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#213 Marcus Farris: Return, life after Moral Injury
In this episode, we explore the profound impact of moral injury and its effects on individuals who have faced trauma, particularly in the military. We discuss the importance of understanding moral injury and the need for healing through storytelling and embracing the hero’s journey. Our guest, Marcus Farris, shares his path to recovery, highlighting how coaching and post-traumatic growth helped him challenge the victim narrative and embrace personal growth and resilience.
The conversation touches on the benefits of engaging in physical activities and the role of the mind-body connection in promoting healing. Marcus recounts his journey to finding his passion for veteran wellness and sports after joining Mission 22 and taking part in recovery and resiliency programs. He discusses his experiences with triathlons, HYROX, and how pushing beyond one’s comfort zone fosters personal growth. Marcus encourages veterans to reconnect with activities they once loved and to seek help when needed. Through his new book “ Return: Life after Moral Injury"#1, Marcus explores the steps we can all take to find ourselves and learn to thrive once again.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Marcus’s skin care routine
02:50 Understanding and Addressing Moral Injury
06:02 The Power of Storytelling and the Hero's Journey
10:30 Challenging the Victim Narrative
15:04 Coaching and Post-Traumatic Growth in Healing
21:26 Embracing Personal Growth and Resilience
24:58 The Benefits of Engaging in Challenging Physical Activities
28:36 Finding passion in veteran wellness and sports
33:03 Engaging in triathlons and high rocks
37:28 Rekindling old activities and trying new things
40:32 The power of physical activities in healing and resilience
46:37 Seeking help and support for personal growth
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Produced by Security Halt Media
security hot podcast let's go with an expert in guerrilla warfare, 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 was disposed of enemy personnel to kill period with my attrition.
Speaker 1:Get on my feed and there's always some sort of like new ad for men's skin care and I'm like dude, you're supposed to look rough, you're, you're supposed to age like a man, but I I do imagine that if you're training in the pool every single day, chlorine, chlorine has got to be definitely a factor for irritation and nobody needs that.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I'm now to where I have two tubes of Aquaphor ointment that I have to put on my face, unless I want to look like some sort of half-mummified person coming into the office.
Speaker 1:Just skin dried out.
Speaker 2:Why are there circles around your eyes and your face is dry? Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, yeah, man, nobody needs that. Oh, dude, marcus Ferris, welcome back. Um, it is an honor to have you back. I love, uh the we're able to sit down and talk about this new book. Um, return life after moral injury. You know we turn life after moral injury. You know we talk about ptsd, we talk about depression, anxiety, but few people take the time to dive in understand moral injury. Uh, it's, it's still being debated. Some people say it doesn't exist and there's a lot of people and a lot of evidence to say, yeah, it does. You're raised a certain way. You're raised to believe right from wrong, and then you experience something like the g-watt and values your morals, everything changes Right. And when you come back, how do you reconcile that? So thank you for being here to talk about this brother.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, stoke me out. Yeah, the conversation. I'm like does it exist? I mean it's you. You run into the same issue in any psychological field of study. So when you're designing a, say, a personality test, right, like, is that thing that you're referring to a real thing that we can say? So the way we describe this is with construct validity, so you can imagine the say. For example, you might've heard of the big five personality trait.
Speaker 2:One of the constructs that would probably be familiar to your listeners would be introversion, or extroversion as it's described. So the construct is extroversion and the way that we describe that is oh, it's like how outgoing you are and you know how how much energy you get back from a certain number of people that you interact with, and it's like, well, okay, I can agree with that, but is that a real thing? Because I can't open up your brain and point like, hey, look all this neurons firing me. You have 80% of. You know what I mean. So we can't quite measure these things in the same way. Um, but you know, it's. It's.
Speaker 2:It kind of goes back to the mind body problem of like, how do you?
Speaker 2:This is worth thinking about for a while. How do you take something that's an idea in the mind, that is a timeless, spaceless, immaterial entity, and then turn it into a thing that is within time, takes up space and is made of stuff, and we have that ability to do that. And so the way that we describe things like moral injury is through story, right, which is why there are certain stories that you walk away from the movie theater and you're like, eh, I don't know no good. Or there are others where it's like, wow, there was something about, like there was something there, like the construct or whatever you want to call it. Like that's, it pulls to me. So is moral injury a real thing? Well, it, it's language that allows us to talk about something that's there, and I, from the kind of field of study I'm in and where where I work in Mission 22, I think it's a lot more accessible to talk about the kind of hero's journey in terms of moral injury as opposed to in terms of PTSD as it's described.
Speaker 1:Yes, Dude, let's dive into that, because that's a concept that a lot of individuals don't even understand and it ties into why you serve, for a vast majority of us ties into why we serve. Everybody remembers Luke Skywalker, everybody remembers these epic heroes. You know, campbell wrote about it and the hero's journey and we, growing up, we don't understand these tales but, just like you said, they stick to you and it develops a narrative and, before you know it, you're a 40, 50 year old that went into the military because he saw a character or he read a book with a character. Um, you know, you talk about it in the book the epic of gilgamesh. Why are these stories so impactful and historically have like? You know, you read it and it sticks with you, the odyssey. It sticks with you, it calls you into a life that you know you're of service to others. Why is that such an important thing?
Speaker 2:yeah, one of the things with with that whole story too, is that we, we can kind of get lulled into the sense of that story only exists and is real for us if we're doing military stuff. And I can kind of trace, like you know, I got the shaved head at BASIC, I got the initiation, I got the help in time of trouble, but then a lot of us are stuck in that abyss, even though the war on the outside is over. It's like, well, I haven't quite come home yet in a sense, and, um, you know, I think it can be relieving to know that. Hey, you know, actually there's like a whole other half to this and one of the components of that story is like you have somebody come to your aid in a time of need, like a mentor by your side. Um, and that's where in our mission 22 programs, we have coaching that plays such an integral role of that and, as far as we see it, at least on the level of storytelling, is that coach, that guide by your side, is that person who is able to kind of ferry you through back so that you can sort of return home, if you will, with a revitalized, you know, sense of like.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, I have been able to heal from this. I have been able to realize that this psychological injury, uh, this depression is whatever, it's only like that's part of the deal, except it's not like. The metaphor I really like is that the, the, the, whatever mental health things, psychological issues that you deal with can't affect the, the you that you are, no more than bad weather can affect the blue sky above, and we often confuse the two, where it's like oh, it's, it's my PTSD, again, it's my this, it's my that. Yeah, dude, yes, and it's. Here's an interesting question you can ask yourself. So imagine you're doing so. Let's, let's, we'll, we'll roll play, besides amazing conversations with awesome guests on your podcast. When do you feel lit up? It's like I'm in the right time, the right place, I'm doing the thing that I want to do. What's that for you?
Speaker 1:Being of service to others when that phone goes off or I have a meeting with somebody where they need help. They need somebody to provide a resource or just somebody to listen to.
Speaker 2:I know for a fact in this point in my life of service to others. That's my thing, yeah, so it sounds like in this case it's you being in dialogue with somebody in a, yeah, kind of open, good, free-flowing conversation, right? So in those moments do you feel depressed, anxious, ptsd symptoms propping up? Nope, right. So where did they?
Speaker 1:Like for me, like it's now on this side of the the journey, like it's not, it's not a factor, it's not there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I would say that, even even for those who say that you know they've been diagnosed with clinical depression, clinical this or that, we can probably find certain exceptions where it's like, you know, when you were walking your dog, when you were hanging out with your kid, when you were enjoying a nice meal, you weren't just depressed the clouds moved away for a little bit. Yeah, how do we do more of that? And what does that say about the you that's under there, that's already there that's brilliant.
Speaker 1:That's a great way of forming it. It's the same thing that we talk about with pain too. We have this idea that we're always in pain my back's messed up, my feet are messed up, my shoulders, that script, that way of thinking that you're always suffering, you're always in pain. We'll dial it back a little bit. I found that with mindfulness. What are you feeling in this moment, right now? Are you truly in pain? You're sitting down or you're comfortable on your couch? Well, yeah, you're right, I'm not in pain right now, in this moment. There you go. Change the narrative, change that script. And none of us are told that when we get out and we're dealing with injuries, we just comfortably fall into the spot of constantly saying the same thing I'm miserable, I'm always in pain. It's a hard thing to break for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we can easily take for granted that that's a thing that we continue to tell ourselves. Where it's the whole thing, where it's like, oh, I'm in the market for a green Jeep, and then suddenly you see green Jeeps everywhere. Like, oh, I'm the person who's in pain. So let's find pain as much as we can. And with with so much kind of victim mentality that we've got going on in our culture, it's kind of like reverse cdt. So what I mean by that is like, if you've been to cognitive behavioral therapy or something akin to it, the idea is like let's find where some bad thinking is coming up, be able to put a label on it like, oh, I'm, I'm having that thought again. Get some distance. And here's a quick tool that you can use. You can say like I'm noticing that I'm looking for pain, I'm noticing that my body's feeling anxious, and suddenly that puts a little bit of traction between the you that's noticing and the sensation of the pain. Okay, so in cognitive behavioral therapy or something like that, you can start to create distance between the me. That's like that we're, you know the sky, to use our metaphor, the blue sky and the clouds. But then in the victim narrative, what it was saying is like, find every possible way that you're being hurt, Like yeah, instead.
Speaker 2:So there's a really interesting study I came across where they it was a interview setup, and so the subjects were the people who were being interviewed for a job, and so what they did was they were testing ostensibly it's like we're going to see if the appearance of your face changes, how that other person treats you. So what they did is they had a makeup artist go in and they put like a scar like right across the face or something like very obvious, and so the person with the interviewee was basically told like see how much they discriminate against you based on the scar. And then, right before the interview, they're like, okay, we're gonna touch this up just one little bit, and they removed the scar completely but didn't say anything right. And so then after the fact, they asked the test subject oh, how much they discriminate you based on your looks? And then they came up with all these reasons and then they were like, hey, look in the mirror.
Speaker 1:That's genius, it's. It's crazy how we can be and I think we see it. If you're aware you see it more nowadays, especially in the political realm. It's kind of hard. It's feeling that identity in being a victim, like it's okay. It's that warm comfort. You want to be able to belong to this group of justified individuals. And that's such a sad existence to constantly feel like you have to put on that, that warm comfort of identifying with something that's wrong with you. How do we change that? How do we, how do we tell individuals to you know, push back against that idea yeah, one.
Speaker 2:One way that I've uh, that's been helpful for me to think about. It is so a couple weeks ago, I went to the vadodD Suicide Prevention Conference in Portland, about three hours down the road from here, and they had the way I would describe it is like if you're, if you're, driving along in a vehicle and suddenly you break down, the resources that you need to get to your destination change drastically versus when you just had a car that works well, right, and so after you break, break down, suddenly you need to contact emergency services, you need to contact an uber, you need to contact tow trucks, this and that. And what I saw at the conference was like a lot of really shiny looking tow trucks. Like, look at these, look at this fleet of tow trucks we have. Aren't they great about how great our tow trucks are? Meanwhile, this, like you can go and look this up for the audience there's they did a breakout session that had.
Speaker 2:Every year, the DOD or I guess the VA puts out statistics on mortality, right, and so Mission 22, the organization I work with, as you probably know, got its name from one of these statistics of how many veterans are taking their own life every day, and so they charted out from 2001, I think it was 2001 to 2022. I think they take a little bit to get all the data together. Do you want to guess what the total number of deaths by suicide at least as far as their tracking shifted from over the course of that 20 years? How much? In 2001, when they first started tracking, it was just over 6,000. In 2022, I believe it was 22, it was 6,300. So it had gone up, but slightly, and at the same time, everybody at this conference not everyone, but kind of painting with a broad brush but the stuff that I was getting from this conference was like oh man, service members are going to see these providers at twice the rate that they were before. Isn't that great. Let's pat ourselves on the back. We're reducing the stigma, hooray. And it's like well you know, are we moving the needle really? And so we had a. I'll tell you about this. This is really enlightening for me.
Speaker 2:There was a fireside chat that they had, where they had these panels of the kind of experts in the field of mental wellness, service member well-being, and there's a va panel and a dod panel. I went to the latter and so they're. I don't know, there are four or five hundred people there, um, a little open mic situation. And so I go up and I asked this panel of the experts on service member mental health and I described like hey, you know, I've been a company commander for two and a half years, I work mission 22 uh, gave some background on on that and told them like hey, you know, there's there's this coaching model that seems to work a lot better. And I gave them two very good reasons why. One was an article that you can find on armymil that talks about the. So you've probably been to some MRT training, right? Was that master resiliency training, something like that? And even the master resilience training, like whoever wrote that article, was like hey, we need to go to more of a coaching model because what we're doing is not really working.
Speaker 2:And then I cited another article that talked about how to use the language in the article, paraprofessionals, ie people who aren't clinicians, can be just as effective as clinical CBT in most cases. And so I brought those two up. I made the case for like hey, coaching would be great, it's a lot more accessible. And the response I got was pretty telling. I think it was four or five people who responded to me. The best I got was like yes, clinicians are burnt out, it would be nice if we had help, but no acknowledgement was given to the efficacy of coaching at all. And I had several people come up after like, come and talk to me, like wow, they didn't really answer your question. It's like yeah, uh, so yes, um so why is there such a hesitancy?
Speaker 1:because we've seen the. We've seen the success of peer-to-peer coaching. We've seen the success of other programs that utilize coaching.
Speaker 2:There is tons of efficacy out there. Why is there such a pushback? I think it's kind of that principle where it's like science progresses one generation at a time because you have to have all the people who are stuck in the ways of like this is how it works. I think there are also just like, how much money? I'm going to get cynical here for a little bit, but really how much money is there to be made off of clinical care versus coaching care? Um, and we have a? A? Okay, so here would be the example.
Speaker 2:So have you ever seen the movie the life of pie? Yes, okay, time ago. Yeah, so remember the island he got stuck on? Yeah, yeah. So this is a very weird island. Uh, and the.
Speaker 2:From a distance, it showed a silhouette of a corpse. It's like that's weird. Why wouldn't the island be a corpse? And he lands on it during the day and the tiger is able to eat the, the meerkats or whatever were on there, and then the boy was able to eat potatoes and this stuff, like that. And so it's like, wow, this is an amazing island, I'm getting refreshed, so cool, great.
Speaker 2:And so he climbs up in one of the trees during the night and he opens one of the little lotus flowers that's in the tree and he finds inside a tooth. That's weird, why is there a tooth in the flower? And then he looks down to all of the ponds within the island and all these fish are just dead. Then he looks down to all of the ponds within the island and all these fish are just dead. They're just like decaying, and I think that's when it pans out and shows that the island is porous.
Speaker 2:So what's the takeaway there? Well, the takeaway is that for certain parts of your journey, you need help, you need some refreshment. That's good. It is not your home, and I think too many people getting incentivized on both sides will find themselves perpetually stuck on this island of care, where the person who goes to the VA is incentivized to stay there with the idea that like oh, go, see mental health stuff, like you need to continue to rely on a thing that is outside of you to heal, and then the person who's doing the healing ostensibly has can like be rewarded by like wow, look at all the help you're giving. And if you challenge that, like oh you, you don't think veterans should get help, what do you mean?
Speaker 1:and yeah, so it's. It's one of those things that aggravates the. You know it's my show. I I concuss the ever-living dog shit out of me. You go, you get injured. You go to a doctor, you get assessed. You get stitched up, you get released. You go to a mental health provider. You go see a counselor, you get help. You get to where you can start using the tools that they give you. They work through some things with you and then eventually you high five and you keep moving forward.
Speaker 1:But we're changing and what I'm seeing more and more is this idea that you need to be locked in and stay in. We see it with telehealth providers I'm not going to name the companies. We see it all the time. Hey, you finish our nine week cohort. Don't forget, you're still part of us, you're still part of our family. Come on, in, log in weekly. No, no, you have to be able to go out there and ride without training wheels and maybe fall down and get back up and dust yourself off and realize, okay, I'm doing some bad things. Let me get back Course correct. You can't stay beholden to a system, to one provider, for the rest of your life. It's it's life. You have to try to figure it out on your own. You have tools, you have resources. You get in trouble. Hell yeah, shoot up that star cluster and get help again. But nobody should be getting you locked in to a subscription model freaking treatment center like it's just not right, yeah yeah, like, yeah, like.
Speaker 2:there's Adam Lane Smith, who is a fantastic um counselor turned attachment specialist. You can find his stuff. Uh, there's mind pump media. Shout out to those guys, have some really good podcasts with Adam Smith.
Speaker 2:One of the things that he noticed in the clinical world is that we have all these criteria for how do we diagnose people, right, Speaking of constructability at the very beginning. How do you actually decide what the threshold is? But anyway, so he'll talk about. Let's take for granted that they have a good metric, and it's like if the depression gets in the way of daily function, there's some type of a sickness. Okay, that I mean, that's logical, I guess.
Speaker 2:But then the problem is that how often are you undiagnosed, right, like oh, you've reached a point where it's not in the way anymore. Cool You're, you don't need extra care. What, like he? And his point was like we really in the, in that industry, you don't get undiagnosed very often. How often do people like I have PTSD and then the VA said that I got cured and I don't have it anymore? Which is why I think for for coaching for a lot, for probably 80, 90% of people. Have you ever heard the story of the golden Buddha. No, so I forget which country this is in, so forgive me, for you know giving the people group wrong or whatever.
Speaker 1:So we'll put it in the episode description. We'll we'll fact check it, We'll put it in there for you guys.
Speaker 2:So the story of the golden Buddha guys. So the story of the golden buddha basically there's a we'll say, a people group and the um. You know this this ancient time, and they had this golden buddha statue that was worth who knows how much money, like very valuable thing that they it was like their center of. Uh, it's what brought me into the community and they realized like, hey, there's this whole other force let's say it was the mongols who are coming to, like, take over the town and our way of life is going to be seriously threatened. And so what they did was that we're like this golden Buddha is too big to just be able to move and hide with them a good amount of time, because, you know, the invaders are on their way. So what they did was they basically covered it in like this sort of mud spackle and they took all of the shine out of it.
Speaker 2:And there was, from all appearances it was just the sort of terracotta type statue, and generations passed and stayed in the same place and people forgot that that's what it was until one day, um, somebody was kind of messing with one of the sides and a little piece came off and it revealed there's this gold underneath it and they realized, wow, this, like they discovered, they rediscovered that history and so it's kind of a that seemed like a reasonable metaphor of for somebody seeking care like, hey, the, the gold isn't outside of you, like you don't need to go to a specialist for that healing.
Speaker 2:It's more of a matter of what can we find what's already there? How do we get back in touch with that blue sky above and realize that you know they're going to be like in this world under the sun, right as the author of Ecclesiastes puts it, in this world under the sun there's going to be stuff that that kind of gets in the way of that. But remembering that there is a piece of you, there is the most important piece of you is that piece that can't be hurt by bad weather.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so important to promote that message, but even within our own circles, even within our own veteran groups, like there's this hesitancy to look past the negative. Some of the most toxic places that I have to interact with are within those veteran ecosystems where it's like it's an identity. I want to be broken, I want to be the disgruntled veteran. It's like fuck, dude, you can have a life, you can have great, joyous moments. You have to let go of this stuff. How do we change that narrative? That's the hardest thing that I'm still trying to promote, but's always. Oftentimes shouldn't say always oftentimes it's met with a lot of negativity. Like who are you to tell me I could live better? It's like, dude, there's more to life than just being bitter and angry yeah, yeah it's.
Speaker 2:I think growing up requires, um, holding two truths at once. Like I, I'm sympathetic to people who feel that way, because there are a lot of things in the environment, culturally, that reward that. Remember the whole story of Stolen Valor back in I think it was like the 80s before I think it was. Was it the Bush era administration that basically put that into effect? I think so, yeah, yeah. So essentially, you had a lot of people that were impersonating Vietnam veterans to get all sorts of benefits, Right, Um, and the fact of those benefits being there like part of human nature is that we go where the incentives are and when you're in serious pain and the only way that you understand how to cure that pain is to adopt a victim narrative and hop onto that carnivorous island Like we can. We can understand why people would do that. In some sense, it's almost a wonder why more people aren't that way, and so, for my part, it seems to me that one of the best avenues to do that is through sport. So I've been an endurance athlete for a while. I was on the US military endurance sports team for a couple years and in mission 22,. We're in the early stages of looking into what it might look like to put more life into amplifying how individuals from the military are doing things in sport. And so I, you know we've, we've gone back and forth about like what's the best, like we call it post traumatic growth. You know we've, we've gone back and forth about like what's the best, like we call it post-traumatic growth. Um, you know, moral injury, healing, stuff like this One of the terms I really like is post-traumatic performance.
Speaker 2:So so if you've gone through moral injury, you've, you've been diagnosed with whatever and you've taken some type of action to heal from that, how much did you learn about how the human body works? How much did you learn about your physiology, how the way that you eat affects your mood, affects your sleep, affects your vocation, affects your mental clarity, right and like, when you start to see all of these, this constellation of health illuminated, because you were put in a point where you had that tension of like I just want to be well, I want to get over this, Let me learn, let me have this hunger, let me have this tension towards what health is? Who better to then realize all of the complexities of the human body, how it works and how you can actually end up performing after, and could it be the case that you would be better off than somebody who is just kind of going with the flow of normal life and living lives of quiet, desperation, right that somebody finds themselves in. So how cool would it be if you were to turn that into like and I can give specific examples we have on our Mission 22 YouTube page.
Speaker 2:There's a video called Pedaling with a Purpose One. Chris Jackanick talks about his story of getting on the bike after his experience in the military and transforming that to something else, and so I think messages like that really just like continuing to drive home. Man, it is because you went through that dark valley that you have the gift. Trauma is a teacher. You get two lives if you've gone through something like this, and that's actually kind of badass.
Speaker 1:No, it's so true man, it is, and we're seeing it more. There are more veterans right now that are taking on insane challenges the free and CEO of Snake Farm just at the Leadville 100. These are soft veterans, soft professionals are going out there and taking on these insane challenges, not only to inspire growth and promote like finding that chapter two and finding that next goal to conquer but to prove to everybody like you're not done after traumatic incidents, you're not done after going through hellacious combat in the G1 era. There's something to being in discomfort. There's something great about putting your body to a test and putting your goals out there and achieving them, and that mind-body connection.
Speaker 1:There's proven efficacy in doing hard things. But again, we're going against the narrative because what does the world around us tell us to do? Shh, go back, sit on the couch, grab that tub of ice cream, grab that Coke and sit down and binge watch Stranger Things for the 15th time. It's hard beat it. But when you, when you see it pop up on your feed, like it does challenge people, I'm I'm engaged with it every single day when I, like I said, when I see people within my own community going out there and doing hard things and it's like dude, there's something to this like how, how are you at this point in your life? You said you're gearing up for another triathlon, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I took after about eight seasons of doing triathlon. I took a good like four years off when my last triathlon I did was in well until recently in Nice, france, in 2019.
Speaker 1:And for me that was. I said, oh shit, that's still pretty recent.
Speaker 2:Um, and just on a personal level, like that was uh, I had a marriage that was ending. I had, uh, basically a lot like I didn't really know what I was doing vocationally. I had a lot of things that at in that era were just kind of dissolving, but I had like one. So this is a really cool moment in my life where, um, I'll spare all the details right now because it's sort of a long story, but you can imagine how bro it's share.
Speaker 1:It share with the world, man. Your journey is going to help somebody well.
Speaker 2:So where? Where I found myself is I? So I I had finished my active duty service when I was in Alaska and had moved down to Bend, oregon, as part of mostly a result of. Basically, the substance of the marriage I was in at the time was we were mostly like triathlon friends and I didn't want to admit that, I didn't think that that was how it actually was. But basically we got here, did triathlon for a while. I was sort of it was fun for a bit. Um, but then, like from from my job, I was having a really hard time finding something.
Speaker 2:In central Oregon, the main industries are construction or tourism or healthcare, and I had an engineer background, but I also had a heart to do something in the realm of veteran wellness and sports and I was like, how on earth do I put all these puzzle pieces together? Because it was like finding my bliss was doing something that was physically challenging with service members. What does that look like? That's what I need to do, and so, fast forward a little bit. I learned about health coaching, and that was at the beginning of 2019. And that, like there was something about that, talking about the hero's journey. Where it's that, that call to you where it's like there's something there. I don't know how it's going to work, but I need to follow that thread and and in my life here I didn't have a whole lot of people that were supporting that it's like you're not going to be able to make any money. You need to get a job that's like just project management or something that follows your degree, and it was like, well, maybe, but this is, I need to do this.
Speaker 2:And so it was about that same time that the marriage pretty much dissolved. I got fired from my job and what was amazing was, right before that trip to Nice I remember this so vividly. So it was like the last week that I was in any type of I mean, it wasn't even a functional relationship at that point but about the last week that I shared a household with that person, and so I got a call from my employer. So I had just taken some time off for my first. I had only been there for like four months and they were like hey, don't come back after your vacation. It was just kind of out of the blue, like okay, awesome, um, okay. It's like I got no food, got me a job, my pet's heads are falling off. And uh, dude, within five minutes, within five minutes of getting that call, a guy from fedex shows up at the door and it was my graduation kit from my health coaching institute. Um, and it was like I knew in that moment it was like something's, something's here, something like this is cool. And so, um, I had already met magnus johnson, who is the mission 22 founder at that time, um, and basically, when I got back from that trip, started doing stuff with mission 22, did some coaching for some of the people on staff there, and then they just brought me on full time.
Speaker 2:I've been able to, uh, kind of get back with the recovery and resiliency program that we've been running, uh, now for almost four years, and so that's kind of how that passion of mine coalesced into something that's becoming really awesome. And so now, here in real time, you know, I was able to go back and race with the whole Army team at Point Maku, california, about two months ago. I had previously done that race eight years prior, so it's super cool to be able to go back and re-experience that. And so now, yes, now I'm kind of back into getting my triathlon legs under me and we'll kind of see how it goes. I've also been experimenting with this sport called High Rocks. I don't know if you've heard of that one, but H-Y-R-O-X yeah, it's a sport that a buddy of mine from my gym told me about maybe two years ago.
Speaker 1:And they came up with it in germany in 2018, so it's gonna be bad shit crazy if the germans came up with it.
Speaker 2:It's got to be crazy well, okay, so here you go. Um, the way the competitions go, it's kind of it's quasi crossfit, but it's crossfit adjacent. We'll put it out it's crossfit light. Yes, so the competitions, the, the movements are all in the same order, so it's not like a CrossFit competition where it's always different. It's eight kilometers of running, but you do it in one kilometer loops and so between each loop is a different functional movement. So the functional movements go, if I can remember, in order it's skier, sled, push, sled pull, burpee, broad jump, row, sandbag, lunges, armor, scary, and then you finish with 100 wall balls and between each of those is a one kilometer run. And so they have them all over Europe, they have a couple in the States, and so that's been a really fun kind of change of pace. So I'm kind of combining that with triathlon right now, and that's been a ton of fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds like fun. Dude, that's insane. That's a hero's workout right there, Holy shit hey they've got one in Vegas on February 1st.
Speaker 2:I'll be registering for that. Are you going there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm coming down that. Are you going there? Going back to the book, did you write all of it? Were you partnered with somebody?
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, I wrote the. I wrote it myself, uh, but it was, I think I put in kind of the early chapter of how a lot of it came as a result of those conversations with magnus in those early days, um, probably like the first good two years at least, uh, being at mission 22. He, he mentored me a lot and going through my own thing, um and uh, so like a significant amount of that book was an influence for him, as well as just a lot of my own kind of learning and following my own uh interests when it comes to like. So here's another thing that I didn't include in the earlier story. So I was, um in that process of divorce. I was separated for 15 months, like with a naive hope that something would come back, something, yeah, but during that time I just the way my brain worked is like what happened? I have to figure out what happened and I discovered what codependency meant, yeah, yeah, oh my God, yeah, that that happens to a lot of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah that that happens to a lot of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and so it was. It was in that season where I was learning, like how those things, uh, basically I was like how can it be that the person that I thought I knew turned out to be somebody very different? And then, like some light bulb moments happened, uh, and that's what ended up getting me into counseling, um, and so mission 22 also allowed me to go to school for that for a while. Um, so about this time last year is when I got that uh degree solidified, um, so, yeah, so the book is like it's. It's taking the perspective of the counseling world. It's looking at hero's journey. It's kind of my story, his story, synthesized a bit, and then also at the end of it it has a couple of very practical, just physiological stuff that you can do. So types of exercise. It has a bit on nutrition. It has a bit on mindfulness stuff like that, um, a bit on how not to take life so seriously. And then I also one of the cool things that I try to tie in is how, uh, one of my favorite chapters is the one on play, and I think the chapter is um, it's like slow life down, essentially. I think I named it something else, but, um, so here's, here's something to think about. Um, okay, so two things.
Speaker 2:When somebody has experienced trauma and they haven't quite gotten on that other side of recovery, one of the hallmarks of their kind of psyche at that point is I can't do hard things with other people because that is a threat to my life. And so well, what could we do to sort of undo that? Okay, so put a pin in that idea. And then another idea is if we were to describe somebody who is depressed, anxious, socially isolating, what would we like if we just to describe somebody who is depressed, anxious, socially isolating, what would we like if we just took a video camera to record what that person was doing, what actions they were taking? What would those actions be? Okay, so these are rhetorical questions. Hold those two things in your mind, right, so I can't do hard things with other people. What is the behavior of somebody who is very depressed, anxious and isolated? All right. What is the behavior of somebody who is very depressed, anxious and isolated? All right. Now, what would be the opposite of all of those? What actions would we take? That's the opposite of everything that I just described.
Speaker 2:Well, it's probably that you're coordinating physically challenging things with other people. It's you're coming into close contact with other people in a way. That's creating something that is harmonious, right? It's? Uh, well, I have a whole like there's like a table in the book Super cool, I made it in Excel. Everybody should check it out. Um, but it's, it's a whole list of stuff where it's like if you're depressed, isolated and anxious, then these are probably the actions that we would see. And then with play, and also if you're into dance or you know, country swing personally is what I've kind of gotten into the last year. Um, talk about a plot twist in my story.
Speaker 1:That's like we got to dig in that in a little bit, but continue yeah.
Speaker 2:But anyway, so the the action of playing with other people and whether I'm not you know, I'm agnostic as far as your sport or just doing some type of a workout, I'm doing hard things with other people and I'm telling my body that I'm able to do this with other people. That's kind of the undoing of that Gordian knot, of all of the sort of symptoms that we might see from somebody healing trauma.
Speaker 1:Yeah, taking the opposite action. If everything's telling you to stay in that, yeah, that dungeon of your bedroom and continue ordering DoorDash and binge watching shit, do the opposite action. And I know, guys, it sounds impossible. I've dealt with it. Grab your shoes, go to the nearest gym, go outside, call that one friend they used to go fishing with, get out there and do something and you'll slowly realize that, yeah, it's a pain in the ass and you're doing it begrudgingly. But even if you're just getting out with your dog, like, get outside, it is the best thing you can do when you're dealing with depression, anxiety and that urge to just close off from the entire world. It's great advice, man.
Speaker 2:You know one thing I learned about this. This was like I had a bit of a light bulb moment. Um, not too long ago I was, I was in, uh, some airport, I don't remember. I had a long layover listening to podcasts. This was a really cool thing to know. So there's one thing let's see here's. Here's a little stump chump for you. There are certain people whose amygdala is pretty much are inert, and they don't fear anything, which is not a good thing in a lot of circumstances, because there's a reason that fear is a thing. But there's a condition where, no matter what you do to this person, they will not fear anything, except there's one exception where there's a universal fear.
Speaker 2:Lack of oxygen, right? Well, it's a buildup of CO2 in the blood. So basically, yeah, so asphyxiation.
Speaker 1:Okay, I remember that case study. It was a woman, right. It was a young woman, that's right. You've done the homework, I'm impressed. Oh yeah, that's what I go to school for, man, I'm getting that degree Trying to get like you, dog, right, get it.
Speaker 2:So, yes, okay. So it's been well established that if you increase the level of CO2 in somebody's blood, you can reliably produce panic, okay. So produced panic, okay. So what's the implication of that? Well, if someone is having panic attacks, it could be the case that the fact that your body is not aerobically fit enough to clear out CO2, that's a primary driver of what those panic attacks are. So if it's like I'm going to the gym and I might get a panic attack, so I better not go, well, you're now increasing your chances of getting panic attacks later because your body's ability to handle and shuttle oxygen and your metabolic health contribute to that. Now, is that true in all cases? Probably not, but it was a very interesting way of looking at how your physiological health, your metabolic health, affects these sort of symptoms that we only really talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's. It's fascinating what we end up, um, fearing in life, and I mean all of us, for, for vast majority of veterans, we still love being outside, going, working out, and then something happens and now you just want to be shut off from the world. I go back to that person that found that working out to be enjoyable, that liked running, that liked being outside, like. Reach out to that former self and get back out there Like life's not going to happen inside a house. Tv and Netflix and Prime that's great, it's wonderful, but the real world everything happens outside of your front door and it's so amazing to see people sharing more of that. It's the greatest content we can do because it inspires other people to do that. Um, I think it's great. I think we need more of that. Are you guys actually actively working to develop, uh, more of that endurance sport with with mission 22, or is that still in like developmental stage?
Speaker 2:uh, I would say it's in the developmental stage but as far as I'm concerned, like it will happen at some point. So I've, within our, our crew, um, I'm basically just trying to figure out what's the interest level and, like you can imagine, a lot of people are really down for that and uh, it's, it's such an accessible way for for veterans to like. For me personally it's like jeep show. I don't know, I'm not really a moat pet or you know. Um, archery, like I've got some other hobbies.
Speaker 2:I can't like archery school, but but then it's like, hey, sport of some kind, like so many of us can identify with sport and how many people, like everybody in the military, has done something that like, no matter how much you hated your drill instructor for making you do that next burpee, like you kind of liked it. Um, and then when you're doing that, when you're celebrating, just people moving their bodies and challenging ways and jumping over fire, spartan races or whatever um, we actually do have um. Shout out to Steve, one of our coaches. He's helping to organize a little meetup in North Carolina. I think there's a Spartan race there. I don't have the details on me, but we'll have a couple of our folks representing there. But we're working on getting some athletic merch, because that's what really makes it real.
Speaker 1:You have a t-shirt, oh yeah. Well, we got to go back to the swing or the country line dancing. How did that?
Speaker 2:come about. Yeah, well, you know. I mean, where else is a guy going to meet people in a small town?
Speaker 1:It's so true, man, I would imagine it's way better than the current way that individuals are engaging in meeting somebody, somebody which is apps. It's. It's so weird to me, that's a thing that's the most like. I can't imagine sitting down at dinner table and being like well, kids, here's how I met your mom, through an app called tinder yeah, yeah, totally, and that was like talk about like, uh, you know life, how life happens outside your front door.
Speaker 2:For me, if you ran a personality profile on me, it'll show that I lean more introverted. I heard one guy. I forget who this was, it might have been Alex Ramosi. He's like maybe you're not introverted.
Speaker 1:Maybe your friends just suck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was Alex Ramosi.
Speaker 2:Right, it's like at my gym I love all of his, those friends and I'm pretty outgoing there and I kind of like where'd the where'd the introversion go in that case and so, but still like the idea of me going and like just asking some random girl to like dance with me, like that's, it's like oh my gosh that.
Speaker 2:And. But then as soon as I had that oh my gosh. Feeling, it's like that's what you need to do, oh man, like how about I just go run 100 miles? I prefer to do that like. No, go like go talk to that girl, ask her to like put her hand in your hand and then go do something harmonious on the dance floor where everyone can see, uh, see, but then, yeah, getting over getting over that hesitation for me anyway was was a pretty big deal and uh, but then it was kind of fun to realize, like, having done sports of some type for so long, I'm fairly well aware of how my body moves and so, um, learning how to swing dance actually wasn't too as big a learning curve as I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah and dude, we have to continue learning in life, being willing to do things that scare us. It doesn't mean going out there and starting a fight with a bear, but maybe it does mean going out there and learning how to dance. Maybe it does mean going out there and taking a class at a local CrossFit gym. Whatever it is, you've got to find things that scare you a little bit. Like that's that's life. Like be able be willing to reach out and get out of your comfort zone. Like being comfortable will lead to a quiet, miserable death. Like or you can just be willing to be a little uncomfortable every single day. Find this comfort wherever you can find it, whether it's fucking sucking it up and finding the courage to. Like go outside and go see a movie on your own, grab a meal on your own.
Speaker 1:Like there's so many things that we as human beings are scared of, that are ridiculous. Just beholding, just being out in public by ourselves. Like that was a thing. Like why would you fear that? But that's a. That's a fear that many people have today. They be willing to go against the grain and do something for yourself that you value, that you have always wanted to do. Who gives a fuck what the world thinks? If somebody looks at you and gives you some sort of look like fuck them, this is more about them than it does about you, and we all have to take that approach in life. It's too short, you don't have that long, we don't have that long, we don't have that long. So be willing to do things that you you find interesting. That may seem scary to try out, and start off Like there's something wonderful about having the beginner's mind constantly throughout your life. Be willing to try something new and be okay if you suck. Otherwise you're going to stay home and that's just not a good existence one of the most challenging things.
Speaker 2:So I have a coach as well and, uh, the other week he asked me this is after a lot of you know us getting to know each other and him understanding me a little better he was like, hey, man, where can we add weakness to your life? It's like, uh, what do we mean by that? Look at your calendar. Where's their risk?
Speaker 2:Um, there's a concept in the new Testament where it says where, where you are weak, I am strong, and so it's kind of, I think, whatever your spiritual predispositions are, I think that the principle there, it's kind of what you're just talking about. So we like where is weakness in your life? Where's there space where you can grow strength? It's where you're weak. Now, okay, where's a venue, a domain in your life where you have to be a beginner? So another area that I got into was volleyball, and I had a moment where I got out and found a crew to play volleyball with and it was my turn to serve, and I hadn't served the volleyball in 10 years and uh, it's like, oh no, there are 11 people watching what I'm doing right now, straight into the net.
Speaker 2:Great, awesome, oh no, I'm vulnerable. Awesome, it's like you know I. Well, well, let me tell you what my friend time is. Like no one cares um, so that you know that it's so healthy for me, like it's so healthy for me to put myself into that again. Going back to play, one of the benefits of play is that you can fail safely, like it teaches yourself, like you can fail, you can admit that you did it wrong and they get the point and you're not going to die. You're reminding yourself that you can fail and you're not going to die. Fail does not equal equal death and like it's important to get reps in on that. If you're, if you, if we have like this background program that's constant, like that's so fearful of failure that we can't ever let it happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so true, man, we have to look back and understand like it plays on onto that professional that you used to be. Like how many of you are really good at all the things that you used to do? Like it's good to reflect back and be like, oh man, I used to do X, y and Z, but like, don't rest on that, don't just rest on your old, you know dusty, dd214. All the great things that you used to enjoy and you were great and you were proficient at. Don't just think of the past. Get out there and practice them. Like, are you still good at shooting? Do you still enjoy shooting? Then get out there, get on the range and start shooting again, start doing everything that you used to love, and find out that it's okay, that if you're not 100% in those skill sets, you can get all that back. You just have to be willing to try it again. Like I'll be the first to admit, rusty as hell shooting, I don't get to do it as much. But getting back out there and shooting again, then you find like, oh man, like I enjoy this, like this is fun, like this is something, this is something that's good to build those building backs right back up.
Speaker 1:Same with fitness. Shout out to my coach, terry Wilson. You look back and you figure out all the things that you had slowly gotten rid of in your life and you didn't pick up the weights like I used to. I'm like you know what? I'm going to get a coach again. Get somebody that can give me a good training plan. Go out there and find that person that can mentor you to get back all those things that you neglected for a while. Because we're human, we forget the importance of having these routines. We forget the importance of excelling at all these things we used to enjoy. Dust yourself off and get back out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's really good advice too for somebody who might be going through a divorce, right? So it's, maybe for the past however many years you're, you know, the sum total of your fun outgoing activity revolved around her. Um, well, now what would it look like to kind of go back and rekindle some of those old things, like shooting in your case, or whatever it was that maybe you didn't realize you sacrificed, um, you know, for for the sake of that relationship maybe? Maybe you're working on a little codependency there too. Uh like, maybe just a little bit um, do something for yourself, that's.
Speaker 2:that's really that. Oh gosh, what was the quote? Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what awakens your soul, because the world needs men whose souls are awake. There we go.
Speaker 1:Perfect and no one will ever know we edited that. Marcus Ferris, where can we get this book and how can we get ahold of you and give us a tell us about mission 22 real quick, before we?
Speaker 2:wrap up? Yeah, absolutely so. Book is available on Amazon as well as a plethora of other online retailers available. Kindle are back in software.
Speaker 2:Mission 22 right now is we're really making a push for our new Odyssey coaching program, which basically is a yeah, it's like what we were describing before with coach. That's where you'll find that. There we're.
Speaker 2:We've been producing a lot of really awesome videos on our YouTube page on basically teaching how do you connect with veterans better. It's teaching kind of basics of how do you sort of be open in a healthy way with other people, just stuff that we don't really get. You know, we take for granted that we ought to know how to be able to listen, how to be able to connect, but we often don't. We often have to learn how to do these things and, um, we'll have a couple of more videos coming that have to do with nutrition, that have deeper dives on on um, recovery from combat, that kind of thing. So keep an eye out for that. Um, yeah, and then, personally, I also do a little bit of one-on-one coaching, if that's something anybody in the audience is interested in, um on a limited basis. So, uh, we're really excited about this. Is all going.
Speaker 1:Heck, yeah, man. Thank you so much for coming back, brother, and thank you for sharing this important message. If you guys are struggling or think that you just need an extra bit of support, reach out to Mission 22. You can find their information on the episode description. Just pause, go there right now, You'll see it. Or hit up Markets on LinkedIn. Just Google them.
Speaker 1:Don't waste another day sitting in the same pit of disparity. Be willing to take that bold, brave step into the unknown and reach out for help. I'm grateful that I was finally able to wake up and get help myself and everybody that's gone through that journey. Markets itself will tell you ad nauseum that you're worth it, that you deserve to have that moment of victory overcoming and being able to get back on the road to success. So please, if you need help, reach out today, Get help. Thank you all for tuning in. I can't wait to drop this episode because I think it's going to resonate with a lot of people. Marcus, Thank you for coming in again. Brother, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming in again brother, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1:If you like what we're doing and you're enjoying the show, don't forget to share us, like us, subscribe and remember we get through this together. Take care Bye, Thank you.
