Denise (Sleep paralysis sufferer)
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
It's not.
Yeah. No, I appreciate it.
All right. Yeah. You bring up a good point. I didn't think of that way.
That's how I feel.
Hi, Dr. John.
Doing good. Thank you.
How can I help? Dr. John, my question is about parenting an adult child.
No.
Please do. So my 20-year-old son, he's my oldest. He has started a relationship with a 37-year-old woman. And I want to know if I'm irrational for trying to steer him away from her.
I'm 39.
My 20-year-old son, he has started a relationship with a 37-year-old woman and I want to know if I'm irrational for trying to steer him away from her.
No, I haven't met her.
No, of course not. No. So my son got a job with my husband with through his work.
And so he met her through work.
Well, yeah, she's one of my husband's employees.
Usually most of the information I gather is either through word of mouth, through coworkers from my husband, or actually me through social media.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, I've tried having conversations with him in regards to what he wants for his future, and so far all I've gotten is one-word answers, and I don't see any resolution of this ever stopping anytime soon. He seems adamant that he's going to be dating her.
Yes, correct.
I think I would have been stubborn. I'm going to do it my way.
We've been married for 21 years. So imagine a 39-year-old woman talking to your 21-year-old husband.
I haven't thought about that, Dr. John.
I'm 39.
Yeah, he does. Well, he went off to college, so he... Initially, he went off to college for two semesters. He didn't do so well. He was out of state.
And then when it didn't work out well through his bad decisions, we brought him to live with us in Arizona. And since then, he's been working at my husband's work.
Yeah. I mean, he doesn't know her, know her, but he knows her very like he sees around the facility.
Well, my husband's in like a leadership role. So he talks to the employees, but he's not like... Has he fired her? No, he has not. He's actually trying to be very careful about not doing anything wrong because everybody at work knows about this. So even make jokes like, oh, there's your future daughter-in-law.
And it is kind of funny, but it's not. Yeah.
I mean, we've recently started having him pay us rent because he was living here rent-free. So, I mean, is that reasonable?
No, mm-mm.
Well, he's not my only child. I also have a 14-year-old son.
I have said that to him.
He doesn't agree with it either.
Yeah. Oh, God, I think it would be totally different.
He probably would be coming up. Because that would be his little girl.
That's where I don't really know. I don't know what... I don't know if she thinks that she's going to get money or if she wants to have... Oh, I didn't mention she had a pregnancy scare about a month ago. That was great in her household. Turns out she's not.
Yeah, no. Yeah, well, they weren't using condoms, but now they are, apparently.
They are. My other son found a condom in the backseat of my oldest car, so they are.
No.
Would it be crazy if I called her and spoke with her or had a meetup with her?
No, I don't want her here.
I don't want her in my house. I don't mind meeting up with her somewhere.
That's going to go really well in the conversation.
It wasn't until I was maybe, I don't know, eight or nine years old that one day I woke up and it was like my eyes were open. I was looking around. I just couldn't move. I couldn't move my arms or my legs. I couldn't turn my head. And I felt this, like, weight on my chest. And the first thing I thought was, oh, my God, what happened to me? Was I in a car accident? It lasted for...
I don't know, maybe 30 seconds to a minute. And then I just kind of snapped out of it. And I was really freaked out, and I went and told my mom, you know, I think something's wrong with me. And my family's Mexican, and in Mexico they have this superstition that they say the devil is sitting on your chest when that happens to you. And she said, oh, don't worry.
It was just the devil sitting on your chest. Like, that's supposed to make me feel better.
I've definitely avoided taking naps, no matter how tired I was. I mean, I forced myself to survive on like five or six hours of sleep, very little sleep.
In college, it was happening to me so regularly that I basically survived on Red Bull and not much else.
Forever. Forever. And ever. And ever.