Forty five and fifty five KRCD talk station. Very Happy Wednesday to apologies to everyone about the technical issues. We have a Judgenna Polatana there. We'll get the desironed out and getting back on next Tuesday. I am pleased. Welcome
to the fifty five Cassee Morning Show. Michael McNamara. He has initially a degree in economics University of San Francisco, but he enlisted in the US Marine Corps back in eighty three, left active duty in ninety four, but then returned to the Corps in two thousand and four and deployee Iraq twice in Afghanistan once. Is an infantry soldier,
retiring from the Marine Corps in twenty fifteen. Founder and president of the Post Traumatic Winning Company LLC, hosted a podcast All Marine Radio since twenty sixteen and began presenting the ideas connected with his first book, From Trauma to Joy, which we're here to talk about in twenty nineteen. Michael McNamara. Welcome to the fifty five Carse Morning Show. The name of the book, From Trauma to Joy Life changing lessons that fellow US Marines taught me after traumatic events occurred
in my life. Lessons that apply to anyone. Emphasis on that last part. It's a pleasure to have you on the program, Michael.
Well, first of all, as the son of a former.
Manager of the Cincinnati Reds and a guy who worked on Johnson's party boats in the summer during college. Tender bar I am happy to be back on the air. Well, I've never been on the air of the Queen City, but now it's a pleasure. Brian, thank you very much for having me.
I was going to bring that up after your bio. I was gonna say, also, you know John McNamara, don't you, the guy that took over after Sparky Anderson left the Cincinnati Reds. And of course you filling in the blanks on that one. The party boat too, that's it brings back memories anyway.
Oh my god, you don't even know.
Oh, I can only imagine. I can only imagine it's like being a fly on the wall. I suppose being that role.
Oh my god, Tornado warnings while you're on the river and there's a party going on.
Incredible, incredible stories. Man.
I bet Well you maybe write your second book on that, but this book, I think it's really important. Mental health has become something that we can all talk about. There's no longer, at least, there's very little you know, negative viewpoints or like, you know, get over it kind of attitudes.
These days.
We know a lot of people deal with mental health challenges. But you mentioned trauma. It's the title of the book, From Trauma to Joy and point out that approximately ninety five percent of the US population deals with some form of trauma. We could be talking about something as traumatic as losing a loved one for example, right, well.
And that's what you know.
You know, that's why I don't really care for the term PTSD because if when you throw that out there, everybody says, oh, that's that combat thing, right right, or that's the thing cops in firefight.
No, no, no, it's an everybody thing.
If you had to tend to somebody who you loved and hold their hand and watch them die of a lengthy illness, you're in the same valley of the shadow of death that I'm in.
We just different paths to get there.
If you've been abused as a child physically, sexually, emotionally, right, and you've suffered with that your life, guess what, you're.
In that thing too. So the book is about you know.
That is not a death sentence, okay, And the first place that you should look for an answer is not in a jar of pills, and it's not in forever therapy.
It's inside of you. And I know this. And again I'm not a Brian. I'm not a mental health person.
I've been a leader since I was a little kid, and so I started talking about this on my podcast, and then the way the book begins is with a presentation I started doing around the world, and that is I'm going to tell you the truth, true things about what it is to live a great life after you go through really difficult things, right, And I don't care what the difficulty was. And so the great thing that people don't understand about you know, as a marine, is
that our suicide is not linked to combat. It is linked to child abuse. It is linked to child sexual abuse and adverse childhood experiences. Because when we went to the volunteer force, right, we're not so much across section of America anymore.
I would tell you about fifty.
Percent of the people that joined the American military right are trying to get to a better place. Their peers are in jail, their dead of drug overdoses or suicide. But they come from that part of our culture and they're looking for something better and sometimes they don't find it. And so you can't understand veteran suicide or military suicide unless you understand who we recruit.
And then what I found out.
When I started doing seminars for everybody was that there was no difference between what you know, active duty and veterans talked about as opposed to the civilians.
That I met.
It was all it was based on the traumatic events of their life. And so this stuff applies to anybody. And that's the beautiful part of it.
Now, imagine the outline in the steps and the principles that you set forth in the book have to start with. I suppose a pretty tremendous amount of introspection, trying to be an objective observer of your life and where you are and why you're experiencing this trauma.
Yeah, And I'll tell you what, and that's not hard for most people, because most people when you go through these things, you know, I saw somebody get decapitated in a training incident, a helicopter crash in nineteen ninety three, and you know, we were trying to save the three other guys in the back, and I have my hands, you know, all over this one young marine and everybody dies, right, And one of my senior marines came up to me.
I was a commanding officer, but one of my senior and listen guys come up to me and asked me. About three hours later, he goes, hey, Serri, He said, how are you doing?
And I said, I don't know. We've been kind of busy.
And he looked at me and he said, you know you're never going to get over this, right, And I said, well, he said you'll never get over this. And I can't use the language I use, but I said, hey, why don't you get away from me? I don't think that's what the therapist says to the patient right now, you go away?
And he looked at me and said, no, you need to know that.
And I said, who told you that? And he said, Vietnam guys told me that. And I tell everybody. The single best piece of advice ever got, although I didn't understand at the time, was that because when I struggled, guess whose voice I heard a guy who who would have died for me, who looked me in the face and told me the truth. And once you understand, you don't get over it that when you struggle, you know what that makes you.
A normal human being.
You can't go through those experiences without those ghosts coming back. And the question becomes what do I do when they come back?
Because they will.
And now the way the nation approaches it is we'll give you medications and you can go to Forever Talk therapy. If you look at the trend lines of that, the nation set US side record what twelve months ago, and the military is setting suicide records and we're nowhere near a conflict. But that is our approach to helping these people.
And what I tell people is before you do any of that, read my book because if you understand, the first thing you're going to have to do is coexist with it, because it's not going away.
The next thing you're going to have to do is live with some self discipline.
When you struggle. Guess what you should do, not isolate yourself, not go get drunk, right, and which is what marines do. You should talk to somebody who loves you and will not judge you, and you should stay.
Away from alcohol.
And you can do that next stay physically active. So if you'll do those things, watch how quick your life changes. Then you got to learn how to meditate, Merrines.
We don't like that word. I call it calming your brain down. You got to learn how to do some version of that.
You got to learn how to read when you feel anxious or you feel anger, and how to interrupt that cycle.
And these little wellness things.
The people that damage your life, you got to put them at arm's length and keep them there and then all of a sudden your life calms down. But the transformational part of this whole thing, Brian, and the beautiful thing that I learned is you know how many.
People around you were struggling.
You're going to find this path out of the valley of.
The shadow of death, and your life's going to get better.
And then you're going to stick your hand into their darkness and say, hey man, I know what you're going to You got a minute, could I talk to you? And if you'll do that, if you'll help them, at some point.
One of them is.
Going to pick up the phone and call you and say, hey man, remember that conversation we had two months ago. Yeah, you don't know this, but I was getting ready to kill myself that much. And when we do, and I'm not saying that hypothetically.
Because we all know people.
Around us that are struggling, and good luck sleeping that night, because you will experience the joy part of this. I call it the Gridge moment, when the Gridge's heart grows through tons. And here's the who people singing, right, It's that feeling. And that is what we do with our suffering.
We give it meaning. How do we do that?
We learn about it, We learned how to live, We've learned how to become a better version of ourselves, and then we help others.
And if you'll do that.
I guarantee you that you can transform your life.
Well, I would imagine the conversation serves a multitude of reasons why it's beneficial. But in so far as saying, I'm reflecting upon the horror you that you witness and the idea that your your commander said, you're never going
to get over it. That you will remember that incident and it may trouble you and you may want to blame yourself, But if you deflect your attention away from that and go back to that sort of concept of meditation, living in the moment, not going back and retracing old events over which you have no control, but thinking about something different and getting your mind away from it. That in and of itself has to be beneficial.
Well yeah, but I would tell you the big thing is sometimes you can't control that smells trigger the video in your head, right yeah, And you're now you're watching the video and there's no off button and there's no mute button. And so what you have to learn is that's normal. That's normal.
And for me, my combat experiences were not the worst experiences of my life. Right.
My sister's husband murdered their two kids when she told him she wanted her divorce fix years old and four years old, shot him both in the head, right, and then beat her and then put the gun in his mouth and killed himself. So even when I went to combat, even when I went to combat, and it's important that people hear that from somebody who spent three years in Iraq and Afghanistan as an infantry officer, all during the heights of the fighting.
I'm not in that zip code.
And there's people listening to you that were sexually abused as children, that have had this horrible things happening. They're in my sister's zip code, not in mine. And it's very humbling for a cop or a firefighter to hear me speak. And I look at them and I say, you're not in that.
Zip code and you know that. So you don't have the market cornered on trauma. And so what I want what you do is open.
Your mind and learn that there's nothing wrong with you when you struggle, and then it's okay. And the video some days are going to last longer than it's gonna last others. But if you'll learn how to do these things, what you're gonna do is you're gonna learn how to.
Coexist with it. And that's really the art with your trauma.
To understand there's nothing wrong with you, to understand that you're going to coexist with it. I mean World War Two that's once three hundred years old. Yeah, ask them about what they did and they'll tell you in slow motion, high definition what they did. So it's not like this stuff leaves you. And that's so it's developing wisdom relative to this stuff.
Michael McNamara from Trauma to Joy, Life changing lessons that Philly US Marines taught me after traumatic events occurred in my life, underscore lessons that apply to anyone. Michael can't thank you enough for the time you spent my listeners with me on the program. I will certainly recommend they go to fifty five carec dot com where we have a link to get your book. We all experience trauma, and Michael's figured out a way to help us all
deal with it. It's been a pleasure having in the program, and I want to thank you on behalf of all of my listeners and myself personally for your service to our country and your service to everyone for writing this book.
No my privilege. Maron, thank you very much.
Bron take care man A fifty seven fifty five KRC the talk station Big Picture with Jack Avid and brilliant as always, Ken Cober from the FOP, Jason Williams from the Inquire on the Least Agreement, which is in a state of flux and technical difficulties with judging into Polton, but you get a coby of Michael's book at fifty five kr Z dot com. I Heart Media Software is there as well. Joe Jacker, thank you for all that you do to and tomorrow Corey Bowman and Jay Rattliffe
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