Invisible Storm of PTSD

One of the bigger takeaways from this episode, one of the overall themes of not only this episode, but um Jason's message is that anybody with any kind of anxiety disorder, depression, anxiety moment in your life. Stress can relate two not fully being aware what the symptoms are, thinking that it'll just go away, and thinking that you have to have something really bad in order for it to wererant getting any help. You know, you think, well, this person hasn't

much worse than me. They've had a harder life than me, So who am I to think that I need to get help? That's a luxury. That none of that is true, and that the longer we wait to get help with whatever we need help with the symptoms start to morphin change. We almost convince ourselves that we're getting better even though we're getting worse. But we're getting worse in different ways. So maybe it's not the thing I thought I had.

It's so much easier to get help sooner now. In terms of having PTSD, you don't need to have been in hand to hand combat if you were, uh, you know, deployed, if you served in the military. As Jason will tell us in his story, it was the high stress and life or death undercurrent that ran under every intelligence meeting

he had during his four month deployment in Afghanistan. You know, a big through line in Jason's book that just came out is that feeling of like all you know is he self deprecatingly says, I just went to meetings for four months in Afghanistan? How could I have PTSD? Because he didn't really understand what it was, and he didn't fully understand that. When you train to serve in the military,

your brain is trained to stay alive. But when you leave the service and it's time to re orient back into civilian life, there's not a lot of help to help people's brains get out of that survival mode and it still lives in our body, and so there are ways in which you know Jason was still living that

was not conducive to having a wife and kids. You know, to be constantly on high alert, thinking that your kids shouldn't be in front of the window, and we can't have our back facing the door because someone could come in. And if we're out of stoplight, we got to just blow through it because you know our car could get

blown up. You know, to really feel in your body that those things could be happening and be unable to stop responding in that way in your day to day life can be very, very disruptive, to say nothing of the nightmares and night terrors and sleep paralysis and insomnia, and especially when he was still serving as a politician, you have to take red eye flights to save time, but his body was still in a different mode and he couldn't fall asleep in front of strangers, and so

there'd be no sleep on the red eye flights. You see, how these don't sound like your typical symptoms that we see in movies where somebody is having a literal flashback, where the wars flashing before their eyes is there, you know, walking down the street talking to themselves. That is something

that can happen. But there's also just the very I hate to say, Monday, but the the irregular symptoms of PTSD that are absolutely crippling, destructive to your life, and as it did with Jason, lead to such depression that it led to suicidal ideation and that's when he decided to get help. But you don't have to wait until it gets to so I will let Jason tell his own story. But um, just to let you know what's

going on with Jason right now. He is currently out promoting his new memoir that just came out Invisible Storm, a soldiers Memoir of politics and PTSD, and all of his personal royalties are going to fight veteran suicide and veteran homelessness at vc P headquarters, which is the Veterans Community Project, which is a nonprofit that serves homeless and at risk veterans with tiny homes, wrap around support services, and emergency assistance. So a little more about Jason before

we get into chatting with him. Jason and was the member of the Missouri House of Representatives in the forty four district from two thousand nine He was also the thirty ninth Secretary of State of Missouri from seventeen when he left public life to get help for his PTSD. He was in the middle of launching a bid to run for mayor of Kansas City, and as he says in his Twitter bio, he sort of ran for president UM.

He was exploring a presidential run in twenty twenty. He even had a ninety minute meeting with Barack Obama, who called him a Democratic star in the future of the party. But again he needed to get help first. So these days UM Jason has had a bit of a career change. So right now Jason is working full time with this nonprofit organization which he is the president of UM, the Veterans Community Project. And I'm also always very interested in people who have a passion for something that helps others

and they make a complete life change. I always think that's very inspiring. You know, we can change gears at any time, you know, how do we identify ourselves? UM, I just find that all very inspiring. So anyway, this is also a great episode if you just want to hear, you know, maybe what it's like to sit in in a intelligence meeting in Afghanistan during the height of a war, when you don't know if the politician you're meeting with is secretly corrupt, if they're meeting with you because they

want to kill you. And it's it's his book is so thrilling. I do blame him for this one night of insomnia I had because I couldn't put the book down, and I think I read it until three in the morning, even though UM, I had to get up at seven in the morning the next day. But that's okay, you know what, I will blame myself. So uh, last link, UM, if you want to listen to Jason's podcast, it's called Majority fifty four. I'll put the link in the show notes.

I'll put the link in the show notes to that to his book and UM as well to the Veterans Community Project. And I think that's it. Just enjoy our conversation. And again, UM, you don't need PTSD to enjoy it, and you don't need to be a Democrat to enjoy it. So here we go my talk with Jason Candor. Jason Candor, I am honored and delighted that you are taking the time to do my podcast on your book tour. Thank you I'm honored and delighted. Uh in return, thank you

for having me. Yeah, of course your book, Invisible Stormy Soldiers, Memoir of Politics and PTSD. I'm holding it up even though it's not a video interview, is a page or in our It is compelling, It's got all the emotions in it. But really, at the end of the day, I know it's about your journey with PTSD, but besides that, it is a page turner. I did not sleep one night. I just stayed up as late as I could. I gamed out. Okay, what's the least amount of sleep I

can get in function tomorrow because I need to keep reading. Um, so that's your fault because it wasn't functioning that well the next day. Sorry, but also very pleased to hear that. Before we get into your story, I only have one critique of your book, and I just want to get it out of the way. Is you mentioned that you're really good at taking care of blisters and then you never tell us how And I'm a I'm living in New York, I'm walking, my feet are torn up. Can

you give us the secret? As a soldier, how do we deal with blisters on our feet? And then we'll move into the serious stuff. Absolutely. Yeah, God, I've lost the name. What's the stuff called mole skin? You know? Um, the stuff you can so you can buy it like any pharmacy pretty much. It's just a little how do you describe it? It's it's like this little foam, uh that is that's soft and a little furry. And what you do and this is the key. So a lot of people know about the mole skin thing, but what

I learned in the army is the donut trick. So what you do is, let's say, you know, whatever, the size of the blister is. The mistake most people make is they'll put the mole skin over the blister, which means the adhesive is touching the blister. That's not what you do. What you do is is you cut a big donut, okay, a big donut that's big enough to go around the blister, and then you save the donut hole and so you you put the adhesive of the

doughnut onto your foot to surround the blister. And then you take like a bandage and you're gonna put a bandage around that part of your foot to hold it all in place. But you take the donut hole and you stick that to the bandage, so that what's happening is that furry soft material is UH is holding the lister in place to keep it from popping UH, instead

of having an adhesive on the blister. And then what you want to do is you want to change your socks frequently, because the blisters require two things to exist, and they are friction and moisture. And so if you can avoid friction and moisture, you can avoid blisters. But I haven't given that explanation in a while. So I'm so excited I'm going to be walking around like I'm in combat when I'm really just walking, um, five to

ten miles a day. Thank you just needed good pair of scissors and some mole skin and maybe some medical tape in your set. So you were running for mayor of Kansas City. I remember you dropping out saying you're going to get help for PTSD, and I remember that really hitting me and thinking that this is so great. Yeah. So, UM.

The device I used in the book is I kind of start at the middle of the story and then take you back to the beginning, and then in the middle of the book you get back to the middle of the story. And the middle of the story really is my first day at the v A. And so I walk in, and you know, to give a little context to this, what predates the months before this is first, I'm getting ready to run for president, and I know something is wrong with me, but I'm not willing to

admit to myself that it's PTSD. And so this big, you know, brilliant solution, brilliant in quotes that I come up with is I'm gonna go home run for mayor because I think, well, you know, being in charge of my hometown, that's gonna fill me up and make me feel good. But then the other promise I made to myself was I'm gonna go to the v A. Well, I kept half the promise. I started running from Ayor

was going great. Uh, you know, to be fair, if you're going to run for president, you decided to run from Ayir like you should be the front runner or what the hell were you doing? Um? All right, and but then the part about going to the v A,

I didn't keep that promise to myself. And then things just get worse and worse and worse, and now I'm having suicidal thoughts, and it's like, all right, it's time to go to the v A. So I go to the v A and at first, like, I'm just sort of mortified at the fact that everybody's recognizing me, because you know, I run a lot of tv ads in Missouri, in Kansas City, and so I was very recognizable, which

usually was great. Uh, not so much when you look like shit and you've shown up because you're suicidal and you're at the b A. And pretty quickly I end up in the emergency suicide hold at the v A emergency department. And all along the way people are being very subtle and nice about it, but I can tell by the double takes, like, also, these folks are like, that's Jason Candor. And now I'm in like four times two big scrubs that they've given me because they've taken away,

you know, all of my belongings, my clothes, everything. And I'm sitting there and waiting for this psych residant to come in and see me. And he comes in and I at first, I'm like relieved that this dude is from out of town and has no idea who I am. And we talked for like a half hour and I he's the first person that I really other than my wife,

like told all of the problems I've been having. You know, that I had gone eleven years without a good night's sleep, that I had these terrible night terrors, and that I was paranoid by danger to my family and myself all the time, that I felt angry and shame and self loathing and all these things, and uh, and that I had been over the last several months very depressed and

was now having these suicidal thoughts. And so he talks to me for about a half hour, and eventually, I think because I said that I had to go pick up my son at four thirty, he, I think he was like, Okay, future plans, He's not gonna kill himself today, so he's gonna let me go. And he asked me, he says, by the way, do you have like a particularly stressful job or something. And I was like, well, I'm in politics, and he's like, what does that mean?

So I explained, you know, my background, and then he's like, has it been like particularly stressful lately? And I said, well, yeah, I mean I was gonna run for president, and then I decided to run for mayor. Uh, and then you know, now I'm just going to call that off tomorrow because I want to get help. And he's like, wait, president of what. And keep in mind, like I'm a thirty seven year old dude in the suicide psychold and clothes

that don't fit because they just given to me. And I'm like sitting there wrapping my arms around my my knees and and I'm like, well of the United States, and which felt silly, and he's and he's like, what does that mean? And I'm like, well, you know, I was going to Iowa and New Hampshire a lot that kind of thing. And he's just like, okay, who told you? He goes who told you could run for president of

the United States? And now I've gone from like relieve that this guy didn't recognize me to like irritated that he doesn't believe me. And so I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. Man. I spent an hour and a half just me and Obama in his office, and he seemed to think it was a pretty good idea. And he pauses for a second, thanks about it, and then he's like, so how often would you say you hear voices and uh, yeah, so that was my first day at the v A. We'll be right back. Well,

let's start with, so you deployed to Afghanistan. Um, tell us where you are, how longer they are for and then I'll ask you a bunch of questions about your you know, your work there and what your thought process had to be as a soldier. Sure. Um. So part of the reason that it took me so long to admit that my experience could be traumatic is that I my tour was only four months and that bothered me for years, to the point where I actually tried to

go back and was denied. Um. And you know, because I have a lot of friends who, you know, they did multiple tours of like nine months at a time or more, and there were people who were there when I got there, who were still there when I left, and it just that really bothered me, and it made me tell myself this fiction that oh, well, I can't have PTSD from a four month tour. Um. But I

was based out of Cobble. I was an Army intelligence officer and my job, the simplest way to put it, was that it was my job to figure out which bad guys were pretending to be good guys within the Afghan government, and in order to do that, I had to go meet those guys. Uh. And so that's what I did for for four months, oh six to oh seven, like fall to the to the spring in the early spring,

early winter, whatever you call it. Yeah. And and it's so funny because in the book you self deprecate and joke that, you know, when you were before you had your recovery. You're like, I just went to meetings for four months, Why do I have PTSD? And it's like, okay, you say that, but then these stories you have, I mean, my heart was racing reading and it was part of me. This is where I think it's interesting for those out there who don't have PTSD, have been in a war zone.

A lot of your um symptoms are very similar to people with you know, just generalized anxiety or a d h D or panic disorder. But what I found exciting as someone with a d h D who needs a lot of dopamine and my brain is, uh, it needs a lot of regulation, it needs a lot of structure. I understand completely, except for the carrying a gun and shooting a part, which I know I'd be bad at I understand completely why people want to enter the military.

There are rules. You keep it simple. Um, as you learned once you did get therapy, that your brain is trained to survive, so you have a few thoughts and they're meant to be repetitive so you can keep yourself safe. And that really appealed to me. I thought, in another world, I could, I could really thrive in this environment. Because I liked your descriptions of being in the meetings. I mean I I felt, um, wow, that seems in a

weird way. And this sounds sucked up, but you probably get it calming because you're in a meeting and you know what you have to do. So explain to someone why this meeting is nothing like Larry the accountants meeting that he's going to in five minutes after he's done listening to this episode. What what goes on? Like? Tell us the story? Um, and this is your most you know,

this is a story that you told many times. You told it in the book and then later we'll discuss that you had to tell it again in therapy for a certain reason. But what is your big story about the meeting you went to where you had to make a decision about whether to take a weapon. Yeah, so first for context to this, some of what you were saying I want to speak to because like where you're saying, you know that you relate to the sort of predictability

of it, and and you know of the work. But you said, like, you know, except for the part of carrying again and firing it, they give you lessons like you would do fine, Like they teach you all that stuff. And a couple of things I wanted to do with the book that you sort of alluded to. One it's a soldier's memoir, but like the books about PTSD and the politics part is that's what I did with most

of my career. So what I didn't want to do was write a book that was like for fifty five year old men who read combat books, which is why there's one chapter about Afghanistan and then the rest is

just about dealing with all of it. And so but the other thing I think I had to do with from what you said it makes me feel good that I accomplished it is I also understand that there's a lot of people who deal with mental health challenges who I want to read this book, who don't read military books and aren't interested in the military, and so I knew that I had to relate in the chapter before the Afghanistan chapter why the hell I joined the military and why I liked it so much, so that people

could actually relate to my story. And so I'm glad to hear that that got across. Um. Yeah, the the incident that you're talking about is h I had recruited as a as a really helpful contact to me in my intelligence collection work, the Attorney General of Afghanistan, a guy named sab It, and I really liked working with Sabbat for a couple of reasons. Were really a couple of characteristics of him. One, he spoke like perfect English,

which made it really easy. And too, he had no discernible incentive to help anyone kidnap and kill me, which was like really high on the list of ways to become my friend when I was there. And and so I would have these regular meetings with him where he would tell me all about his anti corruption work in the Afghan government. It was really valuable, and I'd take

it back and I'd write it up. And so what started happening was other people in the intelligence community, uh got wind of this because they'd read my reports and they had questions that they wanted to ask sab It, So they would ask to tag along to these meetings. And sab It, you know, he's a politician, he as a performer. He liked having an audience, so I could

bring a few people with me. And on this one occasion, uh, these guys from the d i A, the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Hey, can we come along with you on on a SABBIT meeting? And I was like sure, And you know, I was a green second lieutenant that's the first officer rank, like just brand new guy, and I'm I'm still have a little bit of imposter syndrome about the fact that I'm in this, you know, really who a high speed job. That's usually for somebody with a lot more experience and

rank than me. So I see these guys from a three letter agency and I'm feeling like when these guys know what they're doing, like, I'm I don't want to look like a fool or on these fellas. So we pull up to the usual compound where I go to to meet sab It, and these three like Goon come out with a K forty seven at the low already and they're in border police uniforms, which was weird because Sabad had his own security detail and it wasn't border police. And they start barking at us, and they tell us

to leave our weapons in the vehicle. And I'm like, They're like, leave your body armor and your weapons in the vehicle. And I would regularly leave my body armor in the vehicle because you know, intelligence work is about getting people to trust you, and if you dress like you think, they're going to detonate themselves, like, it's pretty hard to get them to answer honestly to your questions. So I was like, cool, I'll leave my body armor.

But I'm thinking, okay, these d I A guys may think that I'm this rookie green no nothing, but I ain't leaving my I'm not leaving my pistol in this vehicle, right, So I take my pistol and I stick it into the waistband of my pants and pull my sweater over, you know, And I'm like, all right, so I'm sure we're all doing that. Let's let's roll in here. And so we go in and we sit down and I'm talking to sab It and then it becomes clear, like what this meeting actually was because then he this guy

comes in. Who. As soon as this guy comes in, I'm like, I know with this guy is? Who is this guy? I'm trying to place him. And then sab It says, Jason, this is my dear friend, Hadj's a here. So General Hadj's here at that time was a general in the Border Police. He was super corrupt. He had been working with the Taliban and and you know, possibly other terrorist groups, and he was a narco trafficker from

eastern Afghanistan. And I'm like, what the hell is happening, right, because I had seen sab It as like somebody I could trust, and so we sit down and suddenly it's Ha's here's meeting. And the whole time these three So there were six border police fellows, if I remember correctly, there three stood right behind Hog's here, facing us with their a K forty seven of lit already and then I remember thinking, okay, I think there's three more between here and the vehicle. So that was the kind of

stuff I was doing on a regular basis. By the way, it's my job, like every time I go to one of these meetings, you know exactly where the exits are you know how many potential bad guys there are between you and your vehicle. You're thinking about things like, all right, if it goes south, which guy do I shoot? Which exit are we taking? Do I cover the exit and go? You know that that's what you're thinking. And um, my back shouldn't be to the door. Let me know what

this window? I mean all of that, right you you have to game out instantly. Yeah, you're your your mind and your body are fully utilized the whole time. Right. It's like it's it's like whatever level of alertness and readiness people have felt in a job interview, just take that times like a thousand. Actually, I just say, imagine you enter a job interview and you're like I might get the job where they might kill me. You know, like that's that's what it is. Um. And so I'm

sitting there and how's here? Pretty quickly launches into like this tirade. He's like very angry, and I knew that he knew that we were the people investigating him, right, and that this meeting was not by chance, and that it was sort of arranged. And over about forty five minutes, you know, we're all and I can see the guys looking at me. We're all trying to figure out like, okay, is he gonna take us? Is that the plan? Is

he trying to intimidate us? What's happening? And he's getting more and more animated and upset talking about all this stuff, and uh, and I'm thinking, and I know these guys are thinking like, what the hell did this this lieutenant get us into here? And I at some point I realized, okay, we might have to shoot first, like you know, these guys have the drop on us. We just have pistols, and and so I'm thinking two things. I'm thinking, Okay, if we have to shoot first, okay, which guy do

I take? I take this guy. But I'm also thinking, Okay, one of these guys may decide. One of the guys with me. He may decided to shoot first. So I gotta be ready to just pull my pistol and go. And so I start, he gets more animated. I'm thinking, Okay, I guess it's gonna be that guy. I'm envisioning shooting him. For a second, I think, am I allowed to kill these guys if they don't shoot us? For and then

I thought that a't gonna matter. If this goes down, and then at some point it becomes clear that what is here really wanted uh was he was trying to get us to eliminate the narco trafficking competition uh in the province where he's from. And so he was actually there to like try and coerce us and intimidate us and rat out a bunch of other narco traffickers out where he was. So then we figured this out sort of.

We can all tell that this is what we've all usually figured out, So we just start taking like a ton of notes, like, oh, we're super interested in this information. Is if we didn't have all of it already, Oh interesting, okay yeah, And so you at that moment you can all sort of calm down and be like, okay, this we're not being killed. Yeah, It's like it's like, okay, I'm pretty sure we're getting out of here, right, So

we do that. The meeting ends, We walk out, and I get We get to the vehicle and I and I opened the door and I see the other guys the d I A guys reach in and pull out their pistols, and I realized I was the only one of us who was armed in the meeting and I almost pulled out my pistol and got us all killed, and uh, And at first I just got really nauseous and I wanted a puke, and then I spent the rest of the ride back to the base just super piste,

because like, you don't go anywhere in Afghanistan unarmed if you're an American soldier. And I just remember going from uh, you know, worry these guys would think I was too green, to super upset that these guys put me in danger and thinking that they were a bunch of fools. Um, So yeah, that was That's one of the one of the events in the book that I talked about. And I think it's so clearly illustrates like for me, someone with you know, anxiety or I used to be really

bad fear of flying. So that intensity or feeling I used to feel for no reason on an airplane except it wasn't focused, so it would go off the rails. And so I can imagine having that kind of body intensity and then focus all at once. I imagine there's

no time to um come down from that. And I don't mean I mean obviously you're going to have moments that aren't stressful like that, But it's not like you're doing a practice very mindfully to um complete the stress cycle as they call it, you know, like it, right, And I don't think you should be doing that war zone like anoun's time to decompress spellas you know, you don't want to not be Yeah, that's from when you

come home. But they didn't give me those tools when I came home either, And and that that's you know, the way. And I talked about this a little in the book, but there's an analogy that I've stumbled on lately for it. Um. I'm not really a golfer, but I think the analogy works. You don't even know much

about golf to know that. Like, you know, there's all these clubs in the bag, and a good golfer us as different clubs for different situations, right, And that's kind of what our emotions are like in everyday life, right, Like we have nuanced emotions, we have empathy, we have

you know, sadness, we have all these things. When you're in a combat zone and you're regularly in you know, like on a pretty much daily basis, in a situation where you're like, okay, where are the doors what happens if this guy pulls a gun, what happens if there's somebody coming from this door behind me? All that stuff you really only need like four clubs in your bag, right, It's like the emotions necessary to prepare yourself to take a life, which is like a low level simmering anger

sort of focus. There's boredom because sometimes you're just sitting around, you're inside the wire and you're like playing cards or whatever. There's you're tired, and there's like you're homesick. And then I'd say five because sometimes there's like you know, gallows humor, you're just laughing your ass off. Then you get home and like, you know, you've stopped using any of the other clubs for a long time. You don't remember how to swing them, and they may not even be in

your bag anymore. And now you're supposed to like go back and fill your bag with these other clubs and start using them. But your brain is operating in a place where it's like, yeah, if we use these other clubs, we might die. That's what we learned, So don't use the other clubs. And so therapy for me was just like learning how to reuse those clubs and believe that it was okay to use those clubs and that it

wouldn't get me killed. Anxiety Bites will be right back after a quick little message from one of our sponsors. I think I'm going to go backwards because I think people need to know, like what the big recovery ah ha was, so that it will make sense when you're talking about it. I do want to ask one non mental health question, and I really don't mean this to be funny. If you had pulled out a gun, would your pistol do anything against a K forty seven? I

mean we were pretty close range. We were like six ft from each other, so I acted fast enough you might yeah, that was the idea. The idea was, well, I don't think it would have gone well. I'm glad I didn't do, especially since I was the only one. But the thought was at the time, what I remember envisioning and thinking was, um, I can probably get two of these guys before they realize what's happening, because we're just sitting there having tea and these guys are waiting.

In my mind, what I thought was potentially happening was there waiting for how she's here to turn around and be like, Okay, kill these guys, and until that happens, they're not necessarily so in my mind, I'm thinking I can probably put two in the chest in one in the head on two of these guys before the and the third guy can't do anything. But I wasn't sure. But you can have been kind of a suicide mission in a way if you did that, Like, did you think it was unlikely that all of us would have

got out of there? Okay? But it was one of those things where it's like, I'm not gonna let it wasn't like I should kill these guys. It was like, if I'm getting closer and closer to thinking these guys may be about to kill us, and if that's going to happen, the only chance we have is we have

to we have to fire first. I mean, one of the things you learned in combat training is this concept of violence of action and that you know and an element of surprise, right and so that you know, a lesser armed force, we're kind of seeing it in Ukraine on a very large scale right now. A lesser armed force can have a chance when they have violence of action, meaning they're coming into this like we are here to

fight and maybe take somebody by surprise. So it's kind of like, you know, I watched I'm watching you know, shows like Better Call Saul and something, and I see people with a knife or a pistol and they're fighting gangs with forty seven then they always win, And I'm like, that can happen. But I that's that makes sense, that it's the violence of action like that actually can you

never know? Could? Yeah, it's one of those things like if you remember being a kid, and like this is a very simplistic analogy, but when you were a kid and you were like wrestling with your friends or whatever, if one of you was more serious and more aggressive about wrestling, even if you're undersized, like you had a chance. And it was sort of like if one if if somebody is in a fight and they know they're in the fight before the other person knows they're in a fight,

even if you're sort of outgun, you got a chance. Yeah. It's like it's like running before the thing goes off, you know, um in a race. Um a thing I've never done. But okay, so I just wanted to know I listened, but to anyone listening out there. I mean I referenced TV shows, but you're not just I mean you're dealing with like three kinds of bad guys all at once. You're dealing with a guy who's corrupt in

his government, um actively at war with your country. I mean, sort of not like everyone and not that that's what I've been saying, Okay, and then and you don't know who's like sympathetically is not. And then the whole drug running.

I think it's heroin, right, uh So, I mean that's a lot, and I know that it's not a competition or a contest, but I do think police correct me if I'm wrong that at some point your your therapist had explained to you at the v A that this notion that only people who were in combat someone's shooting at me, I'm shooting at them, were in the war, were over the hill, you know what people imagine war

to be. That is not always likely to have a PTSD response, because it's almost expected like you were doing something a little extraordinary in that sense that you were kind of try in your neural pathways to live very

differently than than hand to hand combat. Right, Yeah, that's you're really hitting on one of the big themes of the book, which is me learning that I couldn't rank my trauma out of existence because like when I landed in Afghanistan and when I was training to go there and everything, you know, I was drawing on two things

as to what my idea of combat was. Right One, all the movies I watched grown up that we've all seen, Like, to me, combat was there's bullets whizzing by your ear and cover me while I move and boom and blah blah blah. That was, you know, to me, that was combat. Nothing else was combat. And minutes of saving Private Ryan That's exactly exactly if if I wasn't storm enormandy, you know,

then like I wouldn't have considered myself in combat. And then too uh, you know, the combat training I had had had been all what we would refer to as kinetic, like you know, people shooting at each other. Right, And then I go there and I spend these four months, and I go to meetings and I'm out on the road a lot and do all that. But I never fired my weapon the entire time. I never fired my weapon.

So I come home and I'm like, and then I got you know, I got friends who are trained with people who have known sense, who were wounded over there, who had to kill people. Um. And so in my mind, I'm like, I didn't experience combat. That's not what that was. And so I went eleven years thinking I was gaining perspective by valuing what they did and and diminishing what I did. And and the whole time, what I was actually doing was just experiencing increasingly worse symptoms of undiagnosed,

untreated PTSD. And I would say to my friends, like, I have a very close friend Stephen, whom I talked about in the book a Lot, who had been a marine in um Fellujah, and you know, and and I would stay to him all the time, like what you did that was real, and he was like dude, he would always be He and other guys would be like I could not have done what you did, and I just was like, they're just being kind, right, And so my it was like when I was with a clinical

social worker at the v A. It was my second time at the v A after that, you know, first time with the guy. Thought I heard voices and she said to me, okay, let me get this straight. Uh, you were in the most dangerous place in the planet out basically by yourself, like you and a translator most of the time for hours at a time, completely vulnerable with people who may or may not want to kill you. You You couldn't know and you had no backup because nobody knew where you were. And I'm like yeah, and

she goes, yeah, that's combat. She's like, that's traumatic. She's like, and then what did you do when you came home? You went to high stakes meetings for your work. And I'm like, oh yeah, And that was the first time that I was like, Okay, I think I'm a combat veteran and uh yeah, I can see now how I

have PTSD. And that was eleven years after I got home. Well, I interviewed this woman, this doctor, for this podcast, and she said, the average person who has any kind of symptoms where they need their mental health taking care of

takes eleven to fifteen years to go to therapy. And unfortunately, in time, we're not only not doing anything about it in terms of like using little tools that you could find, you know, a little free free advice online, you know, like whatever that maybe you're not even doing that, You're you're making it worse. You know, you're like feeding the monster, as you call it, the monster. You're feeding your PTSD. You're like giving it everything it wants, and you're training

yourself to have more and more. Right, So it's like by the time you went there was a lot to undo, and I think you had to get to the place of Okay, I'm literally at the end of my room, like I don't want to kill myself, so I gotta go and and and you're saying it doesn't have to be that way. People can. I mean also, when I'm hearing in your book too, is like, you know, there's no training coming out. You know, they why are you coming in? And they don't on why are you coming out?

And I'm assuming that's the work that you do, um with the Veterans Community Project is helping to change that, right, Yeah, absolutely, UM. That's what we do is we restart the military civilian transition back at day one. And and that that's why I wanted to write the book, is because for a

couple of reasons. One, if this book had existed fourteen years ago when I came home, I would have read it and I would have gone to therapy and and and the reason that that's such a huge deal other than the obvious, is that, you know, trauma is not like wine, like it doesn't age well. It just gets

worse and worse and worse. And so all those years that I put it off, it's like any other injury, right like I The comparison I make is that in order to get into the Army I had to get surgery and physical therapy on my knee because I had

a knee injury. And what I did with my mind after I deployed would have been like if instead of getting that surgery and physical therapy, I was like, I don't need it, and I just went into the Army and did all the stuff they wanted me to do well after eleven years, like I wouldn't have been able to walk, but instead, like I treated the injury when

it happened. And so you know, while my trauma, you know, I'm not trying to like rank my trauma, but clearly there are people who had more traumatic experiences than I did. What I did that made it so much worse is I just let it get worse and worse and worse, whereas if I just treated it, I would have treated it gotten the tools, moved on gotten to where I am now, but instead I just I let it get so bad over all those years. Do you think it

should be mandatory? I mean, I don't mean to. I hope this doesn't sound insulting to anyone serving, but it it is weird that, like you're trained to be kind of a killing machine and then you're just let back come into society. Not that people are going to start killing people, That's what I mean at all. But don't you think it makes society better if everybody gets kind of unwired when they get out and they can be more productive and not have to go through what you

went through. But do you think it should be um mandated or is that kind of stepping on freedoms should be mandated and you don't have to mandate therapy, but what you have to mandate is education about PTSD. Here's the education I got about PTSD before I went over, and I hope this has changed, but I don't know

if it has. The education I got about PTSD before I went over it was it was mentioned by one guy when I was an intelligent school, and it was a chaplain, and the chaplain came in to tell us how to use our chaplain like it had nothing to do with PTSD. He was just like, here's a thirty minute block of instruction from the base chaplain. He's going to tell you how to make sure your troops get access to the chaplain when you're deployed. And as he was doing that, I remember he said, oh, hey, by

the way, PTSD. PTSD is a normal response to an abnormal situation, and which was a great thing to say. But it's literally all the training I got about PTSD. And so there's a really important thing and you alluded to this that the military does, which is a very necessary form of brainwashing. And I say necessary because if they didn't do this, I wouldn't have kept going to meetings,

My buddy Stephen wouldn't have kept going on patrol. You gotta have this, And what it is is the moment you get off the bus at basic training, the message they put across to you is this is no big deal,

and somebody has it worse. Most people have it worse, right, and they and they have to wire that into you because if they don't, like, if you bite from the apple of knowledge, that no, this is pretty bad, Like you're not gonna keep doing it, like I wouldn't keep bringing back the information I need to if I had known. So the problem is is that when you get out, nobody sits you down and goes, okay, actually that was some crazy ship. And uh, you know, and and by

the way, here's what PTSD is. Here's what it looks like. There's a you know, a chance that you're going to experience this or a friend of yours will. And I think if they had done that, it would have helped a lot. I can't say for sure that would have made a difference, because when you when you wire somebody to believe that what they did is no big deal, and you train them to believe that, they believe you.

I believed the Army. I had, you know, a couple of buddies on my base who were doing similar work to me. And I was like, you know, Todd and Kevin are going to these meetings. They seem fine. Todd and Kevin went to these meetings, they seem fine. Right, Well, never mind that, I don't want to spoil what happens in the book, but it becomes evident that they weren't fun. And but I didn't know that, and so I was telling myself, I have it on good authority that what

I did is no big deal. So what the hell right would I have to say this is PTSD? It must just be something to do with me, right, And so what happens is people don't understand that you can get better, that that this is not a terminal diagnosis. And everything we see in popular culture about PTSD is what I call PTSD porn right. It's it's it's usually a combat vet, not always, but it's usually a combat vet, and they're like robbing a bank, beating their spouse, abusing drugs,

maybe all at once. Um. And what I wanted to get across is post traumatic growth is a real thing. I wanted to demonstrate what it looks like because it actually is way more common than people realize. The majority of people who go to therapy and address it get better. People don't know that, so they don't say, Okay, I'm gonna go to therapy. And I still wanted to get across that. Look. I was convinced that what I did was no big deal. So you don't have to be

a combat vet. You could have had a bad car accident, or survive cancer, or be a victim of sexual assault, or just lost a loved one or gone through a bad divorce or a head a rough childhood, whatever it is, you're probably convinced that what you did was no big deal. And I know this because people walk up to me all the time and say, you know, I didn't go to war or anything, and I'm like, that doesn't matter. Like my brain doesn't know what yours experienced, and yours

doesn't know what mine experience. So what does one have to do with the other. Well, and I'm going to spoil just a little bit of the recovery ending. But when you were working with your therapist, what you're big aha moment was is he said, I want you to tell me everything you learned from your parents and used in your life before you deployed that you still seek to use now. And he wrote down, as you said, work hard, hustle, help people, stand up for people, be humble.

I can do anything, obligation to others. I am privileged. Don't steal, don't do drugs, don't cheat, don't start fights, do finish fights, fight for others, don't kill, be faithful, be protective, care about the world, have high standards. Therapist a great now let's do the same thing for Afghanistan. What principles did you learn over there that you used all of the time, And your answers were be calm,

suck it up. Someone as a worse, I am lucky, danger everywhere, Always have weapon, protect self and others, maintain control of situation, eliminate risk, eliminate threats. Then the therapist says, okay, why and you just say so I don't die, and he's like great. So he points out to you that the first list of all your values is how you live life outside of the military. The second list, which has less things on it, like you said, less golf clubs,

is so you don't die. So now you've come home and your brain is living with your wife and kids in it's important not to die mode. You don't have any of the other like you know, whatever tools, and you're running for for offices. So at this point, your PTSD isn't like you're in the warner going and going like I see the combat. You know, it's literally like you can't stop working. And so you're at home and it's getting to the point where like it is really

disrupting your your family in ways. That what I like about your book too, is your wife has written some passages as well about how hard it was for her because she just kind of went along with what you we're doing. You know, if you weren't getting recovery, then didn't dawn on her. And but here she's dealing with this guy who's like, now she's starting to think like you, right, Like, how so can you talk about how pt PTSD affects everyone in your life in ways that maybe people don't

really understand. Yeah, I'd say the first way is that I was just not present with my family, like and and so I you know, I just I wanted to be really badly, but I just couldn't be emotionally present

the only time. And this I bet you would relate to as a coping mechanism that you used for your struggles, because we're both in in like I in some respect you and a full respect are performers, and it was like I else present when I performed, Like when I was in front of an audience, that was like I felt fully me And for me, that was because like I had to get some sort of adrenaline rush back

in order to feel that. And then the rest of the time I just like it was just dull and like I couldn't and and you know what it was the rest of the time, it was just me and my thoughts like if if if things weren't going really quickly boobom boom, then it was just me stuck with me.

You know, I'd be with my son when he was a toddler, and like it should have been a really joyous moment, and I could feel that that joy was there, but it was like it was on the other side of a thin wall, you know, because my brain was like, you know, I had all these intrusive thoughts and memories and and and I had I was dialed up to an eleven all the time in terms of my stress, and I didn't know why and uh and so that

affected my family greatly. But then my wife, you know, I was no I was no fun to live with during that period. And you know, here she is, she's sleeping next to me. I'm waking up in the middle of the night with these violent night terrors. She's having to be like my service dog. Where because I was having sleep paralysis, she could hear when I was grunting to to like alert her that my brain had woken

up from this nightmare, but my body hadn't. And I had this thing where sleep paralysis gave me this like hallucination that the threat that was in the dream was now in the room, coming at me or eventually coming at my family. Is how those dreams developed are evolved. And so she knew like she had to sleep really light because she had to turn and like shake me and wake me up, like wake up my body, and

then I would wake up. And as she puts it in the book, it was suddenly horrible story time, because you know, we've been together since we were seventeen, Like my life has always been I just share everything with her, and so I would tell her about this nightmare that I just had, and oftentimes it was somebody came to hurt her and our son, and and so they soaked into her in the middle of the night. And eventually she was experiencing my symptoms, just not having having experienced

my trauma. She was hyper vigilant. She was worried that there would be intruders, uh, you know, all those sorts of things. And and then it turned out when I went to therapy, she needed to do the same thing. So it was just this beautiful gift that I gave my wife post traumatic stress disorder, you know, so well, you know it's I've had sleep paralysis and it is terrifying. It's the worst. Yeah, I thought it was interesting you said in the book that people have service dogs for

that reason. The dogs know when you're in it and they lay on you to to wake you up, just keep you from it. Yeah, that's right. It's my Dan's always joke that I was her or that she was my service animal, you know. But yeah, I mean it's like it is terrifying. And what's like so messed up about it is is that what brings it on is trauma and sleep deprivation. So it's like, Okay, I had trauma, and because of my trauma, I wasn't sleeping because I

had these night terrors. And then and then it just would all just build on each other and uh and and eventually, um, I just feared going to sleep, like like sleep was the last place I wanted to be, so I would stay up just to avoid going to sleep. And and what's now the part that I deal with, I very very rarely, very rarely have sleep prowesses. I occasionally have night have nightmares. I would describe the more

as nightmares now than night terrors. And it's like, you know, once every couple of weeks that kind of thing during a stressful time. And I know what to do about it now. But what I still do struggle with is there's like a muscle memory for me that says like sleep is a bad thing, and so I have to I have and I'm pretty good at it now, but I have a very intense like sleep regiment in order to allow myself to say like, okay, no, no, no no, sleep is good. We like sleep. It's okay, it doesn't

that doesn't happen anymore. And you said in the book too that you could never sleep on planes and you couldn't figure it out. Well, the the wild part about that was is that I actually figured that particular part out when I started working as president National Expansion of Veterans Community Project. Because one of the things we do is we build these villages of tiny houses for homeless veterans and then we give them wrap around care. And the reason that and I didn't found it, uh you know,

I came in after. So the reason that the co founders did it that way is because, uh a lot of homeless veterans were not using other homelessness services because they had PTSD and they couldn't sleep around strangers. So they needed these single units where the door locked in order to come in off the street. And they said,

because they can't sleep around strangers. And I realized all those years, like getting ready to run for president, you know, when I was running for Senate and my staff would put me on red eye flights to save time, and they're like, you know, you'll learn how to sleep on them, and I would just show up I hadn't slept all night.

Because if you think about it, like if you're like me, the idea of closing your eyes a little and falling to sleep while there are people you don't know next to you, when you're laying back with your neck exposed, um, just not gonna have Yeah. I can do it now. I'm not great at it, but I can do it now. Yeah. And also I thought that was so interesting too, about the homeless vets that even within that little pod they're in with the door locked, they're even set up in

a way that feels safe to them. Right. It's like they're facing the door because they're used to it's a trauma informed design, so that so the bed faces the door. There's only windows on a couple of sides. No unit looks directly into another unit. Um, and yeah, it's it's just tailor made for people to transition back into society.

And some of the little things too. I mean, you know, you've got the night terrors, you've got the can't sleep, but even just little things that we're PTSD responses that that can just be low key annoying to your spouse. Is just going to dinner and you're jumping up, you're ready to go, and you've got to face the right way and all that. I mean, even that, right, you

can't even enjoy that. Yeah, Like you know, Diana talks in the book about how before I deployed, like we could go on a date to dinner and finish our meal and sit there and and like have a nice time, you know, like you're supposed to do at a restaurant.

And uh and I was, you know, not only did like everybody close to me understand, like Jason likes to face the door, and like my staff knew, like you know, they've only known me since post Afghanistan, so that all they knew was like, yeah, Jason doesn't like it when people sit behind him in a meeting, you know, stuff like that. You know, like, oh, just just a preference that the boss has um and like as soon as the meal would end, you know, it was like let's go.

And and it was sort of something that animated my entire life, not just like on a day to day literal level, but also sort of a a figurative my career, which was I didn't want to be in one place for too long because and I had just really internalized the idea that if you're in one place for too long, they're gonna get you, right, And that was just so deep in me that I had. I had to work hard to let it go. And I think a lot of people can like over psychoanalyze it, like and did

you stay still too long? Your thoughts come to get you. And it's like yes, yes, yes, but also we are dealing with a real physical reaction to what you've been through and that has to be handled. You can't start with just the thoughts, you know, like you have a very specific disorder that needs body and mind right for sure. Like yes, it was it was figuratively like if I stay in one spot for too long, my thoughts will

give me his figure. But it was also like literally like if you're in one spot for too long, like they've got the drop on you. Keep moving, like like one of the things that experienced when I first came home that Diana talks about in the book is that, you know, every time I get in a vehicle, my heart would race, and and that I understood, like right away. I knew, like, okay, because every time I've been in a vehicle in the last four months, I'm going outside

the wire. And then when we would stop at stoplights, like I would grab the little handle above the window and I would lean back. And I didn't really remember this that way, but she says I would lean back and I would like jam my foot down on a gas pedal, which didn't exist because I was in a passenger seat. Because over there, like you avoid stopping because if you stop, you might get blown up. And so just little stuff like that. Uh that's like, but I

mean doing that how many times a day? Yeah, how many times a day do you stop at a stoplight? How many times a day, especially if you're campaigning, are you going to have to go to a restaurant. I mean, it's it's overwhelming. It was interesting about that too, is that I had I constantly had this story. I could tell myself that, oh, well, yeah, that happened, but I'm getting better, and so that's a good example where after like a few months of being home like I could drive,

I didn't have any problems. That that went away. Now I learned in therapy that the reason stuff like that went away was because that's what in vivo prolonged exposure therapy is which I did in therapy, and it is go out and do the things that make you uncomfortable get used to doing them again. So that's why in therapy I had to go to a restaurant and sit with my back to the door for forty five minutes

until you know it no longer had a grip on me. Well, when I came home, like I didn't have a choice, I had to go drive. So I was unknowingly doing in vivo therapy and so I was able to get past it. The problem was because I no longer had this driving problem. I was like, well maybe I had some ship, but that's over right, And I had this eye twitch when I got home that went away. Eventually I had I had these nightmares when I got home. But after a few years, the nightmares didn't take place

in Afghanistan anymore. I wasn't even in the military, and the nightmares. Now, what I didn't understand was it's not a good thing that now the nightmares take place in my home and people are coming to kidnap my family. I thought, well, it's not PTSD because it doesn't have to do with war. And it took therapy for me

to be taught that, No. See, when the symptoms evolved, that's bad because you already have hyper vigilance, you already think you're in danger all the time, and now when you're subconscious every night, people are attacking you and your modern environs, and they're coming after your family, which reinforces your feeling that you and your family are in danger. But but I had this constant story I could tell myself of oh, no, no, I'm getting better, when if

I I was getting worse. So you're, yeah, your your PTSD is progressing. You're not making progress, and it's just changing, so it seems like it's better. Right. We'll continue the interview on the flip side of a quick message from our sponsors. Lastly, how did you get to suicidal thoughts? Was it was it literally like I'm gonna do something, or was it like it'd be easier if I were dead that which seems relaxing, or how did it feel I was in I learned in therapy an early stage

of it, I was in like suicidal ideation. So it's a good thing that I went in when I did, because mine and actually, just what you just said was was it? Because at one point my therapist asked me, he was like, did you just feel like it would be better if you were dead? And I was like, yes, that's what I started to feel. And for me, it was because I felt like this enormous burden on my family, on the people around me, and I just I came to and on top of that, I was exhausted. I mean,

that's that's the thing for me. Is interestingly, one of the very first symptoms to lift was the suicidal ideation because when I went into therapy, it was like, Okay, I have a goal here, and I have and I have a reason to believe that I have a chance of getting better. So it was like, well, I'm not going to kill myself, I want to see, you know,

and I haven't had that problem since. But then the next thing to lift um that took a little while was some some version of depression, right, And when I think back on it, what I realized is it's important for people to understand that PTSD doesn't equal depression automatically,

and PTSD doesn't equal suicidal ideation automatically. And I think the reason it's important people to understand that is if you don't understand that, you believe PTSD is a terminal diagnosis and you will avoid it at all costs, like I did. But what I now realize is no, Look, PTSD caused a bunch of things. It's different for everybody. For me, it was all the stuff we've talked about. But look, after after eleven years of not getting a

good night's sleep, you're gonna be pretty depressed. And if you're depressed for a long enough period of time, you're gonna you're gonna have suicidal thoughts. And and so that's why I say, had I addressed this stuff years earlier, I don't ever get to those places. Right. It's not like people necessarily or suicidal the story we put on them, they had to do so much stuff in combat, they

just feel guilty and they're suicidals. Probably not, it's probably physical, Like you don't sleep for ten years, you're going to become like clinically insane in a way, you know, like if your life sucks every day, you know, and you're just like you can't sleep and you're fucking tired, and you don't like yourself and you're angry all the time, Like at some point, like you're gonna look for some

sense of control. It's interesting. I I had like I think, you know, and now I'm like super into nutrition and fitness and all this stuff and long gevity. And I had this conversation with my therapist not too long ago where I was like, how is it possible that I went from wanting to kill myself to now a few years later where I am just like sometimes even get stressed out about am I doing enough to live a

really long time? And and he's so smart, and it's so smart he said to me, He's like, well, look, they're both about control. When things were terrible, you were desperate to have some sort of control, and that control, which is a big part of trauma survivors, right like, if I can control the situation, I'll be okay. And it was like, you know, I'm running out of ways to find an ability to control it. Killing myself would would do it right? And he's like, and now things

are really good. You want to be here for as long as possible, but you still want control. And the way you want to control that is you know, you work out every day and you track all your food. He's like, and that's fine, that's a healthy way to do it, but understand that it's still a control thing. I love that you said in the book. You just reminded me. Thank you, and I I know we have to wrap up and you gotta go, but I love

what you said in the book about your wife. And you have a mantra three percent because you were told um was in therapy. I think that of things in life we can't control, we have control over like three percent.

And so you keep that in mind all the time. Yeah, yeah, we uh we we keepen in mind all the time, and it allows us to not try to control you know, would happened like like my son, like if he goes swimming at somebody's house, Like I want to be like, okay, look, he's a pretty good swimmer, but he's but he thinks he's a better swimmer than he is, so keeping you know, and she's like, look, let him go have a good time.

Three and uh. At one point we were like, okay, we should get we don't have tattoos, and we all for years we've been talking about matching tattoos, and she was like, let's get matching three percent tattoos and we were about to until she looked up that the three percenters were like a violent right wing militia group. And so we're like, still work shopping the tattoo. I do

maybe get a nineties of the percent or something, right? Right? Um? So, lastly, do you think that like, like you said, it's all about control, but you've replaced like a healthy control with like you know, working out and tracking your food. But I got to imagine that you're wired for like healthy dopamine and healthy adrenaline. Because what I think you did a great job within your book is is all of the running for various offices that you didn't and the

public life that you lived. It didn't come off like, oh, this guy needs the love of the crowd, like you said you were in in flow when you were in front of people, and you know I've experienced that too. There's less thoughts in my head. I really don't care about admiration or applause, like I swear I don't. It's just how I feel on stage. It just zeros everything down to one thing. And so that's sometimes what kept

me going, is that feeling. So I know that you've, you know, stepped away from a public life in that sense, and obviously you're not in combat, and the more so, how do you keep that healthy need that you might You might I don't know if this is true for you, but you might have more than regular people, like a need for a little excitement, adrenaline, dopamine. Um, I think of it. It's a great question, uh, And I appreciate

what you said. I'm not going to give myself as much credit as you just did, which is to say that while I did feeling flow and I absolutely felt present when I performed, I also had such a low opinion of myself as a result of my trauma that I was desperately in search for some sort of evidence, some sort of external validation that would help me convince

myself that I wasn't an irredeemable piece of ship. And so so the request for selfies, the adulation, the you know, fawning comments on social media, after a you know, a hit on MSNBC. I had this idea that if I could fill myself up with that stuff, maybe that would fill the hole inside me. But it actually it just was like any other addiction. I just needed more and more and more of it to get there. And and so when I went to therapy, I knew that I wanted to get to a place where I could model

post traumatic growth. But I was also really scared because I did understand pretty soon in therapy that my drug was attention and that that's what I had used to avoid myself. And so it was this delicate balance of like, I want to be able to go back and do that, but I don't want to need it. If I need it, I can't do it. And so where I am now is my therapist was eventually able to convince me to go try it, and I did, and I realized, Okay, I like doing this. Now I'm where you were saying

where you are, which is I'm good at this. I enjoy performing and I enjoy getting my opinion out there and shaping the debate. So I do that on social media, occasionally go on TV. I have Majority fifty four my podcast, and that the difference now is I don't feel like it's a dopamine hit because now I mean it is. But the difference is now like in the past, I

had to go from dopamine hit to dopamine head. I was like any other addict, right, like the stuff in between performances that was that was like Diana used the analogy in the book, that was like coming out of the matrix, right it was like, now I'm in this dull world aboard the Nebucannezer, like I gotta wait for the next time into the matrix. And I don't feel

that way anymore. Now. I'm like, like like this right now, like we're doing this interview, I'm sort of just in some respect, you know, on but when it's over, the difference between me now and me then when it's over, you know, I'm gonna go do like I have another interview after this, but after that one's over, like you know, I'll go about my day and not feel like, Okay, I'm coming down, Like I'll just go back to it

and and it's the analogy that my therapist used. Was I kept saying to him because he was trying to get me to go back and do media, because he knew I wanted to demonstrate this to people. And I kept saying, look, I came here to get sober, and you're trying to get me back to my job as a beer taster, and and he was like, okay, I

get it. But after a few months he was like, look, let me just suggest the possibility that if we're gonna go with this analogy, what if you weren't an alcoholic, what if we dealt with your underlying trauma and you can have a couple of drinks and stop. And that is now where I am with performing. I like doing it, I don't have to do it, and that's right where

I want to be. That's amazing. And lastly, you are working with UM Veterans Community Project and at one point in your book you were there and working with them and you said yourself, which, if only you could do this full time. It was like that little glimmer inside of you that knew, like, this is what you should be doing, but it took years to get there. And so that's what you're full time doing now right. Yeah, I'm the president of National Expansion and we are building

our campuses and serving veterans across the country. People can go to VCP dot org it's like Veterans Community Project dot org to support us. And in fact, all of the royalties from Invisible Storm go to benefit Veterans Community Project, meaning all of all of my royalties. Publishers keeping their money, but all of my royalties go to that It against veterans suicide and veteran homelessness at Veterans Community Project and we'll put everything in the show notes. Thank you so much.

I'm I love your journey. I find it very inspiring, and I love that you're I don't know, doing such good things for the world by by working with veterans. It it does break my heart that there's so much stigma around this, and I'm I'm sure you're changing so many lives. So thanks for chatting with me and exposing our listeners to This is my first PTSD episode. I'm very excited about it. Well, Jen, I'm a fan of yours and I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.

And it's even cooler that we recorded it so we can go back and listen to it later. I'm just gonna listen to it on a loop, the part wher you say you're a fan. Hi. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jason. I have been trying to get him on the podcast forever. I didn't even know he had a book coming out when I first reached out to him to come on to the pod, and I said, if you're up for it. I don't know if you talk about your PTSD publicly anymore, but I'd love to

have you on the show. And we went back and forth for a while, but he said, you know later, I'm having a book coming out. So um, we did the interview you know now surrounding the book release. But I definitely learned a lot from reading the book and even more from from chatting to Jason. There's definitely lots of details in this interview that we're not in the book. So let's look at some of the takeaways that we learned.

Jason wrongly believed that he could not have PTSD from a four month tour in Afghanistan where he did not kill anyone or engage in heavy hand hand combat. In Jason's environment that he was in, although it was not combat her his training, his nervous system, and his mind had to be fully utilized. He had to have an intense level of alertness and readiness to defend his life. When soldiers come home from deployment in a war, there is not really a good system in place to give

them tools to get their brains reset. For civilian life, when dealing with post traumatic stress disorder, you should not rank your trauma and compare your experience as lesser than or greater than anyone else's. PTSD gone untreated gets worse and the symptoms can change, leading someone to believe that they're getting better even as they're getting worse. But if someone gets tools early in their trauma, they can prevent them. As Jason says, trauma is not like wine. It doesn't

age well. Jason believes that PTSD education should be mandated for everyone coming back from deployment. Post traumatic growth is real, and if people get help for their PTSD, they will get better. In the military, a person is trained to protect themselves and live in survival mode with the one goal of do not die. But in civilian life, a person cannot survive in survival mode, and they don't need to,

especially when there is no real threat. Jason's PTSD symptoms included intrusive thoughts, bad memories, hyper vigilance, suicidal ideation, insomnia, sleep paralysis, and night terrors. He didn't sleep properly for eleven years, which only worsened the symptoms of his PTSD. Having PTSD doesn't always equal also having depression and suicidal ideation.

It's different for every survivor. PTSD can manifest in ways like not being able to sit too long in a restaurant having the urge to get out quickly, or not being able to sit at a stop sign in your car without having a racing heart and the urge to go. We can only control about three percent of what happens to us in life. Therefore, our lives we probably don't have control over. Homeless veterans needs special care and often do not seek help in shelters that don't cater to

a veteran's needs. For example, many are not comfortable sleeping around strangers due to their military training, and instead they could benefit from sleeping in their own tiny else, which is what the Veterans Community Project built. They built shelters with a trauma informed design where the bed faces the door. There are only windows on a few sides. Their pod has a door lock and no unit looks into another unit.

So again, you can visit the links that I have put in the show notes to buy Jason's book, to check out his podcast, and to check out the work of the Veterans Community Project. Thanks again for listening, and you can follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter at Jen Kirkman and Instagram at Jen Kirkman. That's one end in Jen, And of course you can send an email to the show Anxiety Bites Weekly at gmail dot com. Give the podcast five stars wherever you listen, and just

remember that Anxiety Bites but You're in control. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or evert you listen to your favorite shows