Speaker 1: This is the Anxiety Bites podcast and I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jen Kirkman. Hi, I'm Jen Kirkman. Welcome to another episode
Speaker 1: of Anxiety Bites. My guest today is Jason Kander, who
Speaker 1: will be telling us about his battle with PTSD that
Speaker 1: he eventually did get helpful, very much so in the
Speaker 1: public eye. But I will say that you do not
Speaker 1: need to have experienced PTSD. You do not need to
Speaker 1: be a war veteran in order to relate to this episode.
Speaker 1: One of the bigger takeaways from this episode, one of
Speaker 1: the overall themes of not only this episode, but um
Speaker 1: Jason's message is that anybody with any kind of anxiety disorder, depression,
Speaker 1: anxiety moment in your life. Stress can relate two not
Speaker 1: fully being aware what the symptoms are, thinking that it'll
Speaker 1: just go away, and thinking that you have to have
Speaker 1: something really bad in order for it to wererant getting
Speaker 1: any help. You know, you think, well, this person hasn't
Speaker 1: much worse than me. They've had a harder life than me,
Speaker 1: So who am I to think that I need to
Speaker 1: get help? That's a luxury. That none of that is true,
Speaker 1: and that the longer we wait to get help with
Speaker 1: whatever we need help with the symptoms start to morphin change.
Speaker 1: We almost convince ourselves that we're getting better even though
Speaker 1: we're getting worse. But we're getting worse in different ways.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's not the thing I thought I had.
Speaker 1: It's so much easier to get help sooner now. In
Speaker 1: terms of having PTSD, you don't need to have been
Speaker 1: in hand to hand combat if you were, uh, you know, deployed,
Speaker 1: if you served in the military. As Jason will tell
Speaker 1: us in his story, it was the high stress and
Speaker 1: life or death undercurrent that ran under every intelligence meeting
Speaker 1: he had during his four month deployment in Afghanistan. You know,
Speaker 1: a big through line in Jason's book that just came
Speaker 1: out is that feeling of like all you know is
Speaker 1: he self deprecatingly says, I just went to meetings for
Speaker 1: four months in Afghanistan? How could I have PTSD? Because
Speaker 1: he didn't really understand what it was, and he didn't
Speaker 1: fully understand that. When you train to serve in the military,
Speaker 1: your brain is trained to stay alive. But when you
Speaker 1: leave the service and it's time to re orient back
Speaker 1: into civilian life, there's not a lot of help to
Speaker 1: help people's brains get out of that survival mode and
Speaker 1: it still lives in our body, and so there are
Speaker 1: ways in which you know Jason was still living that
Speaker 1: was not conducive to having a wife and kids. You know,
Speaker 1: to be constantly on high alert, thinking that your kids
Speaker 1: shouldn't be in front of the window, and we can't
Speaker 1: have our back facing the door because someone could come in.
Speaker 1: And if we're out of stoplight, we got to just
Speaker 1: blow through it because you know our car could get
Speaker 1: blown up. You know, to really feel in your body
Speaker 1: that those things could be happening and be unable to
Speaker 1: stop responding in that way in your day to day
Speaker 1: life can be very, very disruptive, to say nothing of
Speaker 1: the nightmares and night terrors and sleep paralysis and insomnia,
Speaker 1: and especially when he was still serving as a politician,
Speaker 1: you have to take red eye flights to save time,
Speaker 1: but his body was still in a different mode and
Speaker 1: he couldn't fall asleep in front of strangers, and so
Speaker 1: there'd be no sleep on the red eye flights. You see,
Speaker 1: how these don't sound like your typical symptoms that we
Speaker 1: see in movies where somebody is having a literal flashback,
Speaker 1: where the wars flashing before their eyes is there, you know,
Speaker 1: walking down the street talking to themselves. That is something
Speaker 1: that can happen. But there's also just the very I
Speaker 1: hate to say, Monday, but the the irregular symptoms of
Speaker 1: PTSD that are absolutely crippling, destructive to your life, and
Speaker 1: as it did with Jason, lead to such depression that
Speaker 1: it led to suicidal ideation and that's when he decided
Speaker 1: to get help. But you don't have to wait until
Speaker 1: it gets to so I will let Jason tell his
Speaker 1: own story. But um, just to let you know what's
Speaker 1: going on with Jason right now. He is currently out
Speaker 1: promoting his new memoir that just came out Invisible Storm,
Speaker 1: a soldiers Memoir of politics and PTSD, and all of
Speaker 1: his personal royalties are going to fight veteran suicide and
Speaker 1: veteran homelessness at vc P headquarters, which is the Veterans
Speaker 1: Community Project, which is a nonprofit that serves homeless and
Speaker 1: at risk veterans with tiny homes, wrap around support services,
Speaker 1: and emergency assistance. So a little more about Jason before
Speaker 1: we get into chatting with him. Jason and was the
Speaker 1: member of the Missouri House of Representatives in the forty
Speaker 1: four district from two thousand nine He was also the
Speaker 1: thirty ninth Secretary of State of Missouri from seventeen when
Speaker 1: he left public life to get help for his PTSD.
Speaker 1: He was in the middle of launching a bid to
Speaker 1: run for mayor of Kansas City, and as he says
Speaker 1: in his Twitter bio, he sort of ran for president UM.
Speaker 1: He was exploring a presidential run in twenty twenty. He
Speaker 1: even had a ninety minute meeting with Barack Obama, who
Speaker 1: called him a Democratic star in the future of the party.
Speaker 1: But again he needed to get help first. So these
Speaker 1: days UM Jason has had a bit of a career change.
Speaker 1: So right now Jason is working full time with this
Speaker 1: nonprofit organization which he is the president of UM, the
Speaker 1: Veterans Community Project. And I'm also always very interested in
Speaker 1: people who have a passion for something that helps others
Speaker 1: and they make a complete life change. I always think
Speaker 1: that's very inspiring. You know, we can change gears at
Speaker 1: any time, you know, how do we identify ourselves? UM,
Speaker 1: I just find that all very inspiring. So anyway, this
Speaker 1: is also a great episode if you just want to hear,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe what it's like to sit in in
Speaker 1: a intelligence meeting in Afghanistan during the height of a war,
Speaker 1: when you don't know if the politician you're meeting with
Speaker 1: is secretly corrupt, if they're meeting with you because they
Speaker 1: want to kill you. And it's it's his book is
Speaker 1: so thrilling. I do blame him for this one night
Speaker 1: of insomnia I had because I couldn't put the book down,
Speaker 1: and I think I read it until three in the morning,
Speaker 1: even though UM, I had to get up at seven
Speaker 1: in the morning the next day. But that's okay, you
Speaker 1: know what, I will blame myself. So uh, last link, UM,
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to Jason's podcast, it's called
Speaker 1: Majority fifty four. I'll put the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: I'll put the link in the show notes to that
Speaker 1: to his book and UM as well to the Veterans
Speaker 1: Community Project. And I think that's it. Just enjoy our conversation.
Speaker 1: And again, UM, you don't need PTSD to enjoy it,
Speaker 1: and you don't need to be a Democrat to enjoy it.
Speaker 1: So here we go my talk with Jason Candor. Jason Candor,
Speaker 1: I am honored and delighted that you are taking the
Speaker 1: time to do my podcast on your book tour. Thank
Speaker 1: you I'm honored and delighted. Uh in return, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. Yeah, of course your book, Invisible Stormy Soldiers,
Speaker 1: Memoir of Politics and PTSD. I'm holding it up even
Speaker 1: though it's not a video interview, is a page or
Speaker 1: in our It is compelling, It's got all the emotions
Speaker 1: in it. But really, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I know it's about your journey with PTSD, but besides that,
Speaker 1: it is a page turner. I did not sleep one night.
Speaker 1: I just stayed up as late as I could. I
Speaker 1: gamed out. Okay, what's the least amount of sleep I
Speaker 1: can get in function tomorrow because I need to keep reading. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's your fault because it wasn't functioning that well
Speaker 1: the next day. Sorry, but also very pleased to hear that.
Speaker 1: Before we get into your story, I only have one
Speaker 1: critique of your book, and I just want to get
Speaker 1: it out of the way. Is you mentioned that you're
Speaker 1: really good at taking care of blisters and then you
Speaker 1: never tell us how And I'm a I'm living in
Speaker 1: New York, I'm walking, my feet are torn up. Can
Speaker 1: you give us the secret? As a soldier, how do
Speaker 1: we deal with blisters on our feet? And then we'll
Speaker 1: move into the serious stuff. Absolutely. Yeah, God, I've lost
Speaker 1: the name. What's the stuff called mole skin? You know? Um,
Speaker 1: the stuff you can so you can buy it like
Speaker 1: any pharmacy pretty much. It's just a little how do
Speaker 1: you describe it? It's it's like this little foam, uh
Speaker 1: that is that's soft and a little furry. And what
Speaker 1: you do and this is the key. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people know about the mole skin thing, but what
Speaker 1: I learned in the army is the donut trick. So
Speaker 1: what you do is, let's say, you know, whatever, the
Speaker 1: size of the blister is. The mistake most people make
Speaker 1: is they'll put the mole skin over the blister, which
Speaker 1: means the adhesive is touching the blister. That's not what
Speaker 1: you do. What you do is is you cut a
Speaker 1: big donut, okay, a big donut that's big enough to
Speaker 1: go around the blister, and then you save the donut
Speaker 1: hole and so you you put the adhesive of the
Speaker 1: doughnut onto your foot to surround the blister. And then
Speaker 1: you take like a bandage and you're gonna put a
Speaker 1: bandage around that part of your foot to hold it
Speaker 1: all in place. But you take the donut hole and
Speaker 1: you stick that to the bandage, so that what's happening
Speaker 1: is that furry soft material is UH is holding the
Speaker 1: lister in place to keep it from popping UH, instead
Speaker 1: of having an adhesive on the blister. And then what
Speaker 1: you want to do is you want to change your
Speaker 1: socks frequently, because the blisters require two things to exist,
Speaker 1: and they are friction and moisture. And so if you
Speaker 1: can avoid friction and moisture, you can avoid blisters. But
Speaker 1: I haven't given that explanation in a while. So I'm
Speaker 1: so excited I'm going to be walking around like I'm
Speaker 1: in combat when I'm really just walking, um, five to
Speaker 1: ten miles a day. Thank you just needed good pair
Speaker 1: of scissors and some mole skin and maybe some medical
Speaker 1: tape in your set. So you were running for mayor
Speaker 1: of Kansas City. I remember you dropping out saying you're
Speaker 1: going to get help for PTSD, and I remember that
Speaker 1: really hitting me and thinking that this is so great. Yeah. So, UM.
Speaker 1: The device I used in the book is I kind
Speaker 1: of start at the middle of the story and then
Speaker 1: take you back to the beginning, and then in the
Speaker 1: middle of the book you get back to the middle
Speaker 1: of the story. And the middle of the story really
Speaker 1: is my first day at the v A. And so
Speaker 1: I walk in, and you know, to give a little
Speaker 1: context to this, what predates the months before this is first,
Speaker 1: I'm getting ready to run for president, and I know
Speaker 1: something is wrong with me, but I'm not willing to
Speaker 1: admit to myself that it's PTSD. And so this big,
Speaker 1: you know, brilliant solution, brilliant in quotes that I come
Speaker 1: up with is I'm gonna go home run for mayor
Speaker 1: because I think, well, you know, being in charge of
Speaker 1: my hometown, that's gonna fill me up and make me
Speaker 1: feel good. But then the other promise I made to
Speaker 1: myself was I'm gonna go to the v A. Well,
Speaker 1: I kept half the promise. I started running from Ayor
Speaker 1: was going great. Uh, you know, to be fair, if
Speaker 1: you're going to run for president, you decided to run
Speaker 1: from Ayir like you should be the front runner or
Speaker 1: what the hell were you doing? Um? All right, and
Speaker 1: but then the part about going to the v A,
Speaker 1: I didn't keep that promise to myself. And then things
Speaker 1: just get worse and worse and worse, and now I'm
Speaker 1: having suicidal thoughts, and it's like, all right, it's time
Speaker 1: to go to the v A. So I go to
Speaker 1: the v A and at first, like, I'm just sort
Speaker 1: of mortified at the fact that everybody's recognizing me, because
Speaker 1: you know, I run a lot of tv ads in Missouri,
Speaker 1: in Kansas City, and so I was very recognizable, which
Speaker 1: usually was great. Uh, not so much when you look
Speaker 1: like shit and you've shown up because you're suicidal and
Speaker 1: you're at the b A. And pretty quickly I end
Speaker 1: up in the emergency suicide hold at the v A
Speaker 1: emergency department. And all along the way people are being
Speaker 1: very subtle and nice about it, but I can tell
Speaker 1: by the double takes, like, also, these folks are like,
Speaker 1: that's Jason Candor. And now I'm in like four times
Speaker 1: two big scrubs that they've given me because they've taken away,
Speaker 1: you know, all of my belongings, my clothes, everything. And
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and waiting for this psych residant to
Speaker 1: come in and see me. And he comes in and
Speaker 1: I at first, I'm like relieved that this dude is
Speaker 1: from out of town and has no idea who I am.
Speaker 1: And we talked for like a half hour and I
Speaker 1: he's the first person that I really other than my wife,
Speaker 1: like told all of the problems I've been having. You know,
Speaker 1: that I had gone eleven years without a good night's sleep,
Speaker 1: that I had these terrible night terrors, and that I
Speaker 1: was paranoid by danger to my family and myself all
Speaker 1: the time, that I felt angry and shame and self
Speaker 1: loathing and all these things, and uh, and that I
Speaker 1: had been over the last several months very depressed and
Speaker 1: was now having these suicidal thoughts. And so he talks
Speaker 1: to me for about a half hour, and eventually, I
Speaker 1: think because I said that I had to go pick
Speaker 1: up my son at four thirty, he, I think he
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, future plans, He's not gonna kill himself today,
Speaker 1: so he's gonna let me go. And he asked me,
Speaker 1: he says, by the way, do you have like a
Speaker 1: particularly stressful job or something. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm in politics, and he's like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: So I explained, you know, my background, and then he's like,
Speaker 1: has it been like particularly stressful lately? And I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was gonna run for president, and then
Speaker 1: I decided to run for mayor. Uh, and then you know,
Speaker 1: now I'm just going to call that off tomorrow because
Speaker 1: I want to get help. And he's like, wait, president
Speaker 1: of what. And keep in mind, like I'm a thirty
Speaker 1: seven year old dude in the suicide psychold and clothes
Speaker 1: that don't fit because they just given to me. And
Speaker 1: I'm like sitting there wrapping my arms around my my
Speaker 1: knees and and I'm like, well of the United States,
Speaker 1: and which felt silly, and he's and he's like, what
Speaker 1: does that mean? And I'm like, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: was going to Iowa and New Hampshire a lot that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And he's just like, okay, who told you?
Speaker 1: He goes who told you could run for president of
Speaker 1: the United States? And now I've gone from like relieve
Speaker 1: that this guy didn't recognize me to like irritated that
Speaker 1: he doesn't believe me. And so I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what to tell you. Man. I spent an hour
Speaker 1: and a half just me and Obama in his office,
Speaker 1: and he seemed to think it was a pretty good idea.
Speaker 1: And he pauses for a second, thanks about it, and
Speaker 1: then he's like, so how often would you say you
Speaker 1: hear voices and uh, yeah, so that was my first
Speaker 1: day at the v A. We'll be right back. Well,
Speaker 1: let's start with, so you deployed to Afghanistan. Um, tell
Speaker 1: us where you are, how longer they are for and
Speaker 1: then I'll ask you a bunch of questions about your
Speaker 1: you know, your work there and what your thought process
Speaker 1: had to be as a soldier. Sure. Um. So part
Speaker 1: of the reason that it took me so long to
Speaker 1: admit that my experience could be traumatic is that I
Speaker 1: my tour was only four months and that bothered me
Speaker 1: for years, to the point where I actually tried to
Speaker 1: go back and was denied. Um. And you know, because
Speaker 1: I have a lot of friends who, you know, they
Speaker 1: did multiple tours of like nine months at a time
Speaker 1: or more, and there were people who were there when
Speaker 1: I got there, who were still there when I left,
Speaker 1: and it just that really bothered me, and it made
Speaker 1: me tell myself this fiction that oh, well, I can't
Speaker 1: have PTSD from a four month tour. Um. But I
Speaker 1: was based out of Cobble. I was an Army intelligence
Speaker 1: officer and my job, the simplest way to put it,
Speaker 1: was that it was my job to figure out which
Speaker 1: bad guys were pretending to be good guys within the
Speaker 1: Afghan government, and in order to do that, I had
Speaker 1: to go meet those guys. Uh. And so that's what
Speaker 1: I did for for four months, oh six to oh seven,
Speaker 1: like fall to the to the spring in the early spring,
Speaker 1: early winter, whatever you call it. Yeah. And and it's
Speaker 1: so funny because in the book you self deprecate and
Speaker 1: joke that, you know, when you were before you had
Speaker 1: your recovery. You're like, I just went to meetings for
Speaker 1: four months, Why do I have PTSD? And it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you say that, but then these stories you have, I mean,
Speaker 1: my heart was racing reading and it was part of me.
Speaker 1: This is where I think it's interesting for those out
Speaker 1: there who don't have PTSD, have been in a war zone.
Speaker 1: A lot of your um symptoms are very similar to
Speaker 1: people with you know, just generalized anxiety or a d
Speaker 1: h D or panic disorder. But what I found exciting
Speaker 1: as someone with a d h D who needs a
Speaker 1: lot of dopamine and my brain is, uh, it needs
Speaker 1: a lot of regulation, it needs a lot of structure.
Speaker 1: I understand completely, except for the carrying a gun and
Speaker 1: shooting a part, which I know I'd be bad at
Speaker 1: I understand completely why people want to enter the military.
Speaker 1: There are rules. You keep it simple. Um, as you
Speaker 1: learned once you did get therapy, that your brain is
Speaker 1: trained to survive, so you have a few thoughts and
Speaker 1: they're meant to be repetitive so you can keep yourself safe.
Speaker 1: And that really appealed to me. I thought, in another world,
Speaker 1: I could, I could really thrive in this environment. Because
Speaker 1: I liked your descriptions of being in the meetings. I
Speaker 1: mean I I felt, um, wow, that seems in a
Speaker 1: weird way. And this sounds sucked up, but you probably
Speaker 1: get it calming because you're in a meeting and you
Speaker 1: know what you have to do. So explain to someone
Speaker 1: why this meeting is nothing like Larry the accountants meeting
Speaker 1: that he's going to in five minutes after he's done
Speaker 1: listening to this episode. What what goes on? Like? Tell
Speaker 1: us the story? Um, and this is your most you know,
Speaker 1: this is a story that you told many times. You
Speaker 1: told it in the book and then later we'll discuss
Speaker 1: that you had to tell it again in therapy for
Speaker 1: a certain reason. But what is your big story about
Speaker 1: the meeting you went to where you had to make
Speaker 1: a decision about whether to take a weapon. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: first for context to this, some of what you were
Speaker 1: saying I want to speak to because like where you're saying,
Speaker 1: you know that you relate to the sort of predictability
Speaker 1: of it, and and you know of the work. But
Speaker 1: you said, like, you know, except for the part of
Speaker 1: carrying again and firing it, they give you lessons like
Speaker 1: you would do fine, Like they teach you all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And a couple of things I wanted to do with
Speaker 1: the book that you sort of alluded to. One it's
Speaker 1: a soldier's memoir, but like the books about PTSD and
Speaker 1: the politics part is that's what I did with most
Speaker 1: of my career. So what I didn't want to do
Speaker 1: was write a book that was like for fifty five
Speaker 1: year old men who read combat books, which is why
Speaker 1: there's one chapter about Afghanistan and then the rest is
Speaker 1: just about dealing with all of it. And so but
Speaker 1: the other thing I think I had to do with
Speaker 1: from what you said it makes me feel good that
Speaker 1: I accomplished it is I also understand that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who deal with mental health challenges who
Speaker 1: I want to read this book, who don't read military
Speaker 1: books and aren't interested in the military, and so I
Speaker 1: knew that I had to relate in the chapter before
Speaker 1: the Afghanistan chapter why the hell I joined the military
Speaker 1: and why I liked it so much, so that people
Speaker 1: could actually relate to my story. And so I'm glad
Speaker 1: to hear that that got across. Um. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: incident that you're talking about is h I had recruited
Speaker 1: as a as a really helpful contact to me in
Speaker 1: my intelligence collection work, the Attorney General of Afghanistan, a
Speaker 1: guy named sab It, and I really liked working with
Speaker 1: Sabbat for a couple of reasons. Were really a couple
Speaker 1: of characteristics of him. One, he spoke like perfect English,
Speaker 1: which made it really easy. And too, he had no
Speaker 1: discernible incentive to help anyone kidnap and kill me, which
Speaker 1: was like really high on the list of ways to
Speaker 1: become my friend when I was there. And and so
Speaker 1: I would have these regular meetings with him where he
Speaker 1: would tell me all about his anti corruption work in
Speaker 1: the Afghan government. It was really valuable, and I'd take
Speaker 1: it back and I'd write it up. And so what
Speaker 1: started happening was other people in the intelligence community, uh
Speaker 1: got wind of this because they'd read my reports and
Speaker 1: they had questions that they wanted to ask sab It,
Speaker 1: So they would ask to tag along to these meetings.
Speaker 1: And sab It, you know, he's a politician, he as
Speaker 1: a performer. He liked having an audience, so I could
Speaker 1: bring a few people with me. And on this one occasion, uh,
Speaker 1: these guys from the d i A, the Defense Intelligence Agency,
Speaker 1: said Hey, can we come along with you on on
Speaker 1: a SABBIT meeting? And I was like sure, And you know,
Speaker 1: I was a green second lieutenant that's the first officer rank,
Speaker 1: like just brand new guy, and I'm I'm still have
Speaker 1: a little bit of imposter syndrome about the fact that
Speaker 1: I'm in this, you know, really who a high speed job.
Speaker 1: That's usually for somebody with a lot more experience and
Speaker 1: rank than me. So I see these guys from a
Speaker 1: three letter agency and I'm feeling like when these guys
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, like, I'm I don't want to
Speaker 1: look like a fool or on these fellas. So we
Speaker 1: pull up to the usual compound where I go to
Speaker 1: to meet sab It, and these three like Goon come
Speaker 1: out with a K forty seven at the low already
Speaker 1: and they're in border police uniforms, which was weird because
Speaker 1: Sabad had his own security detail and it wasn't border police.
Speaker 1: And they start barking at us, and they tell us
Speaker 1: to leave our weapons in the vehicle. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: They're like, leave your body armor and your weapons in
Speaker 1: the vehicle. And I would regularly leave my body armor
Speaker 1: in the vehicle because you know, intelligence work is about
Speaker 1: getting people to trust you, and if you dress like
Speaker 1: you think, they're going to detonate themselves, like, it's pretty
Speaker 1: hard to get them to answer honestly to your questions.
Speaker 1: So I was like, cool, I'll leave my body armor.
Speaker 1: But I'm thinking, okay, these d I A guys may
Speaker 1: think that I'm this rookie green no nothing, but I
Speaker 1: ain't leaving my I'm not leaving my pistol in this vehicle, right,
Speaker 1: So I take my pistol and I stick it into
Speaker 1: the waistband of my pants and pull my sweater over,
Speaker 1: you know, And I'm like, all right, so I'm sure
Speaker 1: we're all doing that. Let's let's roll in here. And
Speaker 1: so we go in and we sit down and I'm
Speaker 1: talking to sab It and then it becomes clear, like
Speaker 1: what this meeting actually was because then he this guy
Speaker 1: comes in. Who. As soon as this guy comes in,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I know with this guy is? Who is
Speaker 1: this guy? I'm trying to place him. And then sab
Speaker 1: It says, Jason, this is my dear friend, Hadj's a here.
Speaker 1: So General Hadj's here at that time was a general
Speaker 1: in the Border Police. He was super corrupt. He had
Speaker 1: been working with the Taliban and and you know, possibly
Speaker 1: other terrorist groups, and he was a narco trafficker from
Speaker 1: eastern Afghanistan. And I'm like, what the hell is happening, right,
Speaker 1: because I had seen sab It as like somebody I
Speaker 1: could trust, and so we sit down and suddenly it's
Speaker 1: Ha's here's meeting. And the whole time these three So
Speaker 1: there were six border police fellows, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: there three stood right behind Hog's here, facing us with
Speaker 1: their a K forty seven of lit already and then
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, okay, I think there's three more between
Speaker 1: here and the vehicle. So that was the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff I was doing on a regular basis. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's my job, like every time I go to one
Speaker 1: of these meetings, you know exactly where the exits are
Speaker 1: you know how many potential bad guys there are between
Speaker 1: you and your vehicle. You're thinking about things like, all right,
Speaker 1: if it goes south, which guy do I shoot? Which
Speaker 1: exit are we taking? Do I cover the exit and go?
Speaker 1: You know that that's what you're thinking. And um, my
Speaker 1: back shouldn't be to the door. Let me know what
Speaker 1: this window? I mean all of that, right you you
Speaker 1: have to game out instantly. Yeah, you're your your mind
Speaker 1: and your body are fully utilized the whole time. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's like whatever level of alertness and
Speaker 1: readiness people have felt in a job interview, just take
Speaker 1: that times like a thousand. Actually, I just say, imagine
Speaker 1: you enter a job interview and you're like I might
Speaker 1: get the job where they might kill me. You know,
Speaker 1: like that's that's what it is. Um. And so I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there and how's here? Pretty quickly launches into like
Speaker 1: this tirade. He's like very angry, and I knew that
Speaker 1: he knew that we were the people investigating him, right,
Speaker 1: and that this meeting was not by chance, and that
Speaker 1: it was sort of arranged. And over about forty five minutes,
Speaker 1: you know, we're all and I can see the guys
Speaker 1: looking at me. We're all trying to figure out like, okay,
Speaker 1: is he gonna take us? Is that the plan? Is
Speaker 1: he trying to intimidate us? What's happening? And he's getting
Speaker 1: more and more animated and upset talking about all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and uh, and I'm thinking, and I know these guys
Speaker 1: are thinking like, what the hell did this this lieutenant
Speaker 1: get us into here? And I at some point I realized, okay,
Speaker 1: we might have to shoot first, like you know, these
Speaker 1: guys have the drop on us. We just have pistols,
Speaker 1: and and so I'm thinking two things. I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: if we have to shoot first, okay, which guy do
Speaker 1: I take? I take this guy. But I'm also thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: one of these guys may decide. One of the guys
Speaker 1: with me. He may decided to shoot first. So I
Speaker 1: gotta be ready to just pull my pistol and go.
Speaker 1: And so I start, he gets more animated. I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess it's gonna be that guy. I'm envisioning shooting him.
Speaker 1: For a second, I think, am I allowed to kill
Speaker 1: these guys if they don't shoot us? For and then
Speaker 1: I thought that a't gonna matter. If this goes down,
Speaker 1: and then at some point it becomes clear that what
Speaker 1: is here really wanted uh was he was trying to
Speaker 1: get us to eliminate the narco trafficking competition uh in
Speaker 1: the province where he's from. And so he was actually
Speaker 1: there to like try and coerce us and intimidate us
Speaker 1: and rat out a bunch of other narco traffickers out
Speaker 1: where he was. So then we figured this out sort of.
Speaker 1: We can all tell that this is what we've all
Speaker 1: usually figured out, So we just start taking like a
Speaker 1: ton of notes, like, oh, we're super interested in this information.
Speaker 1: Is if we didn't have all of it already, Oh interesting,
Speaker 1: okay yeah, And so you at that moment you can
Speaker 1: all sort of calm down and be like, okay, this
Speaker 1: we're not being killed. Yeah, It's like it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure we're getting out of here, right, So
Speaker 1: we do that. The meeting ends, We walk out, and
Speaker 1: I get We get to the vehicle and I and
Speaker 1: I opened the door and I see the other guys
Speaker 1: the d I A guys reach in and pull out
Speaker 1: their pistols, and I realized I was the only one
Speaker 1: of us who was armed in the meeting and I
Speaker 1: almost pulled out my pistol and got us all killed,
Speaker 1: and uh, And at first I just got really nauseous
Speaker 1: and I wanted a puke, and then I spent the
Speaker 1: rest of the ride back to the base just super piste,
Speaker 1: because like, you don't go anywhere in Afghanistan unarmed if
Speaker 1: you're an American soldier. And I just remember going from uh,
Speaker 1: you know, worry these guys would think I was too green,
Speaker 1: to super upset that these guys put me in danger
Speaker 1: and thinking that they were a bunch of fools. Um,
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was That's one of the one of
Speaker 1: the events in the book that I talked about. And
Speaker 1: I think it's so clearly illustrates like for me, someone
Speaker 1: with you know, anxiety or I used to be really
Speaker 1: bad fear of flying. So that intensity or feeling I
Speaker 1: used to feel for no reason on an airplane except
Speaker 1: it wasn't focused, so it would go off the rails.
Speaker 1: And so I can imagine having that kind of body
Speaker 1: intensity and then focus all at once. I imagine there's
Speaker 1: no time to um come down from that. And I
Speaker 1: don't mean I mean obviously you're going to have moments
Speaker 1: that aren't stressful like that, But it's not like you're
Speaker 1: doing a practice very mindfully to um complete the stress
Speaker 1: cycle as they call it, you know, like it, right,
Speaker 1: And I don't think you should be doing that war
Speaker 1: zone like anoun's time to decompress spellas you know, you
Speaker 1: don't want to not be Yeah, that's from when you
Speaker 1: come home. But they didn't give me those tools when
Speaker 1: I came home either, And and that that's you know,
Speaker 1: the way. And I talked about this a little in
Speaker 1: the book, but there's an analogy that I've stumbled on
Speaker 1: lately for it. Um. I'm not really a golfer, but
Speaker 1: I think the analogy works. You don't even know much
Speaker 1: about golf to know that. Like, you know, there's all
Speaker 1: these clubs in the bag, and a good golfer us
Speaker 1: as different clubs for different situations, right, And that's kind
Speaker 1: of what our emotions are like in everyday life, right,
Speaker 1: Like we have nuanced emotions, we have empathy, we have
Speaker 1: you know, sadness, we have all these things. When you're
Speaker 1: in a combat zone and you're regularly in you know,
Speaker 1: like on a pretty much daily basis, in a situation
Speaker 1: where you're like, okay, where are the doors what happens
Speaker 1: if this guy pulls a gun, what happens if there's
Speaker 1: somebody coming from this door behind me? All that stuff
Speaker 1: you really only need like four clubs in your bag, right,
Speaker 1: It's like the emotions necessary to prepare yourself to take
Speaker 1: a life, which is like a low level simmering anger
Speaker 1: sort of focus. There's boredom because sometimes you're just sitting around,
Speaker 1: you're inside the wire and you're like playing cards or whatever.
Speaker 1: There's you're tired, and there's like you're homesick. And then
Speaker 1: I'd say five because sometimes there's like you know, gallows humor,
Speaker 1: you're just laughing your ass off. Then you get home
Speaker 1: and like, you know, you've stopped using any of the
Speaker 1: other clubs for a long time. You don't remember how
Speaker 1: to swing them, and they may not even be in
Speaker 1: your bag anymore. And now you're supposed to like go
Speaker 1: back and fill your bag with these other clubs and
Speaker 1: start using them. But your brain is operating in a
Speaker 1: place where it's like, yeah, if we use these other clubs,
Speaker 1: we might die. That's what we learned, So don't use
Speaker 1: the other clubs. And so therapy for me was just
Speaker 1: like learning how to reuse those clubs and believe that
Speaker 1: it was okay to use those clubs and that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't get me killed. Anxiety Bites will be right back
Speaker 1: after a quick little message from one of our sponsors.
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to go backwards because I think
Speaker 1: people need to know, like what the big recovery ah
Speaker 1: ha was, so that it will make sense when you're
Speaker 1: talking about it. I do want to ask one non
Speaker 1: mental health question, and I really don't mean this to
Speaker 1: be funny. If you had pulled out a gun, would
Speaker 1: your pistol do anything against a K forty seven? I
Speaker 1: mean we were pretty close range. We were like six
Speaker 1: ft from each other, so I acted fast enough you
Speaker 1: might yeah, that was the idea. The idea was, well,
Speaker 1: I don't think it would have gone well. I'm glad
Speaker 1: I didn't do, especially since I was the only one.
Speaker 1: But the thought was at the time, what I remember
Speaker 1: envisioning and thinking was, um, I can probably get two
Speaker 1: of these guys before they realize what's happening, because we're
Speaker 1: just sitting there having tea and these guys are waiting.
Speaker 1: In my mind, what I thought was potentially happening was
Speaker 1: there waiting for how she's here to turn around and
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, kill these guys, and until that happens,
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily so in my mind, I'm thinking I
Speaker 1: can probably put two in the chest in one in
Speaker 1: the head on two of these guys before the and
Speaker 1: the third guy can't do anything. But I wasn't sure.
Speaker 1: But you can have been kind of a suicide mission
Speaker 1: in a way if you did that, Like, did you
Speaker 1: think it was unlikely that all of us would have
Speaker 1: got out of there? Okay? But it was one of
Speaker 1: those things where it's like, I'm not gonna let it
Speaker 1: wasn't like I should kill these guys. It was like,
Speaker 1: if I'm getting closer and closer to thinking these guys
Speaker 1: may be about to kill us, and if that's going
Speaker 1: to happen, the only chance we have is we have
Speaker 1: to we have to fire first. I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the things you learned in combat training is this concept
Speaker 1: of violence of action and that you know and an
Speaker 1: element of surprise, right and so that you know, a
Speaker 1: lesser armed force, we're kind of seeing it in Ukraine
Speaker 1: on a very large scale right now. A lesser armed
Speaker 1: force can have a chance when they have violence of action,
Speaker 1: meaning they're coming into this like we are here to
Speaker 1: fight and maybe take somebody by surprise. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, I watched I'm watching you know,
Speaker 1: shows like Better Call Saul and something, and I see
Speaker 1: people with a knife or a pistol and they're fighting
Speaker 1: gangs with forty seven then they always win, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: that can happen. But I that's that makes sense, that
Speaker 1: it's the violence of action like that actually can you
Speaker 1: never know? Could? Yeah, it's one of those things like
Speaker 1: if you remember being a kid, and like this is
Speaker 1: a very simplistic analogy, but when you were a kid
Speaker 1: and you were like wrestling with your friends or whatever,
Speaker 1: if one of you was more serious and more aggressive
Speaker 1: about wrestling, even if you're undersized, like you had a chance.
Speaker 1: And it was sort of like if one if if
Speaker 1: somebody is in a fight and they know they're in
Speaker 1: the fight before the other person knows they're in a fight,
Speaker 1: even if you're sort of outgun, you got a chance. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like running before the thing goes off,
Speaker 1: you know, um in a race. Um a thing I've
Speaker 1: never done. But okay, so I just wanted to know
Speaker 1: I listened, but to anyone listening out there. I mean
Speaker 1: I referenced TV shows, but you're not just I mean
Speaker 1: you're dealing with like three kinds of bad guys all
Speaker 1: at once. You're dealing with a guy who's corrupt in
Speaker 1: his government, um actively at war with your country. I mean,
Speaker 1: sort of not like everyone and not that that's what
Speaker 1: I've been saying, Okay, and then and you don't know
Speaker 1: who's like sympathetically is not. And then the whole drug running.
Speaker 1: I think it's heroin, right, uh So, I mean that's
Speaker 1: a lot, and I know that it's not a competition
Speaker 1: or a contest, but I do think police correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong that at some point your your therapist
Speaker 1: had explained to you at the v A that this
Speaker 1: notion that only people who were in combat someone's shooting
Speaker 1: at me, I'm shooting at them, were in the war,
Speaker 1: were over the hill, you know what people imagine war
Speaker 1: to be. That is not always likely to have a
Speaker 1: PTSD response, because it's almost expected like you were doing
Speaker 1: something a little extraordinary in that sense that you were
Speaker 1: kind of try in your neural pathways to live very
Speaker 1: differently than than hand to hand combat. Right, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: you're really hitting on one of the big themes of
Speaker 1: the book, which is me learning that I couldn't rank
Speaker 1: my trauma out of existence because like when I landed
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan and when I was training to go there
Speaker 1: and everything, you know, I was drawing on two things
Speaker 1: as to what my idea of combat was. Right One,
Speaker 1: all the movies I watched grown up that we've all seen, Like,
Speaker 1: to me, combat was there's bullets whizzing by your ear
Speaker 1: and cover me while I move and boom and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. That was, you know, to me, that was combat.
Speaker 1: Nothing else was combat. And minutes of saving Private Ryan
Speaker 1: That's exactly exactly if if I wasn't storm enormandy, you know,
Speaker 1: then like I wouldn't have considered myself in combat. And
Speaker 1: then too uh, you know, the combat training I had
Speaker 1: had had been all what we would refer to as kinetic,
Speaker 1: like you know, people shooting at each other. Right, And
Speaker 1: then I go there and I spend these four months,
Speaker 1: and I go to meetings and I'm out on the
Speaker 1: road a lot and do all that. But I never
Speaker 1: fired my weapon the entire time. I never fired my weapon.
Speaker 1: So I come home and I'm like, and then I
Speaker 1: got you know, I got friends who are trained with
Speaker 1: people who have known sense, who were wounded over there,
Speaker 1: who had to kill people. Um. And so in my mind,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I didn't experience combat. That's not what that was.
Speaker 1: And so I went eleven years thinking I was gaining
Speaker 1: perspective by valuing what they did and and diminishing what
Speaker 1: I did. And and the whole time, what I was
Speaker 1: actually doing was just experiencing increasingly worse symptoms of undiagnosed,
Speaker 1: untreated PTSD. And I would say to my friends, like,
Speaker 1: I have a very close friend Stephen, whom I talked
Speaker 1: about in the book a Lot, who had been a
Speaker 1: marine in um Fellujah, and you know, and and I
Speaker 1: would stay to him all the time, like what you
Speaker 1: did that was real, and he was like dude, he
Speaker 1: would always be He and other guys would be like
Speaker 1: I could not have done what you did, and I
Speaker 1: just was like, they're just being kind, right, And so
Speaker 1: my it was like when I was with a clinical
Speaker 1: social worker at the v A. It was my second
Speaker 1: time at the v A after that, you know, first
Speaker 1: time with the guy. Thought I heard voices and she
Speaker 1: said to me, okay, let me get this straight. Uh,
Speaker 1: you were in the most dangerous place in the planet
Speaker 1: out basically by yourself, like you and a translator most
Speaker 1: of the time for hours at a time, completely vulnerable
Speaker 1: with people who may or may not want to kill
Speaker 1: you. You You couldn't know and you had no backup because
Speaker 1: nobody knew where you were. And I'm like yeah, and
Speaker 1: she goes, yeah, that's combat. She's like, that's traumatic. She's like,
Speaker 1: and then what did you do when you came home?
Speaker 1: You went to high stakes meetings for your work. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh yeah, And that was the first time
Speaker 1: that I was like, Okay, I think I'm a combat
Speaker 1: veteran and uh yeah, I can see now how I
Speaker 1: have PTSD. And that was eleven years after I got home. Well,
Speaker 1: I interviewed this woman, this doctor, for this podcast, and
Speaker 1: she said, the average person who has any kind of
Speaker 1: symptoms where they need their mental health taking care of
Speaker 1: takes eleven to fifteen years to go to therapy. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in time, we're not only not doing anything about it
Speaker 1: in terms of like using little tools that you could find,
Speaker 1: you know, a little free free advice online, you know,
Speaker 1: like whatever that maybe you're not even doing that, You're
Speaker 1: you're making it worse. You know, you're like feeding the monster,
Speaker 1: as you call it, the monster. You're feeding your PTSD.
Speaker 1: You're like giving it everything it wants, and you're training
Speaker 1: yourself to have more and more. Right, So it's like
Speaker 1: by the time you went there was a lot to undo,
Speaker 1: and I think you had to get to the place
Speaker 1: of Okay, I'm literally at the end of my room,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to kill myself, so I gotta
Speaker 1: go and and and you're saying it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be that way. People can. I mean also, when I'm
Speaker 1: hearing in your book too, is like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: no training coming out. You know, they why are you
Speaker 1: coming in? And they don't on why are you coming out?
Speaker 1: And I'm assuming that's the work that you do, um
Speaker 1: with the Veterans Community Project is helping to change that, right, Yeah, absolutely, UM.
Speaker 1: That's what we do is we restart the military civilian
Speaker 1: transition back at day one. And and that that's why
Speaker 1: I wanted to write the book, is because for a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. One, if this book had existed fourteen
Speaker 1: years ago when I came home, I would have read
Speaker 1: it and I would have gone to therapy and and
Speaker 1: and the reason that that's such a huge deal other
Speaker 1: than the obvious, is that, you know, trauma is not
Speaker 1: like wine, like it doesn't age well. It just gets
Speaker 1: worse and worse and worse. And so all those years
Speaker 1: that I put it off, it's like any other injury,
Speaker 1: right like I The comparison I make is that in
Speaker 1: order to get into the Army I had to get
Speaker 1: surgery and physical therapy on my knee because I had
Speaker 1: a knee injury. And what I did with my mind
Speaker 1: after I deployed would have been like if instead of
Speaker 1: getting that surgery and physical therapy, I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't need it, and I just went into the Army
Speaker 1: and did all the stuff they wanted me to do
Speaker 1: well after eleven years, like I wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to walk, but instead, like I treated the injury when
Speaker 1: it happened. And so you know, while my trauma, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to like rank my trauma, but clearly
Speaker 1: there are people who had more traumatic experiences than I did.
Speaker 1: What I did that made it so much worse is
Speaker 1: I just let it get worse and worse and worse,
Speaker 1: whereas if I just treated it, I would have treated
Speaker 1: it gotten the tools, moved on gotten to where I
Speaker 1: am now, but instead I just I let it get
Speaker 1: so bad over all those years. Do you think it
Speaker 1: should be mandatory? I mean, I don't mean to. I
Speaker 1: hope this doesn't sound insulting to anyone serving, but it
Speaker 1: it is weird that, like you're trained to be kind
Speaker 1: of a killing machine and then you're just let back
Speaker 1: come into society. Not that people are going to start
Speaker 1: killing people, That's what I mean at all. But don't
Speaker 1: you think it makes society better if everybody gets kind
Speaker 1: of unwired when they get out and they can be
Speaker 1: more productive and not have to go through what you
Speaker 1: went through. But do you think it should be um
Speaker 1: mandated or is that kind of stepping on freedoms should
Speaker 1: be mandated and you don't have to mandate therapy, but
Speaker 1: what you have to mandate is education about PTSD. Here's
Speaker 1: the education I got about PTSD before I went over,
Speaker 1: and I hope this has changed, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if it has. The education I got about PTSD before
Speaker 1: I went over it was it was mentioned by one
Speaker 1: guy when I was an intelligent school, and it was
Speaker 1: a chaplain, and the chaplain came in to tell us
Speaker 1: how to use our chaplain like it had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with PTSD. He was just like, here's a thirty
Speaker 1: minute block of instruction from the base chaplain. He's going
Speaker 1: to tell you how to make sure your troops get
Speaker 1: access to the chaplain when you're deployed. And as he
Speaker 1: was doing that, I remember he said, oh, hey, by
Speaker 1: the way, PTSD. PTSD is a normal response to an
Speaker 1: abnormal situation, and which was a great thing to say.
Speaker 1: But it's literally all the training I got about PTSD.
Speaker 1: And so there's a really important thing and you alluded
Speaker 1: to this that the military does, which is a very
Speaker 1: necessary form of brainwashing. And I say necessary because if
Speaker 1: they didn't do this, I wouldn't have kept going to meetings,
Speaker 1: My buddy Stephen wouldn't have kept going on patrol. You
Speaker 1: gotta have this, And what it is is the moment
Speaker 1: you get off the bus at basic training, the message
Speaker 1: they put across to you is this is no big deal,
Speaker 1: and somebody has it worse. Most people have it worse, right,
Speaker 1: and they and they have to wire that into you
Speaker 1: because if they don't, like, if you bite from the
Speaker 1: apple of knowledge, that no, this is pretty bad, Like
Speaker 1: you're not gonna keep doing it, like I wouldn't keep
Speaker 1: bringing back the information I need to if I had known.
Speaker 1: So the problem is is that when you get out,
Speaker 1: nobody sits you down and goes, okay, actually that was
Speaker 1: some crazy ship. And uh, you know, and and by
Speaker 1: the way, here's what PTSD is. Here's what it looks like.
Speaker 1: There's a you know, a chance that you're going to
Speaker 1: experience this or a friend of yours will. And I
Speaker 1: think if they had done that, it would have helped
Speaker 1: a lot. I can't say for sure that would have
Speaker 1: made a difference, because when you when you wire somebody
Speaker 1: to believe that what they did is no big deal,
Speaker 1: and you train them to believe that, they believe you.
Speaker 1: I believed the Army. I had, you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of buddies on my base who were doing similar work
Speaker 1: to me. And I was like, you know, Todd and
Speaker 1: Kevin are going to these meetings. They seem fine. Todd
Speaker 1: and Kevin went to these meetings, they seem fine. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: never mind that, I don't want to spoil what happens
Speaker 1: in the book, but it becomes evident that they weren't fun.
Speaker 1: And but I didn't know that, and so I was
Speaker 1: telling myself, I have it on good authority that what
Speaker 1: I did is no big deal. So what the hell
Speaker 1: right would I have to say this is PTSD? It
Speaker 1: must just be something to do with me, right, And
Speaker 1: so what happens is people don't understand that you can
Speaker 1: get better, that that this is not a terminal diagnosis.
Speaker 1: And everything we see in popular culture about PTSD is
Speaker 1: what I call PTSD porn right. It's it's it's usually
Speaker 1: a combat vet, not always, but it's usually a combat vet,
Speaker 1: and they're like robbing a bank, beating their spouse, abusing drugs,
Speaker 1: maybe all at once. Um. And what I wanted to
Speaker 1: get across is post traumatic growth is a real thing.
Speaker 1: I wanted to demonstrate what it looks like because it
Speaker 1: actually is way more common than people realize. The majority
Speaker 1: of people who go to therapy and address it get better.
Speaker 1: People don't know that, so they don't say, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go to therapy. And I still wanted to get
Speaker 1: across that. Look. I was convinced that what I did
Speaker 1: was no big deal. So you don't have to be
Speaker 1: a combat vet. You could have had a bad car accident,
Speaker 1: or survive cancer, or be a victim of sexual assault,
Speaker 1: or just lost a loved one or gone through a
Speaker 1: bad divorce or a head a rough childhood, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: you're probably convinced that what you did was no big deal.
Speaker 1: And I know this because people walk up to me
Speaker 1: all the time and say, you know, I didn't go
Speaker 1: to war or anything, and I'm like, that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Like my brain doesn't know what yours experienced, and yours
Speaker 1: doesn't know what mine experience. So what does one have
Speaker 1: to do with the other. Well, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: spoil just a little bit of the recovery ending. But
Speaker 1: when you were working with your therapist, what you're big
Speaker 1: aha moment was is he said, I want you to
Speaker 1: tell me everything you learned from your parents and used
Speaker 1: in your life before you deployed that you still seek
Speaker 1: to use now. And he wrote down, as you said,
Speaker 1: work hard, hustle, help people, stand up for people, be humble.
Speaker 1: I can do anything, obligation to others. I am privileged.
Speaker 1: Don't steal, don't do drugs, don't cheat, don't start fights,
Speaker 1: do finish fights, fight for others, don't kill, be faithful,
Speaker 1: be protective, care about the world, have high standards. Therapist
Speaker 1: a great now let's do the same thing for Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: What principles did you learn over there that you used
Speaker 1: all of the time, And your answers were be calm,
Speaker 1: suck it up. Someone as a worse, I am lucky,
Speaker 1: danger everywhere, Always have weapon, protect self and others, maintain
Speaker 1: control of situation, eliminate risk, eliminate threats. Then the therapist says, okay,
Speaker 1: why and you just say so I don't die, and
Speaker 1: he's like great. So he points out to you that
Speaker 1: the first list of all your values is how you
Speaker 1: live life outside of the military. The second list, which
Speaker 1: has less things on it, like you said, less golf clubs,
Speaker 1: is so you don't die. So now you've come home
Speaker 1: and your brain is living with your wife and kids
Speaker 1: in it's important not to die mode. You don't have
Speaker 1: any of the other like you know, whatever tools, and
Speaker 1: you're running for for offices. So at this point, your
Speaker 1: PTSD isn't like you're in the warner going and going
Speaker 1: like I see the combat. You know, it's literally like
Speaker 1: you can't stop working. And so you're at home and
Speaker 1: it's getting to the point where like it is really
Speaker 1: disrupting your your family in ways. That what I like
Speaker 1: about your book too, is your wife has written some
Speaker 1: passages as well about how hard it was for her
Speaker 1: because she just kind of went along with what you
Speaker 1: we're doing. You know, if you weren't getting recovery, then
Speaker 1: didn't dawn on her. And but here she's dealing with
Speaker 1: this guy who's like, now she's starting to think like you, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how so can you talk about how pt PTSD affects
Speaker 1: everyone in your life in ways that maybe people don't
Speaker 1: really understand. Yeah, I'd say the first way is that
Speaker 1: I was just not present with my family, like and
Speaker 1: and so I you know, I just I wanted to
Speaker 1: be really badly, but I just couldn't be emotionally present
Speaker 1: the only time. And this I bet you would relate
Speaker 1: to as a coping mechanism that you used for your struggles,
Speaker 1: because we're both in in like I in some respect
Speaker 1: you and a full respect are performers, and it was
Speaker 1: like I else present when I performed, Like when I
Speaker 1: was in front of an audience, that was like I
Speaker 1: felt fully me And for me, that was because like
Speaker 1: I had to get some sort of adrenaline rush back
Speaker 1: in order to feel that. And then the rest of
Speaker 1: the time I just like it was just dull and
Speaker 1: like I couldn't and and you know what it was
Speaker 1: the rest of the time, it was just me and
Speaker 1: my thoughts like if if if things weren't going really
Speaker 1: quickly boobom boom, then it was just me stuck with me.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd be with my son when he was
Speaker 1: a toddler, and like it should have been a really
Speaker 1: joyous moment, and I could feel that that joy was there,
Speaker 1: but it was like it was on the other side
Speaker 1: of a thin wall, you know, because my brain was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I had all these intrusive thoughts and memories
Speaker 1: and and and I had I was dialed up to
Speaker 1: an eleven all the time in terms of my stress,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know why and uh and so that
Speaker 1: affected my family greatly. But then my wife, you know,
Speaker 1: I was no I was no fun to live with
Speaker 1: during that period. And you know, here she is, she's
Speaker 1: sleeping next to me. I'm waking up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night with these violent night terrors. She's having
Speaker 1: to be like my service dog. Where because I was
Speaker 1: having sleep paralysis, she could hear when I was grunting
Speaker 1: to to like alert her that my brain had woken
Speaker 1: up from this nightmare, but my body hadn't. And I
Speaker 1: had this thing where sleep paralysis gave me this like
Speaker 1: hallucination that the threat that was in the dream was
Speaker 1: now in the room, coming at me or eventually coming
Speaker 1: at my family. Is how those dreams developed are evolved.
Speaker 1: And so she knew like she had to sleep really
Speaker 1: light because she had to turn and like shake me
Speaker 1: and wake me up, like wake up my body, and
Speaker 1: then I would wake up. And as she puts it
Speaker 1: in the book, it was suddenly horrible story time, because
Speaker 1: you know, we've been together since we were seventeen, Like
Speaker 1: my life has always been I just share everything with her,
Speaker 1: and so I would tell her about this nightmare that
Speaker 1: I just had, and oftentimes it was somebody came to
Speaker 1: hurt her and our son, and and so they soaked
Speaker 1: into her in the middle of the night. And eventually
Speaker 1: she was experiencing my symptoms, just not having having experienced
Speaker 1: my trauma. She was hyper vigilant. She was worried that
Speaker 1: there would be intruders, uh, you know, all those sorts
Speaker 1: of things. And and then it turned out when I
Speaker 1: went to therapy, she needed to do the same thing.
Speaker 1: So it was just this beautiful gift that I gave
Speaker 1: my wife post traumatic stress disorder, you know, so well,
Speaker 1: you know it's I've had sleep paralysis and it is terrifying.
Speaker 1: It's the worst. Yeah, I thought it was interesting you
Speaker 1: said in the book that people have service dogs for
Speaker 1: that reason. The dogs know when you're in it and
Speaker 1: they lay on you to to wake you up, just
Speaker 1: keep you from it. Yeah, that's right. It's my Dan's
Speaker 1: always joke that I was her or that she was
Speaker 1: my service animal, you know. But yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: like it is terrifying. And what's like so messed up
Speaker 1: about it is is that what brings it on is
Speaker 1: trauma and sleep deprivation. So it's like, Okay, I had trauma,
Speaker 1: and because of my trauma, I wasn't sleeping because I
Speaker 1: had these night terrors. And then and then it just
Speaker 1: would all just build on each other and uh and
Speaker 1: and eventually, um, I just feared going to sleep, like
Speaker 1: like sleep was the last place I wanted to be,
Speaker 1: so I would stay up just to avoid going to sleep.
Speaker 1: And and what's now the part that I deal with,
Speaker 1: I very very rarely, very rarely have sleep prowesses. I
Speaker 1: occasionally have night have nightmares. I would describe the more
Speaker 1: as nightmares now than night terrors. And it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: once every couple of weeks that kind of thing during
Speaker 1: a stressful time. And I know what to do about
Speaker 1: it now. But what I still do struggle with is
Speaker 1: there's like a muscle memory for me that says like
Speaker 1: sleep is a bad thing, and so I have to
Speaker 1: I have and I'm pretty good at it now, but
Speaker 1: I have a very intense like sleep regiment in order
Speaker 1: to allow myself to say like, okay, no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: sleep is good. We like sleep. It's okay, it doesn't
Speaker 1: that doesn't happen anymore. And you said in the book
Speaker 1: too that you could never sleep on planes and you
Speaker 1: couldn't figure it out. Well, the the wild part about
Speaker 1: that was is that I actually figured that particular part
Speaker 1: out when I started working as president National Expansion of
Speaker 1: Veterans Community Project. Because one of the things we do
Speaker 1: is we build these villages of tiny houses for homeless
Speaker 1: veterans and then we give them wrap around care. And
Speaker 1: the reason that and I didn't found it, uh you know,
Speaker 1: I came in after. So the reason that the co
Speaker 1: founders did it that way is because, uh a lot
Speaker 1: of homeless veterans were not using other homelessness services because
Speaker 1: they had PTSD and they couldn't sleep around strangers. So
Speaker 1: they needed these single units where the door locked in
Speaker 1: order to come in off the street. And they said,
Speaker 1: because they can't sleep around strangers. And I realized all
Speaker 1: those years, like getting ready to run for president, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was running for Senate and my staff would
Speaker 1: put me on red eye flights to save time, and
Speaker 1: they're like, you know, you'll learn how to sleep on them,
Speaker 1: and I would just show up I hadn't slept all night.
Speaker 1: Because if you think about it, like if you're like me,
Speaker 1: the idea of closing your eyes a little and falling
Speaker 1: to sleep while there are people you don't know next
Speaker 1: to you, when you're laying back with your neck exposed, um,
Speaker 1: just not gonna have Yeah. I can do it now.
Speaker 1: I'm not great at it, but I can do it now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also I thought that was so interesting too, about
Speaker 1: the homeless vets that even within that little pod they're
Speaker 1: in with the door locked, they're even set up in
Speaker 1: a way that feels safe to them. Right. It's like
Speaker 1: they're facing the door because they're used to it's a
Speaker 1: trauma informed design, so that so the bed faces the door.
Speaker 1: There's only windows on a couple of sides. No unit
Speaker 1: looks directly into another unit. Um, and yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: just tailor made for people to transition back into society.
Speaker 1: And some of the little things too. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got the night terrors, you've got the can't sleep,
Speaker 1: but even just little things that we're PTSD responses that
Speaker 1: that can just be low key annoying to your spouse.
Speaker 1: Is just going to dinner and you're jumping up, you're
Speaker 1: ready to go, and you've got to face the right
Speaker 1: way and all that. I mean, even that, right, you
Speaker 1: can't even enjoy that. Yeah, Like you know, Diana talks
Speaker 1: in the book about how before I deployed, like we
Speaker 1: could go on a date to dinner and finish our
Speaker 1: meal and sit there and and like have a nice time,
Speaker 1: you know, like you're supposed to do at a restaurant.
Speaker 1: And uh and I was, you know, not only did
Speaker 1: like everybody close to me understand, like Jason likes to
Speaker 1: face the door, and like my staff knew, like you know,
Speaker 1: they've only known me since post Afghanistan, so that all
Speaker 1: they knew was like, yeah, Jason doesn't like it when
Speaker 1: people sit behind him in a meeting, you know, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. You know, like, oh, just just a preference
Speaker 1: that the boss has um and like as soon as
Speaker 1: the meal would end, you know, it was like let's go.
Speaker 1: And and it was sort of something that animated my
Speaker 1: entire life, not just like on a day to day
Speaker 1: literal level, but also sort of a a figurative my career,
Speaker 1: which was I didn't want to be in one place
Speaker 1: for too long because and I had just really internalized
Speaker 1: the idea that if you're in one place for too long,
Speaker 1: they're gonna get you, right, And that was just so
Speaker 1: deep in me that I had. I had to work
Speaker 1: hard to let it go. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people can like over psychoanalyze it, like and did
Speaker 1: you stay still too long? Your thoughts come to get you.
Speaker 1: And it's like yes, yes, yes, but also we are
Speaker 1: dealing with a real physical reaction to what you've been
Speaker 1: through and that has to be handled. You can't start
Speaker 1: with just the thoughts, you know, like you have a
Speaker 1: very specific disorder that needs body and mind right for sure.
Speaker 1: Like yes, it was it was figuratively like if I
Speaker 1: stay in one spot for too long, my thoughts will
Speaker 1: give me his figure. But it was also like literally
Speaker 1: like if you're in one spot for too long, like
Speaker 1: they've got the drop on you. Keep moving, like like
Speaker 1: one of the things that experienced when I first came
Speaker 1: home that Diana talks about in the book is that,
Speaker 1: you know, every time I get in a vehicle, my
Speaker 1: heart would race, and and that I understood, like right away.
Speaker 1: I knew, like, okay, because every time I've been in
Speaker 1: a vehicle in the last four months, I'm going outside
Speaker 1: the wire. And then when we would stop at stoplights,
Speaker 1: like I would grab the little handle above the window
Speaker 1: and I would lean back. And I didn't really remember
Speaker 1: this that way, but she says I would lean back
Speaker 1: and I would like jam my foot down on a
Speaker 1: gas pedal, which didn't exist because I was in a
Speaker 1: passenger seat. Because over there, like you avoid stopping because
Speaker 1: if you stop, you might get blown up. And so
Speaker 1: just little stuff like that. Uh that's like, but I
Speaker 1: mean doing that how many times a day? Yeah, how
Speaker 1: many times a day do you stop at a stoplight?
Speaker 1: How many times a day, especially if you're campaigning, are
Speaker 1: you going to have to go to a restaurant. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's overwhelming. It was interesting about that too, is
Speaker 1: that I had I constantly had this story. I could
Speaker 1: tell myself that, oh, well, yeah, that happened, but I'm
Speaker 1: getting better, and so that's a good example where after
Speaker 1: like a few months of being home like I could drive,
Speaker 1: I didn't have any problems. That that went away. Now
Speaker 1: I learned in therapy that the reason stuff like that
Speaker 1: went away was because that's what in vivo prolonged exposure
Speaker 1: therapy is which I did in therapy, and it is
Speaker 1: go out and do the things that make you uncomfortable
Speaker 1: get used to doing them again. So that's why in
Speaker 1: therapy I had to go to a restaurant and sit
Speaker 1: with my back to the door for forty five minutes
Speaker 1: until you know it no longer had a grip on me. Well,
Speaker 1: when I came home, like I didn't have a choice,
Speaker 1: I had to go drive. So I was unknowingly doing
Speaker 1: in vivo therapy and so I was able to get
Speaker 1: past it. The problem was because I no longer had
Speaker 1: this driving problem. I was like, well maybe I had
Speaker 1: some ship, but that's over right, And I had this
Speaker 1: eye twitch when I got home that went away. Eventually
Speaker 1: I had I had these nightmares when I got home.
Speaker 1: But after a few years, the nightmares didn't take place
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan anymore. I wasn't even in the military, and
Speaker 1: the nightmares. Now, what I didn't understand was it's not
Speaker 1: a good thing that now the nightmares take place in
Speaker 1: my home and people are coming to kidnap my family.
Speaker 1: I thought, well, it's not PTSD because it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to do with war. And it took therapy for me
Speaker 1: to be taught that, No. See, when the symptoms evolved,
Speaker 1: that's bad because you already have hyper vigilance, you already
Speaker 1: think you're in danger all the time, and now when
Speaker 1: you're subconscious every night, people are attacking you and your
Speaker 1: modern environs, and they're coming after your family, which reinforces
Speaker 1: your feeling that you and your family are in danger.
Speaker 1: But but I had this constant story I could tell
Speaker 1: myself of oh, no, no, I'm getting better, when if
Speaker 1: I I was getting worse. So you're, yeah, your your
Speaker 1: PTSD is progressing. You're not making progress, and it's just changing,
Speaker 1: so it seems like it's better. Right. We'll continue the
Speaker 1: interview on the flip side of a quick message from
Speaker 1: our sponsors. Lastly, how did you get to suicidal thoughts?
Speaker 1: Was it was it literally like I'm gonna do something,
Speaker 1: or was it like it'd be easier if I were
Speaker 1: dead that which seems relaxing, or how did it feel
Speaker 1: I was in I learned in therapy an early stage
Speaker 1: of it, I was in like suicidal ideation. So it's
Speaker 1: a good thing that I went in when I did,
Speaker 1: because mine and actually, just what you just said was
Speaker 1: was it? Because at one point my therapist asked me,
Speaker 1: he was like, did you just feel like it would
Speaker 1: be better if you were dead? And I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: that's what I started to feel. And for me, it
Speaker 1: was because I felt like this enormous burden on my family,
Speaker 1: on the people around me, and I just I came
Speaker 1: to and on top of that, I was exhausted. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing for me. Is interestingly, one of
Speaker 1: the very first symptoms to lift was the suicidal ideation
Speaker 1: because when I went into therapy, it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have a goal here, and I have and I
Speaker 1: have a reason to believe that I have a chance
Speaker 1: of getting better. So it was like, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to kill myself, I want to see, you know,
Speaker 1: and I haven't had that problem since. But then the
Speaker 1: next thing to lift um that took a little while
Speaker 1: was some some version of depression, right, And when I
Speaker 1: think back on it, what I realized is it's important
Speaker 1: for people to understand that PTSD doesn't equal depression automatically,
Speaker 1: and PTSD doesn't equal suicidal ideation automatically. And I think
Speaker 1: the reason it's important people to understand that is if
Speaker 1: you don't understand that, you believe PTSD is a terminal
Speaker 1: diagnosis and you will avoid it at all costs, like
Speaker 1: I did. But what I now realize is no, Look,
Speaker 1: PTSD caused a bunch of things. It's different for everybody.
Speaker 1: For me, it was all the stuff we've talked about.
Speaker 1: But look, after after eleven years of not getting a
Speaker 1: good night's sleep, you're gonna be pretty depressed. And if
Speaker 1: you're depressed for a long enough period of time, you're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna have suicidal thoughts. And and so that's
Speaker 1: why I say, had I addressed this stuff years earlier,
Speaker 1: I don't ever get to those places. Right. It's not
Speaker 1: like people necessarily or suicidal the story we put on them,
Speaker 1: they had to do so much stuff in combat, they
Speaker 1: just feel guilty and they're suicidals. Probably not, it's probably physical,
Speaker 1: Like you don't sleep for ten years, you're going to
Speaker 1: become like clinically insane in a way, you know, like
Speaker 1: if your life sucks every day, you know, and you're
Speaker 1: just like you can't sleep and you're fucking tired, and
Speaker 1: you don't like yourself and you're angry all the time,
Speaker 1: Like at some point, like you're gonna look for some
Speaker 1: sense of control. It's interesting. I I had like I think,
Speaker 1: you know, and now I'm like super into nutrition and
Speaker 1: fitness and all this stuff and long gevity. And I
Speaker 1: had this conversation with my therapist not too long ago
Speaker 1: where I was like, how is it possible that I
Speaker 1: went from wanting to kill myself to now a few
Speaker 1: years later where I am just like sometimes even get
Speaker 1: stressed out about am I doing enough to live a
Speaker 1: really long time? And and he's so smart, and it's
Speaker 1: so smart he said to me, He's like, well, look,
Speaker 1: they're both about control. When things were terrible, you were
Speaker 1: desperate to have some sort of control, and that control,
Speaker 1: which is a big part of trauma survivors, right like,
Speaker 1: if I can control the situation, I'll be okay. And
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, I'm running out of ways
Speaker 1: to find an ability to control it. Killing myself would
Speaker 1: would do it right? And he's like, and now things
Speaker 1: are really good. You want to be here for as
Speaker 1: long as possible, but you still want control. And the
Speaker 1: way you want to control that is you know, you
Speaker 1: work out every day and you track all your food.
Speaker 1: He's like, and that's fine, that's a healthy way to
Speaker 1: do it, but understand that it's still a control thing.
Speaker 1: I love that you said in the book. You just
Speaker 1: reminded me. Thank you, and I I know we have
Speaker 1: to wrap up and you gotta go, but I love
Speaker 1: what you said in the book about your wife. And
Speaker 1: you have a mantra three percent because you were told
Speaker 1: um was in therapy. I think that of things in
Speaker 1: life we can't control, we have control over like three percent.
Speaker 1: And so you keep that in mind all the time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we uh we we keepen in mind all the time,
Speaker 1: and it allows us to not try to control you know,
Speaker 1: would happened like like my son, like if he goes
Speaker 1: swimming at somebody's house, Like I want to be like, okay, look,
Speaker 1: he's a pretty good swimmer, but he's but he thinks
Speaker 1: he's a better swimmer than he is, so keeping you know,
Speaker 1: and she's like, look, let him go have a good time.
Speaker 1: Three and uh. At one point we were like, okay,
Speaker 1: we should get we don't have tattoos, and we all
Speaker 1: for years we've been talking about matching tattoos, and she
Speaker 1: was like, let's get matching three percent tattoos and we
Speaker 1: were about to until she looked up that the three
Speaker 1: percenters were like a violent right wing militia group. And
Speaker 1: so we're like, still work shopping the tattoo. I do
Speaker 1: maybe get a nineties of the percent or something, right? Right? Um? So, lastly,
Speaker 1: do you think that like, like you said, it's all
Speaker 1: about control, but you've replaced like a healthy control with
Speaker 1: like you know, working out and tracking your food. But
Speaker 1: I got to imagine that you're wired for like healthy
Speaker 1: dopamine and healthy adrenaline. Because what I think you did
Speaker 1: a great job within your book is is all of
Speaker 1: the running for various offices that you didn't and the
Speaker 1: public life that you lived. It didn't come off like, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy needs the love of the crowd, like you
Speaker 1: said you were in in flow when you were in
Speaker 1: front of people, and you know I've experienced that too.
Speaker 1: There's less thoughts in my head. I really don't care
Speaker 1: about admiration or applause, like I swear I don't. It's
Speaker 1: just how I feel on stage. It just zeros everything
Speaker 1: down to one thing. And so that's sometimes what kept
Speaker 1: me going, is that feeling. So I know that you've,
Speaker 1: you know, stepped away from a public life in that sense,
Speaker 1: and obviously you're not in combat, and the more so,
Speaker 1: how do you keep that healthy need that you might
Speaker 1: You might I don't know if this is true for you,
Speaker 1: but you might have more than regular people, like a
Speaker 1: need for a little excitement, adrenaline, dopamine. Um, I think
Speaker 1: of it. It's a great question, uh, And I appreciate
Speaker 1: what you said. I'm not going to give myself as
Speaker 1: much credit as you just did, which is to say
Speaker 1: that while I did feeling flow and I absolutely felt
Speaker 1: present when I performed, I also had such a low
Speaker 1: opinion of myself as a result of my trauma that
Speaker 1: I was desperately in search for some sort of evidence,
Speaker 1: some sort of external validation that would help me convince
Speaker 1: myself that I wasn't an irredeemable piece of ship. And
Speaker 1: so so the request for selfies, the adulation, the you know,
Speaker 1: fawning comments on social media, after a you know, a
Speaker 1: hit on MSNBC. I had this idea that if I
Speaker 1: could fill myself up with that stuff, maybe that would
Speaker 1: fill the hole inside me. But it actually it just
Speaker 1: was like any other addiction. I just needed more and
Speaker 1: more and more of it to get there. And and
Speaker 1: so when I went to therapy, I knew that I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to a place where I could model
Speaker 1: post traumatic growth. But I was also really scared because
Speaker 1: I did understand pretty soon in therapy that my drug
Speaker 1: was attention and that that's what I had used to
Speaker 1: avoid myself. And so it was this delicate balance of like,
Speaker 1: I want to be able to go back and do that,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to need it. If I need it,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. And so where I am now
Speaker 1: is my therapist was eventually able to convince me to
Speaker 1: go try it, and I did, and I realized, Okay,
Speaker 1: I like doing this. Now I'm where you were saying
Speaker 1: where you are, which is I'm good at this. I
Speaker 1: enjoy performing and I enjoy getting my opinion out there
Speaker 1: and shaping the debate. So I do that on social media,
Speaker 1: occasionally go on TV. I have Majority fifty four my podcast,
Speaker 1: and that the difference now is I don't feel like
Speaker 1: it's a dopamine hit because now I mean it is.
Speaker 1: But the difference is now like in the past, I
Speaker 1: had to go from dopamine hit to dopamine head. I
Speaker 1: was like any other addict, right, like the stuff in
Speaker 1: between performances that was that was like Diana used the
Speaker 1: analogy in the book, that was like coming out of
Speaker 1: the matrix, right it was like, now I'm in this
Speaker 1: dull world aboard the Nebucannezer, like I gotta wait for
Speaker 1: the next time into the matrix. And I don't feel
Speaker 1: that way anymore. Now. I'm like, like like this right now,
Speaker 1: like we're doing this interview, I'm sort of just in
Speaker 1: some respect, you know, on but when it's over, the
Speaker 1: difference between me now and me then when it's over,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna go do like I have another
Speaker 1: interview after this, but after that one's over, like you know,
Speaker 1: I'll go about my day and not feel like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm coming down, Like I'll just go back to it
Speaker 1: and and it's the analogy that my therapist used. Was
Speaker 1: I kept saying to him because he was trying to
Speaker 1: get me to go back and do media, because he
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to demonstrate this to people. And I
Speaker 1: kept saying, look, I came here to get sober, and
Speaker 1: you're trying to get me back to my job as
Speaker 1: a beer taster, and and he was like, okay, I
Speaker 1: get it. But after a few months he was like, look,
Speaker 1: let me just suggest the possibility that if we're gonna
Speaker 1: go with this analogy, what if you weren't an alcoholic,
Speaker 1: what if we dealt with your underlying trauma and you
Speaker 1: can have a couple of drinks and stop. And that
Speaker 1: is now where I am with performing. I like doing it,
Speaker 1: I don't have to do it, and that's right where
Speaker 1: I want to be. That's amazing. And lastly, you are
Speaker 1: working with UM Veterans Community Project and at one point
Speaker 1: in your book you were there and working with them
Speaker 1: and you said yourself, which, if only you could do
Speaker 1: this full time. It was like that little glimmer inside
Speaker 1: of you that knew, like, this is what you should
Speaker 1: be doing, but it took years to get there. And
Speaker 1: so that's what you're full time doing now right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm the president of National Expansion and we are building
Speaker 1: our campuses and serving veterans across the country. People can
Speaker 1: go to VCP dot org it's like Veterans Community Project
Speaker 1: dot org to support us. And in fact, all of
Speaker 1: the royalties from Invisible Storm go to benefit Veterans Community Project,
Speaker 1: meaning all of all of my royalties. Publishers keeping their money,
Speaker 1: but all of my royalties go to that It against
Speaker 1: veterans suicide and veteran homelessness at Veterans Community Project and
Speaker 1: we'll put everything in the show notes. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I'm I love your journey. I find it very inspiring,
Speaker 1: and I love that you're I don't know, doing such
Speaker 1: good things for the world by by working with veterans.
Speaker 1: It it does break my heart that there's so much
Speaker 1: stigma around this, and I'm I'm sure you're changing so
Speaker 1: many lives. So thanks for chatting with me and exposing
Speaker 1: our listeners to This is my first PTSD episode. I'm
Speaker 1: very excited about it. Well, Jen, I'm a fan of
Speaker 1: yours and I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.
Speaker 1: And it's even cooler that we recorded it so we
Speaker 1: can go back and listen to it later. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna listen to it on a loop, the part wher
Speaker 1: you say you're a fan. Hi. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: my conversation with Jason. I have been trying to get
Speaker 1: him on the podcast forever. I didn't even know he
Speaker 1: had a book coming out when I first reached out
Speaker 1: to him to come on to the pod, and I said,
Speaker 1: if you're up for it. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: talk about your PTSD publicly anymore, but I'd love to
Speaker 1: have you on the show. And we went back and
Speaker 1: forth for a while, but he said, you know later,
Speaker 1: I'm having a book coming out. So um, we did
Speaker 1: the interview you know now surrounding the book release. But
Speaker 1: I definitely learned a lot from reading the book and
Speaker 1: even more from from chatting to Jason. There's definitely lots
Speaker 1: of details in this interview that we're not in the book.
Speaker 1: So let's look at some of the takeaways that we learned.
Speaker 1: Jason wrongly believed that he could not have PTSD from
Speaker 1: a four month tour in Afghanistan where he did not
Speaker 1: kill anyone or engage in heavy hand hand combat. In
Speaker 1: Jason's environment that he was in, although it was not
Speaker 1: combat her his training, his nervous system, and his mind
Speaker 1: had to be fully utilized. He had to have an
Speaker 1: intense level of alertness and readiness to defend his life.
Speaker 1: When soldiers come home from deployment in a war, there
Speaker 1: is not really a good system in place to give
Speaker 1: them tools to get their brains reset. For civilian life,
Speaker 1: when dealing with post traumatic stress disorder, you should not
Speaker 1: rank your trauma and compare your experience as lesser than
Speaker 1: or greater than anyone else's. PTSD gone untreated gets worse
Speaker 1: and the symptoms can change, leading someone to believe that
Speaker 1: they're getting better even as they're getting worse. But if
Speaker 1: someone gets tools early in their trauma, they can prevent them.
Speaker 1: As Jason says, trauma is not like wine. It doesn't
Speaker 1: age well. Jason believes that PTSD education should be mandated
Speaker 1: for everyone coming back from deployment. Post traumatic growth is real,
Speaker 1: and if people get help for their PTSD, they will
Speaker 1: get better. In the military, a person is trained to
Speaker 1: protect themselves and live in survival mode with the one
Speaker 1: goal of do not die. But in civilian life, a
Speaker 1: person cannot survive in survival mode, and they don't need to,
Speaker 1: especially when there is no real threat. Jason's PTSD symptoms
Speaker 1: included intrusive thoughts, bad memories, hyper vigilance, suicidal ideation, insomnia,
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis, and night terrors. He didn't sleep properly for
Speaker 1: eleven years, which only worsened the symptoms of his PTSD.
Speaker 1: Having PTSD doesn't always equal also having depression and suicidal ideation.
Speaker 1: It's different for every survivor. PTSD can manifest in ways
Speaker 1: like not being able to sit too long in a
Speaker 1: restaurant having the urge to get out quickly, or not
Speaker 1: being able to sit at a stop sign in your
Speaker 1: car without having a racing heart and the urge to go.
Speaker 1: We can only control about three percent of what happens
Speaker 1: to us in life. Therefore, our lives we probably don't
Speaker 1: have control over. Homeless veterans needs special care and often
Speaker 1: do not seek help in shelters that don't cater to
Speaker 1: a veteran's needs. For example, many are not comfortable sleeping
Speaker 1: around strangers due to their military training, and instead they
Speaker 1: could benefit from sleeping in their own tiny else, which
Speaker 1: is what the Veterans Community Project built. They built shelters
Speaker 1: with a trauma informed design where the bed faces the door.
Speaker 1: There are only windows on a few sides. Their pod
Speaker 1: has a door lock and no unit looks into another unit.
Speaker 1: So again, you can visit the links that I have
Speaker 1: put in the show notes to buy Jason's book, to
Speaker 1: check out his podcast, and to check out the work
Speaker 1: of the Veterans Community Project. Thanks again for listening, and
Speaker 1: you can follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Jen Kirkman and Instagram at Jen Kirkman. That's one
Speaker 1: end in Jen, And of course you can send an
Speaker 1: email to the show Anxiety Bites Weekly at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Give the podcast five stars wherever you listen, and just
Speaker 1: remember that Anxiety Bites but You're in control. For more
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