352: Fixing Your Mind, Mind Mechanics, and Mental Health, w/ Dr. Karlyn Pleasants and Megan Harrison

Dr. Karlyn Pleasants is a clinical Psychologist who specializes in adult and adolescent psychotherapy. She is also the Chief Clinical Advisor and a managing partner at Anew Treatment Center, Scottsdale AZ. Megan Harrison holds a master's degree in Marriage and Family Therapy with experience in transgenerational trauma and mental illness. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 352 with me, Jocko Willink.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life that without me you could work.

• 0:49Jocko Willink?

  And you will, I know.

• 0:52Jocko Willink?

  You see, I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You've been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that. Everybody knows it.

• 1:10Jocko Willink?

  If anybody could have saved me, it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is the final work of the English writer Virginia Woolf. It was a suicide note that she left to her husband Leonard. Virginia Woolf was born into an affluent family. She was well cared for as a child. She was homeschooled in English and Victorian literature from a young age. She attended the Ladies Department of King's College in London. She was

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  successful by any measure. And she wrote a bunch of successful novels.

• 2:02Jocko Willink?

  She authored more than 500 essays and reviews. She had friends and family and a long seemingly happy marriage.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  And yet throughout her life with even with all those opportunities and advantages and benefits and privilege that she had, she suffered from mental health issues. She had mood swings and depression and manic excitement and psychotic episodes.

• 2:31Jocko Willink?

  And she attempted suicide twice before she was successful in killing herself in 1941. So

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  how does that happen?

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  What is going on there? And psychiatrists today, they hypothesize that she had a mental health problem. In particular, likely bipolar disorder, which used to be called manic depression. And we've talked about mental health on this podcast. We've talked about mental health issues facing veterans. We've covered some tragic, horrible suicides. Including Chad Wilkinson,

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  Joe Price, Charles White Whittlesley, Louis Puller Jr.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  We've also talked about non-military suicides. We talked about Iris Chang. Iris Chang, who was the author of the bestselling book, New York Times bestselling book, The Rape of Nanking. And she had a nervous breakdown in August of 2004 and was placed on a wide variety of prescription medication. But over time, the medications only seemed to amplify her issues and she was diagnosed with reactive psychosis. And put on even more medication.

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  And on November 8th, 2004, she wrote, "When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you just live by the day, but by the minute.

• 4:15Jocko Willink?

  It's far better that you remember me as I was in my heyday as a bestselling author.

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  Each breath is becoming difficult for me to take. The anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea.

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  I know my actions, I know that my actions will transfer some of this pain to others, indeed to those who love me the most. Please forgive me."

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  And the next day, November 9th, 2004, she killed herself with a pistol.

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  So these are topics that we've certainly addressed. We've talked about them initially, really with Jordan Peterson. And focus them, focused on them in the most recent podcast, the last podcast we did, 251 with Marcus and Amber Capone. But it's an area, you know, it's an area that I still lack even basic understanding of what mental health disorders are, where they come from, what we can do to prevent them or overcome them in some way. Luckily today, we have some experts from that field. Dr. Carlin Pleasants and Megan Harrison. Dr. Pleasants is a clinical psychologist who specializes in adult and adolescent psychotherapy.

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  She's also the chief clinical advisor and a managing partner at A Anew Treatment Center in Scottsdale, Arizona. And Megan Harrison holds a master's degree in marriage and family therapy with significant experience working with families affected by transgenerational trauma and mental illness. And Megan is the CEO and managing partner at A Anew Treatment Center in Scottsdale. So, um, thank you both for joining us.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  Thanks for having us. Yes, thank you.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's great to meet you. Um, you know, I mentioned that sort of my introduction to psychology.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  I would say was having Dr. Jordan Peterson on this podcast and that's when I I realized I just didn't understand at all what was going on and what what it meant to have a mental health issue. And I realized when he was on the podcast as he was talking through some of the problems that people have. I realized that the mind, well, this is my simple caveman way of translating what he was saying. Was that your mind is like a car. And sometimes the car breaks down or sometimes there's, you know, you blow a gasket or your oil is low. And when that happens, you take it into a mechanic.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  And the mechanic diagnoses what the problem is, oh, you blew a gasket, here's what we need to do to fix it.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  And so I realized that in many ways, the mind can do that, too. You can blow up a gasket and there's people, psychologists or therapists that can diagnose what the problem is and have methodologies and protocols to get those things fixed. So I, again, in my caveman brain, realized that

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  psychologists and therapists are like mind mechanics that have seen, that's what, that's what triggered it for me. That's what triggered that thought was he was telling me about, oh, I'd see this case, this type of case, you know, he'd see it again and he'd see it again and he's getting it. You develop a protocol and how to deal with it. Just like, oh, your car's making this noise. Okay, here's what the problem is. And you see that over and over again, you develop a protocol. So you too, welcome and you to our mind mechanics, as far as I can tell. Um, let's talk about how you guys got here, just a little bit of background, just so we we get familiar with you. So let's start with you. Carlin, um, where'd you grow up? Well, how'd you end up in this scenario that you're in sitting here right now?

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Okay, let's see. Well, I grew up in the Bay Area, California. And one of the things I think is really funny about my story is I didn't understand how I got here until much, much later, looking back and trying to figure it out. For a very long time, I was, I was one of those folks when people would say, so why did, why did you go into psychology? Why did you become a psychologist? I would say things like, oh, I just like helping people. I'm a good listener. I'm interested in how the mind works, which are, are true things. But really going back and taking a more in-depth look at my journey, it started when I was

• 8:59Speaker 01

  a kid. You know, I had some pretty serious physical limitations and physical illnesses that, you know, kept me out of school for a long time. I did not take a single PE class my entire scholastic career. Didn't get to participate the same way as other kids did, was, missed a lot of things, was absent a lot of the time. And I remember being really young and thinking, like, is this it? Like, is this it? Can, can there be some other way of being, some other way of living? Because it's, you know, it was lonely. And, and as a kid, like, the, the sense of feeling different, like, I don't really belong.

• 9:39Jocko Willink?

  How old were you when these health issues started? Was this like?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  I was diagnosed when I was two, two, with like, really severe respiratory and lung problems. And back then, I mean, we're talking early seventies, right? Like, treatment was not as it is now. People didn't understand. I mean, my mom talks about how I was sick as a, an infant, and it took two years for a doctor to say, oh, I, I think I know what she has. Talk about a mechanic, right? She's taken me lots of, lots of mechanics over the years. And, you know, treatments weren't as advanced as they are now. So, growing up all through, you know, elementary school, junior high, high school, feeling very separate and different and not included and knowing that people, you know, thought I was kind

• 10:27Speaker 01

  of weird. How come you, how come you don't come to all the things? How come you don't take PE? How come you sit in our recess when we all go outside? Right? Which, on one hand, doesn't sound, I mean, whatever, it's the plight of a kid. But when I really look back and think about it, it was that sense of feeling alone and really misunderstood and not included in things. And wondering, like, there's gotta be more. Like, this can't be it. This just cannot be it for, for me, for people. So, early on, I remember thinking, when I grow up, like, I wanna be a doctor. I wanna be somebody who helps, basically helps people like me. Again, in a young brain, thinking, well, if I feel like this, probably everybody feels like this.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  And I don't want people to feel like this, so maybe I'll help kids, or I'll help people with respiratory problems, or I'll help people with medical illnesses. And it just kind of developed that way, this idea of wanting to, I don't know, in some way, help ease the suffering that other people experience and, and make sense of, of what was going on. Now, again, I don't remember it like this at the time. In my mind, I just wanted to help people.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  So, did you apply yourself at school? Were you like, I need to get straight A's so I can be a doctor?

• 11:44Speaker 01

  I was like, yeah, so overachieving. I mean, for, for what I couldn't do over here, I made up for it way over here. So, lots of good grades, lots of degrees, lots of academic awards.

• 11:55Jocko Willink?

  Did you go to school with the intent of becoming a doctor? At what point did you think psychology was the, the place to go?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  For a while, I was gonna, I wanted to go into medical, medical doctor. And then, when I learned that you have to take a class called anatomy and look at bodies, I thought, yeah, this might not be for me.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  Like, you were squeamish?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Totally squeamish. So, I'm like, yeah, I don't know if that's then gonna work out for me very well to go that direction. But it also, again, it, the, the insight of this came through hindsight, is I was so curious about, really, the, the mental part of it, right? The experience of feeling isolated and disconnected and how that left you feeling, or me, feeling, like, lonely and depressed and kind of, like, wanting more, right? So, I got a little, a little bit more curious in the, like, psychological department of what happens for people who have an illness? What happens for people who? Feel separate and different from everybody else who are left out, who are bullied.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Like what, what happens psychologically? So I definitely made a turn along the way.

• 13:04Jocko Willink?

  And was that, was that in college?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Um, I would say maybe high school-ish going into college.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Just, you know, kind of a fascination with, um, well, how the mind works and, and, and, you know, in some ways unlike, um, going to a mechanic, a lot of the psychological experiences that a person might have in reaction or relation to all of these different events, you don't see them. Like, you know, we can't go into a doctor and take, take a listen to your head and go, "Oh, I, I recognize that clicking, I know exactly what to do." There, there are these kind of invisible unseen experiences that make it a little bit more challenging to, to figure out or understand what exactly is going on. So that curiosity, I just remember high school, probably going into college, just curious, like, "How does this work?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Like, why do, why do I feel this way, but this person I met also had an illness when she was young and she seems to be okay? Like, why did I suffer? Or, "Why was I okay over here, but this guy couldn't do grades?" You know, do, so, so this kind of curiosity about how the mind influences the experiences. And, um, I remember sitting in a, I was probably getting close to getting my first degree and, uh, in a, um, kind of a pathology class, kind of a mental illness, a class on mental illness and the pathology of illness. The professor said, "How many, show of hands, how many in here believe that you're in here to help people? You just wanna do good in the world."

• 14:38Speaker 01

  You know, me, the good student, me, me, um, along with most of the other class. And he's like, "Okay, how many of you in here think that you have chosen this field or chosen this, uh, part of the field? Because you've got your own stuff you might need to work out."

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Everyone's like, "Not, not me, not me." Not, not a hand, or maybe like a half hand. And by the end of that class, whoo, it was the reverse. Everybody was like, "Yep, I've got my own stuff, I need to work out, that's partly why I'm here." All right? So that started the, um, I think the, kind of...

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Budding awareness that this isn't just about, for me, it wasn't just about helping people and being a good listener, but it was about understanding myself and hopefully through the process, being able to take that experience and help other people, whether that's not feel so alone, or understand that there are options available, or that this isn't kind of the fate of your life, because you have this illness or this experience. So, yeah, I definitely have swung from here, like, I'm just really altruistic, all the way over here to, no, that, life is hard, sometimes, life is really hard, and when you factor in, like, my experience growing up with an illness, also growing up in a

• 16:02Speaker 01

  family where there were a lot of issues, and not just in my immediate family, but generational, I mean, you and I, Megan, have talked about this, of trauma, and addiction, and loss, and wartime, like, you, you, you kind of inherit a little bit of that along the way. So, my curiosity over time, you know, expanded beyond just my own experience, but how does this happen in families, how does this happen through generations, how do you find, we had a, a client we saw at the treatment center for a long time, who had schizophrenia, two siblings, a sister who did not have schizophrenia, a brother who did. Parents were really, really lovely, great people, did not seem to have a lot of stuff

• 16:47Speaker 01

  going on, but the dad's brother, the dad had three brothers, he was one of four, all three of them had schizophrenia. So, this idea, right, of like, okay, some of this is passing down through generations, not just at a, like, a genetic level, but what you're exposed to, and what you're seeing, and what you're experiencing, and what you're witnessing. So, the, again, for me, the curiosity and the, the interest was about, how do these things happen, how do they go from here, to here, to here, to here, and what can we do to shift that, so people aren't just...

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Kind of living out this emotional inheritance or this traumatic inheritance, depending on what was going on in the family. How do you break that chain? How do you do something different? How do you set your own life up to go in a different trajectory than maybe how it's been going? And then your kids and their kids and their kids.

• 17:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it makes sense that like if you were going to get like a personal trainer because you want to get in shape, it would be kind of if you saw that that personal trainer had gone through some sort of transition themselves, you go, okay, this person kind of knows what I've been through. So you kind of got that vibe going. I can say vibe a lot.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  I do too. It's okay.

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  You kind of have that vibe. So what degrees did you end up with? What what did you end up with? You said you went got like degree upon degree.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  I got a bachelor's degree in psychology, which unfortunately in our field nowadays, that doesn't mean a whole lot, other than you went to school for a few years and learned a bunch of things about the brain. Got my master's in counseling, also in California, and then got my doctorate in clinical psychology down here in San Diego.

• 18:36Jocko Willink?

  All right, Megan. Let's let's talk about you. Where where'd you grow up? How'd you end up here?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Sure, feels like a big question. I I grew up in Southern Wisconsin, really small town, beautiful there. Not much to do in that area. You're probably fishing.

• 18:53Jocko Willink?

  What did your parents do?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  My dad owned a chain of grocery stores and my mom worked just cleaning houses and working for my uncle's scrap metal business, whatever we could do. And my dad that I'm speaking to came later on in life as well with like the chain of grocery stores. So the first part of my life was just me and mom. And so she taught me definitely hard work, but there wasn't much to do where I grew up. You were. Bowling, curling, fishing, hunting, or going to the bar. That was about it.

• 19:26Jocko Willink?

  Curling.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:28Jocko Willink?

  Curling just made the podcast. We're 352 podcast deep and we just got into curling.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  It's a big deal in Wisconsin, let me tell you. It's very cold for about eight months out of the year. So, yeah, I mean, my story, I was born into a family system that had definitely been impacted by just generations of trauma, you know, abuse, addiction, mental health issues on the very severe end. And, you know, I, you know, similar to what Carlin is saying, I don't know that like sitting here right now, like the only intentionality in that for me and coming into this therapy world was just this idea that through life, every step I took forward in terms of overcoming just brought me further into the life that I envisioned for myself. And that was sort of my intention in that way.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  But I knew growing up in that environment that there was no way I was going to be able to do something different for myself or do something different for the family I wanted to have if I stayed there. And so from a very young age, I sort of started my path towards independence. I started working at a very young age. The military sort of came into my life as this idea of like, here's an opportunity to go somewhere, to do something. I actually was finishing some high school stuff at a community college and was watching the September 11th occurrences in 2001. And I just remember looking at the screen and being like, oh, this is, this is, this is what I'm going to do. I had entertained the military for a period of time and I had thought maybe this was my opportunity.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  But it was in that moment that I was like, okay, like this, I feel a sense of purpose, like drawn to something. And in the environment that I grew up in, I kind of always knew that I wanted something different for myself. But I did, I lacked a lot of direction and people in my life to kind of help me guide in that way. Education wasn't particularly valued or seen as like a possibility. And at that point in my life, I hadn't had enough experiences other than just like surviving in a lot of ways to.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  See, see that as possible for myself to see ready to like go to school and do that route. And so the military just felt like, like, okay, this is, this is what I'm gonna go do. And there's like something really important that's happening, I need to go do it. And it was about a year later, August of two thousand two, that I was on active duty and.

• 21:42Jocko Willink?

  And what'd you, what'd you join?

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Uh, I joined the Navy.

• 21:45Jocko Willink?

  How'd you pick that, being in Wisconsin?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  You know, it's really interesting. I think it was, it had to do with the recruiter at the time. Because I was, I was definitely a youth that was, you know, getting, you know, some help from the community and different things. And at that time in the Midwest, you know, recruiters would come into those areas and introduce themselves and such. And so, um, I just remember him as being somebody that, um, I was like, okay, like he, he feels, he seems confident. Like I, I, he carries himself like, like this is like something I want to be a part of. Um, and it sort of seems cliche, but at the time it was everything for me. Because I didn't, you know, the friends that I had at the time and I had, you know, been living with friends at a very young age and such, like weren't really going a lot of places. Jail, I lost a lot of friends to, you know, death, you know, suicide overdoses. There, there was just a lot of that in my life.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Um, and so just being around somebody who, um, just sort of represented like a possibly different future and like life was, was huge for me. It was like a role model mentor. Um, and, uh, so I, I joined.

• 22:45Jocko Willink?

  What, what job did you sign up for?

• 22:46Speaker 02

  So I came in as a signalman. Um, and that's what I went to A school for, but I dates myself a little bit. Cause it's already kind of like a dying rate at the time. So I went to A school to be a signalman and, um, my first orders were actually to the USS Kitty Hawk and I, in Japan at the time. And I was, um, like set to leave about a week later. And my orders got canceled because there wasn't enough birthing for females at the time. And I was rerouted to ACB one in San Diego. And I got there and, um, I was getting issued camis and boots. And like, we were getting ready to deploy to Kuwait. Cause this was like August of, or this was like latter part of two thousand two. So we were like getting ready to go overseas, um, for everything that was happening during Operation Enduring Freedom. And dur- during that time.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  And so, um, I was like, what, what did I just get myself into? Because I thought I was going to a ship and then here I am in like a whole different world. As I, I'm sure you're familiar, the CVs are just a whole different realm and such. And so. But it was, um, it was such a blessing for me because it was like a form of reparenting, like the amount of structure that I went into. I knew exactly what was expected of me. And it was also the first time that I learned how much, I think because of the environment I grew up in, that I, um, I thrive in, in crisis in some ways. Like, things get crazy, uh, something's happening. Everything for me just kind of calms down. And I, I, I wanted to lead. And I found myself in a lot of leadership positions. I found myself at opportunity, like,

• 24:11Speaker 02

  volunteer for this, volunteer for that, I'll do it. And it really gave me the opportunity to, um, just build a sense of self for the first time. The community, the feedback that I was getting, um, was just huge for me. And then all kinds of doors opened up for me. The idea of like, I could go to school. I could do this. Um, my first interest in doing some counseling such actually came from, I, I thought originally I was gonna go to school to be, um, to do organizational psychology to, for leadership. Like, that was really my goal. I, I always wanted to be a leader for me.

• 24:40Jocko Willink?

  Was this before you joined the Navy or once you got in?

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Once I got in. You know, I, and I, I was just kind of drawn into these situations where I knew that there was like, um, I don't know if you want to call it a natural leadership quality, but there was just like this part of me that, um, I had gone through so much and I had overcome so much that it was like, people need, need that, you know, to like hear that story, to be a part of that. Like, it just, um, it was a really powerful thing for me. Um, and I was realizing for other people as well at the time. And so, um, I got offered an opportunity to do some work with, um, families in, uh, pre and post-deployment, um, sort of support. And it was very logistical at the time. How do you support families and like, um, you know, preparing for the logistics of bills or separation or what's going on.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  But what I, what I realized at that time was that there was a significant amount of, um, support that these families needed and, and understand like how much role shifts were happening when one of the, the partners would deploy. And then I'm making this new group of friends while my, my, my husband or my wife is gone. And they're making their new group of friends. And our kids are getting used to me as playing like both mom and dad and doing these different roles. And they just did not have the resources to be able to deal with that. And I think because I had gone through what I did as a, a child, I, I could recognize things related to like mental health or relationship issues or things like that. I didn't really have the skill set yet to know exactly what to do with that, other than just, my mindset was always like,

• 26:07Speaker 02

  You just do keep moving forward and and one step at a time and you make healthy decisions and you recognize that, you know, I don't exist in a vacuum and the things I do matter and how I treat people matter and I could support people a lot with that, but it was, that was what first drew me to the idea of counseling. And at the time I was working, when I decided to go to school for counseling, I was working as a contractor for HSE III.

• 26:32Jocko Willink?

  So how long did you end up doing in the Navy?

• 26:34Speaker 02

  So I did five years. I did four years on active duty and then I extended for a year.

• 26:38Jocko Willink?

  How was that first deployment to Kuwait?

• 26:40Speaker 02

  It was intense. You know, we were at the Kuwaiti naval base. We came in during a time where really nothing was set up. Our goal is that being the CBs there, ACB one and ACB two were there at the same time. So when we got there, we knew we're not leaving for a while.

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  Props to the CBs, by the way. CBs are awesome.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  Yes, they definitely are and definitely make friends with builders because your camp will be real nice. You'll get a nice little shelf up there and all the things that you need, so.

• 27:07Jocko Willink?

  And they'll steal you whatever you need. Which no one's talking about.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  I learned how to be very resourceful. There was also some aspects of being in the military as a female in that type of environment and a lot of things that were going on during that time that that made it a scary situation sometimes, too. You want to feel safe in that environment, but there was, you know, you're in the middle of the desert and people are going through wartime and we had, you know, incoming missiles coming in. We're running, you know, to conics boxes that are buried in the ground for like shelter. Like people were on edge during that time for sure. And so, but I learned a lot and if anything, it was walking away from that, knowing that I could, you know, it doesn't matter what life throws at you, if you just keep moving forward, like you'll get through it for sure, so.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  If I can interrupt, I remember you telling a story one time, Megan, about like having to dig holes to sleep in the ground.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  And having like your gun there because of like how big the scorpions were.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  And like having to protect yourself and guard yourself from the scorpions while you're in a hole in the desert at a hundred and twenty seven degrees and you're like nineteen.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  It's like, yeah, I think you can pretty much handle whatever is gonna come your way in life.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Holy moly. But I mean, this is sort of that, where you're talking about earlier, where one person can have one situation growing up and another can have an entirely different situation and, and how you choose to respond is gonna very much so shape the outcome of who you are. And so for me, I just, you know, there was a lot of opportunity to move into fear and have fear make you small. And for me, it was just like, I'm just gonna keep going. But there wasn't, at that time in my life, I can't say, I mean, I was very young, that I was intentionally like, this is what I'm doing to overcome, or that really wasn't there. For me, it just like, stopping or, or not moving or going backwards wasn't an option. Just keep moving forward with whatever kind of presented itself to me. So, um, so yeah, I was there for a year and actually didn't find out till the day before we were leaving that I was leaving. So it was like, you know, coming up to you like, here's your plane ticket, you're leaving tomorrow. I'm like, cool.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  And at the time, you know, cell phones weren't allowed, we weren't, we couldn't have any of that. And so there was two phones in the camp for a camp of, um, gosh, don't quote me on this, but there was a lot of people. I mean, the, the army was there.

• 29:19Jocko Willink?

  I won't quote you on a lot of people, being super specific like that.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  The, you know, uh, you know, special operations, special forces were there, the air force was there. We had Australian, um, British, you know, military. It was a huge camp, Kuwaiti naval base. And, um, so, uh, two phones for a large group of people would make the line very long that you're waiting, you could be standing there in hours and then there'd be an incoming missile. Everybody'd have to run, go take, you know, shelter and then, I, I gave up. So I, I didn't make any phones. And also for me, I, I, you know, I was, I was moving forward. I didn't have a whole lot of connections to the past. So I, I would just, uh, um, yeah.

• 29:57Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with your Navy career, you end up as a contractor and this is, so when did you end up like, uh, going to school?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  So that was when I was a, when I was a contractor, I started, so I started with my, I actually went to school to be a pharmacy tech while I was still on active duty. I was, um, you know, a single mom at the time and, um, just raising my son and going to school at night and working during the day. And, uh, pharmacy tech seemed like a good option for me at the time to have a job when I got out. So I finished that before I got out. I started working at, um, a compounding pharmacy and very quickly realized this is not what I want to do. Um, went back to school. Uh, for my bachelor's in psychology and then started working towards my masters um, in that contractor work. So um, my bachelor's and my masters all came um, after I had separated from uh, the military. So, and so yeah, I obtained my masters while I was working as a contractor

• 30:48Speaker 02

  and was um, introduced for my practicum. So uh, in counseling psychology, you have to do some uh, pre-degree and post-degree hours, about a total of three thousand, direct like um, direct and indirect clinical hours in order to obtain your degree. And so you get introduced to various treatment centers while you're in your school to um, you know, get that experience in practice. And that was when I was actually introduced to Humble Chia, which was owned by Carrie and Carlin at the time, so treatment center for um, clients with complex psychiatric disorders. And again, for me at the time, I was like, this is, just sounds so interesting, family therapy and all of that. But I, in my mind, I was going to school because this was the school that I could do at night while I was commuting. I was commuting from Temecula down to uh, Naval Air Station at the time. It was like seventy-two miles one way.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  And so I was just kind of moving through life, like it, you know, just doing the things that I thought I needed to do to move forward. Um, and then I met Carrie and Carlin and I came to know Humble Chia. And Humble Chia was just this really special place. It was like, I like to call it like a, I'm very much all about like, small business ownership and like what that means for our economy and such. But Carrie and Carlin just, they just owned this uh, treatment center. And it was not, it was just a s- a small family-owned um, place where like, people just a hundred percent threw themselves into helping these families. And I, I was drawn to it so much because the families that were walking through there were definitely the types of fa- like, could have been my family, right?

• 32:16Speaker 02

  And, and here I was in this place where really beautiful things were happening in terms of supporting these people suffering through very severe things. I mean, when you have a loved one who has a, a chronic, complex psychiatric disorder, something that you're not getting rid of, right? We're, we're like, making friends with this. We're learning how to, how to um, You know, accept it, grieve what I thought was gonna be for my kiddo, you know, whatever it may be. When a family lets you into their life to like walk through that path with them is a very special thing. And I, I knew at that point, like, okay, this is what I want to do. I want to work with families. And when I, I started to realize, not in, only in my own life, but in what we were doing, that we were creating like generational change. Like when you can help

• 33:00Speaker 02

  a family system shift away from abuse, or addiction, or grief, or, um, in, in a way that allows them to envision a different identity for themselves. Like, life could be different. Like, we don't actually have to keep going in this way, or continue these patterns. I mean, you think about the, the impact of that for years and years to come. We're talking about hundreds of people that could be impacted by one person choosing to do something different. That was like everything to me. And that's what I knew I wanted to do. And it's what I realized I was able to do for my family in a lot of ways. And then this sort of became my family. When I was there, like, just, I was able to be seen in a different way. It was like, oh,

• 33:44Speaker 02

  we have this new leadership opportunity. Like, you do it. And I'm like, me?

• 33:51Jocko Willink?

  And, and this is an interesting, uh, this is the kind of the intersection between me and you two, which is, you know, I got a, I got a group of friends, and we invest in a bunch of different things. And, um, at one point, you know, my buddy Joe said, hey, we're gonna invest in this. We're gonna, we're gonna buy some real estate, and it's gonna be used by this mental health facility. And I was like, you know, cool. I mean, literally with them, they just kind of tell me what, like, they tell me a, a three minute, hey, this is what we're putting money into. I say, cool. Give them some money. We throw it in there. And at some point, we invested in sort of a, a branch of Homelachia. And then that branch got swept into Homelachia, and the whole thing got bought.

• 34:31Jocko Willink?

  And so, you know, we, we, it was a cool situation for us. You know, we, we made money and high-fived. And, and then that eventually rolled into this new venture, which is the, a new treatment center, which, again, I mean, I'm just basically like a, I don't want to say a gambler, but a little bit of a gambler. Like you're just letting money roll, you know, like, oh, just leave it on the table. And that's kind of what I did. And next thing you know, I'm invested in this, uh, in this new treatment center. And that's all starting to take place. And, um, so that's kind of how we all know each other was from that connection. You know, from me just kind of letting my money sit on the table and, and hope it keeps doing well. Um, that's, that's how we all are, uh, know each other. But so, thank you for your backgrounds.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  Um, definitely, I'm sure we could do a whole podcast about like each one of your stories because they, there's a lot there. But, um, I want to kind of get to the, the, the topic at hand, right? Which is me trying to get a better understanding of mental health issues. And, and you know, we were talking about before we hit record that just different things can hit people so differently. And two people can experience the same, literally the same traumatic, traumatic event. And have totally different reactions. As, as you were talking, Megan, I was thinking that, um,

• 35:50Jocko Willink?

  like in SEAL training, the people that make it through SEAL training are, are, are so radically different. You've got a kid that grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth and he makes it through no problem. You've got another kid that makes a silver spoon in his mouth and he quits the first day. You've got someone that grew up on a farm in Iowa and he makes it through no problem. And someone else that grew up on a farm in Iowa and they quit the first day. And everyone in between, you've got a kid from the ghetto that, that, you know, didn't have anything and he just makes it through. Some other kid from the ghetto, first day, I'm not putting up with this shit. And that's, so these different lives can have just a radically different outcome. What are some of the main causes of mental health issues? Like what is, and I know there must be several factors.

• 36:32Jocko Willink?

  I mean, there must be some that are hereditary. You kind of mentioned that, Carlin, like there are some hereditary things. Then there must be some things that are brought on by the environment that you grow up in or what you see. So what, what are some of the kind of main causes?

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Well, there's, gosh, there's so many, it's hard to to narrow them down. And like I was saying earlier, so many of these things are, they're unseen, they're invisible. They can't be like located so much on a map, so to speak. But things like temperament, you know, like the kind of the traits and characteristics that we're born with are gonna play a role. Our upbringing, of course. Like, I'm thinking, when you would share that story about being in Kuwait and dig, I'm like, I, for, for sure, I would have never made it there. But like, I'm not, I don't think I could have done that. Now, is it, do I not have a tenacious personality or perseverance? No, I've got some of that, but I think about my early upbringing, right?

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Where just living was hard, digging a hole to like survive. That would have been at this whole other level for me. So, my, my history, so people's histories, um, messages like in the family, like that's a, that, and this is my opinion.

• 37:43Jocko Willink?

  What's a message? What does that mean?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Like, for example, I like to ask families or family members sometimes, so how did you guys do feelings?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  What were feelings like?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Most of the time, you're gonna have folks say, oh, we don't talk about feelings. We, we don't actually do feelings. Oh, okay, so when something difficult happens, you know, you, you get bullied at school, you, your boyfriend breaks up with you, grandma passes away, what, what did you guys do?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Oh, nothing, we just had dinner, like, you know, right? So, right here, right, there's something. A family that doesn't acknowledge feelings, talk about feelings, have a way to pro, like, process what was happening, is going to have a certain effect versus the family you ask, and they're like, oh, we talked about feelings all the time, anytime something happened, we'd sit down and have a big family meeting about it. That person is gonna be shaped very differently in terms of managing stress and managing conflict and negotiating hardship, right? So, so family, messages and family, um, almost like traditions around things like feelings or how you handle hardship.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm, the book I'm writing right now has a lot to do with the impact of secrets. So, and finding that that has a big, um... Secrets like, yeah, like we don't talk, like if something happens, um, we, we're just not going to talk about that. We're not going to talk about it amongst ourselves. We're not going to share this with the outside world, under the rug, in the vault, whatever you want to call it. So you think about, again, and it's not going to affect everybody the same way, but how easy it would be for a person then to develop, especially if they're young, this idea that like, oh, when, when bad things happen or when difficult things happen, you're not supposed to talk about that. You're supposed to keep it to yourself.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Don't, don't share. So what happens for those folks who are faced with something difficult or faced with a hard decision or faced with a stressful um, circumstance?

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  And then it's also so individual because someone can say, oh, you know, my grandma died and I'm looking at my dad and he looks stoic. That seems like a good thing to do. That seems like a good example, right?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:12Jocko Willink?

  Or, oh, my grandma died and my dad looks stoic. He doesn't care. And so it's like your interpretation, people's individual interpretation. And even when you were talking, Megan, like, um, when you joined the military or even you saw this recruiter and you kind of say, oh, this guy looks put together and you get the military and you're like, okay, here's what I should be doing. And like your perception of what you're seeing and then your decision to say, oh, I can, I can step up. I can volunteer for this. I can make this happen. Like just people's own interaction with reality and what's going on is so different. And

• 40:53Jocko Willink?

  is there a way that you can take people and show them the positive one? Does that, does that work? Is that a, is that a thing to do? Like, let me give you an example. I, I have a kids podcast that I do sometimes. And I'll answer kids questions. I've written a bunch of kids books. And one of the, one of the questions I got one time was from a kid and I've got multiple forms of this question. Is, and this actually reminds me of you, Carlin. The question was like, oh, um, Sometimes kids don't like to hang out with me and I feel like I'm alone.

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  How can I, how can I feel better about that? And I answered the question like, hey, it's okay to be alone. I, I, I'm alone sometimes and it's okay. Sometimes you can be alone and you don't always have to have people around you and it doesn't, doesn't mean they don't like you, it doesn't mean you're not gonna have friends, it's just that sometimes you're alone and, and that's okay. And I mean, that's to me is a legitimate answer because, you know, let's say, let's say your mom says, why are you alone again, why don't you have any friends? That might start to mess you up. You know, as opposed to your mom saying, oh, you know, what are you reading? Oh, here's a book, you know. So how we're interacting and how things, uh, how you perceive the world can be so different that these things, and again, you got a kid that grew up in Iowa that quits and you get a kid that grew up in Iowa on a farm,

• 42:10Jocko Willink?

  they both grew up in the same exact thing, one of them quits, one of them makes it. So do you as therapists, as psychologists, get to try and guide and open and show those positive things? Is that what we're doing here?

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I, I, I think we're trying to create some reparative experiences. Cause when you talk about the story of the guy who quit or the guy who went, I would be really curious about his history and past around what happened when he was struggling, when he was having a hard time or needed to move through something or didn't know if he could move forward. What was the response or message that he received in his environment? And the thing about, you know, some of these aspects of mental health, very complex, hard to pinpoint exactly what needs to be. But the story that you just told about this child, that response, when someone chooses to lean in and be vulnerable in a way and ask a question or look out for support, how, how we respond to them is pivotal because it shapes their experience of whether or not that's a safe thing to do again in the future.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  So we talk about like what cultures or what things influence why someone might, you know, keep things to themselves or be less inclined to share or come forward if they're struggling with something. Is, you know, how we respond is huge. And so, you know, there's so much aspects of what's going on for another person that we don't actually have control over. But what we do have control over is sort of our own reaction to when someone is sharing something with us that appears upsetting. Do we want to shut it down and kind of, this should be fine and get, move, move past it because that creates an experience for them? Or can we kind of tolerate whatever feelings are coming up for us when we see one who's, someone who's struggling or with, working through something that I have no idea how to fix or how to respond to, but can I sit with them for enough time to create an experience

• 43:48Speaker 02

  for them that lets them know that like, if something's coming up for me again, or if I need to work through, it's, it's safe to, to come to this person, or this environment is safe enough to be able to share what's going on for me. Because if it's not, and that person goes inside, then when we look at more severe things like suicide, or very chronic, you know, psychiatric disorders, that becomes much more debilitating in a way that can, you know, cost someone their life.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  I think what you said, I also, I so appreciate what you shared. Did I give a good answer? You did. It was really good. Very lucky. Of how you responded to the kid, right? To me, I'm like, there it is.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Right? As opposed to say, a mom or somebody else that would be like, well, come on, what, what are you doing wrong? How come you don't have any friends? Friends. Versus like, oh, I'm sorry to hear that bud, but you know what? It's okay. It's okay sometimes to be alone. I'm sorry that you're feeling bad about that today, bud. Okay, it's all right. There's something about the, like, I'm just acknowledging what you're going through. I'm not trying to change it. I'm not making it wrong. I'm not telling you, you should be doing something different. And that's, that brings out that safety piece. And in fact, some research into resiliency, so speaking to, how come some kids kind of bounce back and get better, and some kids really flounder over here?

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Some of the research shows that there needs to be opportunities to make mistakes and like not be essentially shamed or made in trouble. Opportunity to fix them, which means you gotta use new skills and like try and experiment and trial and error. And you need to have at least one adult. If you got more, that's even better, but you need to have one adult that is kind of a safe guide, like somebody that you can feel safe with, that's gonna kind of get ya and say, you know what buddy, it's alright, sorry, that one did not work out so well, we'll try it again tomorrow. Versus the shaming, you're wrong, how come you did that, you should know better, like those kind of things.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  So resiliency is about having adults, especially as kids, having adults that can say, yep, you know what, sometimes it's just like that, I'm sorry, but it's okay, you'll be fine.

• 46:05Jocko Willink?

  I had another guy who's a neuroscientist named Andrew Huberman on here and we were talking about like winning and losing his kids. And he said, it's through your whole life, you gotta push yourself, you gotta lose sometimes. And he actually gave the percentage and he's got, you know, research or whatever, he's a Stanford doctor, so I guess he's smart or whatever, Andrew. But, you know, we came down, it's like eighty percent of the time, you want the kid to kind of do well, and then twenty percent of the time, they should like lose. If they start, what I did with my kids was lose ninety percent of the time, like put them in really hard situations, and that's not the good way to do it. Luckily, my kids turned out pretty resilient. But, um, you know, I was just like, oh, you're gonna get beat down, it's gonna make you tougher, it's gonna make you stronger.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  And no, what happens is they just start to feel like a loser, right? So you gotta be careful with that, but that eighty percent, I think it's a good number to, okay, eighty percent of the time, you're winning or you're evenly matched, but you're doing well, twenty percent of the time, you know, you gotta be pushing yourself into some situations. And that's the weird thing, didn't, like the SEAL training, like I'm talking about kids that were division one wrestlers, right? Quit. Division one wrestling is so insanely hard. And they have all kinds of hypotheses, you know. Somebody that was a really good athlete, they've never really been, they've never lost. And when you get to SEAL training, you're gonna lose, like you're, you're gonna fail stuff. And so that can be a problem with people's mentality, because they've just never lost before.

• 47:32Jocko Willink?

  And then there's, you know, some kid that's been getting beat down his whole life. He's like, oh, cool, I failed, whatever, I'm gonna keep going. Um, so how do you, how do you diagnose? You know, again, I, I made the car mechanic thing and the cool thing, well, the interesting thing about this metaphor is even a car mechanic, you bring your car and there's a whatever, a, a, a tapping noise in the engine. He doesn't necessarily know a hundred percent what it is, he's like, ah, it could be this, could be that, he's gotta dig in there. So is that the way diagnosis works? You're sort of like, okay, here's a problem, you're getting super emotional. We, we don't know what's causing it yet, that's the tapping, right? You're getting super emotional. And then what are we doing to diagnose? How does it happen?

• 48:17Speaker 01

  That, I, pretty much, I mean, it is a, um, let's look over here. Oh, that doesn't really seem to be the problem, let's try this over here. Now personally, what I have found is, um, and, and not everybody works this way, this is totally fine, is I like to go into how, like, how, how did you get here? Right, so I'm gonna ask all kinds of questions about what happened in the family and how were things talked about? And what did you experience and how was that managed in the family? Because I see those things as they shape. So now we have this tapping that's happening right now, where there's something probably that went on back then that has to do with it. Some therapists, some psychologists don't, um, they look at like what's happening right now and how do we move it forward?

• 49:02Speaker 01

  They are not gonna spend a lot of time in the past, it's preference. But I mean, I can't tell you how many times what walked through the door is not what we ended up finding. Sure. Right, somebody, I mean, my, um, some of my earlier years in private practice, I worked a lot with eating disorders. And because I was also still learning and, you know, didn't have as much experience as I would have within a few years is. Oh, it's meal plan. This person is afraid of getting fat. This person thinks they're more popular if they're skinny, whatever, all of these things. So we would kind of target those behaviors. Let's get you on a good meal plan. Let's talk about self-esteem, et

• 49:43Speaker 01

  cetera, et cetera. Over the years, it was, I mean, it was kind of insane how much I discovered through looking back, like there was trauma in there, or some kind of really defining event that happened in that young person's life, that the eating disorder behaviors, so to speak, were almost like the manifestation of something else.

• 50:07Jocko Willink?

  What kind of, what would be a something else?

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Um, like, um, abuse, like often, and especially with girls, you'd see like a sexual assault or sexual abuse. Um, sometimes something that was happening in the family that was not being talked about would be, um, kind of stuffed down and then expressed through these behaviors. So, um, almost psychologically, you can interpret that a little bit as if we're spending all of our time over here on meal plans and weight gain and weight loss, what are we not looking at? The secret over here that nobody wants to talk about. Right? So sometimes finding an origin, um, that then explains the symptoms. Then you

• 50:52Speaker 01

  treat the origin, the issue over here versus the symptoms, right? Kind of like the analogy I've used a million times even with clients is if you come in with like a, like with pneumonia, a severe case of pneumonia, and the only thing we're doing is giving you some cough syrup to help your cough. Like, that's gonna help a little bit. I mean, it's gonna help you feel a tiny bit better, but nothing, in fact, you might even get worse if we don't really treat. The thing that's really underneath the cough, like the cough actually isn't really the issue.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Well, this is, yeah, this is the really humanizing part in terms of what you're talking about because I think we have to be really mindful and responsible of with as clinicians with how we talk about the use of diagnoses, you know, in my private practice, I often get people coming to me that it's their first time they've reached out for mental health services, they've gone somewhere and they met, spent just a short meeting with someone and they were given a diagnosis bipolar disorder, something that's very severe, you know, they go look this up on the internet, they start attaching all these things to their personality.

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  WebMD.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  And now, you know, I am bipolar disorder, I, you know, have I start to attach these like things to my personality and that language is very powerful over time because if I am something or something is happening to me, I have much less control over how I respond to it as exposed as opposed to this idea that I'm experiencing some symptoms associated with bipolar disorder, or I'm experiencing some symptoms associated with this, or you know, after some reflection, I've, I've, I have an unaddressed trauma in my past that's showing up like you know, very volatile outbursts or something like that. And so I think, you know, how we talk about it is really important. Because nowadays, and if you have kids my age, there's plenty of kids walking around self diagnosed as OCD or depression or

• 52:38Speaker 02

  these sorts of things because they hear about something and I am this and I can't do this because I have this and so I think one of the first things we try to do with people is start to talk about like the impact and history because it allows us to create a framework to talk about things that are more humanizing as opposed to you know, the symptoms.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Or like a label.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:59Jocko Willink?

  So this made me think of something that I said a while ago. I looked up the definition of being insane and being insane was when your your reality doesn't match reality of the world, right? And I was, we have a online training program and I was telling you, I said, hey, everyone is insane, right? Everyone is to some level insane because if the three of us witness an event or participate in an event, it's going to be a little bit different for all of us, like our, our reality is going to be a little bit different. Well, no, you said this, I didn't say that, I said this. So we're going to have different interpretations of reality. So everyone therefore is a little bit insane, right? And it's just how insane are you?

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  And when, when you start looking at that like this, the, the most horrifying thing, like anorexia, where the person is so clearly malnutritioned and so clearly like 100% of people in the world would say, you need to eat more. And that one person, the, the, the person that has it, just, they just don't see that. That's gotta be the scariest, scariest environment, like for a parent, I can't even fathom what that's, what that's doing. So as you, you're talking about, Carlin, you're talking about addressing the, the, like, finding

• 54:26Jocko Willink?

  this original, this initial problem. And that's what we're able, how, how we're able to address that, bring that into the light, get that thing solved, and it solves the symptom that we're all seeing.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Pretty much. I mean, and that's the mechanic work, right? Is you're, you're kind of digging and, and you know, sometimes the person will know, like, I had this thing happen, and I think my symptoms are related to this. Sometimes they're not aware. I had a, a, a young girl that I was treating for anorexia. She was a cheerleader and a ballerina. So, so much pressure, right, to maintain this very malnourished, very thin body. And all the guilt, like even eat, you know, eating something that had a carb in it, you know, just, oh, I can't, I'm gonna get fat, da, da, da, I'm not gonna get picked. I mean, so destructive and interfering with life. So I'm working with her and I'm trying this thing and this thing, and we're trying over here, and I don't know, your worth isn't

• 55:24Speaker 01

  wrapped up in your ballerina stuff.

• 55:25Jocko Willink?

  So you were focused on the physical, like, oh, you look fine.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Because this is all she was presenting with, is like, I, I know. Like, it's almost like, I know, I, I, this is not a good for me, I just don't really know what to do about it. But there wasn't really much else. Tried getting the parents in, they didn't want to come in, which really should have been my first clue. And, long story short, just to, to get to this point, is months and months of meeting with her and like, well, what about this? And I don't know, what about that? She says, well, you know, my mom said she didn't want me to talk about this, but I, I feel like I should. I think I was molested by my cousin when I was, you know, like 12. I'm like, Oh, so I'm like, here we go. So I'm asking her all these questions and, you know, she just tells this

• 56:14Speaker 01

  really very sad, um, kind of horrible story about learning that she, like, learning something at school that made her think, oh, my God, I think that happened to me. Going home, telling her parents and her parents like, do not tell anybody about this. This is going to ruin everybody's life, la la la la. Right? Just don't talk about it. Well, now, now she's a Valerie, now, right? Like, all that got, um, stuffed down and kind of channeled in this way that she could control her environment a lot of time. Um, a lot of the time. So we start unpacking this and it turns out, as she tells me about this event that made her think that she might have been molested, that's not what happened. She was

• 56:58Speaker 01

  in some class at school and they were talking about something and she, like, almost like misinterpreted. So this, for years, there was this whole thing that had happened in her family where she said she had been molested, but she really, she really wasn't. They thought she was, shut it down, didn't let anybody talk about it. And now she's coming in for treatment for anxiety and an eating disorder, right? Soon as we got there and we got it and she was, I mean, she bought in. She was like, oh, my God, I had no idea. At this point, she's maybe eighteen. I think I started seeing her when she was fifteen.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Like, all of a sudden, it was like all that symptomology went away. I mean, it didn't vanish overnight because she'd been doing those behaviors for a long time. But that clarity of like, oh, this is what this was about. This being made to be wrong, you know, I thought this bad thing had happened to me and I was like essentially punished for it and told that if I tell and something happens to my cousin, it's going to like be my fault. So not being able to talk about it, being told by her mom, don't go talk about this in therapy. Do you want to go to therapy for, right? But, but it was that, like, that's an example of you kind of, we just had to peel and peel and ask questions. And when we found it, it cleared up.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Because, right, like you said, like, it kind of brought it into the light. We could address what the real problem was. And then the symptoms, the cough, so to speak, alleviated. Because the, the root, the core, had been addressed. So there is a lot in, in psych- psychological practice and treatment that does involve some...

• 58:38Jocko Willink?

  And it took you years, three years to get through this.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Years. And I saw her every week. Because she, and she was really, like, I was told not to talk about this. So she kind of knew something was back there. But she was also young and had been directed by her family, don't talk about this. If you talk about this, and she calls the school, and your cousin gets in trouble, then Aunt and Uncle are, like, you know, the, so just...

• 59:07Jocko Willink?

  But it was, what was, if you can go into it a little bit, like, what, because you said it didn't really happen, but she thought it happened?

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, so she said she was at school one day, and they were doing one of these assemblies, right, where you're giving, like, the kids education on, you know, healthy touch and inappropriate touch, like, just, you know, maybe she's fifteen at this time. She was also a very immature, only child, a little bit sheltered, so, maturity-wise, she was a little, little, um, behind, I think. And so, she says, oh, I, this thing was happening, and I told my friend, oh my God, I think I might have been molested, because this thing happened with my cousin, blah, blah, blah. So I'm like, okay, so, can you tell me what happened with your cousin? So she tells me this event, which was really, like, at a party one night, like, all the

• 59:53Speaker 01

  cousins and aunts and uncles, the kids decided to, like, like, play a joke and, like, skinny dip. Like, they all went into the poolhouse, like, stripped off their clothes, and, like, ran into the pool, and made a big joke, and everyone got in trouble, because the parents were there, and this kind of thing. And she goes, it was my cousin's idea. I said, okay. She goes, so, like, he molested me, right? I'm like... What, what? In her mind, she had, cause she heard this thing at school and her friend said, oh my God, it was your cousin that said you should take off your bathing suit? Oh, I think that's my last, I think that's inappropriate, whatever. Like it grew into this thing, but when she really, when we went back and walked through the event, she goes, well, no, it was, it was my cousin's idea, but like we all did

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  it, no one, no one touched anybody. It was, we thought it would be funny. So tragic. I mean, this is, this to me, and she did, once we got there, she did beautifully. She's off at college. I mean, doing wonderfully, but the years, right? Of a misunderstanding of something that happened. It was all like the telephone game, right? She told this person, they told this, they, it just by the time it arrived at parent, her parents, it was this whole other thing.

• 1:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Scary.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  So scary.

• 1:01:08Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Megan, something you were talking about when you were talking about, oh, people's kind of self-diagnosed at some point, or they get a diagnosis from somebody. And, oh yeah, we had a friend of mine on here, there's an ancient Native American saying that something along the lines of, it's not a diagnosis, it's a curse. Like if you get diagnosed with something and you, you can hear it as a curse, like this is what you are.

• 1:01:36Jocko Willink?

  How much play does it give to me? I mean, well, obviously I wrote a book called Extreme Ownership, taking ownership of like what's going on in your world. And instead of being, oh, I'm bipolar, that's what I am. It's like, no, I have some systems, symptoms, and here's how I'm going to get control of this. Is that something that comes into play in getting people moving in the right direction?

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  I would say absolutely yes. I mean, because what we're trying to do is help people, um, you know, identify differently with what's happening in their life, or create a new narrative or story around what's going on in their life. So, I mean, this happens not just with the individual, but with families, right? Like if I'm, uh, if I hear that my kiddo who's historically done really well, you know, they're talented, they've done it well in music all through high school, all of a sudden they're in their first or second year of college and they're starting to display some really interesting symptoms, um, they have their first psychotic break, it's like devastating for a family, like what happened, it's very common around that age range for something like this to happen. All of these ideas start coming up. My, my son has schizophrenia. He'll, he'll never be able to get married.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  He'll, he'll never be able to hold down a job. We're, we're never gonna see our son graduate from college. We're not gonna be able to do the family vacations. You just, it just goes on and on. And so you sit with these families and there's just such a sense of hopelessness. And so what, what we try to do is, is, is come back a little bit to say like, well, you know, why, why don't you think he's able to live alone? Well, he hasn't taken out the trash all week. His, his room is a mess. He stays in there all by himself. Well, well, how come, how was he able to do that? Like, how was he able to sit in his room all day and like not experience the natural consequences associated? If I went in my room all day, stopped going to school or work or whatever it may be, like things would fall apart in my life. How was that able to happen?

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  And so what we can get to, and this takes a lot of time, is essentially the fear associated with like if I was to, to, to push him towards something or if he, he, he's not capable or because of this illness, now he can't do this. And we have to really unpack, and it's different for every family, but we have to really unpack that to figure out what it is that they've decided collectively this means for their life, right? These symptoms or this diagnosis. And then help them envision something sort of different for themselves. And then create experiences for individuals to play that out. Well, he's been taking out the trash all week here. And if he doesn't, his peer tells him like, hey, you didn't take out the trash and so go do that. Or experience some of the natural consequences associated with, I, if I've just leave my

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  stuff everywhere, you know, but my roommate tells me like, hey, you know, this room like stinks. Can you like clean this up? Like some of that peer-to-peer interaction. But we have to create those opportunities for that. And then interestingly, when people start to engage in this, it's not like a cognitive like, oh yeah, I'll go do this thing and something will be different. It's usually more like, I act, I have these experiences, I walk through something difficult. My symptoms got really activated when I was gonna go try to learn how to take the bus or do, do the trolley. But you know what? Like, I had someone with me and I was able to do it and it was like, okay. And it didn't stay that way forever. And then so the, the, the kind of the insight comes a little bit later with the experience that like I can experience some discomfort or I can let my kiddo struggle a little bit

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  or go through something and I can actually tolerate some of my fear that this could be like devastating for him. Because, you know, oftentimes. When we get to it, especially for families who have, you know, we're, we're sort of in a good place if a family's coming to us at a first break because we can help them like right there. But oftentimes, people come to us fourteen hospital-

• 1:05:09Jocko Willink?

  Like a last resort type thing.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  Fourteen hospitalizations in, multiple short-term treatment centers.

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  What does a break look like? What's that, what's that look like?

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  I mean, it, it, it looks like a break from reality. It's different for each person. You know, uh, um, that process sometimes can appear like what you see more often in like movies and such sort of bizarre or paranoia or I see aliens. Sometimes, um, for people with significant personality disorders and this way, like delusions can be grounded almost in something like that feels real, like it could be a real situation, but it's in fact not when you get to down to it. So, um, but ultimately, it's just a disconnect from what's happening in the here and now in a lot of different ways. And it can be auditory, it can be tactile in terms of a person's, you know, experience of what they're feeling in their body. Uh, it could be visual, um, just a, a break from reality.

• 1:05:57Jocko Willink?

  A break from reality. So, a family, they got a eighteen-year-old kid, a twenty-year-old kid, they're in college, they're going to college, everything's fine. And then all of a sudden, just give me an example, what does this look like?

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  So, I mean, for example, what it might look like is they're calling home and like, uh, my neighbors are, they're, they're listening to me. My neighbors are really bothering me. Like, they're, they're listening through the walls. I, I know that they're doing these things.

• 1:06:19Jocko Willink?

  So, this is like an obvious.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  I, I mean, it could be, yes. Or it could be as a parent, you're hearing this, you're like, that's really odd. Like, why would the neighbors be listening to them? Or so sometimes this can go on for a period of time where there's like some things that, you know, you notice some more isolation or not hanging out with friends as much, or maybe there's some substance use that is sort of new. And so, it's not always so like in your face, obvious. Yeah.

• 1:06:42Jocko Willink?

  It might not be like, the neighbors are watching me. It might be like, I'm not doing anything this weekend.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, or even how many times we've had, um, like somebody come into the treatment program and the parents say, well, we thought everything was great. He's at college, like he's, seems like he's fine, but we started getting calls from his friends. Hey, we think something's going on. It's not really coming out anymore. Seems to be hanging out in his room all the time. But then we call him and he says he's okay. Right? So, there's this like, I, we don't really know what's going on. And how many times we've had, uh, you know, families say, so we just decided to like get in the car and drive up there and see what was going on for ourselves. And they find their kid like- Disheveled, maybe haven't been eating.

• 1:07:23Jocko Willink?

  So what's going on with that kid? Well, like, what's an example of, okay, I get the call, hey, your son is, he's, hey, hey, you know, Billy, Billy's not come out with us for like three weeks. We haven't even seen him. We just want to call you and let you know, like, he's really been acting weird. And so I call Billy and Billy says, no, I'm fine. I've just been studying really hard. This has been a pain at school and I'm really sick of Fred anyways. So I'm just doing my own thing. And I go, oh, okay. And then, you know, I get another call. It's his ex-girlfriend. You know, I just, I saw him the other day. He just looked totally different. So I drive up there and there he is in his room. Um, his room is a mess. What, what's going on with him?

• 1:08:04Jocko Willink?

  What, what is it? Is it a, is it something that he saw? Is it something that got triggered? Is it? Like, what is it? Do we know?

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Sometimes we do and sometimes we won't. And this is where like the mechanic has to come in, right? And figure it out. Sometimes it's going to be very obvious, like, a more common scenario that we've experienced is like, everything was fine. Star athlete, blah, blah, blah. Goes to college, seems to be making friends, decided to start smoking weed a little bit and then boom. Right? It set something off. Again, some people can smoke weed. That will not happen. Um, you know, there's some theory and hypothesis that some people, um, you can be like predisposed for schizophrenia or psychosis, but it not necessarily come out. But it will under certain conditions and sometimes drug use is one of those.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  So you can have somebody who's predisposed, like has genetic loading and, and never kind of becomes.

• 1:09:03Jocko Willink?

  So you go through your whole life and you could be one of these people.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  And then you've got somebody who has a, a genetic predisposition and they go to college and they start smoking a little weed and it like, cracks something open internally and here it comes.

• 1:09:18Jocko Willink?

  But it could be a girlfriend breakup.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:09:21Jocko Willink?

  Could be, um, you know, they didn't get into the frat or whatever.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Disappointment.

• 1:09:27Jocko Willink?

  Just something like that. And this can, in some cases, people can just kind of, they're, they're changing. And sometimes it goes away naturally.

• 1:09:36Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes it's like, oh yeah, he was bummed out for a few weeks, but hey, we just saw Billy. He's, he's actually.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Seems to be doing better.

• 1:09:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's, and it's, we can get, a person can get through it.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Sure. We've had folks come in, like the, the one person I'm thinking about was, um, I think he was in his freshman year at college. Again, great student, scholarship to football. I mean, just a lot of friends, great girl, like just really kind of all around. And they got a call, the, the parents got a call from the police, the local police in his, um, their son's town. That they found him like running around outside like half naked, like kind of, kind of crazy, screaming and doing weird things. And they're like, are you, are you, did you call the right people? That is not my kid. Well, he had smoked, he had never done drugs or, you know, maybe he had a little bit, but smoked weed and he couldn't, he's like, I don't know.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Someone just gave it to me. So who, who knows what was in there? Well, it did something to this guy's brain. I mean, it just scrambled him. He did not know what way it was up or down, went into the hospital. They brought him to us for treatment, never been in treatment, I mean, had never had anything happen like this before. He was, um, he was back in school, I think by the next semester, like he needed, he came in. You know, we got him settled, kind of walked through what happened. Soon as the, um, the drugs were out of his system, which didn't take a, a long time because he wasn't really a chronic user. Um, he cleared, like he instantly cleared in his mind. So in that case, um, diagnosis wise, it was a substance induced psychosis.

• 1:11:13Jocko Willink?

  Substance induced psychosis.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  So soon as the substances were out of his symptom, out of his system, he, there was no more psychosis. He cleared. So really it was just helping him almost like recover from, I mean, that was a traumatic event and he was embarrassed and had all the shame. You know, there was like a lot of stuff he had to kind of process and recover from. And then he went back to college.

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  Same school?

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  Well, an early intervention there is huge. Super early. Because, you know, the further away the intervention, the person starts to find ways to self soothe or whatever might be, and it becomes much more complex at that point.

• 1:11:49Jocko Willink?

  So if someone has one episode, they're easier to help than someone that's had twenty eight. And the parents were just like, oh, he'll be fine. Oh, it's just Billy. He's just, he acts up sometimes. And then that goes on for three, four, five years. He's going to be harder to treat.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  Where the brain stays in a constant state of psychosis for a longer period of time. It's hard to know what it's going to look like when they come out of that, right?

• 1:12:13Jocko Willink?

  Explain what psychosis actually means.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  I'll go. Yeah, well, it's, well, you had said it earlier. It's a break in reality. It's like psychosis typically is defined as a, a break in contact with reality. And what's interesting, though, about psychosis, and I say this in the, the presentation and in the book, is people can be psycho, people can be psychotic, have a psychotic episode, and it not be related to a mental illness.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:12:45Jocko Willink?

  What would that look like?

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Anesthesia. Like, under anesthesia, people have reported hallucinating. Malnourishment and dehydration. Somebody can hallucinate, hear voices, have delusions.

• 1:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Sleep deprivation.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  Sleep deprivation, one hundred percent. So there are lots.

• 1:13:04Jocko Willink?

  And seal training, they keep you awake for a long time.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  And, you know, you wouldn't be surprised if you are seeing some things that maybe are not actually there.

• 1:13:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was out in the boat in the middle of the ocean, and I thought I saw like traffic's lights. And I was like, hey, we gotta stop, you know? And I actually knew that I was hallucinating. I was like, that can't be real, because I'm in the ocean. But that definitely is a stoplight. And I think we should stop, but that doesn't make any sense, so.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Head injury.

• 1:13:28Jocko Willink?

  So psychotic event is when you're, you're disconnected from reality in a big way?

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a break in kind of the contact in reality, like seeing something that isn't there, feeling, hearing something. Or delusion, right? Like a belief that somebody's following me, somebody's watching me, somebody's out to get me. I, I was telling one of my friends the other day in supervision that one of my very first patients who had schizophrenia, and he was pretty severe, had a belief that he was like... Every once in a while, he was reincarnated as somebody else. So but like, you know, sometimes he would talk about that, like funny, he would be like, oh, my God, Carlin, remember last week when I told you I thought I was Ram Dass? I'm like, mm hmm, I do remember that. He's like, wow, that was really weird. I'm like, uh huh.

• 1:14:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so he kind of knew it.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  And then he wouldn't, like, then sometimes he wouldn't. He'd be like so in it and very, like, fixed that you you really couldn't, um, kind of talk him out of it, so to speak.

• 1:14:30Jocko Willink?

  So here I'm going to open up just the biggest can of worms ever. What the hell happens when I'm on on the internet and social media and I'm starting to think that I'm a little bit conspiratorial and I start reading, read, reading various websites that are just totally, you know, Reddit, which is like a website that has a bunch of different random things. I mean, I guess they all do. I mean, you can go down, you can go any Reddit, YouTube, any one of these things, you can go watch something on YouTube that if you have a little bit of an indication that the world might be flat, you guys heard of flat earthers?

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're out there.

• 1:15:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that the earth is flat and there's videos upon videos upon threads upon threads of the earth is flat. So if you have a little bit of paranoia about something, that can't be good for you.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  You have to be really mindful of that.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  The internet is a dangerous place. I mean, like WebMD, self diagnosing. Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Jocko Willink?

  Um, do P, how bad is that? Like, I mean, you talk about, oh, uh, somebody can smoke weed. How bad is it if I think, you know what, I really think that there's a world order that's trying to keep me down?

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it depends on the person and their ability to sort of like self moderate their exposure to stuff like that. Because if you're if if you're in a healthier place and you can moderate your exposure to that, you realize, gosh, I just spent two hours scrolling through this super unhealthy, I'm not feeling good, and I can set some sort of boundaries for myself around that, then like, well, it's it's positive. You know, I think we all have the tendency towards indulgence in some ways. But for someone who struggles with that or who's coming to us and like every time they turn on the news, there's a significant amount of paranoia for them and that causes them to act in response to those delusions or thoughts in a way that's like harmful to them or others. Well, then we help moderate some of that, you know, a lot of the treatment that we do and why it takes so much time is creating some scaffolding around things like that. So the people can develop that insight if it's not readily available to them because with

• 1:16:28Speaker 02

  Something like schizophrenia, I mean, it's a thought disorder. It's impacting your cognition, your ability to think in a lot of ways. And so if someone is not able to self-regulate in that way, we help create some scaffolding for them. So like, maybe we're not watching the news at five tonight, because that's not gonna end up good, because every time you do, you end up out on the streets, or whatever it might be, and in a very paranoid state.

• 1:16:47Jocko Willink?

  You just don't want me to watch the news, because you don't really know what's going on, because you're part of the conspiracy against me.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Well, a lot of times, which is why it's so important to to build a sense of rapport and safety with someone, to be consistent in what you're doing, and have an environment that's consistent, so that people feel safe enough to allow you to support them. And and and they will, in a lot of ways, with time. But the work that we do is not a a quick fix. People spend a long period of time with us. And so that we can develop enough safety where they will buy into trying some of the things that we're requesting might be, you know, or suggesting might be helpful for them. And so that then they can develop some of their own insight, like, oh, wow, I haven't had this much paranoia, or I haven't been this kind of undone for a period of time, and I also haven't watched the news for this period of time. Like, maybe that is helpful for me.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  And then usually when they come to the latter part of their time, or their journey, where they're more in like, an outpatient type setting, they can reflect back some of those things. Like, I didn't like the structure that you put me on, or I didn't like this particular thing, but I realize now why that was so helpful for me.

• 1:17:55Jocko Willink?

  Do people have to be open to wanting to change in order to change? And if you have someone that's just like, the parent put them in there, the 23-year-old kid, hey, look, you're going in here, you're gonna get fixed.

• 1:18:09Speaker 02

  That's like all of our people. From our perspective, is especially when you're working with something like a thought disorder, like schizophrenia, systemic containment is incredibly helpful.

• 1:18:21Jocko Willink?

  Systemic containment?

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Meaning that the family is helping to support some sort of boundaries around the options that the child has in a lot of ways. Because sometimes people will come to us, and their their kiddo has schizophrenia, that they don't want to come to treatment, they don't want to do these things, they they don't want to do some things that are gonna help them.

• 1:18:38Jocko Willink?

  Wait, the kid doesn't?

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  The kid doesn't. But yet. And the family's like, I don't know what to do. He doesn't want to come. It's like, well, you know, how does he have this car? Or how does he have this apartment? He's like not able to work. And so we help the family really create some structures around like, um, sort of some boundaries in a way of like, I'm here to support you and I'm going to help you on this journey within the context of this realm.

• 1:18:59Jocko Willink?

  But you've got to do your part type thing.

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. So a lot of times when, when folks come, they aren't necessarily happy to be there, but they just don't have a lot of options. And we really work with family, extended family, grandparents, whatnot to be like, don't send that $500 check because if you do, I know you feel bad and he doesn't have any money. He's probably going to be out on the streets, drinking or whatever it might be. And so we work with as many people as we can to create a nice, safe container in some ways, which is the treatment environment. Because with what we do, it's not a locked setting. It's, it's a sort of the least restrictive type of environment in a residential setting, but it requires a ton of containment and support from every member of like the community that's working there in the family to make sure that there's a path. And maybe there's a couple of options to the path, but it's really clear

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  and they're tight and contained, um, so that, uh, the person can actually have some experiences and we can calm down some of the things that are happening in these symptoms so that they can begin to develop some of their own insight or understanding as to why. And sometimes, um, you know, the hardest part about the work that we do is that you can want to help someone, you can want to save them, you can want to, and, and, and they might not want that. And it might not be the choice that they have for themselves. And we've had to, you know, walk through losses in that way as well, you know? So I, I do think there is a component of, um, that person wanting some of that. And even if somebody on the surface doesn't want it, uh, families and the people around them can do a lot to create an environment for them where they can grow in that desire for themselves. Um, and, you know, sometimes people don't.

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  So this is like a tough love scenario i- in some way. Am I right?

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:20:34Jocko Willink?

  It's like a tough love scenario. So sometimes, you know, I've got friends and they might be having a hard time with whatever, you know, maybe they're, they're drinking or they're, they're not doing what they should be doing. And I think most of the time, what they need is, bro, what are you doing? You're being an idiot. Stop doing that. And they go, yeah, man, you know what? I'm being an idiot. I need to stop doing that. It seems like that's a vast majority of the time of what people need. What scares me is, you know, if I say, hey, what are you doing? You're, you're being an idiot.

• 1:21:11Jocko Willink?

  And they really do have like some significant issue that they don't have any control over. They can't help and all of a sudden, I was just the worst friend ever by saying, dude, you're being a wimp. Just get over it and move forward. And they think, oh, Jaco saying I'm a wimp. That means I really am a wimp. That means I'm not good enough that. And they go down, I'm worried that they would go down a spiral. As opposed to, hey, man, stop acting like that. Hey, quit blaming, quit blaming this incident on the way you're acting now. You know, you, you need to go, you need to show up to work on time. You need to get a job. You need to stop drinking. Oh, sometimes like that's, and I think actually most of the time people just need like, bro, what are you doing? And I'm talking bro, because these are my friends that are dudes.

• 1:21:56Jocko Willink?

  Um, even though oddly enough, my daughters call each other bro. Yeah. And they call all their friends, bro, that are all females.

• 1:22:04Speaker 01

  They got it down.

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, so, but, but is there some way to, to discern whether, whether someone's crossed the line into, okay, listen, tough love isn't going to help this individual anymore. And I need to get them some real help. Cause that's a scary thing, you know, you, you, you know, I'll experience that with a person that I know and acquaintance that I have, a friend that I have that, oh, you know, he's not looking good, right? Stop working out. Which to me is a big indicator of, oh, stop working out, doesn't, you know, not really eating like crap and seems to be drinking a lot. And what I want to say, and what I have said to do, guys, is, bro, what are you doing? Why are you, why are you not working out? You're getting fat. What are you doing? Like, how much are you drinking? Are you drinking every night? What, what's wrong with you?

• 1:22:50Jocko Willink?

  Get back on the path, like stop. And oftentimes they're like, yeah, but I've been so lazy. I need to, I've been thinking about this thing, but you're right. I need to keep going. But then I get the feeling sometimes is like, it's deeper and worse. Is there any way to discern, is there any warning signs to look out for between these two individuals? One of whom needs this good kick in the ass that's going to get them moving in the right direction. And the other one, I kick them in the ass, they're going to fall down the stairs and it's going to hurt them.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  I mean, that's a, that's a, it's a tough question. I mean, discernment is important in knowing people's history and such, especially in the work we do. I think it's different, you know, when you're looking from a clinical perspective, but discernment is huge. And at the same time, I think one of the hardest things in loving or caring about somebody who's struggling with something is that we don't necessarily have control over how they respond to what we try to give them. And so, you know, coming from a place of if, if, if my approach is, is tough love in terms of what you're describing and like what you're, you're being honest and true to yourself and can also add that other part of like, there's a part of me that's sort of fearful that if I have tough love on you, this like, this is gonna go kinda sideways for you. Does that feel true for you? And just sort of being direct and honest with people. I mean, I think people can feel congruency, they can feel care.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  And tough love, if it's coming from a place that's like love, it's felt very differently than something that's critical or mean or suggests like, you're, I'm gonna cut you off from my life if, if, if you don't, you know, do this thing. That's very different. So when we talk about tough love, and oftentimes it is working families who are like, this isn't mean, this is actually the most loving thing you could do for this person because to say nothing or to let them continue on in a way where their life is just deteriorating, well, that would be horrible, right? So like to do nothing would be very harmful. And so I don't think, I mean, this is the hardest thing about severe mental illness is that we can try a lot, we can say a lot, we can do things, we don't necessarily have control over what somebody's gonna do with the feedback that we give them.

• 1:24:46Jocko Willink?

  And there's risk too, right?

• 1:24:47Speaker 02

  There's definitely a risk involved in doing some of those things. And it doesn't always, you know, have a positive outcome to set boundaries and things like that. And at the same time, I think being congruent is like most important.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  And I think what you said earlier about rapport, like I think about some of the clients I've seen for the longest. I mean, I have relationships with these people, I know these guys, you know, these guys. Like, I, I can tell. Like, and I can, because I have rapport, I always joke, like you've heard me say this in supervision, like, I'm sometimes surprised myself with how much I can get away with saying.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Because I have enough rapport where I know the person's gonna be able to handle it, even if it's something like, I have a client, this literally just happened, I said, You sound like a crazy person right now. And she's like, I know, don't I? I said, you kinda do. No, I wouldn't say that to everybody and if I didn't have that kind of relationship with a different client, I'm not gonna say that. That could be construed as like rude and very not PC, right? But with her, I can say like, you're doing that thing right now or you just, you kinda sound and look like a crazy person. Can you pull it together? And she'll be like, okay, you know, and we move on. But if I were to say that to her, say, one afternoon and she, she can't pull it together or she, how dare you say that to me or she, you know, reacts in a way that's different than my experience of her typically.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  You know, that's gonna be my discerning clue of like, okay, this might be something a little bit more than she's just, you know, having a moment. Uh, like I know her enough or I know him enough to know like, oh, I kinda pulled the like, come on, get your shit together. I know you can do this. And it works. And the times when it seems to not really be working, then it's just my clue that, okay, there maybe is something a little bit more happening here. So I'm gonna, I'm just gonna like change my approach a little bit. Slow it down and maybe ask more questions instead of say, hey, come on, get it together and move on. It might be like, so what's happening? Cause you, you seem different to me today than you did last week. What's going on? I might ask a little bit more to see if more comes out.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  But the, um, I think there's a place for both and people really, esp- especially people who are very disorganized internally, which you will, you'll see more with psychosis or just in a funk, in their depression, in their grief, whatever, whatever. Um, they need, they need actually like the scaffolding on the outside. Somebody to say, okay, you know what? You need to get up.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  Go take a shower, brush your teeth, meet me in the kitchen in 15 minutes. Like that kind of direction actually helps gel some of the looseness that's happening internally when someone's really struggling. And then there's gonna be times, hopefully, when that's not needed, that they can do that for themselves.

• 1:27:29Jocko Willink?

  From a, this is sort of, I guess, parallel, or at least adjacent to the social media stuff we were talking about this. The idea that we did a podcast on social contagions, right, which is, and I think one of the best examples that I read about was bulimia. And when the first reported case of bulimia was in 1979, or something like this, I forget the dates, but, you know, this guy did a, did a article about these girls who were making themselves sick. And there was, you know, three or four girls that he did this report on. And after that, like, the number of cases went completely through the roof.

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  Same thing with, uh, cutting, like, uh, this happens with young females a lot. They cut themselves, but it'll spread through, uh, through a community, through a friendship group of girls. Happens with suicide, you know, there's this thing where, and this, this always scares me because, you know, doing a podcast like what we're doing today, and a lot of people are gonna listen to this. Uh, when they put up anti-suicide for, or suicide help hotline numbers in a community, oftentimes the suicide rate increases because now it's putting it in their mind. How much do you, how much have you all seen of that in the last, you know, 10 years? And I guess it's maybe even less than that, seven years of where people are so connected to social media,

• 1:28:56Jocko Willink?

  where, oh, you know what, Billy's depressed and he seems like he's got, getting a lot of attention for being depressed. And I kind of, you know, I, I, I didn't have anything to do on Friday night, and so I'm probably not that popular. I'm actually gonna be depressed too. How, how much is that impacting people? Cause let's face it, you know, a hundred years ago, people weren't talking about this. And so what were they doing? You know, like, oh, I'm depressed, but that's just the way I feel, and there's, they even had a name for it. So guess what they did? They went to work and they carried on, and maybe they didn't feel great, but they carried on. What, what role is this total connectedness that we have? And, and, you know, we all can't even compare to the young, to the 15-year-olds

• 1:29:37Jocko Willink?

  that are connected like 100% of the time that they're awake. They're connecting and being influenced by everyone else in the world. What impact are y'all seeing from that?

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  It's substantial, and I think it is with the onset. In fact, I think around like when smartphones happened.

• 1:30:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  That's where I kind of like the internet was already there. You could go online and look at a bunch of stuff, but at your fingertips.

• 1:30:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  And now with Instagram and all the, I mean, you're just constantly looking who's doing what, who's saying what, who's endorsing what, who's against what? And the attachment to all of that. And also the social disconnect like from other human beings versus instead of having a conversation with you or asking you your opinion about something or going to you to talk about something that might be on my mind, I'm looking to see who's saying what and what are other people doing about it.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  Which is influencing my feed and all the things that are coming out.

• 1:30:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the algorithm.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Like how many, like I didn't get as many likes as you got. What does that mean about me? In addition to what you were saying earlier about like the self diagnosing. Oh, I read it, you know, how many times, especially with adolescence, I see. Oh, I read an article, I think I have OCD in my mind, like, you don't, let's talk about that. Or, oh, I read an article and this is happening to me, so I think I might have stomach cancer. We'll send you to the doctor if you want to have that checked out, but let's talk about your, that you woke up with a stomach ache because you have a job interview this afternoon that you kind of don't want to go to. Let's talk about that instead. But no, I looked online. I looked online. If you wake up with a stomach ache, it means this.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Right, so this, whether it's looking up symptoms and diagnoses or what this means or what other people are doing or what other people are saying about what other people are doing, it's just, it's like it's defined.

• 1:31:32Jocko Willink?

  Right, and self diagnosis becomes self fulfilling prophecy as well.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  Well, and the person's, you know, what their, their world outside of social media looks like, their family, how much they can, you know, cross reference the things that they're seeing on there with like a parent who's telling them like, hmm, let's think about that, let's, let's walk that through. Like if, depending on how much exposure they have to that outside of that world is going to make a big difference in terms of the impact of being engrossed in the social media world because not all kiddos have a family who's willing to talk them through all the things that they're seeing on social media, help them discern what they read, these sorts of things. So definitely a balance outside of that is, is necessary to combat the influence within social media.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Well, then there's also the part of Having things just available, right, right now, right now is, like, I think about when I, like, growing up. Like, there were no, there were, I didn't even, we didn't have an answering machine. Like, if you wanted to call somebody, you called them, and if they were there, they would pick up, and if they weren't, they didn't. Like, that was it. You called them back later. There was no texting, that, like, there was no this immediacy, so, thinking about not having that im- immediate gratification. I, and people in my generation, and people who didn't have access to some of these things, developed, um, patience and tolerance skills. Like, I could wait, even if I really, really, really want to talk to you, like, I can, I can wait and not fall apart.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  I had a, a client, well, I still see her, but when she was younger, um, her, her parents are fantastic. She is, like, very self-diagnosing, has no tolerance for delayed gratification or patience, because everything, right? Everything is a, an immediate answer. If she, if I text you and you have not, if I see the dots and then you don't get back to me, like, you know, this kind of thing. So, she did something and got herself in trouble, so her parents took her phone. She said, "If you take my phone, I am gonna kill myself. I can't not have my phone." They put her in the car and took her to the emergency room. I thought that was the most brilliant thing ever. And of course, by the time they walk in, she's like, "Never mind, I won't kill myself, I'll, I'll get my phone back whenever you want to give it to me."

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  But it was that instant, like, "I can't, I can't live, like, I, I cannot not have my phone." And she has no, um, emotional, like, ma- at the time, like, no emotional management skills.

• 1:33:54Jocko Willink?

  How old?

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  She was probably fifteen or sixteen at this point, like, old enough. Um, but I think about all the parents that would be like, "Oh, oh my, okay, never, never mind." Yeah. Right, and so now you're just reinforced that if you're upset, or you don't think you can handle something, just, I, I'll make it easy for you, so that, um...

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  A delay of gratification, managing anxiety, tolerating waiting, and then what do you do? Right? Like if I want to talk to you and you're not answering the phone, I'm not going to just like sit there. Like right now, people sit there, right? They sit on their phone versus like you go do something to manage your anxiety or your distress at not being able to talk to your person. Like we, like I grew up with that. People nowadays, they're in a lot of ways are lacking in those skills of just managing their feelings because they don't have to.

• 1:34:48Jocko Willink?

  Have you heard the expression left on red? Have you ever heard of this?

• 1:34:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:34:52Jocko Willink?

  So it's when

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  My kids talk about that.

• 1:34:54Jocko Willink?

  So it's when you're, you know, I send you a message, Carlin, and I get a thing that says, you read it?

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  But you don't respond to me. So you just left me on, you read it, but you don't respond to me.

• 1:35:06Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. It's devastating.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  I never heard about that.

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  It's catastrophic.

• 1:35:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  For one, to not get an immediate response and then to be left on red is like you might as well have been canceled is the other term.

• 1:35:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh. So, so this stuff is going to impact people. I mean, that's an impact psychologically.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:35:21Jocko Willink?

  Clearly.

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 1:35:22Jocko Willink?

  Because we're just expecting everyone to maintain connection all the time.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  And soothe me. When, like when I'm upset, you need to reply. So I don't have anxious feelings.

• 1:35:32Jocko Willink?

  And the social media companies are creating these things, like TikTok is created to be as addictive as possible, as humanly possible.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:35:40Jocko Willink?

  So it's immediate gratification a hundred percent of the time. There's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you can't put that thing down. This is a nightmare, isn't it?

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  Well, and if you see it show up a lot and folks coming into work, younger ages between 20 to 24, and you, you're referred to a lot as like being entitled, right? You hear this term entitlement thrown a lot, like this generation is entitled, entitlement and such. But when you really look at what's going on, there's very poor distress tolerance skills. Like if there's something I need to wait on, or I'm waiting for an answer from my manager for something, or you know, something needs to change. It clearly needs to grow in the organization, but you know, it's taking some time to work through these things. Like there's an immediate sort of narrative that something must be wrong, that this is a really negative thing. People don't care about me, or whatever that person goes through in their poor distress tolerance, and it creates all kinds of issues. And then if I can't tolerate it,

• 1:36:31Speaker 02

  Well, what do I do? I just leave, or I check out, or stop caring about what I'm doing, or, you know, I can justify misusing company resources, or not really using my time. I mean, there's all kinds of interesting things that come from it, but at the core, at least I'm not an expert on this at all, but it's just a very poor distress tolerance. And watching my kids work through some of that stuff, where if, you know, someone didn't reply to them, like it felt sort of catastrophic, and helping them think through, like, what could possibly be some other options as to why someone might not have responded. And usually, a few days later, it's like, oh, it's everything, everything's cool, Mom. Someone 's got their phone taken away. So, oh, okay, so that's why they didn't respond to you, you know?

• 1:37:09Jocko Willink?

  And your kids are freaking out, thinking that's the end of the world.

• 1:37:12Speaker 02

  Something bad is happening, for sure, yeah.

• 1:37:16Jocko Willink?

  Can we talk through some mental health issues? I read through a bunch of these. Anxiety disorder, fear and dread. What's a, what's a cause for that?

• 1:37:33Speaker 02

  There's so many potential causes for that, but I mean, ultimately, it's a, it's a state in which you're sort of assuming, or maybe anticipating, that something very negative is going to happen, right? I have this, I'll just use a job interview coming up, and, you know, I really need this job, but I'm definitely gonna say something wrong, and I'm gonna trip. I mean, it just can sort of roll in that direction with a person's thoughts, in a lot of ways. And then in their body can feel sick, sick to my stomach, look like somatic symptoms. So people express it in a lot of different ways. Some, you'll see a lot of thoughts related to it, that are very sort of negative, and anticipating something sort of horrible's going to happen, or not work out well. And in some ways, for

• 1:38:17Speaker 02

  some people, it's very physical. They're sick all the time, or often getting a cold, or, you know, these sorts of things, so.

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  And it's like a chain, so, so, job interview, right? Like, well, I don't know, what if I say the wrong thing? What if they ask me a question that I don't know? Well, what if they don't like me? What if I don't get the job? What if, what if, it's that, that kind of chaining together? So next thing you know, like, I, I might as well just not even, I might as well kill myself. I mean, it can go, it can go in a lot of different ways, but the, this like persistent...

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  Worry and anticipation that is not proportionate to the situation. Like it's, it's one thing to have some nervousness. I have this big job interview. I really want this job. I hope they like me. I'm a little bit, my stomach hurts a little bit. That's one thing, but that disproportion and that chaining together of all of the like things that could potentially happen.

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  So, go ahead.

• 1:39:14Speaker 02

  I would say it's like the difference too between, I think most of us experience some level of anxiety around things. It can actually be really helpful, right? Help me to prepare for something. But when it gets to the aspect of sort of clinically significant, it's interfering in such a way that now I just called out of my job interview or I'm choosing not to go or I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't even bring myself to study because I was so anxious about the potential exam. And so it becomes almost self sabotaging in some ways as we move towards like a clinically significant version of that.

• 1:39:42Jocko Willink?

  So what is treatment like for someone that's in that zone? I haven't been out of my house. I didn't get the job. I didn't do go to the job interview. I actually haven't even applied for any jobs. I'm, you know, just getting by on whatever savings I had and maybe starting to get some welfare checks because I'm just freaked out because, so what are you saying to me? How do we talk someone through that?

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, a lot of it has to do with, well, I know we were talking about this before recording, that when somebody is that kind of agitated and in distress, the front part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, which is the part we use for like weighing pros and cons and anticipating outcomes and kind of making decisions and thinking things through is almost like not available. It's almost offline. You can think about it like it got knocked offline because my nervous system is a wreck. So the person really can't make really good decisions when they're that kind of escalated. So treatment will.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Like undoubtedly, no matter what, include helping a person learn skills and techniques to like calm their, like literally calm their physical body down. It doesn't, I always tell people, you don't have to be calm. That would be lovely, but you don't have to be calm. You just have to be calm enough for your brain.

• 1:41:03Jocko Willink?

  What are some techniques you're gonna teach somebody?

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  It could be like deep breathing techniques, meditation, grounding. Um, physical activity is really, really helpful for a dysregulated body. Like walking, running, jumping, you, swimming, yoga, Pilates, whatever. Physical activity, because it's a, it's a physical manifestation of the anxiety. So you gotta get the body to be able to relax enough for the brain to come online. So now, once the brain is more available, now we gotta go through all that cogn- that cognitive distortion. This idea that like, if you don't get this job, you're a horrible person. Like, let's, let's talk about how realistic that is. Or if you don't get this job, it means that you're never gonna get a job for the rest of your life.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  Well, let's look at that. So cognitive, like cognitive behavioral therapy, cognitive techniques will address some of those, um, really kind of extreme escalated thoughts. You need both. I mean, mo- most, um, mental health and illness issues are gonna require both. But for anxiety, you really need both, the physical and the cognitive.

• 1:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Um, as I was reading through this, I ended up with these personality disorders coming into these different, um, categories. Cluster A, Cluster B, and Cluster C. Cluster A is just, they had some subtitles here. Cluster A was odd.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Yep, odd.

• 1:42:26Jocko Willink?

  Cluster B was dramatic, and Cluster C was anxious. And I was like, well, you could kinda like, the stereotypical categories of people, you know, that guy's weird, right? That guy's an odd guy. Um, someone that's paranoid. Paranoid is one of the things in Cluster A. Odd. Paranoid, always on guard. Believe people are trying to har- harm them. Um, schizoid.

• 1:42:49Jocko Willink?

  Which I didn't really know the definition of schizoid is people that avoid people and relationships. So tell me about paranoid. Well, look, give me a case. Let me, let me redefine that. Let me hear a case. I want to hear some case studies of paranoid. Hey, um, you know, the black helicopters are out there flying around.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you know, what you said earlier, actually about like a person who might already be a little bit, say, be predisposed to like conspiracy, right? So with personality disorders, it's, it's not, it's more like a part of your, like, I can be a shy person, and which means I'm probably going to be shy, like, across the board, right? Not just in one or two situations. So with personality disorders, it's one of those, like, kind of in most situations, you're going to see. So paranoid, it might be not the, the helicopters are chasing me. That, that's probably you're more in the psychotic psychosis realm there. Personality disorders might be just kind of a general paranoia, like, well, you know, every time I go to

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  work, um, I say hi to the girl at the desk and she says, and say hi to me. I think she doesn't like me. She probably X, Y, Z. Like a, like a, a leaning or a disposition to thinking, people don't like me. I think people are watching me. I think somebody went into my locker and took something out, I think. You know, I found it at home later that night. Like, my, my predisposition is paranoid versus psychosis, which is going to be the helicopters are chasing me and the, the lights are secretly, you know, filming me.

• 1:44:18Jocko Willink?

  The, you know, I mentioned that thing earlier, where, where I said, I told people on my, uh, training course, like, hey, we're all insane. We're all some level of insane because reality looks different. These things are the same, too. Like, everyone's got some level of paranoia, and you can see it come out of people. You know, got that person, you know, I work with leaders a lot. And, you know, a leader that might be like, well, I'm never going to get promoted. Oh, why is that? Oh, they don't like me. Like, it's just a level of paranoia. That's, and it's usually because, well, actually, you're not getting promoted because you failed on your last two projects. Has nothing them do with them not liking you. You, you're not performing well. But of course, for them, it's, they don't like me. Why don't they like you? Well, because I used to work at this other company and that guy worked there and they don't like that guy, and so therefore they don't like me. So like all these things and anxiety, you know, right?

• 1:45:03Jocko Willink?

  We, we talk about, you, you just mentioned, Meghan's like, a certain level of anxiety is good. So it's okay. Hey, I'm nervous about this job interview because I want, really want to get the job. So I'm therefore I'm going to research the company. I'm going to be prepared. Well, I'm going to go over some notes. I'm going to be ready. That's cool. That's great. So everyone has some level of these things going on. It's just when we start to let them spiral and get out of control, that's when we have problems. So cluster A, we're acting a little strange. Cluster B, dramatic, which is this also known as teenage years a little bit?

• 1:45:40Speaker 02

  Oftentimes with some of that, you'll find, you know, some form of an attachment disruption or something happening during that time period that leads to some of this in more adult life where we're looking at like a pattern of unstable relationships or sort of this real or imagined fear of abandonment that leads me to sort of be dramatic. If that's what you, the word you want to use in relationships and such in response to a perception that I might be losing you, a lot of push, pull, these sorts of things. But I think we can find often in this group that there's some, something that happened in the attachment that led to this disposition for.

• 1:46:14Jocko Willink?

  What kind of thing is happening?

• 1:46:16Speaker 02

  I mean, it can be a wide variety of things. It could be various levels of abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse. It could be a very misattuned parent or maybe not having somebody who could reflect back to you at a young age, mirroring sort of like, you know, I feel sad or I feel afraid. It's sort of normal to feel that way instead of like, don't feel that way. Or there's something wrong with you for feeling that way. And I start to build these beliefs where I, I sort of lose touch with my map for like an appropriate emotional response to what's happening. You can kind of find that disruption. And sometimes with, when you're looking at a personality disorder, something has been so severe that now it is part of the personality in some ways. And so you can shape it and kind of lose some things with the volume of it.

• 1:47:00Speaker 02

  But that disposition might always be there to be sort of like, you know, someone, my friend canceled, you know, dinner on me again. They, they must really not like me or must not be important to them as opposed to like, maybe there's something else going on for them as to why they canceled dinner. But it really does feel. That traumatic to the person, and I think that's a really important part of working with someone with a personality disorder is recognizing that while it might look sort of irrational and you're like, what's going on for them, it feels very real. So this piece of like, how do I calm down the body enough to bring the the brain online to be able to just consider what else might be possible is a super important part of helping somebody through that. And you can see with time with like, an appropriate level of support

• 1:47:45Speaker 02

  and period of time and multiple reparative experiences and relationships where the thing that I feared didn't actually happen, that that some of this can calm down a little bit.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  You'll see, especially in what's considered Cluster B, people who have been adopted, given up her adoption early on, or or in a way that was left them for some period of time without kind of a secure, like a parent or authority attachment. Clients who, like I have one client who is, she's the the definition of that, was neglected, like severely neglected when she was a child. So this anxiety of like, being left, or not being wanted, or

• 1:48:34Speaker 01

  being some, like picking somebody other than her, like this felt sense of rejection is so profound. It almost, it's like her lenses. It's like her in her experience in the world with other people is always through this lens of, like, do you like me? Are you gonna pick me? Like, am I, am I safe? Can I rely on you? Can I trust you? So these are, that can be rough.

• 1:49:01Jocko Willink?

  Is this, one of these things was called histrionic, histrionic personality disorder, which in one of the categories in there was desire to be noticed. This is a similar thing where I just want people to see that I'm here?

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  Well, and you know what I would say, and I say this a lot clinically, too, is this idea that like, oh, that that person, she's like seeking attention. She's attention seeking. That's very common, right, term that's used. And but often used in like a judgmental derogatory way. I always feel like, oh, they're absolutely seeking attention, but not because they're just being like, You know, irritating, it's something is going on for this person internally that they like literally need you to stop and like pay attention to me. So I can, something inside of me settles down. Now, this is a huge dysregulation, right? So this is where, um, in terms of therapy and treatment comes in is helping people learn how to regulate their body and like calm some of that agitation down and then do all

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  the cognitive work of helping like re- reality check, like right, kind of sort through some of these big extreme thoughts that I have to like, are they really that realistic? And then, like you have said a couple of times, Megan, the reparative experiences, like, um, you know, how many times did you think? Like I have a client who for the longest time, she would show up like fifteen, twenty minutes early to her session because she had this idea that what if she's not out there at the time of our session and I forget we had a session and I leave? Which first of all, would never, ever happen in a million years, ever. But like, this was the one who grew up with a lot of neglect, grew up with parents saying, oh yeah, I'll be home, I'll be home in a few hours and they didn't come home or they

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  forgot about her, right? So you can see where like the early stuff shaped this, but a lot of our work was, it wasn't just like saying, hey, we've had seventy-two sessions and I've been here every time, like, isn't that enough? It wasn't not enough for her. Like she needed to really go through the experience of not relying on me to be there on time so that she felt better. She had to learn how to do that for herself. It's that external scaffolding versus the internal.

• 1:51:11Jocko Willink?

  And was she able to?

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  Yep, totally. She's, I still see her, she's great.

• 1:51:14Jocko Willink?

  You still see her, but she, but it's more like just checking in?

• 1:51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's more like maintenance. I see her once or twice a month. I used to see her two, three times a week. Cause, cause the level of distress and interference in her life, like she couldn't work, her relationships were a mess, she was on all these medication. I mean, she had a really, really messy life because this is how she lived it. This is how she approached almost every relationship she had in her world. So now like she's working, she's got kids, she's, she's got back from like.

• 1:51:46Speaker 02

  Bali or some, I don't know, she went with her husband, like, her life is great.

• 1:51:49Jocko Willink?

  Things are good.

• 1:51:50Speaker 02

  It, so it's a, it's a little mainten, like, kind of maintenance? Car, car maintenance. Um, she's getting her.

• 1:51:55Jocko Willink?

  The mechanic's got a tune up.

• 1:51:56Speaker 02

  Her tune ups every once in a while.

• 1:51:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's weird, because all these things are, people, everyone listening can be like, oh, yeah, I,

• 1:52:03Speaker 02

  I have a little bit of that.

• 1:52:05Jocko Willink?

  I have a little bit of that, I have a little bit of this. Well, another one in this category was narcissistic.

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  Which, you know, when, when we work with leaders, you know, a lot of times, people that end up in leadership positions, they end up in leadership positions oftentimes because they were stepping up and they thought they could do the job. And if you can think you can do the job, that means you got a little bit of ego working. And if you got a little bit of ego working, sometimes that ego can start to expand beyond your own control. And you end up sometimes with people that are narcissistic. And what does that look like from like a clinical perspective?

• 1:52:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I think when you, you talk about this from like a clinical where you're ending up in treatment, it, it, it moves into a place where you have, um, you lose sight of, uh, I don't know if empathy is the right word, or like my impact on other people, like my focus becomes so much on like where I'm at, my, my, my vision, whatever I have going on. And, and somehow along the way, I've lost sight of like what I do, uh, impacts other people. And like my behavior has an impact on other people. And so that's on the very severe end. And I think when you're looking at the actual disorder itself, that word is thrown around a lot.

• 1:53:10Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:53:11Speaker 02

  Um, but, uh, where we've seen it often really looks like this person, uh, has, uh, become significantly self-focused, um, and really lose sight of how their behavior impacts other people.

• 1:53:24Jocko Willink?

  And they just don't care about anybody else.

• 1:53:25Speaker 02

  It, it would appear that way. I mean, I think what's really happening so much is that there's, the, the, the ego cannot tolerate any sort of feedback that would suggest like, wow, I, I might have hurt someone when I did that. Like, it, it's just so vulnerable. Like, it's actually this person, while they might appear like it doesn't matter to them, they're actually so sensitive and vulnerable that they've built up so many defenses in their psyche to not allow for any sort of feedback to crack through, an idea of like, oh, in fact, I could potentially fail. Or in fact, like I could, I do have the potential to hurt someone. It's like become so distorted in a way that they they can't even see that as a possibility. And so then I come across in my behaviors and such as very disregarding of others.

• 1:54:09Speaker 02

  These, a person with narcissist personality is very easily wounded with your words. They're not the person that you can give that sort of direct feedback to. They're so wounded, almost catastrophic to the relationship sometimes to be able to give feedback.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  And what you will see as opposed to some of the other personalities, just like the histrionic borderline and they're easily, easily wounded with words, very, very sensitive. But you're going to see somebody kind of melt down and cry. And oh, my gosh, I can't believe you said that to me. You know, like, like kind of collapse a little bit with narcissism.

• 1:54:46Jocko Willink?

  Lash out?

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  Lash out and like cut you off, out, gone.

• 1:54:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  Like can't, just cannot tolerate, like kind of being challenged.

• 1:54:53Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Cluster C, which is, which is anxious. This is when you get in the OCD, the obsessive compulsive. Let me hear a wild OCD story.

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. Let's see. I don't know if I have a good one to go.

• 1:55:12Speaker 01

  Well, I, I mean, several. And I think, like we said before, there's, people can have like kind of traits and like leanings and inclinations, and that's one thing versus it being at a, like a clinically significant level where you're like, your life, like you're having a hard time living your life. So somebody who's a little bit more extreme might be, like OCD might be, say, germs, right? So they don't, I don't want to touch doorknobs, shake hands, use public restrooms.

• 1:55:47Jocko Willink?

  How they fare during, during COVID?

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  They loved it.

• 1:55:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because they were just like, oh.

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  Social distancing, I don't have to touch anybody.

• 1:55:55Jocko Willink?

  The whole world.

• 1:55:56Speaker 01

  And you have to wear a mask in front of me?

• 1:55:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:55:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:55:58Jocko Willink?

  They were stoked.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  Those are the ones that are going to have a lot harder time socially engaging, taking risks, right? Like, the idea of, it's like, well, the only restroom here is a public room and you gotta go in there or hold it. Like, you know, that's going to be very distressing for somebody that leans a little bit more towards obsessions and compulsions.

• 1:56:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, what did COVID look like? Because I've done a couple of podcasts about deaths of despair during COVID. It's a nightmare.

• 1:56:34Jocko Willink?

  From your professional perspective, how bad was it?

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  I mean, it was significant because, I mean, already, especially when you're working with very complex psychiatric disorders, resources and like access to hospitals and such is always sort of an issue for our folks because, you know, there is certain criteria related to being able to get hospital support. Somebody has to be very sort of significantly regressed to be able to get hospital support if they need that and there oftentimes isn't that level of care that allows for that, like, sort of least restrictive setting in order to be able to support them outside of the hospital.

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  So does that mean that in order for me to go and get help, I needed to be in really bad shape, which means I'm in really bad shape?

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  Well, and that's in general for folks with mental illness. You need to be a danger to yourself or others and meet criteria, like significantly be a danger to yourself or others to be able to get that, you know, kind of inpatient hospitalization, unless you're willing to go on your own, which oftentimes when someone is in that state, they might not be. So then with COVID, obviously, access to resources and beds became significantly less. Then you have a significant more isolation, which is a huge risk factor for our folks. Isolation undoubtedly will increase, you know, symptoms of psychosis, depression, anxiety. Because, you know, when I go inside my head and I have this internal side of isolation, a lot can happen. And so just being in contact with other people, making eye contact with you, these things, they're like grounding to the person, so all of that is impacted. And then

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  How we had to do therapy shifted significantly. I mean, we moved from a residential setting where we're seeing people in person, we're going to outings together, we're meeting in groups together to like now I'm doing over the computer with you, with somebody who may have some significant psychosis around computer use, so they're not even going to get on the camera with you. So it just really impacted our ability to provide care during that time. And people responded, I think, you know, I can't speak for all settings, but you know, as best as they could during that time to be able to provide services and such, and maintain the level of services that people needed. It was definitely a really difficult time. And you know, telehealth is a super great option. It's not the best option for every client.

• 1:58:43Speaker 02

  You know, that in-person is so important. And a lot of times for our folks, because a lot of talk therapy is very cognitive, and if you're working with someone with a cognitive disorder or a thought disorder, you know, oftentimes your sessions look like going for a walk, or baking a pie together, or like something of that nature that really like we couldn't do so much during that time. Or if we did, it was, you know, an increased risk to the person and their health, especially during the time of COVID where we didn't really know too much about, right, what was happening and all these regulations came in and like you had to have all this distance and couldn't do these things. It impacted, it impacted a lot.

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

  And I think also seeing, especially for people who are, seemed like in that age range, like maybe middle school going into high school, like right, somewhere in there where a lot of social things are happening. Like your life is kind of socially driven, your friends, access to your friends, what everybody else is doing, you're growing up, maybe starting to think about college, things like that, where there was this instant, you know, kind of a halt. And people were not going to school and having to do their classes online and not seeing their friends. So I saw a lot, especially in the younger population, almost like an arrested development of, of social development. So now like, yeah, I have clients who are 20, 21, 22, but you're talking to them and you're like,

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  wow, you really sound like 16 or 17 years old right now. Like they kind of stalled out in the natural progression. I mean, my, my niece and my nephew, one was graduating college and one was graduating high school right when COVID happened. So like that May or whatever. So like, no graduations, no. You know, the pomp and circumstance that comes with these milestones and rites of passage in life, they didn't have those. They seemed to fare okay, but I think about all the folks that like, well, what did that mean for their lives? Or the sense of missing out on something important and not having had the same opportunities. And I saw a lot of anxiety, lot of anxiety,

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  depression, isolation, fear, so much fear. I actually was on a podcast a couple of weeks ago where we were talking about how people like, remember when we were able like going to the grocery store, like, you know, everyone's like head down and you're like not looking at anybody and don't get too close to that car. Like it was very like weird. And this like that stayed. Like the people weren't like, oh, hey, how's it going? Nice to see you. I haven't seen you in a couple of months and give you a hug.

• 2:01:15Jocko Willink?

  I was like that for about three days.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm going to the store.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  But it is still like that. I mean, some of that is still happening. So the fear, so when people, again, going back to that nervous system thing, right? So if people's fear is up here and I'm constantly on alert and watching and waiting and who's wearing their mask and who isn't, and you're not on the dot in the grocery store. Like, people are not using their brains. Like, they're not using these, the part of the brain that can be like, okay, it's chill, it's cool, we're fine, we're good. Because you're keyed up all the time. I think that is still happening. We have not seen the end of the effect of that.

• 2:01:50Speaker 02

  Well, and those who had a propensity towards anxiety prior were struggling through some of that. I mean, significant more damage. And then you saw it happen when there was the decision of could we take the masks on or off? And those who chose to keep it on and those who didn't, you know, it was very interesting when you would listen to folks' perspective on that. But oftentimes it felt, especially for some of the younger kids, protective to have that over the face in some ways. Very interesting impact.

• 2:02:15Jocko Willink?

  Man, that's, that's crazy. What about addiction? And it's funny because like you can get addicted to anything, apparently, right? Like, people get addicted to anything, but alcohol, opioids, cocaine, amphetamines, hallucinogens, PCP, like people, it's crazy.

• 2:02:38Speaker 01

  Anything and everything. Tik Tok.

• 2:02:40Jocko Willink?

  Tik Tok.

• 2:02:44Jocko Willink?

  Uh, let's jump to um PTSD. So you know, obviously in the veteran community PTSD has been a huge news story and it's had a really big impact on, you know, on a lot of people.

• 2:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I think, well, some people could actually use that kick in the ass that I talked about earlier, like, hey dude, yeah, you saw some bad stuff, you lost some friends, but it's time to move on. And I think some, some people need that sort of direction. I mean, we've been going to wars since the beginning of mankind. I mean, and you know, you look at the other wars that we've been through in America, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, these were incredibly horrific wars, as all wars are.

• 2:03:37Jocko Willink?

  When, when, when you guys look at PTSD, what do you think from a, from like a national perspective of where it's at, how it's being handled? Do you think it's being handled the right way? What could we do better?

• 2:03:55Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you're out there freaking with a, in a, in a foxhole with a pistol and a scorpion.

• 2:04:01Speaker 02

  I should write a book. That's the book title right there.

• 2:04:06Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm, I'm not a public health expert. I don't have the national kind of response to some of this. I mean, what I'll, what I'll say in my private practice specifically to veterans is that whether sort of real or imagined, the military or armed forces in general is doing a lot to try to address providing resources, early intervention when traumatic events occur, having people on site who are trained to be able to help support. I mean, there's a lot that's happening. But stigma, the notion of stigma is, is still very present with regard to what it means to have mental health issues. And so I often have both active duty and veterans find me in my private practice, knowing that I Was previous military, I think they feel a draw to me in that way, in that history,

• 2:04:51Speaker 02

  that I'm a safe person, coming to me, because it doesn't, in that environment, feel safe just yet to be able to talk openly about what's going on for me, because of, I mean, I think there's two really primary themes, which look like privacy, like will what I have to share stay private to me, or if I talk about this, will my medical officer then know, and now my CO knows, and now somebody's having a talk with me about something I shared, or this notion of retaliation, in some ways, because somebody heard a story from somebody, that they told someone they had depression, they were put on antidepressant, now they took my wings, which is like my whole identity. So whether these things are

• 2:05:32Speaker 02

  actually happening, it's still very much so part of the culture or suggestion of like, is it safe to like, talk about these things? And so, I think from that perspective, in terms of what we can do, is it's amazing, all of the resources that are being created and opportunities, I just recently read about, like, it's referred to as the SPRINT team, but it's essential, it's a special psychiatric unit, as part of the armed forces, where they come on site in response to like, a trauma or something, it's very awesome. But engagement in the resource is still a really important factor, especially for veterans who disengage from like, use of VHA services, or anything like that, so like, getting people to engage. And like, I, you know, what we know about engagement in general, is that

• 2:06:14Speaker 02

  like, that initial response to someone's willingness, and we talked about this earlier, to disclose or talk about what's going on for them, is critical, because it's going to shape whether or not they feel they can do that. And so I think engagement is huge, both in the active duty and veteran realm, and what we see with a lot of veterans, and why they usually end up finding me in private practice, not part of their insurance, or anything like that, is the privacy factor, but also, you know, when you're separating from the military, part of your access to resources, and disability, and these sorts of things, is directly connected to your service record, what was disclosed while you were in the military. And so, if I'm in a culture, real or imagined, or in my mind,

• 2:06:56Speaker 02

  I feel like this is not a place where I can talk about these things. So I've chosen not to, I've sort of white knuckled it, I've gotten through, I haven't shared a whole lot. Here I am, as a veteran, looking towards trying to get some services or disability, or maybe now I'm realizing I'm no longer in The structure of that military environment and so all this stuff is coming up for me that maybe the structure of that environment sort of kept at bay. And I'm being told, well, there's, there's nothing here to suggest in your record that anything significant happened to you. So you have to kind of convince me in some ways as to why you should get this disability percentage or why you should be treated for these. And the way it's looked at is based on, you know, PTSD or, um, uh, everything is broken down in parts.

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  Your back is one part, your PTSD, your mental health is one part, your, your arm is one part of that. And they're all looked at differently in that way. And so it puts a veteran in a position where they have to sort of now prove in some ways that they are deserving of this disability can be very re-traumatizing for someone who's maybe never shared about something that happened in the, a sexual assault or, um, something that happened to me while I was deployed or something that's sort of embarrassing or I hold a lot of shame about because I haven't really dealt with. Now I'm in this position where I have to sort of recount all this. I have to get these, um, character references for these things that happen and to sort of prove that I'm worthy of this disability, which then opens me up to a, these like resources in some ways. And so that part, um, you know, what we can do sort of like as a leader in an initial

• 2:08:23Speaker 02

  response to somebody, you know, a sailor coming to tell us something that's going on, um, how we react in that moment is huge because it's going to set the precedent for whether or not that person is going to re-engage, should something be going on for them or if it's a safe place to talk about the things that are going on. So, I mean, to answer your question a long way around, I don't know about nationally, like what we're doing, if it's the right thing to do, but I do know like engagement and all of the resources that are being put out there is, um, still an issue. And I, I read something from the, the, uh, Navy, like it was like a 2021 study around veteran suicide rates and all of these different things. And the suicide rate daily for those individuals who were engaged with the VHA was less than those who were not, right?

• 2:09:04Speaker 02

  So, um, engagement, uh, is a, is a really important factor in how do we keep people doing that. Well, I think, um, making sure that we understand how important privacy is to someone who's dealing with something like this, um, and, um, what the fear of retaliation, like will you take something that's important to me? Will you take my wings? Like, will you, you know, that, you know, these are people's full identity, you know? Will, will I lose my, will I lose my, my status, my spot as part of this group that I've been so connected to? Um, I see this a lot in folks coming through and, um, You know, special operations or things like that, like they're more likely to seek services in my experience, outside of um the military, out of fear of those two things.

• 2:09:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  being aware of what's going on in the world is such an advantage. And my basic example of that is if if you came to my house and I said, hey, I'm gonna scare you when you walk down the hallway. And then you walk down the hallway and I jump down and said, boo, you wouldn't be scared at all. If if I didn't tell you that and you came walking down my house and I jumped out of the, you know, out of the doorway and screamed at you, you'd be scared because that's what would happen. So being aware of what's going on just makes you so much more prepared for it. So I realized um in working with fighters and being in combat,

• 2:10:27Jocko Willink?

  you'd see like a new guy that was on his first deployment and you'd see him before an operation and you'd see he's really nervous. And you know, maybe feels like a little bit sick to his stomach. He's gone to the bathroom four times in the last 20 minutes and you're like, oh yeah, he's he's got a little bit of that, a little bit of those nerves going. And you say something to him like, hey, man, yeah, that's the fourth time you go to the bathroom. Are you all right? They're like, I'm fine. And you're like, hey, dude, it's fine. Like, you're nervous, you might get killed. It's no big deal to be a little bit nervous. And I go, oh, okay. Okay, it's okay. It's okay that you're nervous. You should be nervous. If you're not nervous, there's something wrong with you. And then so I took that and I actually used it when I was training mixed martial arts fighters because they, the same thing would happen.

• 2:11:10Jocko Willink?

  They'd they'd be going, you know, the night of the UFC or a few hours before. They're all nervous. You could see that they're nervous. But they don't know what it is. They don't know why they feel sick. So they think there's something wrong with them. So now they're now now they're freaking out. So you go, oh, you're hey, you just went to the bathroom for the ninth time in the last half an hour. You feeling a little nervous? And they go, no, I don't know what's wrong with me. Hey, what's wrong with you is you're getting ready to go into combat. You're getting ready to take some chances and that's your body getting ready, getting rid of all the stuff it doesn't need right now so it can focus on fighting. This is good. And they think, oh, okay. So that's what normal is. It's okay to feel like that. I had a guy on my on my podcast named Tom Fife, who was in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And he got a Purple Heart in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

• 2:11:56Jocko Willink?

  And I was asking him, he was a battalion commander in Vietnam. And uh, and so this was, you know, it'd been 55 or 60 years since he was in Vietnam. And I was asking him about, you know, what type of operations they were doing. And then I started asking him about what kind of casualties he took in his battalion. And as he started to address that, he started getting choked up talking about it. And I remember I'm sitting there thinking it's been 60 years for this guy. And he was a battalion commander and he lost guys and he still gets choked up about it. And because that'll happen to me, I'll be talking to someone about some of the guys that I lost and I'll get choked up. And I said to myself, oh, this is just the way it is and it's normal and it's okay.

• 2:12:42Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's a huge part that we missed out on and that we have missed out on is someone going, oh,

• 2:12:52Jocko Willink?

  I'm sad, there must be something wrong with me. And it's like, no, you're sad, you lost your friend and you lost your friend and now you feel sad. And that's what's, that's what you're going to feel like. And over time it'll dissipate a little bit and then it might come back. You know, it's another thing that I talked about, I talked about losing people and what you go through and what, what, and I went through this big dramatic description of being caught in a storm. And when you lose someone, when someone, when one of your friends dies, you're going to be hit with emotions that you can't control. And we as adults, we're not used to not being able to control our emotions anymore. That happens when you're, when you're five years old, it shouldn't happen when I'm 40.

• 2:13:35Jocko Willink?

  So my friend dies, all of a sudden I get hit with these emotions. I'm not in control anymore and I don't like that feeling and I think there must be something wrong with me. It's like, no, actually this is what's normal. You're getting hit with these emotions, but guess what? Eventually those wave, those waves of emotions will go away and you'll have a break.

• 2:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So then you think, okay, well then I'm fine. But then you get hit randomly, you see something, you hear a song, you smell something, you drive by whatever restaurant and you get hit with that emotion again. You don't notice this, but it's not quite as strong. And there's been a little space and over time, the, the, the strength of the emotional waves starts to lessen. And this is what I, I learned this for myself because I experienced it a bunch of times. And by the sixth or seventh or eighth time I was saying, oh yeah, this is that emotion that I'm going to feel right now. And I don't can't control it and I'm going to sit here and cry. And then I'm going to stop and then 20 minutes later, I'm going to be laughing. And that'll seem, it'll seem like I'm okay, but then a week later, I'll get hit with this other emotion again, this sadness and it'll knock me, knock me down.

• 2:14:38Jocko Willink?

  But it's going to lessen over time and it's going to dissipate. So I, I think a lot of this is people don't. People don't understand what's normal. And I think that everything I just said is totally normal. And now that I've told that to a bunch of people, yeah, this is what you're going to feel. They've been like, that's exactly what I felt. And, and so getting the word out about, yeah, oh yeah, you're going to feel sad. This doesn't mean you're depressed. It means you're sad. Your friend died, like that's a horrible thing. But it's okay to feel sad and it's okay in a little while. It'll dissipate. That's another thing people get caught up in is, oh, the strong emotions that I had are now dissipating.

• 2:15:17Jocko Willink?

  I must be, I didn't really care about him or I'm, I'm, I'm a bad person because, no, you're just processing it. And you're moving through this thing. So I think a lot of just the, you know, what you were talking about earlier, Carlin, of just. Not talking about things and I've been very lucky and I, and this is another thing I noticed about loss. Is when I would lose one of my friends, oftentimes I would be the person that would be giving a speech or one of the people that would be writing down. My feelings about the situation, about who this person was, about what they meant to me, about how awesome they were.

• 2:15:57Jocko Willink?

  I'd, I'd have to go through that trail mandatory because you're going to get up and you're going to talk, you're going to give a eulogy or one of the eulogies at someone's funeral. Someone's memorial service. So that's what you're doing. What a cathartic thing that turned out to be. Then I end up, when I get out of the Navy, I end up writing books and oftentimes these things are addressed in the books. And being on this podcast or going out and speaking to groups of people, guess what I'm doing? I'm telling a story over and over again. The same story about the same situation. And each time you tell it. You go, okay, you process it and it moves you further down that road and it helps you detach from it, not in a bad way, but in a good way, where you can be truly appreciative of the friend

• 2:16:42Jocko Willink?

  that you lost and say, yeah, it's horrible, but guess what? I had some good times. We had some great times. We had some incredible times and I'm gonna live a good life and not forget about them, but I'm not gonna dwell on the fact that they died. And by the way, guess what that means? That means I'm gonna die too. And everyone I know is gonna die. And I can't get caught up and dwell on that fact for so long. So it seems like those are the kind of things that I think we could do better is letting people understand what they're going through, letting them understand that it's normal. It's normal. It's normal to be like, oh yeah, oh, what's wrong with Jaco? He just heard a song and he's gonna go over there and cry for like eight minutes and just,

• 2:17:26Jocko Willink?

  then he's gonna be okay. And Jaco's not embarrassed by it. It's like, oh yeah, this song freaking bums me out sometimes. Okay, well, that's not abnormal. You lost one of your best friends. Okay, well, it's gonna be sad sometimes. And I think that's one thing that we can do better, and I try and do that as much as I can when we talk about these things on this podcast. But it also sounds like that's the kind of thing that you all would do with people as you talk them through issues that they've gone through in your life. Am I accurate?

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Well, and to speak to the example you gave with the gentleman, you noticed he was going to the bathroom. I mean, you also saw him, like you, you saw him. You saw he was struggling through something. You chose to engage, you chose to interact. And I think that that, you know, not just from the encouragement or the cognitive part of the conversation, but to see people, to notice them is huge. Because, you know, that could have gone completely unnoticed. And in his mind, he could have created a whole different narrative about everybody else seems to be fine and they're doing okay and they've got it together.

• 2:18:27Jocko Willink?

  They're all acting like they're fine.

• 2:18:28Speaker 02

  And I'm, and I'm different in some ways, you know, so to like, to see that person to make that eye contact.

• 2:18:35Jocko Willink?

  That's the scary thing. Like, I must be a coward. Oh my gosh, why is everyone walking around like a badass? And I'm sitting here like a coward.

• 2:18:41Speaker 02

  Yep. And in the absence of the communication or in the attunement that you gave him, like all kinds of things can happen. So that's huge.

• 2:18:49Speaker 01

  And I think with, especially in the treatment world and at Anew for sure, a lot of our clients come in, the ones who have been in the system for a bit, this is like not their first rodeo, there is that identity that has almost been adopted a lot of the times. Like, I'm schizophrenic, so I need to take these pills.

• 2:19:11Jocko Willink?

  You're cursed.

• 2:19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm cursed. I need to take these pills. Why are you taking them? I don't know. It's just what they give me, right? There's this kind of, when will my symptoms go away? Right? This, this lack of what you're talking about is like, it's totally normal that that's happening today. I get yesterday you felt great and today you woke up thinking these things that you weren't thinking yesterday.

• 2:19:35Speaker 01

  Yes, we're gonna move and march toward, what can we do about it? What can we do to help you feel better? Sometimes it's just going and having your cry over there and then come back on over. Totally fine. But the idea of validating is what, like you're talking about is like, yep, that's happening. I get it. And it sucks today and it may even suck tomorrow. You have schizophrenia. This might be something that you deal with on and off your entire life. But by doing these things, having it normalized, people being seen, people supporting versus, why are you doing that? Yeah. Over time, it gets less and less.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's what I was gonna say, but the little kid that asked me, like, I feel, I feel like I'm alone. Yeah, you're gonna feel alone. That's totally normal. Sometimes you're gonna be alone. Like, that's gonna happen. And when you're a teenager and you don't get invited to the party, you're gonna be bummed out. That's just normal. That's just like, oh, and when you're a teenager and your boyfriend or your girlfriend dumps you, yeah, you're gonna feel sad. And that's just the way you feel. And in a little while, you won't even remember who that person was and you'll carry on with the rest of your life. So, being aware of what's going on in these, these peaks and valleys of life, knowing that they're there is such a positive thing. And a lot of times, and I guess especially going back to social media, it's like, oh, if all I see on social media is everyone smiling and happy and looks, you know,

• 2:20:55Jocko Willink?

  like they're doing some awesome thing and I'm sitting at home in my room alone. Like, that's life. You're gonna be alone. You're gonna get dumped. You're not gonna get invited to the cool, cool guy party. All these things are happening. They're totally normal and you'll get through them. And they're not gonna be fun, but that's the way it is. We get, we get a lot of, uh... People that don't even recognize that this is the way life is. Well, actually, um, we were just talking the other day, you know, I, um, my friend Jordan Peterson will say, life is suffering. Right. And it's like a religious context. The Buddhist says life is suffering. And I was like, eh, you know, I get it. That's a good way. It's a good thing to know.

• 2:21:37Jocko Willink?

  It's a good thing to know that, that life, that in life there is suffering, right? But you don't have to go and say, life, all of life is suffering. There's gonna be some valleys, you know, there's gonna be some darkness. We get it, but it's not all of life. And you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna come out of that. You're gonna see some light. You're gonna have some fun. You're gonna, but then you're gonna get sucked down into some darkness again. And that's, that's what I think people don't, or what I think people need to understand is there's a cycle to life. And you're gonna have some good and you're gonna have some bad. And that's the same with everybody. No one is just basking in the, in the, in the sun and the warmth for their whole life. Unless you're only looking at them on Instagram, in which case they're doing it and they're doing it in a G-string bikini. That's the way they're doing it.

• 2:22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. And, and with PTSD, a lot of other things too, a lot of other, um, conditions or diagnosis. I mean, I've heard this so many times. We definitely hear it at the treatment center for people who've been maybe in an illness for a lot longer. So when is this gonna go away? When, when am I gonna not have this anymore? And this idea of like, it, it may not, kind of like with trauma, right? Every time you remember that buddy or hear that song, you're gonna have a little something show up. And yeah, is it less than before? Sure.

• 2:22:51Jocko Willink?

  Maybe.

• 2:22:52Speaker 01

  Your whole life, every time you hear that song, you might feel a little something going on there and that's okay. Like, that gets totally normal.

• 2:22:59Jocko Willink?

  I feel that when I hear the Star Spangled Banner.

• 2:23:01Speaker 01

  Yes, every time.

• 2:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Like when I hear the Star Spangled Banner, if I'm not careful, I'll get like, super emotional. From the start, and that's a song that you hear a lot, right?

• 2:23:10Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 2:23:11Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you're at every sporting event. So, yeah. And here's the thing, I guess in my own narcissistic mind, I thought, hey, that's normal and I'm, that's okay. It's okay. It's okay to feel like that.

• 2:23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:22Jocko Willink?

  This is the way things go. Where, you know, you mentioned, um, quickly there, you mentioned drugs and I just had a, a friend of mine on the podcast who by the time he went and saw, sought help in the Navy, using the SEAL teams. By the time he went and sought help, he got immediately prescribed something. By the time he got out a year or two later, he was on seven. Seven different um drugs. You know, this one to get you get you amped up for the day. This one to keep you level headed, this one to put you to sleep at night is like they're all counter to each other. And just just a disaster.

• 2:24:04Jocko Willink?

  At what point, where where where do these drugs come into play? Now, we he and I both acknowledged. And again, this is something that that I know from from talking and reading is absolutely. There's times like, oh, this person needs this specific drug to help them get through this situation. Where do you where do you all think these drugs come into play and what do we need to be careful of?

• 2:24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not a psychiatrist, so it's hard to speak to that part. But generally, when somebody's coming in on a bunch of different medications, you know, there's a there's a conversation about like, do you do you know what you're taking? Often ties with folks with complex psychiatric disorders, they they don't. Um, it's just this is what I was told to take, you know what it's treating? Um, how do you know that it's helping you and really starting to discern that? Because I mean, I think we. You know, and this my opinion in some ways, but in a culture of sort of instant gratification or seeking something outside of myself to soothe. You know, there there's a lot of benefit to various, you know, psychiatric medications. They can really help stabilize someone in a place where without otherwise, they might not be able to receive some of that treatment.

• 2:25:12Speaker 02

  Um, and at some point assessing like, why I use this, I think is really important, right? Do I use it because I think it's going to fix or take this thing away? I think this would apply to not just a prescription drug, but any kind of substance. You know, why do I drink? Do I do because I enjoy a glass of wine at night or whatever may be? Or do I drink to alter my mood? Do I change this to alter my mood in a way because I don't feel like I can do this independently or on my own? So I think assessing why. Someone is using the various amount of things and their understanding of it. And, you know, one of the things, the benefits of being able to do long-term treatment in a structured environment is it gives us an opportunity to sort of unpack some of these things, obviously, with the support of a psychiatrist and somebody, you know, who's medical overseeing their care,

• 2:25:54Speaker 02

  to see, you know, what in fact is this actually treating at this point? Is it helpful? And if it is, great. But also too, does it take us out of the role of like the work? Because, you know, therapy is hard work. Like, people might think therapy is a soft place to come and whatever. Therapy is hard work. Someone who commits to therapy is really willing to do some work. I mean, unless you're in a place where somebody's just like buttering you up and giving you compliments all day long, but when you come to do therapy, you come to do work, especially in a residential treatment center, you're not just receiving all these things. But medications often is this notion of like, I'm just taking this thing. There's no, it's very different than the amount of effort that's involved in walking through a very difficult situation.

• 2:26:37Speaker 02

  Or if I'm afraid of something in particular, I haven't gone to address some of this unresolved grief or, you know, whatever it may be, you know, engaging in that behavior is very difficult. It's going to bring up a lot of feelings. And, and walking through that can be incredibly healing. A very different approach than if I'm choosing to just take something to get rid of something.

• 2:26:59Speaker 01

  Well, I think there's like an agency thing, which I think shows up in a lot of your work. I mean, even just what you've shared today. Is people say like, oh, I, I'm feeling so much, I'm going to call my psychiatrist, I'm going to call the doctor. I need to, I need something for this, is very external. One instant gratification, but also this, whether the person's aware of it or not, this idea that like, I don't believe in my ability to manage myself. I need you to give me something to feel better. And a lot of the longer-term work in therapy, definitely in our program, because it's so, it's longer term, is this idea of helping people internalize agency versus just rely on external things to like make them be okay.

• 2:27:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that seems like a basic principle of success in life.

• 2:27:43Speaker 01

  But you'd be amazed with people with some of these complex psychiatric diagnoses that that's the, the sense of personal agency is so low. Whether it's like, I just take these pills because my psychiatrist says I'm supposed to, or my mom says I need to, versus like, do you know what, what are you taking? Or having conversation with your doctor about. Side effects or whatever, but the sense of I don't have, I don't have what it takes to manage myself and my situation and the demands of life.

• 2:28:14Jocko Willink?

  That's a horrible mindset.

• 2:28:15Speaker 01

  Horrible, and it's very, very common with, with mental illness.

• 2:28:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I mentioned, I, I talked about SSRIs on some other podcast and, and, you know, I read through the comments and, you know, there was definitely some people that were like, hey, you know, these things really helped me and there was, of course, you're gonna get that side and you, of course, got the side of like, oh, that, that stuff was a disaster for me. The side effects, when you, when you read the side effects, you're like, oh, my God, you know, like emotional blunting, violence, bipolar switch, suicide risk from the medicine that you're taking. So there's definite risks need to, that needs to be paid attention to. The other side of the spectrum, as far as I'm concerned, is

• 2:29:00Jocko Willink?

  something that you, you already mentioned, Carlin. What about just like sleep, diet, and exercise? How often are we, how often are we blowing that?

• 2:29:13Speaker 01

  Often. Often. Often. I mean, it is amazing when, when we bring folks into the, the program, we try and set aside like kind of the first month, give or take, it may take longer, because this person maybe has not been sleeping well at all, not eating well, like maybe they've been using, maybe they haven't. Poor hygiene. Caffeine, smoking, I mean, you name it. So just like getting somebody eating well and on a regular basis, getting some physical exercise, getting like their sleep hygiene in order. Structuring some habits throughout the day. You would be amazed how much changes just in that little period of time. And we've talked with folks that, and this is also related to the meds, is sometimes when people

• 2:29:56Speaker 01

  have, they're seeing multiple doctors, or they go in and they see a different doctor every time. And who and they may not be coordinating, so you're just getting all kinds of meds and things that may not even really go together. So same with diagnoses. We've had folks come in with a laundry list of diagnoses. I'm like, you can't even have half of those at the same time. Like, but these were all little snapshots of, oh, this trip to the ER and this trip to the hospital. Like, this is what they looked like that day, and that's what they look like this day. It doesn't mean they have all of those things. So let's get them eating and sleeping and in a routine and comfortable, showering, like all the things, the basic psychological and physical wellness and safety. And guess what? Almost all of these diagnoses

• 2:30:40Speaker 01

  go away. Maybe we're left with like these couple right here.

• 2:30:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was on, I was on Joe Rogan's podcast and it was, it was the morning of Chris Cornell from, from Soundgarden had killed himself. And of course, you know, Joe and I started talking about it. And look, we're just a couple of knuckle draggers talking. But you know, both of us were kind of like, man, you know, like, get a kettlebell to work out. Like, you know, again, like I said, we're, we're just a couple knuckle draggers talking. And, you know, again, reading the comments, people like, oh, you know, you think just working out is going to solve everything. And of course, I don't think that. But damn,

• 2:31:24Jocko Willink?

  it's a good thing to do. Go get healthy. Get on a sleep schedule where you're doing, like where you're getting some good sleep. Eat good food. Stop eating trash. Go outside. Move around. This is real, right?

• 2:31:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, it's both and. I mean, because without the structure that we create, the therapeutic process that we try to do is not possible. Like, without the routine, without the sleep, without the healthy eating, can't actually do that therapeutic part. So there's a lot that can happen in that initial structure and physical activity and all this. And for those folks with those clinical aspects that require a deeper level of like therapeutic intervention or psychiatric support. That's the framework that has to maintain that never changes. That structure and stability is the main component that sort of holds the foundation for everything else to be able to be possible. So it's definitely, you know, with any sort of complex human issue, you can't say that one thing is going to solve anything.

• 2:32:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:32:21Speaker 02

  But that is undoubtedly the foundation for which all else sort of occurs for our folks and becomes the thing that they maintain long term. When they move into their own houses, they're still getting up at a certain time. They might pick their day that they go grocery shopping. They might, because that structure and routine is very helpful.

• 2:32:39Jocko Willink?

  Human beings like that, don't we? And when you live without it, it's just the beginning of possible, serious issues. Now, here's another thing that I talked about on a podcast. This was around mass shootings. And as myself and my friend Daryl were looking into the various causes behind these mass shootings, one of the most shocking pieces of information that we came across is this right here. So in 1955, in America, there were 340 inpatient beds per 100,000 people.

• 2:33:21Jocko Willink?

  So I'm gonna say that again, in 1955, 1955, for every 100,000 people there were in America, there were 340 inpatient beds for mental health care.

• 2:33:35Jocko Willink?

  Now, here we are, you fast forward to 2007. In 2007, there were only 17 beds for every 100,000 people. And here we are, we talk about mental health all the time. Now, some of the feedback that I got about that episode was that in the 50s and 60s, there were these really heinous, some really heinous events that happened inside these psychiatric wards and people were abused. And they pretty much, from everything I can tell, threw the baby out with the bathwater and just said, oh, you know what, we're just gonna shut these things. Abuse happens in these places, we'll shut them all down.

• 2:34:23Jocko Willink?

  I I think about like, you know, I live in San Diego. I think about what there's a couple million people in San Diego. That means that there would be a few thousand inpatient beds if we were on the 1955 levels. And if you go around San Diego and you go look at the homeless people, many of whom have psychological and mental health issues. If you opened up all those beds, they would probably fill them and we'd be in a much different place and these people would be getting some kind of treatment that they actually need. What what do you think happened with this? Is it just the the abuses that took place? We shut them down? What is there anything else?

• 2:35:02Speaker 02

  I mean, there's a there's a lot to this. I mean, you're talking about the deinstitutionalization. Like, I mean, some of this started even back into the 1700s, but there there's like at the time, in the time that you're referring to, primarily residential facilities is where folks would be able to take their loved ones with mental health, right? So if people had mental health issues, they went into these residential facilities. And that's where they primarily receive treatment or just a place to stay. And then as that evolved, you know, sometimes I think the term asylum came along at some point, this became a place where people could stay and also work and such and they were having, you know, but what was really happening on the inside was a pretty restrictive setting in some ways. And then there was some, you know, people that had gone in and saw, you know, all this horrific stuff that was happening.

• 2:35:47Speaker 02

  And so ultimately, all of these sort of things moved towards this idea that a person is entitled to like the least restrictive settings. And there's a lot of stuff that happened over the course of the period of time for this, but that a person should not be chained up, they should be entitled to the least restrictive setting. And so then you also had the the notion then coming in of SSDI and SSI and these different things that started reform as federal movements, but people

• 2:36:10Jocko Willink?

  What's SSDI?

• 2:36:11Speaker 02

  So it's social security disability income or social security income that came from like a federal movement. So this part where people who are in inpatient facilities at the time were not entitled to those resources. And so sort of forced this max set of Exodus is discharge from hospitals for them to be able to receive these services. And what you find at that time, then it also, some of the states created some laws that made it much more difficult for people to readmit to inpatient settings, right? So the the notion was good, this idea that people will do better in the community, they'll do better in a least restrictive setting. Let's create these resources like SSDI and such like that for them. However, it sort of flipped its on its head in terms of the amount of resources that the community wasn't ready to absorb that. So what we saw is sometime in some states,

• 2:36:55Speaker 02

  I think California, I can't remember the year, but in the year of sort of discharge of hospitals out into, we saw the jail population double in California and the homeless population go by. They think, what I recently read is something around like 65% of the jails are full of people with mental health issues.

• 2:37:14Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to a police officer a month, month and a half ago, and he was just, he had heard that podcast and he's like, "Yeah." He goes, "I 100% have to arrest people and there's no possible way that they belong in jail. They belong in some kind of a mental health facility and there's nowhere to take them. So guess where they go? They go to jail."

• 2:37:36Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 2:37:37Jocko Willink?

  Or, or they don't go anywhere, you know, or they just get, you know, they might get, go into jail for two nights and then they get kicked out, back out on the street and they're just deteriorating.

• 2:37:46Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, and if you read about this, I mean, depending on where you come from, congressman, rulemaker, they're gonna say financial stuff, whatever, like everybody had sort of a different rationale as to, you know, why deinstitutionalization, the outcome. But ultimately, what we know is that we didn't know anything really around that time around complex psychiatric illnesses. It was just in the mid 50s at the first, like the 1950s, antipsychotic drug was released. Prior to that, it was, you know, people with mental illness, like they'd never be cured, right? There was the myth of mental illness. We didn't know too much about it. And so I think Thorazine was the first antipsychotic that came out in the 1950s. And so at that point, it was like, "Oh, well, people can get better." And that was a very also pivotal movement in the deinstitutionalization of people that historically had been able to be seen as like they just will always need

• 2:38:31Speaker 02

  to live in some type of facility. It became, oh, we can like do something with this. And today, obviously, there's, there's tons of different things. But yeah, it definitely had an impact on our homeless and jail population.

• 2:38:43Jocko Willink?

  Is there any movement back in the other direction at all?

• 2:38:48Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't know too much to speak to that part, but what I will say about like Anu and what Humble Chia had been for a very long time is it's a very unique model of care that allows for a full continuum of care where people can have like a residential setting sort of right out of the hospital for a long-term period of time and then fluidly move through transitional residential for a person to be able to kind of integrate what they need and then also to be able to move back into that inpatient setting if they need to and instead of sort of this pattern of I end up in the hospital, I get discharged to either home environment or a place that's just not conducive for me to be able to integrate that treatment episode, I'm out in the streets or I'm not receiving the care I need until

• 2:39:30Speaker 02

  I regress again, then I get back in the hospital and utilize all these emergency services. And our model of care really allows people to stay long-term in a way that they can move fluidly through this and avoid really moving into the hospitalizations. But it's also, it's a private pay model. Insurance is not going to pay for that for folks, right? Because, and so folks who are primarily dependent on insurance and such like that will find themselves in more short-term environments.

• 2:39:57Speaker 01

  Kind of like crisis intervention environments, which just, it creates kind of a revolving door, right? I'm in crisis, I come in here for a couple of days, a couple of hours, maybe a week, stabilize, get out. There's nothing available for me once I'm out, so I deteriorate and then I come back.

• 2:40:16Speaker 02

  Or I end up in jail because oftentimes people with mental illness.

• 2:40:19Speaker 01

  Versus, like the idea with deinstitutionalization was this idea of people having more rights, more agency, being out in the community, not being locked up, but then, so kind of released to nothing that could hold them. So like what you were saying, Megan, is a lot of our clients come in from a hospital or like...

• 2:40:43Speaker 01

  Could have been in one, maybe they've been maintained at home, but like not, not well. And it takes, it's like this whole arc. It takes a long time to stabilize all the stuff we just talked about with sleep and food. Before we can even get into the nitty gritty of like, what is going on here and what needs to happen? Let's get you off these 14 meds. Let's figure out what was really happening. Like this takes a long time. So the idea was nice. It was like kind of a humane idea. But the, the, the out, outside world was not equipped to receive all of these folks and, and actually help them. So they got worse, deteriorated in their symptoms and then they're getting arrested, they're getting picked up. You know, you go to a, um, drop them off at some emergency room. They'll sit in the lobby for a day or two.

• 2:41:27Speaker 01

  Get, get some meds. There's your meds again and they're out. So.

• 2:41:31Jocko Willink?

  So I, I would think that the long-term hope is that this model of treatment, which right now is basically for people that can afford it and it's expensive. Is that over time, people start to recognize this should be a, number one, a type of treatment that should be covered by insurance. And number two, at some point it gets to a, a situation where the public, there can be some public offering of treatment centers like this. But it's gotta be proven for even more. I mean, you've already been doing this for how long, Carlin?

• 2:42:05Speaker 01

  Twenty-five years.

• 2:42:06Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-five years. You've seen incredible successes over those twenty-five years. And yeah, I mean, I, I, I hope that as people hear this, as people learn more about the methodology that you're using. First of all, like just other people in the private sector will pick up this type of model and start moving with it. And then eventually insurance hopefully starts to cover it. And then eventually we start saying, oh, these, you know, these, these homeless people on the street that have psychological problems. The worst thing we could do is take them, throw them into prison for, or throw them into jail for two days, and kick them back on the street. We're just gonna do that. It's a never-ending cycle. To get back to a point where, look, do we wanna have people chained up to walls and having lobotomies and having electroshock therapy?

• 2:42:50Jocko Willink?

  No, obviously, we don't. That's horrible. And I owe an episode on some of those, um, some of those horror shows that have taken place in the past. But to get to a point where there's only seventeen beds per hundred thousand people, I mean, you take a hundred thousand human beings with all the fragility of someone's brain and mind, and you think you're only gonna need seventeen inpatient beds, that's a crazy thought, and yet, that's where we're at. So, what my hope is, is this model that you all are executing starts to be seen as the way to actually help people, and it can broaden beyond, you know, people that can afford this type of treatment,

• 2:43:34Jocko Willink?

  because this type of treatment is very expensive. And, and we can, number one, get insurance to cover it, and number two, hopefully eventually get it to a point where a model like this can be used on a broader public scale, um, that, that the state can pay for if people need it.

• 2:43:50Speaker 01

  And, yeah, like affordable and accessible. And by the way, I just wanna pause, because you have been a great support to us. I mean, not only in the Anew Treatment Center, but in our previous facilities. So, like you said in the beginning, coming in is like, God, just I'm gonna invest some money here, some guys. But you know, what your contribution and your involvement in that and staying involved, I think, what, seven, eight, nine years with our group, has helped make this, this possible. Um, so, thank you. Yes, absolutely. And, um, but that would be my hope too, right, is, is, um, what are the, you know, if you look at any National Institute for Mental Health or CDC, one in five people has, is considered having like kind of a, a mental health experience.

• 2:44:34Speaker 01

  One in twenty is considered as having like a serious mental health diagnosis or condition. One in twenty, so I don't know the math, and a hundred thousand people, how many does that turn out to? And we got seventeen beds. I mean, it's, it's, it's insane.

• 2:44:50Jocko Willink?

  Yep, it's horrible. Um, probably a good place to wrap it up. Um, what, what, did we miss anything?

• 2:44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, the one thing I was thinking about earlier, and you had mentioned scaffolding. And again, I think this like goes with a lot of your work is my understanding, Jaco, is this idea of there is a need for external scaffolding. Like you said earlier, people like, do they like, they don't really want to be there. Nope, they don't. And at the beginning, that's totally fine. We're gonna like scaffold them up because internally they're kind of jiggly and not really set, right? So we're gonna hold them until things can kind of firm up a little bit. And over time, as they're building, we pull the external scaffolding back because what is happening theoretically is internally, their internal scaffolding is is taking shape and taking hold. So it's very much about helping people

• 2:45:42Speaker 01

  access their own agency, their own strength, normalizing and saying, yep, I get it today. You know what? Today is just a rough one. That's fine. Nothing is wrong with you. We're just having one of those days. And help them to develop that internal confidence and agency of like self-management, even when you have an illness, even if you have PTSD, even if you lost your friend.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, this is the title of the book that I wrote, Discipline Equals Freedom. It's the exact same thing, right? I mean, it's like you put the disciplines in in your life around waking up, around sticking to a structure, around going to get groceries, around showering, which you mentioned, and you mentioned it like very quickly, you said, you know, showering. But you get people that aren't showering. That's an issue, right? So we got to have the discipline to get up, to stay on a schedule, to eat good foods, to shower, to brush our teeth. And once we get that kind of scaffolding, that kind of discipline in place, then it becomes internal, it becomes self-discipline, and now we can get more and more freedom as time goes on.

• 2:46:42Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 2:46:43Jocko Willink?

  What are some good tactics, techniques, and procedures for getting someone to want to help themselves? So I, you know, I got a family member, they, you know, they're not dealing with reality, or they're, they're, they're starting to show some of these signs. What's, what's a step to take? That might be helpful. So like I have a book called Extreme Ownership and people would say like, "Well, how do I get my boss to read it?" And the worst thing you can do is go to the boss and say, "Hey, boss, you need to read this book." You know, so we say, "Oh, you go and say, 'Hey, boss, I read this book. It really helped me out a lot. I'm trying to hold myself to these standards. Can you just look at it and if you see me slipping, can you tighten me up?" You know, a little indirect approach.

• 2:47:24Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any recommendations around what to do and maybe some recommendations of what not to do?

• 2:47:30Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think with your example, consistency is huge and patience too, because oftentimes like we want people to move at the level of our ability to tolerate what's going on for them. And it's very uncomfortable to see someone struggling. It's very uncomfortable to see someone so hopeless. You're hearing their narratives. You're like, "What? Where are you even thinking at?" And often, we want them to move faster than they're ready to move. But what you're describing with the framing around the book is we plant seeds. We create as much structure and consistency as we can. We plant seeds. We help people to kind of be thinking about and, you know, how this will impact them. But every day, it's the sort of same conversation until they get it and sort of a loving approach with them until they get it and being able to tolerate what comes up for me when somebody isn't moving at the pace

• 2:48:14Speaker 02

  that I want them to. Because when we're talking about, you know, somebody who needs a little pick-me-up, that turnaround might be a lot quicker than somebody with a chronic sort of complex disorder. And in that case, like, it might take days or months before that person gets up and goes showers on their own. So can I deal with my own frustration, right? Can I deal with my own sense of like helplessness and like sense of powerlessness or even inadequacy and not being able to like shift? Like, all these things come up for someone when you're loving somebody through something like this. But consistency is huge and then remembering that you're not hurting someone by trying to hold them in their own discomfort, right? So if somebody is uncomfortable, but you're helping move them through something that's good for them, you're not hurting them.

• 2:48:56Speaker 02

  Actually, their experiencing that discomfort is going to be really helpful for them. It's a very loving thing to do. It's a conversation I have with parents often about this notion of like hurting in some ways when my child is experiencing discomfort. No, in fact, experiencing discomfort in this thing is actually really Motivating. Yes, and amazing for them. And it's a super loving thing to do.

• 2:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I think it's important to, you know, when I talked about, oh, it's it's normal to go and like, hey, you're sad, that's normal. Hey, you feel down when you hear this song, that's normal. Hey, it's also normal if you've got a kid or a relative that's having some issues, that you take them to the engine shop to get checked out and see what's going on. Like, this is also a normal thing. So I think that's another stigma to punch through. Anything we should not do, any any warnings like, hey, that that's not a good approach? When you're trying to get someone to help themselves?

• 2:49:54Speaker 01

  Well, I think like some of the examples you used earlier, and even like when the kids call and ask you questions, is like the not the shaming stuff. Like you said, like, well, what a mom who is going to say something like, like, well, why are you doing that? Like, those kind of things aren't typically helpful because nobody wants to be ill. Nobody wants to have PTSD. Nobody wants to have these symptoms. So even on the surface, if it looks like, why on earth would you do that? They're not doing it to like be difficult or willful or to make themselves, you know, worse. So it's easy, it's part of the stigma to move into kind of a shaming. Why? Why did you do that? Like, that's that's ridiculous. Or you you know better than that. Like this kind of thing.

• 2:50:36Speaker 01

  They, I mean, people will sink, right? They kind of cower and sink into that. And in some ways, might even come to believe that I'm weak, I'm incapable, I'm stupid, I'm whatever, which is going to suck the sense of agency. So encouragement, still tough law. I mean, it's a blend of all these things. Like, I'm going to be kind and respectful, also a little bit firm, also let you know that I absolutely believe in you. And so we're going to get up right now and we're going to do this thing, even though I know you feel really sad.

• 2:51:06Speaker 02

  Well, and I would say to not disregard your own intuition, especially when we're talking about suicide, because there's such a There's also could be a self stigma in some ways and so if your intuition has you wondering about something or something seemed off with them or oftentimes we can talk ourselves out of that, oh, we don't step into other people's business, that's somebody else's kid, or it's not my place to do that, or you know, maybe if I bring this up, it'll make it worse for them, you know, and so I think trusting our intuition is huge if there's a pull in some ways to check in with somebody or ask them how they're doing, or you notice something that feels off, can't tell you how many times, especially when we're working in a peer-supported environment, because we're trying to get folks when we're bringing them into this like pousing and they're living together to sort of notice each other and take care of each other, create their own community and friendships.

• 2:51:51Speaker 02

  When we see something go kind of sideways with someone, or they regress significantly, or something happens, and you start asking their peers, sort of what was going on, oftentimes they noticed something, but their intuition talked them out of it, they'll be mad at me if I hold them accountable, you know, I didn't tell everybody when I didn't see that they were up for meds, because I didn't want to like kind of call them out, or whatever it might be, and so I think that, you know, trusting our intuition with that and like really checking in with people and asking important questions, and working through our own fears that we have related to addressing some of these things are, is super important.

• 2:52:23Speaker 01

  And your example of like, like, hey, that's like the fourth time you went to the bathroom in the last half an hour, right? Imagine, like you were saying, if you hadn't said that, like what that person would have done in their head and how that would have, so I think one of the advice, like it's both is say something, say something, call it out, ask a question, hey, like, again, the person might say, oh, I'm good, I'm good, don't worry about it, okay, but at least you saw them and they experienced you seeing them.

• 2:52:47Jocko Willink?

  They saw that, you saw them.

• 2:52:48Speaker 01

  Versus like that blind eye, I mean, I think the turning the blind eye, not saying the thing, keeping the secrets, under the rug is the worst.

• 2:52:57Jocko Willink?

  I, from a leadership perspective, I always often talk about asking earnest questions and how that's a great indirect way to let people know that you are watching and that you're interested, and the key word is earnest. It's not like, hey, I noticed, you know, you've been sad lately. What's, what's wrong with you, which is an accusatory question as opposed to being like, you know, hey, hey, uh, what are you doing this weekend? Like an earnest question. That's an earnest question. What are you doing this weekend? I'm not doing anything. Oh, well, what about next weekend? I'm not doing anything. Do you want to do something? Like, do you want to go catch a movie? You know, so like these kind of earnest questions are a good way to interact with people without being accusatory.

• 2:53:41Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and they might be like, yeah, you know, I, no, I haven't been doing much lately because I've, you know, I've been sick for the last few weeks and I'm just going to heal up and you go, okay, cool. In which case, cool.

• 2:53:50Speaker 02

  Great.

• 2:53:50Jocko Willink?

  You can carry on.

• 2:53:51Speaker 02

  They, they know, they saw you notice them.

• 2:53:53Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:53:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, we talk about it as being curious as opposed to accusatory, approaching everything with a certain level of curiosity. It'll take you a long way.

• 2:54:00Jocko Willink?

  That will do it. Um, Megan, any closing thoughts?

• 2:54:05Speaker 02

  Thank you. Having us be here. Extremely grateful to be a part of this. And yes, I mean, I think in terms of the work that we do, it takes a special type of person to be, to be able to have this conversation, to talk about this, to, to work with this population, to be a part of it. And, and you're definitely a part of that. So thank you.

• 2:54:23Jocko Willink?

  Glad to be here, Carla. Anything else?

• 2:54:25Speaker 02

  Same. Thank you for your support.

• 2:54:27Jocko Willink?

  If anybody wants to find you, the, the latest and greatest, the new treatment center is called A New. It's a good play on words you did there. A new treatment center dot com.

• 2:54:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54:40Jocko Willink?

  You're on Instagram. So you're on social media.

• 2:54:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54:43Jocko Willink?

  With some positivity.

• 2:54:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54:44Jocko Willink?

  That's at A Anew Treatment Center. You're on Facebook, you're on LinkedIn, and you're on YouTube. You got your own little YouTube channel going on.

• 2:54:53Speaker 02

  I've been running. A little bit of social media, but I'm really glad that's happening.

• 2:54:56Jocko Willink?

  I, and all those are at A Anew Treatment Center. And I was, uh, I was thinking YouTube should do a little podcast, by the way. I'm just going to let you know that. You should do it. You should talk about like some cases that you see because people will be interested in it. I think it would be very educational. And, um, I know I always laugh because Joe Rogan told me to start a podcast. And at the time I was like, oh, you know, it's pretty cool. And then you realize Joe Rogan, literally at one point in time, Joe Rogan told everyone on his podcast to start a podcast because he was super stoked on podcasts.

• 2:55:28Speaker 02

  Well, he knew he was gonna get it right in one way or the other.

• 2:55:31Jocko Willink?

  And a bunch of people, a bunch of people have started podcasts, but certainly him and Tim Ferriss both told me to start a podcast and I listened to him. But um, I think that if you broke it down and did some podcasts about some of the things that you see, I think it would really be helpful for people. And uh, would be cool. Um, so there you go. That's my little, my, my little recommendation and thanks for joining us. Um, thanks for educating us. Thanks for trying to educate me. I know it can be challenging sometimes. Uh, Megan, of course, thanks for your service in the Navy and uh, thanks to both of you for what you're doing today. To help heal people, help get people to a point where they can live productive and happy lives. And, and by the way, if there's any one out there right now that's listening, um,

• 2:56:16Jocko Willink?

  you might not feel great today. And you might need to uh, bring the car into the shop and get that thing looked at. And figure out what's going on. Nothing wrong with it. It's gonna make you better. Thanks for doing that, both of you.

• 2:56:33Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:56:33Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate it.

• 2:56:36Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Megan and Carlin have left the building and Echo Charles has returned. Good evening, Echo.

• 2:56:43Speaker 03

  Good evening.

• 2:56:45Jocko Willink?

  So you were sitting there listening.

• 2:56:46Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:56:47Jocko Willink?

  You've been taking the uh, what the kinda off-camera approach last two podcasts. You've been sitting there observing detached.

• 2:56:56Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:56:57Jocko Willink?

  Lot going on there, isn't there?

• 2:56:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:56:59Jocko Willink?

  Lot going on in the, in the mental health world.

• 2:57:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, it's really, it's like a slippery scenario, right? Because just like how you get, it's a spectrum. It's not like, oh, you're the, you know, like you. Compared to your body. So if you break your arm.

• 2:57:16Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:57:16Speaker 03

  It's like, oh yeah, broken arm.

• 2:57:17Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:57:17Speaker 03

  Or maybe you got a fractured arm.

• 2:57:19Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:57:20Speaker 03

  And that's sort of, it's kind of a distinct thing. Well, fractured, protocol.

• 2:57:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:24Speaker 03

  Broken, stress fracture. Okay. A spiral fracture. Okay. You know, kind of a thing.

• 2:57:29Jocko Willink?

  Pretty limited. Like as far as a bone break.

• 2:57:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:57:32Jocko Willink?

  You're kind of, there's a pretty specific protocol you're gonna follow.

• 2:57:37Speaker 03

  Handful of things.

• 2:57:38Jocko Willink?

  It's pretty easy to diagnose, right? The spectrum isn't this weird, it's the, you know, there's cards are gray, you know? Maybe this bone, compound fracture, or whatever. Like, there's some differences.

• 2:57:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:57:47Jocko Willink?

  But we know that a broken bone is a broken bone. Here's how we fix it.

• 2:57:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then that's not, okay, and then compared to the mental part where it's like, it's just, it's, it's this spectrum and you can fall anywhere on the spectrum.

• 2:57:58Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, you do fall on. Like, we all fall on.

• 2:58:00Speaker 03

  That's what makes it even double.

• 2:58:01Jocko Willink?

  That's what makes it interesting. That's what really, that's part of what makes it interesting to me is like, oh, you're a little bit of a narcissist. I'm a little bit of a narcissist. I'm a little bit paranoid. You're a little bit, how paranoid are you? Are you good paranoid? Cause there's a certain level of paranoia. Like, someone that's not paranoid at all is just like going through life. They could just gonna get taken advantage of. You gotta be somewhat paranoid.

• 2:58:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:58:20Jocko Willink?

  So just like the dichotomy of leadership, like the dichotomy of your mental, uh, status is, has to be balanced.

• 2:58:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, and that's so, it makes it so clear how helpful it is to understand and inversely, kind of to express that to people who might be in a certain situation, that like, hey, that's, that's normal. Like, there's nothing quote unquote, wrong. That's normal, you know? And, um, so, and that's what makes it even harder too. Where it's like this bad thing, this thing that I don't want, you know, like you break your arm, something that you hurt, your arm will say, you hurt your, before you go to the doctor or whatever. You know something's wrong. Like, this thing is hurting. It's not getting better, whatever. Let me go to, I know something's wrong. So mentally, you're gonna feel sad for two days or whatever you feel. You have these feelings for two days that are normal.

• 2:59:11Speaker 03

  So it's like harder to, you know, after a while, it's like, maybe if I'm behaving in a certain, it's like certain symptoms have to kind of arrive or arise along with the feeling. And it's all like, and if you don't know, you don't know, you know, so it's like just so slippery like that.

• 2:59:24Jocko Willink?

  I took down a note during catch 22, which, which, which basically means, cause even with, with Marcus and Amber on the last podcast, I was kind of like, you know, I feel fine and like, I don't think I need anything, right? So I'm telling them, and then these guys show up today. These girls show up today, these women show up today, and I kind of tell them the same thing, you know, before we get in here, I'm like, you know, I, I feel like, you know, I'm fine, but then it, one of the, one of the like notifications of when you're crazy is when you don't think you're crazy, right? So I'm like, oh, I'm that guy that doesn't think he's crazy, but I'm actually totally crazy. So I thought that was kind of funny as I was thinking through that. I was like, wait a second, I'm the guy that's sitting here. I'm fine. But I'm actually crazy.

• 3:00:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 3:00:08Jocko Willink?

  So gotta watch out for that one.

• 3:00:09Speaker 03

  Yes. And we all know people, maybe not a lot, but we know people who are like, they obviously routinely do things that are just, you shouldn't be doing that. And they're like, no, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. Absolutely fine. So you're like, man, am I that guy? Just not knowing all the things that I'm doing. That's not fine, you know?

• 3:00:31Jocko Willink?

  So gotta watch out for it, but what a, what a fascinating world. And as I was doing research for that podcast, and we only got to so much, I mean, there's so every one of these things. When you open it up, I mean, there's a story and like a whole world behind being paranoid and what a really paranoid, being anorexic, what a real, what that looks like. Like there's a whole world behind each one of these. That's what's, that's what's interesting, interesting, like compared to, you know, an orthopedic surgeon, like sure, there's a bunch of different things that can go on with a broken arm or with whatever, right? But you know, this is just wildness, you know?

• 3:01:12Jocko Willink?

  It's wildness. And you remember how you, a long time ago on the podcast, you said, working out is like the one thing that you can do that will positively impact everything that you do in your life. Well, that proved to be right, but what, what's interesting is,

• 3:01:25Jocko Willink?

  Having a broken arm is gonna impact some parts of your life, but it's not gonna impact like everything. But if you have some kind of a mental health issue, it's like everything is gonna be impacted.

• 3:01:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:01:39Jocko Willink?

  And, and again, it's a spectrum where it's like, oh, you know what? Now I'm kinda like, I don't go out as much. Cool. It's no big deal, right? But then where does it go? Like, does it, I don't go out much to, hey, I'm not gonna go, I'm, I'm not gonna go to the grocery store to, I'm gonna have people drop my food at the end of the hallway to, I'm just gonna sit in here and like not eat. Like it gets, it's just so, it's very strange. And the other thing that I find interesting is just how, when I, when I told, when I talked to him about how I had said in the academy, like, we're all insane. Everyone's insane because your version of reality is different than my version of reality. And by the way, neither your version or my version is actually correct.

• 3:02:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:02:24Jocko Willink?

  Like what your perception is, is not a hundred percent correct. My perception is not a hundred percent correct. We hope that you and I have a big overlap. Like, we hope that we have a big, huge overlap and there's like a little bit that I think is a little different, a little bit. But that's what we hope. And we hope that with most people in our lives, most of it is relatively close.

• 3:02:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:02:42Jocko Willink?

  But the fact is, and also, the fact is, they're not gonna be perfect. And different people, like you can go meet someone today. You and I have ninety-seven percent overlap. We can go talk to someone right now that we only overlap like twenty or thirty percent of reality.

• 3:02:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Their reality is just different.

• 3:02:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:03:00Jocko Willink?

  And that's a real thing. So, um, it's mayhem out there.

• 3:03:07Speaker 03

  It is mayhem out there. It's crazy, man. It, it's crazy because of how they shed such a clear light on like how it really works. And it's like, man, all this is going on right now. Like in my head and this person and everyone's head around us. Holy cow. And she'll mention like, or. They'll mention like certain things, right, where you it reminds you that, hey, I didn't really think about this. Where like going out, going outside, right? I think actually you said it, go, um, get outside. And not just outside the building, I mean, I think anyway, outside and talk to people, talk to different people, be around different people. Cause you know, now a lot of my work, quote unquote, work is inside in front of the computer for long periods of time.

• 3:03:49Speaker 03

  So then I remember not recently, but this is like years ago, where I remember not going outside for a few days. Like not going outside of the building in a few days.

• 3:03:58Jocko Willink?

  That's not healthy.

• 3:03:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you can feel it too. Like after a while, when you kind of are in touch with it, like you can feel it. Or not used, not, or being, not used to being around people. When, okay, I used to work in nightclub where you're around people all the time, all different dynamic spectrum of people all the time. Positive, negative, everybody. Um, and then, you know, working inside where you're not a lot, uh, around a lot of people, like I can totally tell the difference. Like the idea of me, and this might have to do with age too, by the way, but the idea of going down and dealing with the crowd of a nightclub or something.

• 3:04:32Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't appeal to you.

• 3:04:33Speaker 03

  On any night is like, that is one of the last things I'd wanna do. And then when I compare, especially when I compare it to like how I was kind of down with that a long time ago, you know? And so you take that idea and do it and just apply it to everyday life. I know nightclub and all that stuff is different, a little bit different. But in everyday life, if you're used to going out to the store or going out to this and that, and then you don't go outside for a long time, or you just, just simply alone, you just don't go outside for a long time. Starting to go outside and dealing with like people or the public becomes more and more challenging. Just because you're not used to it, just like any kind of exercise you do. See what I'm saying? And it I can understand even more now.

• 3:05:12Jocko Willink?

  How that window shuts.

• 3:05:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, and how that can jam you up mentally. Uh, it doesn't seem like you're made for that kind of stuff, you know, just being isolated. And then you're stuck with the internet all the time. Oh, man, brother, brother, you gotta watch out.

• 3:05:25Jocko Willink?

  See, that internet conversation could be a five hour conversation.

• 3:05:27Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:05:28Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's, it's mayhem out there on the internet. And if you have that little belief, I mean, look, if you believe that, uh, uh. Veganism is the best thing for you that you can go insane. If you believe that the carnivore diet is about, you can go insane. If you believe like whatever weird belief that you want to have and you want to jump on the internet and you want to read into that thing.

• 3:05:56Jocko Willink?

  You got to watch out. You gotta watch out, man. Put that, put that, don't get off that internet, man. It's gonna jack you up. Oh, yeah. And the weird thing is when I tell you, if I'm like, Echo dude, you gotta get off the internet. You gotta stop reading about, uh, you know, carnivore diet. You'll be like, oh, you just want me to keep eating the mainstream diet. It's like that, that's, you see, it's like, it's like a self fulfilling prophecy. Oh, yeah. So you gotta get yourself out of the algorithm. Just watch out. Uh, hey, that being said, one thing that we did talk about today was being healthy, eating the right foods, working out.

• 3:06:35Jocko Willink?

  This is coming from two people in the industry for a quarter, well, between them, it's probably, I don't know, 50 years or something. They got a lot of experience in this industry. Yeah. And I made kind of made fun of Rogan and me saying like, oh, you should work out. Yeah. I kind of made fun of it and they're like, actually it's true. Yeah. Workout, eat right, stay on the path. It's gonna help you in everything that you do. So get yourself some good, let's say supplementation. Yes, to help with that workout. And that's the thing, actually, you're probably in this boat too, where you- Segue just occurred. You're welcome, everybody.

• 3:07:10Jocko Willink?

  Perfect transition. But you probably like this too, where you pretty much worked out your whole life, probably, right? Yeah, I really didn't start legitimately working out until I was like, first of all, because working out wasn't really a thing. I mean, it really wasn't like, there was no, I'm, what am I, five years older than you? Yeah. So like, yes, did we, did we, did we have, uh, Joe Weider's super weight gain back in like 1985? Yes, we did. Yeah. But we didn't understand, at least where I was. I mean, look, maybe if I'd have been at, uh, some bigger school, because I was in like a little school. Like there was a YMCA and there was, there was bumper plates in there. But like, I had no idea what, I remember there was a blind guy that would Olympic lift.

• 3:07:56Jocko Willink?

  And I actually thought at the time it was because- Like that was what he was limited to.

• 3:08:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:08:02Jocko Willink?

  I thought, well, you know, he can't really see, so he just stays in this one spot and just lifts that one bar. He doesn't know how to use the freaking peck deck.

• 3:08:11Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? So, yes, I guess I have been working out for a while.

• 3:08:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we and so you weren't like a jock.

• 3:08:19Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:08:19Speaker 03

  Jocko, but you're.

• 3:08:20Jocko Willink?

  I definitely was not like a jock, although I played soccer and basketball.

• 3:08:26Speaker 03

  Every year?

• 3:08:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:08:27Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. So, yeah, yeah. So to me, that is working out. So especially if you took it even this much seriously. So consider and I'll use myself as the example. So when I was 11 years old, I started actual sports. So you play football.

• 3:08:42Jocko Willink?

  But you got into pushups, right?

• 3:08:43Speaker 03

  I remember. Pushups. And so I always thought that having big muscles was cool. Yes. So, so I would do that kind of stuff. Yes, for sure. And then when you reach puberty, 13, 14, probably like 15 years old, we started lifting weights. So, man, from there, it was on. It was all one big program.

• 3:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:59Speaker 03

  Indefinitely.

• 3:09:00Jocko Willink?

  Till now.

• 3:09:02Speaker 03

  Till literally right now.

• 3:09:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, till this morning.

• 3:09:04Speaker 03

  Yes, sir. Yes. So it, and this is how it works. Essentially, if you care about sports, care about your performance in sports, which we did. So you go on season, obviously, you're practicing every day, football and track. That's what we did. So football is one season. Now, once football's over, get ready for track. Between that set, you're lifting weights. So, yeah, you're just going from one sport to lifting and conditioning to the next sport, lifting and conditioning, and back and forth years through college. And then after college, it was just lifting. And then when I got into jujitsu, okay, now it's lifting and conditioning for jujitsu tournaments, all this stuff. So essentially, being on the program, on the path, on the, from a physical standpoint, is, has been.

• 3:09:44Jocko Willink?

  Decades.

• 3:09:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, but as a result, it's, it is served as like an anchor. So, you know, the idea of like not working out.

• 3:09:54Jocko Willink?

  It's not a thing.

• 3:09:55Speaker 03

  Like, oh, he just quit working out. Like, bro, I, man, it's hard to relate, even though it's so common. So yeah, I think if you can anchor that, the workout, like my physical health is like an anchor, a given.

• 3:10:10Jocko Willink?

  And it should be, because if your physical health falls apart, like it's gonna negatively impact everything else. Now, look, you can get sick and you guess what? When you do get sick, if you get sick, it is still gonna negatively impact everything else. But there's sicknesses you don't have an option on, right? Like you get hit with some horrible cancer out of nowhere. Like what are you gonna do about that? Well, you, you know, you go through the protocol, you try and stay positive. But a lot of people, they don't get hit with something they can't control, they hit with the one thing they can control.

• 3:10:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:10:42Jocko Willink?

  And they let it slide, which is freaking horrible to see. Uh, so let's not let it slide.

• 3:10:48Speaker 03

  Yep. Get on there. Um, and yeah, take your supplements. That helps it. That helps the physical part. See what I'm saying? Jacquez, these goods are functional. This is the line of supplements I wish I always had.

• 3:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That could have been a game changer, actually. If, if we were to have these supplements our whole lives.

• 3:11:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:11:04Jocko Willink?

  Be a whole different story.

• 3:11:07Speaker 03

  Let's face it, we navigate our supplement, um, experience very ignorantly. You know, the best advertisement wins straight up. Like, hey, you see a buff guy on there saying freaking a hundred grams of protein.

• 3:11:18Jocko Willink?

  You see a guy that's freaking juiced to the absolute gills.

• 3:11:22Speaker 03

  Yes. Oh, yeah. And, you know, so that's, that's what we're gonna get.

• 3:11:26Jocko Willink?

  And he's like, yeah, I take freaking whatever. And they come up with these crazy days.

• 3:11:32Speaker 03

  Mega mass, I forget the number.

• 3:11:34Jocko Willink?

  I think it was five thousand.

• 3:11:36Speaker 03

  Very good. Brother, it tasted kinda good. It was in a big dog food bag.

• 3:11:39Jocko Willink?

  Mega mass five thousand. Like, just get some.

• 3:11:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. And that's, but so, yeah, now we know, Brad, it's not like that. You gotta take the correct stuff, made with the correct stuff, for the correct stuff. So yeah, we're doing that. We got joint stuff, uh, milk, which is the protein. That's the protein we should have had back in the day. Not this mega sugar, one million or whatever it was before. Um, the energy drinks, Jaco Go.

• 3:12:06Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:12:07Speaker 03

  The first health, well, maybe not the first. I don't know. I have no idea.

• 3:12:09Jocko Willink?

  The first.

• 3:12:10Speaker 03

  Fully healthy energy drinks.

• 3:12:12Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:12:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. Like, can you drink one? You're healthier.

• 3:12:15Jocko Willink?

  You're healthier.

• 3:12:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 3:12:15Jocko Willink?

  You just got better.

• 3:12:16Speaker 03

  You just got better.

• 3:12:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, like, oh, if good health came in a can, everyone would say, well, it does.

• 3:12:20Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 3:12:21Jocko Willink?

  It does.

• 3:12:21Speaker 03

  Well, one third of it, see what I'm saying?

• 3:12:23Jocko Willink?

  One third.

• 3:12:24Speaker 03

  Nutrition, exercise, rest. That's the trio.

• 3:12:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, look at you over there.

• 3:12:28Speaker 03

  Well.

• 3:12:29Jocko Willink?

  Don't want to throw that rest at me.

• 3:12:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, JacoFuel.com. You can get all this good, good stuff for you. You can support the podcast. You can support yourself. You can be healthy. You can help your, you can help your mental health. Right? We did a freaking three hours on mental health. Help your mental health by helping your physical health. You can get the drinks at Wawa. We got, ah, October 3rd, I think, the Molk RTD hits Wawa. Get in there. Get yourself some banana. Get yourself some chocolate. Get yourself some, some vanilla. The best you can get. The best, the best, the highest quality. Look, we are not cutting corners. And believe me, people want, want you to cut corners.

• 3:13:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:13:08Jocko Willink?

  They want to make an extra seven cents. No, we, we could get an extra seven cents out of every sale.

• 3:13:14Speaker 03

  Per unit.

• 3:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. If you put, if you don't use a natural sweetener, if you use something that's bad for you, cool, I made more money off your health. No, we're not doing that.

• 3:13:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:13:26Jocko Willink?

  We are keeping healthy. JacoFuel.com, Wawa, Vitamin Shop, uh, HEB down in Texas, bunch of different places. If they don't have it where you shop, ask them for it. We'll get it to you. Um, OriginUSA.com. We're doing jujitsu. Which means you need a gi. You might as well get the best possible gi in the world. Go to OriginUSA.com. Get yourself, uh, the best made gi. And it's made in America, just like the jeans, just like the, just like the boots.

• 3:14:00Jocko Willink?

  Awesome stuff. The Hunt gear. OriginUSA.com. Don't forget that we, don't we have a store?

• 3:14:07Speaker 03

  We do have a store.

• 3:14:08Jocko Willink?

  And what's that called?

• 3:14:08Speaker 03

  It's called Jaco's Store. Again, the Discipline Equals Freedom Standard Issue T-shirt is out. We made the announcement. Made it yesterday to the people. And you know, good response. It's a good, it's a good standard issue shirt.

• 3:14:21Jocko Willink?

  I saw you put a YouTube video up of the Shirt Locker.

• 3:14:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, kinda updated. Yeah, yeah.

• 3:14:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, is it an updated one?

• 3:14:28Speaker 03

  Little bit, yeah.

• 3:14:30Jocko Willink?

  It's pretty cool.

• 3:14:31Speaker 03

  Quite frankly. Yeah, it's, it's a metaphorical, uh, it's metaphorical. It's a metaphor for...

• 3:14:37Jocko Willink?

  For what?

• 3:14:37Speaker 03

  The Shirt Locker.

• 3:14:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because my shirt's changing?

• 3:14:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, people, I read the comments.

• 3:14:42Jocko Willink?

  That's not the deep is metaphor.

• 3:14:44Speaker 03

  I read some of the comments are like, oh, how do you make a shirt change when you didn't even take it off? Or whatever, see what I'm saying? So I'm saying, hey, it's a metaphor. It's a metaphor. You wear a shirt, it changes every month. Boom. It doesn't really change on your body the way it does in the videos, see what I'm saying?

• 3:15:00Jocko Willink?

  You're wearing one of these Shirt Locker shirts right now. Is that not?

• 3:15:02Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah, it is.

• 3:15:04Jocko Willink?

  The G.I. Joe one.

• 3:15:05Speaker 03

  G.I. Joe Rip. Most recent one is called Toxic Productivity. It's a good one. It's a good one, very good.

• 3:15:13Jocko Willink?

  These cartoonish pictures that you're utilizing of me, by the way.

• 3:15:17Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:15:18Jocko Willink?

  Cartoonish pictures of me.

• 3:15:20Speaker 03

  Comic book.

• 3:15:21Jocko Willink?

  Comic book pictures of me, like... Holding a weapon in each hand.

• 3:15:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:15:27Jocko Willink?

  Riding a tank.

• 3:15:28Speaker 03

  Yep. Yeah.

• 3:15:31Jocko Willink?

  Uh, that's funny stuff, so.

• 3:15:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's, there's actually a lot of good designs on there. Um, you know, I don't know, they come up, uh, for, sometimes people request certain types of designs. We go down a rabbit hole looking into it, you know, the viability of certain ones. And some of them is just real obvious that just need to be made into shirts, so. You know, but it's fun. Anyway, that's called the Shirt Locker. One shirt, uh, new shirt every month. Um, cool fan, people seem to like it. Check that out, it's all on Jaco's Store.

• 3:15:58Jocko Willink?

  Uh, subscribe to the podcast. Don't forget about JacoUnderground.com. People getting canceled.

• 3:16:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:16:04Jocko Willink?

  People getting pulled off of platforms. We, we don't own this platform. Look, are we talking about some crazy controversial thing? Not really. Do we talk about some things that maybe could get us put in a situation? Yes, we do, we have, we've had warnings on some of our YouTube videos. That they had to get facts checked.

• 3:16:24Speaker 03

  Well, yeah.

• 3:16:25Jocko Willink?

  So that's an indicator that, you know, maybe we're getting looked at. Well, obviously we are getting looked at. So to combat that, to make sure that we always have the ability to get information, we have Jaco Underground, Jaco Underground.com. We do an extra little podcast. We put it on there. Answer your questions. Jaco Underground.com. If you want to support there, go support. We appreciate it. If you can't afford it, it's eight dollars and eighteen cents a month. What do they say like less than a cup of coffee? Was that what they say?

• 3:16:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, sometimes. When it is.

• 3:16:53Jocko Willink?

  Like about things?

• 3:16:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:16:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you have a cup of coffee every day and you're buying it from one of the like more well-known coffee shops, you're definitely spending more than eight dollars and eighteen cents.

• 3:17:03Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, monthly, even if you're having the most, unless you're not drinking coffee at all, you're spending more than eighteen, eighteen. Even if you've been to the grocery store getting, yeah, you're going to spend maybe eight bucks, maybe.

• 3:17:15Jocko Willink?

  So pretty cheap you can get. If you can't afford it, we still want you in the game. We still want to be able to talk to you in case things go sideways. Assistance, email assistance at Jaco Underground.com. We have a YouTube channel. Check that out. We have psychological warfare. People have that on their playlist on iTunes.

• 3:17:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:17:32Jocko Willink?

  It's an MP3 that you can just, if you're going through life, you might experience a little moment of weakness. This will get you, help get you through it. Flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Myers Company. Gets cool stuff to hang on your wall, which is nice. Keep you on the path. I've written a bunch of books. You can check out those books at some point. If you're interested about the things we do here, Echelon Front Leadership Consultancy. Go to echelonfront.com if you need help in your organization.

• 3:18:02Jocko Willink?

  We can help you. We can help you through leadership. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details on that. We also have an online training academy. I mentioned that a couple of times today.

• 3:18:14Jocko Willink?

  Where we teach leadership. Now, look, leadership, it doesn't mean that you're the CEO, or you're the COO, or you're the commanding officer. There's leadership, no matter where you are in an organization, even if you're the frontline individual contributor, or the frontline assaulter on a team, you are still in a leadership position. You're leading your teammates, you're actually leading your boss, you're leading your family, you're leading your friends. Become a better leader and you'll have a better life. Go to extremeownership.com, join the academy. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she's

• 3:18:58Jocko Willink?

  got a charity organization. If you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to Americas MightyWarriors.org. Don't forget about also Micah Fink's organization,

• 3:19:09Jocko Willink?

  HeroesAndHorses.org. Also, check out Marcus and Amber Capone, they've got VetSolutions.org. Check out some of those charities. And if you want to connect, once again, if you want to connect with A Anew Treatment Center, A-N-E-W Treatment Center, go to AnewTreatmentCenter.com. They're on social as well, A Anew Treatment Center on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, they're there. And as for us, we're also in those places. Echo is at Echo Charles, I am at Jocko Willink, of course, be wary, be wary of that, that algorithm. And thanks once again to Megan and Carlin for joining us today to share their knowledge with us

• 3:19:51Jocko Willink?

  to try and educate me. And thanks to both them for dedicating their lives to helping other people. Also, thanks to all our service men and women out there around the globe that are standing watch against evil. And a big thanks to our police and law enforcement, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, firefighters, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all the first responders, thank you for protecting us from evil here at home. And everyone else out there, pay attention.

• 3:20:30Jocko Willink?

  Pay attention to that mental check engine light. Pay attention to your own. Pay attention to the people around you. And if that check engine light comes on, don't just keep driving.

• 3:20:45Jocko Willink?

  Pull over for a minute.

• 3:20:48Jocko Willink?

  Call that mind mechanic, call that therapist or that psychologist. Who can help get your mind back up and running the way it's supposed to. So that you can go out. And get after it. And until next time, the Zeko and Jaco out.