1141: Dark Pillar of Community Abuses with Immunity | Feedback Friday

This episode is sponsored in part by Vital Proteins. I want to tell you about Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides.
That's a mouthful. It's a daily supplement that supports your hair, skin, nails, bones, and joints all in one in one simple step each day.
Collagen makes up about a third of the protein in our bodies, but as we hit our 30s, it unfortunately starts to decline. That's when you might notice things aren't working quite like they used to.
Your joints, your skin, maybe even your hair. Vital Proteins steps in to help keep those areas supported so you can stay active and keep doing what you love.
Vital Proteins is the number one collagen peptide brand in the U.S., so they know what they're doing.

It's super easy to take. Just add a serving to your coffee, smoothie, even water.

It doesn't even taste like anything, so it blends right in.

The key is consistency. Making it a daily habit is how you see the benefits.

Get 20% off by going to VitalProteins.com and enter promo code Jordan at checkout.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Location, The Lab. Quinton only has 24 hours to sell his car.
Is that even possible? He goes to Carvana.com. What is this? A movie trailer? He ignores the doubters, enters his license plate.
Wow, that's a great offer. The car is sold, but will Carvana pick it up in time for...
They'll literally pick it up tomorrow morning. Done with the dramatics? Car selling in record time.
Save your time. Go to Carvana.com and sell your car today.
Pickup fees may apply. Welcome to Feedback Friday.
I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with Feedback Friday producer, the stranger holding the door for you while you've got your hands full as you enter this edifice of life drama, Gabriel Mizrahi.
You know how you gotta speed up a little? Like, you gotta pretend to speed up so you look like you're being played. The little walk run? That's right, the little walk run where you're like, oh, thank you, yeah, yeah.
On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker.
During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from former jihadis and drug traffickers to cult members and mafia enforcers. Even the occasional good guy makes an appearance on this show.
This week, we had Mark Fulman, author of Trigger Points, Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America. Really sobering episode about mass shootings, school shootings, what it might take to stop this crazy nonstop problem that we're having.
On Fridays, though, we share stories, take listener letters, offer advice, play obnoxious soundbites, and compare Gabe to various means of ingress and egress. Before we dive in today, I gotta tell you guys something funny.
My son, Jaden, he now says, friggin? Ah, that friggin mushroom guy cut me off. We're playing Mario Kart.
Sometimes he will just yell frig' really loud when he's angry. She took my toy.

Friggin'!

And...

That's the first big thing he's doing

that's very much like you, right?

Yeah, he also looks exactly like me,

but tiny so that's really funny.

Only my son does this.

My daughter doesn't do this at all.

He's just got this sort of streak to him.

The other day,

Hi, Junie.

Hi.

I knew you were gonna come in.

Hold on, let me lift you up. Look out, I don't want to run over your foot.
Look out, it's Uncle Gabriel. Hi.
Hello. I have a foot.
I have two feet. How are your feet today, Junie? Good.
Oh, yeah. Whoa.
Oh, nice. Can you see that little foot? What? That was a foot.
That was a stinky foot. You don't know that.
You can't smell my feet over there. No, I can smell.
No, you can't. I smell the foot.
Not on my end, Junie. Maybe over there.
Yeah. I do like that.
So we're recording a podcast. A podcast? Yeah.
Do you know what that is? I don't know. Oh, it's what your dad does for a living.
Oh. Did you know that? Yeah.
You did know that? Yeah. You still have a no hot tub? I don't have a hot tub still.
Since yesterday, I didn't get one. I want to buy you yours.
You want to buy me one? Yeah. You want to buy me a hot tub? Yeah.
Okay, we'll talk to your dad about that. But you can get mine.
I can have yours? You're going to give me your hot tub? Yeah. But then what hot tub are you going to go in? I'm going to join you in my hot tub.
Oh, so we share? Thank you. Gabriel and Uncle Gabriel and I are going to do some work, okay? Ginny, I have to work with your dad, and we're going to be done really

soon, and then you can hang out with him as much

as you want. Sound good?

Thumbs down or thumbs up?

Thumbs up.

Thumbs up.

Thumbs down. No.

Thumbs up.

No.

Okay, fine. Bye, Junie.
Say bye-bye. Bye.
Sorry about that. No worries.
Both of my kids are funny, but my son is just unintentionally hilarious in ways that sometimes we can't always show. So he's really pissed off the other day, really angry about some nonsense.
He goes in the toy room. He brings out this Nerf gun, which he found.
We did not want to buy him this, but he found a Nerf gun. And then we just were like, okay, fine.
You can shoot targets. And I said, what are you doing with that? Because I knew he was really angry with his sister.
And he goes, got it to protect myself. Just like matter of fact, very matter of fact.
And it was just like, okay, stay strappedpped yo in the house like a turf war breaking out of the house between jaden and juniper yes yes you got to be strict with them because they're doing something wrong but they're doing it in such a funny way you have to try not to laugh and sometimes jaden and juniper will do something that jen and i have to correct but then we look at each other and we're just like, don't you laugh. You have to cover your mouth and pretend you're not entertained because otherwise it reinforces the wrong behavior.
And the last like 48, 72 hours has been full of this. And it's one of the funnest parts of parenting.
Yeah. Can you record some of this and put it on Instagram or something? Because that would be so funny to see.
Why do you have your gun out, Jay? Nervously. Like, why do gun out your nerf gun protect myself yes because it's dangerous out in these streets it's hot out there for a pimp yeah just in the living room while everyone's eating dinner oh man speaking of protecting yourself yeah what's the first thing out of the mailbag hey jordan and gabe two close friends and an acquaintance have confided in me that they were brutally assaulted by a man.
Let's call him Zach. Zach's MO is this.
He dates women, gains their trust with charm, poetry, and wit, then uses psychological manipulation to physically force himself on them. Afterward, he gaslights them into believing they wanted it, needed it, or that he's quote-unquote enlightening them by forcing some twisted form of shadow work on them.

The reality is that he's passing his own trauma onto them under the guise of spiritual growth.

In his mind, he's some kind of dark guru, dragging women through hell in the name of

awakening. In reality, he's just a predator.

Wow, what a piece of crap. So shadow work, is that a Carl Jung thing, right? I've heard about, I don't really know what that entails.
So shadow work, people use that term in different ways, but basically it's about recognizing and integrating the dark side of your personality. So those parts of yourself that you repress or consider shameful or bad in some way, or like certain impulses or behaviors or feelings.
And actually what is kind of interesting about is that for many people, sometimes even good qualities or superpowers can end up in the shadow. And the idea generally is to reclaim them, to be in touch with them and acknowledge them and be consciously in touch with all of these aspects of yourself so you can integrate them.
Okay. And the idea is if you integrate this stuff, you're healed or whole or whatever.
Yeah, I guess so. I don't know about healed, but the idea is that if you're in touch with all of the parts of yourself, you have more self-awareness, you have more authenticity, you're whole basically instead of repressed or cut off or in denial of good or bad parts of yourself.
So Dark Jordan-ish? Yeah, precisely. That's a shadowy kind of thing.
Yeah. That sounds useful, just dragging things into the light.
I can definitely now see how creepy, wannabe, culty gurus like this dude could co-opt something like that to take advantage of people. Yes, for sure.
No legit Jungian or person who's inspired by Jung or anything would do something like this. Ironically, though, I don't know all the facts, but if this guy actually did true shadow work on himself, then he probably would not need to abuse other people.
But that's a whole other idea. It's so gross.
Anyway, carry on. From what I've gathered, Zach comes from a highly unstable background.
Neglect, drug abuse, financial chaos, maybe worse. He's dabbled heavily in psychedelics, and my suspicion is that unchecked trauma, combined with spiritual bypassing, has left him deeply unhinged.
Clearly, that all tracks. But I will say, I don't know if I chalk this up to the psychedelics.
I have a lot of friends who have responsibly turned to psychedelics to heal precisely these wounds, as well as address things like PTSD, depression, anxiety, all of that to great effect under doctor supervision, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, if you're deranged or you're using them inappropriately or you're not applying what you learned from them, yeah, they definitely won't help you.
They might even do more damage. One of my friends, let's call her Taylor, already tried to raise the alarm in our dance community, but the organizers hesitated to act, too afraid to make a call based on hearsay, even though Taylor is a pillar of the community.
She was in tears when she told me, saying I hate that he's still allowed at these events and it makes me so uncomfortable when he shows up. Meanwhile, Zach is still attending dances, leading prayer and song circles, ironic, I know.
Sometimes just sitting and staring at the crowd, with a darkness in his eyes that I can't unsee. Oof, yeah, that is unsettling.
I want to do something, but I know confronting him personally is dangerous. He knows exactly who he's harmed, so if word gets out, he'll know someone talked.
Narcissistic abusers don't own their actions. They retaliate, twist the story, play the victim.
My men's group has my back if needed, but I need a real strategy. Filing restraining orders seems like an easy first step.
If members of our community take legal action, the event organizers will be forced to comply. His victims could also press charges, but ideally I want him to face actual consequences and take accountability.
I mean, facing charges is an actual consequence, isn't it? And if he gets prosecuted, then he'll really have to face consequences. Yeah.
What more consequences could you ask for than that? Like karma? I don't know. I'd be more satisfied with prison time, personally.
How do I move forward in a way that keeps my friends safe, holds this man accountable, and ensures that he cannot manipulate his way out of it? Signed, plotting some next steps to correct the defects of this dark subject. Oh man, this is all super sad and dark.
What a stressful situation. Not just that this guy is manipulating and assaulting women in your community, but that these event organizers can't or won't take action to kick him out.
That is not cool. So based on what you've shared, I'm going, what the hell are these people thinking? A prominent member of the group comes to them and says, this guy's a monster.
He's sexually assaulting people in our community. He needs to go.
And they just shrug their shoulders and do nothing. But then, I don't know, maybe these organizers are in a tough position.
Maybe they feel they don't have the grounds to kick them out. They don't have enough evidence.
They didn't find Taylor's testimony compelling for some reason, or they're trying to be fair to Zach, which frankly, I'm surprised they'd have that reaction in this day and age. But who knows? Maybe they're also making room for both parties.
Although, if what you say is true, and it sounds like it is, they are clearly making the wrong call here. So, I think you have a few options here if you want to hold this guy accountable.
First off, I think you need to talk to Zach's victims. I might do this with Taylor's help.
Ask them what their goals are, what they want to see happen. I love that you're a champion and an ally.
You do have an important role to play here, but they're really the ones who get to decide whether to tell their stories, talk about what happened to them, decide who to share it with, whether it's the event organizers or other people in the community or the police or a court if they take out restraining orders. And ultimately, their testimony, that's what's going to matter the most.
Now, you have to tread lightly here because this is very sensitive territory. These women have been assaulted.
This is obviously traumatizing. And if you approach them to talk about what happened, you have to do it from a place of great respect and empathy and gentleness.
And I'm not sure how close you are with these people, how much they trust you. That's a big factor here.
But either way, you got to be thoughtful about how you start this conversation. And that's why I think Taylor could be helpful because A, she's a woman and B, she's a prominent member of the community.
And I can't tell if she was a victim herself or if she was just speaking up for other victims. If Zach targeted her too, then she's an even more powerful ally in all this.
But either way, it sounds like she has unique relationships and influence in this world. So actually, I'd start with Taylor first and strategize together about how to proceed.
And it sounds like you two could make a good team. I bet it would be very powerful for the event organizers to hear from women and men about this.
And when you guys talk to these women, I would work up to asking them, what do you want to see done? How do you want to handle this? Do you want to file a police report? Do you want to take out restraining orders? Do you just want this guy out of the dance group and just see what they're willing to do? And from there, I would support whatever plan they want to go with. One person's story, honestly, that should probably be enough to intervene in this case.
But it might be hard for the organizers to know what to do with that. Three, four, five, ten, whatever women coming forward and saying, hey, this guy's a monster.
He shouldn't be here. They have to take that seriously.
And that can be multiple individual emails to the event organizers. It can be a letter signed by all of them.
It can be an in-person conversation where they all tell their stories to the event organizers. But I tend to think that writing is best because it can be more damning and compelling and it can be shared more easily.
And then you have to back them up and say, you guys need to listen to these women. And as a man, I'm also quite disturbed by this guy being here and I want him gone.
That's your role. But again, I think it's primarily the victim's call.
This is their story to tell. And you're welcome to share what you know with the organizers on your own, too.
But ultimately, it's their testimony that's going to make the most impact. Of course, the victims are going to have to balance that with their own safety.
I know one of your concerns is that Zach might actually retaliate, although, yo, there's safety in numbers. If several women report him, I've got to think there's a decent chance he'll be so scared that he'll just disappear.
You said he's a narcissist in a way that's a liability, but in another way, it might actually be an advantage if he's terrified that people will withdraw their interest and affection for him or stop listening to their fear of him. I would be shocked if they didn't ban this guy after hearing all this, but you won't know for sure until you try.
And if they don't want to talk for whatever reason, then you can still report him based on what you know. That might move the needle too, but I just, I don't think it'll be as impactful.
As for making sure that he can't manipulate his way out of it, that's tough. I'm not sure how much control you really have over that.
Given what you've told us about him, I'm sure he's going to try. It's not really your concern though.
Your concern is to help keep your community safe and empower these victims to handle this the way that they want. Make it clear to the people organizing these events that this guy is dangerous and that they do need to take this seriously.
The best way to prevent him from manipulating his way out of this is to arm the organizers and potentially the police and the courts, if you guys decide to go that route, with as much solid and compelling information as possible. I mean, that's really the most important thing.
Beyond that, I'm just not sure how much you can control about this guy. And look, if the group still doesn't take this seriously, maybe you do go a little dark Jordan on this.
Maybe you encourage Taylor to start a private Facebook group where people can talk about their stories. Maybe you guys publish an anonymous essay or post for the whole community to read, naming the guy, detailing what he's done.
Maybe you get everyone to shun this guy on their own until he gets the message. Or worse, you know, I'm sure you can get creative.
I'm not a big fan of doing these things before going through the proper channels. But hey, if the proper channels fail and the evidence against him is credible and overwhelming, I do think it becomes fair game.
I'm so sorry that this guy is hurting your friends. It's truly awful.
People like this obviously need to be called out, kicked out, held accountable. They're dangerous and gross, and they infect special communities like yours, and they ruin them.
But I think as a guy, as a non-victim here, you do play a secondary role in supporting the primary victims. So start there and keep asking how you can be the most helpful and you'll know what to do.
In the meantime, hey, keep dancing, keep being there for your friends and take good care. All right, now we're going to get in touch with our shadow side by acknowledging what shameless, money-hungry capitalists we are deep down.
Even Carl Jung couldn't say no to the deals on the fine products and services They've got bars, hydration mixes, mushroom coffees, all designed to keep your brain and body in sync. No weird ingredients, just smart fuel.
And they've got over 20,000 five-star reviews. If you're looking to start your day without crashing and burning or you just want to actually function like a human being in some of those mornings, check out IQ Joe.
And right now IQ bar is offering our special podcast listeners 20% off all IQ bar products. Plus get free shipping to get your 20% off text Jordan to 64,000 text J O R D A N to 64,000.
That's J O R D A N to 64,000 message and data rates may apply. See terms for details.
This episode is also sponsored by better help. Therapy can sound big, serious.
I gotta lay on the couch and talk about my childhood

while staring at a ceiling fan.

And hey, sometimes it is like that,

but it shouldn't feel like a luxury reserve

for people with unlimited time and a black Amex card.

And have you seen the price of traditional therapy lately?

We're talking 100, 250 a session,

and at that rate, you're gonna need therapy

about how much you've spent on therapy.

With BetterHelp, you're getting real licensed therapy

online for up to 50% less than traditional sessions. It's a flat weekly fee.
You can do sessions from your couch, your car. It's not just for major life crises.
Therapy is great for learning how to manage stress, set boundaries, navigate relationships, basically all the things you wish were covered in school, but weren't because we had to learn about the frigging Pythagorean theorem instead. Plus, BetterHelp makes it easy.
Over 30,000 therapists serving more than 5 million people. So if you've been thinking about therapy or life's been just getting a little too hard lately, check out BetterHelp.
Your mental health is worth it. And now it's not going to cost you your entire vacation fund.
Your well-being is worth it. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Jordan to get 10% off your first month.
That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Jordan. Thank you for listening and supporting the show.
All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support this podcast are all in one place, jordanharbinger.com slash deals. All right, back to Feedback Friday.
Okay, what's next? Hi, Jordan and Gabe. I'm having my first child in a few months, my parents' first grandchild, and recently flew across the country for a baby shower they were hosting.
My mother-in-law invited family and parents of my husband's childhood friends, but then also included several members from her tribe, her MLM slash essential oils slash supplement group, whom I've never met. Ah, yes, exactly who you want at your first baby shower.
A bunch of woo-woo strangers you've never met before running a shady side hustle and recruiting your friends and family for their downline. Yeah.
Pushing 30 cases of bergamot oil on your college roommate next to the stork-shaped sponacopita. That's the scene.
Hmm, exactly. Yes.
I heard you majored in astrophysics with Julie. Have you ever wanted to be the CEO of your own life? No, thank you.
What are you doing? I'm an astrophysicist. Okay, I'm a Gemini.
I have to stop and explain for our listeners. The glee on Jordan's face right now, that he just got to use that.
I think you've been sitting on that one for at least two years. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Years.
Just waiting. You've been on a good run with the soundbites lately.
Just waiting for an astrophysics reference, which when's that going to come up? And here we are. Here we are.
All right. So the letter goes on.
The shower was OK, but it felt awkward having strangers at an event that was supposed to be for me. It felt like I was just a featured guest at my mother-in-law's show.
Yeah, that's not a fun feeling. Side note, fascinating how many baby shower drama questions we've had lately.
I think any event like this, right, wedding, baby shower, any sort of big event with a lot of people involved who think they should have a stake in it, but it's really about one person. And a lot of people cannot handle when that person is not them.
Is a minefield. Yeah.
But I just mean like in the last few weeks, we've gotten so many letters about the same event. Yeah.
It's baby season. Oh, I didn't even think about that.
That could explain it. Okay.
Also, only a few people from the guest list of about 40 actually purchased items from our registry. And those who did bring gifts brought them in person, despite our invitation clearly stating to ship them directly to us so we wouldn't have to pay to transport them back across the country.
Who needs a diaper genie when you can have discounts on essential oils that you just can't get anywhere else? That's the gift. Not to mention financial freedom.
That's really the gift that you should have put on your registry. The gift is mentorship and leadership and community.
Man, that is definitely annoying. Okay.
But to be fair, this might not have been malicious on their part. A lot of people just don't read invitations closely.
You might want to let that one slide. Also, the people who didn't give you a gift, they might've been like, we don't even know the couple, so we don't have to get them anything.
We're just friends of Marlene's or whatever, which is, yeah, rude, obviously. But that might say more about how absurd it is that she invited people you don't even know to your shower than it does about these people's characters.
By the way, everybody involved in MLM is broke anyway, so they couldn't have afforded anything on your registry. Most likely.
Charitable and cutting take on your part.

I'm grateful for the attempt to celebrate this significant life event, and I appreciate

the gifts we received, but the whole thing felt like it was designed for my mother-in-law's

benefit rather than mine.

This isn't the first time she's done something like this.

She once randomly declared that the family had a tradition of running 5Ks at Thanksgiving

and then cutting down Christmas trees, neither of which ever happened during my husband's childhood. Wait, what? Okay, first of all, super weird thing to randomly declare if you've never done it.
I guess somebody's trying to keep up appearances or whatever, but I'm a little confused. How is that similar to the baby shower thing? Okay, so I'm guessing it just means that the mother-in-law does things that benefit her without thinking how they're going to affect everyone else.
And maybe she literally made a bunch of family members run a 5k and cut down Christmas trees one year because she wanted to pretend that was a thing they do for God knows what reason. Sure.
And this woman is a little off her rocker. Maybe a little.
I know I'll need to set boundaries when the baby arrives, as I'm certain she'll try to push her anti-science beliefs and dietary restrictions on my child, but that's a conversation for another time. Am I being ungrateful? How do I continue to navigate these challenges? Signed, stuck between munificence and malevolence when it comes to my mother-in-law's recklessness.
Oh boy, interesting mother-in-law, huh? As with most stories, I think there are many things going on here. I get the sense that your mother-in-law is really sweet and generous in certain ways.
Just throwing a party for you at all, even if it's not the one you wanted, that does take a lot of work. And she might be a little self-absorbed and misattuned sometimes.
The MLM, the multi-level marketing scam thing though, that is just a red flag all on its own. And it does, for me, color everything else you shared.
But maybe we need to separate these things out. So no, I don't think you're being entirely ungrateful.
You've literally said, I'm grateful for the attempt to celebrate the baby. I appreciate the gifts we received, but the whole thing felt designed for my mother-in-law's benefit rather than mine.
What I'm hearing is that you appreciate what she's done and what some of these people got you and that the day was more about your mother-in-law than it was about you, which is fair. My only caveat is we don't have enough information to know how malicious your mother-in-law really is, how much of this is intentional.
It does sound like she probably struggles to identify fully with other people, and personalities like that can come in a few varieties. There are people who are out-and-out narcissists, and there are people who just aren't very self-aware or attuned to others.
So yeah, it's possible. She's just more clueless than hurtful.
If that's true, then it's not that you're being totally ungrateful, but you might need to work a little harder to appreciate what your mother-in-law did offer you, given her limitations. So that's my one big caveat.
But your second question is the most important one. How do you continue to navigate these challenges? Because once the baby comes, things will probably get more intense.
She's going to want to see her grandchild. Her beliefs are going to bump up against you and your husband's beliefs.
That's tricky. You don't want her feeding your kid essential oils or trying to get your husband to not vaccinate your kid for measles or something like that, right? It's going to be tricky.
The saving grace is you live across the country. So that makes things way easier.
But I'm sure this will not be the last time you have to work with your mother-in-law's tricky personality. My feeling is I think you need two things.
One is a lot of patience, a lot of forgiveness, because in all likelihood, she's not going to do a 180 at her age. And you're probably not the person who's going to make her see things differently, especially these MLM, multi-level marketing, anti-science types.
They're very entrenched in their delusional positions. It's very culty.
The other thing you need is strong boundaries, like you said, and a willingness to tell your mother-in-law if it's appropriate when something does not sit right with you. The baby showers behind you, I probably wouldn't relitigate that unless you feel she could take in some feedback that it would set a helpful precedent for future events or something.
But let's say that in a year or two, you fly out again, she wants to host a birthday party for her grandson. That might be a good moment to say, hey, listen, I really appreciate that you want to throw us a party.
That's so sweet of you. I want to make sure the day is really about him.
So can we make sure the guest list is just friends and family of ours? Can we be super clear with people about gifts and work with her to avoid the baby shower situation again? Or if that's only going to create tension, you politely decline and you just host the party yourself and just keep her away from planning big events. That's also an option.
And whatever she says or does something that serves her but doesn't take into account how it's going to affect you guys, if she randomly declares that now there's suddenly an annual tradition of going cross-country skiing with her grandkids or whatever, and it's not something you want to do, maybe you and your husband start gently pushing back or you learn to say, hey, you can go have fun. We're going to stay here.
See you in a few hours. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
I like that approach. Basically, you need to kind of risk disappointing and maybe occasionally hurting your mother-in-law if it's necessary and if it means standing up for your legitimate interests.
You don't need to be cruel. You don't need to be disrespectful.
I don't think we're saying that you should be adversarial for no reason. I would not defy your mother-in-law just for the sake of winning.
But if her way of doing things is going to continue to come at your expense in some significant way, like having to participate in a party that's more for her than for you, or having to run five kilometers on Christmas when you don't want to or whatever, I think it's perfectly all right to push back or work with her to create the experience that you and your family do want. And if that's not possible with her, maybe you guys just won't be very close, which sucks, but it happens.
I'm sorry that your mother-in-law is challenging in certain ways. I also think it's important to recognize her for her good qualities, which you're doing, and validating those qualities.
That's going to be just as important as pushing back on the trickier ones, so keep that in mind too. This will probably be a process, a subtle negotiation you're in for a little while.
The key is to know when to draw a hard line and when to be skillful. And that's something that I'd collaborate with your husband on deciding if these big moments come up.
And good luck. You can reach us Friday at jordanharbinger.com.
Keep your emails concise. Try to use descriptive subject lines.
That makes our job a whole lot easier. If you're finding dead squirrels in your mailbox, your stepdad's got your nudes, your neighbors are eavesdropping on your therapy sessions through the wall, or you find out your wife was having an affair with her best friend and you don't know whether to believe it's over, whatever's got you staying up at night lately, hit us up Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com.
We're sure to help and we keep every email anonymous. By the way, if you haven't signed up yet, come check out our newsletter, We Bit Wiser.
It is a bite-sized gem from a past episode from us to you, delivered right to your inbox most Wednesdays. So if you want to keep up with the wisdom from a thousand plus episodes and apply it to your life, I invite you to come check it out.
You can sign up at jordanharbinger.com slash news. Okay, next up.
who have spent their entire lives as civil servants. Just for anyone who's listening right now who doesn't live in the US, I think this person is referring to the doge cuts and to a lot of the layoffs that have been hitting government agencies across the board.
So he goes on, how do you handle losing a position if you feel it was unwarranted? If you work on programs that give aid to people in need, USAID, how do you reconcile leaving those things undone? When an organization, agency, or job you've spent most of your life supporting is shut down unexpectedly, how do you feel about the work you've done throughout your career? Signed, Coping with the Specter of Losing My Vector in the Public Sector. Yeah, great questions.
First of all, all politics aside, and I know that's not what your question is about, the anxiety you're feeling, it must be pretty intense. It's very normal.
I'm so sorry that you're going through this. However people feel about Doge and Elon and these cuts, being laid off or being at risk of being laid off, it's stressful, it's scary, it's unpleasant.
So I really do feel for you and for your friends and colleagues. I also know that the uncertainty is often the hardest part.
Most of us can deal with a clear loss. It's painful, but it's survivable.
But not knowing what's coming, when it's coming, not always being able to track the logic behind these decisions, it can drive even the best of us insane. You and your peers are over there sweating under the sword of Damocles.
So I can only imagine how intense this chapter must be for you, and I'm sorry that you're going through it. So there are no simple answers here.
This is no different from losing your job in the private sector or going through any other loss, although I do know that many public servants, especially the ones who work in more impactful roles, they're usually driven by a real sense of purpose, and that makes getting fired sting even more. So the first step, I think, is to accept the loss completely, which means really allowing yourself to go through the pain, not denying or negotiating with it, not suppressing the emotions that come up around it, sadness, anger, fear, whatever it is.
And this might be the hardest part for us humans. Learning to accept that some professional blows are just inherently unfair and sometimes unnecessary.
And that's not a comment on Doge or your job specifically. I don't know all the details of your career.
I'm not an expert in these government cuts and whatnot. I'm talking about loss in general.
We go through so many things in life that are quote unquote unwarranted, that don't have a clear rationale, that don't make sense. Then we're left to make our own meaning of them or to accept that there is no meaning.
So that's the first step, just grieving. The next step is deciding what to do with that grief.
The feelings that seem especially powerful for you right now are this anxiety and the anger, which I'm sure is true of so many federal employees right now. I also think this belief of this was unwarranted, I think that's a thought you're going to have to work with.

Not saying you're wrong. I'm saying you're going to have to figure out your relationship

with that thought. Because look, maybe these cuts or potential cuts are unwarranted.
Maybe

they aren't. I don't know.
In a way, it doesn't matter. I don't mean that to be callous.
I am

not minimizing how stressful this is. Of course, it matters to you, to your friends, even to the

world. But it doesn't matter from the standpoint of this is what's happening right now or this is what could happen.
And if something is happening, especially a force as big as this that you ultimately just can't control, then there's no arguing with it. So whether you find it warranted or unwarranted, fair or unfair, logical or insane, and I can appreciate all those judgments, it's really secondary.
What's primary is what you do with those beliefs, how you apply them. Because look, you could spend months, you could even spend years, and many people do this, being angry, being anxious, resenting the people and institutions that are firing them.
Again, those responses are totally valid, but they can also keep you stuck. They can prevent you from working with these circumstances to find better outcomes.
Whereas if you looked at this and you went, man, this sucks. My friends are being laid off.
I might be laid off. I'm freaking out.
I think it's unnecessary. I think it's unjustifiable.
I think it's dumb. Whatever those beliefs are, and I can't control this.
So what can I control? What do I do with these feelings? That is a very different process, a much more productive and interesting process because one person might feel this anxiety and anger and just go, this is awful. I'm screwed.
I'm just going to stand here and freak out and wait for the chopping block or rage against government. Another person might feel these feelings and go, wow, this is really painful.
This uncertainty is bringing up a lot of feelings for me. Maybe I can find a way to use them.
And that could look so many different ways. It might mean starting an informal group for federal workers who've lost their jobs or are at risk of losing their jobs, supporting one another, commiserating, sharing resources, advice, job postings, whatever you guys need right now.
It might mean reaching out to your contacts now and warming up those relationships in case you need them or building those relationships if you don't have them yet. Telling your story to people, channeling this anxiety into creating the safety net you'd want to have if you do end up losing your job, which coincidentally is exactly what we teach in 6-Minute Networking.
It's a free course, 6minutenetworking.com. If you're not doing it now, start doing it.
Dig the well before you get thirsty. That's literally the whole point of the course.
Who knows? It might even mean advocating for your position in a new way, putting in a little extra time to communicate what you do, why it's important, how you're needed. And I don't just mean hitting reply to Elon's what did you do this week email, if that's a thing.
This is not a subtle endorsement of all that, which I'm sure some people listening right now are really trying hard to suss out. I'd have the same advice for somebody in the private sector on telling the story of your job to the people who need to hear it and maybe banding together with other people in your agency to do the same if that's appropriate, whether it's an email to more senior people or an essay you publish on Substack or talking to a reporter or whatever it is.
Point is, these feelings and opinions you have, all of them fair. They're only useful to you to the extent that you work with them, that you put them to work.
What I've learned over the years dealing with a ton of uncertainty myself is you can't control the uncertainty because, you know, it's uncertain. It's not even a thing.
It's the absence of a thing and your mind just cannot do anything about it, even though it really, really wants to. But what you can do is control your sphere, your mind, your heart, your body, your words, your actions.
You can decide what spirit you want to meet people in, what mindset you want to greet your challenges with. You can take your anxiety and your anger and your sadness and channel them into specific choices as opposed to just being overwhelmed by all of them.
So my advice is this, surrender to what's happening, look for the open doors. They are always there, I promise you, whether you wanna walk through them or not.
And the truth is you don't know if you wanna walk through them because you haven't walked through them yet. But there's a world where if you do end up losing your job, which, you know, I sincerely hope does not happen, but I think we need to prepare for the possibility.
To Jordan's point, there's just so little control you have over this huge force that is moving through the government right now. There is a world where you wake up in three months or six months or a year and you go, man, this was not where I thought I would end up, but it's actually kind of worked out well, or at least it was interesting.
Having your career turned upside down sucks. I get it.
I know it's awful. But the pain that you're experiencing right now is actually a symptom of change.
It's not necessarily an indicator of whether that change is good or bad. And I think that's also important to remember.
So don't let your anxiety and anger blind you to the opportunities here. Once you give yourself over to what's happening, even if you hate it, you're going to start to spot them and you're going to start to get curious about them.
And I can tell you firsthand, it is ultimately kind of exhilarating to do that. Exactly.
He might as well start thinking that way now. I also hear that our friend is struggling not just with the practicals of losing his job, but with meaning.
I think anyone who loses their job has to grieve not just the identity and the structure of their profession, they also have to grieve their purpose and their impact. In some ways, that can be even more painful, especially for mission-driven people like you.
And honestly, I don't know if there's a simple answer to that part. I don't know if you can really reconcile leaving certain things undone, especially when those things like some of the initiatives that were being done at USAID, however you feel about that agency, they do have a real impact on people's lives.
And that's a whole other bucket of anxiety and pain to deal with, right? So Jordan's advice to fully surrender applies here to reconciling. That's another thought.
I think that's another thing that your brain wants to do. And yeah, maybe you'll get there one day.
But in the meantime, I think you just got to accept, which means being willing to feel all of the feelings around not being able to finish the work that you care about and not understanding why it makes any sense. And you got to trust that might be painful, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the end of the mission for you.
It doesn't mean you can't pursue that purpose somewhere else in a new way, in a new role. It doesn't mean that the people whose lives that you and your colleagues touched are not going to find other sources of support.
And by the way, it definitely doesn't mean that the work you've done up till now is totally meaningless. You get to decide how to feel about your track record, and that's going to show up in how you communicate that meaning.
For example, when you reach out to people and tell them your story, or when you sit down for job interviews. So basically, you want to make sense of this, but the reality is that it might not ever totally make sense.
Basically, I understand that you want to make sense of this so that you can get through it somehow, but the reality is that it might not ever totally make sense. Basically, I understand that you want to make sense of this so that you can get through it somehow.
But the reality is that it might not ever totally make sense, at least to you. And I also think it's possible that it doesn't have to make sense in the way that you want it to.
Hundo P. And I keep coming back to the idea.
There's something vaguely zen about this. This idea that you don't know what this uncertainty means and you don't know where you're going to be in six months or a year, you could still be in your job and totally safe.
You could be in a new role in the government and loving it. You could be in the private sector and having a whole new experience.
Yeah, you could be a party planner for the mother-in-law from the previous question. You don't know.
That's right. You could be shilling yarrow oil by the gallon, counting your MLM stacks and thrilled that you left the public sector.

Obviously, I'm kidding. There's no such thing as MLM stacks.
We all know that.

Point is, all of those timelines could be fantastic.

But where you end up, the quality of your work, the meaning you derive from it, that is all going to depend on how you act now.

So come back to the basics. Good work, strong relationships, a healthy lifestyle, strong habits, productive mindsets, generosity.
These are really the things that are going to get you through. You don't need to know exactly where you're going, although I can certainly sympathize with wanting to know.
You just need to use this very strange and stressful time to become the best professional you can be and keep evolving.

And if you do that, I promise you, you're going to weather this storm and you're going to be great. I'm so sorry that you and your peers are going through it, but I have a ton of faith in you guys to land on your feet, sending you a big hug and wishing you all the best.
And now we're going to drop the sword of Damocles right on the prices on the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back.
This episode is sponsored in part by SimpliSafe. If you haven't heard, which you have, I'm sure we had a break in recently.
While we were home, nothing quite wakes you up like realizing somebody's creeping around your house that shouldn't be. Whole neighborhood was rattled.
We were rattled naturally. My very sweet, very proactive neighbors decided it was time for action.
Suddenly we got a full on neighborhood watch situation situation. There are signs.
There's a group chat. I even attended a neighborhood watch meeting.
Imagine a room full of very concerned retirees peppering a 29-year-old cop with questions like, why do people light fireworks? Sitcom energy. I mean, 50s sitcom energy.
But somebody made a great point. If you don't have a solid home security system yet, what the heck are you waiting for? Enter SimpliSafe.
No installers. No weird appointments.
No rewiring the whole dang house. You set it up yourself.
Jen did it in a few minutes. You get sensors, cameras, professional monitoring, the whole setup, and you can check in on your phone from anywhere.
And look, after experiencing a break-in, I got to tell you, knowing somebody's watching your place 24-7, it's peace of mind you really can't put a price on, but lucky for you, they actually did put a price on it, and right now, it's a good one. To get 50% off a new system with professional monitoring, plus your first month free.
That's simplisafe.com slash Jordan. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
This episode is sponsored in part by Audible. People always ask me how I manage to get through so much content, especially since I prep for every interview.
I'm talking two to three books a week, and it's all thanks to Audible. I've got Audible in my ears while I'm getting my 10,000 steps in, running errands, even doing stuff around the house.
I don't mess with physical books anymore at all. Audible's just way more efficient.
I listen on 2 or even 3x speed, which lets me cover a lot of ground without sacrificing quality. Right now, I'm listening to Good Inside by Dr.
Becky Kennedy. She's got this really down-to-earth way of talking about parenting that is not preachy.
And here's what a lot of people don't realize. Audible is not just audiobooks anymore.
You get access to thousands of titles with your membership, podcasts, Audible originals, and cool stuff like their words and music series where artists tell their stories in their own words. The variety makes the membership way more valuable, so you never run out of great stuff to check out.
One day I'm deep in a parenting guide, the next it's a podcast or a spy thriller. So whether you're into suspense, self-development, or you just want to make traffic suck less, Audible's got you covered.
Start listening and discover what's beyond the edge of your seat. New members can try Audible now free for 30 days and dive into a world of new thrills.
Visit audible.com slash JHS or text JHS to 500-500. That's audible.com slash JHS or text JHS to 500-500.
If you like this episode of Feedback Friday and you find our advice valuable, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support the amazing sponsors that make this podcast possible. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.
The AI chatbot can help you surface codes. And if that doesn't work, email us, jordan at jordanharbinger.com.
Happy to dig up those codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show.
Now, back to Feedback Friday. Okay, next up.
Dear, I got kidnapped twice and handsome boy number two. Ooh.
I'm a 47-year-old guy living in South Dakota and I have a sister-in-law, let's call her Debbie, who's a little older than me, is intellectually disabled, and has a mental age of four or five. Last year, there was a dust-up between Debbie and the rest of the family that caused us all to cut a visit short and go home.
Even though she was largely responsible, I decided to be the bigger person and smooth things over. So for Christmas, I gave her a card apologizing for hurting her feelings.
She yelled, I don't want an apology. I want to be mad, which was probably the most authentic thing she's ever said.
We're all used to her being perpetually angry, so we let it slide as cute, albeit a little disappointing. Interesting.
There is something cute and authentic about that, but this is a challenging family member to have for sure. Poor woman.
Yeah. Had a little bit of Jaden going, friggin' energy.
Friggin'! Yeah. I have two sons.
One is a teenager and the other is about to be a teenager and is also severely autistic. Debbie and my in-laws live around the corner from us and do a lot of the daycare.
She likes to feed my boys afternoon snacks, although at this age it's less of a necessity and more of a chance for them all to hang out. The other day, my wife went to pick up the boys while I was at work, and Debbie was in one of her moods.
So she said, Debbie, you would feel so much better if you would just apologize to your brother-in-law and accept his apology. So Debbie went into the bathroom, came back into the living room holding a bottle of medicine, and shoved all the pills into her mouth.
Oh my god, that's awful. Then my youngest son entered the room to find Debbie attempting to down the pills.
Oh my god, this keeps getting worse. That's a terrible thing for a kid to witness.
My wife immediately called 911, and my father-in-law went about getting Debbie to spit out the pills. After my wife got off the phone with 911, she called me, and I raced over from work to get my kids out of that house around the same time that the cops and the paramedics showed up.
For various legal and tax reasons, Debbie has never been legally declared mentally incompetent, and nobody has guardianship over her. So when the authorities arrived, she told them she didn't swallow any of the pills and didn't want further help, which meant that as soon as the paramedics determined she was either telling the truth or didn't swallow enough pills to be dangerous, they couldn't enforce an involuntary psychiatric hold, and they left.
Oh boy, I gotta say, this story really brings to life why having these legal structures in place is so important. Gabe, I'm trying to imagine what those legal and tax reasons are for not having a guardianship would be.
I mean, I know it's a headache, but it's gotta be more helpful than costly, right? I wonder if he just meant that it's a lot of responsibility. Like, for example, if you have a guardianship, I think you have to get power of attorney.
You have to manage the person's benefits. You got to file taxes for them.
It's a whole job. But also, I did read up on this a little bit.
And if you don't do any estate planning or like gift tax planning before the ruling of incompetence, apparently you do have fewer tax saving strategies. Like it's harder to gift the person assets, for example,

because they can't legally consent to financial transactions

or changes in their estate plan.

Okay, that does make sense.

Maybe that's it.

But if you provide financial support for somebody who's declared incompetent,

don't you also qualify for more tax deductions and credits? For one thing, I remember learning that. Yeah, you do.
First of all, I'm really sorry to everyone for how boring this tangent is, but this could be really helpful for some people listening. So I'll be very brief.
There is something called the dependent care credit. If you have to pay somebody to care for your dependent who's incapable of self-care so that you can go and work.
And then separately, you can also deduct medical expenses for unreimbursed medical costs for the person if they exceed, I think, a certain percentage of your income. So to bring it back to our friend here, maybe the parents make too much money to benefit from having her declared incompetent.
They don't work, so they can't claim that. Or maybe they just don't want to deal with all the admin.
To be fair, I guess I can understand. Also, one other interesting thing, a guardian or a conservator usually requires court approval for significant financial decisions, and that can just like slow down or block certain tax saving strategies.
And it's costly and it's a pain in the ass. Okay, but then if your child hurts themselves and you need to make a medical decision, not having this in place, it clearly becomes a liability.
So it's kind of like, which one is more important, saving some money or being able to fully care for them? That's exactly the right question. So he goes on, the family had an agreement that first thing Monday morning, Debbie's parents were going to call her psychiatrist and schedule an emergency appointment to get things under control.
But my mother-in-law claims she can only focus on one thing at a time, and right now Debbie has some minor health issues and she wants to get those under control and just go to their regular psych appointment next month. My father-in-law is willing to give Debbie whatever she wants as long as it keeps her quiet, so he's taking advantage of my mother-in-law's decision to also avoid doing the right thing.
Meanwhile, my kids are traumatized, especially my younger son, asking if they and Debbie are going to die. Yeah, I'm not buying it.
I'm not buying their stories. I am furious.
Yeah, I get it, man. I hear the anger in your letter and I agree.
Snacks, meals, and school pickups and drop-offs are done. My wife and I have decided to have zero in-person contact with her family until they meet with Debbie's psychiatrist and come up with a plan.
But the most likely outcome is going to be nothing because by the time they meet, they're going to think everything's calm and there's nothing to worry about. It's also very possible they just won't say anything about this because it might complicate their situation.
Oh, she'll never do it again. We talked to her.
Well, maybe. But you know what? I'm not totally sure that this outcome is what's going to happen.
Maybe it is. Maybe this guy knows best.
But a good doctor, if they heard what she did, I'm hoping that the parents would tell them the full story. They should factor that into their treatment.
They should try to prevent this next crisis. I would hope so.
But yeah, there's no guarantee. But I just want to say, I do think it's important not to catastrophize too much or assume the worst possible outcome before you have all the information.
Fair. The letter goes on.
Even if they do come up with a plan, my wife and I have decided that we're both going to go over when the boys have snacks. And if anything goes sideways, she's going to call 911 while1-1 while I get the boys out of the house.
I'm going to be in total sheepdog mode. My only mission is to make sure Debbie doesn't kill herself in front of my kids or harm them before she goes.
I'm so angry with Debbie and her parents that I don't even care if she does it, just that my kids don't witness it or find her after the fact. If her parents want to keep her alive, that's their job.
I know that's not a very charitable stance, but it's how I'm feeling right now. Yeah, dude, I get it.
You don't want young kids around somebody unstable, and you definitely don't want them to witness anything traumatizing for no reason. My only caveat is, I get why you're angry at Debbie, but mentally she's four years old.
She's disabled. She doesn't fully know what she's doing.
It's hard, but you kind of got to forgive her. Her parents, on the other hand, they're a much more legitimate target of your anger.
I think they're also probably terrified and embarrassed and overwhelmed, and they're handling this the only way that they know how. Might be good to make room for both of those facts.
Even though I didn't witness what happened, I think I'm in a bit of shock. Yesterday, I was checking the mirrors in my car, scanning rooms and counting exits way more than normal.
I'm going to need to dial that instinct up to 11 when we hang out with my in-laws again, but I need to manage it so I can come back down to baseline when I leave. I know you're going to recommend therapy.
I have a therapy hotline at work, some pastors that I trust, and some law enforcement and military friends who I plan on having help me manage the threat assessment shifts. Complicating matters, my wife and I will be responsible for Debbie's care when my in-laws pass.
That isn't imminent, but she's old enough that things could change rapidly. Her living with us is no longer an option, but there's enough money and state resources to make sure that she's provided for.
I'd like to see some of that money put into irrevocable trusts and managed better, but keeping her safe and alive is the priority now. Being able to override her decisions is more important than money.
Oh yeah, I totally agree with that. I think you're on the right track.
Also, Debbie threw some garbage at my wife during the incident. None of it hit her, but the cop asked, did anything she threw touch you? Intimating that if it did, that could be enough for assault.
Jail or criminal charges would hurt more than help, but I am not above getting that 72-hour psych hold on a technicality, even if Debbie and my in-laws don't consent. What can we do to protect ourselves? What sort of plan can we create here? How do we set a bottom line for Debbie's father that he will enforce? How can we best care for Debbie when the time comes? What goals should I set for therapy? And any Dark Jordan advice? Signed, protecting my flock and watching my sister-in-law like a hawk when her parents just balk at getting her mental on lock.
Oh boy, what a story. There's so much going on here.
That's a doozy, dude. Yeah.
Yeah. We could probably spend hours unpacking all this.
I'm going to try and cut to the chase here. First of all, goes without saying, Debbie's whole situation is very challenging, very tragic.
I know that you're angry with your in-laws. I would be too.
But my heart also breaks for parents who have to care for a child with needs this severe. It's got to be so hard, practically, financially, and emotionally.
You can empathize to some degree. You have a severely autistic son, different diagnosis, obviously, totally different circumstances, but I'm sure you know how hard this must be.
On the flip side, I wonder if he looks at the way he's handling his son and he looks at those parents and he's like, guys, this is what you have to do. I'm doing it for my son.
Why can't you do it for yours? So it could cut both ways. Interesting.
I'm sure he is. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Oh, I draw boundaries and don't let this person get whatever they want as long as he keeps them quiet, because that's not a good long-term strategy. So could your in-laws be doing a better job? Probably yes.
Is it also kind of an impossible situation? Also, yes. I say that again, not to dismiss your concern or minimize your anger.
They are appropriate, in my opinion. They have to protect Debbie.
You have to protect your kids.

Just to be very direct here,

I like your plan to keep a close eye on Debbie

when you go over there.

Keep the boys safe if anything terrible ever happens again.

Call 911 if you need to.

I agree that taking care of Debbie

is primarily your in-law's job,

but because it's their job

and they're not doing it perfectly,

I think a big part of protecting yourself

is educating them, empowering them to be more proactive in managing her care, helping them see the ways they might not be doing enough or moving fast enough and collaborating with them to find better resources, better partners, better decisions. I'm just realizing that that's kind of why I pounced a moment ago when he said that the likeliest outcome of going to the shrink is going to be nothing.
Because by assuming the worst, I think you and your wife might be missing a big opportunity, which is to talk to her parents in a new way about your concerns and hopefully work with them in a way that helps avoid that outcome. You could literally say, guys, we're very concerned that Debbie's psychiatrist is going to think that nothing serious is going on by the time you get in with them.
And something serious is going on, even if we don't really want to acknowledge it. And we feel that we would be failing her and continuing to put your grandchildren at risk if we don't address this.
So how would you feel about getting that appointment sooner? How can we plan for that appointment starting now so that the doctor understands just how vulnerable she is? Do you want one of us to come with you? Like, how can we help? You know, fair. That's a much more productive conversation.
That's a way better use of your anxiety. It's a much more loving way to show up for your in-laws and for Debbie instead of condemning them for an outcome that hasn't even come to pass.
Yeah, that's my point. I would also try to help them see why that outcome would be bad for all of you and then figure out how to achieve a better one.
By helping them take care of Debbie, you'll also be protecting yourselves now and down the road. I also think that offering to tag along to the appointment or just advise from the sidelines, I think that's also a great way to start learning how to care for Debbie when the time comes.
Don't want to find yourself starting from zero and scrambling to learn everything overnight in 10 or 15 years when this responsibility eventually becomes yours. The other way to care for her is to put those structures in place that your in-laws haven't as soon as possible.
Guardianship, conservatorship, any other programs or resources for people like Debbie. Again, this is probably going to require you to collaborate with your in-laws.
So that's one more reason to proactively work with them,

even if they're driving.

But you and your wife might also need to start driving

just a little bit more.

I know it's a huge responsibility,

but as we keep coming back to,

the more you guys can get these supports in place now,

the harder you work early on,

the easier it's going to be to care for Debbie

when the time comes.

And my strong advice is to talk to a family lawyer and an estate attorney as soon as possible. Getting a guardianship, a conservatorship, that is going to involve a court-appointed plan and some crucial admin.
You need an advisor. It just always helps to start this early.
You might start with one lawyer, decide you don't like him, move on to another one. I mean, this just takes longer than you think sometimes.
And accessing money to care for Debbie, which by the way, you guys are very lucky to have, that's going to require you to manage it well, which means having the right trust and bank account and paperwork and bankers and systems for managing state resources and all that, all of which are going to require an estate attorney. And consulting with these two attorneys alongside your in-laws, or at least at the very least relaying what you learned to them, that might actually help them see why they need to start being more proactive.
I would also go back and listen to episode 1124. It was question four on that episode where we took a letter from a guy who's trying to figure out how to best care for his autistic brother once his parents get too old.
His brother is pretty different from Debbie, but there are so many parallels between your stories and so many similar feelings, which makes sense. I do think our take there will also help you plan for your situation.
As far as setting a bottom line that Debbie's father will enforce, honestly, I don't know if you can, given what you shared about his personality. Sounds avoidant.
Your better bet, in my opinion, is to collaborate with him and his wife in the way that we're talking about. Treat them like partners to be empowered rather than liabilities to be managed and to help them see how their indecision and avoidance might actually be making things worse.
Respectfully, of course, if it helps you cut through the fog and actually get them to act. I totally agree.
But listen, I want to talk about you for a moment. You've been through something pretty extraordinary as a father, as a brother-in-law, just as a human being, honestly.
It sounds to me like Debbie's suicide attempt brought up a lot for you, which makes sense. The hypervigilance that you described, that's a very common symptom of anxiety, of PTSD, among other things.
And like you said, it might be useful because you're going to have to be on high alert when you go over to the house, but you also don't want to live with your nervous system, your brain in that state all the time. That's bad news.
So you are absolutely right that we're going to recommend therapy. I think you and probably your wife as well could really benefit from it.
And look, I'm so glad that you have a hotline you can call that's really good in a crisis. And I am all for talking to leaders in your community and friends who can help you navigate all of this.
It's wonderful that you're surrounded by so many people. But none of those folks are a replacement for a proper therapist.
They might be therapeutic, they might be very helpful in certain moments, but that doesn't make it therapy. My feeling is that you have a bigger opportunity here, which is not just to focus on symptom reduction, which is important, of course, but also to understand yourself and your family a lot better.
There's a chance here to appreciate why your in-laws are handling Debbie the way they are, why you have the responses to them that you do, including, by the way, this anger that you feel toward them, which I think is very meaningful. Also to understand how your upbringing and your family and your patterns are playing a role in all of this.
To process the stress and responsibility of being a parent to a special needs child yourself. To appreciate how your experience with your son, like we said, might be informing your feelings about your in-laws, which, by the way, I suspect is a much bigger part of your story than you might even realize.
And also just on a practical level, one of the big things you get to do in therapy is develop new skills for navigating difficult conversations with family, communicating with your wife about Debbie, and just generally to get clear on your role in this whole situation. When to act, when not to act, what other resources you might need to care for a special needs family member, which is another area where a therapist can be super useful.
In other words, what I'm saying is your experience in therapy could be a lot bigger than just figuring out how to, what was the word he used, manage the threat assessment shifts. My sense is that this day at the house when Debbie took the pills is a window into a whole world of feelings and beliefs, experiences, history, family history that are all actually quite complicated.
Symptom reduction is one great goal of therapy. It's important.
It's not the only goal. And actually, I think it's often the byproduct of a deeper therapeutic process, which is generally unpacking everything around the problem, processing your feelings, building this relationship between you and your therapist, stepping into a better understanding of yourself and your life and how you want to engage with the problems that are in front of you.
So bringing down the hypervigilance and ratcheting down the anger, that'll probably happen in the course of doing this kind of work. So I would really encourage you to consider finding a proper therapist and starting to talk.
It does sound like you're open to it, which is great. And my goals would be all of the things we just talked about and any others that you find meaningful.
But my point is to not necessarily go in there with just the goal of how do I stop checking my side mirrors in the car and how do I stop scanning every room I enter for the exit doors? Totally agree. Go deep, and the symptoms generally tend to take care of themselves.
As for Dark Jordan advice, honestly, I'm very sweaty about the ethics of using Dark Jordan techniques on a special needs person. No shadow side for Debbie.
Like you said, getting her arrested for something that she didn't even do, that would probably traumatize her way more than it would help. Even if it led to her seeing a doctor, you guys also might not need an involuntary hold.
What you need is to help Debbie's parents see that they need to get her in with a psychiatrist ASAP or to take better care of her until she does get in with her psychiatrist. Now, if you try and they refuse and Debbie tries to hurt herself again and there's really no other option, and then maybe you go dark, but you have so many other options to try first, so please don't jump the gun.
I'm very sorry that Debbie struggles the way she does. It's putting so much stress on your family.
Everything you guys are going through is deeply sad, extremely challenging. I don't envy you guys.
But what Debbie's forcing you to do is evolve in the way you relate to your in-laws, in the way you take care of yourself and your sons, in the way you engage with the system and the law. It sucks.
And I wish you didn't have to do it. But in a very weird and mysterious way, she's actually forcing you to grow.
So my hope for you is that you throw yourself into that growth. That's really all you can do.
I'm not saying it'll be fun, but it could be pretty profound and quite rewarding if you meet these responsibilities with the right mindset and resources. Sending you, your wife, your kids, Debbie, the whole family, a big hug and wishing you all the best.
All right. And now for the recommendation of the week.
I am addicted to lit filler. My recommendation this week doesn't cost you anything.
It's stretching. Oh, nice one.
Thank you. Look, I know this is kind of silly because people are going to be like, stretching, I've heard of that.
What the hell? What do we need you for, Jordan? I have never been a flexible person at all. In fact, really, generally, really stiff.
We all sit a lot, a lot of us anyways, most of us. And I was really frustrated with some of the lifting and stuff I was doing in the gym.
I recently got into something called calisthenics, which is not aerobics. It's actually like gymnastics-y.
And you don't need a ton of flexibility, but you need some. And just thought, all right, I'm going to stretch my wrists.
I'm going to stretch my hamstrings. I'm going to stretch my quads.
I'm going to stretch my groin for 40 seconds, twice a day, each muscle, whatever. And it is just night and day.
It's crazy. I thought, oh, I'm going to be able to touch my toes more easily.
No, my stride has changed. My back has started releasing.
I don't get shoulder tension anymore. I don't get hip pain anymore.
I don't get knee pain anymore. I'm able to lift more weight just because I'm not fighting my body.
I'm able to put myself in all these different positions that are way more comfortable. I don't get as sore when I'm sitting in the car.
The benefits are ridiculous. It's just actually insane.
And this is probably what people are talking about when they're all like, you've got to do yoga. And you're like, shut up.
You've said that a thousand times. This is just a major, major thing.
And look, most people, if they're like, I don't have time to go do an hour long yoga class every day, I get it. Just stretch each muscle for 30 seconds.
And I don't mean your whole body. I mean, like your quads, your hamstrings, your groin, that's a good enough start right there.
You're just going to feel massive difference. And what is that like six minutes, twice a day, or even once a day.
It's just very doable. You can do it while you're watching watching tv i'll do it while i'm listening to a

podcast i'll do it while i'm texting someone this is not a heavy lift this is a really easy thing

that you can add to your day and it will just change everything especially if you're dealing

with back pain knee pain hip pain that's really going to be a huge difference if i could jump on

this stretching bandwagon for one moment i think another really easy thing to do in this department

is if you do down dog for like five minutes a day it will change your life what does down dog do

Thank you. for one moment.
I think another really easy thing to do in this department is if you do down dog for like five minutes a day, it will change your life. What does down dog do? It's just puts your whole body in the right position.
You know what I'm talking about though? Like the pose from yoga. Yeah.
Downward dog. It's a yoga pose.
If you don't know what downward dog is, just Google it. You'll be like, oh yeah, that.
It's just amazing. If you push your palms into the floor and you wrap your biceps forward and your triceps back, you just push the floor away and you pull your hips back.
It just your spine and everything lines up in the right way. You don't even have to be a yogi.
I've told several friends about this and they're like, oh, my upper back pain is completely gone. My neck feels great.
I stand a little taller. You don't have to be super hardcore to enjoy the benefits.
I think this is great. I'm a big fan of stretching and doing tiny bits of yoga in small doses.

I love this one.

Give it a shot for a week.

If you don't feel a huge difference, you can have a full refund on this podcast.

All right.

What's next?

Okay.

For our last segment today, I wanted to revisit the letter we took about a month ago from the father of the daughter who refused to move out of her parents' house.

That was episode 1127, question two on that episode.

So quickly for anyone who didn't catch it, the guy who wrote into us was struggling because his 27-year-old daughter still lives at home. She kind of refuses to move out and relies heavily on her parents for emotional support, which is now straining their marriage.
She's actually a very fascinating person. She was super attached to the

house that they live in, attached to her home, to her comforts. She's avoiding therapy.
It sounded

like she was using a vague goal of working in law enforcement one day as a way to avoid going to

therapy and working on herself. And she also struggled with OCD and hoarding tendencies.

She wanted to be close to her cats who were buried in the backyard. And whenever they tried to talk to her about any of this, building her own life, she would get heated.
There was a lot going on in this story. So our take was basically this daughter's facing a number of challenges, all of which probably speak to a very real anxiety.
But these parents aren't serving her well by avoiding these conversations, cramping around her diagnoses, helping her stay small, safe. Yes, exactly right.
So I thought about this letter a lot after it aired, Jordan, and apparently a lot of you guys did too. There was quite a lively discussion in the subreddit about it.
And you can find that by the way, reddit.com slash r slash Jordan Harbinger. And you guys brought up a few things that we might've missed in our response.
So first of all, a lot of you agreed with our general take that the situation was not very healthy for any of them. Most of you seem to feel that this family was in fact quite enmeshed.
The daughter was fairly regressed. A lot of you felt that she was actually manipulating her parents by coming up with all of these reasons that she doesn't have to leave the nest.
Also that detail about sitting on their bed most nights, just emoting. Do you remember that Jordan? Yeah.
Yeah. That struck most people as problematic to very problematic.
In fact, I thought it was interesting. A couple of people pitched the same idea, which was to just shift the location of those conversations from the parents' bedroom to her bedroom or to a neutral space, like the living room or the kitchen.
I thought that was kind of a clever idea. It doesn't solve the deeper problem, which is that she's just unloading on her parents for apparently hours like a child at her age.
It might take out the childlike, childish aspect of talking in her parents' bedroom every night at 27 years old. So that was clever.
But then another listener touched on something that we didn't consider, which was, is it possible that their daughter is neurodivergent in some way, possibly on the autism spectrum? And would that account for a lot of her challenges, a lot of her behavior? This listener pointed out that people with ASD sometimes have trouble making friends. They have much higher rates of anxiety disorders.
They also have a very hard time with change, as we all know, which was a huge theme in the letter. And if this daughter is on the autism spectrum, this listener felt that the parents need to approach the situation very differently.
For example, giving her a timeline of six months to move out might not be realistic for her. It might really do a number on somebody who struggles with change and might not have the resources yet to really make it on her own.
But then it was interesting. Another listener shared their story.
They have two adult sons who are both neurodivergent. One is on the autism spectrum.
Both are successful in their careers and are living on their own. And the parents support them appropriately with friendship, advice when asked, money for extraordinary living expenses.
They said they'd go nuts if their sons were still living in their small two-bedroom home. So that's a fascinating counterpoint, that having ASD doesn't mean that his daughter can't function on her own or build a full life, although obviously that depends on the severity of her symptoms.
And clearly there's more going on here than just potential ASD. There's anxiety, there's trauma, there's personality stuff, there's just the unique circumstances of her childhood.
It can be hard to separate all that stuff out. Yeah, it is very confusing and it's hard to know the right way to parent.
Do you have to respond to the unique needs of each individual child? These are all good questions, but I thought this was a good point. Also, the original listener pointed out something else we might have missed, which is that cultural values can play a big role in situations like this.
So as this person put it, I understand that she is an adult and the social expectation in the U.S. is that adults should live on their own.
But in many cultures, like in Italy, it is common for adult children to live at home in their 30s for economic and personal reasons. This is not necessarily a bad thing unless she's making the living situation difficult for them.
Yeah, but she is making the living situation difficult for them, right? I mean, didn't the father say that? That's why they wrote in. Yes.
He said he and his wife have some tension around their daughter. They aren't able to like step into the next phase of their marriage and their lives.
So yes, this is a problem. But the idea that a child at a certain age has to move out.
Look, I happen to feel that's probably true universally. It isn't possible in all countries and cultures for practical reasons like money or the availability of housing, but that's a separate issue.
We're talking about what's emotionally healthy and developmentally appropriate, what well-adjusted human beings need. And this 27-year-old refusing to leave home doesn't sound like any of these things.
But if we talk to somebody from, I don't know, India or Egypt or Japan, Korea, honestly, even some European countries that are similar in many ways to the United States, they might have a different lens on this. My understanding is that a lot of children in those cultures live with their parents until marriage or often well into their 20s, even their 30s, or longer if they don't get married, and that's just normal.
Okay, but that kind of just begs the question, how do we define normal? Because this might be the cultural norm in some places, so it's not weird from the standpoint of this is what we do in our country, but it can still be weird from the standpoint of, is this psychologically healthy?

Yes, totally. Is this awkward? Is this getting in the way of my growth? Is this impeding the family in general? Is living at home, even if it's like what everyone's cool with, is that also allowing me to not face certain things in my life? So honestly, I don't know the answer, but I just wanted to touch on this because we are all influenced by our cultures in ways that are, I think, often hard to see.

And maybe our take on that letter was heavily informed by an American value or Western value that adults should not live with their parents past a certain age if they can make it on their own. And to be clear, I still don't think that's wrong.
I'm not totally convinced that that's completely relative. I suspect that if you asked a lot of adults in Korea or Egypt, if they would prefer to live on their own, if they could afford it, or if they had permission, I think a lot of them would probably say, yes, I would love to do that.
I'm sure even cavemen wanted to move into their own caves at some point, you know, but I recognize that other cultures might not always share that view. And since we hear from people from all different backgrounds and from all different parts of the world, I just want to make some room for that.
We do try to acknowledge when this applies, but honestly, I forget all the time. I hear you.
I think the autism theory is much more compelling than the values argument, personally. This daughter's rigidity, her fear of change, her clinging to her home, her parents, her cat's buried in the backyard, all of that, it could be explained by, say, an anxiety disorder.
But that could also totally be undiagnosed autism. And I totally agree that somebody on the spectrum needs a different approach, a different set of supports.
And we probably should have clocked that. But to be candid, I'm also very wary of screaming, autism, every time we hear these qualities, because A, people can be rigid and fearful and regressed when they're not on the spectrum and be as we just heard not all autistic people fall into these patterns we get that a lot a lot of people will say you'll see a news article that's like the person had autism and the top zillion comments are like i have autism and i haven't shot anyone what the hell man so you really got to be careful about labeling a lot of this stuff i worry worry it can be a little insensitive, simplistic to chalk up any certain qualities to just autism automatically when so many neurotypical people struggle in similar ways.
Yeah, that is a really good point. Also, whether this woman is autistic or not, it doesn't change the fact that she's not really helping herself or her parents by responding to her situation the way she is.
It doesn't change the fact that their way of relating to her might be preventing them from finding a good solution. So all of that could be informed by ASD potentially, which would make a diagnosis very useful.
But I'm with you, Jordan, ASD alone probably would not account for how they all ended up here. And so I guess we're back to that interesting question of what role these labels should play in our lives, in our treatment and in our decisions, which is a whole other topic.
But just to say beyond the labels and diagnoses underneath these categories and symptoms, I think it's crucial to treat people as individuals with their own unique histories, their own unique personalities, their own unique needs, which means, yeah, having empathy and flexibility for their challenges, but also not letting them off the hook completely because, I don't know, a doctor gave them a certain acronym. I think that's really important to keep in mind too.
Yeah. The big theme of that letter for me was what should love actually look like? What does caring for a child mean? I'm just realizing that's the big theme of today's episode.
The mother-in-law who threw the baby shower, the parents who aren't fully dealing with their disabled daughter. I can say from experience that challenging your children and not always saving them, that's one of the hardest parts of being a parent.
It can feel like you're being cruel or failing them, but stories like this one really capture how you can also fail your children by not challenging them, pushing them, allowing them to struggle, to face healthy adversity. That's a form of love too, and if that doesn't come early enough in their life, it can become really difficult, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't come later too.
Anyway, fascinating story. Thanks to everyone for chiming in.
You helped us fill in a few gaps and you helped us appreciate just how complex the situation is. Always a delight on Feedback Friday.
Always more contours, eh? And if you get worked up about anything we talk about on the show, you want to give your two cents or keep the conversation going, by all means, join us on the subreddit. I'm loving these discussions.
And as you can see, they aren't just entertaining. They're actually also really helpful.
Go back and check out Mark Fulman if you haven't done so yet. Show notes and transcripts on the website, advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.
I'm at jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.
You can find Gabe on Instagram at Gabriel Mizrahi or on Twitter at Gabe Mizrahi. This show is created in association with Podcast One.
My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, Tata Sidlowskis, and of course, Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own.
And yes, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Do your own research before implementing things you hear on the show.
Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love.
If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use the advice we gave here today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.
And we'll see you next time. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with the investigator who solved a serial killer case that had gone cold for decades.
There was a definite spike in serial predator crime in the 1970s. Part of it was the ready victim pools that don't exist today.
Houses generally didn't have alarm systems. We don't see women hitchhiking much today.
Joe D'Angelo was a full-time law enforcement officer. He's breaking into houses in the middle of the night, raping women or girls that are home alone that he's binding up and sexually assaulting.
He ended up committing 50 of these attacks in Northern California between 1976 and 1979 and just disappeared. I started working that case in 1994 as a cold case investigator, even though the case is 30 years old.
It's like, no, you know, this is still a public safety issue.

We need to remove this offender from society.

And in 2001, 10 people had been killed across six cases.

I'm seeing this woman's body laying inside her house

and the photos of her alive on the shelf above her body.

She battled for her life, and I could see this combat go throughout that entire room. After the Golden State Killer raped some of his victims, he would crouch in the corner and cry.
They said he was sobbing, you know, it was like genuine. In fact, one victim, he was sobbing while he was raping her.
The last thing I did in my career before I retired was I drove up and

parked in front of his house. I debated, should I just go knock on his door? I didn't know he was

a Golden State Killer, but this was such a brazen, brutal predator. He absolutely had to be caught.

To learn more about how Paul Holes puts himself inside the minds of serial killers, check out episode 725 of The Jordan Harbinger Show. This episode is sponsored in part by What Was That Like? podcast.
Have you ever wondered how it feels to watch your house burn down, be attacked by an alligator, or learn that your spouse hired someone to kill you? What was that like is the podcast for you if you're that person. Real, not the person who got hired to be killed, but the person who wondered, more thankfully.
Real people come on every episode to explain the unbelievable situations they've been through. I think it's a funny concept for a show.
I kind of wish I'd thought of it because I always get crazy stories from people. Not everything turns into a Jordan Harbinger episode.
But what was that like is hosted by my friend, Scott Johnson, who's naturally curious and gives his guests the opportunity to share how they've really felt during some of their most surreal experiences, what they did in the morning before an earthquake, what song was playing as a gunman entered, what is their stomach growling as they hid. Guests share everything they remember about their crazy, crazy experiences.
So if you want to hear some disturbing slash inspiring firsthand stories

about the thoughts that go through your head

while surviving a kidnapping

or winning the price is right,

What Was That Like is the podcast you've been looking for.

Every story is thoroughly researched and fact-checked

so you know even the most unreal stories

are actually someone's reality.

Listen to What Was That Like

wherever you get your podcasts.