? It's like you don't need to actually even take a substance, but it activates your brain in the same way. It gives you dopamine.

• 29:13Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, lights you up.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, shuts off your negative emotions, right? So anything that we get addicted to, there are two things to look for. One is it gives us pleasure and the second is it takes away pain.

• 29:21Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  And then we become dependent on it. But I think there's a couple of other angles to this. So a lot of the women that I work with who, you know, have male partners who struggle with pornography, there's an intense amount of insecurity.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Right? Because it's like, what, what are you getting from this?

• 29:40Dr. John Delony?

  That I'm not providing you.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  I'm not providing.

• 29:41Dr. John Delony?

  What's wrong with me?

• 29:42Speaker 00

  What's wrong with me, right? And, and, and there's, there's a very real threat.

• 29:47Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, of course.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  Right? So, so is this, because like it starts with pornography, but then like what comes next?

• 29:54Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  And, and part of that pain is not just the discovery, right? Uh, the, part of the pain of the discovery is also the fact that there was a discovery.

• 30:01Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 30:01Speaker 00

  The fact that this is hidden.

• 30:03Dr. John Delony?

  There's secrets.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  The fact that there are secrets, right? So if this is something, so I, I think a lot of those warning signs I think are completely understandable. And I'm not saying, I, I get that you're saying that they're understandable too, right?

• 30:11Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Right? But I, I, I think like, you know, there, there's a lot of insecurity. There's a lot of concern about, you know, doing something behind my back. The hardest conversation that I've had to navigate with a patient is how to communicate your sexual needs and desires to your partner.

• 30:27Dr. John Delony?

  So a couple of years ago, I was doing a marriage retreat and this was a joke. I was being silly. I said, I will, I've created a new thing. It's called the John Deloney Erotic Envelope System. And here's what I want you to do. Go to Walgreens and get a 99 cent envelope and you write down five things you want to see or try. And you, and just once a month, once every two weeks, one of y'all draw it out and just promise you'll give it the college try. And if you don't even know how this is physiologically possible, you'll, you won't go, your first thing won't be, that's sick. Your first thing will be, I don't even understand that. Tell me about that. And. Bro, the number of people who've come back and be like, can we buy that?

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:03Dr. John Delony?

  But it has nothing to do with the act. It has to do with, there's a thing inside of me and I don't know how to share this.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:10Dr. John Delony?

  And I don't know how to receive this thing.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Beautiful, right?

• 31:12Dr. John Delony?

  That's it, right?

• 31:13Speaker 00

  So, and, and, and, and let's like, let's dig into that for a second, right? Because this is like, if we think about the most private parts of ourselves, right? There's so much intimacy.

• 31:21Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  And, and so you have one person, if you're married, let's just assume that we've got a married couple, right? So like, you've got one person in the world who's got your back in every single way.

• 31:30Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  But if there's some part of you, you want them to do something.

• 31:33Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  And then you share that with them because many of them don't know how it's physiologically possible. Or they don't know how to start going about doing that. We'll, we'll talk about female examples in a second. That rejection, the risk of that rejection.

• 31:48Dr. John Delony?

  Boom, off ramp.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Right? Yeah, absolutely. That, that's gonna crack this intimacy. So we've got, we've got a good thing going, right? We're in love, it's good, we've got a couple of kids.

• 31:58Dr. John Delony?

  But let's just, like, we've made humans together, we've buried parents together, we have gone through job loss and job gain together, we've celebrated.

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:06Dr. John Delony?

  We have so much.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  But there's, there's.

• 32:08Dr. John Delony?

  Except this.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, but there's a huge difference between everything that you just said.

• 32:12Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  And this, which is all of those things is me and you against that thing out there. But when it comes to something like sex, this is me and you, and, and so this, the tension, the tension is between the two of us, right? That's why it's such a critical fracture. Right? So we, and, and I don't wanna risk, because hey, like you said, this is what's so paradoxical about it. We've been through so much stuff together. And would I ever risk that?

• 32:39Dr. John Delony?

  But this is between us.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, so, so there's some distance. And in this equilibrium, we can bury parents, we can raise children. We're connected right now, there's nothing between us, right? We're gonna just, I'm gonna shove it to the back and you're gonna shove your stuff to the back and we're gonna stay good in, between us. And that's how we handle all the difficulties of life. Why would I ever wanna jeopardize raising kids, burying parents, paying off mortgages, dealing with cancer? By creating this friction? What if there's a rejection over here? Because this is something you can't take away.

• 33:12Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. So it's, it's, it's almost, it's the old adage, like, women connect, and again, I know this is overgeneralized, but women connect kneecap to kneecap and men connect shoulder to shoulder. We're doing a thing, it's us verse, or we're solving a problem this way. And in a marriage. Yeah, we can get shoulder to shoulder and take stuff on, but the moment we turn. Man.

• 33:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think it's tricky.

• 33:36Dr. John Delony?

  That's terrifying.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  Because even if I share with you and you say no, that's not the end of it.

• 33:42Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Because then how does that rejection make me feel? And even if I say, if we pretend everything is okay, and then you you say no, which is totally fine. But then are you wondering whether I think that's okay? Am I just saying it's okay, but I really don't think it's okay?

• 33:56Dr. John Delony?

  What is it about me that she just rejected or he just rejected?

• 34:00Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So I think this is what's really important is. People don't realize how to, it's not about. Opening the conversation. People don't know how to navigate that conversation to a healthy close. Right? Whether it involves trying things or not. There's, there's so much that we don't know how to talk about because this is the one kind of conversation that. No one ever teaches us how to have.

• 34:25Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  Right? About intimacy.

• 34:27Dr. John Delony?

  Yep.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  And the funny thing about this is like. A lot of people will, will think like, oh, you know, dudes want their wives to do particular things, but it goes both ways.

• 34:35Dr. John Delony?

  Of course.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  And I, I think that oftentimes the men that I work with, you know, and I've had my wife complain about this to me. And by the way, my wife says you are awesome. I was supposed to give you this.

• 34:46Dr. John Delony?

  I received that dude. Thanks.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Because of the way that you talk about your relationship and she absolutely loves it.

• 34:51Dr. John Delony?

  Well. Tell her I think she's awesome.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  Will do. So, so. I forgot what I was saying. Oh, yeah. So, so, you know, a lot of times we as men don't know how to provide the right level of romance. That you find in a romance novel.

• 35:09Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Right? And our partners don't know how to ask that of us. So they'll say like, I want you to be more romantic. Right? But then we look at the cover of, of this romance novel. Where there's some like, you know, pirate.

• 35:21Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, on a horse.

• 35:23Speaker 00

  Pirate on a horse.

• 35:24Dr. John Delony?

  With no shirt.

• 35:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, right? And, and so similarly, there's a lot of stuff that, that. Our wives may be wanting us to do that they don't know how to ask for. That is also intimate. It's something between the two of us. But we're like, we can't live up. So we can't live up to the, the, the washboard ab pirate riding a horse.

• 35:47Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  And they can't live up to the pornographic actress. Whereas the beautiful thing is you don't have to live up to those two things. The reality of it is great, you know? And, and so I think there's a lot of like romance that we don't know how to do. We think it's flowers and chocolates and that's it. But there, there's so much more to it. There's, there's tension, there's connection, there's excitement, you know, there's a lot of.

• 36:08Dr. John Delony?

  The, the, the transformation of my own marriage came from what I would call the de-Hollywoodization.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 36:16Dr. John Delony?

  The, when, when going back to like, I just need some more romance. To now, my wife came in and I've told this to her before on the show, like she came in about a year ago and just pointed at me and said, I need to borrow your nervous system for 20 minutes. Find an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I'll be right back. And I was sitting on the couch doing something mindless. I found an episode and she curled up on me like a, like a golden retreat. I just curled up tight. We watched the show, we laughed and she, literally she got up and she goes, thank you.

• 36:50Dr. John Delony?

  As though saying exactly what I need when I, instead of saying just romance, Hollywood say, if, if, if you have to explain it, it's not real anymore, your relationship's over.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 36:59Dr. John Delony?

  And instead of saying, hey, can, this is exactly what I need in this moment. I just need to lean up against something sturdy for a bit. Versus, and also me being like, hey, you want to try, uh, like I need you to read my mind. And if you can't read my mind, then we're done. Then, then Hollywood says, then somebody else is going to be able to read your mind. Instead of saying, hey, I really, ooh, this is uncomfortable. I want to try this, this and this, which is scary. It's, it's terrifying and that's where the magic is, right?

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I, I think what people don't get about de-Ho, and I love this term de-Hollywoodization. You know, we have these ideas of what relationships are.

• 37:35Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  And especially when it comes to things like pornography, when it comes to things like social media, right? Where we have all these performative relationships. Where we have influencers who are showing, oh, my partner did this for me. And people are, I, I really think a lot of this stuff really pollutes our idea of what a real relationship is. And oftentimes what happens is. You know, if your partner is watching something, whether it's a Hollywood movie, an influencer, or pornography, it can feel like you can't match that.

• 38:05Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  Right? So there's a lot of sense of like, I can't live up to these expect-

• 38:09Dr. John Delony?

  I'm not enough.

• 38:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I can't live up to these expectations. One thing you gotta remember is that you have certain things at your disposal that they can't match. And your example is great. It's actual physical touch.

• 38:21Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  You know, when you touch a human being, when you actually, there's like, what you see when you kiss, when you see two people kissing, and then there's the actual experience of kissing.

• 38:31Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  So you have so much ammo that Hollywood can't touch, which is real experience.

• 38:37Dr. John Delony?

  It's real. Yes, yes, yes, yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 00

  Which is actually holding your partner, which is, which is cracking a joke, you know? And, and not all sex has to be passionate, right?

• 38:46Dr. John Delony?

  Exactly.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  Sometimes it's like, but they don't-

• 38:49Dr. John Delony?

  You got two young kids. There's survival sex.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 38:52Dr. John Delony?

  We got seven minutes.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right?

• 38:53Dr. John Delony?

  I'm in if you're in, right?

• 38:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then there's the, why, why don't we do that more often?

• 38:57Dr. John Delony?

  Exactly, yes, exactly, yeah, yeah.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  So I, I think there's a lot of like, you know, shared emotional connection. There's a lot of intimacy that you can build. There's a lot of shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee kinda going on. And so I, I think a lot of the problems that we see is that, that, and this is one of the reasons that I think we have like this dating and mating crisis right now, which is that everyone is trying to live up to expectations, and I think apps are just making this worse.

• 39:20Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, yeah, catastrophically so, yeah.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  Apps are basically saying, give us all your expectations. We will find you someone who checks all the boxes, but that's not what a real relationship is.

• 39:30Dr. John Delony?

  Which is, by the way, is kind of a, through a Glass Darkly version of yourself.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  What does that mean, Glass Darkly version?

• 39:36Dr. John Delony?

  Means, when I fill out all the things I like, I'm gonna get a version of that back to me, and so we're gonna have three great dates, and then I'm gonna get bored. I'm, I, I'm gonna have no- There is, there is no reciprocation.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  I, I, I.

• 39:54Dr. John Delony?

  I listen to punk rock music. My wife grew up on country music. I've benefited and so has she.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So I, I think that's what's so scary is what you're, what you're talking about is that apps will select for things that have nothing to do, there's tons of research on this, have nothing to do with relationship quality.

• 40:11Dr. John Delony?

  Exactly. It has to do with what you think is cool.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right?

• 40:15Dr. John Delony?

  Which is not good relationship down, down the road.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I'm the same way. So, you know, my wife and I had a conversation recently where, where like she wants me to like do more things that she likes. We're like completely different human beings. We don't, we don't like the same music. We have different interests. Like I'm a gamer. She's super into tennis, right? And we're like completely different people and we would have never met on a dating app. This is kind of funny. The one thing we have in common, she's Indian, I'm Indian. The one thing we have in common is we both didn't want to end up with an Indian person. That's the only thing. That's the only thing we have in common when it comes to like, like our shared preferences for relationships. And if you look at the science of it, you know, sharing interests is not even in the top five of a successful, a successful relationship.

• 40:59Dr. John Delony?

  No.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  You know, it, it's, it's really wild.

• 41:03Dr. John Delony?

  The hardest part is if I could go back and tell 24 year old me is the things you're the most worried about when it comes to shared interest will be the thing that make your life as rich as it possibly can be later on.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 41:16Dr. John Delony?

  And yeah, but it's hard. I, I, I don't know how to, I don't know how to explain that to 25 year old me because that guy wouldn't listen to anybody, right? And it's, it's something you have to endure. Um, and I guess the challenge is getting into the minds of folks that the greatest gift you can give your partner is some sort of map. And that map is like, here's how you can love me right now. Or here is a.

• 41:43Dr. John Delony?

  Let me ask this, if this passes your smell test and feel free to say absolutely not. I have a working hypothesis that may not be accurate. In fact, you're the first clinician I've talked to about this. Tell me if I'm wrong. I think we way overuse the word needs, especially in mental health culture. And a much more intimate and even vulnerable

• 42:07Dr. John Delony?

  thing to put on the table is what I want. So if I tell you I need X, Y, or Z, I need you to help around here. I need this type of sex right now. What I'm doing is I'm taking a cinder block and I'm handing my well being to you and saying, you have to fix this for me. That's a, that's a, that's a weight and that goes on a checklist because you know what else needs to be done? The kid's got to be fed, the diaper's got to be changed, the yard's got to be mowed, the roof's got to be fixed. It goes on this list. It's a scarier thing for me to say, I want you. Or I want a hug right now because then someone could say, no. If someone gives you a need, you kind of have, you kind of get railroaded in.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so, so I

• 42:50Dr. John Delony?

  Does that pass the smell test or no?

• 42:52Speaker 00

  It's, it absolutely passes the smell test, but it, it, I, I agree a hundred percent. And I'm, it's triggers me because I think this is one of the worst things that's happening right now.

• 43:03Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  So I completely agree that we use needs way too much and we don't use wants enough.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  I think some of the other, some of the, that foundation, I agree with a hundred percent. Where you go from there?

• 43:17Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  I go in a far more negative place.

• 43:21Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. Take me there.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  So I'm not disagreeing with even where you end up, but like what I've noticed is scary. So when you start saying you need particular things, this is the way for a spoiled person to get what they want.

• 43:38Dr. John Delony?

  Yes. It's a weaponization. Yes.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Right? So I say like, I need. This purse.

• 43:44Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  So it it's really scary and you're spot on that like this is there's something weird happening where we're starting to use a lot of mental health language very colloquially.

• 43:53Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  And I think it what's really scary is that, you know, there are there are people out there that and it's kind of human nature who will hijack the word need.

• 44:02Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  And really start to create and and even when I work with these people like it kind of makes me angry, but I sort of see where they're coming from because they many times they don't know how to manage that on their own. So it becomes a need.

• 44:16Dr. John Delony?

  So. Okay, that's fair. That's a good call.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  A great example of this is.

• 44:21Dr. John Delony?

  I need my spouse to regulate me because I literally don't know how.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Right? So I'm you took the example out of my mouth.

• 44:26Dr. John Delony?

  That's actually that's actually a fair that's a valid challenge.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Really scary example of this is I need you to not break up with me. Otherwise, I'm going to kill myself.

• 44:35Dr. John Delony?

  Yep. Yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  Right? And and so this creates a really and maybe that is more of a need because we're talking about life and death.

• 44:42Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 00

  But what we're what we're seeing a lot of is a lot of people, when they want something, their inability to tolerate not getting what they want is so low that they convert it to a need.

• 44:53Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  Or they have discovered that the way to get what I want is to call it a need.

• 45:01Dr. John Delony?

  It's to is to throw a cinder block at you and say, catch.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Right? And and it feels so burdensome.

• 45:06Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  I I love this imagery of a cinder block, right? Because when I'm sharing all my needs with you, I'm absolutely outsourcing that responsibility to you. Um, and so I think it's like it's really, really dangerous.

• 45:20Dr. John Delony?

  It it's it will it it it causes so much. The question I get from men all the time is how do I get my wife to want to want to be with me? Right? And every time I've had an audience, like a live audience, and I've said, when's the last time you told your wife not that I need sex today? Or which which, by the way, can be a threat too. Or I'm have to go get it somewhere else, either through pornography or through the person I work with, whatever. When's the last time you looked at her? After helping around the, like, taking your fair share of the load at the house and saying, "Hey, I really want you." And the whole room just goes, "Oh," right?

• 46:01Dr. John Delony?

  And that gets you off the need-to-do list into the, right? Similar with, if you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, and he never gives me emotional connection. It's like, are you a person that he can emotionally connect to? Because the emotional interactions you'll have are all about how he's not enough, he's not enough, he's not doing this, he's not doing this. Are you a person that he can actually plug into? And that comes, like, to me, it always comes back to, if you need to use the word "need" to get what you want, then your relationship is not built on the foundation you think it's on.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a dangerous game, right?

• 46:38Dr. John Delony?

  If you say, "I want you," and they say, "No," that's a revealing, that tells you where your relationship is, right? And, um, but, but I, but your critique is fair in that, if I don't know how to do that, then it is a need, right?

• 46:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, absolutely, right? So that's what we see with people who have, like, borderline personality disorder and stuff like that, right? So you have all these intense feelings that, and I think it's everything you said and the things that I said, right? Sometimes it's, "I don't know how to get this done without you," which is why I need you to do it. And the real challenge with that is that it engenders dependence, right? And what's starting to happen is, now, when I'm giving you this cinder block, you have cinder blocks too. You have your own cinder blocks. And oftentimes, you're carrying your own cinder blocks, and now you're carrying my cinder blocks too.

• 47:28Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  And that is, that is something that is, can work in the short term, but is absolutely gonna weigh you down long term.

• 47:35Dr. John Delony?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  One thing I wanted to touch on is this, this question of how to want, so I've devoted myself to this in the last year or two.

• 47:41Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, sweet.

• 47:42Speaker 00

  How do I, how do I get my wife to want to want me?

• 47:46Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Okay, and I'm not saying that from like, uh, uh, my marriage perspective. I did go through somewhat of a midlife crisis and we...

• 47:54Dr. John Delony?

  We all have, yeah. We've all been there.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  I think we don't, we don't advertise, one thing that we should let people know more is that midlife crises, I think, are developmentally appropriate. I think they should happen. They should happen, and it's part of growing up. But, so a couple of questions that, you know, I work with, when I work with someone, I'll ask someone, "When was the last time that they wanted you?" And what were the conditions during that time? Yeah. Yeah, right? So, so what we need to understand is desire is something that grows. It's not something that you turn on or turn off. And you kind of talk about emotional connection. So I'm not surprised at all that we basically ended up in a very similar place. But oftentimes what happens is, you know, early on in relationships, there's a lot of space for desire.

• 48:40Speaker 00

  There's a lot of space for emotional connection. And then we get mortgages and then we get kids and we get all these kinds of things. And as we start entering the early stages of burnout, the first thing that goes from a neuroscience perspective is empathy. And once empathy goes away, once you're not sleeping well and once empathy goes away, I'm sure you've seen this a ton and maybe lived through it, right? But when you have young kids at home and things like that and sex life gets, gets really challenging and then it becomes a desperate, we've got seven minutes, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but I, I think a big part of it is, is understanding that there are certain circumstances that create, that we didn't have to engineer before. Right. Because they were natural and organic. We, we could emotionally connect because we had a lot of idle time. Yes.

• 49:25Speaker 00

  And so what we really have to do, once we get that time crunch is we have to understand, okay, what was the fertilizer at that time? Or what, what was the ground like at that time? And now we need to add fertilizer. Now we need to add something special that wasn't there before. Intentionality. Intentionality, right? You have to really think about it. And I, I think trust, safety, sleep, I think is huge, right? And I think it's just understanding that, that the, there, there is some, I think this stuff gets overplayed a little bit, but there's absolutely like a physiological element where the sexual act for the male biology is different from the sexual act from a female biology. The energy investment for male biology is like, actually averages about seven minutes. The energy investment for a female.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Half the audience was just like, seven minutes? Oh, yes. So this is fascinating. People don't, people don't realize this. Average sexual act is three to nine minutes. Yeah. 50% of women.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  Uh, would prefer that sex stays less than 15 minutes. And this is where a lot of people will be like, that means you're not doing it right. Well, like, sometimes that's not the case.

• 50:35Dr. John Delony?

  Well, and that's where, again, pornography has taken any sort of reality and...

• 50:39Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I, I once had, if I can tell a slightly vulgar story, y'all can edit it out.

• 50:44Dr. John Delony?

  Go for it.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  But I once had a patient who came to my office and said, you know, I'm having difficulty. I can't achieve a full climax. And so we kind of worked at it for a little while and, and, you know, I was trying to ask some questions and things like that. And then finally, like, the second week they came in, I said, you know, let's, let's just get to basics here. When you say full climax, what do you mean? And they had this impression from pornography that when, like, the volume of climax is, is like, you know, gallant.

• 51:13Dr. John Delony?

  Sure, yeah, yeah.

• 51:14Speaker 00

  And they were, they were achieving climax, but in the pornography they were watching... It didn't look like the, the volume was different, right? The volume was like three milliliters.

• 51:23Dr. John Delony?

  And they thought they were broke, three milliliters. They thought they were broken.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  And their climax lasts a certain amount of time, which is not what is demonstrated in pornography.

• 51:32Dr. John Delony?

  Right, right.

• 51:32Speaker 00

  So, so, you know, anyway, that's just...

• 51:34Dr. John Delony?

  It was just out there, yeah, yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, and people just don't understand, right, what, what normal really is.

• 51:39Dr. John Delony?

  So, my, if I was to distill it down and make it as simple as I can, and again, tell me if I'm, if I'm out to lunch here. Again, a broad generalization inside of a bell curve, right, that everyone's different, listening to this, but... It is, for all of human history, sex has been an extraordinarily vulnerable act, especially for women. Carrying the bulk of, this might kill you in childbirth.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  Most dangerous thing you'll do statistically.

• 52:06Dr. John Delony?

  If you have a child, it's yours forever, right? And he can leave and you can't, right? And so I have to know you are safe, you will be here, there is some sort of, and I'm gonna get through that safety emotionally to get to this. And coming this other direction.

• 52:24Dr. John Delony?

  If before we were sitting upstairs in the green room talking and you were like, hey man, can I just tell you like, life's like really tough for me right now. It just guy to guy, I'd be like, cool man, right? We have to know, like physically, we did a thing together. We have shared professional interest. We, if I come in vulnerable with a guy, just out in the, it's gonna, it's gonna get me ostracized. And so we're gonna do a thing together, which thing gives me permission to be emotionally vulnerable with you. And you, we cross each other. Does that make sense? Am I saying that clearly?

• 53:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, so.

• 53:01Dr. John Delony?

  It's emotional to physical versus physical allows emotion and emotion allows physical and we go right past.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  So I think, I think, I think a lot of, so are you, so I, I, I don't disagree with you at all. I, I would add some, some of just my experience working with men. So I think what a lot of men struggle with in terms of emotional vulnerability is they literally do not know how to be emotionally vulnerable. And oftentimes, what a lot of people think by that is, oh yeah, men can't cry. That's actually, it's really fascinating. So many men, including men in like happy marriages, right? So when, when I say, if we were back in the green room and I was like, hey, John, my life is, I'm on the struggle bus right now, right? It would make, may get me ostracized.

• 53:47Speaker 00

  What a lot of people don't realize is that when men are emotionally vulnerable with their female partners, they get ostracized by their female partners.

• 53:55Dr. John Delony?

  Correct, yeah.

• 53:55Speaker 00

  So this is really, there's some fascinating research that comes out of actually a feminist publication, which is really interesting. So oftentimes as men, as we express emotions, so if you look at the way that, that women express emotions, and this is once again, bell curve, right? So there's kind of this gradual escalation, right? Where they'll talk for, let's say like a 45 minute period. You don't, you don't start with crying. You go from like zero to five miles an hour. Your, your female friend tells you, okay, like I totally understand. They're, they're like very emotionally supportive and they'll kind of work their way up in a very like safe collaborative way.

• 54:33Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  So as men, we have like two modes. We have like zero and we have a hundred percent. And what's really scary nowadays, the kids call it the ick.

• 54:42Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  But so many men that I work with, when they express emotional vulnerability to their female partner, their female partner gets the ick.

• 54:50Dr. John Delony?

  Ah, okay.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  And, and that's for a couple of really interesting reasons. One is we don't know how to go from zero to 25 and make sure you're okay with 25, right?

• 54:59Dr. John Delony?

  Hey, we cool?

• 54:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 00

  Right, so it goes from zero to 100.

• 55:02Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  And then there's another really interesting thing. So there's a kind of emotional labor that men are actually really good at, that women are not socialized to do nearly as much, which is something called emotional containment.

• 55:16Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  So if I go from zero to 100, you would be able to handle that.

• 55:21Dr. John Delony?

  Of course.

• 55:22Speaker 00

  Right? So we've all had probably male friends who will just absolutely be out of control and we're like, bro, it's okay.

• 55:29Dr. John Delony?

  Right, right, right.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  I can hold that, right? Like, you can be falling apart and like, it's like, I can handle that.

• 55:36Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 55:36Speaker 00

  So even I remember when my dad passed away, the way that, you know, when someone cries, they end up on a man's shoulder.

• 55:47Dr. John Delony?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 55:48Speaker 00

  Right? So, so I, as a, as a psychiatrist, have held people who are crying on my couch. I cannot think of a single of my female colleagues who has ever done that. Right? So the ability to hold emotions and contain them, right? Because we're really good at suppressing. So you can send it my way.

• 56:07Dr. John Delony?

  I'll hold it for you.

• 56:08Speaker 00

  I, I can hang on to it for you. I can suppress it. I'll shove it down. Like, I know how to bury that. Like, I'm good at that.

• 56:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  And, and oftentimes, women don't do that kind of emotional labor nearly as much as men do. That's our day in and day out.

• 56:20Dr. John Delony?

  Huh.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  So what can actually happen is if you, if, if you're a dude and you go from zero to 100, that is oftentimes too much for someone to handle, right? Especially your female partner. And it kind of gives them the ick. I hear this a lot with like dating where, you know, now like men are trying to be a little bit more emotionally vulnerable and, and stuff like that. And, and just think, think about it, right? If you're a woman listening to this, if, if your, if your husband showed up and just started crying at like 100% and did that. Like six days in a row.

• 56:52Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Right? How would that make you feel? Would you be like, is this okay? I don't know what is going on.

• 56:57Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go, let's go, let's go.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know how to handle it.

• 57:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  And that's also why one of the worst things I think you can ever do is confess your love.

• 57:04Dr. John Delony?

  Huh.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  So when you confess your love, you're going, you've had all this love.

• 57:07Dr. John Delony?

  Oh, and you're dating somebody?

• 57:08Speaker 00

  Right? You're confessing, so I'm falling more and more and more and more in love. And then I suddenly dump all of that on you.

• 57:16Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  So I go from zero to 100. The other person is like, where is this coming from?

• 57:20Dr. John Delony?

  Ah, yeah.

• 57:21Speaker 00

  And if you think about the way that organic, I don't know what happened with you and your relationship. But, you know, I would guess that most people out there, even if you kind of go from zero to 100, you don't show them zero to 100. Right? You fall for them real quick in the back of your mind. You can't get them out of your head. But you're kind of playing it cool. And there's this graduated.

• 57:39Dr. John Delony?

  I was gonna say, the old line was, dude, be cool.

• 57:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, right? Exactly.

• 57:42Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  And there are reasons why these things are the old line, right? So there are reasons that we offer this kind of advice.

• 57:48Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  Because if you go from zero to 100 and the other person can't handle it, they're gonna pull away.

• 57:53Dr. John Delony?

  Gonna bury them.

• 57:56Dr. John Delony?

  Dude, we could talk for five hours on this one topic. We need to set that up. Next time I'm in Houston, we're gonna get together. All right, I want to switch gears.

• 58:04Dr. John Delony?

  I need you to, I need you're parenting coaching me now.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 58:08Dr. John Delony?

  We're gonna televise this, but I, we're gonna record it, but I'm literally asking for your input.

• 58:12Speaker 00

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 58:13Dr. John Delony?

  You are a gamer.

• 58:14Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 58:15Dr. John Delony?

  Like, right? You're like, you're like.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:17Dr. John Delony?

  An outstanding gamer, from what I understand. Like, you're good at it.

• 58:22Speaker 00

  I'm a gamer.

• 58:23Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 58:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:24Dr. John Delony?

  Okay. So I have hit the bell, the pendulum so far that I have, in the words of the great Homer Simpson, the best part about having kids is to teach them to hate the things that you hate, right? So I have passed along to my son, I'll use him, he's 15.

• 58:44Dr. John Delony?

  This over sensationalized danger of all things screens, all things like whatever. Go outside, go be active. In fact, I got him a new climbing stand for, we're in the middle of hunting season here in Nashville and he was this morning before the sun came up practicing with it up a tree, right?

• 59:01Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 59:02Dr. John Delony?

  Hit it so far. And I also have begun to have, like, he got his first smartphone in eighth grade, but we took off cameras, we took off the internet. There's no way, it's basically a texting device, right?

• 59:16Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 59:17Dr. John Delony?

  And to this day, 15 still doesn't have that stuff. Um, no, no Snapchat, no, none of those things. Part of that is a response to me doing a bunch of sexual assault investigations where everything was in Snapchat over and over and over and over again, right? And just constantly living in the data about social media.

• 59:34Dr. John Delony?

  Have I hit, am I, am I, have I gone too far to the point where I'm messing this poor kid up? Playing defense. And if I haven't yet, what is a way that he's, he's not two and a half years from walking out of my front door into the wild, wild west?

• 59:49Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 59:49Dr. John Delony?

  How would I begin to integrate into him responsibility while at the same time saying, you're still a kid, man? And these, these, the tech ecosystem is simply better than us. It's, it's better than us. Help me.

• 1:00:04Speaker 00

  Okay, sure. So let's start with a couple of questions.

• 1:00:07Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  What happens next? Like where, where is your plan going to lead you? Like, so what, what happens next?

• 1:00:12Dr. John Delony?

  Well, it's, plan is A, a, so a couple of years ago, he's got a, he does have some video games and he plays them with his friends and, and that was, he brought it to us and said, hey, we live out here in the country. When I walk out of my schoolhouse, you have isolated me from every human being on the planet.

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  Good.

• 1:00:30Dr. John Delony?

  I was like, that's actually, that's a fair call. And so if there's a couple of these games that have closed groups that I know, what I don't want is strangers coming in, et cetera, et cetera.

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:00:39Dr. John Delony?

  It's a ton of extra work on my part, but he was a fair call. So you gotta be able to talk to your friends on the phone and just talk noise and trash and make jokes after school and whatever. That's fine. And if y'all are doing it playing Minecraft, so be it. Um, but I have to come up with some sort of healthy integration because the day you walk out of my house.

• 1:00:58Dr. John Delony?

  That's the ecosystem you're in.

• 1:00:59Speaker 00

  Okay, so, so, right, so I, I, I think, I think, so it sounds like y'all hunt?

• 1:01:03Dr. John Delony?

  Let me say it with a bow and arrow, there has been, since he was a very young kid, here's what safety looks like, and you can be next to me and you can't touch this thing. And then now he's 15.

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:01:12Dr. John Delony?

  And you can climb up a tree on your own, right?

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:01:14Dr. John Delony?

  Because I, I, there's trust there.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  Y'all hunt?

• 1:01:17Dr. John Delony?

  Yes, correct.

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  Okay, and you use guns or bows and arrows?

• 1:01:20Dr. John Delony?

  Both, both.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  Okay. How old was he when you taught him how to use, which one did he learn first? A bow or gun?

• 1:01:26Dr. John Delony?

  A gun, a rifle.

• 1:01:27Speaker 00

  How, how old was he when you taught him how to use a rifle?

• 1:01:30Dr. John Delony?

  I taught him that very, very young. But there's a difference between teaching you and then you being able to do this.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  I'm with you, I'm with you.

• 1:01:37Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, very, very, very young.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  How old was he?

• 1:01:39Dr. John Delony?

  Gosh, man, probably five.

• 1:01:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:01:41Dr. John Delony?

  Four.

• 1:01:42Speaker 00

  Right, so some people will think, I, I, I can understand that people will judge that. I don't judge that at all.

• 1:01:47Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  Right, so, so I, I think here's, here's kinda, and I'm, I'm kinda with, with you. I, I think this is a really common problem, that's why I, I literally wrote a book about it. It's called How to Raise a Healthy Gamer, where I kinda lay all this stuff out. So I play games with my kids.

• 1:02:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yep.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  I started, I tried to play Mario Kart with my daughter when she was two. She was way too young, didn't understand it.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  So, here's kinda where I'm coming from, so let's like, just super high level.

• 1:02:12Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  You mentioned that these tech platforms are...

• 1:02:16Dr. John Delony?

  Better than us.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  Better than us.

• 1:02:18Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  They're, they're, we're outgunned.

• 1:02:20Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  We have, we have certain things that they don't have, but...

• 1:02:23Dr. John Delony?

  We have the off button.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:02:25Dr. John Delony?

  We always have the nuclear option.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  No, no, no, that's not the nu, no, no, the, the off button doesn't help us so, so much.

• 1:02:30Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, okay. No, that, that feels good.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  So, so, so, so off button leads to deception.

• 1:02:35Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  Okay, so if, if you are pushing the off button on your kid, your kid is just gonna learn ways around it, right?

• 1:02:42Dr. John Delony?

  Correct, yeah.

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  So, so, I think we're outgunned, for sure. Parents don't know what to do, that's why I wrote a book about it. So, let, let's start with a couple of things. So I think that techno, technology is gonna get more addictive every year that goes by.

• 1:02:56Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  So we had, you know, even, even when I started working on tech addiction, which is in 2015, things were not that bad, now we're in the world of AI and everything is just getting, the, the rate of change is increasing, it's, everything's getting, advancing faster, right? So... It's my view that we have to prepare our kids for the world that they are going to inherit.

• 1:03:17Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  So I'm kinda with you that if you wanna teach your kid how to hunt, you gotta teach him early and you gotta teach him responsibility.

• 1:03:25Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  Right? So-

• 1:03:27Dr. John Delony?

  And that, and that, when it comes to the gun, I think, I think this is a great analogy. I had to model every second of that.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Dr. John Delony?

  Cause that's what he's absorbing.

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that, that's-

• 1:03:38Dr. John Delony?

  How does dad handle this bow and arrow every second of every day?

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  So that's another challenge that parents have. You can't model Minecraft.

• 1:03:46Dr. John Delony?

  No.

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:03:48Dr. John Delony?

  That's right.

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  So, so like, that's really challenging, right? So even with gun safety, like, you can model it. He can learn how to chop carrots, he can learn how to shoot a gun, he can learn about safeties. He's gonna watch how careful you are and he's gonna pick it up. But a lot of parents aren't gamers.

• 1:04:02Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  And so how are you supposed to model good behavior?

• 1:04:04Dr. John Delony?

  Can you model laughter and joy and an exuberant life away from a screen?

• 1:04:10Speaker 00

  Absolutely, you should.

• 1:04:11Dr. John Delony?

  Is that, is that a, is that an antidote?

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  That is not an antidote.

• 1:04:15Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  So this is, this is where I think this is the wrong kinda thinking, in my opinion. Right? So it's not either or, and you're thinking about it like a pendulum.

• 1:04:23Dr. John Delony?

  I am, yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  This is not either or. So we gotta, like, if I was coaching you-

• 1:04:28Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  I would start with, what's your allergy to screen? Why do you hate screens so much?

• 1:04:32Dr. John Delony?

  Because it, because I can't stop. When I turn it on, I go to a vortex.

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:04:41Dr. John Delony?

  Does that make sense?

• 1:04:42Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:43Dr. John Delony?

  Like, I, I have a-

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  But-

• 1:04:44Dr. John Delony?

  A lived experience of never having social media and three years ago finding myself-

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  Bro, I-

• 1:04:49Dr. John Delony?

  In my closet scrolling while the kid, and I was like, I remember laughing, like, oh dude, they got me.

• 1:04:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so-

• 1:04:53Dr. John Delony?

  Right?

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  So, I mean, I literally, oh, I failed so many classes. It took me five and a half years to graduate from college.

• 1:05:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  Because I basically failed my first two years of college cause I was playing video games for 16 to 20 hours a day. So, so like, think about that, you're a therapist, right? So, you're a counselor, right? Right, so like, this is your struggle, this is your demon.

• 1:05:12Dr. John Delony?

  I'm dumping on him to carry it, yeah.

• 1:05:13Speaker 00

  And, and it's like, oh my god, you know, I, I've seen this, you're, you know, I had a kid with someone, the person who, the father of the kid turned out to be- Not the best human being on the planet. Therefore, I never want you to date.

• 1:05:25Dr. John Delony?

  All men are bad.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  All men are bad.

• 1:05:27Dr. John Delony?

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  Right? So that's kind of what you're doing emotionally.

• 1:05:30Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  That needs to be worked on because that emotion is going to be very confusing for him when you're coming at him like that.

• 1:05:36Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Speaker 00

  Right? And I think you've done a really good job because you're still letting him play and you haven't, you know, so you acknowledge that this is his world and so you're doing good there, but I think working on that is important.

• 1:05:45Dr. John Delony?

  It is, man. Well, and also, it may be that the only lifeline I have in three years is, hey, you want to get online and play a game together? Cause he's across the country.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Dr. John Delony?

  And that could be a shared moment we have.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right? So, so, so I, I think even sharing with him, why you come at him so hard about screens?

• 1:06:04Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Speaker 00

  This is what I noticed in myself. It's something that I struggled with. It's something that I wanted to protect you from. I was afraid that this is going to mess you up.

• 1:06:13Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  Right? So having that conversation with him, giving him that context will help immensely. Okay?

• 1:06:20Dr. John Delony?

  Yes. Can I ask a question?

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Dr. John Delony?

  Going back to the pseudo-relationship of social media.

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:06:26Dr. John Delony?

  One of the things since he was little,

• 1:06:29Dr. John Delony?

  I would always ask like, why would you outsource playing a baseball game to the screen? Why don't we just go outside and play baseball? Is this a, or why go shoot bad guys out here? Let's go nerf gun in the, in the yard. Is, is, is this an offshoot? Is it a substitute of?

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:06:51Dr. John Delony?

  Of, of an activity?

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  So, so why, why play baseball on a game instead of playing baseball in real life? Because I can be awesome in the game. And

• 1:07:04Dr. John Delony?

  I know, but I can be awesome.

• 1:07:05Speaker 00

  No, you can't.

• 1:07:06Dr. John Delony?

  No, no, I'm saying I can be awesome. I can be really tough on social media, right?

• 1:07:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so, so let's, let's, let's tease these apart.

• 1:07:15Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  So, first thing is for you specifically.

• 1:07:18Dr. John Delony?

  I know I'm wrong here. I'm hanging on.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  No, no, you're not, you're not, you're not wrong.

• 1:07:21Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  You're not wrong about anything.

• 1:07:23Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  You have the beliefs that you have. You have the experiences that you have. You're, you're incredibly thoughtful.

• 1:07:29Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  You're a good dad. You've lived through some difficult times. So you're not wrong. What I would say is you're incomplete.

• 1:07:35Dr. John Delony?

  Perfect. Love it. That was a loving way to say that.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  I mean, it's not like I'm not trying to like glaze on you.

• 1:07:40Dr. John Delony?

  No, I got you. I got you.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  Artificially compassionate. It's like this is, this is how parents get here is there's just dimensions of this stuff that we don't understand.

• 1:07:48Dr. John Delony?

  Yes. And honestly, you asked me my core fear. I don't understand it.

• 1:07:52Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:07:53Dr. John Delony?

  I don't get it.

• 1:07:54Speaker 00

  Right? And, and so this is why when

• 1:07:56Dr. John Delony?

  I don't get it.

• 1:07:57Speaker 00

  Men have problems that they don't know how to solve. Right? We had a whole conversation about how we react to that.

• 1:08:04Dr. John Delony?

  We shut, yeah, we shut it down. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  We shut it down. Or, and sometimes we use pornography. Sounds like that's not your

• 1:08:11Dr. John Delony?

  No, no, no.

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  So, so let's just start with, so I think, I think understanding your own feelings because once again, your, your child is going to model, they're, they're going to pick up on what you're doing.

• 1:08:22Dr. John Delony?

  That's right.

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  Let's remember that when you, when your son was like 11 months old, he had no ability to communicate with you with words. You had no ability to communicate with him with words. The vital survival communication between parent and child is completely non-verbal. He knows how you're feeling.

• 1:08:40Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  Right? My favorite study of this is if you take a parent with anxiety disorder and a child with anxiety disorder, if you give the parent treatment, the child's anxiety will improve, even if you don't do anything to the kid.

• 1:08:50Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  Okay? So he is picking up whatever you are feeling.

• 1:08:54Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  Now, so that's the first thing. So you, you gotta understand how you feel about it.

• 1:09:00Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:00Speaker 00

  Maybe have a conversation with him. He's 15, so you can probably do that.

• 1:09:03Dr. John Delony?

  We're way past, yeah, yeah. He's great.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  I think the second thing is, is, you know, I'm a big fan of teach him how to swim. Don't keep him out of the ocean.

• 1:09:10Dr. John Delony?

  Exactly. I am too. I am too.

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  So how do we do that? So this is where I think the, the key thing is absolutely integration, but with awareness. So what a lot of parents do is it's either off or on, but that's not how people will ask me like, how many hours a day is too much? It's not about how many hours a day, right? So if we think about like,

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  I'm trying to think of a good example. So even if we take someone who like works, right? How many hours of a day is work okay? And you may say, okay, 40 hours a week. Like I work 80 hours a week, 90 hours a week. I work six or seven days out of the week. I do, yeah. And that's not unhealthy, right? So it's not a total number. It is the way that you are handling it. Right. Okay? So I think it's about teaching them responsibility. And the cornerstone of responsibility is awareness. So this is what I did with my kids. I would, they would wake up in the morning and they would say, can we watch TV? Right. Okay, Saturday morning. My daughter starts every day of the week with that question. Yep. Can I watch? Can I watch, right? And, and by the way, as long as your children, so my, my goal, and this is what I lay out in How to Raise a Healthy Gamer,

• 1:10:16Speaker 00

  my goal is to teach them, to make them understand, help them understand. Once they understand, they won't keep asking you the questions. Right. Right? Do your kids ask you, oh, hey, can I touch the hot pan? Can I touch the hot stove? Can I touch the hot stove? Do they ask that every week? It's because they haven't understood. Because you're doing the mental work for them. You're restricting them. Yeah. Right? So you're not teaching, you're never teaching them gun safety. Yeah. You're, you're just saying, no guns, no guns, no guns. Okay, here, hold a gun, now push the trigger, now I'm taking it away. Right. You're not letting them learn how to use it. So this is what I did with my kids. They'd say, can we, can we watch? And I would say, yes. So 45 minutes go by, I say, hey, like, let's go to the playground. And they say, no, we want to watch more, we want to watch more. I say, okay, fine.

• 1:10:59Speaker 00

  So I, I pause for a second, I say, how are y'all feeling? Do you really want to watch? I'll invite them to like, check in with themselves. And then, you know, 30 minutes later, they want to watch for another 45 minutes. 15 minutes later, they're fighting with each other. They're like, they're rolling around on the bed, right? They're like six. They don't feel good. They don't feel good. Yeah. But they still don't want to stop. So I'll force them to stop, we'll pause. I'll say, how do you feel? Are you guys having fun? And they'll be like, yeah. And I'm like, is this what fun looks like? Yeah. Right? Or do you, are you smiling? Are you smiling right now? And they're like, no. And they kind of understand that. Then I'll forcibly remove them. Then we'll go to the playground and I let them play for 15 minutes and I'll say, hey, do you guys want to go back and watch or do you want to stay at the playground?

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  And of course, they say, I want to stay at the playground. Maybe your kids don't, but. And so, so I think a key thing is like, once they're at the playground and then they stay for an hour, right? Then we go back and then we're gonna have lunch and then I'll invite them to reflect. Okay, so what did y'all notice? Would y'all have wanted to stay for two hours? How much fun are you actually having in the first 30 minutes and the second 30 minutes? How does this stuff work? You guys tell me.

• 1:12:06Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:07Speaker 00

  Right? And it's amazing how much when you invite them to like pay attention, because so many parents operate between on and off.

• 1:12:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:15Speaker 00

  The real money is before it turns on and after it turns off.

• 1:12:20Dr. John Delony?

  Ooh, that's good. I like that.

• 1:12:21Speaker 00

  Right? So to think a little bit where people ask, can I get a cellphone? It's the wrong question. Or my kid is asking for a cellphone. Can I get him a cellphone? It's the wrong question. The question is, once you get a cellphone, what are your responsibilities? How are you gonna use it responsibly? These are the conversations you need to be having with your kid. You can absolutely get a cellphone if you can be responsible with it. What does responsibility mean?

• 1:12:45Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:46Speaker 00

  So oftentimes what I'll do is we'll sort of talk, we'll have these conversations with our kids. And parents will be blown away. So you have a kid who plays too many video games. And then we'll sit down, we'll ask them, okay, what do you like about the game? Well, I like, you know, playing with my friends. And it's so sad because I really feel for these kids as someone who's a gamer, right? Because parents are like, I want them to play for one hour a day. And I'm like, that is so terrible. Right? It's kind of like, the whole point of gaming is, you don't like do it for one hour a day.

• 1:13:19Dr. John Delony?

  You go down a rabbit hole?

• 1:13:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, right? Like you want to like play until you're satisfied. It's like, hey, I'm gonna take you to a baseball game. We're gonna go to two innings a day. It's like, that's not, that's not how it's fun.

• 1:13:31Dr. John Delony?

  I want to go to one game a month and watch the whole game.

• 1:13:34Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right? So I'll tell something to these parents and I'll ask them, you know, talk to your kid about what they like about gaming.

• 1:13:40Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:41Speaker 00

  And then they'll blow my, you know, their mind will be blown, but then we'll develop a plan of like, okay, what does your kid really want? And what we come up with is, okay, this is what you're gonna do. These are your responsibilities. Every day, you're gonna, you're gonna have an activity. You're gonna go to martial arts. You're gonna go to tennis. You're gonna do math tutoring. You're gonna be home. Uh, you're gonna be at, at the dinner table at 6:45 so you can help set the table. We set out all these things. I know it sounds unbelievable, but we can get there. But, but when Friday rolls around, okay, five P, Friday, you get home. We're gonna order you pizza. You can start gaming at 5:00 PM. You can sleep at dawn.

• 1:14:20Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Speaker 00

  You can get up at noon. You need to be up by lunch the next day.

• 1:14:26Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:26Speaker 00

  Okay? And then you're gonna be with us on Saturday. And then on Sunday, we're gonna have like a family day.

• 1:14:32Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:32Speaker 00

  But you can stay up all night. We're gonna get you a two-liter thing of Mountain Dew, right? If you do, if you live your life responsibly, you get this game as a reward.

• 1:14:43Dr. John Delony?

  Gotcha.

• 1:14:43Speaker 00

  There is recreation and then there is the rest of your life. And those two things can be combined.

• 1:14:48Dr. John Delony?

  How do you navigate? And actually, we're not quite as on the sleep, but that's actually how we live our life.

• 1:14:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:55Dr. John Delony?

  Which I love. Like Friday night, we're, I'm pretty disciplined about what we eat. Yeah, that Friday night, wheels are off, man.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:15:00Dr. John Delony?

  Family movie night and, and hey, and my son over time is like, can I go in here and play with my buddies on this? What? Absolutely, dude, knock your lights out. Um, how do you manage safety?

• 1:15:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, so a couple of things. Um, so safety with relation to like the people that they encounter on the internet?

• 1:15:19Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, cuz what I can make, I ran the streets growing up. Like, we would go spend the night at somebody's house and we'd come back. We tried to be back before the parents are awake, right? And just being silly, right? Doing silly dumb stuff. So the lack of sleep, fine. The health, the drinking a two-liter Mountain Dew, fine. I'm more worried about the, the nefarious characters that I don't know.

• 1:15:42Speaker 00

  Okay, so let's be specific. So what are you afraid is gonna happen to your 15-year-old son?

• 1:15:47Dr. John Delony?

  I'm afraid that, um...

• 1:15:51Dr. John Delony?

  A... Somebody's gonna come into that group that's not a part of that group.

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  And what?

• 1:15:57Dr. John Delony?

  And go down rabbit holes. That there's gonna be chat responses of... Suddenly, someone's picking on 15-year-old kids. And now they start coming back and forth. And now suddenly, they respond like 15-year-old... Harassment. Like, um, he's a big, humongous 15-year-old. So let me insert my daughter here. That somebody's going to encourage her to go outside. And I'm gonna come by and pick you up, because I got some cool stuff for you, right? Someone's gonna traffic my kid. Or somebody's going to, "Hey, send me a..." My, uh... My former career was looking at somebody convincing, finally wearing somebody down until they sent a topless photo, right? That's the stuff I'm worried about.

• 1:16:35Speaker 00

  Okay, so it's a completely valid fear. But let's, like, put things in perspective. So the most dangerous person from a sexual predation standpoint for your daughter is gonna be someone she knows.

• 1:16:45Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 1:16:46Speaker 00

  Right? So strangers on the internet, are they dangerous? But statistically, I think something like... I don't remember the number. It's probably around 75% or higher of, like, the threats to her.

• 1:16:55Dr. John Delony?

  Somebody I know.

• 1:16:56Speaker 00

  Is someone you know.

• 1:16:57Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 1:16:57Speaker 00

  Right? It's gonna be... Chances are, it's gonna be, like, someone who's older than her, who's gonna be a man, who's a member of your family or social circle.

• 1:17:04Dr. John Delony?

  Or somebody's brother.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  Or someone's brother, right? So this is where, like, let's just put the numbers in perspective. You should be way more worried about when she goes on sleepovers than you should about an internet stranger.

• 1:17:16Dr. John Delony?

  That's one of the things I'm militant on, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  Okay. That being said, there are risks, right? There are absolutely risks. So that's where a couple of things that I recommend. One is that, um, generally speaking, if your child has access to a device in their room, that increases usage by 50%. So what I recommend is, um, keep it in common spaces.

• 1:17:35Dr. John Delony?

  Correct.

• 1:17:36Speaker 00

  And secondly, no headphone speakers.

• 1:17:38Dr. John Delony?

  Perfect.

• 1:17:38Speaker 00

  Right? So then you hear what they're saying.

• 1:17:40Dr. John Delony?

  Or at least they assume you might be hearing what they're saying.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly, right? And then, and then the most... The most powerful thing that you can do is be involved. "Hey, who do you play games with online?", right? And that's where, if your kid is afraid... So I recommend something in the book, which is, for the first month that you talk to your kids about gaming... You don't try to punish them. You don't try to make any changes based on what they say. And you even approach them and explicitly tell them that, hey, I know you play a lot of games. I just want to understand why. You know, can you explain this gaming stuff to me? What do you like about it? Do you have friends? Do you not have friends? What are your friends like? How old are they? You know, I just want to understand. I'm not going to change anything for the first month. Later on, we're going to start to figure out limits.

• 1:18:23Dr. John Delony?

  What's safe and what's, yeah, yeah. Based on.

• 1:18:25Speaker 00

  I would love, when I set limits, I would love it if I understood how you felt.

• 1:18:32Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:32Speaker 00

  I would love to set those limits with you instead of without you.

• 1:18:36Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:36Speaker 00

  Right? And that's how we get to these plans of kid is grinding Monday through Thursday and Friday comes along. It's like, good job. Now your parents, and it's amazing, the kids will be on your side. Because the idea for a kid that dad is going to order me pizza.

• 1:18:50Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:51Speaker 00

  And I get to game all night and, and then, you know, he like, like, that's so foreign to them.

• 1:18:55Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Speaker 00

  Right? That's what they really want and you're giving it to them and they're doing all the healthy stuff, which was what they want too. Because your 15 year old son knows that he needs to be studying hard. He knows he needs to be athletic, right? Because he may have a crush on someone and if he's got acne and he's like severely overweight and doesn't know how to socialize.

• 1:19:13Dr. John Delony?

  Feel good, yeah.

• 1:19:14Speaker 00

  He's not going to feel good, right?

• 1:19:15Dr. John Delony?

  Well, and, and if you layer what you're saying on top of something that's been, this is my wife's idea early on was to always point out how good he feels after a good night's sleep. And now I have a 15 year old that's like, dude, I'm going to bed. I'm like, stay up with your dad. And he's like, dude, I'm going to bed. And that's wired in, right? So that all night takes, begins to take care of itself because he knows that path too.

• 1:19:37Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So, so, so two things there, right? Where the important conversation happens before it turns on and after it turns off. Your wife stumbled into that.

• 1:19:43Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  Right? Which is beautiful. And then the, the next thing.

• 1:19:47Dr. John Delony?

  Gets up at, at noon the next morning be like, you feel great, huh?

• 1:19:51Speaker 00

  So, and, and that's the other thing is, is once children understand, so it's not just kids. Right? So I, I work with people who are addicted to technology from, you know, who are kids all the way to like seniors. And the, the basic problem with all these apps and stuff is that we are not aware of, of the impact it's having on us. The moment what's happening is we are touching a hot stove, but we have lidocaine on our hands. So we're not feeling anything. Then we wake up the next day and we're like, what, what happened to my hand?

• 1:20:20Dr. John Delony?

  We burned our hand.

• 1:20:20Speaker 00

  Burned, right? So we're not even aware, like, just pay attention to yourself.

• 1:20:25Dr. John Delony?

  And that that's teach going full circle. That's teaching emotional regulation. That's teaching. Here's how your body feels.

• 1:20:31Speaker 00

  I I yeah, I would even say it's not even regulation yet. We're not. That's where it'll end up. I would say it's teaching awareness, awareness. Forget about regulation. So so this is where, you know, one thing when I work with like older adults, right? So so here's what surprises people. You know, the reason that healthy gamer is a thing is because people who are addicted to video games don't want to be addicted. They're not in denial. Like the majority of them, they just don't know how to stop.

• 1:20:56Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  And so even when I, you know, I'll work with like, like professionals. And they take a break and you pull out your phone. I'll ask one really simple question. After you take a forty five minute break where you're scrolling on your phone, do you feel energized afterward?

• 1:21:11Dr. John Delony?

  You feel good.

• 1:21:12Speaker 00

  Answer is absolutely not. I feel more emotionally drained. It it drains you cognitively when you're engaging with your phone. So I think there's a lot of awareness teaching. There's a lot of like, you know, graduated steps. Parents suck at this. And the reason they suck at this is because they're not willing to let their children fail.

• 1:21:32Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 1:21:33Speaker 00

  Right? So so I mean, we'll do things like it's like, you know, mom is saying, hey, like, did you, you know, you have to take care of your paper. Is your paper done? And and and then we'll come up with different kinds of rules. Like if you get a, you know, if you get a C, it's like zero hours. If you get a B, it's this much. If you get an A, it's this much.

• 1:21:51Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:51Speaker 00

  And then something really dangerous happens, which is parents have a really big disadvantage, which is that they love their kids.

• 1:21:57Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:58Speaker 00

  So kid comes home and gets a C and parent says, okay, no more gaming. A month into no gaming, kid hasn't gotten rid of his C, right? Because semesters happen every three months, but now the kid is working really hard. Now the kid is is is like, you know, working on their papers and they're studying. They got an A on a test. Now kid comes to you and says, hey, I got an A on a test. Can I play now? And the parent is the one who violates it.

• 1:22:27Dr. John Delony?

  Well, and I think even beneath the and parents love their kids is. Parents really want their kids to like them.

• 1:22:34Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:35Dr. John Delony?

  And I can't live in the tension of my kid isn't like me right now, which I think is job number three or four, besides keep alive, is you gotta have seasons where your kids don't like you. And that's right, that's right and good.

• 1:22:46Speaker 00

  I had a tough conversation with my daughter a couple of weeks ago where I said to her, I know what I'm doing is making you not like me. And if we're not careful, our relationship will evolve in a way where we don't like each other. And I'm okay with that. What I'm teaching you and how important this, I would rather you hate me and do this and learn this than you like me and not do this. This is how important this is to me.

• 1:23:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah, I love you enough to let you not like me right now.

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and, and I think it was, it was hard for her and it was hard for me. But I think like we ended up in a good place.

• 1:23:24Dr. John Delony?

  Always, always.

• 1:23:25Speaker 00

  And, and, and so I think a lot of it, anyway, going back to the gaming thing. So I think it's having conversations with them.

• 1:23:31Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:32Speaker 00

  Enrolling them in developing a healthy practice. Right, that's what we really want to do. Hey, I'm here to provide some structure for you right now, but three years from now, you're gonna be out of the house, you're gonna be on your own. I literally, I just gave a talk with, to middle schoolers and high schoolers where I was like, you know, right now you guys are living this way. What happens in three years?

• 1:23:53Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Speaker 00

  When y'all are, when y'all are out on your own? Like, are you gonna be able to control it?

• 1:23:58Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, so.

• 1:23:58Speaker 00

  And they're terrified.

• 1:23:59Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, I've got a conviction now. Tell me if I'm right.

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:02Dr. John Delony?

  I think you're, I think you're, I think I'm right. You shouldn't, I don't wanna be. So if I wanted to change the health of my home. Right? Just the overall nutritional and physical health of my home.

• 1:24:17Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:24:18Dr. John Delony?

  The greatest thing I could do would not be to

• 1:24:23Dr. John Delony?

  Post a bunch of workout plans on the walls. The greatest thing I could do for my kids would be to start waking up and exercising in the morning and letting them see me live this, to participate in cooking healthy meals, so that they have a lived experience, a picture, a moving picture of one of the most important people in their life doing this thing. More is caught than taught, I've heard it said. And then, as they begin to get curious and ask questions, and I bring them along. But it's gotta be a lived experience. And so, what I'm, is that, is that fair?

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  Uh, I would not say that's the greatest thing that you can do.

• 1:24:59Dr. John Delony?

  Okay, what's the greatest thing?

• 1:25:00Speaker 00

  I think the greatest thing that you could do is have them be aware of the impact of food on their body.

• 1:25:09Dr. John Delony?

  Right, yeah, yeah, we're gonna have conversations about it, we're gonna-

• 1:25:12Speaker 00

  No, no, I mean, so, so, so like, like, I mean, I'm not, I think we're getting maybe a bit lost in the details here, but like, you know, one of my kids has constipation.

• 1:25:21Dr. John Delony?

  Uh huh.

• 1:25:21Speaker 00

  And so, just showing her the link-

• 1:25:25Dr. John Delony?

  Between this food and this outcome?

• 1:25:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, right, so like, what did you eat today? What did you eat today? And, and asking her, okay, like, what do you think your poop is gonna be like tomorrow?

• 1:25:33Dr. John Delony?

  Correct, yes.

• 1:25:34Speaker 00

  Right? And, and even if you don't like this thing, I, I, I think the, the most important, the greatest gift, I believe, that we can give our kids is the gift of awareness. It's not even teaching, it's not even modeling, right?

• 1:25:46Dr. John Delony?

  And by awareness, you mean, you mean, like, action and consequence, here's a link.

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  The simple act of observation.

• 1:25:57Dr. John Delony?

  That's it, yeah.

• 1:25:58Speaker 00

  So, so I know this sounds crazy, but the reason the world is going to hell right now is because technology has taken away our awareness. Anytime you use technology, you lose yourself.

• 1:26:13Dr. John Delony?

  Yep.

• 1:26:13Speaker 00

  That's what we love about it.

• 1:26:14Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:15Speaker 00

  We don't realize how we're being programmed.

• 1:26:18Dr. John Delony?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:19Speaker 00

  Right, so if you look at it, like, I mean, I had this problem when I was in med school. You know, I would wake up in the morning, I would listen to a lecture while I was cooking breakfast. Eating while I'm listening to a lecture, you know, earbuds are in, walk into the train, studying on the train. Walk into the lecture hall, because I needed to be efficient. Right. But I was never, I was always like, externalizing my focus. Yeah. I wasn't just with here. Yeah. And, and I did something that people think is insane, so I, I was studying a ton and I saw all, everyone around me was studying a ton. So monkey see, monkey do, right? And, and I wasn't doing the best, and I was like, this is not working for me. So thankfully, I had spent seven years studying to become a monk, and I just paid attention to myself. I was like, this is not working.

• 1:27:01Speaker 00

  So I, I made up this plan where I would wake up at 4:30 every morning. I would study for two hours before I went to class. I would go to class, I would finish my day around, between three and five, I would come home and I was done. I made a rule that prior tests, I would study more, especially on the weekends. But generally speaking, in med school, I studied two hours a day. And I got two awards for academic achievement. You have to understand the way that you work. Yeah. Right, you have to have awareness of how things are affecting you. As long as my hand is numb, I'll keep touching a hot stove. You don't need to teach them anything. Yeah. The human instrument is designed to learn, but it can only learn if it is aware. Right?

• 1:27:42Speaker 00

  As a counselor, as a therapist, when you work with couples, what causes problems? They don't understand how their actions are, they're not aware Yeah. of the impact of their actions. See that other person, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and sometimes we'll run into things like denial with addiction, which is denial is intentional lack of awareness. We numb ourselves. Oh, this, this, this fire alarm is going on, and you're not aware that these are even fires. I mean, I asked you an hour ago. Yeah. And you're like, I didn't even realize it was a problem. So people don't, we really don't realize how powerful awareness is. And awareness is the greatest driver for behavioral change.

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  Everyone thinks we need willpower or we need discipline.

• 1:28:27Dr. John Delony?

  No, it's nonsense.

• 1:28:28Speaker 00

  Just the moment that you understand, hey, this thing is good for me.

• 1:28:32Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:33Speaker 00

  And what's really interesting is, as you get older, you can't, you become more aware.

• 1:28:38Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:39Speaker 00

  Right? So like your stomach can't handle things the way, and it signals you.

• 1:28:42Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:43Speaker 00

  And then you start to eat healthier automatically.

• 1:28:45Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:46Speaker 00

  So, so I think with kids, really practicing awareness is the key thing.

• 1:28:50Dr. John Delony?

  Okay.

• 1:28:51Speaker 00

  Now, just to kind of quickly summarize, you asked a question about your...

• 1:28:55Dr. John Delony?

  Well, I was saying, what? So yes, if I, to use this analogy, and here's where I was going with it. If I, I'm gonna sit down and say, hey, this is, this is good for you. This is how you feel. Here's a couple of examples. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be the behavior change in this house. And I want to be demonstrative about how good I feel. If I want my son to have a healthy relationship when he leaves my home in two and a half years, then is it beneficial for me to A, continue with the awareness trajectory? How, how do you feel this morning after being up playing all night?

• 1:29:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 1:29:34Dr. John Delony?

  And B, hey, would you invite me in? I want to learn how to do this.

• 1:29:39Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So, so I, I...

• 1:29:40Dr. John Delony?

  You get what I'm saying? Like, I want, I want to begin to model this here.

• 1:29:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so I think the, the problem, John, is that, so I'm all for modeling.

• 1:29:48Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:49Speaker 00

  But I think the most important modeling, modeling is program. It's not programming, but it, it, you know, it helps some.

• 1:29:55Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Speaker 00

  But, but I think joining your kid is great. And I think the really scary thing is that like you're, so why are you modeling? Because you want him to be a certain way.

• 1:30:04Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:04Speaker 00

  Right? That's what I think is really hard for parents to let go of. Right? You want him to be a certain way, which makes you a great dad and is gonna statistically do wonders for your son. But I think there's a deeper, deeper, deeper level to this, which is not, I'm gonna show you how to do it the right way. This is really scary. It's, you are going to figure out how to do the right, what the right way is. And I'm gonna create an environment where you are going to come to your own conclusions.

• 1:30:33Dr. John Delony?

  Ooh, that's scary with kids.

• 1:30:35Speaker 00

  Very scary.

• 1:30:36Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. Huh.

• 1:30:38Speaker 00

  Right? And so I think-

• 1:30:39Dr. John Delony?

  But knowing that kids are not gonna come to the right conclusions most of the time.

• 1:30:44Speaker 00

  My goodness.

• 1:30:46Dr. John Delony?

  Is that fair?

• 1:30:46Speaker 00

  Oh my God, John.

• 1:30:48Dr. John Delony?

  Is that right?

• 1:30:49Speaker 00

  I didn't realize I was sitting with God. Because you know what is right and you know what is wrong. Oh wow, holy.

• 1:30:57Dr. John Delony?

  I thought I would drop that on you here at the end.

• 1:30:58Speaker 00

  I know, right? So, oh, they're coming to the right conclusions.

• 1:31:01Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah. Not the right, that's a bad way to put that. I, this-

• 1:31:07Speaker 00

  The same, right?

• 1:31:08Dr. John Delony?

  No, I was gonna say the same. Here's where I'm finding myself and I'm doing it and we gotta wrap this thing up. Kelly's waving at me. I got you.

• 1:31:17Dr. John Delony?

  I'll tell this quick story and I'm just realizing in real time this is happening. You're a great therapist, well done.

• 1:31:24Dr. John Delony?

  My dad was a homicide detective. And there's a, there's a famous story in our house where we went to, we lived outside north of Houston. And in about as safe as a suburban environment as exists on planet Earth. And we, he came and picked me up from work and drove me out and he always had his suit on. He's a detective, always had a suit. He'd sit outside my baseball, he'd help coach in a suit, it was awesome. We pull back in after being gone an hour and a half. And I had left the back door open. And he looked at that back door and he looked at me and said, "I knew it." And out of nowhere, he pulls out a gun and goes and clears the house.

• 1:32:07Dr. John Delony?

  And I remember being 10, going, "That's an overreaction." Right? That's a lot, right? But his lived experience was-

• 1:32:15Speaker 00

  100%.

• 1:32:15Dr. John Delony?

  All he did every day was homicide investigation. So, my whole career has been students who get themselves in trouble with technology in situations they can't take back ever.

• 1:32:26Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:32:27Dr. John Delony?

  And that has shifted my bell curve-

• 1:32:29Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:32:29Dr. John Delony?

  In a profound way and I'm realizing that right here.

• 1:32:32Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right? So, so this is the really scary thing. The things that you know are right-

• 1:32:38Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:39Speaker 00

  Worked-

• 1:32:40Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 1:32:41Speaker 00

  When you were growing up.

• 1:32:42Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:43Speaker 00

  They've worked up until this point. The really scary thing about technology, the world that our children are going to inherit- Is astronaut for the last 2000, between the years 1900 and 0. Right. The world was roughly. Ish. Similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? So sure, there was industrialization and things like that, but like, you know, still back then, more people died of starvation than obesity. Right. Like, something weird has happened in our society, and that rate of change is only increasing. Right. Right? So that's why I think like, you know, what I try to lay out in the book, and this is kind of the summary for you is, first of all, understand how technology affects the brain. We kind of lay that out. Secondly, understand how to communicate with your child. Yeah.

• 1:33:25Speaker 00

  Right? So we teach communication techniques, which I'm sure you know really well. Open-ended questions. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right? We really need to listen to our kids because we need their information. Yep. That also models, once you start listening to them, they're going to start listening to you. Yeah. But most parents with technology, it's on, off, you're going to do it my way or the highway. They model that behavior. Yeah. Then comes shared boundary setting, right? So we're going to develop a plan. You get your, your child doesn't get a vote. This is absurd. Everyone's like, oh, my God, no. No. You're a dictator. They're the advisory council, but they're also the experts. You're going to listen to what they say, and then you you develop boundaries. Yes. And then you got to be careful because there's a lot of stuff that we do to shoot shoot ourselves

• 1:34:10Speaker 00

  in the foot, which we talked about, right? Because you don't want your kid to dislike you. So there's a lot of, you're tolerating your kid. They're never going to learn unless you let them fall. Right. Have to tolerate the discomfort. Right. Which means I, as a parent, have to hold it. Yeah, absolutely. Right? And so I think that you're doing a phenomenal job, but I think I think it starts with, and I know we're all supposed to say and instead of but, but, but I think that there's, you know, you got to understand that your kid is going into a world where you can teach him how to use a gun, but. Someone is gonna sell him a nuke.

• 1:34:44Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 1:34:45Speaker 00

  Right, so you have to teach-

• 1:34:45Dr. John Delony?

  Literally.

• 1:34:46Speaker 00

  You're gonna, you have to, you can't teach him how to be safe with this. You have to teach him how to learn-

• 1:34:54Dr. John Delony?

  How to think safely.

• 1:34:55Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:34:55Dr. John Delony?

  Yes.

• 1:34:56Speaker 00

  Right, how to think safely. You have to teach him how to learn, how to develop a healthy relationship with technology, instead of imbuing him with a particular idea.

• 1:35:06Dr. John Delony?

  Right, cuz most kids, and I hate to be this binary, but most kids will either placate you till they're out the door, or they will fight you-

• 1:35:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:35:14Dr. John Delony?

  And you'll lose the relationship.

• 1:35:15Speaker 00

  Yep, so, so the, the foundation is you can never be sober.

• 1:35:19Dr. John Delony?

  Right.

• 1:35:19Speaker 00

  So if I had to summarize the work that I do with kids, you can never be sober for someone else.

• 1:35:25Dr. John Delony?

  Exactly.

• 1:35:25Speaker 00

  And that includes your kids.

• 1:35:26Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:27Speaker 00

  So there's nothing you can do to make them have a healthy relationship. You have to teach them, hopefully, fingers crossed, how to develop their own healthy relationship.

• 1:35:38Speaker 00

  Right, so you can't, you can't do the work for them. They gotta do, they have to struggle with the device themselves.

• 1:35:43Dr. John Delony?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:44Speaker 00

  And it's about creating the best environment to do that.

• 1:35:49Dr. John Delony?

  Thanks for coming, dude.

• 1:35:49Speaker 00

  Alright, man, thank you so much. This is great.