Speaker 1: Everybody is bill courted with an army and normal folks.
Speaker 1: And we continue now a part two of our conversation
Speaker 1: with Dan Jarvis. Right after these brief messages from our
Speaker 1: general sponsors. That's heartbreaking to me.
Speaker 2: Well, I was in a position where I didn't know
Speaker 2: what to do, Like do I self refer.
Speaker 3: To mental health? I mean you're drinking. I'm drinking just
Speaker 3: to calmin just so I can.
Speaker 1: Sleep, which explains alcoholism and a number of vents. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're self medicating.
Speaker 2: When they go in the Olympic hijack. The nervous system
Speaker 2: is pegged. So think of an engine and a thousand
Speaker 2: RPMs at idols and then you hit the gas pedal
Speaker 2: and you're up to seventy five hundred RPMs.
Speaker 1: An engine can't last long there.
Speaker 3: And people are the same way.
Speaker 2: So that engine in the brain opens up the entire
Speaker 2: nervous system and it's just you go through these cycles
Speaker 2: up and usually it's like ninety second waves and it
Speaker 2: just keeps going and keeps going.
Speaker 1: But those not How often do you feel that in
Speaker 1: a day?
Speaker 3: It depends depends on the intensity.
Speaker 2: If you can keep your brain occupied, you know you
Speaker 2: can do okay.
Speaker 1: It almost sounds like a guy getting off the meth.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds weird, No, but seriously, I've interviewed
Speaker 1: and I have a friend. Actually, I was talking with
Speaker 1: that friend this weekend and asked him how he's doing
Speaker 1: with his demon and he's been cleaned for three years,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I still think about us some. And
Speaker 1: he said, but you know what, as long as I
Speaker 1: stay working or as long as I stay busy, I
Speaker 1: never feel it. It's when I get downtime or boredom
Speaker 1: it comes back. And I am in no way comparing
Speaker 1: our veterans to folks that have a drug add what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is I kind of get what they're saying about.
Speaker 1: As long as they keep their brain active, they don't
Speaker 1: go through one of those triggering things. And I guess
Speaker 1: if your brain is hijacked, as long as you're staying busy, working,
Speaker 1: or maybe still active in the military and theater, it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen as much. It's when you don't keep your
Speaker 1: mind occupied that the hijacking takes over.
Speaker 3: And is it right, No, it's your one hundred percent
Speaker 3: on target.
Speaker 2: So like a lot of us, when we come back
Speaker 2: from combat theater, we have a hard adjustment because the
Speaker 2: brain is hardwired for the fight or flight, So like.
Speaker 1: Has become hardwired's as a result of the environment and
Speaker 1: the experience constantly.
Speaker 2: See what ends up happening is when your brain is
Speaker 2: in survival mode because every day you're in combat and
Speaker 2: combat actions are happening, troop tics, troops in contact, are
Speaker 2: going on id's are going off indirect fires, and in
Speaker 2: your brain is in a heightened fight or flight response.
Speaker 2: And I'll give you a prime example of it at
Speaker 2: all times, at all times. So they say that one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of the guys when they come back for
Speaker 2: more would be diagnosable PTSD right because they're still in
Speaker 2: the fight or flight. And then over time the brain
Speaker 2: reprocesses things out. But here's the way that that part
Speaker 2: of the brain is supposed to work. And I'll give
Speaker 2: you the first time we took contact in Afghanistan. We're
Speaker 2: having a leadership meeting in our plateen leader and platoon
Speaker 2: sergeant's area and I heard this in the distance and
Speaker 2: I looked at everybody and I said, we're about to
Speaker 2: take contact. And they're all looking at me like what
Speaker 2: I said, We're about to take contact. And then about
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen seconds later, rounds blew up about twenty
Speaker 2: meters from we were. We took our first casualties, and
Speaker 2: then afterwards those guys were, how did you How did
Speaker 2: you know that was going to happen? I said, because
Speaker 2: the hair on the back of my neck stood up
Speaker 2: when I heard the thumb.
Speaker 1: Because it's the thumb the munition leaving whatever tube it's in.
Speaker 3: It's the pooh, the point of origin.
Speaker 2: So and the way I say that is because in
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, when I'm in Iraq, I'm a
Speaker 2: sergeant of the Guard. We're getting relieved by the top
Speaker 2: mountain guys, and I heard a thump in the distance
Speaker 2: and I went on the radio, said anybody hear that?
Speaker 3: And yeah, it came from the south.
Speaker 2: And then about fifteen seconds later, one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: two millimeter or chillier round detonated on top of the
Speaker 2: Hesco barrier, which was only about fifteen feet from me.
Speaker 2: And basically that was one of my first big concussions.
Speaker 2: So that thump in seven activated the nervous system in
Speaker 2: twenty eleven. Wow, that's what the brain is supposed to do.
Speaker 2: It's like the alarm went off right that's the context
Speaker 2: that alarm is supposed to go off, not when we're
Speaker 2: back home and we hear the fireworks on the fourth
Speaker 2: of July. We hear the fireworks on the fourth of July,
Speaker 2: that alarm goes off, and that's what triggers a lot
Speaker 2: of your vets.
Speaker 1: It's funny because if you go down like in Memphis,
Speaker 1: we have our big Fourth of July thing on the river.
Speaker 1: But I'm not talking about yard Fourth of July. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the big firework show. If you pay attention
Speaker 1: before the big explosion the sky, you we're here that
Speaker 1: they're shooting those things up in the air, and that's
Speaker 1: exactly what stops that's it was that. But if you're
Speaker 1: at the river and you hear that thump, you're immediately
Speaker 1: going to go.
Speaker 2: To If you're a VET with PTSD, you're immediately going
Speaker 2: to go back to Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria or
Speaker 2: wherever you heard of that the first time, and then
Speaker 2: the nervous system will open back up. Now a lot
Speaker 2: of us are just like, Okay, we're safe, we know that.
Speaker 2: But in the moment a person that's struggling with PTS,
Speaker 2: their brain doesn't tell them hey, this is not They
Speaker 2: think it's real and they think it's happening, and then
Speaker 2: their nervous system reacts. That's what they call like the
Speaker 2: flashback moment, where all of a sudden, you're diving for
Speaker 2: cover because you hear that thump and you think indirect
Speaker 2: fires coming in and then you realize, oh, I'm here, I'm.
Speaker 3: Safe, right, but your nervous system is still going.
Speaker 1: So you got that going on. Your brain's hijacked. You're
Speaker 1: filling all kinds of guilt. Yeah, first, thank god you didn't.
Speaker 1: What happened is your thinking about lights out.
Speaker 2: So I think what it came down to was, I'm like,
Speaker 2: do I do I ask for help? This is myself
Speaker 2: talk before do I ask for help? Or I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: if my commander finds out, they're going to put me
Speaker 2: in the barracks, they're going to take my guns away.
Speaker 2: My men aren't going to respect me. That's the language
Speaker 2: that's going on. And I'm like, well, do I do
Speaker 2: I call EAP what's like an employee assistance program outside
Speaker 2: of the military, And I'm like, no, they're still going
Speaker 2: to let the commanders are still going to find out
Speaker 2: that I'm getting treatment. So that's why suicide became the
Speaker 2: better option, right, and this ridiculous.
Speaker 3: It should not be that way, and so.
Speaker 1: You would rather kill yourself than lose face and standing
Speaker 1: with your unit and your commander.
Speaker 3: Man, But that's the problem with a lot of us.
Speaker 1: Is that biggest stigma over it in the military, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is. That's a real thing.
Speaker 2: I think they're starting to be a little bit more
Speaker 2: open minded to it because if you really go into
Speaker 2: the numbers of suicides of active duty forces, the highest
Speaker 2: numbers is in the special operations community. So it's obviously
Speaker 2: got nothing to do with psychological weakness. But that's that's
Speaker 2: the dialogue that we tell ourselves, because.
Speaker 1: You don't get into special forces unless you're a high
Speaker 1: speed anyway, right.
Speaker 2: And you're and they're evaluated from a psychological perspective before
Speaker 2: they even get there, right, And so if they're having
Speaker 2: that problem, you know what's what? It's not a weakness thing, right,
Speaker 2: but we all look at it as it's a weakness.
Speaker 2: At least that was a dialogue that I because I
Speaker 2: would make fun of those guys beforehand.
Speaker 1: And you're one of.
Speaker 2: Them, and now all of a sudden, I'm wait a minute,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm I'm sure I was a drill sergeant between
Speaker 2: two combat tours. I had already been a police officer.
Speaker 2: Why am I having these problems? I'm tougher than this.
Speaker 2: And thank god it was the kids in the apartment
Speaker 2: above me that ran across my sailing when I was
Speaker 2: at the moment, and I'm like, Okay, that's a horrible
Speaker 2: idea because that that rifle round will go right through
Speaker 2: that floor. I didn't want to hurt a kid. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm literally playing this out of my mind. I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: that was stupid. So I passed out. Want to sleep
Speaker 2: that same night? Yeah, I passed because I'm self medicating. Right,
Speaker 2: That's how I would sleep if I didn't. If I
Speaker 2: didn't drink, I wasn't sleeping. And does the drinking turn
Speaker 2: off the highjacking? Yes, it numbs it.
Speaker 3: Well, the it's a central nervous system depressant.
Speaker 1: That well, that makes complete sense.
Speaker 2: Alcohol is when the anxiety goes up, when the PTS,
Speaker 2: which is PTS is the highest warm anxiety. When it
Speaker 2: goes up, alcohol will quiet it back down. It'll just
Speaker 2: it'll numb it out. You won't feel it for a while, right,
Speaker 2: And that's a sense of normal It becomes a sense
Speaker 2: of normalcy. But the problem is you end up being
Speaker 2: being depressed because you're not processing, because.
Speaker 1: It's alcohol, and because it's it's a depressant.
Speaker 3: It's a depressant, so.
Speaker 1: Which exacerbates it. Actually, once you sober up, yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes it because then a spiral. Yeah, it's a horrible spiral.
Speaker 1: And that's part of the problem is trying to identify that. Right.
Speaker 2: So the next morning after that, with the kids above
Speaker 2: me in the apartment, I get my phone rings probably
Speaker 2: eight o'clock, I think it was a Saturday morning, and
Speaker 2: Ryan was one of my soldiers.
Speaker 3: He goes, hey, sarm Jarvis, did you hear about Corey?
Speaker 2: Right, that's a word when everybody, if you're in the military,
Speaker 2: somebody says that they're either dead.
Speaker 3: Or engine Did you hear about did you hear everything
Speaker 3: behind that?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, nobody, what happened? So Corey shot and
Speaker 2: killed himself last night. So Corey was a twenty I
Speaker 2: think it was twenty one or twenty two year old
Speaker 2: soldier from the platoon I had just come from. So
Speaker 2: I went from a line unit, you know, Proble Company,
Speaker 2: one of the platoons up to headquarters because I got
Speaker 2: put on a desk, which was what's That's what caused
Speaker 2: me to spiral, because I had time to now you're out.
Speaker 2: Now I'm out of the action, and I'm behind a
Speaker 2: desk and I'm thinking. And Corey just he killed himself
Speaker 2: the same night that I was and serena, Wow. So
Speaker 2: I couldn't imagine, you know, And I do say this,
Speaker 2: Corey saved my life, unfortunately when he took his own
Speaker 2: so doing the memorial service, preparing, you know, to do
Speaker 2: the send off, let guys get closured. When I saw
Speaker 2: how it affected the guys, I realized, Okay, I cannot
Speaker 2: go out this way. I cannot give permission to my
Speaker 2: men to do this. And I just continued to drink
Speaker 2: and so I'll medicate.
Speaker 1: Because because now the fear of letting your men down
Speaker 1: was greater than the other fear.
Speaker 3: The fear was not letting them down, but giving them permission.
Speaker 1: Oh oh oh yeah.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to green light one of those guys.
Speaker 1: To do the same thing, because you knew they were
Speaker 1: all struggling.
Speaker 3: They're all struggling.
Speaker 4: One other thing we didn't name. I think Nils Jargonson
Speaker 4: said this well too. Obviously you want to say face
Speaker 4: of your man and with your commander. But also Nill's
Speaker 4: put it like he dealt with a lot of the
Speaker 4: same things. After nine to eleven he was FDNY, and
Speaker 4: he said, and they actually took it more out of
Speaker 4: the FDNY once he got cancer, so he lost his career,
Speaker 4: and he said, they took away my priesthood. So it's
Speaker 4: like you're taking away everything, like your entire identity if
Speaker 4: they kick you out, or you're losing your position because
Speaker 4: of it too.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got another question to get to, but
Speaker 1: I'm just going to say this. I just have such
Speaker 1: deep empathy for a person who chooses to serve their
Speaker 1: country and on a relationship with brothers in arms and
Speaker 1: risk their lives for one another to end up in
Speaker 1: an apartment drunk, contemplating suicide, because that's the work.
Speaker 3: It's a story.
Speaker 1: It's horrible.
Speaker 3: It's a story you hear regularly.
Speaker 1: And that's the problem is your story is I mean,
Speaker 1: it feels very personal sitting across from you hearing it.
Speaker 1: But the very truth then it is not uncommon. It's
Speaker 1: very common, you know, which leads me to what are
Speaker 1: the numbers twenty two and zero mean.
Speaker 2: So twenty two was originally the accepted numbers of suicides
Speaker 2: per day by vets.
Speaker 1: Per day, per day, and we're losing more veterans for suicide.
Speaker 1: I did the mad when I read that. I looked
Speaker 1: it up. That's more than we lost in theater per day.
Speaker 3: Totally.
Speaker 1: We're losing more men at home than we did fighting
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan in Iraq.
Speaker 3: That's nuts.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a system that we have, right, So the
Speaker 2: VA came back and they tried to revamp those numbers
Speaker 2: of that. I think they claim its seventeen and a half. Oh, well,
Speaker 2: that's so much better, so much better, right, because they
Speaker 2: forgot to add Texas and California in those numbers, which
Speaker 2: the two big right.
Speaker 3: Which I'm pretty sure it would go the other direction.
Speaker 1: But what does zero mean?
Speaker 3: The goal is to not have any suicides.
Speaker 2: The goal is zero, you know, because even in the
Speaker 2: first responder world, we lose more cops to suicide than
Speaker 2: line of duty deaths. Same thing with firefighters, all right,
Speaker 2: And it's just trauma, right, not knowing how to handle
Speaker 2: the nervous system.
Speaker 1: It's that whole amigula being hotjick, right.
Speaker 2: If think about it this way and the way I
Speaker 2: explained it to people. Have you ever felt like you
Speaker 2: were so scared that you thought you were going to die?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Almost ground once, And yes, I do know that
Speaker 1: they legitimately.
Speaker 3: That legitimate feeling.
Speaker 2: Now imagine it's every day, every hour, every minute. That's
Speaker 2: the problem is the nervous system gets so overstimulated and
Speaker 2: it dumps chemicals into your bloodstream, your cortisol, your adrenaline.
Speaker 2: You guys are ending up with a drenal fatigue. They're
Speaker 2: just exhausted. They can't rest, they can't recover. It's a
Speaker 2: lot of them numb things out. So when you numb
Speaker 2: things out, you can't even feel the good feelings, and
Speaker 2: that becomes your normal, and that becomes what these men
Speaker 2: and women don't want to deal with.
Speaker 1: I actually have had the drowning thing happened about ten
Speaker 1: years ago, but I actually have had not too long ago, recently.
Speaker 1: It's so weird that you asked that question to me,
Speaker 1: because I have had I've woken up with a sense
Speaker 1: of dread because I dreamed. I had a dream, a
Speaker 1: recollection dream. I don't know what the words are of
Speaker 1: that moment, and it's scary and I'm just thinking about
Speaker 1: that one little time. I wouldn't be an attack to
Speaker 1: think of that going on.
Speaker 3: But it's still a life or death moment, but it is.
Speaker 1: But you're saying that's happening petually, perpetually, every hour, every day, every.
Speaker 3: Hour, every day. It depends, I'm on how intense the
Speaker 3: symptoms are.
Speaker 2: It's some people every hour every day, once a week,
Speaker 2: some people it's three times a week.
Speaker 3: Some people it's every single day.
Speaker 2: So when you get to that point where your stress
Speaker 2: loads and your nervous system is just going and it's
Speaker 2: firing and it's firing and all those chemicals, you know,
Speaker 2: I use a metaphor of a box of crayons, right,
Speaker 2: I tell my marines, this has got nothing to do
Speaker 2: with you guys. For as a marine out there, I'm
Speaker 2: not talking about you guys. We have an eight pack
Speaker 2: of crayons. We know what our emotions are. We have
Speaker 2: eight of them that we're pretty comfortable with. The ladies
Speaker 2: ore there they got a sixteen pack and we're like,
Speaker 2: what the heck is that emotion that you're doing.
Speaker 1: My wife's got the fifty four pack.
Speaker 3: But then we throw in the sixty four pack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sixty four, which is trauma.
Speaker 3: And we don't understand what future looks like. You don't
Speaker 3: understand what future fusia the color fusia.
Speaker 2: You show those emotions compiled because what happened is your
Speaker 2: body will dump them all in the system at the
Speaker 2: same time, good emotions, bad emotions, and different emotions.
Speaker 3: And it overwhelms the nervous system.
Speaker 2: That's the feeling of overwhelm that you just don't know
Speaker 2: how to process what is this? And it goes in
Speaker 2: those cycles, that waves of ninety seconds, and that ninety
Speaker 2: seconds feels like an eternity because what happens when you
Speaker 2: go into that limbic hijack. Think of your brain requiring resources, right,
Speaker 2: it needs survival mode needs resources. So what's the first
Speaker 2: thing They get shut off? Prefrontal cortex, logic brain, thinking
Speaker 2: brain gets shut down. That's also where our empathy centers are.
Speaker 2: So you're losing empathy. So you lose the empathy for
Speaker 2: anybody in your world, right, not intentionally, it's just that
Speaker 2: part of the brain turns off. So when you get
Speaker 2: into that emotional overwhelm, you lose empathy, you lose the logic,
Speaker 2: you lose decision making, you lose impulse control, because that's
Speaker 2: also prefrontal cortex, and that's when guys do it right,
Speaker 2: not realizing because they're out of the frontal part of
Speaker 2: the brain.
Speaker 3: They're in the back of the brain.
Speaker 1: Can then also manifest itself instead of in suicide, can
Speaker 1: it manifest itself in screamate a spouse or children, or
Speaker 1: even getting into fights and abuse, all of that same.
Speaker 2: Stuff one hundred percent of the same thing. So when
Speaker 2: a person gets into a triggered state, right, they lose
Speaker 2: that prefrontal cortex, they lose empathy. And I always talk
Speaker 2: to groups of vets and I'll ask him, all right,
Speaker 2: who in this room has said something to the person
Speaker 2: they love and care about the most? And five minutes
Speaker 2: later we're like, oh my god, I can't believe I
Speaker 2: said that. Everybody's hands goes up because they the brain
Speaker 2: resources shut off that front part of the brain, and
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden they're saying something in anger,
Speaker 2: not realizing because they can't connect to that person.
Speaker 1: And you're saying scientifically, at that moment, they literally cannot control.
Speaker 2: It correct until that limbic releases, until they come out
Speaker 2: of that and the empathy can start coming back.
Speaker 3: It's what's getting our law enforcement in trouble. Right.
Speaker 1: I was just about to say to cop, is this
Speaker 1: why cops? An otherwise normal, nice guy ends up beating
Speaker 1: that out of somebody for twenty seconds because he's.
Speaker 3: In Olympic hijack.
Speaker 2: The amigdala is taking over and the logic impulse is
Speaker 2: gone and the empathy is gone. You can see law
Speaker 2: enforcement also is getting in trouble all over the place.
Speaker 2: And there's people that go around that's their whole job.
Speaker 2: They want to get cops triggered and let them do.
Speaker 3: Something so they can sue the department. Right, So we
Speaker 3: had a.
Speaker 1: And there's also to be clear, there's also some just
Speaker 1: bad human beings that are cops. But those are very
Speaker 1: very very very very very very very infinitest SMaL percentage.
Speaker 2: What are the ones that I'm talking about? Are the
Speaker 2: ones that lose control that you would never expect.
Speaker 1: That to happen to And it happens.
Speaker 3: It happens, and.
Speaker 2: A career can be over in a second, a life
Speaker 2: can be over in a second. You know, a lot
Speaker 2: of those folks get into those limbic hijacks. There was
Speaker 2: a sergeant down to Sunrise Florida, and there was a
Speaker 2: young black male. He was in custody, hands cut, but
Speaker 2: he was just running his gator, right. He's in the
Speaker 2: back of the patrol car ready, he's not going anywhere.
Speaker 3: Let him run their gators, right.
Speaker 2: And this sergeant arrives on seeing everybody's body cams are out,
Speaker 2: and he goes into the back of the patrol car.
Speaker 3: He's got his pepper spray out.
Speaker 2: And he's mfing this kid, and a female police officer
Speaker 2: reaches to his duty belt because what they trained him
Speaker 2: do to de escalate it pulls him away. So what
Speaker 2: does he do in that moment he's in He's enraged, right,
Speaker 2: He turns to her and puts his hands on her
Speaker 2: throat and starts pushing her back and mfing her. He
Speaker 2: was in the hijack right now, All of a sudden,
Speaker 2: he's a convicted felon because he ended up getting arrested
Speaker 2: in charge with the battery and a law enforcement officer
Speaker 2: because that's what he did, right, all because the LIMPIC
Speaker 2: system overactivated from something that was probably twenty years prior.
Speaker 2: So think of it in the terms of because I
Speaker 2: work law enforcement too, so I'm deeply passionate about trying
Speaker 2: to shift some of the culture and law enforcement because
Speaker 2: I've seen guys.
Speaker 3: Overreact on the job. Right, I've probably overreacted plenty of.
Speaker 2: Times on the job, but a lot of them are
Speaker 2: losing it, and they're losing their careers over it, or
Speaker 2: they're losing.
Speaker 3: Their lives over.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. It's funny you hear the public
Speaker 1: talk about, gosh, these cops and their egos. Why can't
Speaker 1: they just look, I was speeding, fine, give me a ticket.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be such a jerk about it.
Speaker 1: And you know, they have these massive egos. They walk
Speaker 1: around like they own the place, and candidly, if you
Speaker 1: take yourself out of it, you kind of get where
Speaker 1: people are coming from. Because the cop is the one
Speaker 1: person walk around the streets that can actually take the
Speaker 1: one thing that's the most valuable to you, which is
Speaker 1: your liberty, and you would like them to not also
Speaker 1: be so fricking intimidating. But if you walk in the
Speaker 1: shoes of.
Speaker 3: The cop and you listen to what you're saying.
Speaker 2: We outsource trauma to our police and firefighters right a place.
Speaker 1: Interesting say that again.
Speaker 2: We outsource our trauma to police officers and firefighters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you may be the very one I'm talking
Speaker 1: about saying what you're saying, but the minute something goes bad,
Speaker 1: you're calling that one one exactly, you're outsourcing your issues.
Speaker 2: But the trauma that the police officers and the firefighters
Speaker 2: have to endure because they agree to do that and
Speaker 2: our community sends them to do the job.
Speaker 3: Right. So there's a study with one hundred.
Speaker 2: And in a thirty year career, one hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: eight traumatic events may be experienced by a police officer,
Speaker 2: and if you put a civilian side by side, maybe
Speaker 2: two or three in that same timeframe.
Speaker 3: That's one of the reasons why they're dying so young.
Speaker 3: One hundred and eighty eight for a cop.
Speaker 2: Traumatic events personally life or death to the police officer.
Speaker 2: And that's not even at all because not every critical
Speaker 2: incident is traumatic to a police officer.
Speaker 1: Where I may have experienced three over the course of
Speaker 1: my life, if you, as an officer, would experience hundred
Speaker 1: eighty eight, what about an officer that was a vat
Speaker 1: those numbers are.
Speaker 2: Right, If they're a combat vet, they may have had
Speaker 2: close to that many in a single deployment.
Speaker 3: Right. Think about if you.
Speaker 2: Were a marine in a Fallujah, or a marine or
Speaker 2: a soldier you know in Ramadi n O six when
Speaker 2: a lot of those guys didn't know they were going
Speaker 2: to come home or not because it was day in
Speaker 2: and day out. Right, think about your you know World
Speaker 2: War two vets that are still walking around today, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, imagine if you were on Normandy and D Day,
Speaker 2: how long did that go on for?
Speaker 1: And Vietnam?
Speaker 2: How many events did they experience in that So they
Speaker 2: may have an entire career's worth of trauma in that
Speaker 2: short period of time. But even because there's a very
Speaker 2: close similarity between what a soldier on the battlefield fields
Speaker 2: and what a police officer feels. When I first got
Speaker 2: into Iraq and we did our first mission, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: this eerily feels like being a cop, same kind of feeling,
Speaker 2: same kind of heightened.
Speaker 1: Firefight, bigger guns, baagger guns.
Speaker 3: I felt safer in Iraq because I had a.
Speaker 2: Whole p two of infantry guys, right, I had a
Speaker 2: bunch of twenty year olds and fifty cows. So but yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd love to see the culture and law enforcement change.
Speaker 1: So initially you started twenty two zero yes to do
Speaker 1: what the.
Speaker 2: Goal was to take twenty two veterans suicides at eight
Speaker 2: of zero. That was the initial goal. That's when I
Speaker 2: first met Scott Man. So my paradigm change happened in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen. So a little bit of backstory. My wife
Speaker 2: and I were divorced now, but we got married after military,
Speaker 2: and I was a deputy sheriff for Pole County, Florida.
Speaker 2: And when I went back into law enforcement, I felt
Speaker 2: early normal again, really I did.
Speaker 1: Because it was at least back close.
Speaker 3: To felt very close to what it felt like being
Speaker 3: in the military.
Speaker 2: So when I'm in my patrol car and I got
Speaker 2: my uniform on, I'm carrying a gun, I'm operating at
Speaker 2: a fire flight response. So when that uniform came off,
Speaker 2: that's when I felt like the fish out of water.
Speaker 2: Just like when I went from the line infantry unit
Speaker 2: to a desk, I felt like a fish out of water.
Speaker 3: It's why they always want to go back to war.
Speaker 1: So you felt like a fish out of water when
Speaker 1: you went home.
Speaker 2: I felt like a fish out of water when I
Speaker 2: went home, like I don't belong here, this is not where,
Speaker 2: this is not where I'm comfortable.
Speaker 1: And again that is not necessarily uncommon. Correct, that is horrific.
Speaker 2: Well, there's the reason why a lot of that's get
Speaker 2: involved with mixed martial arts, right because you're fighting on
Speaker 2: a mat.
Speaker 3: Your brain's function in the way it's you feel normal there.
Speaker 3: You've been wired that you're wired that way, you know.
Speaker 3: But the really cool part is when you can.
Speaker 1: Unwire it, so that takes us through healing the hero
Speaker 1: and the getting unwired part is this. This is where
Speaker 1: first of all, I have sat here in all of
Speaker 1: the stories in you, like I hope most of my
Speaker 1: listeners right now have. But now we're kind of flipping
Speaker 1: to where we get to to hopefully take that perspective
Speaker 1: and understanding from your very real explanations and very personal
Speaker 1: explanations into the psychology of what Healing the Heroes about.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that your first exposure to it
Speaker 1: you thought it was hocus pocus, I mean, those are
Speaker 1: my words. And then how you became a believer in
Speaker 1: this work, and then what you're doing with this work
Speaker 1: and what's happening with this work. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: let you start at the beginning and just take us
Speaker 1: through it because it's fascinating to me because now we're
Speaker 1: switching into that psychology part that I find fascinating.
Speaker 2: I prefer the word neurology to psychology, and you'll understand
Speaker 2: here in a minute.
Speaker 3: Neurology is a nervous system.
Speaker 2: Right when I left the sheriff's office, you know, well,
Speaker 2: my wife was a civilian level administrator, and she was
Speaker 2: worried because I didn't have a filter. Right, she was
Speaker 2: worried I was going to say something they would cause
Speaker 2: her to get called into the boss's office.
Speaker 3: Right, because I did. I had a very very short
Speaker 3: fuse because I was still hard wired that way. And
Speaker 3: when I.
Speaker 1: Left line you a scary person.
Speaker 2: I don't think I was, but there may be some people.
Speaker 2: A lot of people say I would intimidate them. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was a drill sergeant, so I was scary for
Speaker 2: a part of my career, right, No.
Speaker 1: I'm talking after when you got back.
Speaker 2: That's a Again, I don't think I was, But at
Speaker 2: the same time, I wasn't thinking clearly, so it's possible.
Speaker 1: I just think if you were hijacked and frontal lobe
Speaker 1: was turned off half the time and you lacked empathy,
Speaker 1: that maybe you wouldn't have even known if you were
Speaker 1: scary right, which again feels common for people. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to put a face and an understanding on what that is.
Speaker 1: When you see it, when I see it, when our
Speaker 1: listeners see it, you.
Speaker 2: Know well, I mean, there's enough video evidence out there
Speaker 2: to show all the Karens out there, people getting super triggered.
Speaker 3: It's pretty noticeable when you see it.
Speaker 2: If you see a cop triggered, or you know you're
Speaker 2: seeing somebody in school or juvenile.
Speaker 3: It doesn't take much.
Speaker 2: Kids are easy to trigger because they're developing and they're
Speaker 2: still already in the especially.
Speaker 1: Kids that grow up in kang ridden neighborhoods. They've experienced
Speaker 1: all kinds of trauma. I mean Memphis, let's look at Memphis.
Speaker 1: There is so much tu I've coached them for thirty years,
Speaker 1: and it's.
Speaker 2: So sad because hard think about the future of a
Speaker 2: traumatized child.
Speaker 3: Right, there's a couple different pathways.
Speaker 2: One may because if you look at vets and first responders,
Speaker 2: it's the same thing. Ninety five percent of people that
Speaker 2: come to us, it's childhood trauma.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: A lot of these people were traumatized as kids and
Speaker 2: they decided, you know what, I'm going to be the
Speaker 2: sheep dog. I'm going to stand in the gap. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to let this happen. And then they take
Speaker 2: on a persona a firefighter, a paramedic, a police officer,
Speaker 2: or a soldier. The other half become predators because they
Speaker 2: don't know how to process correctly.
Speaker 3: And it could go either way.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting that all pull up the same characters
Speaker 1: on opposite ends of society.
Speaker 2: It's just the pivot point, what are you going to
Speaker 2: look for in your life? What do you want to do?
Speaker 3: So as a you know, it's.
Speaker 1: A fascinating way to think about it, really, it really is.
Speaker 2: You know, because I had some things that happened in
Speaker 2: childhood that I never wanted anybody to experience.
Speaker 3: Me too, So I became the other side.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be a sheep dog, a protector, and
Speaker 2: I went in the military, I went to war. You know,
Speaker 2: it was a street cup. I weren't in narcotics. I
Speaker 2: did a lot of those things. And I used to
Speaker 2: get so frustrated dealing with kids as a police officer,
Speaker 2: right because you know, the system just they don't punish
Speaker 2: these kids, right, And then you realize now it's well,
Speaker 2: they don't punish it because one their brain's not developed,
Speaker 2: you know. And two, look who's raising them?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: I remember one time I had a six year old
Speaker 2: little boy asked me when I arrested his dad.
Speaker 3: When's it my turn?
Speaker 1: On's it my turn?
Speaker 3: When's it my turn? I said, what your turn?
Speaker 1: For?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: We tried not to do it in front of children,
Speaker 2: because well, my dad's been arrested, my mom's been arrested,
Speaker 2: my aunts and uncles have all been arrested.
Speaker 3: On's in my turn? What chance does that kid have?
Speaker 1: Not much?
Speaker 3: Do you think it's his fault that he's going to
Speaker 3: turn out that way?
Speaker 1: No, more than likely he'll get a turn.
Speaker 2: He'll get a turn, or he'll go the other way
Speaker 2: and become a Green Beret or a Navy seal or
Speaker 2: something hopefully right.
Speaker 3: That happens. You see it all the time.
Speaker 2: A lot of these big time operators had tons and
Speaker 2: tons and tons of trauma, which is what makes him
Speaker 2: as a good operator. But then they have to deal
Speaker 2: with the aftermath when the music stops.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, I don't really remember how it happened,
Speaker 1: but take us through your comment or we can reverse it.
Speaker 2: So when I first met Scott Man, it was at
Speaker 2: one of his leadership retreats for a men's leadership treats
Speaker 2: called Spartans Rising, and I'll never forget he stopped in
Speaker 2: the middle of one of his presentations and he looks
Speaker 2: at me and he goes, Dan, you look like you
Speaker 2: have something you want to say. And I just said,
Speaker 2: twenty two zero. So like, what's that? I said, We're
Speaker 2: losing twenty two veterans a data suicide. We're going to
Speaker 2: take it to zero. And then I coached with Scott
Speaker 2: and he taught me how to tell the story like amazing.
Speaker 2: And then and was invited to Albuquerque, New Mexico organization.
Speaker 2: I want to give them credit, doctor Frank Burke right,
Speaker 2: the Research and Recognition Project, and they have a process
Speaker 2: called the Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories Protocol RTM.
Speaker 3: I cannot believe I've never heard of that, but I'd
Speaker 3: never heard about it.
Speaker 2: Tim Bridger so RTM, and I'm I'm the I'm the
Speaker 2: ex cop combat vet in the back of the room
Speaker 2: and I'm listening to the instructor. And this was all
Speaker 2: mental health professionals teach all these people that you can
Speaker 2: heal PTSD with a ninety five success rate.
Speaker 3: YadA YadA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my bowl crap. You are thinking, you crazy.
Speaker 3: There's no way.
Speaker 2: I've been dealing with this stuff for real long. You're
Speaker 2: telling me you can fix it or whatever.
Speaker 1: I have friends that have committed suicide exactly, I've lost
Speaker 1: a marriage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was it was. It was ironic because
Speaker 2: it was the day, second day of that training. They
Speaker 2: were getting ready to start doing the live stuff and
Speaker 2: I said, Alan, I said, h you're you know, you're
Speaker 2: saying something that I'm having a really hard time believing.
Speaker 3: Is this real? He was absolutely.
Speaker 2: I said, well, if I'm going to recommend a veteran
Speaker 2: first responder to do it, I'm gonna have to go
Speaker 2: through it.
Speaker 3: And then he goes, oh, you want to do it today.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, sure, why not do it?
Speaker 1: What is but the protocol is.
Speaker 3: The Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories RTM.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, that does sound like hocus pocus, right, Well.
Speaker 2: That's what I said. I mean, I'm the cop in
Speaker 2: the back of the room. Can I say a bad word? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm a cop in the back room saying both That's.
Speaker 1: How I feel, right, So, especially since we got twenty
Speaker 1: two people kill themselves, if you can do this, well,
Speaker 1: why aren't we doing it?
Speaker 2: But here's the irony is, I'm like, I got to
Speaker 2: go through this because you want to do it today.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, he goes.
Speaker 2: How about in fifteen minutes when we come off break
Speaker 2: in front of the class, I'm like, whoa.
Speaker 3: I'm like, giddy up, show the whole class and this
Speaker 3: guy is an idiot.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shut this dude down.
Speaker 2: So anyways, so we had talked a little bit beforehand,
Speaker 2: and that protocol. You talk about the event and then
Speaker 2: when you start a trigger, they stop you.
Speaker 3: They do what it's called a break state. Oh what
Speaker 3: a break state? They break the emotional state. So you
Speaker 3: talk about you talk about the trauma, which when you've
Speaker 3: got nine thousand different traumas well, we just picked one, right,
Speaker 3: we picked one.
Speaker 2: So I started talking about the one trauma and I'm
Speaker 2: starting to talk about it and I got super uncomfortable quick,
Speaker 2: Like I went from from zero to ten in about
Speaker 2: seven seconds. You could feel it, Oh yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 2: can feel the nervous system.
Speaker 3: Do they have you monitored or they're just they're watching you?
Speaker 2: And when I got you know, your eyes of water,
Speaker 2: You'll start breathing heavier. You'll start ringing your hands. You're like,
Speaker 2: you're you know, it's some people. You can start sweating
Speaker 2: and I'll never forget it. He stops and he goes, hey,
Speaker 2: what color is your Dodge truck?
Speaker 3: What? Yeah, well it's a break state. And I looked
Speaker 3: at him.
Speaker 1: He's just asking anything.
Speaker 2: Out of that moment, and it was so funny. He says,
Speaker 2: what color is your Dodge truck? And I'm like what
Speaker 2: I said, But I drive a Forward. I'd never be
Speaker 2: caught dead driving a Dodge. Right, that's funny.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, we're very brand loyal, especially in the military.
Speaker 1: I'm a Ford guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: I'd rather push a Forward than drive a Chavy exactly.
Speaker 2: So I have I have a Ford Raptor. That's what
Speaker 2: I have, right, It's a twenty thirteen that's called truck.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, I'm like, I'm out
Speaker 2: of it. I'm not even thinking about the event. And
Speaker 2: then he just does the process. What they do is
Speaker 2: have you visualized different things?
Speaker 3: Well? After he says that about the truck.
Speaker 1: Right, and you broke and now may you may be
Speaker 1: even grinning a little bit about the old Dodge thing.
Speaker 3: Then what's the next step. The next step is the
Speaker 3: visual kinesthetic part. Right. It's so he goes from the
Speaker 3: dodge truck to create an image in your mind before
Speaker 3: the event happened.
Speaker 1: Of that day, are we it was the one you're
Speaker 1: talking about?
Speaker 3: It was, Yeah, it was a combat related it was
Speaker 3: losing Doug.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now he wants you to go about before
Speaker 1: you're on patrol at breakfast or so.
Speaker 3: Or it could be before you left for the deployment.
Speaker 2: Oh, so think of a bookend of the event, right, Okay,
Speaker 2: so he booke ended the event and you make a
Speaker 2: black and white picture and a black and white picture,
Speaker 2: and then all you're doing is going to a third
Speaker 2: person perspective. So like if you're watching a movie, so
Speaker 2: you're in a movie theater and you're in the in
Speaker 2: the movie itself, you're associated, right, if you're sitting in
Speaker 2: the seat looking at yourself on the screen, you're disassociated.
Speaker 3: One time. Well, now they would take you up to.
Speaker 2: The camera room, the booth where the camera reels are,
Speaker 2: and you'd watch yourself in the theater watching the movie.
Speaker 2: So they're doing all these layers of dissociation.
Speaker 1: So that's really interesting.
Speaker 3: So you're looking at it from a third person perspective.
Speaker 1: Right, So they say, go back to the day, the morning,
Speaker 1: or before that event happened, and envision.
Speaker 2: Whatever you were doing. It could have been having breakfast. Okay,
Speaker 2: you're safe. Your brain knows that that's before the you're safe.
Speaker 2: You're safe, right, And then you have a point after
Speaker 2: the event's over. Maybe we're back in Alaska. Right, that's
Speaker 2: your safe place. You have two pictures, so think of
Speaker 2: it from an unconscious perspective. The brain now has a
Speaker 2: bookend and the event is in the middle. Well, when
Speaker 2: that event is open, when that emotion is active in
Speaker 2: the nervous system, there's a four to six hour window
Speaker 2: you can change that emotional state.
Speaker 3: So that's all they're doing.
Speaker 2: They're not changing the memory, they're just changing the state
Speaker 2: of the emotion attached to it. And by watching it,
Speaker 2: observing it yourself, watching a movie, you're third, you're three
Speaker 2: people distanced from it, and it does things on an
Speaker 2: unconscious level where the neural pathways will eventually decouple. Right,
Speaker 2: So then that process hit the rewind and then you're
Speaker 2: going all the way back to that first picture and
Speaker 2: you're bringing all the color back in and what you're
Speaker 2: doing at that point is now you're at a safe
Speaker 2: place before, but you're going from black and white to color.
Speaker 2: So the brain thinks, when you think of a black
Speaker 2: and white movie, what is It's an old movie, right,
Speaker 2: less intense. So if you were to watch a scary
Speaker 2: movie in four K versus black and white, which one's
Speaker 2: gonna be worse, right, the four K one. So when
Speaker 2: you go back to that color event, it's like reversing
Speaker 2: the order of the event on the brain. And that's
Speaker 2: when they made it goes, oh wait a minute, that's
Speaker 2: not what this it's for. And then they put you
Speaker 2: into a positive state like birth of a child. You know,
Speaker 2: something you did successful at work, felt really good, a.
Speaker 3: Really good thing.
Speaker 2: And then you're introducing a new positive emotion in that
Speaker 2: layers over the old memory. And then when they put
Speaker 2: you back into that memory still like for me, I
Speaker 2: was that process, they have you tell the story again,
Speaker 2: So sorry, tell the story again, and I want to
Speaker 2: because it was uncomfortable for So I start telling the
Speaker 2: story and all of a sudden, I'm getting through the.
Speaker 3: Story and I'm like, wait, where's the emotions?
Speaker 2: And I remember at one point I got through the
Speaker 2: whole story, and I looked at him. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 2: what kind of Jedi stuff is this?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Half the classes laughing, the other half is crying, right
Speaker 2: because they just watched a.
Speaker 3: Real ten drop down to like zero to one.
Speaker 1: Right, it happened that quickly.
Speaker 2: Well, that protocol is an eighty nine line script that
Speaker 2: goes line by line, and it takes sixty minutes and
Speaker 2: sometimes a little bit more.
Speaker 3: I don't know how long.
Speaker 2: I was up there, but probably an hour, and then
Speaker 2: you know, fast forward.
Speaker 3: We initially at that point and this was my words.
Speaker 2: I went over to doctor Burke and I said, I said,
Speaker 2: doctor Burke, why isn't this available to everybody?
Speaker 1: That's what I'm sitting here thinking.
Speaker 3: Swear to God, it's exactly what I'm thinking.
Speaker 2: Well, I can give you my answer, and my cop
Speaker 2: answer is it's not profitable to fix the problem.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. What was his answer?
Speaker 2: He said, He goes, it's just the research hasn't done yet,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, this should be available to everybody, right,
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 3: Did you literally fell back or that hour? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I felt better as soon as I finished, which is
Speaker 2: why I asked them what kind of Jedi stuff?
Speaker 3: It's like, these are not the emotions you're looking for.
Speaker 3: They're gone.
Speaker 2: That negative feeling that was associated that memory was not
Speaker 2: in my body.
Speaker 1: Okay, but that's that memory. What about another one?
Speaker 3: I had to work on other stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, But the point is that same process. Right,
Speaker 1: Let's take that ten most traumatic things that have got
Speaker 1: you crazy and when and thinking about killing yourself and everything.
Speaker 1: If you spend an hour on each one of these
Speaker 1: through this process, the memories don't go away. It's your
Speaker 1: response to them that changes.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's like you now have different stimuli. Right, And
Speaker 2: when I look at what we do now, So the
Speaker 2: method that we use now is it's a nine line
Speaker 2: instead of eighty nine lines, it's nine lines.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It takes about four to six minutes to diffuse a
Speaker 2: single event, whether it's traumatic event emotion, or if it's
Speaker 2: anger or rage, or if it's anxiety. It's a great success,
Speaker 2: right of this, But that's part of the problem. Everybody
Speaker 2: that does it heals. Come on, everybody, everybody that does
Speaker 2: it heels. If they finish and do the work, everybody
Speaker 2: will heal. Some people won't finish the work. What does
Speaker 2: finish the work mean?
Speaker 3: I mean, do the number of sessions that are required,
Speaker 3: which are usually three.
Speaker 1: To five three to five twenty minute sessions.
Speaker 3: Well, if we dig deep, it's three five forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: Okay, whatever, three to five hour sessions. Let's say it's
Speaker 1: the longest session in the world hour and fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: And let's say you need six you're talking about a day, right.
Speaker 3: We've had people come through. I had.
Speaker 2: It was a wife of a firefighter. She had PTSD
Speaker 2: and she'd been in therapy for twenty years. It was
Speaker 2: the firefighter's wife. So that our nonprofit we know.
Speaker 1: But why was the firefighters?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: Why? Because we worked with spouses, So she was experiencing
Speaker 1: PTSD through his life, probably both, no kidding, Yeah.
Speaker 2: If it's stuff that her husband went through, it's vicarious trauma.
Speaker 3: It's real. A lot of your therapists end up with
Speaker 3: a vicarious trauma from doing therapy. So she had been
Speaker 3: in therapy for.
Speaker 2: Twenty years for PTSD, and she did two sessions with us,
Speaker 2: and she was done and she was mad, and so like.
Speaker 3: What are you upseid about it? Years?
Speaker 1: She's wasted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she goes, I've been in therapy for twenty years
Speaker 2: and you just fixed me.
Speaker 3: In two hours.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what is this called?
Speaker 3: We call the Trauma Resiliency Protocol TRP.
Speaker 1: Is what our method is. And why is the United
Speaker 1: States military not adopted this?
Speaker 3: Who runs the military?
Speaker 1: The government?
Speaker 3: Okay? And who funds the government?
Speaker 1: Taxpayers?
Speaker 3: Okay? Who funds those running for office?
Speaker 1: Donations and taxpayers?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: But what I'm saying is there are a lot of
Speaker 2: organizations other that get funding from pharmaceutical industry.
Speaker 3: A big pharma funds both sides of the politics.
Speaker 1: So you genuinely believe that's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's part of it.
Speaker 1: What's the other part?
Speaker 3: So you ever heard the term cognitive dissonance?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: A brain can't hold two beliefs, different beliefs at the
Speaker 2: same time.
Speaker 3: Right. Let's think Republican a Democrat.
Speaker 2: They are absolute beliefs that Democrats have their absolute beliefs
Speaker 2: Republicans have and when you cross that over, make it
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense to the other person. So for a
Speaker 2: general officer who's done a career of forty years and
Speaker 2: has seen damage a PTSD and nothing's worked to fix it,
Speaker 2: they don't believe it can be corrected.
Speaker 3: So I think that's part of it.
Speaker 2: Is cognitive dissonance the inability to believe that it is
Speaker 2: possible the way it works. And I'll tell you how
Speaker 2: cognitive dissonance is. If I go to a function and
Speaker 2: somebody asked, me, well, what do you guys do for
Speaker 2: a nonprofit? Oh, we got a neurological intervention that removes
Speaker 2: PTSD and depression anxiety. They're like, oh, yeah, that's cool, great,
Speaker 2: awesome because it doesn't make sense to them, and they'll
Speaker 2: move on. And then I'll say it like this. They'll say, well,
Speaker 2: what do you guys doing well? Can I ask you
Speaker 2: a question first? They're like, oh, yeah, I'm sure. I said,
Speaker 2: what live long and didn't have to die? SOID that'd
Speaker 2: be amazing, it'd be all beautiful world. What we do
Speaker 2: is this, Now you're past that critical faculty and you're
Speaker 2: in the unconscious brain. So the critical faculty is what
Speaker 2: we call the bullter between the conscious and unconscious, and
Speaker 2: it filters your brain, filters things out. So I think
Speaker 2: a lot of those general officers filter out the possibility
Speaker 2: and then to the ability to get to the right gatekeepers.
Speaker 3: Right, it's very difficult to get to the higher levels.
Speaker 3: I honestly believe if our President, our secretary, war our
Speaker 3: general officers, realize how simple this is, and I just
Speaker 3: tell this this stuff so easy. We got marines doing
Speaker 3: I love you, marines, nice shot. We love if we're
Speaker 3: not picking on each other, and then we both just
Speaker 3: tell the Air Force at least we were in the military,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: So how many iterations have you done yourself?
Speaker 2: Since I've started doing this, I've worked probably around five
Speaker 2: thousand people.
Speaker 1: And you're telling me of the five thousand, none.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you.
Speaker 2: Of that five thousand, I've probably had maybe a handful
Speaker 2: that didn't finish the work. In other words, because what
Speaker 2: ends up happening is they feel so much better. They're like,
Speaker 2: I'm good, deuces, I'm out.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like not taking your antibiotics until the
Speaker 1: whole prescriptions filled.
Speaker 2: All right, because they if you have somebody with a
Speaker 2: lot of severe PTS, And the crazy part is the
Speaker 2: higher their scores are, the faster the brain heels because
Speaker 2: their brain is ready to dump it, right, And once
Speaker 2: you start dumping that, a lot of them will move
Speaker 2: on and do the next greatest thing, but still could
Speaker 2: probably improve. Sometimes you get people that have what we
Speaker 2: call a personality disorder, where they call cluster b very
Speaker 2: difficult to work with, Like we if we can identify
Speaker 2: that before, we wouldn't let them work with one of
Speaker 2: our coaches.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that was a problem long before the trauma happened. Correct,
Speaker 1: So it's.
Speaker 3: A different.
Speaker 2: You know, it's you can still address a lot of
Speaker 2: their issues and make their lives better, but they still
Speaker 2: have other things they have to overcome. And that's like
Speaker 2: tons and tons and tons of childhood trauma that leads
Speaker 2: into that. But yeah, I have I have very few
Speaker 2: people who it hasn't worked with.
Speaker 1: One of the greatest stories that I've read was that
Speaker 1: this just doesn't happen for people in the Rock Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: and there was a man who carried trauma all the
Speaker 1: way from World War Two. That story, Oh, Mel was
Speaker 1: a beautiful meal. So Mel, he's still alive. He's one
Speaker 1: hundred and one years old, right, wow. And when I
Speaker 1: first met Mel, I was just my jaw hit the floor.
Speaker 1: I'm like, this guy is incredible. A friend of mine,
Speaker 1: Jay gar Steki, who's got Operation Healing Heroes. It's a
Speaker 1: Discovery Channel show. They do like mini document of the
Speaker 1: Live on me.
Speaker 2: Jay, you got to get this guy's story and so
Speaker 2: I picked Mel up in Orlando and I took him
Speaker 2: to River Ranch in Florida. It's like a little resort
Speaker 2: and that's where he did the interviews.
Speaker 1: And they said, where you do your thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do our thing remotely, all over the place.
Speaker 1: Got it going.
Speaker 2: So so Jay captured Mel's story. It was beautiful, like
Speaker 2: they don't make people like that anymore. And as we're
Speaker 2: I'm driving him home, He's like, do you ever think
Speaker 2: it's really over?
Speaker 3: I'm like, what are you talking about? Mel?
Speaker 2: He said PTSD. So Mel had gone through the RTM
Speaker 2: protocol right, so the trauma part was resolved, but now
Speaker 2: he was still dealing with the survivor guilt, which that
Speaker 2: protocol doesn't address.
Speaker 3: I said, what are you feeling?
Speaker 2: Because I felt guilty every day I've step foot on
Speaker 2: us soil since I got back from the war.
Speaker 1: What year was this?
Speaker 3: This would have been two thousand and probably twenty.
Speaker 1: That's almost that's fifty five six, that's twenty and forty
Speaker 1: sixty years that he is sixty or more years that
Speaker 1: you're telling me. Every single day of his life for
Speaker 1: sixty years, he felt.
Speaker 2: Guilt, yep, for being alive, for being alive, because so
Speaker 2: many good men didn't come home.
Speaker 1: What what did he's what? Where would he serve?
Speaker 3: He was a B seventeen waistgunner, so he left.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, life express it was nothing.
Speaker 2: His last combat sort he was flying over Normandy on
Speaker 2: D Day. Wow, imagine the visual that this guy had.
Speaker 2: So his best friend was shot down. Oscar was the
Speaker 2: It's funny he was telling the story. I used to
Speaker 2: pull Oscar out of the bars every night because he
Speaker 2: would get into fights.
Speaker 3: I'm glad it was a different day back then, yay,
Speaker 3: But some things don't change.
Speaker 2: And so they used to wave at each other when
Speaker 2: they were flying their missions. You know, oscars in one plane,
Speaker 2: he's in the other, and he watched them go down
Speaker 2: into the ocean, right and God, so he's felt he's
Speaker 2: held onto that guilt and I and it was is
Speaker 2: everything right. What I mean by framing is if you
Speaker 2: look at a picture and it's got a black frame
Speaker 2: on it, and then all of a sudden you put
Speaker 2: a white frame on it, the picture looks totally different.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So on a zero to ten stress load, he was
Speaker 2: a ten on that survivor gilt. So what I did
Speaker 2: with him is I said mel I want you to
Speaker 2: trade places with Oscar. You're going down into the ocean,
Speaker 2: and every once in a while you get a glimpse
Speaker 2: of his airplane.
Speaker 3: He's going to survive.
Speaker 2: I want you to look at it from that perspective,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, what would you want for him?
Speaker 3: And that this is the framing component.
Speaker 2: I want him to be happy and have a great life,
Speaker 2: be a good citizen. You don't hear that anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: and just be a normal person. I said, mel do
Speaker 2: you want him to feel the weight of your death
Speaker 2: for the rest of his life? He's like, Heavens no,
Speaker 2: I would never want that. So then I asked a question,
Speaker 2: what makes you think he's expecting less? And in that moment,
Speaker 2: his eyes got super wide and he looked at me
Speaker 2: and he goes, I never thought of that. So for
Speaker 2: that sixty plus years, that wasn't accessible to him. And
Speaker 2: in that very moment, the shift happened where he released
Speaker 2: the emotional attachment to the memory, so he didn't have
Speaker 2: that zero to ten went to a zero. He couldn't
Speaker 2: feel it, the survivor guilt anymore. And that's what we
Speaker 2: get to actually do, is address the neural pathway where
Speaker 2: that memory started and all the data that's around the memory.
Speaker 2: One of the ways that we do the process is
Speaker 2: we do it way different. Now the nine lines, we're
Speaker 2: looking at it from a third person, so we'll have
Speaker 2: them associate, rate the intensity of it, and then disassociate.
Speaker 2: Look at it from a distance, drone flying up, moving
Speaker 2: down the street. And as you're doing that, we do
Speaker 2: things like I want you to take the color out
Speaker 2: of it, make it black and white. I want you
Speaker 2: to turn the volume down so you're changing the visual,
Speaker 2: the auditory, the kinesthetic, get far enough where you don't
Speaker 2: feel it. And then we'll have them turn around again,
Speaker 2: and I want you to look into an older, wiser
Speaker 2: version of yourself. They'd be like, like, you're drowning, isn't
Speaker 2: a coach, Bill? I want you to turn around and
Speaker 2: look at a future version of you. What would you
Speaker 2: teach yourself at that moment? Right, that's the frame that
Speaker 2: if you learned, you could let the feelings go easily
Speaker 2: and effortlessly. Well, that's a presuppositional statement, so you're presupposing
Speaker 2: the outcome. And once you give the answer, your brain
Speaker 2: is in an unconscious agreement, attaches that new learning and
Speaker 2: then we reassociate and take you back in time, and
Speaker 2: then you come back through and reprocess it, and then
Speaker 2: we sit you in a resource anchor.
Speaker 3: It takes about four to six minutes, and then when
Speaker 3: they go back that ten is gone and then the
Speaker 3: brain reconsolidates that memory. Sleep is the biggest byproduct.
Speaker 2: So some people will sleep twelve thirteen hours after going
Speaker 2: through the process.
Speaker 1: Their brain's eau.
Speaker 3: Right, the brain's exhausted.
Speaker 2: But then finally got to take a foot off the
Speaker 2: gas pedal and the seventy five hundred RPM's got to come.
Speaker 3: Back down to one thousand, will be right back. Do
Speaker 3: you have a degree?
Speaker 2: I got a master's degree, but it's public administration, nothing
Speaker 2: in like psychology or so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're you're you're not one of these fancy smart people.
Speaker 1: And I know you met doctor Barku, the guy, the
Speaker 1: first guy. Yeah, it's it's just interesting to me that
Speaker 1: this is something that you're doing and it's working. Like
Speaker 1: it's working. You see what I'm saying. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: reconcile all that.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of people look at me like I
Speaker 2: don't have the right pedigree, right if I talk to it,
Speaker 2: like there's a va psychologist that one day when I
Speaker 2: go back and see her, I will give her a
Speaker 2: big thank you card, which was, well.
Speaker 3: I can only imagine what this is.
Speaker 2: So this is this is our system, and I'll functions.
Speaker 2: She's a psychologist, she's at the highest higher level of
Speaker 2: that field. And she was speaking at an event and
Speaker 2: I spoke at an event, right, And she came up
Speaker 2: to me and was very resistant about what I was
Speaker 2: talking about, condescending, very condescending. Well, She's like, I'm like, ma'am,
Speaker 2: I'll pay for your training to do RTM with Frank Burke.
Speaker 2: I'll pay for your lodging, I'll pay for your meals.
Speaker 2: I'll take care of it. You'll even get continued ad credits.
Speaker 2: And she's like, I don't need any continued ed credits, right,
Speaker 2: And then she went into how this is snake oil.
Speaker 2: That's not real cognitive dissonance. She's never seen it, right,
Speaker 2: And we were just having this conversation back and forth,
Speaker 2: and there's a therapist sitting right there listening to the
Speaker 2: whole conversation, who had been through the training and who
Speaker 2: has been using the protocol.
Speaker 3: Guess how many words she said? None?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: Because the other one is a doctor, and she he's
Speaker 2: a licensed professional counselor, right, So I'm like, you could
Speaker 2: have said something.
Speaker 3: But anyways, she thanks wrapping my back.
Speaker 2: I'm like, and I it was a hold my beer
Speaker 2: moment for her. For the psychologist says, you know what
Speaker 2: you're gonna do.
Speaker 3: She's like, what's that?
Speaker 2: I said, You're gonna You're going to cause me to
Speaker 2: train my brother and sister to the left and the
Speaker 2: right of me, and we'll make your profession a whole
Speaker 2: lot less relevant. Wow, And we are. We're making them
Speaker 2: less relevant. If they don't want to be part of
Speaker 2: the solution. Good, get out of the way. Because a
Speaker 2: lot of US vets and first responders were problem solvers.
Speaker 1: So why are you going to send her a thank you?
Speaker 3: Guard?
Speaker 2: Because of where we are right now, that was the
Speaker 2: fuel to the fire. That was the rocket fuel that
Speaker 2: took us into the pure support model. I stopped paying
Speaker 2: for therapists to get trained, right, and then COVID hits,
Speaker 2: and of course everybody's funding dried up. Everybody nobody knew
Speaker 2: what was going to happen with the world, and I'm
Speaker 2: like shooting out, what are we going to do?
Speaker 3: And then I just went down the search rabbit hole.
Speaker 3: A lot of this work.
Speaker 2: It all comes out of a body work called neural
Speaker 2: linguistic programming. I don't know if you're familiar with NLP, but
Speaker 2: Tony Robbins was probably one of the bigger names that
Speaker 2: started off in NLP, and he calls it something different now,
Speaker 2: But NLP was founded by doctor John Grinder and doctor
Speaker 2: Richard Bandler. Grinder was a Green Beret linguist and Bandler
Speaker 2: was a coder, ones and zeros. They got together and
Speaker 2: we were trying to figure out why some people were so.
Speaker 3: Good at what they did.
Speaker 2: So they modeled you know, Virginia Setier family therapy, right,
Speaker 2: why is she so good at what she does?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: Then, staying with her for seven eight months, they basically said,
Speaker 2: there's eighteen different meta models and she drives down.
Speaker 3: To the deepest.
Speaker 2: Also, some people are auditory, some people are kinesthetics, some
Speaker 2: people are visual. So she could get a husband and
Speaker 2: wife that one's auditory, one's visual, they're not communicating the
Speaker 2: same and she would get them on that same wavelength
Speaker 2: and she was very effective at it. So once they
Speaker 2: did modeled her, they started training other therapists to do
Speaker 2: what she did, and then guess what happened to her
Speaker 2: him an average, It lifted everybody up.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Milton Erickson was the psychiatrist who's the father, one of
Speaker 2: the modern fathers of hypno therapy.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He used hypnotic language patterns, so he chunked up instead
Speaker 2: of down.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The way that might work is when we would ask hey,
Speaker 2: when was the first time that ever happened, they'd be like, well,
Speaker 2: I don't remember when it did.
Speaker 3: I said, I know you don't, but if you did,
Speaker 3: one was it? And all of a sudden they'd come up
Speaker 3: with an answer.
Speaker 2: Because you buy a pass critical faculty, you go directly
Speaker 2: to the unconscious brain. And then Fritz Pearls was the
Speaker 2: gestalt therapy, where we know, we've known for over one
Speaker 2: hundred years emotions established linearly and they kind of like
Speaker 2: a string of pearls, right, you pull one out and
Speaker 2: they drop down into the next layer.
Speaker 3: So we've that's NLP right.
Speaker 2: And then of course NLP kind of got a little
Speaker 2: bit crazy going into like the you know, coaching side
Speaker 2: and business and trying to sell things, because all they
Speaker 2: did was learn how people did what they did that
Speaker 2: it did really well, and they trained other people to
Speaker 2: do that. So, and this is one of the things
Speaker 2: that Frank Burke when he when I met him, he goes,
Speaker 2: you know, l he's probably the greatest advancement in psychology
Speaker 2: in the laste hundred years, but nobody knows about it.
Speaker 2: And now a lot of the research is coming out
Speaker 2: is NLP focus, so they're finally starting to validate, which
Speaker 2: is what we're doing when we're doing research out of
Speaker 2: Arizona State University. They've already published one study from my
Speaker 2: first nonprofit. We're doing it with brain scans, so we're
Speaker 2: seeing the brain.
Speaker 5: But I was just about to ask, couldn't you bring
Speaker 5: the scientific community in if you just took people up
Speaker 5: to brain scans and watched their brain react to this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the process that we use doctor David Haggidor
Speaker 2: and he's just a beautiful soul. He's an Army veteran,
Speaker 2: he's a clinical psychologist, neural scientist. He developed a system
Speaker 2: called evos. It's now owned by Firefly Neuroscience. So when
Speaker 2: I first met Dave, doctor Phil mcquee, who was on
Speaker 2: our board, you know, we were talking and I said, man,
Speaker 2: I really like to know what's going on in the brain,
Speaker 2: right And next thing you know, doctor Phil connects with
Speaker 2: you know, David, and all of a sudden, Me and
Speaker 2: Dave are having a conversation and I'm like, well, I'm
Speaker 2: getting ready to goup to Maryland to work with a
Speaker 2: police officer because she won't do the work remote.
Speaker 3: He goes, well, I'll meet you there.
Speaker 2: So it's like a Friday, He closed up shop, drove
Speaker 2: from Jacksonville, North Carolina to Frederick, Maryland, and next thing
Speaker 2: you know, he's doing a brain scan on a female
Speaker 2: police officer and I'll never forget. Her scores were about
Speaker 2: match full tilt like max on PTS, max on anxiety, or.
Speaker 3: Her pre evaluation scores. Her pre evaluation is hijacked.
Speaker 2: So like the PCLC, the civilian version, it's an eighty
Speaker 2: five point survey. She was eighty five out of eighty five,
Speaker 2: which means seven days a week.
Speaker 1: Her life sucks, and she's constantly, constantly and probably not sleeping.
Speaker 3: And not sleeping.
Speaker 2: So what ended up happening is, you see in the
Speaker 2: back of the brain, there's a part where you close
Speaker 2: your eyes for five minutes, and what's happening is as
Speaker 2: you close your eyes, your nervous system goes into full
Speaker 2: tilt because you've lost all situational aware and so somebody
Speaker 2: with PTSD will go into a fight or flight response
Speaker 2: and they close your eyes because they have now they
Speaker 2: can't see what's binding. They feel unsafe. So you measure
Speaker 2: that and you see it and I'll forget. He goes,
Speaker 2: a young lady, this is the worst brain scan I
Speaker 2: have ever seen, and he said, in your scores match
Speaker 2: your brain scan, and the relief in her voice. I've
Speaker 2: been trying to tell everybody that, right, she's a female
Speaker 2: police officer in a pretty male dominated world. Plus she's
Speaker 2: mixed race on top of that. So I do a
Speaker 2: session with her and then we come back the next day.
Speaker 2: I do another session with her, and then doctor haggittt
Speaker 2: Arrn does a second brain scan. And after that second
Speaker 2: brain scan, he sent the results back. He goes, gentlemen,
Speaker 2: this is profound. He said, you're getting in twenty four
Speaker 2: hours results that it would take six months for an
Speaker 2: EMDR Master practitioner to achieve. And he said, in most
Speaker 2: EMDR Master practice will never get this level of work.
Speaker 3: And he goesaid, you're not even a therapist.
Speaker 2: So he he was on board from the very beginning,
Speaker 2: just from the science end, because he saw what we
Speaker 2: were doing from a scientific perspective, and he's the one
Speaker 2: that's convinced us to do the research.
Speaker 3: So now we're doing uh yeah, that you got to do.
Speaker 3: Now we're doing I'm not a research I know, I
Speaker 3: get it, but but but.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you, when I saw the first batch of
Speaker 2: data together, I was I was hooked.
Speaker 3: At that point.
Speaker 2: I tell everybody I've officially become a nerd. I know
Speaker 2: more about the brain than any self respecting infantry mister nobody.
Speaker 3: But the think about it, think about it from a
Speaker 3: clinical perspective.
Speaker 2: We deal with something called peer review literature, right right,
Speaker 2: So you're telling me thirty psychiatrists are going to read
Speaker 2: the same article and come up with the same conclusion.
Speaker 2: Where's the innovation going to come from? Was the cab
Speaker 2: company ever going to create Uber uber no or Lyft?
Speaker 2: Was a hotel industry ever gonna create.
Speaker 1: Going to create Amazon?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 1: Same game?
Speaker 3: So now what we're doing, and Dave really convinced me.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a really good point to my question.
Speaker 1: Why isn't the the psychological side of the VA adapting this.
Speaker 1: It's for the same reason the cab companies aren't venting
Speaker 1: Uber and series didn't invent Amazon.
Speaker 2: It's you want to talk about egos? Yeah boys, yeah boy,
Speaker 2: yeah there. They doesn't actually get that. That makes that's
Speaker 2: so plausibly sensible.
Speaker 3: I mean, who am I? I don't have the right initials.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: You know doctor Haggitorn with the brain stuff, he can
Speaker 2: hook you up to the eg and within that thirty
Speaker 2: minute test he can tell you if you're suicidal based
Speaker 2: on a part of the brain activating. So when the
Speaker 2: VA a few years ago did their I think it
Speaker 2: was a Mission Daybreak or some new it was like
Speaker 2: a three million dollar grant. They were going to award
Speaker 2: a three million dollar grant to a company trying to
Speaker 2: do something about suicide. Dave and I we both applied
Speaker 2: for that grant. Dave actually works for the VA right now.
Speaker 2: We both got rejected first round. We had a solution
Speaker 2: and he had a way to identify. So I don't
Speaker 2: want to call out the organization that got the grant,
Speaker 2: But what they were doing was forensic audits of social
Speaker 2: media and cell phones.
Speaker 3: So what does that mean they're already dead? That's the VA.
Speaker 3: It's cheaper for the VA if we do die? Why
Speaker 3: did you reenlist an army after note to eleven in
Speaker 3: the first place? And what do you think led so
Speaker 3: many to re enlist? And I what impact did not
Speaker 3: eleven have on you that it didn't have on me.
Speaker 2: So I watched from a distance, all right, the towers
Speaker 2: getting hit, the towers falling. I had already left because
Speaker 2: I worked law enforcement prior to that. I was military first,
Speaker 2: did law enforcement, and I was out of law enforcement
Speaker 2: at that point, and watching it, I just felt helpless,
Speaker 2: Like everybody saw what happened, and I just I was pissed,
Speaker 2: I was angry, and I wanted to figure. I didn't
Speaker 2: even think that there was an option for me at
Speaker 2: that time until I talked to one about thirty four.
Speaker 1: I was re enlisted in the military at thirty four.
Speaker 3: I'm a glut for punishment. You were clearly nuts, Yes, totally.
Speaker 2: But I talked to a buddy of mine who was
Speaker 2: going back in. He was going from reserves to active.
Speaker 2: I'm like, how are you doing that? And so I
Speaker 2: just went and talked to a recruiter. I had to
Speaker 2: get a little little waiver, and next thing you know,
Speaker 2: I'm back at Fort Benning, Georgia. Going all the way
Speaker 2: back through basic training again with a bunch of eighteen nights.
Speaker 1: You went through basic again. You had to at thirty four.
Speaker 3: Well, I that sucks. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was supposed to do a what do they call that,
Speaker 2: Warrior transition course, so it was like prior service. They
Speaker 2: condensed that whole period of time into like four weeks.
Speaker 2: So I get sent to Fort Knox, I do that,
Speaker 2: and then they sent me back.
Speaker 3: I was so mad. You want to talk about mad?
Speaker 3: They sent me back to a unit that was in
Speaker 3: week two. Ah had I stayed at Fort Betting, I
Speaker 3: had to be at weeks seven or eight. So I
Speaker 3: went all the way to four weeks.
Speaker 2: At Fortnite, oxtitted four weeks a month there, and then
Speaker 2: I came back and I get dropped into week two
Speaker 2: and I had fifteen more.
Speaker 3: Weeks to go.
Speaker 1: It sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was not fun.
Speaker 1: So an answer was, you had some training, you were pissed,
Speaker 1: and you felt something need to be.
Speaker 3: Done, something need to be done. I wanted to go,
Speaker 3: I wanted to fight.
Speaker 1: I genuinely believe there's an entire generation of kids that
Speaker 1: were twelve years younger than you at that point that
Speaker 1: served in our military. That had that same sense. That's patriotism,
Speaker 1: that's commitment, that's service. And they are the same people
Speaker 1: who were losing twenty two of every single day. Let's
Speaker 1: remember that. Let's remember that that the image of nine
Speaker 1: to eleven. There's an entire generation of people who served
Speaker 1: our country because they saw that and felt compelled and
Speaker 1: called to serve. And we're losing that home because of
Speaker 1: the trauma that they took. You said earlier police that
Speaker 1: people give our trauma place just outsource.
Speaker 3: We outsource our trauma, outsource trauma.
Speaker 1: Well, we outsource our trauma the military.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's crazy eight year olds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy to think right now that a lot
Speaker 2: of these kids joined ucause I think the army just
Speaker 2: met their mission like four months before the end of
Speaker 2: the year. So recruitment is through the roof with the
Speaker 2: kids who weren't even alive when the towers came down.
Speaker 1: I know, it's cristy.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of patriotism that comes. I think
Speaker 2: one of the probably one of the signature wounds of
Speaker 2: the war is probably gonna be the moral injury component,
Speaker 2: because you're doing things that's not normal, right, And I'll
Speaker 2: use the withdrawal from Afghanistan. We know for a fact
Speaker 2: there was a suicide spike after we abandoned Afghanistan. Right,
Speaker 2: I'm connected with a lot of the gold Star families
Speaker 2: who lost the thirteen that day, and I've actually worked
Speaker 2: with some of them, and they're trying to change the
Speaker 2: system too, because nobody can give an answer why their
Speaker 2: kids are dead. Right, the fact that we lost so
Speaker 2: much blood and treasure and just gave billions of dollars
Speaker 2: of hardware to the Taliban and then paid them forty
Speaker 2: million dollars a week, that's moral injury.
Speaker 1: And abandoned Afghan interpreters, very brave. Afghani is the thut
Speaker 1: alongside us. We got guilt.
Speaker 2: We abandoned a group of people that we promised that
Speaker 2: we were going to help them. We promised, when you're
Speaker 2: done helping us, we'll get you to the United States.
Speaker 3: Exactly right. What Scott's doing and those guys, it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's crazy. Have you ever seen it? Have
Speaker 3: you seen this new play?
Speaker 1: I haven't seen them play.
Speaker 3: Now, let's just take some clean X. It's very good.
Speaker 3: It's coming here, is it? Yeah? Yeah, we'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Kind of off topic, but on topic. When Hurricane Hellen
Speaker 3: Eleen thanks starting North Carolina.
Speaker 1: What's your experience that American needs to hear.
Speaker 2: So when Helene hit, you know, one of the things
Speaker 2: that Scott did through task for fine Off what made
Speaker 2: some connections. He's an amazing connector. So he'll go into
Speaker 2: the community, what do you need and then they'll resource
Speaker 2: it to get plugged into that signal group. Is amazing
Speaker 2: because when an emergency happens, all these resources come to bear.
Speaker 2: They're using their skills that they use, you know, and
Speaker 2: obviously the rule is if if you're interfering with first responders,
Speaker 2: stay away because they have the legal responsibility.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: But when we got into because he connected us with
Speaker 2: one of the churches there and we met him before
Speaker 2: we came back and did some training, and all six
Speaker 2: of the people we worked with were like, what did
Speaker 2: you just do?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Because we know they're going to need it. When Able
Speaker 2: and I went back, it was right after the flood.
Speaker 2: We went through one of the communities and I think
Speaker 2: it was I think it was Asheville, North Carolina. We
Speaker 2: went to their PD and fire departments and the hey,
Speaker 2: may should go see these guys in the outside.
Speaker 3: They're the ones that are really dealing with a lot.
Speaker 2: So we went up to this one fire department and
Speaker 2: we're driving around this neighborhood, this community, and every home
Speaker 2: had everything inside of their house in their front yards.
Speaker 2: They pulled everything out of the homes and you're going
Speaker 2: by the tree lines and the mudlines are five feet
Speaker 2: above ground level, and then you start hearing some of
Speaker 2: the stories and it was just like mind blowing, Like
Speaker 2: one of the guys.
Speaker 3: Lost like eleven people in a family. That's like war, right,
Speaker 3: but natural cause. It was very overwhelming.
Speaker 2: So that we ended up going back and trained eleven
Speaker 2: of the church ministry folks and the pastors so that
Speaker 2: they would at least have something that they could actually
Speaker 2: do on the ground. So we got connected one of
Speaker 2: the one of the pastors, she was a former police
Speaker 2: officer and she's the first one that experienced it, and
Speaker 2: she's the one that wanted us to come in there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I was just we went in, we visited
Speaker 2: some of the fire departments and these guys are just
Speaker 2: sitting there with the same look that I remember after
Speaker 2: we lost Corno.
Speaker 1: That's what That's what I think is important, is this
Speaker 1: work although started with that's and that's where your heart
Speaker 1: started with anybody experiences massive trauma.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, the good thing is we're getting we're getting some credibility.
Speaker 2: So like I'll give you an example of Pittsburgh, right
Speaker 2: that's probably our single largest growth right now. We trained
Speaker 2: Pittsburgh Bureau Fire Peer Support Good. We trained McKee's Port
Speaker 2: some of their fear peer support good.
Speaker 1: So there are some.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a really cool part is the what
Speaker 2: do they call it? The Department of Human and Services
Speaker 2: for the County of Alleghany County funded two trainings for
Speaker 2: community based trauma. So the county paid for training for
Speaker 2: US to train other nonprofits and therapists. So they have
Speaker 2: twelve therapists that work in the jail with inmates.
Speaker 1: Oh so there's that's all.
Speaker 3: That's another population.
Speaker 2: So when I heard about that, I was like, man,
Speaker 2: this is really really cool. And so we trained forty
Speaker 2: eight new people up there, plus the fire department the
Speaker 2: other folks, and it was really kind of awesome to
Speaker 2: watch that. And so one of the guys up there,
Speaker 2: he was a news reporter, Sheldon Ingram. If you hear this, shildo,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, but I'm gonna dime me out. I called him,
Speaker 2: and I said, because I did an interview with him before,
Speaker 2: I'm like, man, this is a great story, right.
Speaker 3: Think about it.
Speaker 2: The fact that they're trying to use this to help
Speaker 2: stop recidivism, help community based trauma. I mean the majority
Speaker 2: of the inmates at Alleghany County or African American, right,
Speaker 2: trying to help a community that's been disenfranchised and to
Speaker 2: get them healthy. And then when he did the interview,
Speaker 2: he brought in the union president of the corrections officers,
Speaker 2: and what they spun it in was that this was
Speaker 2: only available for inmates. It wasn't available for the correction staff.
Speaker 2: But there's a good ending. Hey, I'm a Christian man.
Speaker 2: Guy uses all things for the good for those who
Speaker 2: love him. Don Brucker's on my board of directors. He's
Speaker 2: the Alleghanty County Chief Deputy Fire Marshall. I'm like, don
Speaker 2: you think you could reach out and find out that
Speaker 2: this corrections guy their union president.
Speaker 3: They saying, you know, we're having a conversation. We meet him.
Speaker 2: He thought dB was punking him because he talked about
Speaker 2: trauma the correction staff we're having. So we did his
Speaker 2: brain scan, did sessions with him. He had a massive shift.
Speaker 2: So now we've had a whole bunch of other guys
Speaker 2: coming through and they're getting ready to train. We're going
Speaker 2: to eventually train their peer support so that they can
Speaker 2: work with each other.
Speaker 1: Two things, and then we're going to close one. What
Speaker 1: have you been through this and then you experience another trauma?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Do you do it again? Or can you lean on
Speaker 1: what you've already been through? You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so your brain is going to get a new skill,
Speaker 2: so it'll probably process differently. However, new trauma is new trauma.
Speaker 2: It's not like a vaccine, right. I have one of
Speaker 2: my coaches who's a fire captain down in Sarasota County, Florida.
Speaker 2: Every once in a while, you, hey man, been a
Speaker 2: rough couple of weeks. You can carve some time out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's go, bro, and we just do the process. So
Speaker 2: all you have to them it's just for him, but anybody.
Speaker 3: And it helps clean it up, clean it up. That's
Speaker 3: all you're doing is cleaning it up.
Speaker 1: So healing the hero is it started with twenty two
Speaker 1: zero and now you're healing the hero And clearly you've
Speaker 1: talked about your board and everything. What is Healing the
Speaker 1: Hero now, is it a five oh one C three?
Speaker 1: Is it based in winter Haven? Do you have how
Speaker 1: what give me the structure of what this thing is now?
Speaker 1: So you see what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Once we started is we're we've been about two years now,
Speaker 2: and I mean when we stood up, it was fast, quick, fast,
Speaker 2: in a hurry.
Speaker 3: It blew my mind.
Speaker 2: But we we had the organizational structure very quickly. So
Speaker 2: Healing the Hero is a five oh one C three. Right,
Speaker 2: we're classified as a Christian ministry. Although it's not a
Speaker 2: requirement to come through. We get plenty of people that
Speaker 2: we get Jews that come through, Muslims, we get non believers.
Speaker 3: Just a we're about your model the world, not ours.
Speaker 3: We just want to heal everybody. So wherever you are, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: but you.
Speaker 1: Think as Christians we should help whoever you are, regardless
Speaker 1: there are.
Speaker 2: Some organizations that there is it's a diehard stop. It
Speaker 2: can't be that way when, especially when it comes to trauma,
Speaker 2: where you I find let's we'll meet you where you are.
Speaker 2: We'll meet you right where you are. Because a lot
Speaker 2: of times Jesus healed those that were believers, and then
Speaker 2: he also healed those that weren't believers that became believers.
Speaker 2: You know, it's about giving the time to, you know,
Speaker 2: get that relationship if they so choose to. So we
Speaker 2: have about thirty coaches right now that are trained. We're
Speaker 2: all over the US. There's no geographical boundary limitations. I
Speaker 2: can work with some. I've worked with people in Australia.
Speaker 2: I've worked with people in Europe.
Speaker 1: So if people do you do seminars or do people
Speaker 1: just hear about you and call up and say hey,
Speaker 1: I need help? How does it work?
Speaker 2: It's been a very grassroots and been very word of mouth.
Speaker 2: So we get a lot of people that'll come through
Speaker 2: us and be well, what's this going to cost. I'm like,
Speaker 2: it doesn't cost you anything. Oh come on, there's nothing
Speaker 2: that's free. So all right, you got me. Here's a catch.
Speaker 2: When you heal, send me three or four your buddies. Oh,
Speaker 2: I can do that, And that's how it happens.
Speaker 3: So that's it.
Speaker 1: Funded donors.
Speaker 2: I'm not a really good fundraiser, so when I finished
Speaker 2: the study, that's what I have to start doing. Because
Speaker 2: we've gotten like I'll give you an example. Two weeks ago,
Speaker 2: we had twenty five people come through in one week.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of people. There's a lot of people.
Speaker 2: And we got to make sure we have the structure
Speaker 2: in place. I need a full time staff, so I
Speaker 2: need a prefer national executive director. I need a professional
Speaker 2: case manager, and probably hire two or three coaches full time.
Speaker 3: Probably need a fundraiser, and probably need a fundraiser.
Speaker 2: So if you're an angel out there and you want
Speaker 2: to give to something where we can really show you
Speaker 2: what we do, we're always open to that.
Speaker 3: But our goal is to become irrelevant. We don't want
Speaker 3: we don't want to exist.
Speaker 1: Do you want to go to zero? Want to go
Speaker 1: to zero? Last thing we opened with our girlfriend May's
Speaker 1: who's under the table comfortably sleepy?
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 1: Funny. That's a support dog, but you consider yourself a
Speaker 1: support human. Explain that.
Speaker 2: So I tell people that I inherited May's. Fortunately, that's truthful.
Speaker 2: It was one of the veterans that I had I
Speaker 2: had been working with. His name is Jared Jared Hill.
Speaker 2: He was a Navy vet thirty three years old. He
Speaker 2: was a Navy CBE, so he was landlocked Iraqi war
Speaker 2: vet had dealt with a lot of physical pain and
Speaker 2: the VA did what they did good back then they
Speaker 2: got him addicted to opiates. So this guy struggled with
Speaker 2: the addiction part and trauma and we were having we
Speaker 2: were trying to get him out of the traumatic event
Speaker 2: that he was in because it's like I can, I
Speaker 2: can pull you out of a river, we can clean
Speaker 2: it up, you'll you'll catch your breath, but if you
Speaker 2: jump right back in the river, you're gonna go right
Speaker 2: back to being exhausted. And we couldn't get him out
Speaker 2: of the situation he was in. So I picked up
Speaker 2: May's at his funeral and she's been with me ever since.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and that's when I just tell people, I'm
Speaker 2: her service humans.
Speaker 3: So she travels with me everywhere I go. I'm her
Speaker 3: service human.
Speaker 2: It's and it's funny too, because if she gets around
Speaker 2: really loud noises, she'll start shaking. Well, she she will,
Speaker 2: and then I'll have to like comfort her and love
Speaker 2: on her and do the things that she would do.
Speaker 2: Because what a lot of people don't understand service dogs.
Speaker 2: But the impact is, you know when I talked about
Speaker 2: earlier about breaking the state, So what a service dog
Speaker 2: does is they're in tune with the trigger of the
Speaker 2: vet right when a veteran gets emotionally triggered or they're
Speaker 2: having a nightmare at night, they'll jump up on bed,
Speaker 2: on the bed, they'll.
Speaker 3: Start licking their face.
Speaker 2: They'll intervene with make them okay, make them okay, intervening
Speaker 2: physical contact, getting them away from the green Dodge into
Speaker 2: the White Ford, right, it gets breaks that state.
Speaker 3: And that's why they're so effective.
Speaker 2: And the sad part is when Jared killed himself, he
Speaker 2: locked her out of the room because he knew he
Speaker 2: wouldn't be able to follow through with it.
Speaker 1: Wow, So this is so you are Amaz's service human.
Speaker 2: I'm the service human, and she goes with me everywhere,
Speaker 2: and I just tell everybody this mission is no fail
Speaker 2: And the only faces I remember are the ones we
Speaker 2: couldn't save Dan.
Speaker 1: With all of the people that listen to this show
Speaker 1: every week, and it's thousands, there's absolutely zero points zero
Speaker 1: zero zero possibility that somebody hearing us today. It's not
Speaker 1: either themselves in a place that you found yourself, or
Speaker 1: does not have a friend, family member in that place.
Speaker 1: And if you are that person, please hear Dan's voice.
Speaker 1: If you are the family of that person, please hear
Speaker 1: Dan's voice. If they want to find how to get
Speaker 1: help from Healing the Hero, how to get help from you,
Speaker 1: and how to try this this this work. What do
Speaker 1: they do.
Speaker 2: So healingthero dot org is you got a blue button
Speaker 2: that says he'll hear. All they have to do is
Speaker 2: push that button, fill out the information there and usually
Speaker 2: within twenty minutes. Tammy, she's our case manager, well within
Speaker 2: twenty minutes they'll get a response from us. Because I
Speaker 2: get the email and Tammy gets an email. We respond
Speaker 2: very quickly. And then what Tammy will do is schedule
Speaker 2: a ten minute call to see how high your stress
Speaker 2: loads are and then place you with a right coach.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: If you're a police officer, we'll put you with a
Speaker 2: police officer. If you're a firefighter, will put you with
Speaker 2: a firefighter. If you're a marine, will put you with
Speaker 2: a marine. You know, whatever you're comfortable with. And Healing
Speaker 2: your Hero has been around for what two years too?
Speaker 2: And two years the first nonprofit was April of eighteen
Speaker 2: that I started at.
Speaker 3: This one was April twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: And you said about four thousand so far.
Speaker 3: Well that I have worked with personally organization.
Speaker 2: I'd see between both organizations, it's probably around eighteen nineteen thousand.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Some of that is also to the therapists that we trained.
Speaker 2: So we got some therapists up in Pittsburgh that I
Speaker 2: have a they're doing work. They're doing work. So I
Speaker 2: have one Vietnam vet, retired Philly cop. Awesome dude calls
Speaker 2: me up every six eight weeks to share a story
Speaker 2: and or he might need help as he's stuck on
Speaker 2: something and then it'll help him correct it. And he
Speaker 2: sees five or six a day. And he's been doing
Speaker 2: this for what four years now, So five or six
Speaker 2: a day for four years. Do the math, same thing
Speaker 2: with one of the other guys. So the therapist, it's a
Speaker 2: force multiplier, which is why I'm excited about once we
Speaker 2: get the research done and we can you know, because
Speaker 2: it's deeply rooted in evidence based practice. So basically we
Speaker 2: have six evidence based practices that are put together, and
Speaker 2: once the next randomized control trial is done, which is
Speaker 2: going to be San Diego State University with corrections officers
Speaker 2: out of Cook County Jail in Illinois, which is Chicago,
Speaker 2: hopefully that'll give us the solidification of an evidence based
Speaker 2: practice and then we can get the therapy world to
Speaker 2: really step in because technically it's their responsibility. But as
Speaker 2: Scott Man says, nobody else is coming, so we're doing it.
Speaker 1: One of the things we've learned through this through doing
Speaker 1: this show the last three years is there's just about
Speaker 1: nothing that replaces hope, and if you don't have hope,
Speaker 1: things are pretty ugly. It feels to me like healing
Speaker 1: the hero offers hope. So if you're listening and you
Speaker 1: need help, or if you're a family member of a
Speaker 1: highly traumaized person that needs help, healingthehro dot org. Yes, Sir,
Speaker 1: Dan Jarvis is working on some things that are saving lives.
Speaker 1: And one, thank you for the service too, thank you
Speaker 1: for sharing your story with us. Three, thank you for
Speaker 1: the work you're doing.
Speaker 3: And four.
Speaker 1: I hope as you model this out and continue to
Speaker 1: have sus the more and more of our country knows
Speaker 1: it so that you can go from twenty two to zero.
Speaker 3: My friend, I'm hoping we can take every suicide of zero.
Speaker 1: Not just FETZ. I love that. Dan. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3: Thanks for let me go, appreciate.
Speaker 1: You, and thank you for joining us this week. If
Speaker 1: Dan Jarvis has inspired you in general or better yet
Speaker 1: to take action by checking out Healing the Hero, sharing
Speaker 1: it with a friend and need donating to them, or
Speaker 1: something else entirely let me know I really do want
Speaker 1: to hear about it. You can write me anytime at
Speaker 1: Bill at normal folks dot us, and I promise you
Speaker 1: I'll respond. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with
Speaker 1: friends and on social, subscribe to the podcast, rate it,
Speaker 1: review it, Join the army at normal folks dot us.
Speaker 1: Join or start one of our local service clubs by
Speaker 1: our merch any and all of these things that will
Speaker 1: help us grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill
Speaker 1: Coordinator until next time.
Speaker 3: Do it.
Speaker 1: You can