Invisible Storm of PTSD

Jen talks to Jason Kander, President of the National Expansion at Veterans Community Project. Jason's new memoir is out now, "Invisible Storm: A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD."

100% of Jason's royalties from the book goes to fighten vetern suicide and homelessness through the Veterans Community Project.

Get the book here: https://bookshop.org/books/invisible-storm-a-soldier-s-memoir-of-politics-and-ptsd-9780358674313/9780358658962

Jen and Jason talk about the symptoms of PTSD that may not seem obvious or typical, how untreated PTSD can lead to suicidal thoughts, depression, and a disruption in work and family life, and how he has found peace with the notion that we can't control 97% of life.

To check out Jason's podcast "Majority 54" go here: https://www.wondermedianetwork.com/originals/majority-54

and for more information on Jason go here: https://www.jasonkander.com/#page-0

For more information on Jen Kirkman, the host of Anxiety Bites, please go here: https://jenkirkman.bio.link

and to get the takeaways for this episode please visit: http://www.jenkirkman.com/anxietybitespodcast

To send an email to the show write to anxietybitesweekly at gmail dot com.

Follow Jen on Twitter @jenkirkman or Instagram @jenkirkman 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Anxiety Bites podcast and I am your host,
Jen Kirkman. Hi, I'm Jen Kirkman. Welcome to another episode
of Anxiety Bites. My guest today is Jason Kander, who
will be telling us about his battle with PTSD that
he eventually did get helpful, very much so in the

(00:32):
public eye. But I will say that you do not
need to have experienced PTSD. You do not need to
be a war veteran in order to relate to this episode.
One of the bigger takeaways from this episode, one of
the overall themes of not only this episode, but um
Jason's message is that anybody with any kind of anxiety disorder, depression,

(00:58):
anxiety moment in your life. Stress can relate two not
fully being aware what the symptoms are, thinking that it'll
just go away, and thinking that you have to have
something really bad in order for it to wererant getting
any help. You know, you think, well, this person hasn't
much worse than me. They've had a harder life than me,

(01:20):
So who am I to think that I need to
get help? That's a luxury. That none of that is true,
and that the longer we wait to get help with
whatever we need help with the symptoms start to morphin change.
We almost convince ourselves that we're getting better even though
we're getting worse. But we're getting worse in different ways.
So maybe it's not the thing I thought I had.
It's so much easier to get help sooner now. In

(01:45):
terms of having PTSD, you don't need to have been
in hand to hand combat if you were, uh, you know, deployed,
if you served in the military. As Jason will tell
us in his story, it was the high stress and
life or death undercurrent that ran under every intelligence meeting

(02:06):
he had during his four month deployment in Afghanistan. You know,
a big through line in Jason's book that just came
out is that feeling of like all you know is
he self deprecatingly says, I just went to meetings for
four months in Afghanistan? How could I have PTSD? Because
he didn't really understand what it was, and he didn't
fully understand that. When you train to serve in the military,

(02:30):
your brain is trained to stay alive. But when you
leave the service and it's time to re orient back
into civilian life, there's not a lot of help to
help people's brains get out of that survival mode and
it still lives in our body, and so there are
ways in which you know Jason was still living that

(02:52):
was not conducive to having a wife and kids. You know,
to be constantly on high alert, thinking that your kids
shouldn't be in front of the window, and we can't
have our back facing the door because someone could come in.
And if we're out of stoplight, we got to just
blow through it because you know our car could get
blown up. You know, to really feel in your body
that those things could be happening and be unable to
stop responding in that way in your day to day

(03:14):
life can be very, very disruptive, to say nothing of
the nightmares and night terrors and sleep paralysis and insomnia,
and especially when he was still serving as a politician,
you have to take red eye flights to save time,
but his body was still in a different mode and
he couldn't fall asleep in front of strangers, and so

(03:34):
there'd be no sleep on the red eye flights. You see,
how these don't sound like your typical symptoms that we
see in movies where somebody is having a literal flashback,
where the wars flashing before their eyes is there, you know,
walking down the street talking to themselves. That is something
that can happen. But there's also just the very I
hate to say, Monday, but the the irregular symptoms of

(03:57):
PTSD that are absolutely crippling, destructive to your life, and
as it did with Jason, lead to such depression that
it led to suicidal ideation and that's when he decided
to get help. But you don't have to wait until
it gets to so I will let Jason tell his
own story. But um, just to let you know what's

(04:21):
going on with Jason right now. He is currently out
promoting his new memoir that just came out Invisible Storm,
a soldiers Memoir of politics and PTSD, and all of
his personal royalties are going to fight veteran suicide and
veteran homelessness at vc P headquarters, which is the Veterans

(04:44):
Community Project, which is a nonprofit that serves homeless and
at risk veterans with tiny homes, wrap around support services,
and emergency assistance. So a little more about Jason before
we get into chatting with him. Jason and was the
member of the Missouri House of Representatives in the forty

(05:06):
four district from two thousand nine He was also the
thirty ninth Secretary of State of Missouri from seventeen when
he left public life to get help for his PTSD.
He was in the middle of launching a bid to
run for mayor of Kansas City, and as he says
in his Twitter bio, he sort of ran for president UM.

(05:29):
He was exploring a presidential run in twenty twenty. He
even had a ninety minute meeting with Barack Obama, who
called him a Democratic star in the future of the party.
But again he needed to get help first. So these
days UM Jason has had a bit of a career change.

(05:49):
So right now Jason is working full time with this
nonprofit organization which he is the president of UM, the
Veterans Community Project. And I'm also always very interested in
people who have a passion for something that helps others
and they make a complete life change. I always think

(06:09):
that's very inspiring. You know, we can change gears at
any time, you know, how do we identify ourselves? UM,
I just find that all very inspiring. So anyway, this
is also a great episode if you just want to hear,
you know, maybe what it's like to sit in in
a intelligence meeting in Afghanistan during the height of a war,

(06:33):
when you don't know if the politician you're meeting with
is secretly corrupt, if they're meeting with you because they
want to kill you. And it's it's his book is
so thrilling. I do blame him for this one night
of insomnia I had because I couldn't put the book down,
and I think I read it until three in the morning,
even though UM, I had to get up at seven

(06:54):
in the morning the next day. But that's okay, you
know what, I will blame myself. So uh, last link, UM,
if you want to listen to Jason's podcast, it's called
Majority fifty four. I'll put the link in the show notes.
I'll put the link in the show notes to that
to his book and UM as well to the Veterans

(07:15):
Community Project. And I think that's it. Just enjoy our conversation.
And again, UM, you don't need PTSD to enjoy it,
and you don't need to be a Democrat to enjoy it.
So here we go my talk with Jason Candor. Jason Candor,

(07:37):
I am honored and delighted that you are taking the
time to do my podcast on your book tour. Thank
you I'm honored and delighted. Uh in return, thank you
for having me. Yeah, of course your book, Invisible Stormy Soldiers,
Memoir of Politics and PTSD. I'm holding it up even
though it's not a video interview, is a page or

(08:00):
in our It is compelling, It's got all the emotions
in it. But really, at the end of the day,
I know it's about your journey with PTSD, but besides that,
it is a page turner. I did not sleep one night.
I just stayed up as late as I could. I
gamed out. Okay, what's the least amount of sleep I

(08:20):
can get in function tomorrow because I need to keep reading. Um,
so that's your fault because it wasn't functioning that well
the next day. Sorry, but also very pleased to hear that.
Before we get into your story, I only have one
critique of your book, and I just want to get
it out of the way. Is you mentioned that you're
really good at taking care of blisters and then you

(08:41):
never tell us how And I'm a I'm living in
New York, I'm walking, my feet are torn up. Can
you give us the secret? As a soldier, how do
we deal with blisters on our feet? And then we'll
move into the serious stuff. Absolutely. Yeah, God, I've lost
the name. What's the stuff called mole skin? You know? Um,
the stuff you can so you can buy it like

(09:03):
any pharmacy pretty much. It's just a little how do
you describe it? It's it's like this little foam, uh
that is that's soft and a little furry. And what
you do and this is the key. So a lot
of people know about the mole skin thing, but what
I learned in the army is the donut trick. So
what you do is, let's say, you know, whatever, the
size of the blister is. The mistake most people make

(09:23):
is they'll put the mole skin over the blister, which
means the adhesive is touching the blister. That's not what
you do. What you do is is you cut a
big donut, okay, a big donut that's big enough to
go around the blister, and then you save the donut
hole and so you you put the adhesive of the
doughnut onto your foot to surround the blister. And then

(09:45):
you take like a bandage and you're gonna put a
bandage around that part of your foot to hold it
all in place. But you take the donut hole and
you stick that to the bandage, so that what's happening
is that furry soft material is UH is holding the
lister in place to keep it from popping UH, instead
of having an adhesive on the blister. And then what

(10:05):
you want to do is you want to change your
socks frequently, because the blisters require two things to exist,
and they are friction and moisture. And so if you
can avoid friction and moisture, you can avoid blisters. But
I haven't given that explanation in a while. So I'm
so excited I'm going to be walking around like I'm
in combat when I'm really just walking, um, five to

(10:26):
ten miles a day. Thank you just needed good pair
of scissors and some mole skin and maybe some medical
tape in your set. So you were running for mayor
of Kansas City. I remember you dropping out saying you're
going to get help for PTSD, and I remember that
really hitting me and thinking that this is so great. Yeah. So, UM.

(10:49):
The device I used in the book is I kind
of start at the middle of the story and then
take you back to the beginning, and then in the
middle of the book you get back to the middle
of the story. And the middle of the story really
is my first day at the v A. And so
I walk in, and you know, to give a little
context to this, what predates the months before this is first,
I'm getting ready to run for president, and I know

(11:10):
something is wrong with me, but I'm not willing to
admit to myself that it's PTSD. And so this big,
you know, brilliant solution, brilliant in quotes that I come
up with is I'm gonna go home run for mayor
because I think, well, you know, being in charge of
my hometown, that's gonna fill me up and make me
feel good. But then the other promise I made to
myself was I'm gonna go to the v A. Well,
I kept half the promise. I started running from Ayor

(11:31):
was going great. Uh, you know, to be fair, if
you're going to run for president, you decided to run
from Ayir like you should be the front runner or
what the hell were you doing? Um? All right, and
but then the part about going to the v A,
I didn't keep that promise to myself. And then things
just get worse and worse and worse, and now I'm
having suicidal thoughts, and it's like, all right, it's time
to go to the v A. So I go to
the v A and at first, like, I'm just sort

(11:53):
of mortified at the fact that everybody's recognizing me, because
you know, I run a lot of tv ads in Missouri,
in Kansas City, and so I was very recognizable, which
usually was great. Uh, not so much when you look
like shit and you've shown up because you're suicidal and
you're at the b A. And pretty quickly I end
up in the emergency suicide hold at the v A

(12:14):
emergency department. And all along the way people are being
very subtle and nice about it, but I can tell
by the double takes, like, also, these folks are like,
that's Jason Candor. And now I'm in like four times
two big scrubs that they've given me because they've taken away,
you know, all of my belongings, my clothes, everything. And
I'm sitting there and waiting for this psych residant to

(12:36):
come in and see me. And he comes in and
I at first, I'm like relieved that this dude is
from out of town and has no idea who I am.
And we talked for like a half hour and I
he's the first person that I really other than my wife,
like told all of the problems I've been having. You know,
that I had gone eleven years without a good night's sleep,

(12:56):
that I had these terrible night terrors, and that I
was paranoid by danger to my family and myself all
the time, that I felt angry and shame and self
loathing and all these things, and uh, and that I
had been over the last several months very depressed and
was now having these suicidal thoughts. And so he talks
to me for about a half hour, and eventually, I
think because I said that I had to go pick

(13:17):
up my son at four thirty, he, I think he
was like, Okay, future plans, He's not gonna kill himself today,
so he's gonna let me go. And he asked me,
he says, by the way, do you have like a
particularly stressful job or something. And I was like, well,
I'm in politics, and he's like, what does that mean?
So I explained, you know, my background, and then he's like,
has it been like particularly stressful lately? And I said, well, yeah,

(13:41):
I mean I was gonna run for president, and then
I decided to run for mayor. Uh, and then you know,
now I'm just going to call that off tomorrow because
I want to get help. And he's like, wait, president
of what. And keep in mind, like I'm a thirty
seven year old dude in the suicide psychold and clothes
that don't fit because they just given to me. And
I'm like sitting there wrapping my arms around my my

(14:03):
knees and and I'm like, well of the United States,
and which felt silly, and he's and he's like, what
does that mean? And I'm like, well, you know, I
was going to Iowa and New Hampshire a lot that
kind of thing. And he's just like, okay, who told you?
He goes who told you could run for president of
the United States? And now I've gone from like relieve

(14:25):
that this guy didn't recognize me to like irritated that
he doesn't believe me. And so I'm like, I don't
know what to tell you. Man. I spent an hour
and a half just me and Obama in his office,
and he seemed to think it was a pretty good idea.
And he pauses for a second, thanks about it, and
then he's like, so how often would you say you
hear voices and uh, yeah, so that was my first

(14:46):
day at the v A. We'll be right back. Well,
let's start with, so you deployed to Afghanistan. Um, tell
us where you are, how longer they are for and
then I'll ask you a bunch of questions about your

(15:10):
you know, your work there and what your thought process
had to be as a soldier. Sure. Um. So part
of the reason that it took me so long to
admit that my experience could be traumatic is that I
my tour was only four months and that bothered me
for years, to the point where I actually tried to
go back and was denied. Um. And you know, because
I have a lot of friends who, you know, they

(15:30):
did multiple tours of like nine months at a time
or more, and there were people who were there when
I got there, who were still there when I left,
and it just that really bothered me, and it made
me tell myself this fiction that oh, well, I can't
have PTSD from a four month tour. Um. But I
was based out of Cobble. I was an Army intelligence

(15:50):
officer and my job, the simplest way to put it,
was that it was my job to figure out which
bad guys were pretending to be good guys within the
Afghan government, and in order to do that, I had
to go meet those guys. Uh. And so that's what
I did for for four months, oh six to oh seven,
like fall to the to the spring in the early spring,
early winter, whatever you call it. Yeah. And and it's

(16:11):
so funny because in the book you self deprecate and
joke that, you know, when you were before you had
your recovery. You're like, I just went to meetings for
four months, Why do I have PTSD? And it's like, okay,
you say that, but then these stories you have, I mean,
my heart was racing reading and it was part of me.
This is where I think it's interesting for those out

(16:32):
there who don't have PTSD, have been in a war zone.
A lot of your um symptoms are very similar to
people with you know, just generalized anxiety or a d
h D or panic disorder. But what I found exciting
as someone with a d h D who needs a
lot of dopamine and my brain is, uh, it needs
a lot of regulation, it needs a lot of structure.

(16:56):
I understand completely, except for the carrying a gun and
shooting a part, which I know I'd be bad at
I understand completely why people want to enter the military.
There are rules. You keep it simple. Um, as you
learned once you did get therapy, that your brain is
trained to survive, so you have a few thoughts and

(17:19):
they're meant to be repetitive so you can keep yourself safe.
And that really appealed to me. I thought, in another world,
I could, I could really thrive in this environment. Because
I liked your descriptions of being in the meetings. I
mean I I felt, um, wow, that seems in a
weird way. And this sounds sucked up, but you probably
get it calming because you're in a meeting and you

(17:42):
know what you have to do. So explain to someone
why this meeting is nothing like Larry the accountants meeting
that he's going to in five minutes after he's done
listening to this episode. What what goes on? Like? Tell
us the story? Um, and this is your most you know,
this is a story that you told many times. You
told it in the book and then later we'll discuss
that you had to tell it again in therapy for

(18:04):
a certain reason. But what is your big story about
the meeting you went to where you had to make
a decision about whether to take a weapon. Yeah, so
first for context to this, some of what you were
saying I want to speak to because like where you're saying,
you know that you relate to the sort of predictability
of it, and and you know of the work. But

(18:25):
you said, like, you know, except for the part of
carrying again and firing it, they give you lessons like
you would do fine, Like they teach you all that stuff.
And a couple of things I wanted to do with
the book that you sort of alluded to. One it's
a soldier's memoir, but like the books about PTSD and
the politics part is that's what I did with most
of my career. So what I didn't want to do

(18:46):
was write a book that was like for fifty five
year old men who read combat books, which is why
there's one chapter about Afghanistan and then the rest is
just about dealing with all of it. And so but
the other thing I think I had to do with
from what you said it makes me feel good that
I accomplished it is I also understand that there's a
lot of people who deal with mental health challenges who

(19:08):
I want to read this book, who don't read military
books and aren't interested in the military, and so I
knew that I had to relate in the chapter before
the Afghanistan chapter why the hell I joined the military
and why I liked it so much, so that people
could actually relate to my story. And so I'm glad
to hear that that got across. Um. Yeah, the the

(19:29):
incident that you're talking about is h I had recruited
as a as a really helpful contact to me in
my intelligence collection work, the Attorney General of Afghanistan, a
guy named sab It, and I really liked working with
Sabbat for a couple of reasons. Were really a couple
of characteristics of him. One, he spoke like perfect English,
which made it really easy. And too, he had no

(19:50):
discernible incentive to help anyone kidnap and kill me, which
was like really high on the list of ways to
become my friend when I was there. And and so
I would have these regular meetings with him where he
would tell me all about his anti corruption work in
the Afghan government. It was really valuable, and I'd take
it back and I'd write it up. And so what
started happening was other people in the intelligence community, uh

(20:10):
got wind of this because they'd read my reports and
they had questions that they wanted to ask sab It,
So they would ask to tag along to these meetings.
And sab It, you know, he's a politician, he as
a performer. He liked having an audience, so I could
bring a few people with me. And on this one occasion, uh,
these guys from the d i A, the Defense Intelligence Agency,
said Hey, can we come along with you on on
a SABBIT meeting? And I was like sure, And you know,

(20:32):
I was a green second lieutenant that's the first officer rank,
like just brand new guy, and I'm I'm still have
a little bit of imposter syndrome about the fact that
I'm in this, you know, really who a high speed job.
That's usually for somebody with a lot more experience and
rank than me. So I see these guys from a
three letter agency and I'm feeling like when these guys
know what they're doing, like, I'm I don't want to
look like a fool or on these fellas. So we

(20:53):
pull up to the usual compound where I go to
to meet sab It, and these three like Goon come
out with a K forty seven at the low already
and they're in border police uniforms, which was weird because
Sabad had his own security detail and it wasn't border police.
And they start barking at us, and they tell us
to leave our weapons in the vehicle. And I'm like,

(21:14):
They're like, leave your body armor and your weapons in
the vehicle. And I would regularly leave my body armor
in the vehicle because you know, intelligence work is about
getting people to trust you, and if you dress like
you think, they're going to detonate themselves, like, it's pretty
hard to get them to answer honestly to your questions.
So I was like, cool, I'll leave my body armor.
But I'm thinking, okay, these d I A guys may
think that I'm this rookie green no nothing, but I

(21:35):
ain't leaving my I'm not leaving my pistol in this vehicle, right,
So I take my pistol and I stick it into
the waistband of my pants and pull my sweater over,
you know, And I'm like, all right, so I'm sure
we're all doing that. Let's let's roll in here. And
so we go in and we sit down and I'm
talking to sab It and then it becomes clear, like
what this meeting actually was because then he this guy

(21:57):
comes in. Who. As soon as this guy comes in,
I'm like, I know with this guy is? Who is
this guy? I'm trying to place him. And then sab
It says, Jason, this is my dear friend, Hadj's a here.
So General Hadj's here at that time was a general
in the Border Police. He was super corrupt. He had
been working with the Taliban and and you know, possibly
other terrorist groups, and he was a narco trafficker from

(22:18):
eastern Afghanistan. And I'm like, what the hell is happening, right,
because I had seen sab It as like somebody I
could trust, and so we sit down and suddenly it's
Ha's here's meeting. And the whole time these three So
there were six border police fellows, if I remember correctly,
there three stood right behind Hog's here, facing us with
their a K forty seven of lit already and then

(22:39):
I remember thinking, okay, I think there's three more between
here and the vehicle. So that was the kind of
stuff I was doing on a regular basis. By the way,
it's my job, like every time I go to one
of these meetings, you know exactly where the exits are
you know how many potential bad guys there are between
you and your vehicle. You're thinking about things like, all right,
if it goes south, which guy do I shoot? Which
exit are we taking? Do I cover the exit and go?

(22:59):
You know that that's what you're thinking. And um, my
back shouldn't be to the door. Let me know what
this window? I mean all of that, right you you
have to game out instantly. Yeah, you're your your mind
and your body are fully utilized the whole time. Right.
It's like it's it's like whatever level of alertness and
readiness people have felt in a job interview, just take

(23:20):
that times like a thousand. Actually, I just say, imagine
you enter a job interview and you're like I might
get the job where they might kill me. You know,
like that's that's what it is. Um. And so I'm
sitting there and how's here? Pretty quickly launches into like
this tirade. He's like very angry, and I knew that
he knew that we were the people investigating him, right,

(23:44):
and that this meeting was not by chance, and that
it was sort of arranged. And over about forty five minutes,
you know, we're all and I can see the guys
looking at me. We're all trying to figure out like, okay,
is he gonna take us? Is that the plan? Is
he trying to intimidate us? What's happening? And he's getting
more and more animated and upset talking about all this stuff,
and uh, and I'm thinking, and I know these guys

(24:06):
are thinking like, what the hell did this this lieutenant
get us into here? And I at some point I realized, okay,
we might have to shoot first, like you know, these
guys have the drop on us. We just have pistols,
and and so I'm thinking two things. I'm thinking, Okay,
if we have to shoot first, okay, which guy do
I take? I take this guy. But I'm also thinking, Okay,

(24:26):
one of these guys may decide. One of the guys
with me. He may decided to shoot first. So I
gotta be ready to just pull my pistol and go.
And so I start, he gets more animated. I'm thinking, Okay,
I guess it's gonna be that guy. I'm envisioning shooting him.
For a second, I think, am I allowed to kill
these guys if they don't shoot us? For and then
I thought that a't gonna matter. If this goes down,
and then at some point it becomes clear that what

(24:47):
is here really wanted uh was he was trying to
get us to eliminate the narco trafficking competition uh in
the province where he's from. And so he was actually
there to like try and coerce us and intimidate us
and rat out a bunch of other narco traffickers out
where he was. So then we figured this out sort of.
We can all tell that this is what we've all

(25:07):
usually figured out, So we just start taking like a
ton of notes, like, oh, we're super interested in this information.
Is if we didn't have all of it already, Oh interesting,
okay yeah, And so you at that moment you can
all sort of calm down and be like, okay, this
we're not being killed. Yeah, It's like it's like, okay,
I'm pretty sure we're getting out of here, right, So
we do that. The meeting ends, We walk out, and

(25:29):
I get We get to the vehicle and I and
I opened the door and I see the other guys
the d I A guys reach in and pull out
their pistols, and I realized I was the only one
of us who was armed in the meeting and I
almost pulled out my pistol and got us all killed,
and uh, And at first I just got really nauseous
and I wanted a puke, and then I spent the
rest of the ride back to the base just super piste,

(25:51):
because like, you don't go anywhere in Afghanistan unarmed if
you're an American soldier. And I just remember going from uh,
you know, worry these guys would think I was too green,
to super upset that these guys put me in danger
and thinking that they were a bunch of fools. Um,
So yeah, that was That's one of the one of
the events in the book that I talked about. And

(26:14):
I think it's so clearly illustrates like for me, someone
with you know, anxiety or I used to be really
bad fear of flying. So that intensity or feeling I
used to feel for no reason on an airplane except
it wasn't focused, so it would go off the rails.
And so I can imagine having that kind of body
intensity and then focus all at once. I imagine there's

(26:38):
no time to um come down from that. And I
don't mean I mean obviously you're going to have moments
that aren't stressful like that, But it's not like you're
doing a practice very mindfully to um complete the stress
cycle as they call it, you know, like it, right,
And I don't think you should be doing that war

(27:00):
zone like anoun's time to decompress spellas you know, you
don't want to not be Yeah, that's from when you
come home. But they didn't give me those tools when
I came home either, And and that that's you know,
the way. And I talked about this a little in
the book, but there's an analogy that I've stumbled on
lately for it. Um. I'm not really a golfer, but
I think the analogy works. You don't even know much

(27:20):
about golf to know that. Like, you know, there's all
these clubs in the bag, and a good golfer us
as different clubs for different situations, right, And that's kind
of what our emotions are like in everyday life, right,
Like we have nuanced emotions, we have empathy, we have
you know, sadness, we have all these things. When you're
in a combat zone and you're regularly in you know,

(27:41):
like on a pretty much daily basis, in a situation
where you're like, okay, where are the doors what happens
if this guy pulls a gun, what happens if there's
somebody coming from this door behind me? All that stuff
you really only need like four clubs in your bag, right,
It's like the emotions necessary to prepare yourself to take
a life, which is like a low level simmering anger

(28:01):
sort of focus. There's boredom because sometimes you're just sitting around,
you're inside the wire and you're like playing cards or whatever.
There's you're tired, and there's like you're homesick. And then
I'd say five because sometimes there's like you know, gallows humor,
you're just laughing your ass off. Then you get home
and like, you know, you've stopped using any of the

(28:22):
other clubs for a long time. You don't remember how
to swing them, and they may not even be in
your bag anymore. And now you're supposed to like go
back and fill your bag with these other clubs and
start using them. But your brain is operating in a
place where it's like, yeah, if we use these other clubs,
we might die. That's what we learned, So don't use
the other clubs. And so therapy for me was just

(28:44):
like learning how to reuse those clubs and believe that
it was okay to use those clubs and that it
wouldn't get me killed. Anxiety Bites will be right back
after a quick little message from one of our sponsors.

(29:06):
I think I'm going to go backwards because I think
people need to know, like what the big recovery ah
ha was, so that it will make sense when you're
talking about it. I do want to ask one non
mental health question, and I really don't mean this to
be funny. If you had pulled out a gun, would
your pistol do anything against a K forty seven? I
mean we were pretty close range. We were like six

(29:27):
ft from each other, so I acted fast enough you
might yeah, that was the idea. The idea was, well,
I don't think it would have gone well. I'm glad
I didn't do, especially since I was the only one.
But the thought was at the time, what I remember
envisioning and thinking was, um, I can probably get two
of these guys before they realize what's happening, because we're

(29:48):
just sitting there having tea and these guys are waiting.
In my mind, what I thought was potentially happening was
there waiting for how she's here to turn around and
be like, Okay, kill these guys, and until that happens,
they're not necessarily so in my mind, I'm thinking I
can probably put two in the chest in one in
the head on two of these guys before the and
the third guy can't do anything. But I wasn't sure.

(30:12):
But you can have been kind of a suicide mission
in a way if you did that, Like, did you
think it was unlikely that all of us would have
got out of there? Okay? But it was one of
those things where it's like, I'm not gonna let it
wasn't like I should kill these guys. It was like,
if I'm getting closer and closer to thinking these guys
may be about to kill us, and if that's going

(30:33):
to happen, the only chance we have is we have
to we have to fire first. I mean, one of
the things you learned in combat training is this concept
of violence of action and that you know and an
element of surprise, right and so that you know, a
lesser armed force, we're kind of seeing it in Ukraine
on a very large scale right now. A lesser armed
force can have a chance when they have violence of action,

(30:56):
meaning they're coming into this like we are here to
fight and maybe take somebody by surprise. So it's kind
of like, you know, I watched I'm watching you know,
shows like Better Call Saul and something, and I see
people with a knife or a pistol and they're fighting
gangs with forty seven then they always win, And I'm like,
that can happen. But I that's that makes sense, that
it's the violence of action like that actually can you

(31:19):
never know? Could? Yeah, it's one of those things like
if you remember being a kid, and like this is
a very simplistic analogy, but when you were a kid
and you were like wrestling with your friends or whatever,
if one of you was more serious and more aggressive
about wrestling, even if you're undersized, like you had a chance.
And it was sort of like if one if if
somebody is in a fight and they know they're in

(31:39):
the fight before the other person knows they're in a fight,
even if you're sort of outgun, you got a chance. Yeah.
It's like it's like running before the thing goes off,
you know, um in a race. Um a thing I've
never done. But okay, so I just wanted to know
I listened, but to anyone listening out there. I mean
I referenced TV shows, but you're not just I mean
you're dealing with like three kinds of bad guys all

(32:00):
at once. You're dealing with a guy who's corrupt in
his government, um actively at war with your country. I mean,
sort of not like everyone and not that that's what
I've been saying, Okay, and then and you don't know
who's like sympathetically is not. And then the whole drug running.

(32:22):
I think it's heroin, right, uh So, I mean that's
a lot, and I know that it's not a competition
or a contest, but I do think police correct me
if I'm wrong that at some point your your therapist
had explained to you at the v A that this
notion that only people who were in combat someone's shooting

(32:43):
at me, I'm shooting at them, were in the war,
were over the hill, you know what people imagine war
to be. That is not always likely to have a
PTSD response, because it's almost expected like you were doing
something a little extraordinary in that sense that you were
kind of try in your neural pathways to live very
differently than than hand to hand combat. Right, Yeah, that's

(33:07):
you're really hitting on one of the big themes of
the book, which is me learning that I couldn't rank
my trauma out of existence because like when I landed
in Afghanistan and when I was training to go there
and everything, you know, I was drawing on two things
as to what my idea of combat was. Right One,
all the movies I watched grown up that we've all seen, Like,
to me, combat was there's bullets whizzing by your ear

(33:29):
and cover me while I move and boom and blah
blah blah. That was, you know, to me, that was combat.
Nothing else was combat. And minutes of saving Private Ryan
That's exactly exactly if if I wasn't storm enormandy, you know,
then like I wouldn't have considered myself in combat. And
then too uh, you know, the combat training I had
had had been all what we would refer to as kinetic,

(33:50):
like you know, people shooting at each other. Right, And
then I go there and I spend these four months,
and I go to meetings and I'm out on the
road a lot and do all that. But I never
fired my weapon the entire time. I never fired my weapon.
So I come home and I'm like, and then I
got you know, I got friends who are trained with
people who have known sense, who were wounded over there,
who had to kill people. Um. And so in my mind,

(34:13):
I'm like, I didn't experience combat. That's not what that was.
And so I went eleven years thinking I was gaining
perspective by valuing what they did and and diminishing what
I did. And and the whole time, what I was
actually doing was just experiencing increasingly worse symptoms of undiagnosed,
untreated PTSD. And I would say to my friends, like,

(34:35):
I have a very close friend Stephen, whom I talked
about in the book a Lot, who had been a
marine in um Fellujah, and you know, and and I
would stay to him all the time, like what you
did that was real, and he was like dude, he
would always be He and other guys would be like
I could not have done what you did, and I
just was like, they're just being kind, right, And so
my it was like when I was with a clinical

(34:58):
social worker at the v A. It was my second
time at the v A after that, you know, first
time with the guy. Thought I heard voices and she
said to me, okay, let me get this straight. Uh,
you were in the most dangerous place in the planet
out basically by yourself, like you and a translator most
of the time for hours at a time, completely vulnerable
with people who may or may not want to kill

(35:19):
you. You You couldn't know and you had no backup because
nobody knew where you were. And I'm like yeah, and
she goes, yeah, that's combat. She's like, that's traumatic. She's like,
and then what did you do when you came home?
You went to high stakes meetings for your work. And
I'm like, oh yeah, And that was the first time
that I was like, Okay, I think I'm a combat

(35:40):
veteran and uh yeah, I can see now how I
have PTSD. And that was eleven years after I got home. Well,
I interviewed this woman, this doctor, for this podcast, and
she said, the average person who has any kind of
symptoms where they need their mental health taking care of
takes eleven to fifteen years to go to therapy. And unfortunately,
in time, we're not only not doing anything about it

(36:03):
in terms of like using little tools that you could find,
you know, a little free free advice online, you know,
like whatever that maybe you're not even doing that, You're
you're making it worse. You know, you're like feeding the monster,
as you call it, the monster. You're feeding your PTSD.
You're like giving it everything it wants, and you're training
yourself to have more and more. Right, So it's like

(36:25):
by the time you went there was a lot to undo,
and I think you had to get to the place
of Okay, I'm literally at the end of my room,
like I don't want to kill myself, so I gotta
go and and and you're saying it doesn't have to
be that way. People can. I mean also, when I'm
hearing in your book too, is like, you know, there's

(36:46):
no training coming out. You know, they why are you
coming in? And they don't on why are you coming out?
And I'm assuming that's the work that you do, um
with the Veterans Community Project is helping to change that, right, Yeah, absolutely, UM.
That's what we do is we restart the military civilian
transition back at day one. And and that that's why

(37:07):
I wanted to write the book, is because for a
couple of reasons. One, if this book had existed fourteen
years ago when I came home, I would have read
it and I would have gone to therapy and and
and the reason that that's such a huge deal other
than the obvious, is that, you know, trauma is not
like wine, like it doesn't age well. It just gets

(37:29):
worse and worse and worse. And so all those years
that I put it off, it's like any other injury,
right like I The comparison I make is that in
order to get into the Army I had to get
surgery and physical therapy on my knee because I had
a knee injury. And what I did with my mind
after I deployed would have been like if instead of
getting that surgery and physical therapy, I was like, I
don't need it, and I just went into the Army

(37:51):
and did all the stuff they wanted me to do
well after eleven years, like I wouldn't have been able
to walk, but instead, like I treated the injury when
it happened. And so you know, while my trauma, you know,
I'm not trying to like rank my trauma, but clearly
there are people who had more traumatic experiences than I did.
What I did that made it so much worse is

(38:11):
I just let it get worse and worse and worse,
whereas if I just treated it, I would have treated
it gotten the tools, moved on gotten to where I
am now, but instead I just I let it get
so bad over all those years. Do you think it
should be mandatory? I mean, I don't mean to. I
hope this doesn't sound insulting to anyone serving, but it
it is weird that, like you're trained to be kind

(38:34):
of a killing machine and then you're just let back
come into society. Not that people are going to start
killing people, That's what I mean at all. But don't
you think it makes society better if everybody gets kind
of unwired when they get out and they can be
more productive and not have to go through what you
went through. But do you think it should be um
mandated or is that kind of stepping on freedoms should

(38:55):
be mandated and you don't have to mandate therapy, but
what you have to mandate is education about PTSD. Here's
the education I got about PTSD before I went over,
and I hope this has changed, but I don't know
if it has. The education I got about PTSD before
I went over it was it was mentioned by one
guy when I was an intelligent school, and it was
a chaplain, and the chaplain came in to tell us
how to use our chaplain like it had nothing to

(39:17):
do with PTSD. He was just like, here's a thirty
minute block of instruction from the base chaplain. He's going
to tell you how to make sure your troops get
access to the chaplain when you're deployed. And as he
was doing that, I remember he said, oh, hey, by
the way, PTSD. PTSD is a normal response to an
abnormal situation, and which was a great thing to say.
But it's literally all the training I got about PTSD.

(39:39):
And so there's a really important thing and you alluded
to this that the military does, which is a very
necessary form of brainwashing. And I say necessary because if
they didn't do this, I wouldn't have kept going to meetings,
My buddy Stephen wouldn't have kept going on patrol. You
gotta have this, And what it is is the moment
you get off the bus at basic training, the message

(39:59):
they put across to you is this is no big deal,
and somebody has it worse. Most people have it worse, right,
and they and they have to wire that into you
because if they don't, like, if you bite from the
apple of knowledge, that no, this is pretty bad, Like
you're not gonna keep doing it, like I wouldn't keep
bringing back the information I need to if I had known.
So the problem is is that when you get out,

(40:20):
nobody sits you down and goes, okay, actually that was
some crazy ship. And uh, you know, and and by
the way, here's what PTSD is. Here's what it looks like.
There's a you know, a chance that you're going to
experience this or a friend of yours will. And I
think if they had done that, it would have helped
a lot. I can't say for sure that would have
made a difference, because when you when you wire somebody

(40:42):
to believe that what they did is no big deal,
and you train them to believe that, they believe you.
I believed the Army. I had, you know, a couple
of buddies on my base who were doing similar work
to me. And I was like, you know, Todd and
Kevin are going to these meetings. They seem fine. Todd
and Kevin went to these meetings, they seem fine. Right, Well,
never mind that, I don't want to spoil what happens

(41:04):
in the book, but it becomes evident that they weren't fun.
And but I didn't know that, and so I was
telling myself, I have it on good authority that what
I did is no big deal. So what the hell
right would I have to say this is PTSD? It
must just be something to do with me, right, And
so what happens is people don't understand that you can
get better, that that this is not a terminal diagnosis.

(41:28):
And everything we see in popular culture about PTSD is
what I call PTSD porn right. It's it's it's usually
a combat vet, not always, but it's usually a combat vet,
and they're like robbing a bank, beating their spouse, abusing drugs,
maybe all at once. Um. And what I wanted to
get across is post traumatic growth is a real thing.
I wanted to demonstrate what it looks like because it

(41:50):
actually is way more common than people realize. The majority
of people who go to therapy and address it get better.
People don't know that, so they don't say, Okay, I'm
gonna go to therapy. And I still wanted to get
across that. Look. I was convinced that what I did
was no big deal. So you don't have to be
a combat vet. You could have had a bad car accident,
or survive cancer, or be a victim of sexual assault,
or just lost a loved one or gone through a

(42:11):
bad divorce or a head a rough childhood, whatever it is,
you're probably convinced that what you did was no big deal.
And I know this because people walk up to me
all the time and say, you know, I didn't go
to war or anything, and I'm like, that doesn't matter.
Like my brain doesn't know what yours experienced, and yours
doesn't know what mine experience. So what does one have
to do with the other. Well, and I'm going to

(42:33):
spoil just a little bit of the recovery ending. But
when you were working with your therapist, what you're big
aha moment was is he said, I want you to
tell me everything you learned from your parents and used
in your life before you deployed that you still seek
to use now. And he wrote down, as you said,
work hard, hustle, help people, stand up for people, be humble.

(42:54):
I can do anything, obligation to others. I am privileged.
Don't steal, don't do drugs, don't cheat, don't start fights,
do finish fights, fight for others, don't kill, be faithful,
be protective, care about the world, have high standards. Therapist
a great now let's do the same thing for Afghanistan.
What principles did you learn over there that you used
all of the time, And your answers were be calm,

(43:14):
suck it up. Someone as a worse, I am lucky,
danger everywhere, Always have weapon, protect self and others, maintain
control of situation, eliminate risk, eliminate threats. Then the therapist says, okay,
why and you just say so I don't die, and
he's like great. So he points out to you that
the first list of all your values is how you

(43:35):
live life outside of the military. The second list, which
has less things on it, like you said, less golf clubs,
is so you don't die. So now you've come home
and your brain is living with your wife and kids
in it's important not to die mode. You don't have
any of the other like you know, whatever tools, and
you're running for for offices. So at this point, your

(43:57):
PTSD isn't like you're in the warner going and going
like I see the combat. You know, it's literally like
you can't stop working. And so you're at home and
it's getting to the point where like it is really
disrupting your your family in ways. That what I like
about your book too, is your wife has written some
passages as well about how hard it was for her

(44:19):
because she just kind of went along with what you
we're doing. You know, if you weren't getting recovery, then
didn't dawn on her. And but here she's dealing with
this guy who's like, now she's starting to think like you, right, Like,
how so can you talk about how pt PTSD affects
everyone in your life in ways that maybe people don't
really understand. Yeah, I'd say the first way is that
I was just not present with my family, like and

(44:42):
and so I you know, I just I wanted to
be really badly, but I just couldn't be emotionally present
the only time. And this I bet you would relate
to as a coping mechanism that you used for your struggles,
because we're both in in like I in some respect
you and a full respect are performers, and it was
like I else present when I performed, Like when I

(45:03):
was in front of an audience, that was like I
felt fully me And for me, that was because like
I had to get some sort of adrenaline rush back
in order to feel that. And then the rest of
the time I just like it was just dull and
like I couldn't and and you know what it was
the rest of the time, it was just me and
my thoughts like if if if things weren't going really

(45:23):
quickly boobom boom, then it was just me stuck with me.
You know, I'd be with my son when he was
a toddler, and like it should have been a really
joyous moment, and I could feel that that joy was there,
but it was like it was on the other side
of a thin wall, you know, because my brain was like,
you know, I had all these intrusive thoughts and memories
and and and I had I was dialed up to
an eleven all the time in terms of my stress,

(45:45):
and I didn't know why and uh and so that
affected my family greatly. But then my wife, you know,
I was no I was no fun to live with
during that period. And you know, here she is, she's
sleeping next to me. I'm waking up in the middle
of the night with these violent night terrors. She's having
to be like my service dog. Where because I was
having sleep paralysis, she could hear when I was grunting

(46:08):
to to like alert her that my brain had woken
up from this nightmare, but my body hadn't. And I
had this thing where sleep paralysis gave me this like
hallucination that the threat that was in the dream was
now in the room, coming at me or eventually coming
at my family. Is how those dreams developed are evolved.
And so she knew like she had to sleep really
light because she had to turn and like shake me

(46:31):
and wake me up, like wake up my body, and
then I would wake up. And as she puts it
in the book, it was suddenly horrible story time, because
you know, we've been together since we were seventeen, Like
my life has always been I just share everything with her,
and so I would tell her about this nightmare that
I just had, and oftentimes it was somebody came to

(46:51):
hurt her and our son, and and so they soaked
into her in the middle of the night. And eventually
she was experiencing my symptoms, just not having having experienced
my trauma. She was hyper vigilant. She was worried that
there would be intruders, uh, you know, all those sorts
of things. And and then it turned out when I
went to therapy, she needed to do the same thing.

(47:11):
So it was just this beautiful gift that I gave
my wife post traumatic stress disorder, you know, so well,
you know it's I've had sleep paralysis and it is terrifying.
It's the worst. Yeah, I thought it was interesting you
said in the book that people have service dogs for
that reason. The dogs know when you're in it and
they lay on you to to wake you up, just
keep you from it. Yeah, that's right. It's my Dan's

(47:35):
always joke that I was her or that she was
my service animal, you know. But yeah, I mean it's
like it is terrifying. And what's like so messed up
about it is is that what brings it on is
trauma and sleep deprivation. So it's like, Okay, I had trauma,
and because of my trauma, I wasn't sleeping because I

(47:57):
had these night terrors. And then and then it just
would all just build on each other and uh and
and eventually, um, I just feared going to sleep, like
like sleep was the last place I wanted to be,
so I would stay up just to avoid going to sleep.
And and what's now the part that I deal with,
I very very rarely, very rarely have sleep prowesses. I

(48:19):
occasionally have night have nightmares. I would describe the more
as nightmares now than night terrors. And it's like, you know,
once every couple of weeks that kind of thing during
a stressful time. And I know what to do about
it now. But what I still do struggle with is
there's like a muscle memory for me that says like
sleep is a bad thing, and so I have to
I have and I'm pretty good at it now, but

(48:39):
I have a very intense like sleep regiment in order
to allow myself to say like, okay, no, no, no no,
sleep is good. We like sleep. It's okay, it doesn't
that doesn't happen anymore. And you said in the book
too that you could never sleep on planes and you
couldn't figure it out. Well, the the wild part about
that was is that I actually figured that particular part

(49:00):
out when I started working as president National Expansion of
Veterans Community Project. Because one of the things we do
is we build these villages of tiny houses for homeless
veterans and then we give them wrap around care. And
the reason that and I didn't found it, uh you know,
I came in after. So the reason that the co
founders did it that way is because, uh a lot
of homeless veterans were not using other homelessness services because

(49:24):
they had PTSD and they couldn't sleep around strangers. So
they needed these single units where the door locked in
order to come in off the street. And they said,
because they can't sleep around strangers. And I realized all
those years, like getting ready to run for president, you know,
when I was running for Senate and my staff would
put me on red eye flights to save time, and
they're like, you know, you'll learn how to sleep on them,

(49:45):
and I would just show up I hadn't slept all night.
Because if you think about it, like if you're like me,
the idea of closing your eyes a little and falling
to sleep while there are people you don't know next
to you, when you're laying back with your neck exposed, um,
just not gonna have Yeah. I can do it now.
I'm not great at it, but I can do it now. Yeah.
And also I thought that was so interesting too, about

(50:07):
the homeless vets that even within that little pod they're
in with the door locked, they're even set up in
a way that feels safe to them. Right. It's like
they're facing the door because they're used to it's a
trauma informed design, so that so the bed faces the door.
There's only windows on a couple of sides. No unit
looks directly into another unit. Um, and yeah, it's it's
just tailor made for people to transition back into society.

(50:31):
And some of the little things too. I mean, you know,
you've got the night terrors, you've got the can't sleep,
but even just little things that we're PTSD responses that
that can just be low key annoying to your spouse.
Is just going to dinner and you're jumping up, you're
ready to go, and you've got to face the right
way and all that. I mean, even that, right, you
can't even enjoy that. Yeah, Like you know, Diana talks

(50:53):
in the book about how before I deployed, like we
could go on a date to dinner and finish our
meal and sit there and and like have a nice time,
you know, like you're supposed to do at a restaurant.
And uh and I was, you know, not only did
like everybody close to me understand, like Jason likes to
face the door, and like my staff knew, like you know,
they've only known me since post Afghanistan, so that all

(51:15):
they knew was like, yeah, Jason doesn't like it when
people sit behind him in a meeting, you know, stuff
like that. You know, like, oh, just just a preference
that the boss has um and like as soon as
the meal would end, you know, it was like let's go.
And and it was sort of something that animated my
entire life, not just like on a day to day
literal level, but also sort of a a figurative my career,

(51:37):
which was I didn't want to be in one place
for too long because and I had just really internalized
the idea that if you're in one place for too long,
they're gonna get you, right, And that was just so
deep in me that I had. I had to work
hard to let it go. And I think a lot
of people can like over psychoanalyze it, like and did
you stay still too long? Your thoughts come to get you.

(52:00):
And it's like yes, yes, yes, but also we are
dealing with a real physical reaction to what you've been
through and that has to be handled. You can't start
with just the thoughts, you know, like you have a
very specific disorder that needs body and mind right for sure.
Like yes, it was it was figuratively like if I

(52:21):
stay in one spot for too long, my thoughts will
give me his figure. But it was also like literally
like if you're in one spot for too long, like
they've got the drop on you. Keep moving, like like
one of the things that experienced when I first came
home that Diana talks about in the book is that,
you know, every time I get in a vehicle, my
heart would race, and and that I understood, like right away.
I knew, like, okay, because every time I've been in

(52:42):
a vehicle in the last four months, I'm going outside
the wire. And then when we would stop at stoplights,
like I would grab the little handle above the window
and I would lean back. And I didn't really remember
this that way, but she says I would lean back
and I would like jam my foot down on a
gas pedal, which didn't exist because I was in a
passenger seat. Because over there, like you avoid stopping because

(53:04):
if you stop, you might get blown up. And so
just little stuff like that. Uh that's like, but I
mean doing that how many times a day? Yeah, how
many times a day do you stop at a stoplight?
How many times a day, especially if you're campaigning, are
you going to have to go to a restaurant. I mean,
it's it's overwhelming. It was interesting about that too, is
that I had I constantly had this story. I could

(53:26):
tell myself that, oh, well, yeah, that happened, but I'm
getting better, and so that's a good example where after
like a few months of being home like I could drive,
I didn't have any problems. That that went away. Now
I learned in therapy that the reason stuff like that
went away was because that's what in vivo prolonged exposure
therapy is which I did in therapy, and it is
go out and do the things that make you uncomfortable

(53:47):
get used to doing them again. So that's why in
therapy I had to go to a restaurant and sit
with my back to the door for forty five minutes
until you know it no longer had a grip on me. Well,
when I came home, like I didn't have a choice,
I had to go drive. So I was unknowingly doing
in vivo therapy and so I was able to get
past it. The problem was because I no longer had

(54:08):
this driving problem. I was like, well maybe I had
some ship, but that's over right, And I had this
eye twitch when I got home that went away. Eventually
I had I had these nightmares when I got home.
But after a few years, the nightmares didn't take place
in Afghanistan anymore. I wasn't even in the military, and
the nightmares. Now, what I didn't understand was it's not
a good thing that now the nightmares take place in

(54:29):
my home and people are coming to kidnap my family.
I thought, well, it's not PTSD because it doesn't have
to do with war. And it took therapy for me
to be taught that, No. See, when the symptoms evolved,
that's bad because you already have hyper vigilance, you already
think you're in danger all the time, and now when
you're subconscious every night, people are attacking you and your
modern environs, and they're coming after your family, which reinforces

(54:52):
your feeling that you and your family are in danger.
But but I had this constant story I could tell
myself of oh, no, no, I'm getting better, when if
I I was getting worse. So you're, yeah, your your
PTSD is progressing. You're not making progress, and it's just changing,
so it seems like it's better. Right. We'll continue the

(55:12):
interview on the flip side of a quick message from
our sponsors. Lastly, how did you get to suicidal thoughts?
Was it was it literally like I'm gonna do something,
or was it like it'd be easier if I were
dead that which seems relaxing, or how did it feel

(55:35):
I was in I learned in therapy an early stage
of it, I was in like suicidal ideation. So it's
a good thing that I went in when I did,
because mine and actually, just what you just said was
was it? Because at one point my therapist asked me,
he was like, did you just feel like it would
be better if you were dead? And I was like, yes,
that's what I started to feel. And for me, it
was because I felt like this enormous burden on my family,

(55:58):
on the people around me, and I just I came
to and on top of that, I was exhausted. I mean,
that's that's the thing for me. Is interestingly, one of
the very first symptoms to lift was the suicidal ideation
because when I went into therapy, it was like, Okay,
I have a goal here, and I have and I

(56:19):
have a reason to believe that I have a chance
of getting better. So it was like, well, I'm not
going to kill myself, I want to see, you know,
and I haven't had that problem since. But then the
next thing to lift um that took a little while
was some some version of depression, right, And when I
think back on it, what I realized is it's important
for people to understand that PTSD doesn't equal depression automatically,

(56:42):
and PTSD doesn't equal suicidal ideation automatically. And I think
the reason it's important people to understand that is if
you don't understand that, you believe PTSD is a terminal
diagnosis and you will avoid it at all costs, like
I did. But what I now realize is no, Look,
PTSD caused a bunch of things. It's different for everybody.
For me, it was all the stuff we've talked about.

(57:03):
But look, after after eleven years of not getting a
good night's sleep, you're gonna be pretty depressed. And if
you're depressed for a long enough period of time, you're
gonna you're gonna have suicidal thoughts. And and so that's
why I say, had I addressed this stuff years earlier,
I don't ever get to those places. Right. It's not
like people necessarily or suicidal the story we put on them,

(57:26):
they had to do so much stuff in combat, they
just feel guilty and they're suicidals. Probably not, it's probably physical,
Like you don't sleep for ten years, you're going to
become like clinically insane in a way, you know, like
if your life sucks every day, you know, and you're
just like you can't sleep and you're fucking tired, and
you don't like yourself and you're angry all the time,

(57:46):
Like at some point, like you're gonna look for some
sense of control. It's interesting. I I had like I think,
you know, and now I'm like super into nutrition and
fitness and all this stuff and long gevity. And I
had this conversation with my therapist not too long ago
where I was like, how is it possible that I
went from wanting to kill myself to now a few

(58:09):
years later where I am just like sometimes even get
stressed out about am I doing enough to live a
really long time? And and he's so smart, and it's
so smart he said to me, He's like, well, look,
they're both about control. When things were terrible, you were
desperate to have some sort of control, and that control,
which is a big part of trauma survivors, right like,

(58:30):
if I can control the situation, I'll be okay. And
it was like, you know, I'm running out of ways
to find an ability to control it. Killing myself would
would do it right? And he's like, and now things
are really good. You want to be here for as
long as possible, but you still want control. And the
way you want to control that is you know, you

(58:50):
work out every day and you track all your food.
He's like, and that's fine, that's a healthy way to
do it, but understand that it's still a control thing.
I love that you said in the book. You just
reminded me. Thank you, and I I know we have
to wrap up and you gotta go, but I love
what you said in the book about your wife. And
you have a mantra three percent because you were told
um was in therapy. I think that of things in

(59:14):
life we can't control, we have control over like three percent.
And so you keep that in mind all the time. Yeah, yeah,
we uh we we keepen in mind all the time,
and it allows us to not try to control you know,
would happened like like my son, like if he goes
swimming at somebody's house, Like I want to be like, okay, look,
he's a pretty good swimmer, but he's but he thinks

(59:36):
he's a better swimmer than he is, so keeping you know,
and she's like, look, let him go have a good time.
Three and uh. At one point we were like, okay,
we should get we don't have tattoos, and we all
for years we've been talking about matching tattoos, and she
was like, let's get matching three percent tattoos and we
were about to until she looked up that the three
percenters were like a violent right wing militia group. And

(59:57):
so we're like, still work shopping the tattoo. I do
maybe get a nineties of the percent or something, right? Right? Um? So, lastly,
do you think that like, like you said, it's all
about control, but you've replaced like a healthy control with
like you know, working out and tracking your food. But
I got to imagine that you're wired for like healthy
dopamine and healthy adrenaline. Because what I think you did

(01:00:19):
a great job within your book is is all of
the running for various offices that you didn't and the
public life that you lived. It didn't come off like, oh,
this guy needs the love of the crowd, like you
said you were in in flow when you were in
front of people, and you know I've experienced that too.
There's less thoughts in my head. I really don't care
about admiration or applause, like I swear I don't. It's
just how I feel on stage. It just zeros everything

(01:00:41):
down to one thing. And so that's sometimes what kept
me going, is that feeling. So I know that you've,
you know, stepped away from a public life in that sense,
and obviously you're not in combat, and the more so,
how do you keep that healthy need that you might
You might I don't know if this is true for you,

(01:01:01):
but you might have more than regular people, like a
need for a little excitement, adrenaline, dopamine. Um, I think
of it. It's a great question, uh, And I appreciate
what you said. I'm not going to give myself as
much credit as you just did, which is to say
that while I did feeling flow and I absolutely felt
present when I performed, I also had such a low

(01:01:23):
opinion of myself as a result of my trauma that
I was desperately in search for some sort of evidence,
some sort of external validation that would help me convince
myself that I wasn't an irredeemable piece of ship. And
so so the request for selfies, the adulation, the you know,
fawning comments on social media, after a you know, a

(01:01:45):
hit on MSNBC. I had this idea that if I
could fill myself up with that stuff, maybe that would
fill the hole inside me. But it actually it just
was like any other addiction. I just needed more and
more and more of it to get there. And and
so when I went to therapy, I knew that I
wanted to get to a place where I could model
post traumatic growth. But I was also really scared because

(01:02:07):
I did understand pretty soon in therapy that my drug
was attention and that that's what I had used to
avoid myself. And so it was this delicate balance of like,
I want to be able to go back and do that,
but I don't want to need it. If I need it,
I can't do it. And so where I am now
is my therapist was eventually able to convince me to

(01:02:27):
go try it, and I did, and I realized, Okay,
I like doing this. Now I'm where you were saying
where you are, which is I'm good at this. I
enjoy performing and I enjoy getting my opinion out there
and shaping the debate. So I do that on social media,
occasionally go on TV. I have Majority fifty four my podcast,

(01:02:47):
and that the difference now is I don't feel like
it's a dopamine hit because now I mean it is.
But the difference is now like in the past, I
had to go from dopamine hit to dopamine head. I
was like any other addict, right, like the stuff in
between performances that was that was like Diana used the
analogy in the book, that was like coming out of

(01:03:08):
the matrix, right it was like, now I'm in this
dull world aboard the Nebucannezer, like I gotta wait for
the next time into the matrix. And I don't feel
that way anymore. Now. I'm like, like like this right now,
like we're doing this interview, I'm sort of just in
some respect, you know, on but when it's over, the
difference between me now and me then when it's over,
you know, I'm gonna go do like I have another

(01:03:29):
interview after this, but after that one's over, like you know,
I'll go about my day and not feel like, Okay,
I'm coming down, Like I'll just go back to it
and and it's the analogy that my therapist used. Was
I kept saying to him because he was trying to
get me to go back and do media, because he
knew I wanted to demonstrate this to people. And I
kept saying, look, I came here to get sober, and

(01:03:50):
you're trying to get me back to my job as
a beer taster, and and he was like, okay, I
get it. But after a few months he was like, look,
let me just suggest the possibility that if we're gonna
go with this analogy, what if you weren't an alcoholic,
what if we dealt with your underlying trauma and you
can have a couple of drinks and stop. And that
is now where I am with performing. I like doing it,

(01:04:12):
I don't have to do it, and that's right where
I want to be. That's amazing. And lastly, you are
working with UM Veterans Community Project and at one point
in your book you were there and working with them
and you said yourself, which, if only you could do
this full time. It was like that little glimmer inside
of you that knew, like, this is what you should
be doing, but it took years to get there. And

(01:04:32):
so that's what you're full time doing now right. Yeah,
I'm the president of National Expansion and we are building
our campuses and serving veterans across the country. People can
go to VCP dot org it's like Veterans Community Project
dot org to support us. And in fact, all of
the royalties from Invisible Storm go to benefit Veterans Community Project,

(01:04:53):
meaning all of all of my royalties. Publishers keeping their money,
but all of my royalties go to that It against
veterans suicide and veteran homelessness at Veterans Community Project and
we'll put everything in the show notes. Thank you so much.
I'm I love your journey. I find it very inspiring,
and I love that you're I don't know, doing such
good things for the world by by working with veterans.

(01:05:14):
It it does break my heart that there's so much
stigma around this, and I'm I'm sure you're changing so
many lives. So thanks for chatting with me and exposing
our listeners to This is my first PTSD episode. I'm
very excited about it. Well, Jen, I'm a fan of
yours and I genuinely appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.
And it's even cooler that we recorded it so we

(01:05:35):
can go back and listen to it later. I'm just
gonna listen to it on a loop, the part wher
you say you're a fan. Hi. I hope you enjoyed
my conversation with Jason. I have been trying to get
him on the podcast forever. I didn't even know he
had a book coming out when I first reached out
to him to come on to the pod, and I said,

(01:05:57):
if you're up for it. I don't know if you
talk about your PTSD publicly anymore, but I'd love to
have you on the show. And we went back and
forth for a while, but he said, you know later,
I'm having a book coming out. So um, we did
the interview you know now surrounding the book release. But
I definitely learned a lot from reading the book and

(01:06:17):
even more from from chatting to Jason. There's definitely lots
of details in this interview that we're not in the book.
So let's look at some of the takeaways that we learned.
Jason wrongly believed that he could not have PTSD from
a four month tour in Afghanistan where he did not
kill anyone or engage in heavy hand hand combat. In
Jason's environment that he was in, although it was not

(01:06:40):
combat her his training, his nervous system, and his mind
had to be fully utilized. He had to have an
intense level of alertness and readiness to defend his life.
When soldiers come home from deployment in a war, there
is not really a good system in place to give
them tools to get their brains reset. For civilian life,

(01:07:03):
when dealing with post traumatic stress disorder, you should not
rank your trauma and compare your experience as lesser than
or greater than anyone else's. PTSD gone untreated gets worse
and the symptoms can change, leading someone to believe that
they're getting better even as they're getting worse. But if
someone gets tools early in their trauma, they can prevent them.

(01:07:25):
As Jason says, trauma is not like wine. It doesn't
age well. Jason believes that PTSD education should be mandated
for everyone coming back from deployment. Post traumatic growth is real,
and if people get help for their PTSD, they will
get better. In the military, a person is trained to

(01:07:47):
protect themselves and live in survival mode with the one
goal of do not die. But in civilian life, a
person cannot survive in survival mode, and they don't need to,
especially when there is no real threat. Jason's PTSD symptoms
included intrusive thoughts, bad memories, hyper vigilance, suicidal ideation, insomnia,
sleep paralysis, and night terrors. He didn't sleep properly for

(01:08:09):
eleven years, which only worsened the symptoms of his PTSD.
Having PTSD doesn't always equal also having depression and suicidal ideation.
It's different for every survivor. PTSD can manifest in ways
like not being able to sit too long in a
restaurant having the urge to get out quickly, or not
being able to sit at a stop sign in your

(01:08:31):
car without having a racing heart and the urge to go.
We can only control about three percent of what happens
to us in life. Therefore, our lives we probably don't
have control over. Homeless veterans needs special care and often
do not seek help in shelters that don't cater to
a veteran's needs. For example, many are not comfortable sleeping

(01:08:54):
around strangers due to their military training, and instead they
could benefit from sleeping in their own tiny else, which
is what the Veterans Community Project built. They built shelters
with a trauma informed design where the bed faces the door.
There are only windows on a few sides. Their pod
has a door lock and no unit looks into another unit.
So again, you can visit the links that I have

(01:09:16):
put in the show notes to buy Jason's book, to
check out his podcast, and to check out the work
of the Veterans Community Project. Thanks again for listening, and
you can follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter
at Jen Kirkman and Instagram at Jen Kirkman. That's one
end in Jen, And of course you can send an

(01:09:38):
email to the show Anxiety Bites Weekly at gmail dot com.
Give the podcast five stars wherever you listen, and just
remember that Anxiety Bites but You're in control. For more
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