Hiding in Plain Sight: Doug White on Overcoming Trauma and Finding Purpose

Music. All right. Welcome back, everybody. Today, we've got Doug White.

Mo and I are going to be talking to Doug about a book that he published about four months ago, Hiding in Plain Sight. Doug is a husband, a father, a veteran, a retired deputy, now a published author. Part of his career at Hillsborough County was on the bomb team. That's how I first met Doug White. I knew him as Corporal White. He attained the level of Lieutenant White, but that was after I left. But we're so excited to have him here. And Doug, I really appreciate your time.

No, I appreciate you having me. This is quite the honor to be able to sit down and share some stories and reconnect with y'all and share some stories with the audience. So thank you very much. Absolutely. Now, Mo, you knew Doug longer than I did because Doug actually was a corporal when I started in training, but you knew him longer. So what was your exposure to Doug White?

We started out at the sheriff's office within the same district, but I think did we go to the same high school together too, also Doug? He did, I thought so, when I was reading. So we went to, he was a couple of years ahead of me, but we went to high school together, subsequently kind of overlapped. He was actually at my wedding when I got married the first time. So he was, we've kind of always kind of parallel lives, it seems like.

And then we both became deputies. He became a deputy first, I became one thereafter. And we got assigned to the same district together. So always kind of paralleled around each other in that respect. And I always knew of, you know, his character, his, you know, the type of person he was, the deputy that he was. And so when I saw that he had published a book, fast forward many years later, now that we are both no longer in high school, I was very impressed.

And knowing that we were doing this podcast and having this mental health mini series, I thought that what better way to incorporate somebody who is trying to touch the masses by taking the time to be really, really raw and vulnerable and put themselves out there in the hopes that it can impact those.

And I think that goes in line with what we have been trying to do with this mental health series is to touch people where they're at, because the opportunity for you to necessarily always know what's going on is tough, because as cops, we're very guarded. We're not always going to share. But maybe they listen and maybe somebody hears something that resonates with them on our podcast and subsequently in his book because it is very, very real and raw and honest.

And I just thoroughly thought that that was something that I wanted to incorporate here in the effort to have people say, you know what, I can see myself in that story. Yeah. Yeah, on both sides and a lot of occasions. And Doug, we're going to get into a little bit on your background, but I just want to say that I can remember, I can recall three interactions with you. One as a trainer, one and the other two, I believe, were in the bomb tech capacity.

And I always, I recall you being very stern, but I always learned from you. And you would share things with me that sometimes scared the shit out of me. We got into that a little bit before we started recording. I always walked away going, I know more now than I did before. And it was usually brief interaction. So for me, I appreciate you. And reading your book, I was shocked.

I didn't realize the wealth of experience you had prior to coming into Hillsboro and then also the struggles you were dealing with. I would have never known. And I know that's part of what your book is about. And we're going to get into that. And I could relate with a lot of the struggles that you were dealing with.

And then some of the stories, you know, just being honest, I had to kind of skip through because it reminded me of my own stories and interactions that I have with the public and traumatic events and how I'm still processing those. So I do want to get into that. But I just wanted to start off by just saying that, you know, for me, you were always, you know, I learned from you every time. I appreciate that. Now, the stern part was probably because of the haircut.

So I grew my hair out and got the company man part on that side. So it's funny you should say that. Mo's laughing because she knows. I always had a shaved head. And I think for the first three years of my law enforcement career, I got into more fights than anybody else in my zone. And I had a, I can't remember if it was a sergeant or not, but somebody said, or maybe it was BJ. No, it was BJ. It was BJ. Apologies. BJ said, yo, man. It's because of the way you look. You need to grow your hair out.

And I used to wear contacts. He goes, wear glasses and people will look at you different. And I said, that's stupid. So I fought him for a little bit. But then I said, I got to stop fighting all the time. This is driving. This is wearing me out. I grew my hair out and I started wearing glasses. I have not been in a physical altercation since. It's probably been 15 years. It's the most outrageous. Just on the appearance. Not on wood. But I was told, it was actually Ray Lawton.

He was my major at the time in the stories book. He was the major I sat down with and said, you know, you could be the corporal that's been on the bomb team or the major that was on the bomb team. And he told me that other supervisors were intimidated by me and I needed to smile more and maybe grow my hair out. So I grew my hair out and I literally changed nothing else about my persona, about me, the way I did business, my sense of humor, nothing. Nothing changed, but I bought a 99-cent comb.

And next thing you know, I'm being invited to working groups and meetings and plannings. My career takes off because of a comb. Odd. It is odd, but they do say appearance is the first impression, and it's amazing how that could be good or bad. I mean, my uniform is always pressed, clean, all that stuff, but just a couple little adjustments, and the way they perceive you is different. The minute you do the coma where you look like Superman and people forget that you're mean. That's right.

I was never mean. I mean, I was used digitally by the bosses as an enforcer. Yeah. Well, I was referring to Tyler when I said that. Yeah.

And we were, BJ and I were also used as enforcers. So, because we're both, you know, 6'4", 6'5", 300 pounds and we worked out. So, we were usually the enforcers anyway. Anyway, Mo would laugh at me whenever I'd show up to roll call. She's like, you are an idiot. I'm like, it's what makes people happy. But Doug, let's get into a little bit. I don't want to overshadow your book because, again, this is where I learned a lot.

Again, I didn't even realize. I knew you were a veteran, but I guess I didn't understand the scope. But I'm fast forwarding a little bit. Can you tell me a little bit how you were raised? Did you ever think you were going to be in law enforcement? It was a lifelong dream. What was your upbringing? Well, you know, at first, if I go to inappropriate comedy, that's because I don't like talking about me.

So I was born in Florida, moved to Tennessee the first six years of my life because my dad was a salesman. So back in those days, there were no interwebs, so you actually had to go meet with customers. So he traveled quite a bit. When I was six, we moved back here to Tampa. And I've been here outside of my active military time. I was here born and raised or not born and raised, but I was raised in town and country and,

Say my parents live in the same house that I was raised in. They've been married, goodness, 54 years this June. That's awesome. That's amazing. Yeah. So, you know, just middle-class upbringing, nothing special. I have a sister that's 10 months older than I am. You know, just the regular childhood, I didn't, and I'm sure we'll get into this, you know, with the contribution of adverse childhood experiences in our later lives. But I didn't have any aces growing up that I could recall.

I do recall that as a kid, I had a couple of bullies, and I just found that very distasteful. I hated bullies. And, you know, grew up in a house that served. My dad is a veteran. My grandfather, uncles, veterans, uncles, veterans. So, you know, it's just a patriotic household and called to serve. And so that led to me joining the Air Force.

And I figured, you know, the stuff that I did in the Air Force was law enforcement security specialists that translated into, you know, helping people and stopping bullies from hurting others. So by the time I came off my first active duty stint, I had largely grown into my adult body. And I was physically able now to prevent that from happening. So I just found my way to serve and my purpose there. And so you're, when you talked, it was so funny when you're talking about like

where you grew up, I know like all those little areas. I didn't realize we grew up literally in the same area because that's where I grew up was down in country my whole life. Deerfield and all that 12 Oaks area, that was my little, my little stomping ground.

So it sounds to me like your entire family though, they had a really hard to serve. So that led you into the military as well, correct? It did. And in the military, I found being a part of something bigger than myself, you know, larger than, you know, you always had a tribe, you had a purpose, there was something to do, there was a mission, there was a spirit of core and pride, all of the things that I wanted, and all of the things that I valued, and that I value in other people as well.

And I think that just solidified what it was that I was to be doing. I mean, I had a pivotal moment, you know, did you remember the book? Yes. There was a pivotal moment in basic training where I saw my reflection in the mirror. I didn't recognize myself. Yeah. And that was a changing moment. You know, I imagined who I would have to be to fulfill my life's purpose. And I was off to the racist, overcommitted and overinvested. And I was all in. Yeah. So.

Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead, Maude. I have a question to follow up. Go ahead. I just wanted to ask him, because it seems like I'm listening to you talk and then also reading your book, Do you think that that idea of, like, I have this history that's behind me with my family and my uncle and my father, did that create that persona, like the start of that persona, do you think, for you to have to almost, for lack of better terms, live up to whatever it was that they had done?

Because I kind of read about your dad, you know, what he had done in the military. I don't know what your uncles did, but was there something in your head that said, OK, now that I've decided to go in the military, I've got to live here. And if I don't, you know, what? No, it's, again, just a patriotic household. You know, it was the American household. And I was well aware because my parents watched the news and all that stuff. So I was well aware of, you know, the Middle East in the late 70s.

You know, I remember that stuff. I remember watching Reagan, you know, the attempt on Reagan's life and the challenger. And, you know, I remember all of these things and they were big discussion points throughout the house. And, you know, it was it was all America, apple pie and all that stuff. And, you know, I think my well, I don't think my my time with my dad, you know, traveling salesman, he was busy.

You know, that generation, they work and they support the home while the wife takes care of the children. And all of that stuff so time dad was it was there you know i never was you know left wanting but you know time with my dad would be on saturdays and sundays either doing yard work or, watching the old black and white war movies you know the old john wayne stuff and world war ii stuff i just always watched that and anytime i was with my my friends and we would do boy scouts or go camping.

My dad would, you know, talk to us about his old army stories. And it's just, it was kind of that, that thing, you know, it's, it's what you do, you serve. And I always loved the, I just, I always loved, I don't know, I really can't explain it. It was just an internal drive, I guess, to serve and do something bigger than. And then when I did it and realized the, the history and the pride and just the fulfillment really of finding that purpose and driving, driving on that

path. It was just, it was something that filled me. My question was that drive that you had, is that something you, that you always had?

Like did you throw yourself into everything that you did even as a child or is it something you developed over time? It's something that developed over time. And I still don't know the answer to why, honestly. It was never enough. And that was the thing. I mean, being the bomb guy, okay, now I'm teaching bombs. So now I'm teaching the bombs here at the academy. Now I'm teaching it across the country for homeland security.

And, you know, at one point I was contacted, asked to co-author a book, on a bomb disposal and i was like i mean who am i to write this book but these people want to pay me to co-author a book with this you know retired master chief this is pretty cool and but yeah i mean it was always it was always driving if there were two classes to have for a certification i needed both of those classes i needed them you know at back-to-back weeks to be first i

had to get the most i had to amass these things learn these things be able to teach these things and It's just, I don't know, it was, I know at some point it was trying to fill a hole. I just don't know what caused that hole. I see. It's a very fair and raw answer. So I appreciate that because I think sometimes people think they do have to find the root of whatever it is before they can address it. And I don't think that's necessary.

No, I think, I think if you patch one hole, you're going to find a leak someplace else. So it is a constant, you know, I thought about this probably about a year ago that, you know, So the issue is that – and this is the human condition. This is not just for responders or vets, but the human condition. I think that when you're on this path of growth, you have choices.

You can wake up one morning and stay in a victim mindset, having been victimized. You can be a victim and live in victimhood, or you can make a conscious choice that you're going to do your best to be better today than you were yesterday. So I think it's – you know, there's clinical issues. I understand that there are physiological and neurological things that are going to prevent that, but for the most part if you were on a,

A journey to be better is a choice. It's like waking up in the morning. Well, I want big muscles, but I don't feel like going to the gym. But you're not going to have big muscles today. And go lift, you know. You have to make the choice to want to do that. It's like being an alcoholic in recovery. You're always going to be an alcoholic, and every day it's going to be a conscious choice whether you take a drink or not. It's a good comparison. Yeah, no, that's a good comparison.

So getting into the book, how did you get the idea to write a book? Is it something you always wanted to do or did it come to you at what point? Well, as you probably already found out and having known me for a while, I have no short answers. So people would ask me stuff and I would tell them stories and tell them something. And I'd always hear, man, you should write a book. And of course, I was always dismissive. I'm too lazy for that. Yeah, whatever.

Well, and to a degree, yes. I never had an idea to write a book until I retired. And I found myself after, you know, 31 years and various uniforms that I woke up one morning the day after, and I was no longer any of those things. All of the things that I've worked for, all of the courses that I've taught and taken and, you know, the accolades that I had amassed, it was all rented admiration. You were none of those things anymore. Nobody gave a shit that you were a cop.

And it's just gone. So now what am I? So I actually got darker after I retired than when I was working, if you can believe it. And the more retirees I speak to are people that have left the profession, whether willingly or unwillingly. They share that same sentiment. So I started journaling. And I was told for years, hey, you should journal. Like, no, shit doesn't work. Talking about your feelings is stupid. We're going to sit here and comb each other's hair and come on. That doesn't work.

So, you know, I was dismissive in the advice, which is good advice. And I was self-deprecating in my response by saying I was too lazy. So I started journaling after I retired. And after about six months, so we're looking at December, January of 23 and January 24, that having pushed away from it several times because I went into really bad places, and y'all have read the book, so you know the vinyas that I'm speaking of. But at the end of that six months, I had roughly 77,000 words.

And 77,000 words in the context of a paperback book is over 300 pages of a regular paperback book. And I read what I wrote, and I didn't like it because I had written myself as a victim or a bystander in my own hero's journey. Now, y'all have started off this episode by saying very wonderful things, and I'm grateful for the wonderful things you've said about me. But anybody who's ever known me would never, ever qualify me as a victim or a bystander in anything I've ever done.

So why am I speaking to myself this way? What story am I telling myself? So unfortunately, now that I peeled all of that back, I felt the best way to get through it is to sit with it and figure it out. So I went through them page by page, and I sat with them. I worked through everything. I owned every bit of it. I went to the people that were involved, and I would love to get into that later.

But, you know, once you own your story, truly own it, all of it, the stuff that you don't want to tell anybody else, and you atone for those things, so much growth happens. And from that growth to that point, the things that I'd uncovered to that point became a different 52,000 words, which became hiding in plain sight. That's how the book came about. And I was, and it wasn't a book then.

It was a manuscript at best. It was something that I was very afraid of because, as y'all have noticed. It is anything and everything that can hurt me. It is my weakest moments as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a deputy, as a leader, as a veteran. You know, if I ever decided to run for public office, you don't have to hire anybody to find the dirt. I've given it to you. It's all there. Yeah. But the message in that is there's so much power in owning your story.

And there's more power in it when you give it to someone else with the hopes that it's going to help them. Right. So it's probably the most selfish and selfless act of self-care that I could have done for myself. But it was like sawing off my arm. It was not easy. Yeah. Stories, and, you know, we're told this, I think, many times that you should journal, you should write down your stories.

Sometimes it's in the vein of self-care. Sometimes it's in the vein of, hey, if you don't write these stories down, you'll forget them. But like you said, I'm not doing that. I'm too lazy. There's so many reasons why we don't do it. But going through, like I said, I had to skip through some of those because it started reminding me of cases, incidents, horrific tragedies that I was either there on scene or whatever it was.

I've realized how much stuff I've like boxed away and I guess my question is and maybe this isn't just the book but I guess the journaling part emotionally and mentally did you see a shift when you started to when you finished or like what was that process for you just writing it out and then converting it to a book I guess I got recounting some of those things and and I'll I'll tell you now that even though there are some good vignettes in there,

a lot of those would not even make the top 10 of horrific shit that I've been involved with. They're there because I learned something from them that I identified after I started journaling. And my wife, Michelle, I gave her the manuscript when I was done with it, and she read it. And she says, there's things in here that we've never spoken of. And I said, there's things in here that I've never put words to.

And to circle back to journaling real quick, when you're journaling, like, we're having this conversation right now, okay? And it's because I'm open and I'm sharing, but I wasn't always this way. And when you sit down with a blinking cursor on a white laptop screen, there's no ego there. There's no judgment. I don't have to measure my words. I'm not marketing myself. I'm not selling for anything. I'm not – there's no ask.

It's just – it's coming out of me. There was one day that I sat down and 10,000 words came out of me. I had one cup of coffee. I didn't eat lunch, didn't get up from the bathroom, and I didn't realize that Michelle and the kids had already come back home from work and school.

When i was doing this i was having visceral reactions sweating cotton mouth angry mad, the devil the duffel and the angel one of the vignettes in the story i pushed away from the entire project for six weeks not a keystroke not an instagram post not a thought about any of this for six freaking weeks because i was planning how i was going to kill that guy the day he was released from prison and wishing I had done it the day that I met him.

That's where I was. Fast forward to where I am now. Do I have within me the capacity to do those things? Absolutely. And I think that's the key. And again, y'all read the book, you know, the shadow of the monster, you have to make friends with that thing because it's a part of you. It's not, it wasn't some, some thing that you had to transform into. It's in there. And you have to be comfortable that it's there and know how to control it.

And that's what I've learned over the last year. I mean, this July of 24, this was still a manuscript. And this did not become a thought for a book until the day that a Hillsborough County deputy took his own life. And that was the day that I stopped being. I'm sorry. I still get a little.

This is all very raw too by the way because it's I'm still on this journey, so don't think that just because you think you found a way forward and you journaled and you put out a book and you're on a podcast you got it sorted because there are days that there are going to be bad days and you have to understand that that is a bad day, that's it this is not a course of action or you don't have to go back to that place again it's a conscious choice but yeah,

When I found out, I found out that night that he took his own life, I thought to myself, I know this guy, always smiling, gave me spine-straightening hugs. We would introduce each other as brothers because we had the same last name. I loved everything about the dude. Great human being. And I was shocked. Yeah. But I wasn't. And I thought to myself, man, if I wasn't so afraid of my book, if I had had this in his hands yesterday. day.

Now, again, I know that's completely ridiculous. Me making a phone call or talking, in this particular case may not have had any effect. You calling a friend saying, hey, man, where's your heart? Tell me something good. Yes, those things make an impact. But Doug saying, hey, here's a book. I want you to read it. It may, it may not. But that was the day that I stopped being afraid of myself and afraid of the story.

And I said, this has got to go on. I can't be sitting on the answers to the test and sit around and watching people fail. It was selfish of me. So I had to get over that and I had to give it to the world. And it was also, Michelle did not she was supportive of all of this, the podcast, the book, my journey, and all of that. Obviously, she's been supportive since the day I met her. But she didn't want her voice attached to this because she's still on her journey sorting all of this stuff.

But it was at that conversation, she says, I want to write the foreword to your book because putting myself in his wife's position, knowing that something was wrong and I did not know what to do or I did not take action, I don't know that I'd ever recover from that. So I feel like I need to say something to the spouses who may read your book. And what her foreword of that book is her typing, I was having coffee on the back patio on a Saturday morning.

And that's exactly how she typed it. It was not edited. It was put in there exactly as she did. Those were her feelings in that moment. That's awesome. Yeah. Again, I don't have short answers. I apologize. No, no. I love it because I think you have raw answers, though. And I think that's what people need to hear. Like you said, we are failing each other because we aren't being as raw as I think we could be and should be in this profession and any first responder profession.

Because we are, we've been very, we are set up to be, quote unquote, tough for the job that we have to do. But it's never been taught the converse emotion that we need to and have to, that we go through and we need to share on that too. So I appreciate your long answers. No big deal. I'm sorry, Mo. I just wanted to say one thing. They tell us in the academy, or they used to tell us in the academy, be firm, courteous, impartial, and have a plan to kill everyone you meet. Yep.

I know that was said tongue-in-cheek, and it probably is said in some places still, in academies or on the street someplace. Right. They train us to do every one of those things, but they don't train us how to come home. Nope, they don't. So that's a whole podcast episode on its own, I'm sure. It's true.

And it's funny, one of the previous episodes we did, we spoke with a guy who worked for TPD, and one of the things he brought up was the fact that we don't train to be emotionally and mentally healthy. And we train them for everything else. And knowing though, but we know that their emotions and their mental health are going to be taxed and we don't train them for it. So- that that's a failure in itself. And like you said, it could be a whole nother show.

Oh yeah. But a couple of things you touched on, I want to touch on because I think they were so poignant. One of the things that you said in the beginning is when you retired, how quickly things, all those things, the accolades that you had, you had, you know, attained all the learning, all the teaching, all the mastering of all the things that you had done so quickly just goes away. And I'm on this board with Meg Ross, with the helpline.

And one of the things that we are really struggling with as a board that's trying to put together treatment or put together something for people, that can help first responders that are in crisis, we are having the most trouble with reaching out to the retirees because we don't know how to make it accessible to them. We don't know how to make it something that's a, we know the applicability of it because the big thing that they all say is what you said.

Once you separate, you're almost forgotten. Your car's given to somebody else. They re-established. You are. Like, let's be real. I know. You post your position before they post your obituary. I promise you. A hundred percent. You're right. I think the same thing. I left. The big card was like, oh my gosh, we found a huge unit to share this on us. They didn't care. So, we're trying to figure out how we can set people up for that better transition.

And it was just like, that was a poignant reminder that people When they do separate, that is an incredibly memorable time because it happens so fast. People are foolish in their, foolish is the wrong word. They are fooled. That's the better word. They believe that they are more important to the agency than they truly are when they walk out of that door. No, that doesn't check out. We're family. So, you know, I'll tell you from my own experience that, yes,

you know, all the admiration is rented. And it's anywhere you go. And in defense of the professions, in the first responder disciplines, the business of fire suppression, the business of law enforcement must continue. Yes. Irrespective of who's there. Okay. The budget item says 4569. That's it. It doesn't say Doug White one each. So I understand it's impersonal, but the thing is, I was so over-invested and so over-committed, I was enmeshed with the organization.

I needed that support, and I didn't get it, or I didn't get it to the level that I thought I deserved it. And again, that's a whole other podcast, but that perception, real or not, of betrayal or unrequited love. You know, you go to hold the hand of the object of your affection, and she looks at you and pulls away like she doesn't know you. It hurts.

And, you know, when you're literally shown the door by the person that benefits and points to the lobby and says, you can wait there. You know, 25 years of all the things that I accomplished, I valued my career. But I'm standing on the curb in July for 40 minutes like a dick holding a backpack with my entire career in it. He's a sergeant to come pick me up like he's my Uber driver. Yeah. I mean, it's a speeding train. The organization is a speeding train.

You can get on board, enjoy the ride, or they'll use your guts to grease the gears. The machine does not care. No, it doesn't. And that's the big thing that I think that we have to start being realistic with people that are coming into this profession. Yes, we want people to be committed, but not to the detriment of other parts of their lives.

And I think that is where, like you said, it happens where we overcommit, overinvest with the idea that there's going to be that love that's going to be given back to us. And forgetting the fact that the love that we get in our lives is not from the job that we're doing because it is a job.

It is a machine it is a business and law enforcement firefighting being a dispatcher working in detention they are all businesses that make a lot of money and you are part of that business that's it but the idea has to be sold to people coming in because of the nature of the business that it's a brotherhood and it's a sisterhood and it's it's heavy to look at it from that perspective.

So when you said that, I was like, wow, this is why we're struggling with the law so quickly and we're struggling to get them back because when they do separate and they do feel that sting, how do you get them to come back and say, no, no, no, but we want to help you. We're part, like, it's tough to get them to trust you. Well, it's the culture of the organization that you're in.

You know, I was hanging out with some retired firefighters over the last week at this conference I was at and they invited me to dinner at their fire station. And I learned so much about the fire culture. I mean, I've been teaching ICS and all that stuff, so I've been teaching firefighters. But actually learning their culture and sitting at the kitchen table with them, there's nothing that can't be sorted out at the kitchen table in a firehouse. It's a confessional.

It's a counselor's couch. It is your dinner table. I mean, it was really wonderful to see them be a part of that. And, you know, retiree, you know, they come back and they're welcomed. It's part of the atmosphere in their culture. You know, one of the examples that I used with one of them is if they kept saying over the whole week, pediatric code, pediatric code, that's their worst call. I'm like, okay, so when you have a pediatric code and you lose the child, it happens. Nature of the job.

When they get done, the four of them, their crew, they get back on the engine together. They go back to the firehouse together. They stay out of service or go back in service together. They're together. I sit next to this baby's body until the coroner picks it up. Then I go find a quiet place where I won't get after with so I can write my report. Then I go to another.

And then at the 12 hours, I have to shift in my five-minute commute from the office to my house to decide what version of Doug my wife and kids are going to get. We can go in and talk about seeing a zone partner. If it's a slow Sunday, we can isolate. I think being real with these kids, and I'm retired now, so call everybody kids. Being real with the kids when they first come in, I think it's setting them up for the realities of the job.

And not that, hey, this is going to beat you up and you're going to be a horrible person because of, no. Hey, these are the symptoms of what it is that you will experience. These are neurological and physiological changes in you that cannot be compelled. These will happen. This is what it looks like. This is how you mitigate those things throughout your career, the tune-ups, the optimization, the sleep studies, the blood work, the this, nutrition, working out, all of the things.

Instead of being a burnt-out old salt that you can't get to come back for a peer support meeting for retirees. So that's an organizational thing. As far as retiring, there are so many things. You have PTS. You have actual physical injuries. You have financial issues. You have to figure out what your life is like now because your spouse sees you all day, every day.

That with all of the existential garbage that comes along with no longer being part of a tribe right so you know those those are are tough things uh university of central florida their react program they have peer support it's the blue line red line gold line and so they have just kicked off and are doing their first training in may for the retiree peer support, retiree react through UCF for stores.

Let's see what happens there. I think it's going to be successful, not because I helped them work on it, but I think this is going to start getting some traction with the retiree because we need to take care of those folks. We deserve to be living better than we're living. 100%. I agree with you. We cut kind of off on that tangent, but I thought that was a good point that when you said that, I was like, Oh my goodness.

The other thing that stuck out to me is when you said about you were telling your story as a victim bystander. And I thought to myself, the words that someone on the outside says can be hurtful, but goodness, the words that you say to yourself in your own brain could really take somebody down a dark path. So I thought about, like, these people, this is how people get into these dark places because they're saying this to themselves. It's not the exterior world.

It's that internal voice. And it was, I read in your book where you would, your internal voice would talk and then it would be like, okay, now I've got to achieve more, achieve more, achieve more. Yeah. It was never enough. It was never good enough. Yeah. And I don't know why. I don't know who it was I was trying to impress or if it was myself or what that hole was. That's, you know, copy book number three, but. Yeah, I don't know what that's all about.

I do. It felt good to be the guy when the guy was needed. Yeah. I wanted to be the guy for everything. The thing that I was not good at was I was not the guy needed at home. Yeah. That all suffered because I felt, and I convinced myself that being the guy for the people who needs it, you know, more success at work brings more money, brings more stable home life. Success and blah, blah, blah, all of the things. It just makes life easier at home. So therefore, I'm doing good things for my family.

Things matter to my family. It was the time, and it was the time that I didn't give. It was the time that I traded for rented admiration. 100%. Yeah. That leads me to the last thing that I found, that I thought about, when you said that Michelle had to unpack still what and process everything that occurred and then subsequently process the idea of a deputy that you guys did know that killed themselves and being able to process all that.

You think about the first responder needs to work on mental health and process things and be able to recover, but there's all those peripheral people that are affected by that first responder over the span of 20, 25, 30 year careers and have been damaged along the way too that needs to make that, have that time to recover as well, for lack of better terms, and unpack everything.

Yes. The first line of my book says, it is my opinion, I'm not alone in this, that the spouses of first responders, veterans, and military personnel are the brave and the bold. And I actually said that at the fire table the other night having dinner. I said, If you think y'all are the heroes, you're full of shit. You're kidding yourself. So we go to work. We get to do the cool stuff. We put the wet stuff on the fiery stuff and make the steamy stuff, or we get to kick in doors and chase bad guys

and do all of the things that people see on TV. Right. It's easy. We're good at our jobs. We know we're safe, you know, relatively doing the best that we can. Right. Our spouses are at home waiting for the phone to ring. They're not sleeping at night until you get home. They're waiting for a knock at the door to say mom or dad's never coming home again. Right. So, yes, we have a front row seat and we have a ticket to the show that we never wanted to see.

However, our spouses, they're along for the ride. They bound themselves to us because – or they're bound to our service because they bound themselves to us. Yeah. I can go into so many things about, you know, how to treat your spouse and be a better spouse as a first responder and understand what it is that they're going through.

And the thing that I want everybody to know about this book and the book that came to my mind at the end of Struggle Well on Tuesday afternoon, I actually said the title out loud. I was like, my God, somebody write that down. I've got my second book.

It's that hiding in plain sight, this was never just my story. It's not. You know, you think about it. If you've ever been in a car with somebody and you're driving and you almost get into a crash, you get the little tinglys on your face and your arms. Oh, that was close. Ha, ha, ha. You ever ask the pastor, what did you just feel? They can't steer into the skid. They can't, you know, swerve away from the car that's coming into their lane. They just have to sit there and take it. Yeah.

Our cells are sitting in the passenger seat while we avoid crash after crash or crash and crash. There's no locus of control. And if we come home at the end of our day and we're just a standoffish dick, they think to themselves, what did I do? They internalize that. They're the problem. Saying, hey, I've had a really bad day. Can we talk about it? Or I've had a bad day. I don't want to talk about it. Can you just give me a hug?

Or can you give me 10 minutes to get this stuff off and I want to hear all about your day? Instead of saying stuff like, I'm not going to tell you because I'm protecting you. Right. Or you wouldn't understand. That was a smack in the face. You're taking away the locus of control. And I'll tell you, in my experience, my direct experience, the people that love us are actively looking for ways to help us. Yep. And the only way they can do that is if we hand them the steering wheel.

And keep with the analogy. The barrier to entry to getting better is raising your – I'm sorry, can we cuss on this thing? Absolutely. The barrier to entry to getting help, to any first responder or veteran out there listening to me, there is no requisite number of babies you have to pull from the bottom of a pool or fires you have to go to or losses or near misses. The barrier to entry to getting help is raising your fucking hand and saying, I want help. Yeah. hard stop. That's it.

And if anybody tells you to suck it up or press on or you're not hard enough for this job or you weren't meant to this, send me an email. Because I'm going to tell you right now, I've been asked the question several times on podcasts. What would the people working for you say about you? I said, well, it would be pretty arrogant for me to answer. So I'll allow you to interview them. And I would never give that answer.

But I'm pretty sure that the people that I've worked with who I've served would tell you, well, y'all said it before we even started the episode, that y'all would have never guessed that I had these issues. Yeah. This is the human condition. It has nothing to do with firefighter versus EMS versus dispatcher versus Leo. It's not. This is the human condition. These are things that can't be compelled. Yeah. That's the point of this. And we should be talking about this.

Sorry, I've been in it again. No. You're allowed. You're allowed. I'm sure. So I want to get into the book, but I just want to capsulize a few things.

So you mentioned the foreword that your wife wrote, and again, you have to read the book, but I remember reading that, and it hit me in multiple ways, thinking about what I went through in my relationships that I experienced. Very raw, very true. A lot of things that I heard over the years, didn't pay attention to.

And the way you're describing it, it's something I've kind of come to grips with is when I was as a street side, I realized I was compartmentalizing my, you know, deputy Tyler or trooper Tyler and then husband, father, Tyler. And to me, those were two completely different people. And I almost drew a complete hard line or a wall, whatever you want to call it here.

When I put the uniform on I was somebody else and then when I came home I had to struggle to change back into and to be a husband and a father. I didn't do a good job to say less about that but, the impact that you're talking about to your family. My kids now, they're older. They remember I would come home in the middle of the night because I had blood all over my uniform and I'd be like, Hey, it's good. You know, why are you guys up? Whatever. And I'm just changing.

I didn't even think about what they were seeing. I was just like, yeah, I got blood all over. It's not mine. It's fine. But they're like seven and five. They're like, dad, we had no idea what was going on. And you're just like in and out and like quick kiss on the forehead and you're gone again.

We're like what you know is he okay like and they had to go to their mom and she's like i don't know i don't know what's going you know i basically just came in like a whirlwind messed up their night because it's you know one or two in the morning and then i would dip out again because you know i was working till six or seven and i never thought about it until now they're 19 and 17 and they're like yeah you remember that shit and i was just like i had no idea like

it never crossed my mind that you would even think something was wrong like it didn't even come it wouldn't of entered my thought that I was like traumatizing them at that early of an age about not to me what was nothing yeah yeah well you read the part in the book says not without bad days my experience at Disney oh yeah yeah I remember we do that we we react reacting and responding are very different, and we react when if we would take a moment breathe look at the situation and

accept it for exactly what it is and sort those feelings, we'd be able to respond much more effectively. I remember my son was about five and I was working nights. In fact, I was nighttime corporal. It was right after you and I would have met. And he was awake one night, middle of the night, and asked Michelle, what happens if I call 911? And she said, well, the police would come to make sure that we're safe.

And he said, would daddy come home? Oh. That hits me a little bit Maybe a little watery He's 18 now and it doesn't hit me Any less hard than it did then, I was not good at turning off. I was in Mish. Who I was was who I was. It's not who I am now. It was a character that I had to play, and I had lost myself in that character. Yeah. Well, I think... Sorry, go Mo, go.

That's a rough one, but you know, I mean, it's real. Like, that's what people push down and go, well, when you go to work, you got to box that stuff up from home and just go to work. That's the stuff that people are going out and they're just pushing past it. So talking about, like, we've talked about some of the stuff in the book, but I want to get a little more specific. So in reading it, you kind of broke your life up in segments a little bit.

And two things that kind of stuck out to me was in the beginning when you were talking about your military career you had your first encounter with death in 1994 and you talked about it and then it appeared like in your life you just moved on then you left active military separated from active duty you had gotten married in the military then you're going through a divorce you're searching for a career

there was just a lot going on at that particular time and it seemed like as i was reading the book, it was almost in your head at the time, like, okay, this is just doing business as usual. You know, yes, I saw dead bodies. Yes, I'm going through a divorce. Yes, I'm separating from the military and not really giving those things the weight that they should have. Is that perception correct? Yes. Clinicians call that avoidance and I was the CEO of avoidance.

A little rabbit in the back of my head screaming, can't catch me. Yeah. And, yeah, it does. Those little boxes that you – I don't even think I said so in the book that you shove those things down in little boxes, and they're spring-loaded like a jack-in-the-box. One day, those things are going to come open.

And, yeah, there was a lot to process at 23 years old, driving across the country with no plan B, having separated from the military from the active duty into the active reserve, losing that tribe, that way of life. And, you know, now I cried from Washington State through every state all the way back to Tampa. Wow. Do you think that that fed that next like, OK, I've got to find the next thing that I can now learn, master, teach and do all the things that you had done in the military?

I think that that's a yes and no. Not my first, not my first stint on active duty. The first four years was like anybody else's four years, but it was when I was working on getting with the sheriff's office and I got my, I was blessed, absolutely blessed enough to get my, to get selected for a position as special operations command here at McDill. Meeting and being associated with a caliber of people that are in the soft enterprise, that's a whole different level of doing things.

That is always switched on, always right, all the time, always soaking in, taking in, achieving. The bar is moving, and it's always moving up. So the men and women I was associated with from 97 to 07, my last 10 years in, were the most impactful on me about how to be a professional, how to be a warrior, and how to be a teammate. And there were some fatherhood lessons in there, like how to be available when you are home.

I didn't learn those really well, but all the other stuff I picked up on, and I think the hole was caused by, and I've looked into my childhood and done the, you know, the ACE worksheet. Hey, were you beat up or, you know, by your dad or drunks and this and that? None of that stuff was there. I think my drive, and I hit the ground running pretty hard when I got hired at the sheriff's office. I had been at the command for about seven months by the time I got hired by the sheriff's office.

But the post 9-11 time when I got recalled, or when I went back to active duty, which turned into a recall, I was gone for just over three years. And breaking my ankle and not being able to go downrange with my teammates where I felt it mattered most. Or I left them with a whole ball of imposter syndrome, shame, guilt that ate me up for the next 15 years until I had my breakthrough.

So, you know, I think a lot of achieving and doing and doing more and overcommitting came from that need to prove to my teammates that I deserve the company that I kept during that time. Right. And I believe that probably where about 98% of that came from. Yeah. I was going to say in the book, and I'll give you an opportunity to Tyler. I just that when I was reading the book, that seemed to be like this, like the huge, maybe not the switch, but that was such a huge point.

And it's so funny because as a person, as an outsider looking in, because I wasn't, you know, I'm outside looking in your life. I thought, well, you just broke an ankle. I mean, it happens. No big deal is what I'm thinking about. It's the entire culture of my life. Yeah. And it's so incredible to read the book and see how it changed your entire outlook almost. So it was just, it was really incredible to read that part and see that.

Yeah, it was something. Yeah. There's another, there's an end to that story, but Tyler, I'm sure you had something for me.

Well, no, I was letting you talk, sorry. So for me, so again, for me, my question is more involved, like, in the writing of the book and me reading it, did you ever think about the amount of time, energy, sacrifice that you gave to your career, I guess at the cost of maybe personal family or your personal interest that wasn't even consideration while I was doing it it wasn't until after my breakthrough I don't call it my break anymore,

after my breakthrough and I'll be very honest with you the face that I put on after that breakthrough publicly, was stoic and classic Doug White ruck up drive on. Personally, I was a dumpster fire. I was going through my mind, how dare you? Don't you know who I am, what I've dedicated, what I've done, what I've sacrificed? Never once thinking about, wow, I've sacrificed my family, you know, all of the things that really matter, the lasting things, the legacy things.

Well, yeah, I probably should still unwrap that a little bit, too, because I remember having conversations with Michelle when I was working and I was in that space, you know, the drive, drive, drive, succeed, and be the person for everybody. She used to tell me when the kids were younger that she felt like she was doing all this alone. And I wouldn't say anything about it, but I would be so offended. I'm teaching at the academy. I'm an FTO. I'm on the bomb team.

I'm doing this. I'm doing that. I'm working overtime. And I'm doing all of these things to support the family. That's so ungrateful. And it wasn't until probably last October when I was really chewing on, well, I'll tell you exactly what it was. The day I got the author's draft in the mail before the book was actually went to publishing. They send you an author's draft so you can look through the actual book before it goes to make sure it's good to go.

I got this book in my hand. And Michelle was, you know, had the camera on and videoing me. And I didn't realize it until I, you know, I looked up at her. But I'm holding three copies of the book in my hand and I'm staring at it. And I look at the back of, you know, it's got my picture on it. And it says, this is not just another collection of war stories. And I'm like, what kind of who is shit is this? What's it made by in my head when I wrote this?

And I'm holding this book and I'm looking at it. I'm just feeling the pages, man. It's just kind of soaking in the moment. But being present, which is something that I really had to work on, and I looked up at Michelle, and I started to cry. And I looked at her, and I said, this wasn't what I meant to write. And she puts the phone down. She's like, what do you mean? I said, this is, this was, you know, it started off as a cautionary tale of don't do what I did. Get help.

That's not what this is now. And this was like, I send this thing off. A week later, I get these books, and that process was me touching the book to realize this. I said, this is an apology letter to anybody who's loved me over the last 31 years. Wow. Wow. I said, this is a love letter to myself. And more importantly, this is a love letter to the woman who never left.

Yeah. So thinking about things from that aspect and the spouse, you know, I'm probably the only man in this responder veteran space that's speaking up and speaking to the spouses. And if so, I'm sorry that I'm the only one. And I hope that doesn't last for very long. If I'm the only one, I hope that's not the case. And, you know, I just, I had a conversation with her after that, more learning. I said, you know, when the kids were younger, you used to say this to me.

And I recounted what she said. And I said, I was so offended by that because of all the things I was sacrificing and doing. I said, but that's not what you wanted. I said, you were asking me for help, but I wasn't hearing you. I saw this instead of what you really needed. You needed me. You needed my time. And I said, I am so ashamed and I'm so sorry that I didn't see you and hear you then. And here we are, you know, our weekly grocery date.

We're sitting in the public's apartment lot and she's crying. And she says, I don't want you to be ashamed and I don't want you to feel guilty. She says, I'm just glad after all these years you've heard me and you validated that. And I'm like, look at me, I'm growing. This is wonderful. But, you know, and to me, you know, that's the power of having conversations

and communicating. Yeah. You know, it's like watching an old 80s sitcom, you know, some innuendos thrown out and the whole sitcom goes off and everybody believes this joke.

And that's not the reality of it. Well, you know, if you have these open and honest conversations with people, it does several things. One, it doesn't necessarily give people permission to tell their story, but it gives them license to feel safe, to stand in the shade of your narrative and share their story. They know that they're in a safe spot. They know where their boundaries are with you. And not only that, to have these conversations with your spouse.

Again, you give them locus of control. You tell them all of it, everything. Don't curate the message for them. You give it to them and let them decide what they're going to do with the message. Then that way they have the power and how they're going to help or if they're going to help. So I think those are important conversations to be had. It's a lesson, once again, that I learned the hard way. Yeah, and I appreciate that. And we're jumping around a little bit, Doug, and I appreciate you.

Dude, it's awesome. And I can feel the emotion. And you already made me well up twice since you've been talking. So it has made a lot of people cry. I'm being interviewed, and I apologize. No, no, no. That's, I mean, it's the truth. Well, let me switch gears just a little bit. What advice, because we're on the vein, what advice would you give military, fire, law enforcement, whatever, on balancing your career and personal life?

To that family health, you know, aspirations like things outside of law enforcement, any advice that you would have on those things. Well, there's a lot there. The first thing I'm going to say is something that I saw today. Never place your value or how you feel about yourself and someone else's opinion of you if you would not take advice from that person. I look at all the people that I tried to please during the course of my career,

and I would I'm not like any of those assholes. What's my neighbor's dog? I don't like my neighbor's dog. I love dogs. Yeah, fair enough. You know, I think about it. It's like, dude, I would never ask that person for marital advice. They're a horrible person. Why did I give a shit what they thought about me professionally? Right. So my advice to them, and I've given a lot of it already, but I would say to you that this is a job.

It is. It's a career. It's a purpose. It's a calling. But guess what? But there's 18,000 law enforcement agencies in this country. If you're not valued where you're at, pick your ass up and move to a place of your value. You deserve better. Any organization that tells you you're lucky to have us, you're lucky to be here, or my favorite, Mo, I know both of y'all have heard this from our former agency. There's 10 people waiting in line to take your job. Oh, yeah.

This is 2025. You got 10 people waiting to take each law enforcement officer's job. We don't have a recruiting problem, so you're full of shit. This job will end. It is rented admiration. The stories that you're going to be telling later in life are the stories that people want to hear now, but you're not willing to tell.

So deal with your shit as they come along, because I promise you, self-medicating, whether it's women or men or booze or gambling or pills or you pick your vice, whatever it is, guess what? One day the music is going to stop, and holy shit, every one of those boxes are going to come flying open, and you have to deal with them all at once. And it's not going to come when you're healed and at your best. It's going to come on your lowest day.

So meet them as they come, meet them where they are, talk to people. And if you're in a leadership position, your words have weight. The things that you do to your personnel, the decisions you make, and the things that you say impact them when you're not at work. They take those things home. If you don't know that, shame on you. If you do know that and you're still an asshole, shame on you because you are complicit in whatever it is that's going on at their house.

Be a better leader. Be the person that you needed 20 years ago. So I think that without me throwing some shit in my own office, I think I'm just going to stop there. Fair enough. I'd be a little passionate. You may know that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Go ahead. Sorry, I've been dominating again. I apologize. No, it's fine. You were asking some of the questions I wanted to ask, so it was fine.

When you said you touched on here just then when you were talking about the leadership, if you're in a leadership position, what you should be doing, things like that. And in your book, you really talk about before you were even a leader, you talk about the pressure you put on yourself to become a leader, to go to the next phase, to do some of those things. And when you were a leader in your book, you said I would tell people, you know, it's okay not to be okay. It's okay to do this.

Most people in leadership positions would say, well, I'm doing it. I'm telling them it's okay not to be okay. But what does a leader really need to do instead of just saying the words? First of all, Mo, I will shamefully say, proudly say, actually, I would have those conversations with my squads and my platoons for the better part of a decade. And I was the biggest hypocrite in the room. Yeah, you said it in the book, I know.

Because I would say those things. And it was funny because somebody that worked for me, a guy that I love dearly, he's fantastic, and he's still a working supervisor in our agency. He read my book. He called me. He was mad at me. He said, bro, I worked for you when you were going through this, and you never told me? I mean, he was like seething mad, like I don't know how to process this. And I was like, dude, read the title of the book. It's called Hiding in Plain Society for a reason.

But he said, hey, man, all those years that you were having those conversations, and it was like a weekly conversation. With the entire platoon or the squad, depending on my level of command. And he said, were you just waiting for somebody else to say something so you could say something? I laughed, and I was like, brother, you're the only person to ever call me on my bullshit.

That's exactly what I was doing. I was praying. Every time I had that conversation, somebody would pull me aside so I could vent and unload. And I had several deputies come to me and talk to me about stuff like that. I mean, wave top stuff.

But instead of saying it's okay not to be okay and that old cliche and smash the stigma and all these things, if you're a leader, and I'm talking about a manager or some asshole that is sitting in positional authority by some divine right, but I mean somebody who is not in a position of positional authority. Okay? Whether you have rank or not, if you are respected and if you have the ears of people or you are a mentor, mentors are very powerful. Tribe is very powerful.

My recommendation to you is first, sort yourself out, own your shit, and stand up in open form and say it. There is nothing more powerful than a chief law enforcement agent or a chief, you know, fire officer standing in open form and saying, hey, we all went on this call together. Well, you weren't there. This was behind before your time or whatever the case was. I went on this call, and I had a real bad problem with it.

And I didn't speak to somebody about it. and these were the things that I did and these were the things that I did wrong. I want you to know that that's where I'm at and because I was there, I don't want you to be there. That's why I'm having this conversation with you. Connecting with your personnel in an authentic way. Not for a YouTube clip. Not traffic stops on 275, which we all know are bullshit. None of that stuff. A real, authentic connection.

You don't need your name on a car. they'll know who you are yeah. That's my advice to a leader. And it's funny you should say that because a couple things. First of all, I teach. And one of the things when I'm teaching, you know, FDLE doesn't have this written into the curriculum, but I try to weave it in when I can. And I do it through being vulnerable and sharing with people.

And one of the things when we're sitting on this board on the Hope Line is when we were talking about clinicians or when we were talking more so about instructors. But having instructors who are willing to be vulnerable and to tell people, this is where I was at. This is what I felt. This is what I did wrong. Those kind of things. Huge, I think. So, I mean, that's a great piece of advice, in my opinion. Great piece of advice.

When I fall from, when I had my fall from grace. Yeah. That's what I call it, jokingly. And not to give away the book or anything. But I went back to my platoon and met them all in the parking lot, 3 o'clock in the morning at Sitcher's Park Mall. And I told them, this is what I had done. This is what I was in trouble for. These are the consequences, and these are the things that I did wrong that led me to this position. And I had been getting help for about five months by that point.

No one knew there was an investigation. No one had any idea that I was going through any of those things. I was winning by all outward accounts. They thought I'd been promoted to captain. Sergeant kicked in the driver's side door and looked at her cussing. And, uh... But I will tell you, it's things like that that adhere you to the truth. And I got one from a brand-new supervisor who worked for me way back then. He said, hey, somebody said something like this at the morning call.

And I said, hey, I read Doug's book. And, of course, he got stairs. Brand-new supervisor. Right. I said, I think we should do it this way because, well, I know what it feels like when it works well. Yeah. I know what leadership looks like, and this is what I would recommend. And the major was like, yeah, we need to do it that way.

I was like, man, first of all, the freaking guts to be sitting at a table as a new supervisor and to speak like the first week as a new supervisor and voice your opinion in a room with your district's brass, mentioning my name, not knowing my relationship with the major and the people sitting in that room. That's my courage. And I would take that back to the leaders. Leadership needs to have the moral courage to do the right thing, no matter what it means to them.

It should. It should. But we all know that sometimes just the human, and you can't even knock them for being leaders. The human part of us, it is really hard, especially with those of us who are in law enforcement as well, to really fillet ourselves open like that. The human experience, we look for ways to avoid discomfort.

I'm different. I get it. I get it. A hundred percent. I want to go back to one other thing you said, and you had discussed that when you decided to actually publish this book, it was because someone you knew had committed suicide. That was the catalyst, yes. That was my defining moment to find the bravery to throw it out there. Yeah. And maybe if I heard this wrong, correct me if I'm wrong. I know the person that you're talking about as well, and I would have never thought it.

Always, like you said, smiling, gives, you know, best hugs, the whole nine. But. You titled your book Hiding in Plain Sight for a reason, because it sounds to me that you were kind of probably that guy that nobody would have ever suspected. So for that person that is hiding in plain sight, what does the officer that's pulling up 50-60 with that person say in order to get through? Because people had been saying things to you, and they had been kind of throwing

out advice, but what would have been something that might have shaken you? Nothing. At that point. Now, to answer the larger question, if you pull up next to your zone partner, don't ask them how they're doing. You ask a cop or a firefighter, hey, what's up? How you doing? You're either going to get good, good to go, I'm good, or living the dream. That's what you're going to need. 100%. Roll up. Hey, tell me something good. What's on your mind? What's your heart?

Talk to me. What can I do for you? Yeah. But stand by. You better be ready with an answer. when they ask. Yeah. Hey, what's up? Okay. Yeah. Good. Good talking to you. Bye. You can't do that. Yeah. You have to invest in your people. You know, again, going back to leadership, it all circles back to leadership. You know, your job is to make sure you're personal or whole. That's it.

And if that's buying muffins once a week, if that's cooking breakfast for your squad, if that's coming up and saying, hey, man, what's on your heart? You have to do that. If you want to consider yourself a family, You have to be available to do that for each other. I would recommend asking questions that don't require somebody to say, I'm good, good to go, or live in the dream. And be prepared with an answer. Get them to the resources. You don't have to. It's like being a crit deputy.

You're not going to diagnose. You're not going to treat them. Assess. Find out where they're at. Get them to the resources they need. And do it in earnest. As far as me, nobody knew. It first it was one it was lonely being a boss because when you show up, you know, I was always a cause I would track with canine I would set up with, you know, I'd be in the fist fights, I'd be arresting people and doing this stuff. So me showing up on your call was just me trying to get down. That was all.

But, you know, with a lot of leaders, it's very lonely. Nobody goes to see the boss unless they're in a problem. A lot of times, the boss didn't come see them unless there's a problem. They need to change that from a leadership standpoint. But for me, I was so dark, but I was high-performing. Again, I was winning on every metric for the most part.

I hadn't been sleeping. I had convinced myself for the previous six months that any conversation Michelle and I would have would be her telling me she's leaving me because I'm a worthless bag of shit. I'm incapable of love. I can't get anything right. These were the things that I'm telling myself.

And because I wasn't sleeping, the sleep apnea that was undiagnosed, the complex PTS, the anxiety, the depression, the things that I'd been carrying with me by that point for a good 16 or 17 years or more. Knowing that something was going wrong but not knowing what it was, writing it off as the cost of business. When I sat in that parking lot on October 19th of 2019, my only way out was that pistol in my face. Yeah.

That was it. And I know on page 125 in the book, if anybody picks it up, there's a simple line. I noticed there was a pistol in my hand, and it was done. Yeah. Let me tell you something. If I were to rewrite that now from a place of more healing, because I was still very raw when I wrote that and had not even processed that.

Right. but sitting in that parking lot I was dark there was nothing pitch black there was no joy in my life there was nothing I couldn't see God working in my life everything was shit and the only way out was that gun in my hand and when I actually realized without knowing that I had drawn my pistol and I was staring at this fucking gun in my hand never having conceived this as my end And I'm clear about that in the book and every podcast that I've done or been on.

That's where I was. And there's nothing you could have done or said. I had scared me so badly. Michelle being awake that morning, and I'll say this, probably by dying breath, she is my hero, my shield, and my retreat. For all of the wonderful things she was put on this planet for, it was to be there awake at 6 a.m. On October 19th to save my life. Yeah. Because I walked in and she asked me, would you go to marriage counseling with me? Right.

Knowing that if she had said, you're broke and you need to get help, it wouldn't have landed.

There may not have a Monday morning if she had said that to me the day before it wouldn't have landed she said it exactly to me the way that I needed to be told from the person, the only person that could have helped me, so I am completely convinced that was the only reason I'm on the side of dirt I don't have to be here today and it's because of her, her faith in me, her faith in us her faith in God, and pouring into me, being, you know, there's no relationship that's 50-50.

At best, you'll be 50-50 for a day, maybe. Fair enough. But on days that I was 1%, she was 99%. Yeah. Every day. Yeah, that's good. So. I think that's good to hear because you've said several times, like I'm talking to the first responders, spouses, and I think that is important for them to hear that part. Saying the words, you have to be, like you said, she said, can you go to marriage counseling with me? She didn't push you out on an island by yourself.

She wanted to do something with her, and that's what saved you. And I think that sometimes, and it's not even their fault, they get so hurt and lost in what they're feeling from the person that they love, that it just becomes hard for them too, to know the right words. So I think that is so beautiful that you shared, those were the words that were the right ones for you.

And I also like the fact that the person who pulls up in 50-60 with you, you don't have the right words, but sometimes it is asking the right question. Like in the movie, My Robot, that's the right question to say, hey, man, how you doing? What is in your heart? And being raw and honest, too, with them. And flip it. If they're waiting for you to come up so they can bitch about you or bitch about something to you, hey, man, tell me something good.

Well, shit, I only have bad things. Okay, well, think about it. I'm not leaving you until you tell me something good. Yeah, that's neat. I think with first responders and spouses, I think that we don't know how to talk to them. I think that we're trying to save them from something. And, again, we see it.

Want to know what it is that we're doing and i've had several people one guy who i highly respected still works at the office he read the book and gave it to his wife and she said i feel like i can see into your brain now rich you guys know crazy old microphone i've actually got his picture he gave me a picture when he when i retired just to put on my desk because i gave him a picture when i retired to put on the desk at t3 so uh his picture is staring at me right now But I gave him the book,

and he's mad because I didn't have an audible to read it to him. But he read it, and he was mad at me because I made him cry. And he's not somebody that cries. And he's basically, I think he's the first vignette in the book, The Crash, The Airman in New Boots. And we didn't talk about that call. It was our rookie year.

We didn't talk about the call to the day I retired and been in my wedding, watch his daughter grow up he's watched my kids grow up i love the man i love him as if he were my own brother right spoke about that so you know what does that say about us as men as friends, so there's a lot there but you know he read it and he bought three more copies one for his brother one for his dad and one for his daughter and his daughter who was four when he and i started the Academy,

who has kids of her own now, beautiful grandchildren for rich, but she called him and said, this is an operator and owner's manual on how to deal with you. So, if nobody ever buys my book, if I fade away into obscurity to know that I was able to give that to her and to him, I'm done here. I'm happy.

That's kind of my, that was the premise of me starting this thing is I came across a home video of my grandfather and he was on like two minutes and nothing deep or anything but just hearing his voice again faking me well up again, I was like I don't I want to be able to share my stories with my children because they they grew up without their dad for a large chunk of their lives stories and, But I want to share this with them. And so that was kind of how this all launched off.

But now that I'm doing it, my kids, they always comment and they're like, oh, that's who you were telling me about or whatever. So I understand what you're saying, even if you never make a dime from it, at least you're reaching out to the people that, you know, you want to impact. So I definitely understand that. But we got about nine minutes left, and I wanted to just kind of readjust again. How are you and your family adjusting to the new dad-husband mode, meaning you're no longer a cop?

Michelle loves it. I keep telling her I'm going to go find honors work, and she's like, no, why? What are you going to do? And I said, well, I've got quite the resume. As you recall, I was busy for 30 years. And I thought about doing several things before I retired. That was the million-dollar question, and none of those things filled me. I mean, I actually walked away from salary negotiations to teach undergrad. I was like, yeah, I appreciate the offer, but this doesn't fill me.

And I think I found that in this. So as I'm still growing, I'm still learning how to be a dad. The kids are now 20 and 18, so they've not read the book. We've had conversations.

But I think instead of saying I'm sorry I didn't know any better is to show them who I am now and that I, you know, the acts of contrition sitting there, you know, should they come to me and say hey, I wanted to call 911 when I was five because I wanted to see my dad well, I need to sit down, I need to answer to that I need to explain that, I need to sit with it and I need to sort it and grow from it. You know, owning and atoning, those are the keys.

And you can't undo that, and you can't sit there and wallow in regret and shame. You can just do the best you can moving forward. So my goal is to be the best version of me, the man that Michelle married and should have been to support her so she could grow and not just survive over the last 25 years.

It's what I'm doing now and for the kids to support them to love on them to let them know that in times when they were younger I would react over spilt milk and it would be completely, in out of alignment of what my reaction should have been when you're always at a 9 going to 10 is spilt milk but when you realize that and you can stop and respond instead of react, spill milk, it's just spill milk. It's not a big deal.

And that's the key. Being self-aware and then being aware of the things that you bring to other people and fixing that, those are the keys. That would be my advice. I think my overall advice to new recruits coming in and even old people that are looking to say to themselves.

Food tastes better flowers smell better it's just there is life after uniform and after service there's life while you're doing it too but you know, again life's about choices you could sit there and stay at a poisonous organization and continue or you know a career and continue to drink the poison you're being fed or you can go someplace where you valued, that you value, and again I'm not saying anything disparaging about any particular agency. I valued my career. I valued my organization.

I loved it dearly. It's in my own detriment. And I'm very lucky. So I know we've talked about a lot of stuff today. And one of the things I thought that was important that I wanted to make sure got shared is what are you doing now today to maintain your mental health? I know you're not, you know, you say it's a work in progress every day and it's a conscious decision that you're making, but what are the active steps that you're taking daily to work towards healthy mental health?

Well, 800,000 first of all, 800,000 cops, there's 800,000 different combinations of what may or may not work, but for me... Being mindful, having gratitude for things, journaling when I feel like I have a good idea or something that I want to expand on. Showing grace for myself, giving myself grace, giving myself a break, assuming positive intent with everybody that I deal with, working out. Physical fitness is directly linked to mental fitness, I believe.

Watch what I eat. Watch the things that I bring into my life, my circle. You know, you're the average of three to five people that you have in your life. I've cut out anything that is negative in my life. I don't watch the news or any of that stuff. I don't follow any of those things because it's just things that want to make you angry. And I've had enough anger for my life.

Yeah, I mean, if faith is your thing, do that. You know, I'm not a clinician, so I don't want to, you know, I can tell you the things that work for me.

And I've to a point now where ETMS therapy, I don't know if y'all have heard of that but it's electromagnetic stimulation, it's guided by EEGs and if you are a first responder or a veteran in Florida, active or retired you get a protocol of 20 treatments for free through ETMS Florida and you can find them at etmsflorida.com they're in Wesley Chapel, they're in Town & Country Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville And I think there's another, there's a total of six here in Florida and it's free.

It's fantastic. You know, I would direct you to my podcast with Dr. Lena Grunlow if y'all want more information on that. But I did that. My sleep, sleep hygiene is huge. If you are not sleeping, you are not going to maintain anything else. Blood work done. Talk. Be authentic with people. Throw yourself out there and just see what happens. I know it's the departure from old Doug, but there are so many things you can do to keep yourself happy, and those are just some of the ones that I do.

Yeah. Awesome. I think we actually have some coming in to talk about the ETMS, so I'm excited. This is the first I'm hearing about it, but I'm excited to learn about it. That's great. Well, Doug, as we're wrapping up, the book is Hiding in Plain Sight. There'll be a link, but what's your podcast name? The podcast is Tell This Story. Awesome. And it's found on any specific platform, all platforms? You can find it on Spotify. You can find it on iHeart, Amazon, Apple Podcasts.

And I have a YouTube channel also, Tell This Story, where the videos are uploaded along with other clips and stuff.

I'm on LinkedIn under Doug White. I would love for people to connect and contact, follow. I'm not following the algorithms, so I don't know what success looks like there. I just really like engaging with people. So send me a message. Hey, Doug, your message sucks. Okay, cool. Thanks. It's not for you, and I'm glad it's not for you. Just tell me what's working and what's not. We're not going to adjust fire and help out. That's really it. Awesome. Doug, thank you so much. Yeah.

I just want to say I think that overall the takeaway that I got, and this is just me personally, is that old Doug wasn't big on communicating and trying to really make this work on the persona versus actually the person. And I think that from this, and in reading your book, I saw that when you were concluding the calls, it was silence. We never spoke about it. It was a secret. It was unspoken of. And now it sounds like you are communication and talk and have these dialogues and things like this.

And I think that that's what people need to take away from this, is that communication and dialogue is going to be key to getting through this life as a first responder. It is. It is. And I mean, of course, that's the existential side of it. But there's the physiological and neurological side that you can take care of through all those other modalities, you know, therapy and all that stuff. And I think the first thing you need to do is realize that you're not that goddamn special.

You're not. You're not that special. It's not just you. This is not just your story. This is our story. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Done. I love it. Doug, thank you. I appreciate your time. Thank you both. Y'all have a wonderful night and I love what y'all are doing. I started listening to some of your episodes and y'all are spot on. Y'all had me ramped up all day. So I'm very, very happy and very grateful. I've had the opportunity to reconnect and just share some time on y'all's platform.

So thank you very much for that. Awesome. We like to come back again. That's right. Well, I certainly will. You'll get a copy for free this time. Appreciate it. Horrible business model, I know. So... Music.