Building a Non-Anxious Life—Feat. Dr. John Delony (host of @TheDrJohnDelonyShow )

[Music] welcome to the living room disciple podcast today I have the pleasure of interviewing Dr John deloney he's done some really cool things he's got two best-selling books you may have heard of them own your past change your future and redefining anxiety most recently he wrote building a non-anxious life and that's what we're going to be talking about today but you've also probably heard him on the Dr John deloney show I think the thing that excites me the most though is John's coming to us with two phds and over 20 years of experience and counseling crisis response and higher education what I'm trying to say is he knows his stuff and when he talks about anxiety he does it from a perspective I don't think most of us are having the conversation and so that's what we're going to talk about today anxiety and how to build a life that isn't anxious so thanks so much for joining us today on the living room disciple podcast where discipleship finds a [Music] home John thanks for being on the show today dude thanks for having me Phil it's fantastic okay real talk so I got your book building a non-anxious life and I I was H I went in super skeptical and I don't know what it was yeah maybe maybe I was like there's a smiling guy talking about anxiety I feel like everybody's talking about anxiety and so I wasn't I wasn't sold until I read the introduction and then I was like I actually think this guy knows what he's talking about and then I was hooked all the way through in fact if you were to look at my copy man I've highlighted the junk out of it but then I immediately finished it and handed it to a family member and I said read and then she just tabbed it all up and I had literally I had to have her run it back to me really quick because I was like I'm actually going to talk to the guy real quick so if you can give me my book Pi it'd be great I'll send you a couple more so you can pass them around nothing says I love I love my family like uh here's a book on anxiety you should probably read the thing is though like this is a topic that I feel like everybody's talking about but often times I'm not sure the conversation's helpful ah and I think I knew that this was going to be a helpful book when you wrote one thing and this is where I want to start with our conversation uh you wrote really early on I think it was like in the introduction you said anxiety is just a smoke alarm letting you know that something in your house is on fire the alarm is not the problem the fire is can you flush that out for me yeah I mean I I think we've been uh sold a bill of goods if you will and I don't even think it's been intentional um it may be by now but um this idea that our bodies are inherently broken there's something wrong with us all and if a thing happened to you then you're just going to malfunction or if you have the wrong genetics you're just going to malfunction or if there's some you're the wrong parents you're just not going to be able to make it and so there's been this ever increasing move towards um trying to solve for something that like a light bulb went off when I was doing the the research about about 10 years ago on this topic it was like oh what happens if our bodies are right what if our bodies are trying to get our attention and what would that mean for the world we're creating for ourselves and of course that was 10 years ago and it's just accelerated um to a Breakneck Pace but um yeah I think we're running around trying to solve for the alarm and we're trying to solve there's a light on our dashboard ah how do we how do we pull the the the dashboard off and pull the light what if you just put gas in the car man right what if you just rotated the tires so um I think we're and by the way there's not a lot of money you can read the book there's not a lot of money to be made on in in changing your life right in fact the opposite there's a ton of money to be made telling somebody hey you're broken if you just buy this thing if you just um buy my program if you just do this thing then everything's going to be okay and so um it's really swimming way Upstream yeah and and you know even putting the the the money element of side of it you know I think most you know therapists and counselors really have such good intentions but I think the thing that like was like my light switch when reading your book is that our bodies were designed to give us these signs to say that there's this this external issue or this internal issue that we got to deal with and oftentimes it feels like we've built an entire system including the conversations we have around anxiety with anxiety is the enemy anxiety is the thing that's got to be addressed and our life's going to be better the moment we we're not anxious right and so if we can fix an anxiety and then we could fix ourselves or if we could fix whatever it is and I like the image like it starts by assuming that we're broken right and so okay for the average person though uh you know like what is what are healthy signals look like so when you say that it's a smoke alarm you know I get the metaphor but like what are the actual like signals I'm going to experience physiologically psychologically so I know that something's wrong and I need to address it I think that's what makes um anxiety a challenge makes depression a challenge as a clinician is you're you're looking over this long list if you go through the DSM on it's like unable to make thoughts has tons of thoughts it's it's it's it's just it's just this constellation of different things going on um here's a few if suddenly you lay it put your head on the pillow at night and your brain just heads Off to the Races right it is just thinking of everything you said why' you say that what you do what you've got to do what's going to happen oh my gosh if this happens and then this happen this happens and then you finally yourself unable to sleep well then we start trying to solve for sleep like I need to go see a specialist I need to I need to um get a a special medication I need to have a special sleep routine I need to do all these things and we forget to to ask ourselves hey sleep is a core biological function that if you believe in evolution should have been gone bajillions of years ago the idea that the h a human an animal would lie defenseless not looking for food not protecting itself not searching for a mate for eight hours a third of a day that's preposterous it makes no sense yet it's become a it's a core function right instead of saying hey this core Like Oxygen right if suddenly we couldn't breathe we would be looking immediately for what is keeping us from breathing it's not how we do sleep that's not how we do racing thoughts that's not how we do um I'm unable to eat we try to solve the thing right let's shove more oxygen man let's look at what's obstructing the oxygen why who's got their hands on this guy's throat so um I think it's any number of things but racing thoughts TS to be one not being able to sleep um needing a bunch of chemicals to wake up a bunch of chemicals to go to bed feeling like um I'm isolated and alone yet I'm surrounded by people that I love um feeling like I'm in control of who gets elected next I'm in control of everyone else's thoughts and opinions and I need to make sure they know my thoughts and opin opinions it's this ever ever reaching grasp for control and more control and more control and more control and hanging along with dear life to the shreds so I think it's everything in between and I I this maybe this is a rabbit hole but this is something that I'm really interested in is are there trends that anxiety demonstrates self differently across generational lines so for example I wonder you so I'm I'm pretty typical Millennial I'm even wearing plaid I mean you know what I mean like I'm pretty much I'm the guy and so for someone like me I think it's more like the feeling like I can change the election depends on me the world depends on me everything depends on me to do whatever to save it and then I'm looking at the generation behind me and I'm not sure what it looks like for them but it seems like it's translated at least in part and just Ina you know uh feeling too anxious to do anything you know uh can't go you know get a job or can't go get a driver's license I think like with the average age of getting a driver's license has been moved up to like 20 or 21 so are there generational gaps that like people should be aware of in this conversation as well just for Trends that's a great question um off top of my head it'd probably be irresponsible just to to pop something off but I don't know of any um but as you as you as you're talking through them maybe there's some through lines there but I always want to go back to the fight flight freeze Fawn fix right like what are people's people the the whole generation got home from World War II and they got real quiet and they just started building stuff yeah right and we call them the greatest generation and we say way to go and then they have a bunch of kids that had no intimate relationships with their parents because parents came home and were real quiet because they'd seen some dark evil and then those kids um they built everything but intimacy right and then those kids went and started looking for painkillers and they started looking for painkillers at work through alcohol through entertainment through sex through all these different things and so I always want to look at the like a response through um what are people doing to silence those alarms because the alarms are designed to get your attention right um but I don't know I don't I I don't know of any data across gener um but that'd be that's a fun thing to Think Through I bet I bet I bet you're on to something I don't know about that um but I I because I you know I taught high school for a number of years and I think the two things that I saw quite a bit and one of them you touched in the book and to transition to next but one is is the feeling like I just can't do anything it's it it feels like my and this is totally anecdotal so just in my personal experiences uh you know I grew up with all the people who had to go do everything like we were just going to go change the world and then I'm I'm teaching this next Generation that almost like watched us try and fail and and now feels too anxious to try but the other thing that I noticed quite a bit I'm I feel very nerdy I keep going back to your book uh but I I you write um when you believe you have anxiety you see signs of it everywhere in people and situations that make you nervous in hard conversations and obstacles at work in disagreements with your spouse over time anxiety can be a badge a context for your struggling body and an excuse all at the same time and you know when I hear that term I have anxiety I don't initially assume it as an identity thing it's something I have it's not something I am I'm not you know it's not that they're saying I am an anxious person they're saying I have anxiety but can you define that a little bit what what does it mean when you say that that someone's kind of essentially taking this on as an identity um yeah I mean it it you going all the way back to the DSM it was it was the diagnostic and statistics manual the book it's it's the psychiatric Bible it's the it's the book that comes out every five to 10 years with a new or or more um list of all the psychiatric disorders and the best I can tell that book was designed wholly for two things one for researchers to talk to each other so a researcher in California studying depression would could do apples to Apple studies with a researcher in Delaware um the other it was designed for clinicians to communicate with insurance companies so they could get reimbursed for their work was never designed for people and so now you have is you have a doctor saying this person exhibits these and I by the way I got 15 minutes in our managed care plan to see you and your kid um or just you you tell me hey I haven't been able to sleep um I haven't been um intimate with my husband or wife for the last X number of months I don't have any interest in class and I just kind of feel blah and um I find myself um staying up too late and kind of just full of energy all right well how long's it been doing uh about six months okay Bing you have a thing mm M and so instead of being able to sit with somebody for an hour a couple of weeks and say hey what is what is your body trying to why is it keeping you up all night what does it see or feel in the environment in the world that you have inherited or that you've been thrown into or that you've created that would say sleeping is not safe and so as I write about like if you owe six figures in student loans and a car payment and credit cards your body knows hey if you lose your job we lose our home we lose food we're done it would be failing you if it let you sleep if your body detected that you're lonely you don't have anybody in your tribe it's just you doing Life by yourself you you're out of college you moved to a new town by yourself and you have a couple people at work that you know your body be failing you if it let you sleep so instead of asking that and you just get Bing and then you start the um the whack-a-mole of trying to put Band-Aids over bullet holes right let's solve the Sleep let's solve the racing thoughts let's get a journaling program and journaling is awesome let's get a yoga program yoga's awesome but we're throwing these Band-Aids at a at a much deeper systemic issue and so over time when a professional or when a parent or when you Google man finding out that like okay I have a thing you exhale and you're like okay and if you're not careful that can become an identity it can become a reason to not go around people because I have I have I have a special kind of anxiety I can't be around people I can't take that job I can't live in that town I can't go to exercise I can't do these hard things because I have this thing and it ends up becoming a barrier or hurdle for you doing the things that your body's desperately trying to get your attention that you need to be doing I I wonder too especially because you had used that terminology badge and it's it's hard for me for the record I may just sound like an old grumpy man but it's hard for me not to like look at at Celebrities and popular songs and popular uh media where it feels like everybody's identifying with anxiety and so I mean goodness gracious if if I identify with you know if I say I have anxiety I join Taylor Swift's Club you know what I mean and there is a level of like I actually think it's deeper than that I I think there is an affiliation bias like I want to be around I want to be like them um deeper than that and I remember gosh maybe it's 10 years ago I heard Tony Robbins of all people talk on this and I remember thinking oh my gosh you just nailed it he said the number one Addiction in our society is not drugs alcohol it's problem he said our entire cultural interaction is based is problem Centric so we enter every room but first if you walk into a room right now at your school at your work at the coffee shop and you walk in and say hey everybody I'm having an amazing day my kids are healthy and my girlfriend likes me and I just graduated you are instantly categorized as unlikable but if you walk in and you're like man did you see those tweets such and such politicians s can you believe that that group of people just said this thing can you believe everyone's like yeah man and that's how that's how we form groups that's how we form identity is what's wrong in your life what's the problem that we're trying to solve right now even in fact look at the Pol political landscape both sides nobody is painting a picture of what could be possible the only pictures being painted is if the other side wins we're doomed if they win we're doomed if they win we're doomed there is no hey here's a road map we're going to the Moon here's what here's what's it's gonna take to get there it's simply we hate them and they're like no we hate them and so it's this it's this problem Centric and so we cannot walk into a room and say man I have found myself super lonely and I'm glad I'm with you guys because my body's trying to get my attention by making it really hard to sleep we can't do that but I got a thing I'm anxious it's just the way we identify as as as groups and then we get leaders in social media we get leaders in popular culture in entertainment and they hold the torch for us but I think it comes back to this problem Centric culture sometimes holding the torch under the banner of transparency and under thean of you know I mean being relatable um but but it really does ends up and I don't think you know I I don't I doubt there's very many people who are like twirling their maniacal mustache and like laughing because very few um but you know but it's created more excitement about and I don't want to say excitement like um like Joy but more Intrigue or more attention around having uh the fire alarm of anxiety versus being excited and passionate about the healing and the restoration of life and the moving kind of even like your political example like it's just more attractive to talk about the problems than it is to talk about um the healing and the path to Unity and success well and I I you're touching on something that I think is critical here we have a culture that is um largely we have problem Centric communication on one side and we have solved for every discomfort in all of human history MH and so increasingly discomfort is our enemy it's the bad guy in every story and so when the whole goal is to never feel uncomfortable and somebody says hey um it took me and my wife 15 years to pay off everything that we owed so that our bodies would know we're safe that stinks it's not fun we there's a lot of vacations we didn't take this year after being married for 20-some years my wife said hey is there any chance we could get get rid of the Craigslist bed like uh bed that you bought and spray painted in our yard in West Texas and I was like you know what wife this is your lucky year right I mean that's insane but we didn't we didn't we didn't have that right yeah and so um it's hard to go down the rabbit hole of I don't want to feel like this anymore and so I'm G to start making some significant Life Changes that's brutal it's very very tough and especially in a culture that says hey whoa whoa whoa you're never supposed to be uncomfortable if you're uncomfortable it's wrong um that makes healing really difficult in this modern era hard but but beautiful um it oftentimes what is toughest and most bitter and most difficult to consume up front ends up having like sweetness and Beauty on the back end always if you can get through it always if you can get through it right uh you're you're over at uh you know you're part of the ramay network and your show um and that reminds me so me and my wife we got married at 20 we knew everything and right right around um 21 uh we were like gosh you know we should probably get real jobs and take care of all this student loan debt that I brought into the marriage my wife brought a savings account I brought a loan and uh somebody gave us um Total Money Makeover uh kind of the classic you know ramsy book and it really did change our life and in a lot of ways it led us to really uncomfortable years I mean like you know in all of our 20s essentially we were just broke um but we weren't but we lived well under our means and I was a single- income teacher so we were broke and it meant that you know we were going out or I was going out with friends and I was getting a glass of water and an appetizer you know it meant that we didn't have nice cars or we had a much smaller house you know um living in a sub 1000 foot home with four boys and yeah people would think that's crazy but for us we just knew that there was a sweetness and a be beautiful like back end to this of not just Financial Freedom for the sake of Financial Freedom but the the ability to serve the Lord with Financial Freedom and that just tasted sweeter than uh being house broke and I feel like there's a lot like that in life where it turns out that that the easier path forward that we've made for ourselves shapes us into a person with less Grit with less U motivation to change uh and and I'm wondering what kind of people that's making us into and what happens if we fast forward this clock 50 years well um I spent some years fretting about that and I've really been um for lack of better terms I've been freed from it and I I've just sat with people who've lost everything yeah who have been in their homes got a a kid who's passed away in the room next room yeah um whose husband just they get home and from work and everything is gone and he's just gone 25 years I'm gone I'm done with you I'm out do I get an explanation nope it's just over here's the papers yeah um they lose everything and we talk so much in this culture about post-traumatic stress which is important but we don't talk at all about post-traumatic growth we don't talk about any sort of what's on the back end and what I've just seen over and over and over and over again is yes occasionally tragedy Buri somebody but often that person with the help of others Rises out of that Ash and does something pretty extraordinary and so um I know it's it's you know the the the doomsdayers and this I I'm I'm I'm pretty um pretty bullish on what comes next um I think people are waking up and saying this I I did it I I self-actualized I got everything I my parents cleared the path for me and here I am 25 26 and I don't know how to do my job or I know I'm supposed to be able to have a hard conversation and I hate it and it was my college students right before I left the university when who started on their own piling up their cell phones in which everyone whoever reached Fort first had to pay for the meal they started opting in and I think it wasn't even an intellectual thing as much as my body feels better when that's over there and we're all talking and so I'm watching it happen in real time we have uh we're we're we're pretty uh my wife tells me I was born in the wrong Century but I'm I'm pretty brutal with my son and cell phones and he doesn't have social media or his own phone or anything but when his friends come over we live on some Acres out in the woods in Nashville his friends come over and they all know and my wife has talked to all their parents they all know and they walk in they're 14 years old and they just they don't even look look they hand the phone to my wife and head straight out into the woods and they stay out there all day and their parents like can we go to Hanks can we go to HKS can we go to Delon and so I think that there's a self opting back in and um maybe it's not going to be in Mass maybe I'm overly optimistic but it just simply can't there's just an illness and at some point you just you either succumb to your addiction or you say like like as Dave used to always say I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired I'm just gonna do something different what I mean like paint with a really broad brush for a moment because there's a lot of Trends uh and you just highlighted one cell phones like what are some of the what are some of the changes that the average American who's feeling the weight of anxiousness who isn't sleeping who's sitting next to their spouse and yet a thousand miles away from their spouse like what are some of just the the broad stroke changes that you think the average person needs to make I think it starts with that um choosing reality like I think it's kind of like going starting a workout program and you don't know how far you're going to run you just start running and you don't know how much you weigh and you don't know what your goals are going to be where where do you where do you want to end up what's why are we doing this and so I think there's something to be said for sitting down and just stopping the music Turn The Lights On stop the stop the dance party what is the state of your marriage what's the state of your finances is your job going to go away cuz AI is your job going to go away CU you simply can't stomach the thought of doing it one more second um what is your relationship with your kids um what is your relationship with your parents with your local church I mean I think stopping and just taking an inventory becomes really clear because then you try like let's do a week honey with no phones after five o'clock let's turn them off if you can't breathe or if you're fidgeting or you look at your spouse across the table you don't know how to have a conversation that's where you start right M um for the vast majority of Americans movement going for a walk I'm not even doing a workout program yet I'm saying just go walk every day um for the average American going outside and looking at sunlight is important for the average American having human touch reintroduced into their lives especially nonsexual touch just holding hands holding faces hugging your kids um and that's why I say there's no money to be made in this it's this human 101 and what you'll find is your body begins to slowly here's my evidence for that just anecdotal okay um we had I we I created this I created this product it's not even it's it's a deck of cards with questions on them and we just call them questions for humans no screens and that it was an act of Congress to get it through here to make the product and everybody up and down the chain was like this is a waste of our time time this is stupid nobody's going to pay for this this is dumb and um needless to say Dave Ramy personally said and I'm not it was not a private he said this publicly I love being wrong on a product with this many zeros behind it right it's become a massive runaway seller and here all it is turn off your phones and look at somebody that you care about and ask a question and the cards get the the cards get the get the reward like people are like oh Delon you so great no no no no that's not what it is it's your body finally so starved of oxygen took a deep breath you looked at your grandparent you looked at your kid you looked at your wife and you said when's the hardest you've ever laughed and she tells you and you're like I don't even know that story about your childhood and now we're in it right and that's just human 101 and our bodies are trying to get our attention and we're trying to solve for the bod's part no man it's so much richer than that but and this is where I feel like I'm like the worst potential host for this conversation because for me I I I haven't really struggled with anxiety for prolonged periods of of my adult life nor depression and it's not that I haven't felt those emotions it's that for whatever reason you know those aren't things that I've experienced and so I'm oftentimes sitting you know across from someone mentorship counseling discipleship all those types of experiences and my brain doesn't understand when someone doesn't as you put it human 101 right yeah you know someone says this is really what I want and and like they just kind of crying they're sharing their heart and it's like well here's the here's the next baby step right to go in the direction you want they they come to that conclusion right we go through the whole thing and then they just and then they don't right they they know that being on their phone they're laying in bed they're on their phone from 10 o00 when they go to bed to 2 o'clock in the morning and they won't leave it in the living room you know like why why do people not human 101 John like I don't understand it it's a it's a painkiller it's a painkiller because when you turn that phone off then you have to lay there in the dark by yourself and then you have to answer those questions do I like the life I'm creating for myself am I doing something about the life that I was thrown into um that terrifying question that I always ask on my show um I've sat with people through some gnarly stuff and we always always always end up on the same question what what are you going to do now and that is a paralyzing question we also don't have a question we don't have an answer for the question what do you want one of the scariest questions a person can be asked like what do you want this thing this one wild Reckless life that God's given you what do you want that to feel like what do you want it to look like what do you want it to be because if you say that out loud now you're on the hook for it so it's easier just to Outsource that answer to well I want that house well that house cost a million dollars well that's just because inflation and if stupid government like now I can start Outsourcing all of my pain and I can just say look over here look over here look over here and because I I can't deal with the silence and that's what you talk about that's what you mean right when you say facing reality that's it it is a terrifi staring over the abyss right it's Jonah in the whale it's Jonah in the bottom of the sea in the belly of a fish like here we are and what are you going to do now right it's a terrifying place to be um especially in this world where it's the loneliest generation in human history we've created for ourselves when you have no one to sit with you right and that's the the I mean that's the beauty of the story of Jesus how often he just sits he shows up and talks he just shows up and sits with right and um what a staggeringly simple yet profound example we don't have anybody sit with us we have nobody sit with us and so I'm not going down there I'm not going down there alone I'm just going to keep scrolling and keep scrolling and keep scrolling um and it's it's a scary scary place to be so a guy like me like I'm not currently experiencing that difficulty in my life I'm I'm you know I'm I'm the guy who walks into the Starbucks from your earlier analogy I'm like no I'm doing great you know like I have really difficult challenges but they're not getting me down but I love Jesus so it sounds like like because this this is where I want to get next which is what do we do for one another how do we love one another into non- anxious lives um you know you do a really great job in your book talking about how we can kind of help take control of our lives but for those of us who were out a position or out a place in our life by God's grace in which we're not feeling that same level of of crippling anxiety how do we love and support someone who's in that season what are healthy expectations for that individual what are what are not and I mean I'm incredibly selfish like I'm just I really just got you on the podcast just so ask this question because I have people in my life I want I want to support I think um gosh I can rattle off a few of my things that have become core principles of mine over the last 20 years and that is just show up just show up speak way way way less than you think you need to only answer questions that you're asked don't just lob advice at people um like grenades um don't try to solve people's problems for them unless they're asking what do I do now and you can't and the final one is knowing you can't drag somebody to a place of Wellness they have to choose to go and so I often will tell somebody hey here's the deal um uh friend of mine who just reached out I'm G you know that I think cheating on your wife's wrong you know I think it's stupid it's going to blow your whole life up I can't make you not do that here's my promise when everything in your life is in Ash I'll answer the phone when you call and you can come stay at my house and we'll figure out what to do next and it's some sometimes it's it makes us feel powerless but that's the best I can do I can't make somebody put their phone down at 10: a.m. I can tell them hey when you're ready to be serious I told somebody today somebody today who was just pulling me aside and was talking about some pretty neat victories they've had in their with a loved one and and their struggles with addiction and they were telling me about their struggles with with weight loss and and I said hey when you're ready I'll H you up with some of the best people in the world and you got my number and that wasn't me being like well you know if you really tried the keto diet that that's not what we're gonna do when you're ready you got my cell number here's an open invitation that door to my house is always unlocked and often that's the best we can do and then I'm going to show up and then I'm going to show up and then I'm going to show up I had a uh um one of my religious uh someone who's a profound spiritual influence in my life um who was really um I don't say obsessed but he was pretty close with uh St tereso of laau and said his core his core sacrifice his core mission was to be interruptible this is one of the most prolific writers researchers you could ever wrap your head on I've never seen somebody who writes and publishes as much as this person and for them their course that was their work that was their life's Mission which meant when the student knocked on the door when the hurting mom and dad called and said what about my kid it was easy to say well I'm in the middle of something important I'm doing science and so this person's Mission became I'm GNA be interruptable I'm going to be available and um may I be honored to say I don't have a place to rest my head cuz everybody keeps coming and wants to talk right and so I I I think those are a few of the things you can do but I think we over intellectualize help we over intellectualize support we over intellectualize what's 10 things to say just shut up and show up I always tell people be quiet bring tacos and that's about the big you know what I mean I just called a friend um their father passed away kind of suddenly and I call and said tell me about it and I didn't skirt around it and I'm pretty a direct I'm a pretty direct guy um I said man so this your dad this cancer came out of nowhere and they talked for about 15 minutes I said I'm just heartbroken with you that's the worst and but it wasn't like well you need to do this you need to make sure it wasn't that it wasn't time for that person also knows if they ask me those questions I'll answer them um but today I'm just going to sit with you and be sad whether in person or on the phone while you were speaking that each of those steps I feel like there's a pretty good analogy for for Christ in the gospels doing that work too and I don't think I ever understood this question that Jesus asks sometimes until you were just speaking there's a few times where he says to you know somebody who's lame or blind you want to be well do you want to be well and I never understood that I've always kind of thought it was a bit of a butthead question you know I'm like really are he's asking are you in are you in uh and I think that that when someone is lonely when someone is chasing a painkiller whether it's alcohol whether it's sex whether it's their job whether it's their theology like whatever they're using to lay as a blanket over any sort of hurt or insecurity or vulnerability they feel like they have an invitation is one of the greatest gifts you can give somebody it's a it's a cup of cold water in the desert are you in hey we're going are you coming like I'm asking I'm I'm inviting you just it it it just drops everything in your body right um it just doesn't feel like it's enough though and I think that's where I struggle maybe because that's modernity right there yeah that's the last gaps of gasps of the uh Enlightenment but I got to have the right answer and the Five Points oh you go back go back if I can't fix their life who am I there you go so good um and and that's us deciding I mean you read the chapter in the book that's that's us for all of human history going outside and saying dear God or gods or goddesses whatever wherever we happen to be please rain or my kids die and then 100 years ago we got running water in our houses and we you know and then for all of human history there would be entire cultural prayers please let the crops come in or we all die yeah and now we got Uber Eats and we think we are pretty in charge right and so it's this we are God of our own world I'll solve your problems and that's not our job even God himself if I mean if you sit like look at the the woman accused of adultery I'm gonna before anything I'm GNA get between you and your accusers number two this has a chance to go really bad for me too that's fine number three I'm going to look at you and say hey do you realize your safe now they're all gone MH then after I've protected you made made sure you know that I see you then I'm going to say hey man you don't have to live like this there's another way to do it but we love to do is with our trumpets and our uh megaphones yell you should be living like this and then we'll come help you and that's just exactly backwards yeah but you can't go through all those steps on a tweet and that's the problem that's the problem I have I have to actually show up and and not just show up invite people into your space and some of the examples you're using your your your time your calendar being interruptible but also your physical space yeah um being willing to bring people into your home being willing to to be vulnerable I think by extension and now because of uh we grew up in the HGTV generation our home has become our scorecard how big is it nice is it how what's the countertops look like um I worked with a with a couple last year and we we ended up recording like doing a whole like uh episode on it um but one of the assignments I gave husband was really struggling with anxiety one of the assignments I gave them was once a week for a month they had to invite somebody over and they had to intentionally mess something up in their living room they to leave out a basket of laundry they had to get a bunch of crap and pile it up somewhere and they both when I told them this was their assignment they froze it was hilarious it was this wait what and I you got to teach your body that they're here not because I'm because otherwise you're performing yeah and performance is I mean I I'm on stages for a living and it's just nerve-wracking your body gets anxious there's something about and it's fatiguing performing is exhausting it's exhausting you're always thinking it's that old uh that line from Fight Club you're not listening you're waiting for your turn to say the thing that you want to say you're waiting for your turn to speak you're not hearing heing so hey you come to my house it's going to be a wreck it's going to smell weird I got three dogs and I got a 14-year-old boy and I have a daughter and I got junk everywhere but I tell you what we're gonna listen to you and we're gonna eat incredible and um we're gonna laugh super super hard and that's that's that's what I'm offering you and man if you need to go to a hotel or or or a ballroom performance cool that's probably not my house you want to come over and listen to some old punk rock records and just tell me that you're not doing okay nah we're talking because you're offering a family connection you're saying I'm I'm going to welcome you into my family not into my showroom not into to my I don't know I if suddenly ran out of any other metaphors in that moment but but it's really what it is it's saying like your family you're not just a guest so you can be in the midst of my junk and I I I think we've made Family very um unbiblical biological over the last 100 years right yeah it used that was a that's a that's a modern luxury it used to be everybody everybody come over cousins and uncles and Weirdos and neighbors and everybody comes over to eat and um I think it's just restoring some of that that our bodies are wired or designed to Crave and we just took it all away then we we text it to each other doesn't do it doesn't doesn't play the same physiologically it it really does and I I'm I'm just so appreciative I I'm still frustrated I still want more things to do when so here's here here's the beauty can I tell you something wild yeah I'm ready um I don't mean I don't want to unspool you cuz you're not asking for that but here we go let's do it um I had I went to see a trauma therapist there's a whole back story to this but this is about a year and a half ago and maybe a year ago I don't remember it was a while ago and at some point she's I call her the Oracle she's probably in her early 60s her give a crap runs at low to to to zero just she's amazing um literally the best therapist I've ever been in contact with and at one point she smiled so big and just she lights up a room and she leaned back in her chair and she clapped and I said what and she goes congratulations you're smarter than me and I I was like what she goes yeah we can just you can talk to me in circles and circles and circles and she said so from this point forward we're only going to talk every other session on the in between sessions you're going to have to sit with the discomfort you're going to have to feel you're GNA have to look at somebody looking at you and dude I didn't have a psychology for that I didn't know how to be with people I knew how to be at people I knew how to talk to them I I have two phds I spent my whole life trying to get enough read enough books so I had enough answers and what she told me in that moment was well there's your drug there it is your heroin is always being right always being able to fix always being able to offer she said the greatest gift you can offer is you and the only person that doesn't see that is you and so we're just gonna be here and dude it was wildly uncomfortable and it was several sessions later that I noticed I track everything I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to bio feedback and what I'm my heart rate had dropped 10 beats on per minute on a steady basis so I was running about 71 all the time and I noticed I'm running at 6 my body had just stopped it had stopped dancing it stopped being on a stage it it stopped performing and I remember thinking oh this this being not anxious this is just saying dude the greatest thing I can give you is my time my discussions my energy like what do you got and if you ask for an answer maybe I'll have one maybe I won't and that's okay because that's not the best that's not the most important thing about me and so I think as a minister as somebody who mentors people presence is it presence is it um showing up is it being on time is it sitting with somebody when they say the scary dark thing that they're afraid to tell anybody you smile and lean forward and go yeah and then what instead of you know that's the that's the magic the answers on who you should fire should we hire should I take this job should I go to grad school that all comes later it's this presence and believing no I'm enough I'm enough and that's hard and not doing that that's anxiety John as we wrap up I I have I have one more question for you I think I need to hear I think our listeners need to hear it Ju Just say it can can we actually have a non-anxious life yes if you um I'm living it I'm living it um am I worried about the upcoming political election yeah for sure am I worried about um an interview I did earlier today yeah I am am I worried about um the world my children are are inher in yes m is my mom going to get sick and pass away one day yep is my dad going to pass away one day yep they they're in their mid 70s that that day is coming so it's not it doesn't inoculate me from all the bad stuff but can I live every day open my eyes and say I'm going to do my best to make today a good day God will you bless me bless this day um can you live that way yeah can you live a day where you get to decide what you do that day and not some bank or some car loan place yeah can you have a relationship with your wife that when things get sideways you don't spin out because you're marriage is anchored into concrete and yes y'all are separate now but you you've got a path back because you'all done it before you can do it again same with your kids can you do that yeah you can and so it's about backing up and saying I'm not going to chase the alarms anymore man I want to create a new kind of Life the answer is yeah totally dude thank you thank you for your time today John thank you for for writing this book um it's this particular copy has blessed two people it's I'm just going to keep passing around I I really can't recommend it enough um we'll get you some sent to you man deal and and then we'll go ahead and we'll give them away here on the podcast uh so if you listen to this episode you're paying attention to our social media and win a copy John thank you so much thank you so much for tuning in to living room disciple podcast I don't know about you but for me I've had moments where I struggle with anxiet but I'm really trying to love on a community of people many of whom have the shared experience of anxiety and feeling like it's this impossible thing to overcome if our conversation was Catalyst for you for change I do recommend amongst many other things picking up building a non- anxious life it's a quality read you can follow us on social media and we're going to try to give away some copies soon uh so maybe that could be an Avenue for getting the book in your hands but no matter what I think just remembering that an anxious life is not the life that the Lord has prescribed for us it doesn't mean that we are going to be insulated from grief and harm but it means that grief and harm don't become the things that define us huge shout out to Ana live for producing this episode to Eric Church for getting the episode out into the world and to Daniel Ramirez for composing the music and thank you to you for listening welcome to the living room disciple podcast where discipleship finds a home [Music] for

Channel: The Living Room Disciple

Views: 4,247

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Id: bMhP91aaPaQ

Length: 48min 41sec (2921 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2024