#84 From Struggle to Strength: How Men Can Heal and Thrive After Trauma

Suffering in and of itself is poison.

And she died, right?

There in my arms.

I'm just trying to have control over the things that I can't have control over.

And no wonder we're we're struggling so much with mental and emotional well-being.

When reality isn't what I expect and what I hope, I grieve and I have lost and life just isn't fair.

If you're thinking of ending it, don't.

Hang on, hold on.

There's help, and this one's huge.

I can't recommend this enough.

The very thing that's going to help cure that sadness is doing something.

Man, the the probabilities of health and happiness and well-being and success are are massive.

Gentlemen, welcome to the formidable Family Man podcast.

I'm your host, Greg Denning, and my guest today is my Big Brother, Jeff Jeffrey Denning is well, I'll let you introduce yourself, brother, all the stuff and things.

I'll start with the story, though, is one of my favorite stories.

I tell people all the time that he and I I was, I can't even remember.

I was, I was, I might have been, I was either just about to get married or I might have been married already.

And I think we were in Dallas, TX.

And you're like, Hey, give me your knife.

And I'm like, I don't have a knife.

And you like, you lost, and you're like.

Dude, how do you know I have a knife?

Like, you're not even a man if you don't carry a knife.

We literally went and found a knife store in the mall and you bought me my first knife and I was like, yeah.

It's a good knife too.

I I actually spent some money on you.

And sadly, I've been through many knives as I've travelled around the world and sometimes forgotten to check them and they ended up in an airport security.

And I had a knife confiscated from me one time in Jerusalem because I didn't know you're not supposed to have a knife in Jerusalem.

Nope.

It's it's illegal in Israel, very illegal.

And then the last time we had a funny incident is our whole family.

So now all my kids carry knives and we checked.

So it when you go into Arabic countries, they have security at the.

Door.

Of the airport.

So you're, you're checking like you're going to check your luggage, right?

So it's OK to have a knife in checked luggage, but if you're in certain countries, they check it at the door in your checked luggage.

So we roll into Egypt.

We had 17.

Knives, our whole family's travelling, right.

If they lost it, then they pull us all over.

It was this huge thing.

We're like, oh man, we're going to miss our flights.

And we had some big knives that I just like some custom made gorgeous knives that I had bought in Turkey.

Cool.

And and this police officer, he brought all his buddies in.

They're all going off in Arabic and we're like, oh man.

So finally he calls over this the, the main guy from the airline.

He's like, can these guys fly on your airplane with all these knives?

And the guy was like, yeah, of course, long as they're checks like no problem, we're good.

And so then they they let us all go.

And then it would just, it was a funny crazy experience.

We got home with all of our, our custom knives that we picked up around the world.

Anyways, all right, brother, tell your story.

Introduce yourself.

What work you do and why you do it?

Well, first edge weapons are so different than guns.

You see some guns behind me, right?

I, I teach firearms and tactics.

I have that's my background for many, many years running and gunning for shoot almost 30 years, but 25 years before I I retired from law enforcement and I still do some reserve stuff with law enforcement.

So every once in a while I get to run some run some warrants, which is good, but it's it's Jeffrey J Denning.

I started to distinguish that now because there's some other dude spells the name same way.

Jeffrey Denning.

He wrote a book about my childhood.

That's not me, right.

So he's written a couple books.

I should probably read it to see what that's all about.

See if he's cool.

I'll see if we're related.

I don't even know My first book Warrior SSI interviewed a handful of guys and and gal from different branches of service in the military about post traumatic stress.

The first guy to go public with his post traumatic stress from Delta Force, the crime to the crime of special operations did so went in an interview with me and three guys from the unit, you know, were interviewed in in in my book, including Navy SEAL, including Airmen, Army guys.

Anyway, some pretty just good stories after coming from our home from Iraq.

For me, it was pretty cathartic to do those interviews.

I have a couple master's degrees, one in special military, special operations, low intensity, conflict with the emphasis and terrorism.

And then I have a degree clinical mental health counseling, which is what I'm doing.

I have again, background everything from, you know, SWAT team, SWAT team leader and negotiator.

I've asked, I've, I've worked in dignitary protection.

I got to be careful how I, how I say some of it.

And I've, and I've, and I've worked on, with some other government agencies.

I was at undercover Federal Air Marshall.

So, you know, taking all of that, including a handful of buddies of mine who've who've died, who've been killed, who've been injured, who've been psychologically injured, who's taken their life by suicide, you know, just dealing with traumatic and critical incidents for years on years on end.

I've had a keen interest from, from, from the mental health side.

It's like, how do we just get better?

How do we do OK if because you know, as first responders especially, you're seeing stuff that shouldn't, people shouldn't see and it's it's an abnormal, you know.

It's disturbing.

There's, there's something built into us into our hard wiring that there's certain things when we see it, it, it disturbs us like it's, it's just not supposed to be, it's not normal, it's not right.

And it should disturb us.

And so then I think one of the big questions is like, what do you do with that information?

What do you do with that experience?

Because it, it is supposed to service.

And I hope it does disturb people.

And I, and I hope that the people listening and, and they don't like it.

I hope they don't feel bad like they're, they're weak or, or broken or something like they're things that are disturbing.

And, and when that happens, it's what we do with it that that's so important.

I, I was on AI was hiking with my wife in, in Ecuador.

And you know, it was just this blissful, dreamy bucket list experience.

And we're at 16,000 feet and, and this couple fell off a Cliff.

And so I, we'd already summoned it and we're heading back down and I ran back up to help.

And I told the story elsewhere.

So I won't tell all the details, but I, I go back up to help and she died right there in my arms.

I was holding, I was cradling, cradling her so she didn't fall off another Cliff.

And I'm, I'm holding a right there.

And her, her face was, you know, 12 inches from my face, a young woman in her 20s.

And she died right there in my arms.

And then I had to get, you know, had to help get all the rest of the people, the bystanders off the mountain so there weren't more casualties.

And then I end up, you know, going back up a ways and finding her boyfriend who'd also fallen.

And he was all busted up.

We had to package him up and get him off the mountain and and so it like it was, it was one of those things it and it still gets to me.

It's it's still so like it's just not something that you experience on a normal day and, and, and another human being dying.

Like there's something to it.

And so it's what we do with it.

It matters somewhat anyway.

So I just a little interject in there is like this.

This stuff matters.

Right, No, I and that's pretty wild.

I didn't know that.

You know what one of the things that happens is you got either one incident or multiple incidents.

You have cumulative stress.

We talk about post traumatic stress.

It's very normal to change our our thinking about life, our world views change, our belief system change, what we think about our self, others in the world changes because here's what happens.

So I look forward and I I expect one thing to happen.

And when, when reality isn't what I expect and what I hope, I grieve.

And I have lost, whether it's, and I've watched, yeah, I, I've watched plenty of people die and, and, and get killed and shoot, I've negotiated with a guy who killed himself in front of me.

So as a negotiator, you know, I got to understand that that's still their choice.

Whatever happens, accidents happen and people make mistakes.

But if my hope is, for instance, that kids grow up and don't get hurt, injured or killed, but reality isn't that, that's probably one of the most significant things that we can as human beings understand.

Oh, yeah, that's not supposed to be that way.

So we have, we apply these rules to ourselves and to others.

We say, well, life is not supposed to happen.

Sorry, sorry to inter interject there because this is so relevant.

I, I want to just share this because and, and I hope we continue your train of thought.

This is real.

This week we had just a beautiful, wonderful family.

They have 5 little kids and they're out travelling the world, kind of live in their family dream.

Both of them are veterans, both of them served over in, in the Middle East and in wartime.

And they have this beautiful little family.

And they, they came and they spent two months here with us and we just became very close.

It was beautiful.

And then my daughter, they, they wanted to continue traveling around the world and they, they wanted to an out pair a nanny.

And so they hired my daughter to go travel with them.

And so they went and they went to Cyprus out in the Mediterranean and, and this week they lost their baby, their little 18 month old just randomly started having seizures.

And so they ran to the hospital in Cyprus and they found that he had a, an irreparable heart defect.

And it'd been a miracle that he'd even lived that long.

And he's gone.

And so we all felt that this week profoundly at that sweet family and, and all his little siblings and, and mom and dad and then my daughter being there and, and friends and extended family.

So, so that's real.

And the reason I share that is because as you mentioned that I'm like that that's real right now.

And we've all just been wrestling with this idea of like, no little kids should grow up and, and should live these great lives and become adults and, and life just isn't fair.

And it's, it's just brutal sometimes.

So I, I just mentioned that because what you just said is, is very real and palpable and relevant right now this week.

Yeah, yeah, that's hard, you know that.

It's the sudden changes.

Sometimes it's the sudden stuff that's really disturbing, but it's also even gradual changes.

It's like we expect.

And we hoped that life wouldn't end up the way it is.

So whether we get married and life isn't the way it we thought it would in marriage or whether we're getting a divorce and we think, oh, great, or whether we're in our career, whether we lose a job, whatever happens, whether we go on a call as a first responder, whether we see something when we're hiking, OK, all these things give us a, a psychological blind side.

What it is is I'm just grieving.

I'm having loss.

I'm frustrated at what I wanted isn't real.

And so it's part of it is I'm just trying to have control over the things that I can't have control over.

So when I grow up, I grew up in a way I'm in.

Discrepancy.

The discrepancy?

Do what?

From like expectations in reality is what I hear you saying.

That's 100%.

So I actually draw it when I teach this class, I draw it on the board.

Here's my, here's my, here's my expect.

I expect this, but reality is over here.

So the wider the gap, the more distressed we have.

And in some of that we say one, well, life's not fair.

So I, this is, this is something that I made-up and I developed and I'm teaching.

It's actually, it just makes sense, right?

And so we say, well, life is not fair.

It's not supposed to be that way.

We, we start having rules on ourselves and others or we say, well, it shouldn't have happened or I shouldn't act like this, or you shouldn't act like this or it should be like this.

Well, life is the way it is.

You and I can't control anybody else.

Here's the thing.

Everybody has a choice.

And so I can't change.

I can't change my spouse.

I can't change my kids.

I can't change the guys on the road.

I can't change what anybody else says or does.

I can't change whether somebody wants to attack me or my friends, OK, whether I'm in a war zone or just where we're traveling around the world.

I cannot change anybody else.

They have their choice.

Some of the things that people do are horrific and horrible.

I actually was helping out in a in a case not too long ago where as I have a psychiatric service and facility animal.

I take her around when I do counseling and when I do debriefings, critical incidents.

And oh, it is amazing.

It's, it's amazing to watch her work the science of service animals through the roof.

So one of the things that I've seen after doing debriefings for many, many years after massive critical incidents, K basically it's when first responders goes a this one's a little bit overwhelming.

I we probably should just chat about it but I was helping.

And I kind of interject there is that is that often what you're doing, brothers, when, when a group of, you know, medical professionals or police or whatever, or firefighters that they go and, and an incident is pretty severe, then that's when you'll go kind of help them process and debrief.

Is is that what I hear you saying?

Yes, yeah.

But here's the thing, we also if you if we say critical incident stress management CISM, sometimes people say it's causes them right.

It has a a handful of different components.

The first component is pre incident preparedness and that includes education.

If you and I can, if I can tell you, guess what, you're going to face difficult things in the future because you're a human being.

So hang on, how am I going to, how am I going to respond?

How am I going to work through that?

That includes understanding the physiological responses of sympathetic nervous system activation.

What's your body, what your mind's going to do, how you take snapshots of images and and you remember those forever because the brain does that.

The first time I almost died, I can still remember.

I can still remember what it looked like, right?

It's very normal to have different snapshots, including memory gaps.

And so when we talk about that time distortion, audio, audible exclusion, just different things that are like, wait a minute, this seems almost surreal.

And if we can, we can have.

That week that even this week, you're saying it just seems like it's in the movies, like it.

It doesn't feel real I I hear.

I heard those a lot this week and in what happened?

Well, and, and what happens, if we can, if we can understand beforehand, this is what's going to happen.

It doesn't make it easier, but it makes it better because we, we would go, well, shoot, I'm, I'm going crazy if we didn't know about those things and we're not going crazy.

We're normal.

So he one of the other things that happens is I say OK.

Sorry, sorry brother.

I I.

Kind of want you to go back.

No, your dog story I got like I I totally interrupted that.

So let's go back to her and what you were going to tell the story there and then we'll come back to this this framework.

So I was helping with a.

Well, a a little girl.

Who was testifying against her uncle for assaulting her multiple times.

OK, just some evil, evil stuff.

You know, you don't harm little children.

And so sometimes we go, wait a minute.

What is normal to me isn't normal to other people.

And in order to get knocked out, so I actually came up with an acronym several years ago, TKO, which is technical knockout in boxing.

If I transfer my moral codes on to somebody else, that's going to knock me out.

If I have a knee jerk reaction and if I have ostrich syndrome, if I bury my head and think it's not happening, then that's going to knock me out.

Go ahead.

This one gives me.

I've been able to help a little bit in anti human trafficking, even going into foreign countries.

Yeah.

So I can feel the emotion coming up and the stuff we saw and the stories I heard from these victims.

And I and I hear you saying it's like, you know, we we can't we can't operate that they all have the same moral code.

But at some point you're like, there has to be a common denominator.

And I guess, I don't know, I I think having the moral code is absolutely critical for every single one of us and have a high moral code.

And I think when others violate at least a common denominator moral code for me, it awakens this warrior inside of me that I want to fight that evil.

Well, one of the things that happens is when you're when you're expecting one thing and reality is different, you're grieving.

And part of grieving can be anger, and part of survival is anger.

And I think there's good anger, but I'll tell you, sometimes it can, it can consume us.

And so we need to check ourselves to say, OK, this is the way things are.

And it's not going to do me any good if I'm just angry all the time or if I can't have an outlet to say, well, OK, now what?

Here's what it is.

It's a it's a loss of control.

So if I say I have an unwanted event or multiple unwanted events because the term trauma is little overused, then in that I have a feeling of no control over the outcome because my expect, I expected one thing.

Reality is different.

And sometimes I can feel helpless in those situations where like, oh, if I could have only been there.

If I could have only been there.

If I could have helped out just a little bit more, if only, if only.

Well, it just it, it shifts our worldview.

And when it shifts our worldview, it, it, it interrupts our belief system.

Now what that has to do?

Is it it?

But it shifts our identity.

It's a soul and identity wound because it now I think differently about myself.

I think differently about the world and I think differently about other human beings.

It affects me spiritually, spiritually, meaning my purpose, my life, what I thought, what I believed, what I hoped life was going to be about isn't.

And so sometimes it can affect what I used to believe or what I thought I knew.

And sometimes we, we say, OK, well, there must not.

I, I can't tell you how many times I've, I've been around individuals who say, well, if, if there was a God, why would he let bad things happen to kids?

I don't know all the reason.

I I believe it's a perfect plan and part of it is like when I lived in Jerusalem and was doing anyway, there was giant millstones, right?

Giant tire sized rocks.

I'm like, you know what, it's better than a millstone be hanged around that person's neck and they drown in the depths of the sea.

Then to offend one of these my little ones, that's what Jesus said.

And you know what, sometimes it's like, man, I wish I could tie that knot around his neck.

But but what I do is helping out in illegal capacity as much as possible to say, OK, how can we put these dudes behind bars now?

Not just guys, it's women too.

And they're pimping out at a little 5 year old girls.

So some other stuff.

That's all the stories and stuff, you know, we don't need to go into details.

But it's it starts to cloud the mind.

It clouds my mind.

OK, now sometimes is it?

Is it?

Might be a dog.

Sorry I keep interrupting you, I'm not going to talk.

Just tell.

Finish the screen with a dog.

So my, my dog sat with the the little girl on the stand as she testified, and she knocked it out of the court.

I mean, she knocked it out of the ballpark.

It was the most incredible, eloquent and precocious testimony I've ever heard ever, especially from a nine year old.

It was she did such an amazing job.

But this isn't cool to have my dog there.

Yeah, yeah, really.

And And the dog went to her.

Yeah, in fact.

When they first met, she was pretty stressed out and my dog picked up on the clues and signs and I, you know, knowing my dog and working with her for a lot and I'm like, oh wow, yeah, my dog, she was stressed out and my dog picked up on it and calmed her down pretty.

Quickly, it was pretty, it was pretty amazing.

And she like, because I know you, you told a story, I think on the last episode you and I did a while ago.

But like basically what she does, she'll go into a room and and she'll she just senses and feels the person who's who's kind of stressed, hurting, grieving maybe maybe the most.

Would you say like she she picks up on what do you describe that for me?

So let's say just thinking about a handful of different incidents in debriefings, like one time when a bunch of cops got shot at and they couldn't return fire because they couldn't see pretty amped up.

You know, we're talking about it.

Well, sometimes when you talk about it and revisit it, it brings up it brings up the same fit feelings.

Physiologically, we start to change because of the sympathetic nervous system activation.

And so that, that brings the emotion why I remember my my dog jumping on the lap of one guy and, and, and then after somebody else's talk and he'd go over, she, my dog would go over and jump on somebody else's lap or put, put her mouth on or her chin on on his knee.

That's just one incident out of many.

Many.

There was one where, hold on, she's she's reading the room and moving around and, and so you guys are sitting and she'll just go over and climb up and she's just, she's just trying to cover.

Yeah, one time I was teaching a class and I'm.

I try not to bring stuff in that's going to create bad memories.

But one guy goes, yeah, I had to kill a guy once.

My dog was just laying there and there were almost 40 people in the room.

She jumped up.

Of course she's not.

She does speak English, right?

She understands sit and stay, but she jumps up and runs, runs over and jumps on his lap and.

And it's called a lap, right?

And everybody heard it.

Everybody but she she heard it too.

She's like, oh, this guy's stressed out.

She ran over there and jumped on his lap and tried to just calm him down.

It's it's pretty amazing.

This other time I was doing a debriefing and there were a bunch of suicides within this organization and people pretty stressed out.

So afterwards a guy who used to be canine handler for many, many years said, I don't think anybody recognize what your dog was doing, but I was canine handler for like 15 years or something.

He goes, your dog wasn't working in that room.

I go Ashley.

It was pretty amazing.

You know that dogs can, here's the thing about dogs, dogs, dogs consents seizures before they happen or they can be trained to do that.

They can sense low, low blood sugar.

They can send some types of cancer so and they can sense stress and it's pretty, it's pretty amazing, which is again, I researched the science and I'm like, OK, game on.

This is what I'm going to do.

That's kind of what I am.

I'm kind of nerdy when it comes to the Wellness, the Wellness piece, the mind piece.

Jeff, I have AI have a huge conic horsal who's just an absolute beast, and so far the only thing he senses is that he just wants to dominate.

He doesn't eat anybody who is a threat at all and anyone who gets in the way.

I didn't.

I do not have the sensitive soul dog that you've got.

That is awesome.

Well, here's you know what, it's kind of misery talking about dogs.

Dogs naturally would be hesitant to go into bad situations or be with people.

They're a little a little bit hesitant at times.

They're like wait a minute or something, not.

Right.

But as human beings, we're not that good.

It's like, you know what?

I'm OK, I'm going to go over there.

And then we get ourselves into trouble sometimes because we don't trust that.

That gift of fear, as Gavin de Becker called it right in one of his books.

So I'm like, all right, now I can do that.

But guess what?

If I get burnt once or twice now, I might read the clues wrong or incorrectly, and then I'm going to have what's called an amygdala hijack, where I'll just tell you what that means.

So the amygdala is the center part of our brain.

It's in the limbic system with other, you know, the hippocampus, the thalamus, the hippocampus, and everything starts to process through my amygdala.

If I'm, if I've had a lot of bad things happen, right, if I've expected one thing and, and multiple times that thing has not happened.

So the result for me is sometimes I can my amygdala activates quicker.

Now Japanese researchers years ago decided to make it so they in mice that the amygdala wouldn't work.

And so when the cat came by, they didn't care.

And so human beings, that's anxiety or it's worry, it's fear, and it's also the amygdala responsible for rage and violence, frankly, right?

We got to have controlled violence.

We have to have justifiable violence, if we're even justified at all.

But sometimes we start to misread clues.

So, for instance, a little while after I came home from Iraq and this of course, years and years of running the gun in we had a pool at the time and my kids, my my wife was gone, my kids GoDaddy, Daddy, can we please go outside?

I'm like no, we don't want the don't want the little 1 to get in the pool and drown.

Please.

Daddy, please.

They shut the sliding glass door and my eyes welled up with tears and I'm like, oh, she's going to die.

As our minds sometimes go to worst case scenario.

It's very apropos, I guess.

It's very on the tip of the mind of those who've had negative experiences.

Absolutely, like first responders on a constant and regular basis.

Stoics call it primatadio malorium.

It's, you know, think about the worst case, Primatadio, premeditate malorium evil.

Think about evil.

Well, I don't like thinking about evil.

That's not going to be healthy for me psychologically.

Now, as a SWAT team leader, I did.

I'm like, OK, what's the worst thing that's going to happen?

And then let's work backwards so we can mitigate.

Every.

Contingency things don't happen, but sometimes I can have an Amiga hijack where I start having these emotions that I don't want to have.

For instance, you know, my, my kid was out driving and it's the bad weather and I'm like, she's supposed to be home.

I look on her location, I find she's stuck and stopped on the highway.

As a as a retired first responder, I think great.

She's been in a car accident, but not just in the old car accident.

She's overturned it in a ditch.

And And sometimes those things that we visualize and sometimes those things that we experience can come back to haunt us.

Now, here's what's really interesting.

The hippocampus, part of the brain in the limbican survival system does stuff with comparison.

So I said earlier, it's like, OK, a guy from Delta Force, you know, writing in my book, and I'm interviewing him.

I'm like, yeah, but I didn't have it as hard as you did.

And he said, Jeff, don't say that because the things you experienced were difficult.

I didn't believe it at the time.

But here, here's something Viktor Frankel said in his in his book, Search Master for Meaning.

Suffering is like the behavior of gas in a gas chamber will completely and evenly fill the the chamber and the human spirit and soul, no matter the size of suffering.

So suffering is relative.

So suffering in and of itself.

Let me just finish this thought.

I know you're have some Suffering in and of itself is poison.

It doesn't matter if it's a little poisonous gas or a lot.

You could have one critical incident or two and you're still going to suffer or you could have a dozen or hundreds.

So I remember having this comparison.

I come home from Iraq and my wife is like, the dishwasher doesn't work and the kids are bad.

And I'm like, and I had to suppress my emotions so I don't fall apart in in the midst of chaos or as a first responder.

I can't fall apart on scene.

I have to do triage.

I have to do treatment, I have to act, I have to suppress my emotion initially, but I have to be logical.

OK, do this, this, this and this.

But I've always said you haven't been a first responder long enough to cried at work or on the way home.

OK, So what happens now is and, and usually the tears come more than once if you're doing it for a while.

So it's especially with kids.

But what happens is I'm doing that comparison to my wife.

I'm, I'm thinking, so nobody's dying, nobody's limbs are getting broke off.

So I now become less compassionate and she goes, man, you jerk.

And I'm like, what's wrong with her?

Why is she freaking out over something little?

It's because suffering is suffering.

And the more compassionate I can be, even just a little bit, the better off it's going to be for everybody.

It's going to be better for me.

It's going to be better for other people, even if I think their suffering is less.

One more story.

So this lady, I remember this lady telling my neighbor this years ago and I just come back from Israel and I was working as a air Marshall.

It's gone all the time.

And this lady was crying and saying my husband after 24 years has to leave and go to work and he's going to be gone for a week.

She was in tears.

And my wife said afterwards she says I was compassionate on her but didn't she know who she was talking to?

Like as I add up the time away from work from my kids, it's literally years out of our over 20 years of marriage, literally years of me got being gone.

Fact.

My older kids say, why, Dad, you're never home.

That's right.

I was working, you know, I was gone.

I was deployed, I was overseas, whatever, just because, you know, I was the height of the global war against terrorism and all that jazz.

So anyway, that's that.

OK, there's a there's a ton there.

Couple things I want to touch on.

We took our oldest daughter to get a brain scan at Doctor Daniel Amon, his, his clinics, he's got some awesome stuff.

And so she had a scan and she, she was, and we learned about, you know, all the science behind the brain and, and she was born with, which was, I thought was fascinating, a super hyperactive, overactive basal ganglia.

And so in a way, she was, you know, a fight or flight mode all the time, constantly, 24/7.

And she said it was inherited that one of her birth parents, because our oldest is adopted, one of her birth parents had gone through so much of these unwanted experiences.

And the traumas were used in the word that it had been passed on to her and fascinating.

So it, it does it, I guess I just want to share that because it, it massively affects the brain and the psyche Even so much that it can be, it can be passed on.

And that was just one thought I wanted to share.

Well, go ahead.

There is there is a lot of science there, you know, there's there's neuro psycho immunology, OK.

It's a relatively new field of study.

It just says, hey, the body is keeping stress on the cellular level and it's changing you physiologically.

Some of that is inherited, some of that is just because of stress, especially from age zero to 18 years old.

The Aces score adverse childhood experiences.

OK, we know that people have adverse childhood experiences and, and it includes everything from where your parents to divorce, where your parents are not, where is there substance abuse in the home or somebody in jail in the home?

Where it was there abuse?

Did you witness it?

Were you abused physically or sexually?

Were were you take?

Did you have enough clothes?

There's just 10 questions, right?

And so do you have enough to eat?

Was there mental disturbance in the in the house, somebody in your family?

If you add those up the the people have higher levels.

Of.

Asus scores, there's more complications in the future.

Now, it's still our choice.

We can have my Asus scores, but it's still our choice.

I can still control what I wish that I would have controlled.

So in other words, if my expectancy on one level is something and reality is different, I, I need to understand one, I, I have control of nothing.

I don't, I have control of myself, my attitude, and I have to act like the serenity prayer, right?

I have to accept the things I cannot change.

I have to give it up.

What why a a works so well?

It's like I have to recognize that I have no control over anything and God has the ultimate control and I need to rely on a higher power.

So I can just say, OK, I accept the people or the situations that I cannot change because what happens is whether it's whether it's betrayal trauma or whether it's an employer trauma or whether it's just difficulty of not wanting and not getting your way.

I just need to accept the fact that I can't control anything, whether I'm doing compressions in CPR and it's not my fault.

I can control how many compressions I do and what the speed is, but the outcome is different.

In fact, when I teach, you know, EMS and fire and honestly, law enforcement, like I've done CPR too, OK, So it's like I can control the speed that I do the compressions, but it doesn't mean somebody's going to come back to life.

What meaning am I giving to that thing?

And is that controlling me?

It's just because I want the outcome to be different.

Well, maybe God wants something different.

And I will tell you, having talked with multiple first responders and having experienced myself, I've seen miracles and I've talked to other people are like, you know what one flight medic was telling me the other day, He's like, he told me a couple of situation.

He goes, Jeff, there is no way on earth these people should have not been hurt or just be released the next day.

They should have died.

And he told me in detail some of these experiences.

I, I can remember doing a debriefing after a vehicle Rd. rolled on a highway 10 times that dad was drunk and high.

His girlfriend, he was married, was drunk and high.

The two year old in the back seat eventually ejected.

No broken bones, no lacerations, no internal damage, a couple of abrasions.

You can't tell me that.

That's like it's a miracle.

Or sometimes I think heaven intervenes.

That's where you just can't explain it.

Right.

And that's where it can also be so difficult because people start asking why didn't heaven intervene in other situations?

And it, it, it can be so difficult.

As you were talking about chest compressions, I remember the first time I did it, this 19 year old kid from a good family overdosed on drugs and I did chest compressions in the back of the ambulance all the way to the hospital.

And then he ended up dying.

And that one rocked me.

It really, really rocked me because I, I wanted to save this kid and then he didn't make it in spite of all of our efforts.

I don't know.

And, and you know, the, the wasted opportunity of a 19 year old throwing away his life anyways, there's so much there and so many hard questions and, and suffering, suffering is life.

Life just has suffering it, it just does.

And, and, and it's going to be there.

I guess I, I wanted to, that's a good lead in, I wanted to, to talk to you a little bit about increasing our capacity to suffer because you, you did say that everyone's going to suffer and we all suffer at different levels.

And each person is, you know, what's what's happening to them.

Maybe it's significant to them, but at least I think there's a, a place where we talked about increasing our capacity that we, we can handle more and, and hope with more.

Because I don't think any of us wants to be just totally wiped out over small, small amount of suffering.

Like things, things didn't work out so well.

And somebody left a mean comment on my on my social media and and I spend the next three days in bed, right?

So one of the things that I think is, is more important is to talk about escape and avoidance because I think it has more, more disumph.

I guess.

Let me let let me say this.

So we expect to be happy all the time.

And so if kids grow up and they're like, well, I'm just supposed to be happy or we have a bad day and we're like, I'm not supposed to feel this way.

We could put rules on ourselves.

So I can remember this guy, a Co worker of mine, his wife got cancer.

She was young, she died.

I remember I'm working with him through this situation.

He came back to work and I go, how you doing?

And he goes, man, I'm not doing great because when I smile and this is a while after she passed and he's back at work.

But when I smile and when I'm happy or when I laugh, I feel guilty.

I shouldn't be feeling that way.

So he's imposing rules on himself.

But here's what happens if I start feeling blah.

If I start feeling negative, then it's easy to say I want to escape and avoid.

Escape and avoids like if I drink alcohol make me feel good for a while.

Or.

What if I go spend more money?

That'll make me feel good for a while.

I start some other words for this are like buffering, numbing.

That's that's what you're talking about.

So escape and avoid.

It's like I'm turning to pornography or alcohol or drugs or, you know, the, the TV, I'm just binge on TV or social media or whatever.

I'm just yeah, yeah.

I'm trying to avoid an escape.

I'm trying to buffer.

I'm trying to numb.

I'm I'm trying to stay away from the discomfort.

Right.

And so there's numerous studies, in fact, they're one of the last studies that I read about pornography said that they, they, they assessed a bunch of men and they said if there was a negative feeling, they were immediately going to porn because they wanted to feel joy and pleasure again.

And so if we start to feel bad, it's like having a giant magnifying glass above my head, magnifying all the negative emotions.

I don't want to feel bad.

So let me go escape, let me get get into porn.

It's easy because everybody can see it, but there's over 70 peer reviewed articles that say that porn's unhealthy for a marriage.

So wait a minute.

If I'm not feeling good and things aren't aren't really good in my in my marriage, maybe I'll have an emotional affair.

Maybe I have a sexual affair, maybe I'll invite somebody else into my marriage, or maybe I'll start swinging or kink or or get a massage with a sexual ending.

Or maybe I'll get prostitution.

Or maybe I'll engage in those behaviors that it makes me feel good temporarily.

Those do not make you feel good long term.

In fact, they lead to massive problems.

Whether it's checking out by gaming, gambling, spending money and going into debt, even working.

Working is good.

We need to work, but sometimes excessive working is it just because you're checking out things are falling apart in other areas.

And so I can become an alcoholic, I can become a shopaholic, I can become a workaholic, a workaholic.

I can also become a an addict, a sex addict.

Sometimes the those behaviors also lead to the ultimate escape and avoid, which is suicide.

Go you know what, I just you're in trouble at work, you're in trouble at home.

Things aren't going right and you start talking to yourself saying, man, things aren't good.

I'm just going to kill it.

I'm going to kill myself because it's not even worth it anymore.

And people who take their life by suicide don't want to die necessarily.

They just want the pain to go away.

If the pain were away, they'd feel fine.

The thing is, we need to experience pain.

Fact.

I was on a call the other day.

I was teaching them some at a fire department and it was a smaller fire department and they got a call.

So I just rode along.

You know, this lady hurt herself pretty badly and.

She was just screaming and I'm like, you know what, it is good that we feel pain and let's just know we're alive.

If we totally numb out 100% all the time, then we're checked out.

So there needs to be that window of I, it's OK to feel gloomy sometimes.

It's OK, I'm going to have a bad day, but I don't want to do I don't want to stay in that.

Now the science is how do I get back so I can feel better?

I'm going to, I'm going to increase in sadness and depression and, and worry and anxiety and fear and suicidality.

If I don't get enough sleep, I need to have the discipline to go to sleep.

And in fact, I need to wake up the same time every day, no matter what time I go to bed.

That's going to, it's depression and anxiety which are exacerbated in, in our society, right?

The IT it increases when we don't get enough sleep, but it's properly tied.

Our mental and emotional Wellness is properly tied with circadian rhythms.

Now one psychologist at Harvard said, look, if if I can tell my clients that it wake up at the same time every day, no matter what, OK, that's going to help psychologically and get enough sleep.

But even if I go to sleep late, waking up at the same time every day and then eat a high fat, high protein.

Prioritize and I heard this before and I've been thinking through it.

So your your suggestion even prioritizing getting up at the same time over getting more sleep.

I am as a whole as a whole.

But we need 7 to 9 adults, need 7 to 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night.

Is it happening?

No.

So do we need to do those things?

And drinking before we go to bed just keeps you in your limbic system.

You're not doing healing and it's not well, especially after critical incidences.

It's not.

Good.

And all the blue light stuff is looking at screens.

Our bodies are just not handling that well and we need to be off screens before bed, hours before bed.

Right, yes, so, so back to this back.

To fat and proteins.

Yeah, eat high fat, high protein first thing in the morning.

No carbs, no sugar, because if you're stressed or doing something stressful, you become hypoglycemic and psychophysiologically unstable the whole day, and it won't reset until you pass through the night.

So he said usually that'll put people back from each line.

Just those.

Two days.

I love this stuff.

Two things right there.

Just get some good sleep and eat fats and proteins.

That right there can help reset our our brains and our Physiology and we're we're resetting our biochemistry that is so critical.

So there's a couple other things that I usually emphasize.

And one is I need to move, I need to get exercise because there's, there's been studies, there's a lot of studies, but there was 1 landmark study that said that it's exercising 30 minutes a day is as good or better than selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRI pills for Wellness.

And you get a multi billion dollar industry in the Pharmaceutical industry.

This is pushing pills.

In fact, there's another study that I read not too long ago that said, look, running, running twice a week is way better for you.

But people don't want to do it.

It's way better for you than taking pills, but it's easy to take a pill.

It's, we need to change our habits.

It's the habits that needs to change.

So just like Socrates took Plato and held them underneath the water and then brought them up, said, look, as soon as you want to learn as badly as you wanted the air to breathe, then I'll teach you.

So this one of the versions of that story goes, it's like, are we wanting to really feel better?

There's two things right there.

The second, the other thing is nutrition. 90% of our serotonin is created in our gut.

That's the neurotransmitter makes us feel pleasure.

So here's what happens.

I have a sadness and depression, OK, And that's from too much, too much of my body alarm activation going off, too much sympathetic nerve, active nervous system activation.

Sometimes we're not even good at noticing or recognizing that that connection between our brain and our body, that somatic connection, that polyvagal nerve that's changing your chemistry and physiologically is changing us physiologically in our bodies.

And so when I get sadness and depression, isolation and withdrawal, even if I'm with people, I'm like, I'm pushing away and it's easier to do because of the stinking phones or Internet and everything else.

So I'm isolating from others.

And oh, by the way, people will make you feel better physically.

Studies have been shown that if I feel I feel better physically and emotionally and mentally, if I'm engaged with human connection, I need human connection.

So then I have physiological and emotional exhaustion.

Are just the relationships are struggling and and so we're adding this all up and just putting these pieces together.

We're not sleeping well, we're not eating well.

We're eating lots of carbohydrates, lots of highly processed foods, lots of chemicals, lots of sugars.

And then our relationships aren't great.

They're not, they're not profound.

We're not having real meaningful conversations and deep connection.

Just just putting these pieces together, like we're setting up this recipe for the exact opposite outcome.

And, and no wonder we're we're struggling so much with mental and emotional well-being.

Yeah, So, you know, if if I have sadness and depression, isolation, withdrawal, and I'm like, well, even at home, like, well, she didn't understand me, so I'm just going to push away and like, well, maybe somebody else will understand me.

That's not healthy, OK.

Or I just get in my own head thinking I must be going crazy because I don't feel good if my dopamine, serotonin and endorphin levels, all the neurotransmitters make me feel pleasure are depleted.

That's because that's that's a normal thing.

In fact, I remember after coming home from Iraq, I told my wife, I'm like, I'm going to go get certified as a skydiver.

And I've gone a handful of times before before I went and, and after I jumped a handful of times.

But I'm like, I just wanted something to make me feel alive again because I kind of feel numb.

And, and it's because if you're in in sympathetic nervous system activation for too long, it starts to change as chemically.

And, and so if my, if my, what used to bring me pleasure isn't hey, I used to like to do this, I used to like to do that.

And I just feel like I'm just always.

Blah.

But go work out.

Go, go be with human being.

The very thing that's going to help cure that sadness is doing something.

And that's a hard hurdle.

That's a really hard hurdle when you're just, well, I don't want to do anything.

Go work out.

I'm telling you, it's help.

Helps.

What I found, and I'm sure you've experienced and for yourself and work is that the hardest part is just starting.

And then then once you get, it's that first step that that's tough to get the workout in or to go talk to somebody.

It's, it's that first part.

And then once you get going, it's a lot easier.

Even on the mornings where I don't feel like working out, I'm just, it's a little bit of discipline there.

It's not like I have to exercise this monumental amount of self-discipline to do my workout.

It's like I just got to start and then a few minutes into my workout, I feel fantastic.

I'm like, yeah, let's go.

I'm so glad I'm here and I get a great workout in.

It's it's just that first piece where your mind doesn't want to, your body doesn't want to anything.

I'd just rather not.

And it's, it's just that first step.

I love, you know, talking about this and, and sharing it with the clients I got to work with.

Like just exercise discipline for that first step.

And once you get going moving your body, do it going in the right direction, it gets easier and easier to do.

It totally there's there's one other thing that I think is really one of the top things that I say people in the need to do and that's gratitude.

The science is through the roof.

Robert Emmons Emmons and McCullough researchers Universe California Davis.

He's done multiple resources research saying if I write down three things a day a day that I'm grateful for that's one option right.

There's different ways to be grateful and we could write a gratitude letter.

We can keep a gratitude journal we can write down well, I'm glad I'm not and fill in the blank so we can even do that reverse.

But if I write down three things a day I'm grateful for, it will help me mentally and emotionally and physically.

Why physically?

Because we're we're our.

Because the body keeps the scores vessel, vessel.

Vander Koch says.

Because my I'm taking stress on the cellular level.

I have to care for my body.

I'm caring for the my mind.

The best way to care for my mind is look at things in a different light.

Be grateful.

So guess what?

Kids don't live.

Bad things happen, accidents happen, people die, people get hurt.

It's hard.

You have to have a you grieve yes, but looking at it in a different light can really help us maybe appreciating those times after that grieving process.

You know, grieving is hard, but you know, sometimes even if relationships are are are injured, we could I could say just like the Stanford forgiveness project, I need to forgive.

I need to not take things personal.

It's I need to impersonalize things.

I need to accept the things I can't change.

I need to not put rules on myself's or others.

I just need to look at life in a little bit different of light now as I'm trying to have that attitude of looking forward or looking not to be Pollyannaish, but to just say, you know what, there's good, there's good things happening in life.

And if there's good things happening in life, there's always going to be opposition in your mind.

And what happens is like 1 neural trans neuroscientist said the negative sticks to us like Velcro and the positive like Teflon.

We need to try to emphasize and accentuate the things that are going well and and by writing those down, it's going to help us.

So it's kind of a practice that goes along with gratitude, but it's just having something to be excited about, something to just see it with this positive, just know, again, noticing anything from kittens and puppies to flowers to sunrises and sunsets and, and beautiful simple things that we can appreciate that are, that are good, that are beautiful, that are wonderful and that we can get excited about.

And, and I, I always like to tell people like, make sure there's something in your day and something in your week, something in your month, something in your year that you're excited about that you're looking forward to.

So I break it down into micro and macro sort of micro level.

You know, I'm excited every morning to sit down with my family and have breakfast and we do our like family devotional together.

I get excited for that every morning.

And so I, I wake up looking forward to my morning routine, but then, you know, our evenings together as a family and, and, you know, training my dogs, I look forward to that.

So I have all these micro things on a daily on an annual basis, and this one's huge.

I can't recommend this enough.

I got, if there's one thing I could just shake people into doing, like take your calendar for this whole year and make sure you have awesome meaningful things scheduled in that calendar, right?

So every year I take my wife on a honeymoon in two weeks.

We're going out to, to this.

They were going out to Azor Islands.

It was basically like the Hawaii of, of the Atlantic Ocean out in middle of nowhere.

But every week we take a a week to 14 days just the two of us.

We're doing it twice this year, right?

So I know my mind is always like looking for those cool things.

I'm going to go back to the base camp of Mount Everest.

I'm, I'm leading a group there in September.

I'm going to, I just signed up again to lead a group back up to Kilimanjaro.

So I've got these things spread out and my mind knows they're there and they're happening and looking forward to things that that excite me and challenge me.

And so it's just really emphasizing what you were saying.

It's like keep the mind looking at a positive direction, grateful and excited and and emphasizing the good.

Yeah, yeah.

No, you're right.

And there's a lot of science behind that actually right behind the the vacations, because then we get little hits of feel good while we're planning it.

And but I like how you broke it up with the macro on the micro because we have to do positive daily habits.

Like there has to be something every day that we're doing that's going to help us, you know, meditation and prayer, writing, reading, learning gratitude visits or, or just associating or grabbing somebody and telling them thanks, sending a note.

I'll tell you there's, there's so many things that can bring us joy and it's looking for those good things and doing and engaging in those things that are good and not those things that go against our own moral values.

But also there are some moral absolutes.

Like if I'm going to break into somebody's house and rob them at a gunpoint, well, that's, it's a moral absolute saying.

I cannot find a piece of conscience.

If I'm doing something that's just completely wrong.

I can and I need to take responsibility and and and if I'm messing up then I need to take responsibility for.

It so let's, let's bring that back because this one's this one's huge brother and it let's, let's bring it back from an extreme because, you know, our listeners aren't sitting here thinking, how can I rob my neighbors at gunpoint?

You bring it back to something that they're more likely to do.

And, and the way I like to phrase this, this principle or practice is it's really hard to like yourself when you're doing unlikable things.

And it's really hard to respect yourself when you're doing things that aren't respectable.

It's, it's such a simple framework and it, and it can be something as small as just being rude to my wife or children, being snappy, taking out my stress or my frustration on them just from the law of proximity.

You know, I'm, I'm sad about something over here that happened and, and I bark at the kids or I'm not listening to my wife or, you know, I'm, I'm spending time and, and money.

You know, I'm, I'm being dishonest with myself or with others.

It's the little things.

I, I keep telling them I'm going to do something.

I don't do it right.

I'm breaking commitments I make.

So I can't trust myself and they know they can't trust me either.

So it's, it's even in the small things, it starts to tear us up inside.

And every one of us, I, I think it's true for all humans, but especially for men, when we know we're capable of more, but we're living below that, it just tears us up.

It just really tears us up inside.

And, and, and it's part of the moral code.

It's part of this, this inner, this inner self that just knows that that there's a version of a best self and we can be striving to do that instead of just throwing in the towel and and playing small.

There's doing something new is always hard and the but it's creating new neural pathways, habits easy.

Now if the habit is I'm angry and I'm I'm angry at the people and I'm a boss at work and I'm angry at these people and I'm a I'm angry at my wife, I'm angry at my kids.

Maybe they're fearful of me because my anger is getting me somewhere that's not right.

But there's always a reward.

Maybe I'm dishonest a little bit because it's getting me a reward.

But I cannot, I cannot go out of my value system.

I can't deviate that and feel pleasure.

I can't deviate it and feel whole.

Let me tell you what one of the things I value is kindness.

So I came home from Iraq and I recognize I need some.

I need some help.

OK, It was a while.

I'm telling my little girls.

They're all in a room and they were loud.

I was tired.

They were the, the room was a mess and they were tiny girls and I'm like, hurry up, get in bed and I'm yelling at them like this.

And I actually, I, I went outside their room and I, my eyes welled up with tears.

I recognized that I'm like, something's not right.

I need to get some help.

That was the impetus for me for change because I, I went against what I value most, one of the things that I value most, which is a kindness.

And then I finally said, OK, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to go get help.

I will tell you it was hard.

It's hard because you're like, you feel embarrassed or weak or you think, gosh, I'm not like other people.

I'm different.

And that's not the truth.

We are all similar.

And it doesn't matter if it's a little bit of suffering or a lot of suffering where we've inhaled some poisonous gas.

So what are we doing about it?

Well, if we're isolating, withdrawing from everybody else and saying I'm different than everybody else or I must be going crazy, that's not the case.

We're human and we're having a human experience.

What I need instead of isolation is connection.

I need to normalize the fact what I'm feeling.

I need to connect and then I get to have those resources.

What are those resources?

I can mobilize my own resources.

I just gave you 5 things to do.

Sleep, food, you know, exercise, gratitude, people.

I need to just immobilize some resources.

And maybe maybe it's talking to a coach, maybe it's talking to you.

Maybe he's talking to a therapist, maybe he's talking to my brother.

It's just talking to somebody who gets it.

It's talking out loud.

I, I will tell you, there's some things that bothered me even on the class, on the classified side, this stuff that had bothered me.

And if you don't deal with stuff, it comes up and I'm like, I'm not going to talk about it.

And that's been years ago.

I'm like, why am I not going to talk about it?

Because it's classified.

Why else I'm not going to talk about it?

Because it hurts.

It's hard to talk out loud, but talking out loud can actually help it.

It doesn't give the if I'm talking to somebody I trust and they're confidential about it, then they can hear it and it they can take some of the burden.

Exactly.

It's huge and, and talking to somebody who, who can help you, this isn't like you don't talk to your neighbor who's king is, you know, you, you're dumping all your stuff on someone who can't help you.

But you're right.

Talking to someone you can trust someone, someone who can help you, man, it's a it's a massive help.

One thing I like to tell people is like take it out on paper, not on people.

If if you can just dump it all and then just take that thing and tear it up and throw it away or burn it or whatever.

But really just start processing and getting that up and out so it doesn't stay inside of us and and it's toxic.

I'm glad you said journaling.

That's one of the other things I do talk about often.

It's like the science of journaling.

Journaling is through the roof.

In fact, I was in high school, a good buddy of mine killed himself and he asked me to go golfing couple days before he did.

And I said no because I didn't want to go.

And he killed himself.

You know, it's like, OK, I, I grabbed that journal and I, I've been writing ever since.

Writing is so beneficial and cathartic to us and powerful.

Just write about goals, triumphs, hopes, dreams, frustrations, whatever.

Just process because we all talk to ourselves sometimes.

Getting it on paper, like you said, it's going to help.

Love it.

Hey, I want to, I want to kind of shift gears and and ask.

I don't, and I don't know if you have any experience with this yet.

There's a lot of talk about and use of, I want to say hallucinogens.

I don't know if that's the right word.

It's they're using was it psilocybin and LSD and others for PTSD and similar things.

Have you have you come across that people?

You know, I have some, I know some people who are using it and, and had some some good experiences.

I don't know if you've done read any of the research or have talked to anybody about that.

Yeah, right.

Right Where you are, where you're working, there's a lot of people using it.

Yeah, the, you know, ketamine clinics or even MDMA and different stuff.

I just remember as, you know, as a, as a cop many years ago, they're stealing ketamine from veterinarian clinics and, and using it.

And now they're putting it on a drip and saying, OK, let's see what happens.

One of the things that, well one I've talked to or counsel with some first responders and some others who've who've used it.

Some said it was a some said it didn't work at all for them.

Some said it was a horrible, terrible trip and they'll never do it again.

Some said it was a horrible, terrible trip and but it worked.

I have not dealt into the the the science of it.

I I just I had.

Some people.

Who've asked me and I'm like, well, I don't know.

There's a handful of different things you can do for a Wellness.

Yeah, I, I was just thinking, you know, we got to keep an eye on it because it's happening and it's, it's, they're doing a lot of research on it and it's, you know, it's, it's something that interests me.

So I wonder if you've seen it.

And I know where you're working.

Like I said, there's, there are people using it and, and, and, you know, you and I both have a lot of friends who are, you know, former special forces and, and things and, and struggling still with a lot of challenges from the, the things they saw and experienced.

And it's tough.

It's tough thing and I think we, you know, having these habits in place and the, and the micro and the macro, some of the best things we can do to just make sure that that our mind, body and spirit are being addressed every day.

And relationships.

I would say that there's four things we do every single day is do something to address and nourish your mind, your body and your spirit and your relationships.

And, and they're simple things.

And if we can do those every single day, man, the the probabilities of health and happiness and well-being and success are are massive.

It's It's simple stuff that makes such a huge difference.

Yeah, it really is.

You know, it's interesting.

I was just just thinking of some of the keynote speeches that I've given at different places and including, you know, it's a different States and and whatnot.

And one of the things that I think could be very beneficial for us is just compassion and love.

Really, love is kind of the essence of just life.

It's like we, we want to feel loved and we want to and we want to be loved, loving others.

I think that's going to be helpful.

One of the things though, I remember I was at a, at a place and a buddy of mine and special operations, his buddy, his is several years ago, but he, he, he lost, lost some limbs in an explosion.

And I called him up and I, I said, hey, let's get together.

And he said, I can't.

I'm back at Walter Reed Hospital again for another surgery.

And we chatted for a while and I said, hey, I love you, man.

And I could hear him crying.

And he said, thanks.

I really needed to hear that today.

I was wondering if it was worth it anymore.

There are people all around us with emotional amputations.

Maybe there's somebody listening today who has an emotional amputation.

My thing is we just need a help.

We need to help ourselves.

We need to help others.

Let me tell you a different story.

A buddy of mine, Navy SEAL, literally standing next to somebody when they got attacked.

His buddy goes down.

He, he, he grabs a tourniquet from off his vest and throws it to him and then he returns fire.

He goes, Jeff, if I didn't return fire, we at all would have died.

But unfortunately his buddy was not able to put that tourniquet on himself in time and he he died.

And part of it is look, I, I need to look out for myself.

I need to know how to put tourniquets on me.

I need buddy aid and I need self aid.

Self aid is given some of the tools that we talked about today.

But here's the thing, if you're thinking of ending it, don't hang on, hold on.

There's help you, you're, you're not thinking the right way.

There are people who get you.

There are people who love you.

The, the number of completed suicides that I've investigated and the death notification, the not only death notifications that I've given, but the, the suicide notes that I've read.

Everybody who takes their life by suicide, they usually have a theme that says I'm the problem and people will be better off without me.

That's, that's stinking thinking.

That's something, something in their mind there.

That's just not, it's not right.

And so if it's not right, just hang on for a second, talk to somebody who gets it, hang on.

And, and, and, and if I can look for somebody else who needs some help, why don't I?

Getting out of myself is going to make me feel more normal.

Let me let.

Me tell you another story.

Guy is has a shotgun in his mouth and ready to blow his head off.

His thumb is on the trigger.

He gets a knock at the door.

He goes over.

He goes oh it's a guy I'm sponsoring through a a AI better I better answer it.

He opens the door.

The guy says man I am really depressed can you help me?

Can I come in Yeah, come on in.

It normalizes it when we get out of our shell and it when we help other people.

Let me tell you another story.

Purpose and meaning and love it.

It's so powerful.

So I had a first responder, young guy, EMS you driving an ambulance.

It gets married to his high school sweetheart.

They go to they go on a honeymoon for a couple weeks to come back.

Two weeks later, he's sponsored to a vehicle that had been hit by a drunk driver and it was overturned.

It was his wife and her best friend.

He lays down on this on the roadway.

She's still alive but ebbing fast.

He's trying to comfort her, they're trying to extract her.

They try everything to extract her and they can't, not in time.

He said.

They tried pneumatics, better the jaws of life and everything.

They they couldn't extract her in time and she died right there.

He tells me.

He goes, I tried to kill myself after that.

Then he says, not going to tell you how I know, but angels are real.

I had a different background, different religion than me, different place of the country.

I believe his wife came to him and stopped him.

We talked earlier.

It's like, well, why didn't heaven intervene for me?

Or why didn't heaven intervene in this case or that case?

Well, it did in this case.

And here's the thing, we, you and I can be angels in the flesh.

We can, we can text people, we can buddy check everybody.

We can call them a smile, a listening ear, something that just makes them feel normal.

When people are grieving, we can cry with them.

We can just say, you know what?

I'm sorry, sometimes you don't know what to say, but you can just be there for each other.

That's what life's all about.

It's that connection to say, yeah, maybe, and maybe today I'll be that Angel for somebody else. 100% this week I, I felt that very poignantly.

I, I had no idea what to say and I told him that I said, hey, I, there are no words for, for your loss, but I just want you to know how much I love you.

And that hit hit home for him and helped and, and we did everything we, we, we could from where we are to help out.

But man, I thank you, Jeff.

That's what a great reminder for every one of us.

Just love more, receive love, accept love and give love.

And I think, man, for for I'm feeling it right now and for everybody listening, I want to give like a very specific invitation.

As soon as you're done listening to this, send it, send a text message, send an e-mail, make a phone call, write a note like just express some love and just just sit for a minute and see whose name or or face comes to your mind and, and just reach out and share some love.

So it's it's an incomparable power and it's a beautiful thing.

And when we lose the people we love, that's I know for me, the things that come up are just that grateful you express love and wish you could express it again.

Stuff is good, so good and so important for those of you listening, Jeff and I, we, we, we lost our little brother.

He, he took his own life a few years ago.

Man, I miss him and I think about him all the time.

And the, the last interaction I had with him was I sent him a, a Facebook message that just said love you.

And it shows the little icon when he's seen it.

And, and I, I knew he'd seen it.

I took a screenshot of it.

I've kept it.

I'm like the the last interaction I had was that was an expression of love and man, I just find myself constantly thinking, I wish I had done it even more.

And So what a what a great reminder for all of us to just love more and let go of the annoyances.

And then the little things we get upset about and and getting all worked up about is keep keep life in perspective and share that love more.

Yeah.

And you know, it's, it's hard when you lose a loved one and you got to remember it's still their choice.

And but it's hard.

And you know, when we're expecting one thing and another thing happens, we got to remember some some axioms.

One, people have their choice and I can't change what other people do.

And life happens and there are things outside of my control.

But if I can, if I can look at that reality is the way it is, maybe my expectations need to go back to what God's plan is.

The reality is people have their choice.

The reality is it seems like life's not fair sometimes, but I think after this life will realize, Oh, actually, it was so much more fair than we thought.

And, and when, when kids or people pass, there's a plan that's greater than ours that we just don't comprehend.

I, I am convinced of it because there are sometimes people die that I'm like, and even talk to my medic buddies.

They're like, there's no reason they should have died.

Yeah, we don't know.

We don't know the grand plan.

We don't know what's going on in that person's body or that life or if they've fulfilled their time on earth.

And there you go.

Everything's going to work out.

That's what I believe.

And and part of it is just looking to that.

Let me just say Connor researchers Connor and Davison and Tedeschi and I can remember his name did post traumatic growth there.

There are multiple researchers that have have shown the spirituality is something you need.

Even Edward Tick who wrote about trauma, he said psychotherapist are trained not to talk about spirituality.

But that's the very thing we need.

It's like we need we need to have some belief and even that atheists can have a spirituality.

That means what's the purpose?

Well, we're all spiritual beings.

Every one of us is a spiritual being, absolutely.

So we need to address that spiritual side of us.

Well, awesome.

Good talking to you.

Thanks for sharing this, man.

How can, how can people connect with you and, and your services, especially if there's people across the, the US, maybe even globally who work in this, in, in medical services or in difficult situations where they're seeing stuff like this?

How can they?

How can they get in touch with you and your business?

Jeffreydenning.com is is my website and that's about it.

Classic.

Okay, love it brother.

Love you brother.

Thanks for being on here.

Thanks for sharing this message.

Thanks for the good work you do man.

Thanks.

For what you do.