Transcript

My Job Gives Me Nightmares

From The Dr. John Delony Show · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 20 min · 3,459 words · 55 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "My Job Gives Me Nightmares", an episode of The Dr. John Delony Show published December 16, 2025 (20 min, about 3,459 words). It mentions 8 people, works and ideas, including Nightmares, Victim services unit, Memphis, The Body Keeps the Score, Binaural beats.

What this episode is about

The content explores the intense psychological toll experienced by a death investigator at a medical examiner's office, delving into the recurring nightmares and daytime anxiety related to their job. The discussion highlights the emotional challenges that arise from consistently encountering death and the difficulties in coping with these experiences, particularly as their workload increases.

Key takeaways

  • Dream job turned nightmare: Investigating death by day, haunted by it at night.
  • Dark humor: The last defense in a job where you photograph death scenes and children's tragedies.
  • Your mind might shield you from trauma at work but gives nightmares as its brutal reminder.
  • From dream to reality: The job you love can sometimes fulfill and fault your sanity.
  • The body keeps the score: Even dream jobs demand a toll from the spirit and psyche.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Memphis, Nightmares, Victim services unit
  2. – 10:00: Nightmares, The Body Keeps the Score
  3. – 15:00: Nightmares
  4. – 20:00: Nightmares, Binaural beats

Notable quotes from "My Job Gives Me Nightmares"

  • I'm just having a lot of death related nightmares pretty much every night and it's kind of progressed to during the day death related anxiety and basically like thinking that I'm about to die during the day and my previous.
    about Nightmares · at
  • This, like the here's what you do next and the crisis counselors, right? The victim services unit, which I was a part of, we'll show up and sit with you and then the white van shows up.
    about Victim services unit · at
  • Vanderolk the body keeps the score and I'm with you. I don't know why if I go buy a house when I sit down and I'm signing the paperwork to buy a house I am in full fight or flight total panic.
    about The Body Keeps the Score · at
  • Most people listen to podcasts on planes. You know what I listen to? binaural beats because I have a meditation practice because I don't like flying.
    about Binaural beats · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • Memphis — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Do you all have a white van in Memphis, Sarah?

Full transcript with timestamps

I'm just having a lot of death related nightmares pretty much every night and it's kind of progressed to during the day death related anxiety and basically like thinking that I'm about to die

uh during the day and uh my previous coping mechanisms that I used last time uh that this happened were no longer an option for me. So, I'm calling to get your insight on how I might be able to work through it, especially as my work case load increases because it is definitely because of my job that I have wow any of these issues.

What's your job? I'm a death investigator for the medical examiner's office. Oh, you're you work at the the Emy's office. Very cool.

Yes. The medical examiner. Sorry. Um Gez. Yeah. So, there's that. Yeah, I will I will tell you, Sarah, um having shown up I can't count how many homes I showed up to where people had passed away or died. Um natural causes, self-inflicted violence, whatever, car wrecks, whatever. The job I never understood how people could do was the Emmy.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like it makes it compounded and it's probably going to sound morbid to say, but this is actually my dream job that I worked for.

Absolutely. For my whole life. Totally. That also adds to it. Yeah. So, for people who don't know, here's how this works. Let's say um somebody calls 911 and they walked home and their 80-year-old husband has just had a um a cardiac event. they've had a heart attack and they've died in their home or they got home or they got a call from a roommate that a 22year-old has died by suicide or you get a call from a screaming mother that her four-year-old is choking and has just passed away. Like the whole gamut, right? The police show up. Hopefully, if you're in a well-resourced community, folks like me would show up, like those who are here to help with the psychosocial part of this, like the here's what you do next and the the the crisis counselors, right? The the victim services unit, which I was a part of, we'll show up and sit with you and then the white van shows up.

Do you all have a white van in Memphis, Sarah? Yes. Okay. [clears throat and laughter] So, the white van shows up and here's what the white van does. The white van has usually two people in it and their job is to get the actual body out of the house after all the photographs are taken,

after all of the investigation part is done. And by the way, police show up at these scenes, no matter what it is, and they work it homicide back, right? Yeah. And so, they want to make sure there's no foul play. They work it back. Sometimes it's really easy to tell and sometimes it's a little more complicated. But you, Sarah, and your team show up in the middle of the night, 2:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m., Christmas Day, whenever, and y'all get the body out of the house and into the van and down to the morg or to a holding place, right?

Yeah. Uggh. Yeah. And for my job, it's I'm not simply just removal. I'm the one who takes the pictures. I'm the one who interviews the witnesses about what happened. I'm the one who writes the report. If there's a video of the death happening, I have to watch the video and write it down for the doctor to read.

So, yeah, I'm intimately involved. They call us like last responders because we're the last ones to show up.

That's right. And can I um if you are particularly sensitive and you're listening to this um just hit the little the little 15 or 30 second pass button while on this and I'm going to ask you this Sarah directly. Um you've got experiences where you're taking photographs of really graphic images, right?

Yes. You've got you've had to photograph children right? Yes. You've had to photograph really gristly scenes right?

Yes. And those will burn a hole in your spirit right? Honestly, that's the part about this that confuses me because it it doesn't bother me in the moment. That's what makes me feel bad. No,

I think that makes me good at my job, but it doesn't it doesn't bother me in the moment and I I it is my dream to help

figure out what happened to these people and write the last chapter of their story, but even though it doesn't bother me in the moment and I don't struggle to do my job, I guess when I come home,

Yes. my brain holds on to the things I see and then I dream about them at night.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So here here the the title of the book says everything by Dr. Vanderolk the body keeps the score and I'm with you. I don't know why if I go buy a house when I sit down and I'm signing the paperwork to buy a house I am in full fight or flight total panic mode. I come up with every scenario about how I'm gonna not be able to pay off this house and my kids are going to be starving in the street. I go bananas. But if I walk into a house and there's four people who have just been shot and killed, like I can do that just fine.

Some of the and this is awful to say, some of the hardest laughing I've ever done in my life to the point that I had to go outside cuz I was laughing so I was going to throw up was in those homes. And it makes you feel insane, right?

Yeah. Because you have to have a really dark black hole sense of humor to get through those situations. Or some people get really stoic and really clinical, right?

Yeah. And how how you have to have defense mechanisms and that's what makes you really awesome at your job. That's what made me good at my job. And our bodies keep the score. And I don't know about you, but I've gone to some crazy grotesque violent situations. Just out of body experience situations. And it's all good. Fine. talking, laughing with the cops, helping move bodies, taking pictures, cleaning up scenes, and it's when I get home and I lay in bed that my heart starts racing.

Yeah. Or I crash dead asleep and it's when you wake up and you're like, there's no way that just happened. Right.

And for you, it's nightmares. Yeah, pretty much. Very vivid ones. I have a vivid imagination.

Correct. That's right. That's right. All right. So here I'm going to give you a couple of things to do and I want to tell you at the outset, okay? I want more people like you being willing to do this kind of job. The way you just said that was so poetic and beautiful. I want to be the person who will write an honorable last chapter for a person. What an amazing heart you have.

Oh, thank you. And my fear for somebody like you is that sense of I'm going to find beauty in the ugliest. If you're not careful, you will burn out like a flame, right? Like like a flash and you'll have to go do a dumb desk job and then you'll die slowly inside because you were put on Earth to sit in people's ugly mess, right?

Yeah. And I I work with people who are like past that point. Oh, yeah. and I I see like what I could become and I just don't want to end up

like losing my soul to this job, but I also love this job. Okay, awesome. All right, so here's one thing that I want you here the the big picture is you have to have an unflinch don't care how tired you are. I don't care how awful the scene you just came from or honestly how benign the scene just came from, right? Because you've also shown up to houses, the person was 65. They were 300 lb overweight. It It's like a natural cause and effect here, right?

Yeah. [snorts] You've been to those? Yeah, those happen all the time. Yeah. And I want you to honor those the same as when you're photographing the kid who just died from SIDS, who's two, and the mom is screaming in the next room. Both of them. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I always try to do that. I want you to have a unflinchable, unshakable routine or practice for what happens after you hit send on that final report. This is a thing I do every time because here's what's h will happen. Your body will will attenuate to we can cycle this trauma through because I don't care how good you are at showing up to your job. And by the way, this happens for surgeons. This happens for preachers. This happens for attorneys. This happens for nurses. Anybody who works in the messy pain therapist of other people.

Okay? You have to have a process that you do every single time. Every time. And it's annoying, but it's a part of the job. It's an essential part of the job. Okay.

Here's what that might look like for you. This has been a great help to me is writing. It can be 10 sentences. It can be three pages writing a letter to the person who just died

and it it can be on a yellow. I would recommend it not be typed out. I'd recommend you handwrite it. And there's a whole bunch of research about why that's important. But I want to connect your physiology, your body, to the processing of this thing. Because you're good at shutting off the your mind, right? You're good at burying emotions, but bringing those emotions back through your body through just a simple act of writing. Dear Susan, I just finished writing the last chapter of your life. It was such an honor that I got to be a part of the last bit of your story.

Here's what I want you to know. I saw six people tattooed up bald-headed dudes crying in your living room, which tells me you were a person people they could count on. Dear Timmy, two-year-old, I was just a part of your last chapter. And I made sure your mom had somebody to hug. She's going to miss you so much. Okay.

Okay. I could do that. I know. I know. It's going to be just you hearing that is hard, right? Because here's what you're doing.

You are consciously letting your body feel this thing and use its own innate processes to metabolize what you just experienced.

Okay. Okay. You can keep these in a secret folder that's only yours. And by the way, I think legally speaking, I would write at the top of that folder private notes. So that way they're not subpoena subable or anything like that. But I would write them by hand. So not in a computer anywhere. And this is you processing. I used to set mine in a fire, but I was always having fires in my house. Like I always I had a fireplace was awesome. And so I would always put them in there. That was part of my little ritual. But I'd let them go.

Okay. Okay. Here's the second part. You have to have a yoga practice, a walking practice, an exercise practice of some sort. And when you go when you go on this, I want you to be very intentional about the following. I see the trees. That tree has 17 branches low. I'm counting cracks on the sidewalk. Look at that sunset and the colors are orange and red and pink and purple and or it is pitch black outside. I'm going to count street lights. And what you're doing when you do that is you're bringing your body back from what it's starting to spin out and plan for your future death and reverse engineer it to. I'm okay right here, right now.

This is done best with skin-to-skin contact. If Are you married? Yes. Okay. If you just got up in the morning, cuz also, how about this? Have you ever gone to do a thing at 2 am? You come home at 4:30 and you get back in bed for 45 minutes and then your husband gets up and he's like, "What's up?" And you're like,

"Yeah, that happens every day." Exactly. Mine, too. I used to I used to be having coffee. And my wife would be like, "Hey, can you get so and so?" And I would look up at her and be like I would never say anything. You have no idea what I just did last night. None. In fact, I would get home and get back in bed and my wife hadn't even moved.

Yep. Okay. So, here's the thing. You probably learned like I did. I can't just use my my wife. You can't use your husband as a trash bin to dump all of this on.

Yeah. I don't want to do that. But if you keep secrets, you're going to put a huge wedge in your marriage. I did that and it almost cost me my marriage because I realized I created a whole life that my wife wasn't a part of, which meant my need for connection began to not involve her. And I did that. It started out as a way to protect her, but saying, "Hey, I was out last night. I need you to take a 10-minute walk with me, and we're going to hold hands, and we're going to point out five beautiful things on the walk."

Okay. Okay. And here's the third thing. when you wake up in the morning or right before you go to bed in the morning. There's research on nightmares where right when you wake up after a nightmare, you have a small journal by your bed and you write six or seven sentences, but you take that nightmare and you end it well. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to honor my body. Your body's just trying to get your attention. and you're at the early stages, if you're not there already, of a pretty anxious life, I want you to honor that anxiousness by going directly through it on a plane.

Sometimes that's breathing exercises. Most people listen to podcasts on planes. You know what I listen to? um binaural beats because I have a meditation practice because I don't like flying. Occasionally I'll watch John Wick or whatever on the on a movie like right that's fine but like most of the time I'm pretty spun up and I have big headphones on that signal to the world don't talk to me and I exhale and breathe through it and it usually takes me about three minutes now because I do it all the time and I'm through it now.

I let my body know we're okay right now. Here and I chose to get on this plane. If it goes down, there's nothing I can do about it.

Yeah. That's the bargain I made. And it's probably not going to go down. But you can only critically think like that when your body is not spinning out in fight or flight. When your body's not trying to get your attention about a threat right now and it's having a process. It is honoring those people. Not only you honoring them, but think of writing them a letter as a way of them honoring you. It's them saying, "Thank you for being there for the last chapter of my life."

I don't know why, but that makes me feel uncomfortable. It does because because you have worked really hard to divorce your emotions from the person in front of you. And when you're on scene, you have to do that. A surgeon cannot be thinking while they're cutting. This is a four-year-old little boy. They can't. They have to think trachea, trachea, trachea, heart. That's the only way they can get through it.

Yeah. And then the surgeon needs to exhale. If the kid makes it and say, write themsel a quick note. Dear Tom, it was an honor that I got to work on you today. I've given you a new lease on life. My hope is you use that new lease on life. Or Timmy, I did my absolute best today and you didn't make it. I'm going to live my life 5% more adventurous because I got another life to live now. And that's yours, too. And I want you to know I hugged your mom and I held your dad while you wept. If you don't break that wall, your body will break it for you.

Okay? [clears throat] Or you'll be like some you'll be like some of your Emmy colleagues

who are way overweight who are completely burned out. They have no emotion for themselves, their kids, their spouses life. And you know those guys who get three double cheeseburgers on the way to a scene and they stop at Taco Bell on the way home and they watch Netflix till they pass out.

Yeah. And that's not the life I want. I I want you. Can I be honest? I want you to be the person that shows up when I die

cuz I can I can tell by your heart and spirit you will honor my wife and my kids.

Oh yeah. I always try to do that. And I can tell by your spirit you're going to make sure that if I was doing something stupid nobody knows about it. I'm just kidding. I know you got to write down the whole report.

Well, I got to write it down. I got I know you got to write it down. Right. I'll be tactful about it.

There you go. There you go. There you go. But your body is keeping track of all of this whether you consciously are or not. And I want to say thank God that your body loves you enough to try to keep you safe too.

It's true. And when you bust open in the middle of the night, and this is for anybody suffering from nightmares. If you bust awake in the middle of the night, [snorts] I was falling or I was about to drown. I'm going to finish that story right there. And then the guy from EMS showed up, unhooked my husband or he unhooked me. I reached over and unhooked my husband. My husband grabbed me and we swam to to surface [gasps] and we got big gulps of air and we smiled cuz we made it. Thank you body and mind and spirit for trying to keep me safe. I'm good now.

And I'm going to put my foot under the covers and I'm going to touch my husband's foot. Skin-to-skin contact. I'm gonna go right back to sleep. And the research tells me that nightmares begin to slowly dissipate. They don't go away forever, but they slowly lose their power over you because your body knows, "Oh, she's in control." You are a You are a modernday saint, Sarah. People who walk into messy to bring light and to find beauty. My God, we need more of you in the world. I'm grateful for you. My prayer for you is you do the things to take care of you and your marriage so that you can do this long term because we need people like you. Thank you so so much for the call and thank you for the work you're doing.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "My Job Gives Me Nightmares"?

John Delony (Host), Sarah (Guest).

What is "My Job Gives Me Nightmares" about?

The content explores the intense psychological toll experienced by a death investigator at a medical examiner's office, delving into the recurring nightmares and daytime anxiety related to their job. The discussion highlights the emotional challenges that arise from consistently encountering death and the difficulties in coping with these experiences, particularly as their workload increases.

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

8 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Nightmares, Victim services unit, Memphis, The Body Keeps the Score, Binaural beats, EMS. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "My Job Gives Me Nightmares"?

The episode runs 20 min; the transcript is about 3,459 words in 55 timestamped sections.

More from The Dr. John Delony Show

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated December 19, 2025.