My Daughter Has a Genetic Mutation (It’s My Fault)

What this episode is about

The discussion centers on a parent grappling with guilt after unknowingly passing a genetic mutation, neurofibromatosis, to their daughter. This condition, which leads to tumor growth across the body, was discovered in the parent only after exhibiting symptoms in adulthood, prompting concerns about the daughter's health and the emotional burden of genetic responsibility.

Key takeaways

• Genetic guilt is a heavy burden; acknowledging it can lighten the load for both parent and child.
• Neurofibromatosis strikes 1 in 3,000 births, but its variables remind us that every experience is uniquely personal.
• Anxiety often tells us we're destined for failure; challenge that narrative to rewrite your own story.
• Perceived imperfections, like skin marks from conditions, can foster compassion. It's time we embrace our shared struggles.
• In a future dominated by robots, empathy from those with challenges may prove to be humanity’s greatest asset.

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Together, neurofibromatosis
2. 12:00 – 15:00: Building a Non-Anxious Life
3. 15:00 – 15:28: Together

Notable quotes from "My Daughter Has a Genetic Mutation (It’s My Fault)"

• It occurs in about one in 3,000 births. So it's not phenomenally rare but rarer and it's highly var variable condition in that it all it what it does.

  about neurofibromatosis · at 0:25

• I'm going to send you two copies of Building a Non- Anxious Life. It's the number one bestselling book. It resonated throughout the world. Okay.

  about Building a Non-Anxious Life · at 12:44

• If you want to build a better marriage, but you don't know where to start, I want you to try my new app called Together. You'll get daily action steps to help you have a fun, connected,.

  about Together · at 15:07

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

Books & papers

• Building a Non-Anxious Life — Book · Primary recommendation · 1 mention · first at 12:46
  Recommended by the host as a resource for managing anxiety and OCD, with two copies being sent to the guest and his wife.

Concepts & topics

• neurofibromatosis — Concept · Core topic · 1 mention · first at 0:25
  Discussed as a genetic condition affecting the guest and his daughter, leading to anxiety and guilt.

Sponsors

• Together — Product · Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at 0:03
  Promoted as a daily marriage app to help build better relationships, mentioned at the beginning and end of the episode.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:03 brought to you by Together, my daily marriage app. Having passed on a genetic mutation uh unknowingly uh to uh to my daughter and then the guilt associated with that.

0:14 Yeah, tell me about that. The I can go into specifics about the the condition. Sure, tell me about it.

0:21 Yeah, it's um it's called neuro fibromyitosis. Okay. Um it occurs in about one in 3,000 births. So it's not phenomenally rare but rarer and it's highly highly var variable condition in that it all it what it does is it makes tumors all over your body.

0:40 Now you could you can Google search this and then you know you what you're going to see is a car wreck and in most cases you know people describe this as a fender bender. I did not know about this until I was 35 years old. And I had a um a tumor. It was actually secretreting adrenaline causing high blood pressure.

1:01 And so they said, "Do you know you have this?" And I said, "No, I had no idea." And then they looked into it further and then they found out that I have this condition unknowingly for my entire life. Most people are diagnosed, you know, when they're five, six, seven years old. So when my daughter exhibited some of the same um some of the same like manifestations, little little little marks on her skin, um it I I you know I put two and two together and uh I I came up with this. Now granted, everything with her so far is okay, but any any instance in which she says that she feels pain or or whatever is is an immediate trigger for me in that I think that there's some kind of growth or something in her. And I cannot get over the fact that I I did this. Mhm.

2:02 I guess where I would challenge you on is you didn't do anything. But I feel as though I had I should have known, you know, like now that we can go into all these clinical things, but more or less.

2:18 Would you have not had what? No. Well, that's the thing. I I you know I I say I you know I say maybe I shouldn't had I known I shouldn't have gotten married shouldn't have had children.

2:32 Where are these shoods coming from? I don't I don't it it you know it manifests itself in in you know in anxiety too that I I cannot you know I mean I realize no one's perfect. I realize that.

2:50 I know. Hold on. You've been you've been dealing with anxiety outside of this your whole life. Where does that come from?

2:56 Oh, yeah. I don't since since I can remember, I've always had anxiety always. And I I don't I can't I cannot tell you where it where it came from.

3:08 Who told you you should be doing different things at all times growing up? No one. I I'm I'm the one that told me that. I'm I don't know. like that. There was not there wasn't crazy expectations for me uh you know parents or anything like that. They you know they were hands off. They let me do whatever. Um I don't know how it manifestations into even I would describe as you know a pretty form pretty high form of um obsessivecompulsive.

3:39 Yeah. I was going to say this sounds very OCD like um and it's not and I I want to put the caveat on there too. I I I get super irritated when people say, "Oh, I'm OCD." I'm like, "No, you have no you have no idea what that means."

3:52 No, no, that's that's what I've been diagnosed with that before. I get it. Yeah.

3:56 And it loops and it loops and it loops and it loops and it loops. Have you ever received clinical treatment for OCD and anxiety?

4:07 Other than people just wanting to shove drugs down your throat and saying, "This is the best you can do. So you've created a world for yourself where you can't be successful.

4:23 Yeah. There's nothing that's Yeah. I mean that's more or less it. I I am right. I'm destined for failure. Yeah.

4:31 Okay. I want to tell you that's false. So I'm going to say this as boldly as I can. Your feelings in this situation are incorrect. They're giving you poor signals. And so until you decide to do some to feel what you're feeling and then go do the next right thing, you're going to stay on this loop cuz I think you have a pretty freaking amazing daughter. Fair.

4:58 Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And if you sat on her bed next to her and said, "Well, I found this out in my 30s. I've got this thing and you've got this thing just like we have the same color hair or we have the same long toes or whatever and we're going to have different challenges than other people and it's going to make us incredibly compassionate and the world will desperately need us in a world taken over by robots. It's going to need folks like me and you that feels things really big. But you can't tell her that until you come to terms and begin to believe that yourself,

5:41 right? And I I you know, she's only 10 and um you know, she's getting into that age where now looks are going to be important to her and I I know this sounds crazy, but I I again you you couldn't if I came up to you, you wouldn't you know you wouldn't know me from Adam as far as this condition. But it does have the possibility to man itself manifest itself with pretty, you know, pretty significant like disfigurement. Yeah.

6:09 I I know I know I know I know. But listen listen to me. You got to hear me, brother. You are casting a shadow over your daughter that's not fair. And you're casting a shadow over yourself that's not fair. I can't stop you from doing it, but I want to tell you that the shadow doesn't have to exist in the way you're casting it on everything because I remember one of my first counseling sessions when I decided I'm going to work I'm going to go right through the middle of this. I can't keep checking the locks 500 times and I can't keep having these negative thoughts that spin and spin and spin and spin. the obsessive parts and the compulsive parts.

6:59 And I remember a therapist telling me, "You're right, John. It might. And also, it might not." And that was one of the truest things anyone ever told me. And so, if you're going to spend a bunch of energy on it might all go bad, to be a person of integrity, you have to own it also might not. And you've been through hard stuff in your life. Fair.

7:28 Sure. Okay. And you're here on the phone with me. Are you married? Yeah. You found someone that's going to ride or die with you till the end of time. And what that tells me is you've been through hard stuff and you have overcome.

7:44 And so why in the world would you take that from your daughter? I I I I want to No, I I I I haven't even I haven't even

7:55 Talk to Talking to the phone, man. Talking to the phone. I I haven't even disclosed any of this.

7:59 I know. I know. But let me promise you with all of my guts, she feels it. Yeah.

8:07 She feels that you don't feel like she's enough or that you did something to her. She feels it. and she's either gonna back away from that electric fence or she's gonna spend her whole life trying to solve it. And neither of those things are her job. She's 10, man.

8:26 No, I I Well, again, I know this sounds crazy. I I feel that she's going to she's going to blame me later in life to say why.

8:39 That's your voice. That's your voice. You think she's going to be 25 and going into surgery and say, "Dad, I wish I was never born.

8:51 Look what you did to me." Well, yes. And that thought crosses my head, but I think

8:57 it probably will not happen. What I'm trying to tell you here is every parent I've ever sat with who has a kid with special needs deals with some sort of existential guilt. And that's real and it's good. It's right and it's okay. That's normal. But you have a layer beneath that which is you struggle with anxiety and you've already wiped out the fact that you live in a tiny little sliver of history where they have some amazing lifealtering medications both temporarily. Mine was temporary. I took it for about a year or two. And what that let me do was turn the alarms down so I could go do the things that I needed to do to teach my body that I'm okay. I'm safe.

9:51 And if you have a tumor on your adrenal gland, you may always be spun up a little bit. And that's okay. But you're going to need to learn, I feel this thing. Great. I feel it. I'm going to metabolize that feeling. And then I'm going to go do the next right thing. Yeah.

10:11 But if you really want to be in service to loving this 10-year-old little magical girl, well, you have to look in the mirror and say, "I'm worth being on the other side of OCD and on the other side of anxiety." And by the way, there are certain things I've just made peace with. Now I check my phone when I check the locks. I don't care. I'm not going to fight that. But also the compulsive I mean the obsessive thoughts are almost all gone. And I'm not telling you that cuz I'm tough and strong. It was years of work. But man, there's peace on the other side of this that you have never known.

10:54 That's that's what I strive for. I I wish. But you you're not you're not, brother. You are just sitting around thinking about ways that you could be more peaceful instead of going to do things. Striving for peace would be sitting down with a therapist and saying, "I'm willing to follow an exposure plan that's going to help me be less anxious. I am willing to go sit down with somebody and if they say I'm I'm going to put you on a lowd dose something for a season and see how your body responds to it that you can say I don't feel like taking drugs brother. I sat at my kitchen table and wept cuz I thought I failed my family.

11:40 Yeah, I was holding the prescription bag. I get it. And now I don't take anything other than supplements.

11:56 Right. I mean, you you summed it up there though. You said that that that Yes. I mean, essentially you you describe feeling like a failure and

12:05 Yes. And that is a lie, dude. It's not true. Yeah. And so if no one's ever told you, "Brother, hear me say, "I love you." And you're worth more peace than you have right now. And peace will not come from intellectually ruminating over things for the rest of your life. It will come from taking the next right actions.

12:32 Yeah. So, here's what we're going to do. Um, I could walk you through all of this and we could spend the next two weeks meeting every day and I give you a bunch of strategies and stuff. We don't have time for that on the show. I'm going to do a couple of things for you. Okay.

12:44 All right. I'm going to send you two copies of Building a Non- Anxious Life. It's the number one bestselling book. It resonated throughout the world. Okay.

12:52 It's a different path towards healing an anxious body and I'm going to send you two copies. I want you to read one and I want your wife to read one. Okay.

13:03 Okay. That's number one. Number two, I want you to make me a commitment that in 2026, you're going to sit down with a counselor and say, "This is the year."

13:11 Yes. Number three, I want you to sit down with your daughter and I want you to be honest with her about, hey, we have pretty special bodies. They have this weird thing. And I don't want you telling her you may you may one day wake up with a big tumor on the side of your face. That's not helpful to a 10-year-old.

13:36 Yeah. But sitting down, I told I I I'll tell you the conversation I had with my daughter. We I sat on her bed and it changed her life when I said, "God gave you and me really humongous feelings. They feel so big. And so you and I have extra work to do in terms of making relationships, being kind to people, knowing when we need to back away and be alone. This is a lifelong struggle. And those big feelings allow us to have a radar for hurting people that will make us a blessing in almost every room we ever walk into.

14:20 And I wouldn't trade my personal big feelings for anything because that means the universe chose me to be one of the guys that gets to sit with hurting people. And I looked at my daughter and said, "You got chosen, too."

14:32 Yeah. And dude, she grew about two feet when we had that conversation. So hang on the line. I'm going to hook you up. But I want your commitment that you are going to take a step towards you this year. Tension is the doorway. I want you to walk through the hard stuff this year. sit down in front of another person or two and say, "All right, here we go. I'm gonna dump all of this box out on the table and we're going to work through it. This is your year, homie. We're going to solve for peace. If you want to build a better marriage, but you don't know where to start, I want you to try my new app called Together. You'll get daily action steps to help you have a fun, connected, onfire relationship. It's just six bucks a month and your marriage is worth it.

15:21 Click the link in the show notes or search together in the app store.

Questions about this episode

What is "My Daughter Has a Genetic Mutation (It’s My Fault)" about?

The discussion centers on a parent grappling with guilt after unknowingly passing a genetic mutation, neurofibromatosis, to their daughter. This condition, which leads to tumor growth across the body, was discovered in the parent only after exhibiting symptoms in adulthood, prompting concerns about the daughter's health and the emotional burden of genetic responsibility.

What is mentioned in this The Dr. John Delony Show episode?

3 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including neurofibromatosis, Building a Non-Anxious Life. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "My Daughter Has a Genetic Mutation (It’s My Fault)"?

The episode runs 15 min; the transcript is about 2,532 words in 45 timestamped sections.

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