Episode 168: Green Beret and Mental Health Advocate Trevor Beaman

Green Beret and Mental Health Advocate, Trevor Beaman, joins us to lay bare the raw and real process of his mental health journey. His battles with mental health and the quest for purpose, is one that resonates with many veterans. Trevor doesn't just share his story; he offers a beacon of hope, illuminating the significance of preparation and the courage to embrace the next mission with the same valor once reserved for combat.
 
 Through our conversation, we understand the transformative power of Warrior Resiliency and mindfulness. Trevor and I discuss how embracing these practices can lead to a disciplined approach to mental and physical health, benefitting soldiers in the field and as they transition back to civilian life. We stress the importance of nurturing the mind with the same intensity used to hone combat skills, a cultural shift that is slowly but steadily redefining resilience within the military community. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

security hot podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:03

Let's go with a man who's the best with guns with knives with his bare hands a man who's been trained to ignore, ignore weather, to live off the land job with disposed of enemy personnel to kill period with my attrition.

Speaker 1: 0:26

But enough about this dude I got. I got a lot, a lot of stuff that I can talk about, that.

Speaker 2: 0:32

We can talk about a lot of career stuff, a lot of personal stuff, a lot of like what's next, a lot of perspective things that we can discuss, um, and it's kind of you know, we can. However you want to talk, or what you want to talk about is kind of drive that, and like I can like.

Speaker 2: 0:49

I have a perspective and thoughts on a lot of different things and you know, I just want to see like what you want to talk about and like what your audience is kind of looking for, uh, and like maybe we can touch on something that can help people. Um, that is that is, you know, either trying to go into special operations, currently in special operations, maybe at the end of their career, or like they're out and they are kind of lost in a way and maybe they they need some direction and stuff like that absolutely well.

Speaker 1: 1:21

welcome security podcast, and this is your episode, trevor beeman. Thank you for being here today. Man, I want to touch into your journey. I think one of the most important things we can do as advocates once, and even not after you know you're on your way out Retirement is right there, and one of the things that I always harp on is don't wait for the last minute. Find your next calling, find your next mission, find your next purpose and be brave and courageous enough. After a decade or two decades and for some guys, three decades of being able to pick up, kid up and go into the unknown, now, all of a sudden, you start allowing fear to dictate your next move. So, trevor, how are you navigating this pivotal moment in your career?

Speaker 2: 2:11

Well, I think I kind of got thrown into it in a way.

Speaker 2: 2:15

So when I was in Key West at dive school, I was going through some rough times and I ended up in actually up here at the behavioral health facility at the Emerald Coast Behavioral Hospital here in Panama City Beach, and when I was there I kind of discussed a lot about what I had been through in my life and I saw that it was helping the people in the room with me and I thought to myself I was like these people are listening to what I'm saying and so there has to be some, there has to be some context in this that is going to help people.

Speaker 2: 2:51

Later on, and I and at that kind of moment, that two months of going to rehab, I was like this is a fire in me that I saw, like I felt in myself when I was graduating college, when I was trying to go to the Q course, I felt that same feeling and so that was back in September of 2019. And it's kind of propelled me in a direction of like being a person of hope for other people that can share a story and that they can move past this period of their life so that they can find something else that's a fire in their life.

Speaker 1: 3:32

Absolutely it's, and that's exactly what, uh, I've been able to tap into. Um, we don't realize the power of our story. We don't realize the power of our story. We don't realize the power of being able to share with our tribe what we've been through. We take that quiet, professional idea, that statement, and we own it and we just go through life, go through our career, and we don't say something. But what we don't realize is when we're finally vulnerable enough to share and allow others to see what we've gone through and overcome. We allow them to see a pathway to their own healing, to their own journey.

Speaker 1: 4:12

And I'm in the same boat. I went to Laurel Ridge in El Paso and that saved my life. But mental health is something that's so tricky, right, it's so scary to say like I want, want, inpatient, and people don't want to promote that, they don't want to talk about that. How did you navigate that? When you came back and was like you know, because they want to put us in a, in a box, so they want you to kind of go off in the corner, how'd you navigate that, being able to share your testimony of what it did for you?

Speaker 2: 4:39

so the the biggest thing that happens while I'm there I get a phone call from the CARE Coalition and the CARE Coalition guys like here Trevor, you got two choices in what you want to do here. We can pursue a med board or we can find something else in the Army that you can do. I was telling them, like being a team sergeant is not in the cards right now. I can't physically and mentally go back into that space again. And the choice came down to my wife and I that I committed to wanting to serve for 20 years. The pension, the financial gains that I would get by spending 20 years in the army, weighed a lot on me and my family and so getting to that point meant a lot. So SOCOM essentially was like we want to keep you and let's find a place that you can go after SWCC. You can't stay down in Key West for a longer period of time as an E-8. There's debilitating and stuff you have to move about somewhere else. And so Matt Smith was the sergeant major down there. He's a phenomenal guy. He works at Sheepdog, excellent person. He was like we have a first sergeant job within SOCOM that you can go do. You just got to be willing to do it.

Speaker 2: 6:06

And then I was like, well, I've decided that I want to stay in the army and if the army's telling me to go somewhere that I can be a benefit in a role that's critical, like I will, I will take it.

Speaker 2: 6:19

And I feel that there's at times that the army's reaching out and saying, hey, we have all these assignments and all these different things that you can go do. But the guy's like, no, I only want to stay here, I don't want a PCS, I don't want to move my family. So we're just hearing a lot of no's. The Army, the regiment SOCOM, is trying to help you stay in the Army, be productive, be able to take on a new role and you choose your community is saying, no, I'm not going to do that. So that's where there's kind of a hard part of like I'm telling the Army one thing and Army's giving me something back and I'm pushing back on it and saying, no, I think there really needs to be like expectations got to come down a bit and you got to be willing to give some back to the army yeah, and it's a hard thing, right, um, especially when your entire identity is wrapped around being on a team, being in that mission.

Speaker 1: 7:28

If those opportunities do come down the way and you do want to stay, be open to seeing another path and that's a hard thing for a lot of guys that are caught in that predicament, in that situation, and, by all means if it's not all means, if it's not for you, it's not for you, but at least if they offer you something that's within the realm, um, of something that you might be passionate about, be willing to look into it. Uh, that's just one of the things.

Speaker 2: 7:58

it's a real conundrum for us because with the global war on terror, that was development, that was going somewhere and becoming something bigger. But now we don't have that same deployment cycle that is giving this type of career development and giving guys opportunities to go work at different headquarters and seeing a larger perspective of like what's happening. So now it's, I feel like it's going. We got to go back to the team room and look at that team sarn and see how are you mentoring these guys so that they can get developed. And it sucks to say you got to go somewhere else after three or four years. After being on a team where we didn't have to do that. We got to stay for five, six years and not have to go do it a SWCC or not have to go to a TSOC, you know, go down to SOC South or go somewhere else and go to JRTC and be an OC. So all those things weren't on the cards because SOCOM had all these missions that we had to go complete and we needed guys on teams. So for now, what are guys doing to get that same experience that we got? Because we were deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan, syria, you know, different places in the Middle East and we got to be in different headquarters this to get a larger perspective on on the strategic, strategic environment. So that should be the.

Speaker 2: 9:34

The push on these young guys is how do we get as much experience as possible? Because before it was just done for us, right? Um, that's like going and saying about going on a jay set, right, that is a new skill that guys are going to have to build, where we kind of just went to green wrap and got on a you know c17 huge aircraft and went to afghanistan and we were there, we didn't have to plan shit, it was all done for us. And so now it's going back to say, hey, we got to learn this basic stuff again and and so that those basic skills of counseling, mentorship, leadership are really like forced on that person versus where the environment forces on us yeah, and the other thing is the, the new generation of green beret has to embrace a new dynamic, a new shift in warfare that they, they, they grew up seeing us, they grew up seeing the video games, the movies.

Speaker 1: 10:38

But that's not your, that's not your, it's not your, it's not your war. Your future is it's arguably more complex. You should be excited for your new mission and it's going to take a lot of work. I've been out for almost a full year now and it's completely different. It's a whole different environment, a whole different world. But that, that new recruit coming into SF has to be able to sit down and say you know what? I'm not going to get the afghan or iraq, but I'm going to get something completely different. I got to be able to embrace that like that's that's right.

Speaker 2: 11:14

I think there's a lot to say to be the best prepared team to go to war though I think there's a lot of honor in that and I think that guy's got to hold on to that hard and like I'm going to train the hardest, I'm going to, I'm going to go, do the most difficult training. I'm going to go, we're going to go everywhere and like, that's that's what I'm going to do for four years. I like I'm sorry, you know, mom like, like I'm leaving. I got to go. I got to go to the like for here. We got to go down South. We got to go to like for here. We got to go down south. We got to train, and that's my job is to train other people.

Speaker 2: 11:47

So, like, other Americans don't have to Like. That's why you should be a Green Beret is that that 12-man team is able to force, multiply in other countries so that other Americans don't have to go there and fight. I think I mean holding on to that core idea in our hearts. Like should be driving you to work every day, even though I'm like, and I mean the desire to get in a gunfight. I get it. I have. I totally understand that, because that's like that's why I joined the army. That is so awesome.

Speaker 2: 12:21

But as we know that there's a lot of consequences with coming down with that wish and that's something you're going to have with you for the rest of your life. So I mean, and there can bad shit could happen down south too. And so, like, like all these guys are preparing you know, physically they're preparing like they're going to the dietetic, they're going to thor 3 for physical therapy. You know, all these guys are learning about how to take care of their body. But one are preparing like they're going to the dietetic, they're going to Thor three for physical therapy. You know, all these guys are learning about how to take care of their body. But one little aspect that seems to be, you know, jumping out a lot is like where do I go when all the demons and all the things that I do and all the places I've been start to haunt me when I'm back at home?

Speaker 1: 13:01

yeah, yeah, man, it's. We didn't have the coping skills, we didn't have the, the knowledge and it's and I don't. I don't regret I'm. I'm grateful for the experiences, I'm grateful for what got me here, healed and on my journey.

Speaker 1: 13:22

But it is great to see that younger guys are starting to gravitate and incorporate things like mindfulness and yoga and being willing to understand that mindset and discipline are really important on and off. You know work, being able to understand that maybe drinking constantly isn't the best thing, right For sure. It is nice being able to drive down and look at Red Door and see that it's not as packed, and something. I'm kind of hopeful that maybe the culture is shifting and guys are kind of like you know what? I don't need to burn it down every weekend because come to find out it's not great for you. The warrior needs to be disciplined, both in war and at home, and that's something that like if we aspire to be like all these great warriors, we should also incorporate how they maintain their resiliency, how they maintain that mental strength, because it wasn't alcohol.

Speaker 2: 14:32

Right, so that's an awesome point. So that's kind of like where we're coming in in this fireside chat of perspective of what we should be doing and how can we give advice and guidance. So a lot of us took a path of bad and we generally came from a place that people weren't teaching us different mindfulness, yoga, self right, you know, recollection, reflection None of those things were in our, you know, taught to us as kids. You know, we kind of were like go outside and just do your thing and when you come back there'll be some food on the table and then we go, and then we go and join the service and it's kind of like really shut down, we don't show emotion. And then we go through like seer school, where they teach us to stay in a certain area and how to always bring stuff back to that.

Speaker 2: 15:23

So that's not, that's not teaching us how to talk about what I went through and how to reflect on the things I went through. It's kind of a lot of escape and come up with, uh, you know, dirty lies about what I, why I'm doing this, why I'm here. So we get that. And then we have this mantra of quiet professional. Then we have this mantra of quite professional. What I think isn't explained very well. I think it's just put on us and we and we grow an identity inside it in us that says we don't talk about what we do, we don't talk about what we went through. That's another life of mine that I don't ever bring up and that's just kind of like what I do on the side and like I come home and I try to be the best dad ever, but it's hard.

Speaker 2: 16:08

So all that kind of like compounds together to say is like who can I go to learn how to take care of my mind?

Speaker 2: 16:15

And like we all have and it's being screamed from the mountain right now and I love that this mindset thing is out and a lot of people are saying really, the same thing you know across the board is whatever you think is what your body's going to do and that's pretty much it.

Speaker 2: 16:37

And so if you can change the dirty thinking in your brain and and want to live a better life over time, time that's going to happen. And that's really the core of what everyone's like yelling about leadership, personal accountability, respect, self love. All of it comes down to saying that I trust that my brain is powerful than anything else in the world, and if I have a clean brain and I have clean thinking like, I'm probably going to be pretty good. But the thing is is that someone's got to teach us that it's not just known, you have to be taught, and it's like learning how to play a game, like someone else has to show you how to play the game, and once the game is shown like, life becomes so much easier and and you can be in control of your thoughts and you can then control of what you're inside of your body is how is responding to this environment that we're in?

Speaker 1: 17:37

I think that that is absolutely one of the first things that I tapped into and that's why I leaned heavily into mindfulness. That's why I started peeling back the layers and chasing it down, because once somebody shows you that you can bring your focus all the way back and read it, direct and redirect it and not have to stay in rumination. That spoke to me on a deep level and I understood that it was already taught to me. Every time you, if you're a sniper, you're intimately aware of going to sipsic and sitting down at the range and being frustrated and that sniper instructor coming up and not with aggression, not with anger in a voice, but saying, hey, come up off glass, take a deep breath, calm down, focus. What are we doing? Take five minutes. All right, get back on glass. Now you're present. I didn't know I was doing mindfulness in that moment, oh yeah. Or or when, when you're sitting there doing, uh, bobs in the pool, I a horrible in the water.

Speaker 2: 18:37

Uh, shout out to mike, yeah he did everything but but the one thing that he taught me.

Speaker 1: 18:42

The one thing that he taught me, the one thing that really, really honed in, was the ability to understand that Bob's were a recovery mechanism. And then later on, like it was two years after that moment in the pool that I realized, oh, deep breath in through my nose, inhale slowly, exhale, don't think about anything, just repeat that over and over again. That's a meditation, that's mindfulness, and I'm like how many guys are struggling with living in the, in the future or being trapped in the past and never able to focus on the present moment? Because if you're a team sergeant or a senior on a team, you're constantly living with that calendar I need to get this done. And you do this. Never live in the present moment.

Speaker 1: 19:31

And then you do the internal work, the hard work, the mind work of saying, hey, I'm going to let go of this, I'm going to focus on this right now and what's in front of me.

Speaker 1: 19:40

It's the most important thing that you can teach somebody Like, yeah, all your long-term tracking will get done, everything you need to do, but what you stop doing is this bullshit of trying to do everything all at once. That's not productivity, that's just driving yourself insane, and I'm not ashamed to say it took me until like my late 30s to go through this. Like nobody teaches us these things. Nobody's there. So you're 100 correct now, being able to like, speak and champion this to other professionals. And now I'm seeing it, seeing other guys are still lethal, still on a team, and they're aware of this. That's a more important warrior, uh, than anything like that. That's the guy you want at the front of the fight, like you're not going to worry about anything with somebody like that leading your, your team. So it's now starting to become more aware. So I'm hopeful and there's great organizations getting involved in teaching.

Speaker 2: 20:35

So I'll take it back to Micah. So I met Micah for the first time when I went to Key West and what my? There's something Micah did to me about. You're going to talk about mindfulness and I'm going to tell you a little story about how I had an epiphany about mindfulness without anyone ever really showing me. So, as you know, micah is a big spear fisherman and I had never spear fished in my life before I went down to Key West and so I started spearing with Micah and then I kind of the bad thing I kind of started spearing on my own by my house down there on Trumbull Point, and what I started to realize is that when I was in the water looking at fish, at the reef, is that all the stuff in my past, all the stuff that I was going through at home, all the things I was thinking about the future was gone.

Speaker 2: 21:31

And I credit that being able to figure out mindfulness to that guy. And, uh, I've like that's what I think like a leader does is to show you something that you may enjoy, that can bring some happiness and joy in your life, and it's you're having fun doing it, and so I mean that that same perspective goes the guys that go to the gym every day, that do crossfit, that do ultra marathons, that go sailing, go surfing, all of those different like things. It puts you if now that I say it, like when people go out and be like I don't think about anything else but being right here and that's what mindfulness is is just putting you in a place where you're so hyper focused on that skill, skill that you can't think about anything else. And then spearfishing, like your life kind of depends on it at some times because, like you get hypoxic, you can get ran over by boats, like there's sharks, there's different barracuda, there's different things that are there that could hurt you. So then you're like always searching, looking, but then so you look at that and then you go all the way back to afghanistan and we're on a patrol and there's everything going on around us and all we think about is that moment and those people. It's the same thing and yeah and so, yes, we have got over this fear of dying that has to come first, that every time I go outside the wire that something bad's going to happen to me or my boys, that fades away in time, so that gets discarded.

Speaker 2: 23:10

Like we are. We realize we're already dead at this point and we don't. We stop thinking about that because we find that it's wasteful in our brain to to keep thinking about that, so we put it away, we say that doesn't exist and then we're just there, and so I think that that that environment automatically back to that place and that moment very lucrative and it's like I just want to go back to that. It's an easy life, you know, it's eat, sleep, lift and we're present every moment because it matters that we are and we don't have to work to do it. It just it just because of the environment we're in, it automatically is happening. So, being here, we have to work at it. So let's find something that's not work. Let's find something that's fun, that puts us into that mindfulness state, so that you can get a break from reality. And that's what guys got it Like.

Speaker 2: 24:24

Yeah, I mean, after getting out of the army and knowing that routine of what the army has you doing, like you're just happening to you on a daily basis. So what happens when you don't have that team sergeant, team leader, telling you what to do all the time? What have you done to replace that routine and to put you in a place where you're taking care of your self-care. So that's like. So for some folks, they just got to go out and find something that they're really shitty at, because by finding something that you're bad at, you have to focus on it, like, for an example, that's why we love to travel, because when we go to a new place, we see everything as it's new and we notice every person, we notice every street, we notice every building, every tree. We see it all. And then we come home and we don't have that same perspective. So that's what guys got to do, is they got to put themselves in a new environment so that they get all of that in them to make them feel present.

Speaker 1: 25:29

When I started studying mindfulness and getting my certifications, I realized that first mistake that I made. I always focused on practice, practice, practice, practice. It's mindfulness practice, but it's not. It's learning how to incorporate it. And at first, yeah, you do your formal practice every day, you do your informal practices as you're studying and you're learning, but it's teaching you how to incorporate it into your life. So it's the way you live.

Speaker 1: 26:00

And once I had that moment of like, oh shit, like this is not just something I clock in and I do for 15 minutes and then I go do some mindful eating later on in the day. You're doing that in the class, you're doing that to get you know when you're meeting the requirements for your teacher, meeting the requirements for your teacher and shout out to Ted Meisner. That man and the way he taught mindfulness to me finally clicked and I understood. These are all lessons that I can apply. And exactly how you said it when we're deployed, you're consciously aware of every single thing that you're doing. You're lining up for your chalk, you're getting your guys ready to go, but as soon as you get on that bird and when that ramp drops, that is a true mindful moment, and people don't understand that you start moving out, you start hearing the radio chatter and you're not projecting into the future. You're one step here moving forward, forward. Okay, phase line after phase line, checking in Sat calms down, I gotta move to this and it's it's understanding, bringing able to, to bring back that present moment, awareness that I had without the traumatic events of bad days, the traumatic event events of those really bad situations, and reliving that. So if you're once, you're able to reconcile and go through the healing of when you had those bad missions, when you had those bad deployments, but understanding, within all that bad, there's those moments where you were truly living mindfully and understanding.

Speaker 1: 27:29

That was kind of a big thing of like. Hey, I wasn't constantly stressed out of the day to day, it was the day toto-day stuff back here that made me lose my frigging mind. When we're deployed, everything's just like you said Got gym, I got to do this con op, we got to do the after actions, rehab, all your kit, boom, boom, boom, move on. You're intimately aware of every moment of every day because, hey, hey, this is a real world situation, it's life or death, and being able to take those lessons learned, without the trauma, without thinking that my life's constantly in danger is one of the most important things we can do because, like you, dissect those moments, you can find greatness in them and use them to amplify your life and you're right find something that you love to do. That's where I see a lot of veterans struggle because they get out, they're not active, they're not passionate about something and they lose their purpose.

Speaker 2: 28:28

So you could go back to hoffman during the star course and think about those movements and you're like all I cared about was getting to that next point and that's what you can do after, like you could just walk in the woods and just set up. I mean, if you want it to, you could set up a land nav course on your own and it costs $0, nothing.

Speaker 1: 28:52

You can just develop it yourself and you're like.

Speaker 2: 28:54

I'm just going to spend time outside, because that's, if you go, you know we go spend time outside. Yeah, because that's, if you go, you know we go back to the beginning. That's what we were doing. We spent time outside alone. Yeah, like that's, that's it I. I mean it's.

Speaker 2: 29:08

It seems that simple that like you need to go sit by a fire again and reflect on life and maybe tell some people how you feel. That's probably, I think, maybe in our generation in a way, and maybe even before all that. I think the storytelling aspect of how different missions and different things went on made you feel. A lot of people talk about events and guys getting blown up, trucks getting blown up, firefights, all that, but no one's saying like, well, how did that make you feel inside? And I think that if at that AAR, that after action review, if there was mindfulness taught, some mental health stuff taught, storytelling taught to team leaders, team starts, that they would be like tell me what you saw and how it made you feel. And there, if there was just a five, just give me a five minute recap of how that was and all the guys went around the room, I think later on the ability to talk about that situation would be completely different. And I, so I, I, I. I did this ketamine treatment a few years back and it it allowed my brain to kind of show me like this body was worth taking care of and that I can reflect on the things in the past and not let it hurt me, and it was a real cool experience.

Speaker 2: 30:42

I think that if you're going through hard times, that ketamine therapy is something that guys need to look into and do some research on, especially if you're down in a bad spot where you can't get out on your own. I think there's some medical care there that gives some real perspective opportunity. A bad spot where you can't get out on your own. I think there's some medical care there and that gives some real perspective opportunity for guys to kind of grow their mind in a way, because it does help with TBI, the neuroplasticity and things like that, definitely in a clinical kind of setting that I to reach out and go do. But there's a lot.

Speaker 2: 31:15

I think there's a lot of benefit for guys that they're, you know, 17, 18 year mark where they they should go and explore that path because I think it really helps them. You know, traumatic growth, next perspective on next with next purpose. I think it helps kind of conjure that up in your brain to kind of say like, hey, that was a life of mine. I really love being in that part, that section of my life, as a green beret and whatever operator, or even just in the army or any job at that, that you've been a high performer for a long time, that you need to be able to move on to something else, and I think that that's a it's not necessary to go do at all. But if you are a person who's you know suffered through traumatic events, that you're suicidal, depressed, have alcohol, substance abuse, I think that that treatment really provides a good propel to like self healing and to move you on to your next purpose in life.

Speaker 1: 32:19

It's so true, and we, you know, especially on this show, I talk a lot about getting help and I key in sometimes on specific individuals. But one person that always gets overlooked is a team sergeant. Who always gets overlooked is a team sergeant, and we don't talk about how vital it is to get those guys to take a knee before they take a team. Every SF guy that makes it to that E8 position or senior E7, and they get that job, which is the crowning achievement. Hey, you're going to take a team. You freaking did it. They've been beat up, they've been through the ringer, they've how many deployments, divorces, they don't see their kids and they finally get to the one job that they've been wanting to do forever, and that comes with a mountain of work, a mountain of stress. Guys aren't sleeping, guys aren't eating right, and they're the first ones to show up every morning. They're leading the PT sessions, they're crushing it, and then we wonder why they're breaking down.

Speaker 1: 33:35

If you're listening to this and you're that senior leader, whether it's in an infantry company, if you're a platoon sergeant, same thing goes for you. You got to take care of yourself and there's a hesitancy to put yourself on the front line because men mission, then me. But I will argue this the mission is not going to happen without you. The men are going to be taken care of without you. That company, that team, that detachment commander or your platoon leader can't do the job without you. Chief's a great guy, chief's a great backup for you, but he can't do what you do. He can't take care and cover down. So the most important thing you can do is that senior NCO is get help today. Start taking care of yourself so you can have that long career, so you can be there, so that your leadership can look at you and say that's the team I want, because they got the best NCO.

Speaker 1: 34:28

And everybody knows SF survives and continues to grow and continues to achieve their missions, not because we got great officers, we got great warrant officers. But it's the fucking NCOs, it's the fucking team sergeant that drives those missions. They're the ones that have to orchestrate. And look, I am a proud warrant officer that is the greatest chief in my military. I fucking love being a chief. But without a team sergeant you're not going anywhere. You're not going to get the missions that you want.

Speaker 1: 34:59

So if you're a team sergeant leading or senior E7, senior E8s listen to this get the help you deserve. You deserve it, just like everybody else looked at your mashed potato brains looked at and all the things that you're dealing with. You're going to come back to that detachment and you're going to be ready to take them to the next mission and get them across the finish line. And and we don't say that enough we just say, well, you know, I gotta take care of the guys. Um, so that that's something that we have to promote more, because they're overlooked. It's one of those things that really it sucks, man. They're the most fucking worn out dudes in the regiment. They need help. And I want to ask you this, and if you're willing to be vulnerable, what was the, what were you dealing with that led to your going to, you going impatient? What was the final thing where it's just like, hey, I need to get home, oh, wow, the final thing I want, all right.

Speaker 2: 36:06

So I was in key west, um, and it was early 2019 and I had been drinking a whole lot and my wife had said something to me and I what she said is not what I. She said it's. I heard something completely different. I heard her say that you don't provide any value to this family, and I wrote a note and I said, like, tell the kids I love them. And I like, put it on the microwave sticky note, and I left and I was going to, like, walk into the ocean, I was going to go downtown Key West, I was going to drink a whole lot and then I just wasn't going to come home. My wife freaks out and she got a hold of some of my friends and some folks at the dive school and there was a gentleman, matt, who ended up going up to go up to CAG and stuff. You might know him I won't say his last name who sat down with me and really said, like it's time to go get help, and so I went to the VA and then, like, they said that, um, like basically I was an alcoholic, that I had TBI, that, uh, that I was PTSD, all this stuff. But this, at this point, this is my second suicide almost ideation that I've had on active duty my. My previous one was back in 2015 when I was going to the national defense university to get my masters but and so I went to inpatient there and they just said like slow down your drinking, go back to work and stuff. But fast forward back to Key West. And um, I get, uh, and so they're like all right, you got to go to Fast forward back to Key West and I get, and so they're like all right, you got to go to just like ASAP recovery kind of place and I was like fine, I, you guys. They're like because you have a substance abuse disorder on your dive physical, you got to go get treatment so that you can continue to dive. So I said, okay, fine, I'll go there and I'll go through this program Self-referral, fine.

Speaker 2: 38:26

Well, a month after I signed like the paperwork there, I go do on the deep dive on the Vandenberg and I get that and I get bent pretty hard. I get a pretty bad bubble in my in my leg and I get bent pretty hard. I get a pretty bad bubble in my leg. I get the eight-and-a-half-hour ride in the chamber, I come up and they do an echocardiogram bubble study on my heart. I have a hole in my heart, so I'm disqualified from diving.

Speaker 2: 38:52

I said to the doc down there I was like, listen, I'm not going to go to rehab because, like, why I can't dive? I'm not going to go to rehab because, like, why I can't dive, I'm not going to do it. It makes zero sense for me to go to go do some training, to go do some two weeks of stuff up here in jacksonville, florida, so that I can dive still, so I can clear my dive physicals, like I'm done. And the doc was like you have a problem, trevor, you need to go get help. And I was like you're not wrong For sure.

Speaker 2: 39:24

And so I go up here to Jacksonville and that program is substandard and it really infuriates me Because I'm like why are you taking me away from my family to go do some subpar training about like cover your ass for the commander, kind of thing. And I was like this is not making me want to quit drinking or not be suicidal, not be depressed, not think about all the things that I've been through in my life. And so while I'm there I have like kind of my own free time and I'm like driving around Jacksonville and I'm like all I feel in my body is death, like I don't think about my kids, I don't think about my wife, I don't think about my future. Everything inside me is like blacked out in it and I'm just angry and I was like I just want to end all of this. So so there's a really bad, suicidal, like ideation feeling and I go back to my council and I was like I am feeling this way and if I don't get help today, you're probably not going to see me tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 40:25

And so at that moment I was put back into the psych ward at Jacksonville and I spent about three days there trying to calm down and get me some help and stuff. And a doctor there was like we have a three-track program that you can go to here in dustin and that's how I got to the emerald cross behavioral hospital. So it was like childhood sexual abuse, tbi, ptsd, ptsi, whatever you want to call it um, substance abuse for narcotics and for alcohol, and I was like that's all. I have all those things. So I got this multiple fucked up problems of my life I'm gonna go dive into and say like, and at that moment and I said, yes, I will go I said I will stay there as long as possible until I'm healed. I don't it, it doesn't matter. I'm making a choice to live right now and I'm going to give a hundred and a hundred and a hundred percent to that program when I got there.

Speaker 2: 41:29

So I get to Emerald Coast and I just, you know, we start doing different types of talk therapy I'm doing yoga, I'm doing EMDR, I am getting different medications for migraines and and Trazodone and stuff for like for some sleep shit. But it doesn't work good for me. It might. It fucks my sleep up. So I don't take any sleep aids or anything like that. It really makes me feel like all the work that I did that day gets fucking erased and I don't like. I don't like that. It's like drinking, trying to deal with a problem, going to sleep and the problem's still there. It's like you do all this work and it just erases it. So I really stay away from all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 42:13

And so I spent 60 days at that program and I just pounded the shit out of myself to get better and I got to about a 60 percent solution, I think, and I felt really good. I was like this is the greatest thing, how I feel like I can go, I'm going to go back to Key West and have a different perspective on life and, you know, really projected me into getting ahead of what I was feeling inside and what I was thinking about my childhood. So I go back to Key West and I finished on there and then I go back to Fort Bragg and I meet up with my friend, jeff Dardia, who's the NCYC of the human performance and wellness uh third group, who I've known for 10 years being a diver. He's a phenomenal resource of knowledge and stuff and he had met with some folks about the stella ganglion block and the ketamine treatment and I was like sure man, I've been through so much shit in my life, I'll go do anything like I'm not gonna. I was like yes, and so after I got up there, about six months later I ended up going to chicago and I got the dual sympathetic reset done on my left and right side for the Stella ganglion block and six ketamine treatments in a week.

Speaker 2: 43:33

Completely like changes who I feel about myself, what I think about my past life, how much I ruminate about shitty crap and how I feel about my family and who I am as a father completely changes Um and so from that time. And then I get to stand on this stage in Portland to kind of like, tell the world, like what I went through and who I am and they talk about super vulnerable and very scary moment in my life to go on to that red X in Portland to show the world that, like you can go through really bad stuff and still find that life is an amazing thing, that you can retake on, relearn, have a new perspective that I and I was like that's what I want to do. I want to give people hope that they too can get better and it's. And so this whole like it's a three-year process, right, so it's time, it's so much time. It is not something that's going to happen quickly and it's a lot of effort. There's a lot of sadness, there's a lot of falling back on what you've done and going forward and just backward. It's not a constant, you know. It's not a constant up like this at all. It's definitely a mountain of steps that you got to go through.

Speaker 2: 44:59

So that's a lot of how I got bad to good, help from doctors in the middle, some self-reflection in there on my own, some growth as a family, a family, and then to the other side of this journey to see that, like, this is a calling, this is a purpose that I I feel that people need to hear because they they from our community, like they, most of us only trust guys who've been there and and. And. It goes for first responders, it goes through regular army folks, the special operators, to anyone who does a real um, tactical, intense job need to hear from people who have done that in a in a like, relatable sense, and so that's where I've kind of met, uh, and that's where it kind of got me and it's really awesome to like, kind of like build that and share that with folks. So that's like. So that's kind of the whole realm of how I got here and what I had to go through and what I went through, um, and to how you get better yeah, it's, it's.

Speaker 1: 46:18

Mental health is not something that's going to get fixed with a magic pill, a magic treatment, and then you're you're just over and it's done. You're a better human being. It's a journey, it's it's. You ruck up every morning and you continue your path. Along the way, you might veer off, you might lose your asthma and you have to take a knee and get back on it, but it's the greatest single journey you can ever undertake and it's the. I think the most definitive thing that comes from it is understanding to let go of self-hate. That's the greatest thing that I've come to realize the amount of you know and our, our stories are very similar the and and it. I believe, through and it's. You know this is a journey, this is a process, it's a project that's been ongoing for several years and every time I talk to another soft professional that's vulnerable enough and they share their journey, the same things come into play A traumatic past, a childhood where there was some sort of trauma, not being able to address it, alcohol or drugs, and then allostatic load and stress.

Speaker 1: 47:30

That goes like this for decades and you just keep going, you keep pushing it down.

Speaker 1: 47:35

We are humans, we are going to break.

Speaker 1: 47:38

And that's okay, because the beauty of it, the most beautiful thing you will ever experience in life, is that rebreath, that, that taking that first breath of understanding like oh shit, I'm alive, taking that first conscious breath and understanding like I am not out of the fight. I might not be able to do this thing that I was so passionate and in love with, but there's a higher calling, there's a new mission. I am now energized and revitalized to be a better husband, to be a better father, to be a mentor, to be part of my community. And it's our conversations, our discussions not only help the rest of our regiment, the rest of our brotherhood, but other service members, because our stories and our ability to be vulnerable, it's giving hope to everybody that will tune in and listen to us. What was that moment like when you went on that TEDx stage? What was that rebirth like? Being able to go there and not not experience it from a moment of like I'm still hanging on to my trauma, but being able to champion it and advocate for others that moment.

Speaker 2: 48:47

The moment there seems big, but the the time it took to get to that stage is what has to be understood. First, I stood in this office for three months rehearsing, drilling, practicing over, putting my mind in to that building to be able to go do that. It's not like I just showed up one day and I was like here's what I'm going to tell the world. Showed up one day and I was like here's what I'm going to tell the world. But I've repeated this story over and over and over and it's becoming that it's just. It's just, it's just my life. And it's not a rumination, it's not painful, it's, it's telling.

Speaker 2: 49:38

The story is the therapy that being there shows other people that they can do the same. And the relatability of the story is so common that people get a fire in them to say that that guy just did something that I want to be able to do. I had women say like that I want my husband to be able to do what you just did, because if he can do that it will change his life forever. The biggest thing that you can work on if that is a story that you need to tell that's really difficult is to just tell somebody you don't know on the street. Get in a conversation with someone and just tell them. Everybody wants to hear a story and I think it's awesome. The podcast of today to me feels like men are coming around a fire and talking about the war. That's can tell a story about what they've been through and I think that that is a huge catalyst to get men talking where 20 years ago we were not doing that.

Speaker 1: 51:14

No, you're 100 correct. We it leads. When we hold on to this, when we don't share, um, it's slowly killing us and the data sound. You can look at the data, what it does to your heart, what it does to your insides, when you're just dealing with this trauma and the hypertension that it causes you and the bad vices that you pick up because you're trying to hide these demons and keep them locked away, um, it frees you. And what we don't understand is when you're vulnerable enough to share your story, you're giving somebody else the ability to do the same.

Speaker 1: 51:48

It's like sitting around a campfire and redistributing the weight around your rucks. Hey, I got, I got 200 rounds of saw man, I'm dying. Hey, give me a couple of your freaking pouches. I'll take a couple of that. Anybody want 240 ammo? I got a whole bunch. Yeah, man, give me a little bit. You distribute, you allow that weight to come off and you say holy shit, I'm not being judged, I'm not being ridiculed, no one's turning me away. But for a long time that's how I felt. Oh, nobody wants to hear this, no one wants to want, no one wants to hear what I've been through, what I'm dealing with. Just swallow it down, keep swallowing down and that'll kill us. But, like you said, being able to share this is not only cathartic and a release for us, but it gives others the understanding of like oh shit, yeah, I can do it too, it's like I look at it as being a father and telling stories.

Speaker 2: 52:38

It's like, don't you, wouldn't you like your son to know who you are and the things that you've been through? Yeah, don't you want to hear the stories of what your son or daughter go through in their life? Why would you not want to hear that? Like that's incredible. They, they, they're always going to hold you up as this hero, no matter what, and fall having the hero fall is part of the story and to come back and triumph is what we all have done and like it's phenomenal. And then you're like I don't, you don't want to, you don't want to go to that journey with your family. I think you would lose life. Like that's.

Speaker 2: 53:21

That's what I think life is about is we have struggles, we share with it, we grow together and people like that's the community. That's why we need to be outside, that's why we need to be around people like us, like-minded, because the people who are around us, like their ideals, reflect onto me and they reflect onto my family, and the family of the ODA comes together when there's bad problems and you can have that same thing here. Um, you know, after that it maybe makes it's a little harder. You know, a little bit more effort, because it's things, if you know, things in the community that you have to go out and do go to, versus that's their job and they're just people there you have yeah you have your enlisted friend that's just there with you.

Speaker 2: 54:21

That's not. It's not the case anymore. So now you gotta you know you gotta build some other communication skills and and build some gaps with folks that have maybe have no military service and like. Being able to bridge that gap is a great opportunity for us to develop ourselves, because we want to go to the easy button of the vfw, of the of guys who have gone through the same thing that is, 100, being lazy as fuck because you don't have to share anything with guys who've went to the argandab or went to you know camp price or went to cobra or tk or you know, went to baghdad and all these other shit you don't have, like it's already known, so you never have to share. That's what you need to get away from. You have to get into a place where you must share, because that's how you really grow. I think it's like it's just going back to the thing that um is is self-explanatory and no, no sharing, no vulnerability happens like you're setting yourself up for failure.

Speaker 1: 55:27

I think the greatest thing that we can do as we transition, when we get back and we get back to becoming a civilian, it's embracing it and understanding that you have to be part of your community. One of the biggest things for me that's helped me is getting back to going to church. What a great place to finally and I know it's uncomfortable, it can be scary to go there not knowing anybody. But get reestablished, get established where you live in the communities, be willing to take your hand, extend it out, shake hands and say hey, you know I'm, didn't? I just retired from seventh group. For again, I'm proud to be here. I love coming around here.

Speaker 1: 56:08

It seems scary. What you realize is that person is going to enrich your life, just like you're going to enrich their life. They don't know what it's like to be in the military, but you don't know what it's like to be a small business owner. They can give you information and give you a perspective in life that you don't have. And then you have this new powerful network of people from different backgrounds, different places that enjoy your company and they want you around. So that's how you strengthen and build your new tribe. It's better, it's a greater brotherhood now, because it's enriched with people that don't have the same backgrounds.

Speaker 2: 56:46

It just takes work and time. It doesn't just it doesn't happen the day you get out. This is a 36-month process that you should be doing before you get out. You need to take your perspective of the Army and look at it as a company. It is no longer the thing that I have selfless service, it is a fucking job and I'm going to look at it as a job. I'm gonna start pulling away and start worrying about me and about what my next is and this place can get. Let's put it away for a while and let's and reframe what you think it and how you feel what it is, because it's and it needs to happen, because you don't want to be out and then taking three to five years to get over what you were just in. Like, use the time that you're in the army to get out of the army. Don't wait, because it's scary and if you can, at least get the resources that you need.

Speaker 2: 57:51

If there's something that comes up while you're still in versus on the other side, where you're like I don't even know where to start and that would be really scary, yeah, to try to put little systems and processes in place after you're out because you're like I don't need this. And then one day you're sitting on your porch and, like man, I'm really going through some tough times. What do I do? I don't even know the first person to call or to look up and, like you've done, failed yourself, because you should have already known all the resources that SOCOM, care Coalition, all these nonprofits are. If shit goes bad, because everyone wants to plan for bad things happening in their family, I'm going to learn how to shoot, I'm going to make sure we have enough food. I'm going to do all of that, but I'm never going to fucking prepare for what happens when I have a fucking breakdown and I have no idea what to do.

Speaker 2: 58:41

I don't even know who to call. I don't know what I can do, what is available for what. I, as a green beret, what is out there? Like, put those things in your notebook of stuff that I know a guy that is involved here that I can call at a moment's notice.

Speaker 2: 58:58

So like, don't, like guys will come out of that woodworks, but you better be fucking ready for it and when it's time to ask for help, there is a lot of things that are out there. You just got to go, you know. You got to know the right number, you know the right email, know the right people. So that is another community of things that you need to be aware of, your family needs to be aware of, so that when something bad does happen, your wife, other people in your life, know who to call it. You know it's a, it's a good, you know part of your will, in a sense that, like, I hate to say that it's just a matter of time, that if you haven't reached out for help and you went through the GWAP for 20 years, it's just a matter of time until those days of moral injury and self-reflection about what you've done and what you've seen is going to come to haunt you.

Speaker 1: 59:51

Yeah, yeah, and I want to take a moment, uh, plug and share what I think is one of the most amazing resources, helped me. Um, the green beret foundation is an amazing resource for green berets, uh, with that being said, one of the greatest inpatient centers that I benefited from and continues to support I referred many of guys to them Mission resiliency at Laurel Ridge is one of the best places to go inpatient. If you are listening to this and you are having issues and you feel that inpatient is the way to go, please, please, please, look into lower Ridge treatment center in El Paso, texas. If you're a green beret, go to green beret foundation. Hit that request for support button. Let them know what you're struggling with. Let them know what you need a system with. The frameworks have already been established. They already have a framework reference. They already know how to get people to these treatment centers.

Speaker 1: 1:01:01

Please, don't wait. It's only a matter of time. We are humans. It's okay to break. It's okay to realize that, hey, I'm going to shoot the signal flare, I'm going to risk, I'm going to go out there and get help. What we don't want is to get to a situation where you're already past that place, where you're already in that moment of I don't know what to do and you might risk and do something that none of us want to have. You go through being a survivor myself. I know Trevor being a survivor himself. We don't want anybody to experience that. So please be willing to raise that hand, go into the unknown, be courageous and brave enough to say I need help In those moments of vulnerability. That's where the healing can start. That's where it can begin. So yeah, trevor, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being courageous and vulnerable enough to share your story and, man, I'm excited for what's coming next for you, man, any chance?

Speaker 2: 1:02:00

that you're working on a book or any other projects. I'm actually just editing my memoir here to hopefully to be released by the early summer early summer, so it's it's a a count of everything as from a child to college to war and past that and moving, uh, into this next purpose in life. It's kind of a a guide to like shitty stuff and to show that you know there's pain as a part of being human and human is painful. Kind of a perspective is that all the things that you're feeling, everyone else feels it's, and so to say that I'm going through it all the thick of it on my own is just it's not true and it's easy to get in to the perspective and mindset that you're the only one suffering and I don't want it, yeah, and I don't want to suffer anymore and I think that's a fucking cop-out, it's selfish and it it does nothing to provide any anything good can come out of it, cause I I always tend to think about my kids. If I was to commit suicide and what that would do to their rest of their life, and like I would, I would rather be just sad and mad and angry at the world than to put that on my kids ever and it's just, you know, deep reflection.

Speaker 2: 1:03:34

And yeah, I got help from the special forces foundation as well. They paid a lot of money and, yep, there was like really no questions asked and I and I did it on active duty and it so calm was the. The um, the navy seal I was working with. The Navy SEAL I was working with as an 06 was like go take care of yourself, and it was.

Speaker 1: 1:04:00

Yeah, and yeah and final plug, final plug yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:04:05

You got to go. But shout out to SOCOM Care Coalition If you're here in Northwest Florida, go see your representative at seventh group. That's flow, hit my man up. If you need assistance with anything, that man will frigging move mountains to get you the care that you deserve, to get you where you need to go. Don't be afraid of reaching out to these resources. If, at any moment, you have questions and don't know who to turn to, send me an email set call podcast at gmailcom. Any moment you have questions and don't know who to turn to, send me an email setcaultpodcast at gmailcom. I got you. We can point you to the right direction.

Speaker 1: 1:04:43

You're not alone in this fight and, like we like to say on the show, we get through this together. You didn't make through the deployments on your own. You always had a team, you always had a platoon, you had a company. We get through this together, trevor. Thank you for being here today, brother, I hope to see you all next time. Until then, take care. If you like what we're doing and you're enjoying the show, don't forget to share us. Like us, subscribe and head on over to our Patreon, where you can be part of our community and get access to all of our episodes as soon as they drop, and remember we get through this together. Take care.