October 10, 2023 • 35 mins
Big Ray drops some wisdom on World Mental Health Day with an emphasis on mental toughness and curiosity. Today’s show: Mental Health is the Foundation (01:22), Mental Toughness (04:38), Guardrails (11:05), Mental Flexibility (14:46), Mindful Therapy Group (19:10), Curiosity (23:48).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Big Raised Garage Grind.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I want to bring awareness and my voice to something
that's meaningful and purposeful, more than just who's the best
football player, who's the best football team? The intersection between life,
football and mental health. When you need help and you
ask for help, you're operating from a position of power.
When you need help and you don't ask for help,
that's the weakness. Now here's your host, Seahawk's legend, Ray Roberts.
(00:27):
I'm Big Ray and this is Big Raise Garage Grind
Mental Health Edition Episode number seven, Lucky number seven and
today's podcast an episode is brought to you by our
good friends at the Mindful Therapy Group. I'm looking forward
to meeting with the leadership group of the Mindful Therapy
Group in the coming days to discuss some work that
(00:47):
we're going to do together. I think we're going to
pull together some exciting, some cool and sightful, impactful content
that we get to share with you guys. So looking
forward to meeting more with them. Them a little bit
on a zoom call a week or so ago. So
some really really good people today. Before I kind of
get into what I want to talk about, I was
(01:10):
driving in today, and this commercial has stuck with me
ever since I started doing this podcast, and I just
thought it was interesting because of the I guess the analogy,
I guess if you want to call it that, But
Dave Wyman does this commercial for a company here that
repairs home foundations, and so it made me start to
(01:31):
think just the content of the commercial that the way
they talk about the home foundations are the same way
that we're trying to talk about your mental health and
wellness being the foundation of who you are. And so
on their website it says your foundation is critical to
(01:52):
the overall health of your home or your building. When
your foundation is damaged, it can affect your homes or
your building's appearance, safety, and value over time. If your
foundation is showing cracks, buckling, or experiencing any other kinds
of damage, you can rely on our team of foundation
(02:15):
repair specialists to repair it. And I thought, man, that
is such a great, great analogy for mental health, because
their mental health is the foundation of who you are.
There's a famous quote that you know, I don't know
who's attributed to, but Howard Mudd our offensive line culture
with Seattle when I played here, who passed away during
(02:36):
the pandemic. He's always saying, whether you think you can
or you think you can't, you're right. And that's and
if you're thinking, that's a that's a mind mental kind
of a thing. And so it's the foundation of who
you are and what you plan to do and how
you plan to go about things and how you live
your life. And so it's no different than the foundation
(02:58):
of your home. Like when you're life starts to buckle,
when your life starts to show cracks, you know, when
you're when your your life is a little off balance,
getting your foundation back in line will help get all
of that stuff corrected. And uh, and you know in
their commercial it says as a permanent fix, you know,
when you're working with the mind and mental health is
never a permanent fix. It's an ongoing process. But the
(03:21):
idea and the thinking it's the same. And I've been
wanting to share that for quite some time because every
time it seems like every time I'm heading in here
to record the podcast, it's the first commercial I.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Hear when I get in the car.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And so the universe was telling me that I should
maybe just bring that up, and so I just thought
just to start to show today with something maybe a
little fun and just maybe give other people another way
to access the idea of the importance of our mental
health and wellness is to compare it to other things
that we look at the foundation of and go like, hey,
(03:53):
if that if the foundation of this thing is not working,
then we need to you know, repair these other things. So, uh,
I'm gonna move on to to kind of what we're
gonna talk about today. There's been a couple of things
I want to talk about, and one is this this
idea around toughness, and I'm talking mental toughness in particular.
(04:17):
And then also the concept of curiosity, uh as a
way to examine, uh, the anxiety or the depression or
stress that you're experiencing, or whatever kind of mental health
crisis that you're experiencing. Is that this practice of curiosity
as a way to kind of calm the waters a
(04:37):
little bit. And so I'm going to start out with
this with this talk around uh mental toughness. So, you know,
playing football requires a certain amount of physical toughness and
mental toughness toughness if you want to call it that.
And recently in watching a lot of games and there's
a lot of young players playing at the quarterback position
(04:59):
or or doing what they're doing, and you keep hearing,
especially the Wilson kid for the Jets, and you keep
hearing people say, oh, he has to be mentally tough.
And so sometimes I think that people with good intentions,
whether they're family members or coaches or friends or people
that are trying to support you, sometimes we say things
(05:23):
that we don't really know what we're saying, but it
sounds like the right thing to say, and it ends
up actually creating more stress for the people who are
receiving it. So this idea of mental toughness kind of
got me. I don't know, sometimes I get on these
I used to do this thing called raise rants, like
back in the day, and I just get hooked onto
(05:45):
something and go down this rabbit hole and it would
just kind of frustrate me and I'd just be on
Twitter just talking about it forever. But this just kind
of caught my attention more and more of these last
few weeks, because you hear it a lot in sports
about this mental toughness thing. And so I'm a storyteller,
so I'm gonna always start these things out telling the
(06:07):
story and hopefully you guys will follow along with me here,
because I'm gonna make a point and it may take
me a second to get to the point. But when
I was a football coach, head football coach for the
late Washington High School Kangaroos over in Kirkland, Washington, We're
(06:28):
at practice one day and we're doing our team defensive
period and we had this young player I think his
name was Ryan, and he was one of our bigger,
stronger players, excuse me, and a really good athlete. But
he kept getting trapped on this one trap play by
a player that is lesser player than he is, smaller
(06:51):
than he was, not as athletic as he was, And
so I just kept going, Ryan, man, come on, dog
being athlete. And so two or three more times after that,
and I'm like, Ryan, come on, man, be an athlete.
And so after probably like the fifth or sixth time
I said Ryan, come on, dog, you got to be
an athlete, he turned to me and he said, Coach,
(07:14):
what in the hell does that mean? And I was
just like, I'm not gonna lie. I was like stuck
because I was just like, uh, you got me on
that one, Ryan, I don't know what it means. I
just it's like, that's what you hear coaches say all
the time, be an athlete. And so I'm telling you
to be an athlete, and I have no idea exactly
(07:35):
what it is I'm telling you to do. But because
I was telling him to be an athlete, he was
trying to go through everything that he knew what he
thought I was saying to do it, and it was
creating more stress, and he was getting worse and worse
and worse with the technique the harder he tried. And
so in that moment, I realized that man, like, there
are a lot of catchphrases, there are a lot of
(07:55):
cliches and things that we say with good intentions that
we have absolutely no idea what it is that we're saying.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
We have no idea what it means.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
To uh to accomplish what we're asking these people to do.
And it's also creating even more stress and anguish or
you know, struggle for the people we're talking to. And
so long story short or short story longer, this idea
around telling people you hear it all the time, you
(08:26):
have to be mentally tough.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Well, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
What does it mean when you tell, like, especially when
you're telling a football player that you have to be
mentally tough, Like, toughness is gonna be the word that
you probably lean on the most because in our sport,
toughness is equated with something physical, So that means I'm
gonna try physically harder. I'm going to try to hit
the dude harder, I'm gonna work out more, I'm gonna
(08:51):
get stronger, I'm gonna get bigger faster. That like, you
get hung up on the word toughness thinking that those
are the attributes of toughness and that's gonna help you
with the mental part. But that's not the case, and
the idea around mental toughness is not the place to
go to. Is not the terminology that you want to
(09:12):
use when you're talking about someone that's going through something
that is a mental struggle or a mental crisis that
they're going through, because you you can't just fight and
tough your way through it. There has to be something
that gives you by some leverage or give you some resources,
(09:33):
some tools to kind of help you get through that.
And so I was thinking, when you think about mental toughness,
it's also kind of related to resilience, and it's related
to grit. And there was a book a few years
ago that this lady wrote about grit, and there was
a lot of flaws in it, and basically, by telling
(09:54):
someone you have to be grittier, or you have to
be mentally tougher, or you have to be more resilient,
sometimes that's kind of blaming the victim for the circumstance.
And then also it doesn't take into account a lot
of other social issues and equitable issues and things like that.
But for me, more important than anything else is that
(10:19):
this is the place I don't think people understand around
being tough, mentally tough, being resilience, and having grit. All
of those things are rooted in relationships and if you
don't have and we talked a little bit about this
in the in the episode before this about my team
of people, the two guys that I met when I
(10:42):
was in therapy, and we kind of, you know, we
reach out to each other, we take care of each other,
you know, we're kind of our support group for each other.
But what I'm saying is that if you don't have trusting, supportive,
non judgmental relationships, it is really really hard to operate
(11:08):
in resilience. It is really hard to operate in grit.
It is really hard to be mentally tough. There are
I think of it as when you have people in
your corner, when you have relationships that create the environment
(11:29):
for you to.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Display those things.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It's because they're kind of like the guardrails when you
go bowling, So you put those rails up and it
keeps the bowling ball from going into the gutter.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Necessarily do to work for you, although you can cheat
a little bit in bowling and use those guardrails and
bounce the ball off of and all that kind of stuff.
But as it comes to the relationships, it's important to
have people that will come alongside you, not necessarily to
fix the problems all of the problem, but to give
you the guardrail to let you know and create the
environment to let you know that it's okay to keep
(12:05):
moving and then and then also point and guide you
in the right direction for the resources and the tools
that you need to overcome the whatever the mental health
crisis is that you're that you're having at the time.
Since I've since I've retired from the NFL, I've worked
a lot in the education system, either in educational programs
(12:28):
or like what I'm doing right now, where I'm working
with special Olympics and I'm in schools all the time.
And so during this time, I've done a lot of
reading on academic success. And one of the articles I've
read research article was based on this idea around academic
resilience and and grit, and it said that when students,
(12:52):
especially students of color or or mis underrepresented populations, have
a guardian or parent, are an adult in their life
that is invested in their education. So they're showing up
at the parent teacher meetings, they're going to the school events,
they're at when when the when the when the child
comes home, they're asking about the homework. They want to
(13:14):
know what they're learning, they want to know what's going
on in the classroom. When those types of people relationships
are present for the students, the students show more academic resilience.
They're able to fight through tough uh you know, tough
periods of academia so that they can get to the
other side. They're they're they're willing to uh embrace the
(13:35):
not done it yet or not learned it yet attitude.
So knowing that they may not have it now, but
they're going to get it later. So again, these relationships
are what is The relationships are feeding or supporting this
person in a way that they're non judgmental, they're safe spaces,
they're supportive places, they're encouraging places, and they're and there
(13:57):
are people that can help them find other resource just
when you know that you have someone in your corner
that you can go to, that you can talk to
that can not necessarily, like I said, solve the problem,
which you know, the old joke with there used to
be a commercial where, you know, women always say that
men don't listen, they just always want to fix stuff.
(14:18):
So it used to be the commercial where the lady
had like a nail in her forehead and she's trying
to talk to her her husband about some other issue
and he keeps reaching for the nail and trying to
fix what doesn't need to be fixed. But but if
we can get to the place where we have these
relationships that are supportive, like I said, not doing the fixing,
but pointing us in the right direction, then that is
(14:42):
when you can have mental toughness if you want to
call it that. And I don't even like calling it toughness,
because toughness is almost like a like I don't I
don't know how you develop toughness in that sense. But
what I like to call it mental flexibility, and that
means that you have the ability to go like if
you think about the ivy going up the lattice of
(15:03):
the side of a house. It goes up, it goes
to the right, it might go down a little bit,
it goes back up, it goes to the left, it
might go you know, back up into the right again,
but eventually it gets to the top of the house.
And to me, that's the way you have to be mentally.
You have to be flexible that way, because when I
think of toughness, I think of like the wrongs of
a ladder.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So you have to go one.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Step, two step, three steps, four steps, and all of
sudden the fifth step breaks, you drop, You fall all
the way back down to the bottom of the ladder,
and you have to start all over again. And that
feels like that feels like defeat, and so it's really
hard then to pick yourself back up and go at
it again. So I think of it as mental flexibility.
And so having these relationships. Having these supportive relationships allows
(15:46):
you to have the mental flexibility to sometimes have a
bad day. Sometimes you just have a day that's just
kind of it's not good or bad, it's just kind
of somewhere in the middle. And then some days you
have the times when you're really climbing, you're climbing the lattice,
you're for the top of the house, and so you
have these moments where toughness isn't really the word, but
(16:06):
flexibility is the word. And so having the right relationships
around you that allow for that is what helps you
build uh, the muscle or or the the It helps
you build the uh, the the resilience and the grit
to kind of to keep going, to keep going with it.
And so it kind of frustrated me just a little bit,
(16:28):
uh to to hear to hear people say that about
this whole mental toughness thing. And also this this week,
I mean, I forget the dude's name, but there was
a boxer that I think I posted on my on
my on my story page on on Instagram, and he
was had just want to fight and was talking about
(16:49):
some of the battles that he had with with mental
health and he had to take some time off. He
was in a dark place and he had to find
to find a way to get through it. And so
when people say that, like even you know, mental health
and struggling with these things are weakness and speaking of
it is some type of weakness. It's not about toughness
or weakness. It's about having tools and resources and people
(17:12):
to help you get through it. And it's just like
any other health issue. If you have a cold, you're
not You're not a weak person because you have a cold,
and you're not a tough person because you didn't.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Get a cold.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Uh, it's a health issue, and so mental health is
no different and should be viewed the same.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
And so it is just.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Sometimes the verbiage and the language that we use all
well intended, all good intentions. Everything that we're saying, we're
trying to find a way to be positive and help
a person, but sometimes those words can create even more
issues and more stress than what we had planned and
(17:55):
what we had intended. So if you know someone who
is going through it, they're having a mental health crisis
of any kind, anxiety, anxiety, depression, stress, panic, you know,
you know whatever it is, uh that that you feel
that that that they're they're struggling, that should be and
you feel like you need to tell them that they
(18:16):
need to be mentally tough. That is, those should be
indications that you should find a way to come alongside them,
that you should find a way to kind of build
a bridge or a relationship with this person, not to
do the work for them, but to build it and
create a relationship, uh that will provide support and help
them find their way. And so, you know, it would
(18:38):
be good for everyone. You know, I'm pretty sure that
the Mindful Therapy Group has some resources on their website,
but for everyone to just kind of have an idea
of where to god people to some things and to
say and things not to say when and when people
are in crisis. Uh, so that when you come upon
(18:58):
those those things, whether you're a person that needs to
help or the person that that is looking for help,
you have a way to kind of point them in
the right direction. Speaking of the Mindful Therapy Group, the
Mindful Therapy Group, based in the Pacific Northwest, is a
diverse group of qualified mental health providers offering both in
person and virtual care. Whether it's talk therapy or medication management.
(19:22):
You can book your first visit within one week. Visit
Mindful Therapygroup dot com to start your journey to better
mental health today. So the Mindful Therapy Group, like I said, man,
they have done. They have a creative partnership with the
Seahawks and they're gonna help the Seahawks and and it's
players and the sea Hawks mission to it to advance
(19:44):
and create this mental health awareness. And they're also the
title sponsor our of the Big Raised Garage Grind podcast.
How to talk with them about a couple of weeks ago.
Gonna have another conversation with them on this upcoming week,
and so we're looking forward to just kind of putting
putting our minds together using my voice and some of
(20:04):
their resources and things to come up with the content
and things to talk about that kind of can bring you, guys,
some more information and some other things for you to
think about around the mental health space. Like I said,
the idea of this podcast is to really debunk the
stigma around mental health and wellness, especially for men men
(20:24):
of color athletes, but more importantly for everybody. It's a
it's a since the pandemic. I was talking with.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
One of the.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
UH administrators at the University of Virginia this morning, and
they are obviously going through a lot of this stuff
that they went through last year when they had the
three players that were murdered on campus during the season,
had to cancel their final game or two, and then
coming into this season, they've had to have all these
(20:54):
memorials and celebrations of those same three players, and so
it's been really difficult on the players to manage all
of that and then go out and play a football game.
And so we were talking and I said, hey, man, like,
I'm really interested in this mental health thing. And so
we had this conversation this morning around the pandemic and
(21:15):
this situation that happened with our football team there and
the numbers of players. I think they have three mental
health professionals on staff, and the number of athletes that
are accessing the three mental health professionals are overwhelming the
mental health professionals. And that's a combination of the pandemic
and of this situation that happened with the football team.
(21:39):
And so this mental health thing is not going away.
It shouldn't go away. And there are people, a lot
of young people that really needed I remember in two
thousand and I want to say ten. I went to
work for the University of Virginia as the Life Skills
director and at the same time we hired a guy
(21:59):
at actually was from Washington State University, Jim. I can't
think of his last name, but he was a sports psychologist.
They hired us at the same time. So he the
first week he had his office open, he had so
many athletes signed up to come visit him that they
had to hire two more therapists to help him support
(22:21):
the caseload. So even then, before the pandemic, the pressure,
the pressure to perform, the pressure to be perfect, the
pressure to win, all those different things were really impacting
young people. And so his office was full of folks
all the time. So now you fast forward through the pandemic,
(22:43):
and you fast forward at this university, through through through
through the accident that or the murder that happened with
the football team, and all the other stuff, all the
other stuff. Social media is hard. If you're an athlete
and you're on social media when you're thriving, men, high
five to you, because it is very difficult to be
(23:05):
an athlete of any kind to be on social media
and you have one mistake where such a it has
become such a knee jerk overreaction uh to everything that
happens that men, it's hard to understand how it would
not impact your mental health. I would not create doubt
in your mind. How it doesn't create stress or it
doesn't create uh this you know, this idea that you
(23:25):
have to be perfect and so uh partnering with the
uh the mindful Therapy group is going to be really
good for us to kind of bring some resources to
shed some light on some things, uh, to to you know,
even be preventative in it. So, so do you prepare
yourself to be ready to go into certain situations? So
looking forward to that conversation uh coming up on Monday.
(23:48):
The second thing I wanted to talk to you guys
today about was this idea around curiosity and and so,
like I said, I am a storyteller.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
So what does it mean? You know, what does it
mean to be curious?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
And uh? You know uh uh when I was in
the depths of my struggle, I had no clue what
was going on, and the only questions I have for
myself were what is going on? And what the hell?
And in that, you know, there's a lot that's kind
(24:24):
of built up into that, and a lot of it
is like you're kind of beating yourself up, like why
am I feeling this way? I shouldn't be feeling this way.
I have, you know, a life that I want or
what have you? And you know, why am I? Why
am I feeling this way? And and so it this
idea around curiosity came to me when I was in therapy,
(24:48):
you know, when you know my struggles with anxiety and panic.
I mean I couldn't get out of the house to
go see my kids, or I couldn't go to the
grocery store, or or even if I just wanted to
go for a ride, I couldn't do that. I do
the pregame show and postgame show for the Seahawks on
the radio, and so some days to get to the games,
(25:09):
I had to talk myself through every single step. Open
the door, walk down the stairs, get in the car,
start the car, make it out of the parking lot,
get to the freeway, get to the next exit. I
did this all the way to the stadium. The only
questions I said, like I have for myself is like,
what the hell am I is wrong with me?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And you know why me.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
But while I was in therapy, when I was in
the after the Impact program that the NFL sponsored in Manchester, Michigan,
my one the one therapist asked me, I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
No, this is what she said. She said, I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
What were you thinking during those times when you couldn't
when you couldn't get out the house?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Were you ever curious? And I was just like, I
don't understand what you mean. And so she explained to
me that this idea of approaching the questioning with curiosity,
curiosity like minimizes the judgment, and it's a way of
like approaching what's happening in the moment. It helps you
(26:14):
figure out the facts from the facts of the matter
from so that you can access what the real It
helps you figure out the facts of the matter from
the cognitive distortions. The cognitive distortions are the lives that
you're telling yourself, and so it helps you figure out
(26:35):
the facts so that you can then figure out exactly
what's happening. And so you get away from the what ifs,
which we tend to have negative answers and responses to,
and you get to the what is. So, for an example,
when I couldn't get out the door to go see
my kids. I would be nervous about what was gonna
(26:57):
happen when I got to my ex wife's house. Was
I gonna get into an argument with her? Were the kids?
Did the kids really really want to see me? Was
I being a burden on people and just wasting their time?
Was I going to interrupt their family dynamic?
Speaker 1 (27:14):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Are there gonna be conversations happening that I'm not aware of?
And so I'm going to feel like the the third
will like, you know, like I don't belong there. Had
all these things going on in my head, and that
would freeze me from opening and like literally turning the
doorknob and going out the door to get in the
car to go see my kids. And so I'd have
to pick up the phone, call my my ex wife
(27:37):
Beth and say, hey, can you just tell the kids
like I'm not feeling well or whatever, I'm not going
to make it over. And so then I would just
sit back down on the couch and then that's where
I was. But the reality of it, when I became
started being curious about what I was feeling in those moments,
and then speaking to the fact of the matter of
it is that the likelihood of those things happening were very,
(28:04):
very slim. Yes, they may have happened once or twice
in the past, but I've been over to their house
hundreds of times and and something's and if something did
go down, there's nothing wrong with just getting up to
leave and then come back another time is no big deal.
(28:26):
And so I had to walk myself through that, like
I had to be curious about Okay, I'm at the door,
i have my hand on the doorknob, and I'm feeling
all of this. I'm questioning, have all these questions in
my head. And so to be curious is to say, okay, like,
what am I feeling in this moment right now? Okay,
I'm feeling like I'm a burden? Okay, then let's challenge that.
(28:47):
Am I Am I a burden? Do my kids enjoy
when I go over there? Do I help out around
the house when I go over there? Do we play
games and have fun when I'm over there? Am I
able to help my ex wife get through things when
I'm over there, help her process stuff, take some of
the load off of her, like dealing with the kids
when I'm over there. Absolutely. Does that sound like a
(29:09):
burden rate, No, it doesn't sound like a burden. It
sounds like help, help for you know, And it sounds
like I'm being present and I'm being a value add
to the situation. And so that way, you're curious about
what you're feeling or what you're thinking, and then you
speak fact into it, and then you can make a
decision based on the fact or the facts, whether or
(29:29):
not you should go out the door and go over
to the house. And so once I was able, it
took me a while to kind of understand that when
I was in therapy, like even you know, since since
my divorce, I've had a hard time. I fought, like
ritally really understanding like kind of what my value was.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I've always prodded myself on being the world's greatest dad,
and I wanted to be the world's greatest husband, and
and then I ended up in divorce, and so it's
felt like such a monumental failure to me that I
just felt like a failure all the time. I just
felt like I didn't have anything to offer people. And
when I was in this therapy group, the other five
dudes that were there the other five former players were
(30:11):
there after a couple of weeks. They're just like, dude, like,
I don't understand how you see that in yourself, Like
you're like one of the most personable, helpful, you know,
you know, smart dudes like we've ever been around, Like
we we would you should go be a therapist, Like
you're helping us more than the therapies. The therapists are here.
And but I couldn't see that self. I couldn't see
(30:31):
that in myself because of the cognitive distortions, because I
was believing the fog that was right in front of
me that was a lie. And yes, the fact of
the matter is my marriage ended. The fact of the
matter is that that, you know, I put our family
in a situation that that our family, you know, was
(30:52):
not broken, but we had to go our separate ways.
But even in that, have I been Have I honored
my ex wife?
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yes? Have I been a great father to my kids? Yes?
Have I helped other people?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yes, I've worked at a I've worked at programs that
help underrepresented populations in education. I've worked in you know,
special imbus. I'm working with a program that helps you know,
able bodied and mentally uh, disabled individuals. So I've done
a lot of good work and the evidence or the
(31:26):
facts of the matter spoke to something different than how
I saw myself. And so this idea of around being
curious was very eye opening to me because being curious
to me, like I said, is is very non judgmental.
You're just trying to figure out, Okay, what is it
that I'm feeling, Why am I feeling it?
Speaker 1 (31:46):
And is it? And is that the fact of the matter. Yes,
it is.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Going over to my ex wife's house sometimes is a
little uncomfortable, but I have done it hundreds of times,
and I know that I bring value to it when
I'm over there. Have you had incidences where an argument
of something or disagreement broke out, absolutely what happened. I
left the house, but you know what happened. I went
back another hundreds of times. And so the evidence is
(32:12):
on my side that if I open this door, get
in my car and go see my kids, that everything
is going to be okay and I'm gonna be okay.
And so the idea about around being curious really helped
me through that. So, if you find yourself in a
situation where either you know it may not be as
extreme as I was, not being able to ge out
(32:34):
of door. But you're feeling anxious, are you're feeling stressed,
or you're feeling depressed in some way, if you can
find a way to just be curious about what it
is that you're feeling and then speak to the facts
of it. And sometimes it may take other people to
do that for you, because you may be in a
state where you just can't like get your mind wrapped
(32:54):
around what the facts are. But I like, for me
with this whole divorce thing and this whole I did it.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
I'm a fan.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It took other people to go like, dude, like what
are you seeing? Because this is what we see. And
it wasn't just one person, it was five or six dudes.
It was the therapist that was at this that was
at this treatment center when I when I left there,
they recommended that I go get a therapy license and
be a therapist because I had as much impact in
the house as a therapist did. But the whole time
I was there, man, I didn't see that. I wasn't
(33:23):
feeling that even though just being who I am all
the time, I was still going like, man, like I'm here,
like my kids are back home, I'm having to take
thirty days off of work. Like man, I'm just such
a failure, Like I do unscrewed my whole life up,
you know, all this other kind of stuff. And so
these cognitive distortions were beating me down and not allowing
me to see the facts of the matter. And the
facts of the matter told a different story. And so
(33:45):
the way to find and smoke out those facts is
to be curious about what it is that you're feeling.
What is it what is the messaging that you're that
you're giving yourself, so that you can find a way
to get yourself out of those situations. So as I
(34:05):
wrap this up, so we're gonna wrap this up. Being
curious takes away the judgment and the negative answer to
the what ifs, and it replaces it with the facts
and clarity. So surround yourself also with guardrail relationships, or
(34:28):
be a guardrail for someone in moments of stress or anxiety,
or if they're having a mental health crisis. Come alongside
and be a guardrail. You don't have to fix it.
Most people will have the tools to fix it if
you can point them in the right direction and point
them in the right tools and give them the environment
and encouragement.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
To do it.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
So the toughness if you want to call it that,
if you want to call it mental flexibility, if you
want to call it resilience, if you want to call
it grit, all of that is rooted in these guardrail relationships.
So be a guardrail for someone and if you need someone,
lean on your guardrails. So that's it for episode number seven,
(35:09):
a Big Raised Garage Grind. And as always, if it's
okay to not be okay, if you're experiencing a mental
health crisis, contact your medical provider for guidance and assistance.
And third and most important, when you ask and when
you need help, and you ask for help, you're operating
from a position of power.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
So that's it for Big Raise Garage Grind, Mental Health Edition.
Peace
You're listening to Big Raised Garage Grind.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I want to bring awareness and my voice to something
that's meaningful and purposeful, more than just who's the best
football player, who's the best football team? The intersection between life,
football and mental health. When you need help and you
ask for help, you're operating from a position of power.
When you need help and you don't ask for help,
that's the weakness. Now here's your host, Seahawk's legend, Ray Roberts.
(00:27):
I'm Big Ray and this is Big Raise Garage Grind
Mental Health Edition Episode number seven, Lucky number seven and
today's podcast an episode is brought to you by our
good friends at the Mindful Therapy Group. I'm looking forward
to meeting with the leadership group of the Mindful Therapy
Group in the coming days to discuss some work that
(00:47):
we're going to do together. I think we're going to
pull together some exciting, some cool and sightful, impactful content
that we get to share with you guys. So looking
forward to meeting more with them. Them a little bit
on a zoom call a week or so ago. So
some really really good people today. Before I kind of
get into what I want to talk about, I was
(01:10):
driving in today, and this commercial has stuck with me
ever since I started doing this podcast, and I just
thought it was interesting because of the I guess the analogy,
I guess if you want to call it that, But
Dave Wyman does this commercial for a company here that
repairs home foundations, and so it made me start to
(01:31):
think just the content of the commercial that the way
they talk about the home foundations are the same way
that we're trying to talk about your mental health and
wellness being the foundation of who you are. And so
on their website it says your foundation is critical to
(01:52):
the overall health of your home or your building. When
your foundation is damaged, it can affect your homes or
your building's appearance, safety, and value over time. If your
foundation is showing cracks, buckling, or experiencing any other kinds
of damage, you can rely on our team of foundation
(02:15):
repair specialists to repair it. And I thought, man, that
is such a great, great analogy for mental health, because
their mental health is the foundation of who you are.
There's a famous quote that you know, I don't know
who's attributed to, but Howard Mudd our offensive line culture
with Seattle when I played here, who passed away during
(02:36):
the pandemic. He's always saying, whether you think you can
or you think you can't, you're right. And that's and
if you're thinking, that's a that's a mind mental kind
of a thing. And so it's the foundation of who
you are and what you plan to do and how
you plan to go about things and how you live
your life. And so it's no different than the foundation
(02:58):
of your home. Like when you're life starts to buckle,
when your life starts to show cracks, you know, when
you're when your your life is a little off balance,
getting your foundation back in line will help get all
of that stuff corrected. And uh, and you know in
their commercial it says as a permanent fix, you know,
when you're working with the mind and mental health is
never a permanent fix. It's an ongoing process. But the
(03:21):
idea and the thinking it's the same. And I've been
wanting to share that for quite some time because every
time it seems like every time I'm heading in here
to record the podcast, it's the first commercial I.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Hear when I get in the car.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And so the universe was telling me that I should
maybe just bring that up, and so I just thought
just to start to show today with something maybe a
little fun and just maybe give other people another way
to access the idea of the importance of our mental
health and wellness is to compare it to other things
that we look at the foundation of and go like, hey,
(03:53):
if that if the foundation of this thing is not working,
then we need to you know, repair these other things. So, uh,
I'm gonna move on to to kind of what we're
gonna talk about today. There's been a couple of things
I want to talk about, and one is this this
idea around toughness, and I'm talking mental toughness in particular.
(04:17):
And then also the concept of curiosity, uh as a
way to examine, uh, the anxiety or the depression or
stress that you're experiencing, or whatever kind of mental health
crisis that you're experiencing. Is that this practice of curiosity
as a way to kind of calm the waters a
(04:37):
little bit. And so I'm going to start out with
this with this talk around uh mental toughness. So, you know,
playing football requires a certain amount of physical toughness and
mental toughness toughness if you want to call it that.
And recently in watching a lot of games and there's
a lot of young players playing at the quarterback position
(04:59):
or or doing what they're doing, and you keep hearing,
especially the Wilson kid for the Jets, and you keep
hearing people say, oh, he has to be mentally tough.
And so sometimes I think that people with good intentions,
whether they're family members or coaches or friends or people
that are trying to support you, sometimes we say things
(05:23):
that we don't really know what we're saying, but it
sounds like the right thing to say, and it ends
up actually creating more stress for the people who are
receiving it. So this idea of mental toughness kind of
got me. I don't know, sometimes I get on these
I used to do this thing called raise rants, like
back in the day, and I just get hooked onto
(05:45):
something and go down this rabbit hole and it would
just kind of frustrate me and I'd just be on
Twitter just talking about it forever. But this just kind
of caught my attention more and more of these last
few weeks, because you hear it a lot in sports
about this mental toughness thing. And so I'm a storyteller,
so I'm gonna always start these things out telling the
(06:07):
story and hopefully you guys will follow along with me here,
because I'm gonna make a point and it may take
me a second to get to the point. But when
I was a football coach, head football coach for the
late Washington High School Kangaroos over in Kirkland, Washington, We're
(06:28):
at practice one day and we're doing our team defensive
period and we had this young player I think his
name was Ryan, and he was one of our bigger,
stronger players, excuse me, and a really good athlete. But
he kept getting trapped on this one trap play by
a player that is lesser player than he is, smaller
(06:51):
than he was, not as athletic as he was, And
so I just kept going, Ryan, man, come on, dog
being athlete. And so two or three more times after that,
and I'm like, Ryan, come on, man, be an athlete.
And so after probably like the fifth or sixth time
I said Ryan, come on, dog, you got to be
an athlete, he turned to me and he said, Coach,
(07:14):
what in the hell does that mean? And I was
just like, I'm not gonna lie. I was like stuck
because I was just like, uh, you got me on
that one, Ryan, I don't know what it means. I
just it's like, that's what you hear coaches say all
the time, be an athlete. And so I'm telling you
to be an athlete, and I have no idea exactly
(07:35):
what it is I'm telling you to do. But because
I was telling him to be an athlete, he was
trying to go through everything that he knew what he
thought I was saying to do it, and it was
creating more stress, and he was getting worse and worse
and worse with the technique the harder he tried. And
so in that moment, I realized that man, like, there
are a lot of catchphrases, there are a lot of
(07:55):
cliches and things that we say with good intentions that
we have absolutely no idea what it is that we're saying.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
We have no idea what it means.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
To uh to accomplish what we're asking these people to do.
And it's also creating even more stress and anguish or
you know, struggle for the people we're talking to. And
so long story short or short story longer, this idea
around telling people you hear it all the time, you
(08:26):
have to be mentally tough.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Well, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
What does it mean when you tell, like, especially when
you're telling a football player that you have to be
mentally tough, Like, toughness is gonna be the word that
you probably lean on the most because in our sport,
toughness is equated with something physical, So that means I'm
gonna try physically harder. I'm going to try to hit
the dude harder, I'm gonna work out more, I'm gonna
(08:51):
get stronger, I'm gonna get bigger faster. That like, you
get hung up on the word toughness thinking that those
are the attributes of toughness and that's gonna help you
with the mental part. But that's not the case, and
the idea around mental toughness is not the place to
go to. Is not the terminology that you want to
(09:12):
use when you're talking about someone that's going through something
that is a mental struggle or a mental crisis that
they're going through, because you you can't just fight and
tough your way through it. There has to be something
that gives you by some leverage or give you some resources,
(09:33):
some tools to kind of help you get through that.
And so I was thinking, when you think about mental toughness,
it's also kind of related to resilience, and it's related
to grit. And there was a book a few years
ago that this lady wrote about grit, and there was
a lot of flaws in it, and basically, by telling
(09:54):
someone you have to be grittier, or you have to
be mentally tougher, or you have to be more resilient,
sometimes that's kind of blaming the victim for the circumstance.
And then also it doesn't take into account a lot
of other social issues and equitable issues and things like that.
But for me, more important than anything else is that
(10:19):
this is the place I don't think people understand around
being tough, mentally tough, being resilience, and having grit. All
of those things are rooted in relationships and if you
don't have and we talked a little bit about this
in the in the episode before this about my team
of people, the two guys that I met when I
(10:42):
was in therapy, and we kind of, you know, we
reach out to each other, we take care of each other,
you know, we're kind of our support group for each other.
But what I'm saying is that if you don't have trusting, supportive,
non judgmental relationships, it is really really hard to operate
(11:08):
in resilience. It is really hard to operate in grit.
It is really hard to be mentally tough. There are
I think of it as when you have people in
your corner, when you have relationships that create the environment
(11:29):
for you to.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Display those things.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
It's because they're kind of like the guardrails when you
go bowling, So you put those rails up and it
keeps the bowling ball from going into the gutter.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
So it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Necessarily do to work for you, although you can cheat
a little bit in bowling and use those guardrails and
bounce the ball off of and all that kind of stuff.
But as it comes to the relationships, it's important to
have people that will come alongside you, not necessarily to
fix the problems all of the problem, but to give
you the guardrail to let you know and create the
environment to let you know that it's okay to keep
(12:05):
moving and then and then also point and guide you
in the right direction for the resources and the tools
that you need to overcome the whatever the mental health
crisis is that you're that you're having at the time.
Since I've since I've retired from the NFL, I've worked
a lot in the education system, either in educational programs
(12:28):
or like what I'm doing right now, where I'm working
with special Olympics and I'm in schools all the time.
And so during this time, I've done a lot of
reading on academic success. And one of the articles I've
read research article was based on this idea around academic
resilience and and grit, and it said that when students,
(12:52):
especially students of color or or mis underrepresented populations, have
a guardian or parent, are an adult in their life
that is invested in their education. So they're showing up
at the parent teacher meetings, they're going to the school events,
they're at when when the when the when the child
comes home, they're asking about the homework. They want to
(13:14):
know what they're learning, they want to know what's going
on in the classroom. When those types of people relationships
are present for the students, the students show more academic resilience.
They're able to fight through tough uh you know, tough
periods of academia so that they can get to the
other side. They're they're they're willing to uh embrace the
(13:35):
not done it yet or not learned it yet attitude.
So knowing that they may not have it now, but
they're going to get it later. So again, these relationships
are what is The relationships are feeding or supporting this
person in a way that they're non judgmental, they're safe spaces,
they're supportive places, they're encouraging places, and they're and there
(13:57):
are people that can help them find other resource just
when you know that you have someone in your corner
that you can go to, that you can talk to
that can not necessarily, like I said, solve the problem,
which you know, the old joke with there used to
be a commercial where, you know, women always say that
men don't listen, they just always want to fix stuff.
(14:18):
So it used to be the commercial where the lady
had like a nail in her forehead and she's trying
to talk to her her husband about some other issue
and he keeps reaching for the nail and trying to
fix what doesn't need to be fixed. But but if
we can get to the place where we have these
relationships that are supportive, like I said, not doing the fixing,
but pointing us in the right direction, then that is
(14:42):
when you can have mental toughness if you want to
call it that. And I don't even like calling it toughness,
because toughness is almost like a like I don't I
don't know how you develop toughness in that sense. But
what I like to call it mental flexibility, and that
means that you have the ability to go like if
you think about the ivy going up the lattice of
(15:03):
the side of a house. It goes up, it goes
to the right, it might go down a little bit,
it goes back up, it goes to the left, it
might go you know, back up into the right again,
but eventually it gets to the top of the house.
And to me, that's the way you have to be mentally.
You have to be flexible that way, because when I
think of toughness, I think of like the wrongs of
a ladder.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So you have to go one.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Step, two step, three steps, four steps, and all of
sudden the fifth step breaks, you drop, You fall all
the way back down to the bottom of the ladder,
and you have to start all over again. And that
feels like that feels like defeat, and so it's really
hard then to pick yourself back up and go at
it again. So I think of it as mental flexibility.
And so having these relationships. Having these supportive relationships allows
(15:46):
you to have the mental flexibility to sometimes have a
bad day. Sometimes you just have a day that's just
kind of it's not good or bad, it's just kind
of somewhere in the middle. And then some days you
have the times when you're really climbing, you're climbing the lattice,
you're for the top of the house, and so you
have these moments where toughness isn't really the word, but
(16:06):
flexibility is the word. And so having the right relationships
around you that allow for that is what helps you
build uh, the muscle or or the the It helps
you build the uh, the the resilience and the grit
to kind of to keep going, to keep going with it.
And so it kind of frustrated me just a little bit,
(16:28):
uh to to hear to hear people say that about
this whole mental toughness thing. And also this this week,
I mean, I forget the dude's name, but there was
a boxer that I think I posted on my on
my on my story page on on Instagram, and he
was had just want to fight and was talking about
(16:49):
some of the battles that he had with with mental
health and he had to take some time off. He
was in a dark place and he had to find
to find a way to get through it. And so
when people say that, like even you know, mental health
and struggling with these things are weakness and speaking of
it is some type of weakness. It's not about toughness
or weakness. It's about having tools and resources and people
(17:12):
to help you get through it. And it's just like
any other health issue. If you have a cold, you're
not You're not a weak person because you have a cold,
and you're not a tough person because you didn't.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Get a cold.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Uh, it's a health issue, and so mental health is
no different and should be viewed the same.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
And so it is just.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Sometimes the verbiage and the language that we use all
well intended, all good intentions. Everything that we're saying, we're
trying to find a way to be positive and help
a person, but sometimes those words can create even more
issues and more stress than what we had planned and
(17:55):
what we had intended. So if you know someone who
is going through it, they're having a mental health crisis
of any kind, anxiety, anxiety, depression, stress, panic, you know,
you know whatever it is, uh that that you feel
that that that they're they're struggling, that should be and
you feel like you need to tell them that they
(18:16):
need to be mentally tough. That is, those should be
indications that you should find a way to come alongside them,
that you should find a way to kind of build
a bridge or a relationship with this person, not to
do the work for them, but to build it and
create a relationship, uh that will provide support and help
them find their way. And so, you know, it would
(18:38):
be good for everyone. You know, I'm pretty sure that
the Mindful Therapy Group has some resources on their website,
but for everyone to just kind of have an idea
of where to god people to some things and to
say and things not to say when and when people
are in crisis. Uh, so that when you come upon
(18:58):
those those things, whether you're a person that needs to
help or the person that that is looking for help,
you have a way to kind of point them in
the right direction. Speaking of the Mindful Therapy Group, the
Mindful Therapy Group, based in the Pacific Northwest, is a
diverse group of qualified mental health providers offering both in
person and virtual care. Whether it's talk therapy or medication management.
(19:22):
You can book your first visit within one week. Visit
Mindful Therapygroup dot com to start your journey to better
mental health today. So the Mindful Therapy Group, like I said, man,
they have done. They have a creative partnership with the
Seahawks and they're gonna help the Seahawks and and it's
players and the sea Hawks mission to it to advance
(19:44):
and create this mental health awareness. And they're also the
title sponsor our of the Big Raised Garage Grind podcast.
How to talk with them about a couple of weeks ago.
Gonna have another conversation with them on this upcoming week,
and so we're looking forward to just kind of putting
putting our minds together using my voice and some of
(20:04):
their resources and things to come up with the content
and things to talk about that kind of can bring you, guys,
some more information and some other things for you to
think about around the mental health space. Like I said,
the idea of this podcast is to really debunk the
stigma around mental health and wellness, especially for men men
(20:24):
of color athletes, but more importantly for everybody. It's a
it's a since the pandemic. I was talking with.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
One of the.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
UH administrators at the University of Virginia this morning, and
they are obviously going through a lot of this stuff
that they went through last year when they had the
three players that were murdered on campus during the season,
had to cancel their final game or two, and then
coming into this season, they've had to have all these
(20:54):
memorials and celebrations of those same three players, and so
it's been really difficult on the players to manage all
of that and then go out and play a football game.
And so we were talking and I said, hey, man, like,
I'm really interested in this mental health thing. And so
we had this conversation this morning around the pandemic and
(21:15):
this situation that happened with our football team there and
the numbers of players. I think they have three mental
health professionals on staff, and the number of athletes that
are accessing the three mental health professionals are overwhelming the
mental health professionals. And that's a combination of the pandemic
and of this situation that happened with the football team.
(21:39):
And so this mental health thing is not going away.
It shouldn't go away. And there are people, a lot
of young people that really needed I remember in two
thousand and I want to say ten. I went to
work for the University of Virginia as the Life Skills
director and at the same time we hired a guy
(21:59):
at actually was from Washington State University, Jim. I can't
think of his last name, but he was a sports psychologist.
They hired us at the same time. So he the
first week he had his office open, he had so
many athletes signed up to come visit him that they
had to hire two more therapists to help him support
(22:21):
the caseload. So even then, before the pandemic, the pressure,
the pressure to perform, the pressure to be perfect, the
pressure to win, all those different things were really impacting
young people. And so his office was full of folks
all the time. So now you fast forward through the pandemic,
(22:43):
and you fast forward at this university, through through through
through the accident that or the murder that happened with
the football team, and all the other stuff, all the
other stuff. Social media is hard. If you're an athlete
and you're on social media when you're thriving, men, high
five to you, because it is very difficult to be
(23:05):
an athlete of any kind to be on social media
and you have one mistake where such a it has
become such a knee jerk overreaction uh to everything that
happens that men, it's hard to understand how it would
not impact your mental health. I would not create doubt
in your mind. How it doesn't create stress or it
doesn't create uh this you know, this idea that you
(23:25):
have to be perfect and so uh partnering with the
uh the mindful Therapy group is going to be really
good for us to kind of bring some resources to
shed some light on some things, uh, to to you know,
even be preventative in it. So, so do you prepare
yourself to be ready to go into certain situations? So
looking forward to that conversation uh coming up on Monday.
(23:48):
The second thing I wanted to talk to you guys
today about was this idea around curiosity and and so,
like I said, I am a storyteller.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
So what does it mean? You know, what does it
mean to be curious?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
And uh? You know uh uh when I was in
the depths of my struggle, I had no clue what
was going on, and the only questions I have for
myself were what is going on? And what the hell?
And in that, you know, there's a lot that's kind
(24:24):
of built up into that, and a lot of it
is like you're kind of beating yourself up, like why
am I feeling this way? I shouldn't be feeling this way.
I have, you know, a life that I want or
what have you? And you know, why am I? Why
am I feeling this way? And and so it this
idea around curiosity came to me when I was in therapy,
(24:48):
you know, when you know my struggles with anxiety and panic.
I mean I couldn't get out of the house to
go see my kids, or I couldn't go to the
grocery store, or or even if I just wanted to
go for a ride, I couldn't do that. I do
the pregame show and postgame show for the Seahawks on
the radio, and so some days to get to the games,
(25:09):
I had to talk myself through every single step. Open
the door, walk down the stairs, get in the car,
start the car, make it out of the parking lot,
get to the freeway, get to the next exit. I
did this all the way to the stadium. The only
questions I said, like I have for myself is like,
what the hell am I is wrong with me?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And you know why me.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
But while I was in therapy, when I was in
the after the Impact program that the NFL sponsored in Manchester, Michigan,
my one the one therapist asked me, I'm curious.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
No, this is what she said. She said, I'm curious.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
What were you thinking during those times when you couldn't
when you couldn't get out the house?
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Were you ever curious? And I was just like, I
don't understand what you mean. And so she explained to
me that this idea of approaching the questioning with curiosity,
curiosity like minimizes the judgment, and it's a way of
like approaching what's happening in the moment. It helps you
(26:14):
figure out the facts from the facts of the matter
from so that you can access what the real It
helps you figure out the facts of the matter from
the cognitive distortions. The cognitive distortions are the lives that
you're telling yourself, and so it helps you figure out
(26:35):
the facts so that you can then figure out exactly
what's happening. And so you get away from the what ifs,
which we tend to have negative answers and responses to,
and you get to the what is. So, for an example,
when I couldn't get out the door to go see
my kids. I would be nervous about what was gonna
(26:57):
happen when I got to my ex wife's house. Was
I gonna get into an argument with her? Were the kids?
Did the kids really really want to see me? Was
I being a burden on people and just wasting their time?
Was I going to interrupt their family dynamic?
Speaker 1 (27:14):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Are there gonna be conversations happening that I'm not aware of?
And so I'm going to feel like the the third
will like, you know, like I don't belong there. Had
all these things going on in my head, and that
would freeze me from opening and like literally turning the
doorknob and going out the door to get in the
car to go see my kids. And so I'd have
to pick up the phone, call my my ex wife
(27:37):
Beth and say, hey, can you just tell the kids
like I'm not feeling well or whatever, I'm not going
to make it over. And so then I would just
sit back down on the couch and then that's where
I was. But the reality of it, when I became
started being curious about what I was feeling in those moments,
and then speaking to the fact of the matter of
it is that the likelihood of those things happening were very,
(28:04):
very slim. Yes, they may have happened once or twice
in the past, but I've been over to their house
hundreds of times and and something's and if something did
go down, there's nothing wrong with just getting up to
leave and then come back another time is no big deal.
(28:26):
And so I had to walk myself through that, like
I had to be curious about Okay, I'm at the door,
i have my hand on the doorknob, and I'm feeling
all of this. I'm questioning, have all these questions in
my head. And so to be curious is to say, okay, like,
what am I feeling in this moment right now? Okay,
I'm feeling like I'm a burden? Okay, then let's challenge that.
(28:47):
Am I Am I a burden? Do my kids enjoy
when I go over there? Do I help out around
the house when I go over there? Do we play
games and have fun when I'm over there? Am I
able to help my ex wife get through things when
I'm over there, help her process stuff, take some of
the load off of her, like dealing with the kids
when I'm over there. Absolutely. Does that sound like a
(29:09):
burden rate, No, it doesn't sound like a burden. It
sounds like help, help for you know, And it sounds
like I'm being present and I'm being a value add
to the situation. And so that way, you're curious about
what you're feeling or what you're thinking, and then you
speak fact into it, and then you can make a
decision based on the fact or the facts, whether or
(29:29):
not you should go out the door and go over
to the house. And so once I was able, it
took me a while to kind of understand that when
I was in therapy, like even you know, since since
my divorce, I've had a hard time. I fought, like
ritally really understanding like kind of what my value was.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I've always prodded myself on being the world's greatest dad,
and I wanted to be the world's greatest husband, and
and then I ended up in divorce, and so it's
felt like such a monumental failure to me that I
just felt like a failure all the time. I just
felt like I didn't have anything to offer people. And
when I was in this therapy group, the other five
dudes that were there the other five former players were
(30:11):
there after a couple of weeks. They're just like, dude, like,
I don't understand how you see that in yourself, Like
you're like one of the most personable, helpful, you know,
you know, smart dudes like we've ever been around, Like
we we would you should go be a therapist, Like
you're helping us more than the therapies. The therapists are here.
And but I couldn't see that self. I couldn't see
(30:31):
that in myself because of the cognitive distortions, because I
was believing the fog that was right in front of
me that was a lie. And yes, the fact of
the matter is my marriage ended. The fact of the
matter is that that, you know, I put our family
in a situation that that our family, you know, was
(30:52):
not broken, but we had to go our separate ways.
But even in that, have I been Have I honored
my ex wife?
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yes? Have I been a great father to my kids? Yes?
Have I helped other people?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yes, I've worked at a I've worked at programs that
help underrepresented populations in education. I've worked in you know,
special imbus. I'm working with a program that helps you know,
able bodied and mentally uh, disabled individuals. So I've done
a lot of good work and the evidence or the
(31:26):
facts of the matter spoke to something different than how
I saw myself. And so this idea of around being
curious was very eye opening to me because being curious
to me, like I said, is is very non judgmental.
You're just trying to figure out, Okay, what is it
that I'm feeling, Why am I feeling it?
Speaker 1 (31:46):
And is it? And is that the fact of the matter. Yes,
it is.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Going over to my ex wife's house sometimes is a
little uncomfortable, but I have done it hundreds of times,
and I know that I bring value to it when
I'm over there. Have you had incidences where an argument
of something or disagreement broke out, absolutely what happened. I
left the house, but you know what happened. I went
back another hundreds of times. And so the evidence is
(32:12):
on my side that if I open this door, get
in my car and go see my kids, that everything
is going to be okay and I'm gonna be okay.
And so the idea about around being curious really helped
me through that. So, if you find yourself in a
situation where either you know it may not be as
extreme as I was, not being able to ge out
(32:34):
of door. But you're feeling anxious, are you're feeling stressed,
or you're feeling depressed in some way, if you can
find a way to just be curious about what it
is that you're feeling and then speak to the facts
of it. And sometimes it may take other people to
do that for you, because you may be in a
state where you just can't like get your mind wrapped
(32:54):
around what the facts are. But I like, for me
with this whole divorce thing and this whole I did it.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
I'm a fan.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
It took other people to go like, dude, like what
are you seeing? Because this is what we see. And
it wasn't just one person, it was five or six dudes.
It was the therapist that was at this that was
at this treatment center when I when I left there,
they recommended that I go get a therapy license and
be a therapist because I had as much impact in
the house as a therapist did. But the whole time
I was there, man, I didn't see that. I wasn't
(33:23):
feeling that even though just being who I am all
the time, I was still going like, man, like I'm here,
like my kids are back home, I'm having to take
thirty days off of work. Like man, I'm just such
a failure, Like I do unscrewed my whole life up,
you know, all this other kind of stuff. And so
these cognitive distortions were beating me down and not allowing
me to see the facts of the matter. And the
facts of the matter told a different story. And so
(33:45):
the way to find and smoke out those facts is
to be curious about what it is that you're feeling.
What is it what is the messaging that you're that
you're giving yourself, so that you can find a way
to get yourself out of those situations. So as I
(34:05):
wrap this up, so we're gonna wrap this up. Being
curious takes away the judgment and the negative answer to
the what ifs, and it replaces it with the facts
and clarity. So surround yourself also with guardrail relationships, or
(34:28):
be a guardrail for someone in moments of stress or anxiety,
or if they're having a mental health crisis. Come alongside
and be a guardrail. You don't have to fix it.
Most people will have the tools to fix it if
you can point them in the right direction and point
them in the right tools and give them the environment
and encouragement.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
To do it.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
So the toughness if you want to call it that,
if you want to call it mental flexibility, if you
want to call it resilience, if you want to call
it grit, all of that is rooted in these guardrail relationships.
So be a guardrail for someone and if you need someone,
lean on your guardrails. So that's it for episode number seven,
(35:09):
a Big Raised Garage Grind. And as always, if it's
okay to not be okay, if you're experiencing a mental
health crisis, contact your medical provider for guidance and assistance.
And third and most important, when you ask and when
you need help, and you ask for help, you're operating
from a position of power.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
So that's it for Big Raise Garage Grind, Mental Health Edition.
Peace
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