February 25, 2025 • 50 mins
Today's show: Show announcement (00:36), Emotional regulation (06:44), Triggers (16:05), Rewriting the script (20:14), Tips on regulating emotions (27:19), Mindful Therapy Group (36:07), and Mental Health Tips (38:32).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Big Raise 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.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
The intersection between life, football and mental health.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Now here's your host, Seahawks Legend, Ray Roberts. What Up,
What Up? What Up?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Famili This is Big Ray with Big Raise Garage Grind
Mental Health Edition, brought to you by the Mindful Therapy Group.
And just want to make one quick announcement that this
is probably going to be our our well, it is
going to be the last podcast, uh in this platform.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I guess that's what we want to call it.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
We'll be moving to another platform doing some a few
different things of different sponsors possibly, But do want to
say thank you to the Seahawks and to the Mindful
Therapy for being sponsors of it. And you know, the
Seahaw's giving me the space and the time, this room,
the recording, the you know, NASA doing what he does
(01:09):
with the production part of it. Edwin who's early involved
with some of the recording of it, all the folks
that were part of the very first couple of episodes
that we recorded way back when. It's has been really
cool for me because this is something that is super
important to me. This is probably one of my probably
my number one passion in my life right now, is
(01:31):
this work around mental health and mental health awareness and
wellness and just really trying to understand what it is
and giving people the freedom to to seek or empowering people,
uh to to be locked into what they're feeling and
why they're feeling it and where to where to find
help and how to find help, that they're going to
be okay, that they're not broken but they're not there's
(01:52):
not a malfunction, and how they how they move or
live or think or what have you. So it's been
it's been a really cool outlet for me. I've looked
forward to it. It's been, you know, very It's given
me some other opportunities to do some some cool things
around Washington and the city here, been parts of different
events and appearances and things around mental health and just
(02:15):
been able to spread the word and then also the
fans and listeners that I've seen, uh, just in the street,
you know, at at games, you know, coming up and
talking about their own mental health struggles or battles or
how the podcast has helped them in some way. It's
been at least a handful of people that have acknowledged
to me that they've actually gone on and found a
(02:37):
therapist through the Mindful of Therapy group to kind of
help with with some of the stuff they were dealing with.
There was one individual that just I want to say
last week let me know that he was motivated. He
had let me know during the season that he was
motivated by the podcast to pursue a career in mental
health and mental health and therapy. And then he sent
(03:00):
me a message probably three days ago that he actually
got into i think Oregon State's program to start to
pursue his license to practice. And so those are the
types of wins that I know that some of them
we didn't hear, but those are some of the ones
that we did here that make you proud that you're
(03:20):
a part of this, that you're able to change someone's
life or motivate someone in a different way, or you know,
give a just enough of a nudge to someone that
was thinking about something and doing it and then they
went ahead and did it because of the podcast. So
it's been really really cool to be part of that
and have those conversations and to also just let people
see another side of me of who I am.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
You know, you know, this.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Big, huge dude to play professional football and tough and
all the other kind of things, but you know, we
struggle and have issues like everybody else, and so just
trying to find a way to do my part and
helping people get the help that they need, and in turn,
it kind of helps me kind of feel you know,
some bucket's in my life to make me feel a
(04:01):
little bit feel better and feel like I'm being productive
in my community. Today's episode is gonna be I feel
like like these are the most notes I've ever had
for any one podcast, and I don't know that I'm
going to get to all of them, but I just
wanted to make sure they were here in front of
me so that I could hit on some of the
things that I wanted to hit on. And and I
(04:24):
will say that, man, the climate in our country has
been really strange and for a number of reasons, you know,
we've had the natural disasters with the fires in California
and all the loss and loss of property and life
and security and sense of of of you know, of
(04:45):
your being and and and where you are. We have
the hurricanes in Florida and North Carolina, specifically in Ashville,
North Carolina, which is my hometown. Was just back there
a month or so ago, and men, parts of the
town still looks like a third world country or like
a war torn space. There were there were there are
actually concrete slabs, like complete just flat slabs where actually
(05:08):
two or three high.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Story buildings used to be.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I pulled up to this one red light and I
realized that the waterline on the building beside me was
above where the lights were hanging. So that's how high
the water was, and so it was. There's We've had
those types of disaster, and I'm sure there's other ones
that have uh that have occurred, but those are the
big ones that I that I can remember. And then
(05:32):
just more recently, we've had the plane you know, we've
probably had five plane crashes in the last six weeks
that have just been really impactful around the country and
created a sense of fear and anxiety and and angst
and all those types of things. We've had a change
in leadership that in our country that has created lots
of emotions for everybody, no matter what party or race,
(05:54):
or gender or culture you identify with. Uh, there's there's
a lot of tension in the air, that a lot
of just emotional ready like things that are ready to
explode emotionally. It doesn't matter what side you're on, what
side of the argument, support not support, forward against it,
(06:15):
you know, whatever it is, there's just a lot of
emotion going on. And so today I thought that I'd
try to talk about some things that maybe are tools
and maybe not as resources as much, but tools and
ways to think about how to navigate all of this
stuff so that you can keep your peace and not
(06:37):
get lost in a lot of it emotionally and mentally.
And so it made me think about this whole idea
first of emotional regulation. And emotional regulation is basically just
being able to either before you're triggered by something, being
able to kind of calm yourself in a way that
(06:58):
you can control your emotions, or if you've been triggered, like,
what are some of the things that there's a way
that you can still calm your emotions even though you've
been triggered so and then the opposite of that would
be dysregulation. And the thing that made me start thinking
about it is, you know, my girlfriend and I have
(07:19):
been doing some couple's therapy and the main thing that
popped up for both of us was this idea around
emotional regulation, and I started thinking about it through this
mental health lens. But first of all, emotional regulation is
so impactful in so many areas of our life. It's
(07:40):
in relationships, whether they're romantic or friends or what have you,
and how we respond to things that are happening in
the world. The ability to regulate the emotions can go
a long way towards protecting your mental health, protecting your
relationships or your friendships. You know what happen. And as
(08:01):
we're doing this work, you know, we all realize that
growing up, like more than likely you were not in
a household where adults were modeling emotional regulation like I
know in my family, it was pretty chaotic and we
just argue until whoever stopped arguing first would be the
(08:24):
person at lost, whether they were had a good point
or not. And so just a lot of screaming and
yelling and sometimes fighting and and and as a result
of that, man like that is probably some of the
root of the trauma of that that that I went through,
that kind of developed some of these things that I
struggled with as life went on. And so this idea
(08:48):
around emotional regulation is powerful because you have a chance
to model to the people around you and the people
you love, how to deal with conflict, how to deal
with things that trigger you, how to deal with those
types of things. And so it's amazing how nothing in
your life works in a vacuum. We like to think that, hey,
(09:10):
this one thing happened to me this one time, and
in that moment, that's the only impact it had. But
you don't account for the tentacles that those things have
and how it reaches in to other areas of your life.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
You know, in the very first episode of.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
This podcast, you know, I talked a lot about what
it was like growing up in my house and how
my parents fought and argued and drink and all these
different kinds of things. And because of that, like I've
created or developed a mentality and ways to deal with
things that at an early age that became how I
dealt with them. My whole entire life, and then eventually
(09:47):
some of those came back, you know, to bite me
in the butt and impacted my life in ways that
I didn't expect. But then, you know, having to go
through therapy and all these kinds of things to heal
some of that stuff back in the past was really helpful.
But one of the things that would have really really
helped was this idea around emotion regulation. I just felt,
if I felt it, then I can express it however
(10:10):
I wanted to express it, because that's I had the
freedom to do that, regardless of how it might be
impacting the person I'm talking to or the people around me.
And sometimes that showed up in how I played football,
you know, Like I said, when I first got to Virginia, man,
I fought every other day, like there was something that
(10:31):
someone would do that would trigger me, that would just
say like, well okay, well then the next thing, the
next best thing for me to do was punch him
in the face, and that's what I would do. And
so just lots and lots of fights in college, to
the point where the head coach, George Welsh rest in Peace,
called my dad and was like, why does this dude
fight all the time, and part of it was because
(10:54):
I had all of these emotions and things I didn't
know how to regulate them. And so when something got triggered,
you know, and the player across from you may not
even have known that they triggered me, but I was triggered,
and I thought, oh, well, I have this feeling, and
this is how I'm gonna express this feeling in emotion
and on that plan field or in that situation. A
(11:15):
lot of times it helped me because I got to
just unleash all of this anger and frustration and things
I didn't know what I'll you know, how to manage.
I just got to unleash it on other people. And
a lot of times you get a pat on the back.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
For that on the on the football field.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And so there were times though where they where did
get out of hand, Like I've been kicked out of
about seven NFL football games, and so in those situations, Uh,
it impacted my team and it impacted my wallet. And
then you know, it does impact your relationships in a
way because my wife at the time is going like, dude,
like what is wrong with you? And I didn't know
(11:52):
how to express what it was. It was just like
I felt it and I felt like that was the
right thing to do at the moment, and I did it.
And so that is part of the dysregulation because there
were things that are going on that are being triggered
that I couldn't control.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Now some of it it's just.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Like I would have to say, I don't know, maybe
sixty percent of them though, were like I gotta send
a message to somebody, and whether I'm trying to you know,
create energy for our team or for myself, or just
send a message to the person across from me that
whatever they were trying to do that day wasn't going
to happen. Then that that it just had those things
(12:30):
had to happen. I put it that way. But it
did speak to a little bit of emotional dysregulation. And
so I know I've had a couple of coaches, you know,
at the time that were just like they could see it,
you know that I was getting to that place and
they would have me on the sideline calm down, rays,
It's going to be okay, Like, don't worry about it,
move on to the next play. And I could not
let it go. And then I go right out on
(12:51):
the next series punch someone in the face, get kicked
out of the game, and then that was that. So
this idea around emotional regulation is a is a powerful one.
And and so the thing is that is learning to
first understand what your triggers are, uh, that that that
make your emotions get to a place to where they're explosive, explosive,
(13:14):
and then finding strategies to try to then control those
in a way that then you can express what you're
feeling or what you're thinking or what's going on without
bringing harm to yourself or to the relationship, uh, or
to the people around you. Because, like I said, we
have these big explosive moments and we feel justified in
those moments, but man, there are so much there's so
(13:36):
much hurt going on and uh. And so you can say, like, well,
what does one have to do with with the other? Well,
you can feel bad for you know what, you look
back on it and see what you've done, uh and
how it may have impacted people. And that can you know,
make you go to a stressful place. It can make
you go to a depressive place. It can make you
go to an anxious place.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
UH.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And all those things are are mental health places can
then impact how you're living, how you're working, how you're
showing up in a relationship. And then the person you know,
there's guilt if you feel like you've gone a little
bit too far with the person that you're that you've
exploded on from an emotional perspective there and and then
(14:17):
how do they feel and how have you impacted them?
And then what how does that quote unquote trauma show
up and your relationship are they're afraid then to bring
approach you about certain topics.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
So they're afraid to bring up certain.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
You know, things that maybe they don't like that you're
that you're doing, or things that are going on in
the relationship. And so it just it creates an emotional
or mental unhealthiness, uh in a in a relationship when
you are not able to really truly regulate your emotions.
And like I said, there are there's two different ways
(14:54):
that emotional regulations show up.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
One is controlling your emotions before.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
They have fully emerged, so you can you know that
there there are triggers that something that may trigger you.
So going into a let's say you're going into a
conversation with someone and you know that they're however they
communicate or what they're gonna say maybe one of those triggers.
So then that's when you become aware of that and
you do whatever necessary uh practices or things you have
(15:20):
to do to keep yourself calm in a way that
you can hear and communicate. And then the other one
is is kind of I think it's called like a
response focused regulation, which means that you've already been triggered,
and then in the moment of being triggered, you know,
you're able to find things that help you kind of
bring bring down the emotion a little bit so that
(15:40):
you can take a step back, listen here, and then
communicate and so uh to me, just thinking through some
of that stuff, you know, in these these call on
these coaching calls with with with my girlfriend just really
kind of helps me start to understand how this emotional
regular thing also shows up with the with mental health
(16:04):
and so the when we talk about triggers, sometimes triggers
are like the brains, Uh what do you want to
call it? Your brings like emotional alarm system and uh,
it's like and when and when they get triggered, it's
like the firehouse alarm going off. It's like your alarm
going off in the morning, it moves, it awakens, uh,
(16:27):
it kind of it kind of puts you into this
fight or flight or freeze response, and depending on your personality,
you're gonna do one of those three things. I tend
to kind of float float between fighting and then also
just retreating and uh, you know where I just kind
of freeze and and do nothing. And sometimes that's me
just walking away or or what have you, removing myself
(16:49):
from the the from the uh, from the conversation. And
then the other part is that I always like to
say that you're you go to this dinosaur brain place
where your brain becomes really really small, and your ability
to think things through becomes impaired because you're you're so
heightened at a level that you can't really think straight,
(17:10):
and so that you become really impulsive and then reactionary,
and that really challenges and can really destroy what is
going on in those moments, whether responding to something in
a relationship, or you're responding to something that you're saying
on TV, or you're responding to whatever the culture and
the climate is in our country right now around some
(17:30):
of some of the things that are going on, you
can get to a place where you feel like what
your response is automatic, and because it's automatic, you're thinking
that must be the right response. But a lot of
times you're operating from this space where I like to
call it like the like dinosaurs are huge or word huge,
huge animals, but a lot of them have really small brains,
(17:52):
and so like we're operating from that really small dinosaur brain.
And then the other part of it is, you know,
our nervous system. You know, your nervous system gets gets activated.
And for me, a lot of times, when my nervous
system gets activated and then I go into this this
emotional alarm system place, it's something that's connected to what
(18:14):
happened to me, you know, my life growing up.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I can I can.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
I have enough knowledge and awareness now to know like, oh, okay,
what I'm feeling right now is connected to that thing
back there. And then the way I look at it
is I go like, okay, now, adult Ray needs to
speak to little Ray because little Ray is the one
experienced all that that type of trauma growing up. And
when I allow literary to take over the adult Ray,
(18:39):
that's when I get to the place where I get explosive.
I do things I regret, I say things I regret
and all those types of things. So then it's important
for the adult ray in the room to take charge
to speak to the liter ray when those when that
nervous system has been has been triggered. And so the
thing that's important around emotion regulation is you have to
(19:00):
rewire that. And so the adult race speaking to the
little ray is part of the rewiring. The going to
therapy and finding my my therapist and my person that
I can have these conversations with that can help me
smoke out and realize some of these things that are
happened into my in my life, so that I can rewrite,
you know, the script that's going on in my head
(19:22):
and in therapy. Actually that is where when I left
and went to the mindful therapy, I mean not the
mindful therapy group, the after the Impact program the NFL
sent me to in Michigan, probably week three ish out
of four weeks been there, thirty two days been there.
(19:42):
I was going for a walk and one day it
just came to my attention that where I was struggling
was in this rewiring is rewriting the story. I kept
reliving the same story over and over and over and
then in clinical terms, I think they would call that
cognitive distortions. So I was believing things that happened in
(20:04):
my past were still happening right now and they are
impacting how I was responding to things, whether it was
internally or or externally. So then I had to then
figure out, well, then how do I rewrite the script?
And the one way I did it was every morning
I got up and I would write all these affirmations.
(20:26):
And I've covered this before. In the very first episode,
I would say like, hey, I'm a good person, I'm
great at my job. Here are the people that love me,
and I would list, you know, all my family and
my kids, and even the guys on the broadcast team.
I know that they'd love and care for me. And
so it was like a reminder that I'm not even
(20:47):
though times there are times when you are alone or
you're choosing to be in solitude, and you can you
can feel as if you're on the whole face of
the planet all by yourself. And so these types of
affirmations help me rewrite the script to know that like,
even though in this moment, I might be physically by
myself or might be mentally by myself, but I'm not
(21:09):
alone because I know that I had all these other
people and I knew these other things that were true
about me. And so part of that rewriting the script
is to be curious about the story that you're telling yourself.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And it's weird.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I don't know how to explain it, but to me,
there's a difference between being curious and being and questioning.
I feel like questioning when you question why you're feeling
a certain way or why you're doing a certain thing.
Judgment comes with that. But when you're curious, it's almost
as if you're taking it and you're sitting it on
the table and you're looking at it from you from
(21:43):
outside your body, going huh, I wonder what's going on
right here? Why am I feeling certain way? Why is
that thought like popping into my head? What is it
that about this situation I'm going into or coming out of,
or this conversation I'm about to have or not have? Like,
what is it about that that's causing me to have
this or this anxiety or distress or what have you?
And so you look at it from a from outside
(22:05):
in versus questioning yourself from the inside and question, your motives, whatever.
It just removes the judgment in that way for me,
And so to me, that's a big part that the
awareness part is a lot. It's not easy to do.
It takes a lot of work, and I would say,
I mean, you could possibly do it on your own,
but having a therapist to help you walk it, walk
(22:25):
through it and answer questions and even give you some
tools and resources on how to do that is a
big is a big example.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And one of the things.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
That I think about a lot when when I think
about this whole idea of these conversations you have with
yourself is when I coached football at Lake Washington High School,
we had this one player who was grew up in
a tough was growing up in a tough situation, and
his actions were what people were always responding to. And
(23:02):
because of his actions, people were telling me that he
shouldn't be on the football team. And so I said,
you know what, that's the one dude I came here for.
Like that was the reason I coached.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, if you look at my record, we didn't win
many games, but I say that I grew a lot
of men for other people because that was my intention
being there. And so after really getting to know this kid,
really helped him rewrite his script about what his life
is and what is not and what's the reality of
it and what's not the reality of it, and then
what are his opportunities and what are not opportunities? And
(23:37):
I think by helping him rewrite the script for himself,
this dude just became a different guy. And probably about
halfway through the season, our seniors came to us and said, hey,
we want this got to be a captain on the team.
He had changed that much. And then I think I
told his story before, but years later I get this
text message and there's this guy with this big beard.
(23:59):
I couldn't didn't recognize his face and everything. And he said, Coach,
I finally get it. And I was like, I don't
even know who this is and uh because I didn't
recognize him and uh. And he said, hey, you know
this is such and such and I'm like, oh my gosh,
like how do you doing? And he was like, I
finally get it. I understand what it is. You were
you you were trying to tell me and help me see.
And at that point he had already applied to like
(24:19):
med school and Uh, was was gonna, you know, practice
to or study to be a to be a doctor.
And I thought it was amazing because this is a
kid that when I when I first came into school,
one of the very first conversations I had was, don't
have this kid on the team. And so it was
just pretty cool to be able to help him rewrite
the script for himself in a way that uh, he
(24:41):
could see the positive that he brought to the to
the world, and that he could see just how dynamic
and the great a person he is. And so this
idea around writing rewriting the script and like being the
self aware. Uh, there's there's so much that goes on
in our country and our communications, in our uh leadership
and whether you're leading a country or leading a sports
(25:04):
team or you're leading an organization where self awareness is
just lacking. And so it puts you in a place
to say things and do things and make decisions in
a way that you're not aware of your own blind
spots and things and so or you haven't, you're responding
from your own script that you've written for yourself, and
(25:24):
it's impacting the people around you. So this idea around
self awareness is an important piece of emotional regulation. Like
I said, I start to then think about, you know,
the example that I've set for my kids. And I
can't say that I've always been the best at it,
(25:46):
but I do think more recently, especially since going and
to the After the Impact program and is really doing
some real deep dive work on myself, I think I've
been able to model for them a different person and
a different way to do it, and a different way
to think about it. And the way that I know
that is that more more times than not now my
(26:10):
kids come to me for advice or they come to
me with difficult conversations. I had my middle son, Slade,
called me up, I don't know, maybe a couple months
ago and said, and this is what is really cool.
And he just said, hey, Dad, like, you know, I'm
almost twenty six years old or twenty five, twenty six
(26:32):
years old, and I think it's time for us to
have man to man conversations instead of man to you know,
father to son conversations. And to me that was like
a win because to me, I had done something right.
I had modeled something well enough that they felt he
(26:52):
felt comfortable enough to have these types of conversations with me,
and I thought that was pretty cool because I don't
know early in my fatherhood that I was setting in
an example that would make myself approachable that way. But
I'm glad that I was able to recover and do that.
(27:12):
But I think a lot of that, like I said,
is built around this whole emotion regulation thing. So I'd
like to give you just a few tips on how
to regulate your emotions. And one is I used to
do this formula and it was S and then these
two parentheses, so a space and then R so S
(27:34):
was to stimuli, so whatever it is that's triggering you,
the conversation, the person, the situation, you know, whatever it is.
And then there was space and then a response. And
the cool thing that in that space is basically like
a pause, So you're gonna pause before responding because in
the pause is all those things. So the relationship, the
(27:57):
job opportunity, the the the emotional safety, the mental health
is all wrapped up in the pause. How you handle
that space between the parentheses so S space R I
got there was some or we can put call it
a T so trigger space and then response and so
in that space is where you can calm down and
(28:19):
do some of these these practice. So the first one
is to take that actual pause and not just skip
right over it to the response. And then in that pause,
reframe your thinking so instead of it may you may
feel like you're being attacked, but you may not be.
The attack may not be on you personally, but it
(28:39):
may be on an action that you took or or
decision that you made, and so you have to be
able to separate your person from that and look at
the problem as if it was sitting on the table.
So reframe your thinking. And then there's a physical piece too,
So in that pause, maybe you need to just say like, hey,
can I come back to this? And I need to,
(28:59):
you know, go take a walk, I need to go
listen to some music. I need to go do some breathing.
There's different breathing techniques you can do. There's one where
you'd inhale for seven seconds, hold for four seconds, excel
for eight seconds. There's another one that's called like box breathing,
where it's like, I think you do the same thing,
but it's in eight seconds intervals. So there's all different
(29:21):
types of things that help kind of reduce the angst
or the fight or flight or freeze thing that's happening.
And then also there's like mindfulness and meditation that can
go on. I remember when I played at UVA, we
had this one former player that was an air force
(29:41):
and he flew like several missions in the desert storm
attacks or what we wanna call that desert storm? What
do you want to call it? I don't think I
don't want to say attacks, that sounds like hard. But anyway,
during desert storm, and he sent us this thing, and
he said that he would do like at least one
(30:02):
hundred push ups before he got into his plane because
his emotions and things were so on point that that
if he got into his plane going hundreds of miles
an hour, that that he could make a mistake, possibly
kill himself or you know, not complete the mission or
what have you. And so in that situation, he was
(30:22):
doing you know, de regulate, you know, find any emotion
regulation in that response or in that situation, so he
could respond in the right way. So those that's you
know a different type of an example, but it's a
way to demonstrate that the exercise, doing something physical can
help bring down the emotions and things. The other part
(30:44):
you can do in that space is you can journal
or do some self reflection, you know, so write down it.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I find sometimes when I'm kind of in those spaces
that if I can just write out what I'm thinking,
sometimes the better way to respond just comes to me automatically,
because I'm already I'm doing the the uh all out
but on paper and not to the person or to
the situation. And and and in my journaling, I somehow
(31:11):
I get enlightened and go like, yeah, I probably shouldn't
respond this way, and this is the way I should respond,
or oh, this is what I'm what I'm missing in
what this person is saying to me, or what the
situation is saying, or what the situation is calling for,
I'm missing that, and it helps me find that piece
that can unlock everything. And then and then the other
part in that space between the the trigger and the
(31:35):
response is therapy or coaching.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Uh, I'd like to say that, you know, the work
that we're doing in this couple's.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Work is part of that pause.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Because we were going straight from stimulus or trigger right
to response, and it was it was not serving our
relationship well. And uh, and so now we found we
created space for us to kind of work on how
to respond, how to receive information, how to process the information.
(32:09):
You know where some of the responses are coming from
for each other, So that in between those parentheses are
all those things that you can do. And sometimes it
doesn't mean that you get to be triggered, have the
pause and respond in the same day. So sometimes you
got to take that trigger and take that pause moment
to say I'll be back at you in twenty four hours,
(32:31):
give me twenty four hours to think about this, to
do the physical thing, or to do the reframing, or
to do the journaling, or to seek support coaching, and
then I want to respond because then your response will
be more productive that way. And then your ability to
control the anxiety and the stress and that you may
be feeling will also help control the anxiety and the
(32:53):
stress that the other personal the situation may be feeling.
So those are to me if you can remember that formula. Uh,
and so I just thought about the trigger part of it,
but I always put the S and then the space
and then the R, so it was stimuli, space, pause,
all those different things that I just gave you and
then respond. And so that's the formula I have a
(33:15):
couple of dudes that that I was in therapy with
that after the Impact program, and one of them is
like the Second Coming of Samuel L. Jackson and all
the really cool movies where he can just go on
these f bomb drop rants, I mean, like forever, and
I just go like, dude, like, you are not doing
yourself any favors or anybody else any favors when you're
(33:37):
when you go to that place. So when I when
he texts me and I can tell he's in that
ramped up place, I just send that formula to him
S space R and I say, man, go go hang
out in the space for a little bit before you
respond to whoever it is you're responding to that way.
So emotional regulation, even though it seems like something that's more.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Impactful for.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Like relationships in your communications with other people, it is
also important with the communication that you're having with yourself
and then the ramifications from some of those interactions you
have with other people of situations when you're super explosive
and then you have to live with regret and then
that causes stress, anxiety, depression, all these different kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
So, being able to control your emotions and have strategies
for it, and like for me.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Sometimes the thing I've become more I want to say
aware of and that I've done more of is when
I know for sure that I'm going to go into
a conversation or I'm going to go into a situation
where there's going to be triggers all over the place,
I prepare myself beforehand, uh.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
And I go.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Sometimes I'm able to go into the situation and be good,
but other sometimes I have to just tell myself when
I get triggered because I know I'm going to get
triggered that, okay, that might when I get triggered, Instead
of responding, go live in the pause and then find
time to do some exercise or journal or do all
those kinds of things. So I do that beforehand. I
(35:14):
already make the decision before I get into it, because
once I get into it and I haven't made those decisions,
I can't guarantee you that any of that stuff I
just told you is going to work. And I can't
say that I've been you know that I bat a
thousand with any of this. I'm just saying to hedge
my bets towards being more successful with it so that
I don't come out of the situation causing harm, emotional
(35:37):
harm to someone else or to myself. I try to
make sure I'm prepared before I go into it. And
so that's what I'm telling you to do is the
same thing. So I know that that was I hope
that there was some a few little resources in there
for you guys to grab onto.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
It was a little bit.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I remember when Twitter first started, I used to do
these things called raise ramps, and uh, that kind of
felt like a ray rant a little bit, uh because
it just kind of just thoughts, just thoughts I had.
But the Mindful Therapy Group, based in the Pacific Northwest,
is a diverse group of qualified mental health professionals or
providers offering both in person and virtual care, whether it's
(36:17):
talk therapy or medication management. You can book your first
visit within one week. Visit Mindful Therapygroup dot com to
start your journey to better mental health today. And I
will say that I've gotten to know the founders of
the mental uh Mindful Therapy Group, Jessica and Derek, And
every now and then I slip up and I call
him Dereka because the the and Uh, it's our little
(36:40):
inside joke. But they are great people and they're doing
great work for people all around the country representing therapists
that are are you know, bringing uh this type of
care to a bunch of different types of communities, and
so I just always want to give them a shout out.
They've been big supporters of mine. You know, Derek and
I have some pretty cool, deep uh conversations. Is you know,
(37:02):
really cool dude to talk to and hang out with.
So shout out to the Mindful Therapy group. This last part,
this this next or second section that I want to
talk about a little bit is more mental health focused
around the things that are just happening, you know, in
our in our culture, in our country right now, with
(37:23):
with some of the conversations that are going on, with
some of the decisions that are being made, some of
the resources and things that are being under attack, and
you know, whether you agree or disagree, like I said,
some of the emotion and stuff around it is pretty intense.
You know, some some people's jobs are being are been threatened.
(37:46):
And I just want to say that it's okay to
not allow the conversation of the day, the topic of
the day the press conference of the day, the news
of the day to be overwhelming. Uh, you're and and
and if it is, you're not alone in that. But
(38:07):
I will say it's okay. Just like we just talked
about being triggered and in the space and then the response,
it's okay to remove yourself from that. It's okay to
not allow yourself to be overwhelmed by it. So it's
okay to take a step back, it's okay to recharge,
it's okay to protect your peace in it, and so
and and in doing that, you know, there's just a
(38:29):
few little i'm gonna call them mental health health tips
that I wanna that I wanna give and I share
this with our team at Special Olympics too, is that
the first thing you have to do is acknowledge and
validate your feelings. So it's okay to feel what you're
feeling and and and no one can tell you that
what you're feeling is not real. What you're feeling is real.
(38:50):
Now you might get more information that then allows you
to go like, okay, well, there was no need for
me to feel that. So, like, the one thing I
try to compare it to is if you're afraid of dark,
and you're in the dark, you can be your feelings
are fear and fright and scared. But if someone in
(39:11):
the room said, hey, like, there's no one in the
room here but me and you, or they turn the
lights on and you get more information that you're safe
than the feeling of fear and all that kind of
stuff kind of goes away. But the initial feeling is real,
and sometimes we run across people that go like, oh,
that's not a feeling, or you shouldn't be feeling that,
or the feelings don't matter, or all those kinds of things,
(39:33):
or it's not real. The feeling is real, and it
doesn't have to be the same feeling that someone else
in that situation feels. It's what you are feeling in
that moment. And then you can then either choose to
yourself beat it more information so that you cannot feel
those things, or you get more information from the actual
situation that it is or isn't what you're thinking. So
(39:57):
always acknowledge and validate the feelings, because I feel like
when you try to resist what you're feeling is when
things just get amplified. And sometimes just even just saying
it out loud almost releases it to the universe and
takes it in and out of your body. I kind
of compare it to when you stub your toe in
the middle of the night and you grab your toe
and you feel like you're trying to hold the pain in,
(40:20):
but it's when you release it that the pain just
moves through your body and it actually goes away faster.
So acknowledge and validate your feelings. And then the second
thing would be focused on what you can control, because
there are some things that are going to happen and
decisions that have been made that are completely out of
your control and frankly, there's nothing you can do about it.
(40:41):
And so you have to control what you can control.
And you can't control every policy or public opinion, and
you don't have to. You don't have to give those
things power in your life because you can't control them.
So focus on the small, meaningful things that you can control,
(41:06):
so you can, you know, look at some of these
things that are happening and say, okay, then if these
are the rules of the game, how can I accomplish
what I want to accomplish using these different rules, Because
you can probably do that. And the one thing I
think about is when I was doing our master's program
over at the University of Washington Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership, we
had Bill Russell come and talk to us, and it
(41:29):
was really interesting because, you know, he was like one
of the first players that were blocking shots, and so
we someone asked him about why did he start blocking shots,
and he said, well, I looked at the rules, and
the rules said I couldn't block the ball on its
downward path to the goal. So what that told me
(41:52):
is that I can block it on this upward path
to the goal. And so then that's what I did.
And then all of a sudden, he kind of normalized
this idea around blocking shots. So he took the rules
that said this is what you cannot do, and he
looked at what the rules told you he could do.
And so even in this climate that we're in right now,
where there's a lot of things going on and changes
(42:14):
and policies and all these different kinds of things, even
the rules that tell you what you can't do are
also telling you what you can do. And a lot
of times in those situations, you can still accomplish the
things that you want to accomplish. Even though the rules
may be saying something else. The other thing, I will
say the number three, So we had to acknowledge and
validate your feelings. Number two was focus on what you
(42:37):
can control, and then number three was protect your energy energy.
So when I say that, and I had to do
this myself, is because I can get super energized in
what I believe, and then I get ignited and then
I can't stop. I get really dogged at it, and
I want to respond to every tweet I see. I
(42:58):
want to respond, and you know, our team knows. NASA
will tell me every now and again, dude, you argue
with someone that has like one follower, So yeah, but
they say something stupid, you know. And so and so
when I'm in those moments, I'm probably operating in my
little dinosaur brain, and I'm also in this space where
I'm not protecting my own energy because I'm just ready
to argue with anybody. And so it's important to then
(43:21):
around in social media the news conversations that you can
set boundaries around that stuff so that you're not just
constantly living in this place of anger or frustration or
stress or anxiety or depression or all the other things
that you can name. Because you're watching the news twenty
(43:41):
four to seven, or you're scrolling through Twitter or Instagram
or whatever it is you facebook, and you're reading what
all your friends are saying, and what their friend's friends
are saying, and what people don't even know are saying,
and it's all impacting your energy and how you show
up first for yourself, and then that impacts your ability
to go from from the trigger or the stimulus to
(44:02):
the pause space because you go right to the response place.
I know because that happens to me. And so it's
important to set boundaries around that stuff. And then also
know that you don't have to engage in every debate.
And if there's one thing I like to do, whether
I agree with what I'm saying or not, is I
like to debate. And you know, I've told these guys,
I'm about to find the actual article one time one
(44:24):
day and show it to them where they interviewed my
dad and they say, what is one thing that we
don't know about Ray? And he said that that kid
will argue with a stop sign, and uh, and I will.
I will convince the stop sign that it says pause,
not stop. You know that's just me and so, but
you have to know that you don't have to engage
every debate. And then I say number four is stay
(44:46):
connected to your allies and your support system. So talk
to colleagues that or people that you know that understand
what the situation is or that can that can that
can talk you through what it is that it's going
on or what it is you're hearing, and then share wins,
find someone to vent and frustrate with, I mean venture
frustrations with, and then remind yourself of the things that
(45:10):
are important to you and why they matter. And so
the vent frustration part is a big one too, because
I have friends that I just call and I just
go like, man, I just need a minute, and then
I just unload whatever it is they it's not about them.
They're just there to be someone that can hear it
and deflect it. And maybe they are one of the
people that set up Bundy and go, you know what
raided today. I can't do that, and so I have
to respect that. But it's important to be able to
(45:32):
just kind of to get it out of your system,
whether you're venting it to another person or just writing
it out. So stay connected to your systems and then
celebrate small wins. And so the small winds on't even
have to be connected to the climate and the culture
that are going on in our world. It can be,
but a small wind can be like, man, you said
you're going to get up and walk two miles a day,
(45:53):
and you got up and you did it. Or you
said you were gonna not drink this month and you
did it. Or you said that you were going to,
you know, call your parents and say hello, and you
did it. Or that you got up out of the bed,
or that you made breakfast or whatever it is. Like,
you can find small wins. And if it's in your work,
you know, you can find small wins into that too.
Like I said, the rules are telling you what you
(46:15):
can't do, but you can find ways to accomplish some
of the things you want. And sometimes that comes in
the small wins. And then the next one that would
be take breaks without guilt. So it's okay to say
I'm pouring from an empty cup. And I've always said
you cannot give what you don't have, and so in
(46:36):
order to get those things, you need to recharge, refresh,
re educate, become more aware, just take the time to
do the things that bring you joy. You know, whether
it's going to you know, going on a walk, taking
a couple of days and going to the coast, if
that's the thing you like to do. I like to
go for hikes, I like to spend time with my kids,
(46:57):
like those types of things like those are the things
that kind of bring me joy. So I can take
a break, and then I will say, I know I
got a little long list here, but there's two more.
One is channel your frustration into anger, I mean into action.
So instead of using frustration as fuel, use it as
fuel and not fire. So keep finding ways to do
(47:20):
the stuff that you want to do, that that is
important to you, that's impactful to the community, that you
think that people need that maybe the rules is telling
you that they don't, But find your creative brain, get
into that space and find other ways to use your
frustration as fuel and not a fire to just burn
down the house.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Because then that doesn't help anybody.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
And then the last one, and this is more connected
to know what we're doing and why we have this podcast,
is if the weight is impacting, if it's impacting your
mental health, then reach out to somebody. There are lots
of people, lots of resources that are available for you
to reach out to someone and get some help, even
(48:01):
if you had to do what I did, where I
had to reach out to my ex wife who reached
out to Sandy Gregory who was a friend of ours
that were from the Seahawks, who knew someone at the
NFL that that kind of got me connected to the
place I needed to go. Do not be afraid to
reach out to trusted friends or trusted person or you know,
go to the Mindful Therapy Group website and contact them
(48:23):
to try to find someone that can help you unload
some of this of what you're what you're feeling, because
you don't have to carry it alone. And then in that,
you know, I did a post I want to say
two or three days ago where it was saying to
check in on your people because sometimes people carry it well.
It looks like they're doing a great job, and those
sometimes are the people that need to help the most,
(48:45):
but people don't take the time to check in on
them because they look like they're doing it well, like
they're handling. I think the image I used was a
guy carrying a big boulder over his head, and it's like, yeah,
it looks like he's doing it well, but doesn't mean
that the burden and the load isn't heavy, and so
those folks need help to so you don't have to
do all that alone. I want to say thank you
(49:06):
guys for let me have these moments and talk about
these things. I can be long winded, and I know
I tell a lot of stories and all that kind
of stuff, and sometimes I'm not the most direct and
concise communicator, but man, this stuff is important to me.
And this episode ending here doesn't mean that this work
for me isn't ending. It just means I'm taking it
(49:26):
to another place doing some other things. You're still going
to be able to find big raise, garage grind, and
we'll make an announcement about when that happens. But like
always want to close with our three things, and one
is it's okay to not be okay. Number two is
if you're having a mental health crisis, reach out to
(49:46):
your medical providers for assistance. And I think we've shared
and we can share on here some of the numbers
you can call for immediate help for hotlines and things.
And then number three is that when you need help
and you ask for help. You're operating from a position
of power, and so I want to again say thank
you for listening to me, giving me the space, let
(50:09):
me have this voice in the space, talking to me
on the sidewalks, in the stadiums, all those kinds of things.
But for this particular episode, in this particular function of
this episode, this is Big Ray. And this has been
Big Ray's garage grind peace and about
You're listening to Big Raise 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.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
The intersection between life, football and mental health.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Now here's your host, Seahawks Legend, Ray Roberts. What Up,
What Up? What Up?
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Famili This is Big Ray with Big Raise Garage Grind
Mental Health Edition, brought to you by the Mindful Therapy Group.
And just want to make one quick announcement that this
is probably going to be our our well, it is
going to be the last podcast, uh in this platform.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I guess that's what we want to call it.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
We'll be moving to another platform doing some a few
different things of different sponsors possibly, But do want to
say thank you to the Seahawks and to the Mindful
Therapy for being sponsors of it. And you know, the
Seahaw's giving me the space and the time, this room,
the recording, the you know, NASA doing what he does
(01:09):
with the production part of it. Edwin who's early involved
with some of the recording of it, all the folks
that were part of the very first couple of episodes
that we recorded way back when. It's has been really
cool for me because this is something that is super
important to me. This is probably one of my probably
my number one passion in my life right now, is
(01:31):
this work around mental health and mental health awareness and
wellness and just really trying to understand what it is
and giving people the freedom to to seek or empowering people,
uh to to be locked into what they're feeling and
why they're feeling it and where to where to find
help and how to find help, that they're going to
be okay, that they're not broken but they're not there's
(01:52):
not a malfunction, and how they how they move or
live or think or what have you. So it's been
it's been a really cool outlet for me. I've looked
forward to it. It's been, you know, very It's given
me some other opportunities to do some some cool things
around Washington and the city here, been parts of different
events and appearances and things around mental health and just
(02:15):
been able to spread the word and then also the
fans and listeners that I've seen, uh, just in the street,
you know, at at games, you know, coming up and
talking about their own mental health struggles or battles or
how the podcast has helped them in some way. It's
been at least a handful of people that have acknowledged
to me that they've actually gone on and found a
(02:37):
therapist through the Mindful of Therapy group to kind of
help with with some of the stuff they were dealing with.
There was one individual that just I want to say
last week let me know that he was motivated. He
had let me know during the season that he was
motivated by the podcast to pursue a career in mental
health and mental health and therapy. And then he sent
(03:00):
me a message probably three days ago that he actually
got into i think Oregon State's program to start to
pursue his license to practice. And so those are the
types of wins that I know that some of them
we didn't hear, but those are some of the ones
that we did here that make you proud that you're
(03:20):
a part of this, that you're able to change someone's
life or motivate someone in a different way, or you know,
give a just enough of a nudge to someone that
was thinking about something and doing it and then they
went ahead and did it because of the podcast. So
it's been really really cool to be part of that
and have those conversations and to also just let people
see another side of me of who I am.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
You know, you know, this.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Big, huge dude to play professional football and tough and
all the other kind of things, but you know, we
struggle and have issues like everybody else, and so just
trying to find a way to do my part and
helping people get the help that they need, and in turn,
it kind of helps me kind of feel you know,
some bucket's in my life to make me feel a
(04:01):
little bit feel better and feel like I'm being productive
in my community. Today's episode is gonna be I feel
like like these are the most notes I've ever had
for any one podcast, and I don't know that I'm
going to get to all of them, but I just
wanted to make sure they were here in front of
me so that I could hit on some of the
things that I wanted to hit on. And and I
(04:24):
will say that, man, the climate in our country has
been really strange and for a number of reasons, you know,
we've had the natural disasters with the fires in California
and all the loss and loss of property and life
and security and sense of of of you know, of
(04:45):
your being and and and where you are. We have
the hurricanes in Florida and North Carolina, specifically in Ashville,
North Carolina, which is my hometown. Was just back there
a month or so ago, and men, parts of the
town still looks like a third world country or like
a war torn space. There were there were there are
actually concrete slabs, like complete just flat slabs where actually
(05:08):
two or three high.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Story buildings used to be.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I pulled up to this one red light and I
realized that the waterline on the building beside me was
above where the lights were hanging. So that's how high
the water was, and so it was. There's We've had
those types of disaster, and I'm sure there's other ones
that have uh that have occurred, but those are the
big ones that I that I can remember. And then
(05:32):
just more recently, we've had the plane you know, we've
probably had five plane crashes in the last six weeks
that have just been really impactful around the country and
created a sense of fear and anxiety and and angst
and all those types of things. We've had a change
in leadership that in our country that has created lots
of emotions for everybody, no matter what party or race,
(05:54):
or gender or culture you identify with. Uh, there's there's
a lot of tension in the air, that a lot
of just emotional ready like things that are ready to
explode emotionally. It doesn't matter what side you're on, what
side of the argument, support not support, forward against it,
(06:15):
you know, whatever it is, there's just a lot of
emotion going on. And so today I thought that I'd
try to talk about some things that maybe are tools
and maybe not as resources as much, but tools and
ways to think about how to navigate all of this
stuff so that you can keep your peace and not
(06:37):
get lost in a lot of it emotionally and mentally.
And so it made me think about this whole idea
first of emotional regulation. And emotional regulation is basically just
being able to either before you're triggered by something, being
able to kind of calm yourself in a way that
(06:58):
you can control your emotions, or if you've been triggered, like,
what are some of the things that there's a way
that you can still calm your emotions even though you've
been triggered so and then the opposite of that would
be dysregulation. And the thing that made me start thinking
about it is, you know, my girlfriend and I have
(07:19):
been doing some couple's therapy and the main thing that
popped up for both of us was this idea around
emotional regulation, and I started thinking about it through this
mental health lens. But first of all, emotional regulation is
so impactful in so many areas of our life. It's
(07:40):
in relationships, whether they're romantic or friends or what have you,
and how we respond to things that are happening in
the world. The ability to regulate the emotions can go
a long way towards protecting your mental health, protecting your
relationships or your friendships. You know what happen. And as
(08:01):
we're doing this work, you know, we all realize that
growing up, like more than likely you were not in
a household where adults were modeling emotional regulation like I
know in my family, it was pretty chaotic and we
just argue until whoever stopped arguing first would be the
(08:24):
person at lost, whether they were had a good point
or not. And so just a lot of screaming and
yelling and sometimes fighting and and and as a result
of that, man like that is probably some of the
root of the trauma of that that that I went through,
that kind of developed some of these things that I
struggled with as life went on. And so this idea
(08:48):
around emotional regulation is powerful because you have a chance
to model to the people around you and the people
you love, how to deal with conflict, how to deal
with things that trigger you, how to deal with those
types of things. And so it's amazing how nothing in
your life works in a vacuum. We like to think that, hey,
(09:10):
this one thing happened to me this one time, and
in that moment, that's the only impact it had. But
you don't account for the tentacles that those things have
and how it reaches in to other areas of your life.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
You know, in the very first episode of.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
This podcast, you know, I talked a lot about what
it was like growing up in my house and how
my parents fought and argued and drink and all these
different kinds of things. And because of that, like I've
created or developed a mentality and ways to deal with
things that at an early age that became how I
dealt with them. My whole entire life, and then eventually
(09:47):
some of those came back, you know, to bite me
in the butt and impacted my life in ways that
I didn't expect. But then, you know, having to go
through therapy and all these kinds of things to heal
some of that stuff back in the past was really helpful.
But one of the things that would have really really
helped was this idea around emotion regulation. I just felt,
if I felt it, then I can express it however
(10:10):
I wanted to express it, because that's I had the
freedom to do that, regardless of how it might be
impacting the person I'm talking to or the people around me.
And sometimes that showed up in how I played football,
you know, Like I said, when I first got to Virginia, man,
I fought every other day, like there was something that
(10:31):
someone would do that would trigger me, that would just
say like, well okay, well then the next thing, the
next best thing for me to do was punch him
in the face, and that's what I would do. And
so just lots and lots of fights in college, to
the point where the head coach, George Welsh rest in Peace,
called my dad and was like, why does this dude
fight all the time, and part of it was because
(10:54):
I had all of these emotions and things I didn't
know how to regulate them. And so when something got triggered,
you know, and the player across from you may not
even have known that they triggered me, but I was triggered,
and I thought, oh, well, I have this feeling, and
this is how I'm gonna express this feeling in emotion
and on that plan field or in that situation. A
(11:15):
lot of times it helped me because I got to
just unleash all of this anger and frustration and things
I didn't know what I'll you know, how to manage.
I just got to unleash it on other people. And
a lot of times you get a pat on the back.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
For that on the on the football field.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
And so there were times though where they where did
get out of hand, Like I've been kicked out of
about seven NFL football games, and so in those situations, Uh,
it impacted my team and it impacted my wallet. And
then you know, it does impact your relationships in a
way because my wife at the time is going like, dude,
like what is wrong with you? And I didn't know
(11:52):
how to express what it was. It was just like
I felt it and I felt like that was the
right thing to do at the moment, and I did it.
And so that is part of the dysregulation because there
were things that are going on that are being triggered
that I couldn't control.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Now some of it it's just.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Like I would have to say, I don't know, maybe
sixty percent of them though, were like I gotta send
a message to somebody, and whether I'm trying to you know,
create energy for our team or for myself, or just
send a message to the person across from me that
whatever they were trying to do that day wasn't going
to happen. Then that that it just had those things
(12:30):
had to happen. I put it that way. But it
did speak to a little bit of emotional dysregulation. And
so I know I've had a couple of coaches, you know,
at the time that were just like they could see it,
you know that I was getting to that place and
they would have me on the sideline calm down, rays,
It's going to be okay, Like, don't worry about it,
move on to the next play. And I could not
let it go. And then I go right out on
(12:51):
the next series punch someone in the face, get kicked
out of the game, and then that was that. So
this idea around emotional regulation is a is a powerful one.
And and so the thing is that is learning to
first understand what your triggers are, uh, that that that
make your emotions get to a place to where they're explosive, explosive,
(13:14):
and then finding strategies to try to then control those
in a way that then you can express what you're
feeling or what you're thinking or what's going on without
bringing harm to yourself or to the relationship, uh, or
to the people around you. Because, like I said, we
have these big explosive moments and we feel justified in
those moments, but man, there are so much there's so
(13:36):
much hurt going on and uh. And so you can say, like, well,
what does one have to do with with the other? Well,
you can feel bad for you know what, you look
back on it and see what you've done, uh and
how it may have impacted people. And that can you know,
make you go to a stressful place. It can make
you go to a depressive place. It can make you
go to an anxious place.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
UH.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And all those things are are mental health places can
then impact how you're living, how you're working, how you're
showing up in a relationship. And then the person you know,
there's guilt if you feel like you've gone a little
bit too far with the person that you're that you've
exploded on from an emotional perspective there and and then
(14:17):
how do they feel and how have you impacted them?
And then what how does that quote unquote trauma show
up and your relationship are they're afraid then to bring
approach you about certain topics.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
So they're afraid to bring up certain.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
You know, things that maybe they don't like that you're
that you're doing, or things that are going on in
the relationship. And so it just it creates an emotional
or mental unhealthiness, uh in a in a relationship when
you are not able to really truly regulate your emotions.
And like I said, there are there's two different ways
(14:54):
that emotional regulations show up.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
One is controlling your emotions before.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
They have fully emerged, so you can you know that
there there are triggers that something that may trigger you.
So going into a let's say you're going into a
conversation with someone and you know that they're however they
communicate or what they're gonna say maybe one of those triggers.
So then that's when you become aware of that and
you do whatever necessary uh practices or things you have
(15:20):
to do to keep yourself calm in a way that
you can hear and communicate. And then the other one
is is kind of I think it's called like a
response focused regulation, which means that you've already been triggered,
and then in the moment of being triggered, you know,
you're able to find things that help you kind of
bring bring down the emotion a little bit so that
(15:40):
you can take a step back, listen here, and then
communicate and so uh to me, just thinking through some
of that stuff, you know, in these these call on
these coaching calls with with with my girlfriend just really
kind of helps me start to understand how this emotional
regular thing also shows up with the with mental health
(16:04):
and so the when we talk about triggers, sometimes triggers
are like the brains, Uh what do you want to
call it? Your brings like emotional alarm system and uh,
it's like and when and when they get triggered, it's
like the firehouse alarm going off. It's like your alarm
going off in the morning, it moves, it awakens, uh,
(16:27):
it kind of it kind of puts you into this
fight or flight or freeze response, and depending on your personality,
you're gonna do one of those three things. I tend
to kind of float float between fighting and then also
just retreating and uh, you know where I just kind
of freeze and and do nothing. And sometimes that's me
just walking away or or what have you, removing myself
(16:49):
from the the from the uh, from the conversation. And
then the other part is that I always like to
say that you're you go to this dinosaur brain place
where your brain becomes really really small, and your ability
to think things through becomes impaired because you're you're so
heightened at a level that you can't really think straight,
(17:10):
and so that you become really impulsive and then reactionary,
and that really challenges and can really destroy what is
going on in those moments, whether responding to something in
a relationship, or you're responding to something that you're saying
on TV, or you're responding to whatever the culture and
the climate is in our country right now around some
(17:30):
of some of the things that are going on, you
can get to a place where you feel like what
your response is automatic, and because it's automatic, you're thinking
that must be the right response. But a lot of
times you're operating from this space where I like to
call it like the like dinosaurs are huge or word huge,
huge animals, but a lot of them have really small brains,
(17:52):
and so like we're operating from that really small dinosaur brain.
And then the other part of it is, you know,
our nervous system. You know, your nervous system gets gets activated.
And for me, a lot of times, when my nervous
system gets activated and then I go into this this
emotional alarm system place, it's something that's connected to what
(18:14):
happened to me, you know, my life growing up.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I can I can.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
I have enough knowledge and awareness now to know like, oh, okay,
what I'm feeling right now is connected to that thing
back there. And then the way I look at it
is I go like, okay, now, adult Ray needs to
speak to little Ray because little Ray is the one
experienced all that that type of trauma growing up. And
when I allow literary to take over the adult Ray,
(18:39):
that's when I get to the place where I get explosive.
I do things I regret, I say things I regret
and all those types of things. So then it's important
for the adult ray in the room to take charge
to speak to the liter ray when those when that
nervous system has been has been triggered. And so the
thing that's important around emotion regulation is you have to
(19:00):
rewire that. And so the adult race speaking to the
little ray is part of the rewiring. The going to
therapy and finding my my therapist and my person that
I can have these conversations with that can help me
smoke out and realize some of these things that are
happened into my in my life, so that I can rewrite,
you know, the script that's going on in my head
(19:22):
and in therapy. Actually that is where when I left
and went to the mindful therapy, I mean not the
mindful therapy group, the after the Impact program the NFL
sent me to in Michigan, probably week three ish out
of four weeks been there, thirty two days been there.
(19:42):
I was going for a walk and one day it
just came to my attention that where I was struggling
was in this rewiring is rewriting the story. I kept
reliving the same story over and over and over and
then in clinical terms, I think they would call that
cognitive distortions. So I was believing things that happened in
(20:04):
my past were still happening right now and they are
impacting how I was responding to things, whether it was
internally or or externally. So then I had to then
figure out, well, then how do I rewrite the script?
And the one way I did it was every morning
I got up and I would write all these affirmations.
(20:26):
And I've covered this before. In the very first episode,
I would say like, hey, I'm a good person, I'm
great at my job. Here are the people that love me,
and I would list, you know, all my family and
my kids, and even the guys on the broadcast team.
I know that they'd love and care for me. And
so it was like a reminder that I'm not even
(20:47):
though times there are times when you are alone or
you're choosing to be in solitude, and you can you
can feel as if you're on the whole face of
the planet all by yourself. And so these types of
affirmations help me rewrite the script to know that like,
even though in this moment, I might be physically by
myself or might be mentally by myself, but I'm not
(21:09):
alone because I know that I had all these other
people and I knew these other things that were true
about me. And so part of that rewriting the script
is to be curious about the story that you're telling yourself.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
And it's weird.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
I don't know how to explain it, but to me,
there's a difference between being curious and being and questioning.
I feel like questioning when you question why you're feeling
a certain way or why you're doing a certain thing.
Judgment comes with that. But when you're curious, it's almost
as if you're taking it and you're sitting it on
the table and you're looking at it from you from
(21:43):
outside your body, going huh, I wonder what's going on
right here? Why am I feeling certain way? Why is
that thought like popping into my head? What is it
that about this situation I'm going into or coming out of,
or this conversation I'm about to have or not have? Like,
what is it about that that's causing me to have
this or this anxiety or distress or what have you?
And so you look at it from a from outside
(22:05):
in versus questioning yourself from the inside and question, your motives, whatever.
It just removes the judgment in that way for me,
And so to me, that's a big part that the
awareness part is a lot. It's not easy to do.
It takes a lot of work, and I would say,
I mean, you could possibly do it on your own,
but having a therapist to help you walk it, walk
(22:25):
through it and answer questions and even give you some
tools and resources on how to do that is a
big is a big example.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And one of the things.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
That I think about a lot when when I think
about this whole idea of these conversations you have with
yourself is when I coached football at Lake Washington High School,
we had this one player who was grew up in
a tough was growing up in a tough situation, and
his actions were what people were always responding to. And
(23:02):
because of his actions, people were telling me that he
shouldn't be on the football team. And so I said,
you know what, that's the one dude I came here for.
Like that was the reason I coached.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, if you look at my record, we didn't win
many games, but I say that I grew a lot
of men for other people because that was my intention
being there. And so after really getting to know this kid,
really helped him rewrite his script about what his life
is and what is not and what's the reality of
it and what's not the reality of it, and then
what are his opportunities and what are not opportunities? And
(23:37):
I think by helping him rewrite the script for himself,
this dude just became a different guy. And probably about
halfway through the season, our seniors came to us and said, hey,
we want this got to be a captain on the team.
He had changed that much. And then I think I
told his story before, but years later I get this
text message and there's this guy with this big beard.
(23:59):
I couldn't didn't recognize his face and everything. And he said, Coach,
I finally get it. And I was like, I don't
even know who this is and uh because I didn't
recognize him and uh. And he said, hey, you know
this is such and such and I'm like, oh my gosh,
like how do you doing? And he was like, I
finally get it. I understand what it is. You were
you you were trying to tell me and help me see.
And at that point he had already applied to like
(24:19):
med school and Uh, was was gonna, you know, practice
to or study to be a to be a doctor.
And I thought it was amazing because this is a
kid that when I when I first came into school,
one of the very first conversations I had was, don't
have this kid on the team. And so it was
just pretty cool to be able to help him rewrite
the script for himself in a way that uh, he
(24:41):
could see the positive that he brought to the to
the world, and that he could see just how dynamic
and the great a person he is. And so this
idea around writing rewriting the script and like being the
self aware. Uh, there's there's so much that goes on
in our country and our communications, in our uh leadership
and whether you're leading a country or leading a sports
(25:04):
team or you're leading an organization where self awareness is
just lacking. And so it puts you in a place
to say things and do things and make decisions in
a way that you're not aware of your own blind
spots and things and so or you haven't, you're responding
from your own script that you've written for yourself, and
(25:24):
it's impacting the people around you. So this idea around
self awareness is an important piece of emotional regulation. Like
I said, I start to then think about, you know,
the example that I've set for my kids. And I
can't say that I've always been the best at it,
(25:46):
but I do think more recently, especially since going and
to the After the Impact program and is really doing
some real deep dive work on myself, I think I've
been able to model for them a different person and
a different way to do it, and a different way
to think about it. And the way that I know
that is that more more times than not now my
(26:10):
kids come to me for advice or they come to
me with difficult conversations. I had my middle son, Slade,
called me up, I don't know, maybe a couple months
ago and said, and this is what is really cool.
And he just said, hey, Dad, like, you know, I'm
almost twenty six years old or twenty five, twenty six
(26:32):
years old, and I think it's time for us to
have man to man conversations instead of man to you know,
father to son conversations. And to me that was like
a win because to me, I had done something right.
I had modeled something well enough that they felt he
(26:52):
felt comfortable enough to have these types of conversations with me,
and I thought that was pretty cool because I don't
know early in my fatherhood that I was setting in
an example that would make myself approachable that way. But
I'm glad that I was able to recover and do that.
(27:12):
But I think a lot of that, like I said,
is built around this whole emotion regulation thing. So I'd
like to give you just a few tips on how
to regulate your emotions. And one is I used to
do this formula and it was S and then these
two parentheses, so a space and then R so S
(27:34):
was to stimuli, so whatever it is that's triggering you,
the conversation, the person, the situation, you know, whatever it is.
And then there was space and then a response. And
the cool thing that in that space is basically like
a pause, So you're gonna pause before responding because in
the pause is all those things. So the relationship, the
(27:57):
job opportunity, the the the emotional safety, the mental health
is all wrapped up in the pause. How you handle
that space between the parentheses so S space R I
got there was some or we can put call it
a T so trigger space and then response and so
in that space is where you can calm down and
(28:19):
do some of these these practice. So the first one
is to take that actual pause and not just skip
right over it to the response. And then in that pause,
reframe your thinking so instead of it may you may
feel like you're being attacked, but you may not be.
The attack may not be on you personally, but it
(28:39):
may be on an action that you took or or
decision that you made, and so you have to be
able to separate your person from that and look at
the problem as if it was sitting on the table.
So reframe your thinking. And then there's a physical piece too,
So in that pause, maybe you need to just say like, hey,
can I come back to this? And I need to,
(28:59):
you know, go take a walk, I need to go
listen to some music. I need to go do some breathing.
There's different breathing techniques you can do. There's one where
you'd inhale for seven seconds, hold for four seconds, excel
for eight seconds. There's another one that's called like box breathing,
where it's like, I think you do the same thing,
but it's in eight seconds intervals. So there's all different
(29:21):
types of things that help kind of reduce the angst
or the fight or flight or freeze thing that's happening.
And then also there's like mindfulness and meditation that can
go on. I remember when I played at UVA, we
had this one former player that was an air force
(29:41):
and he flew like several missions in the desert storm
attacks or what we wanna call that desert storm? What
do you want to call it? I don't think I
don't want to say attacks, that sounds like hard. But anyway,
during desert storm, and he sent us this thing, and
he said that he would do like at least one
(30:02):
hundred push ups before he got into his plane because
his emotions and things were so on point that that
if he got into his plane going hundreds of miles
an hour, that that he could make a mistake, possibly
kill himself or you know, not complete the mission or
what have you. And so in that situation, he was
(30:22):
doing you know, de regulate, you know, find any emotion
regulation in that response or in that situation, so he
could respond in the right way. So those that's you
know a different type of an example, but it's a
way to demonstrate that the exercise, doing something physical can
help bring down the emotions and things. The other part
(30:44):
you can do in that space is you can journal
or do some self reflection, you know, so write down it.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I find sometimes when I'm kind of in those spaces
that if I can just write out what I'm thinking,
sometimes the better way to respond just comes to me automatically,
because I'm already I'm doing the the uh all out
but on paper and not to the person or to
the situation. And and and in my journaling, I somehow
(31:11):
I get enlightened and go like, yeah, I probably shouldn't
respond this way, and this is the way I should respond,
or oh, this is what I'm what I'm missing in
what this person is saying to me, or what the
situation is saying, or what the situation is calling for,
I'm missing that, and it helps me find that piece
that can unlock everything. And then and then the other
part in that space between the the trigger and the
(31:35):
response is therapy or coaching.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Uh, I'd like to say that, you know, the work
that we're doing in this couple's.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Work is part of that pause.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Because we were going straight from stimulus or trigger right
to response, and it was it was not serving our
relationship well. And uh, and so now we found we
created space for us to kind of work on how
to respond, how to receive information, how to process the information.
(32:09):
You know where some of the responses are coming from
for each other, So that in between those parentheses are
all those things that you can do. And sometimes it
doesn't mean that you get to be triggered, have the
pause and respond in the same day. So sometimes you
got to take that trigger and take that pause moment
to say I'll be back at you in twenty four hours,
(32:31):
give me twenty four hours to think about this, to
do the physical thing, or to do the reframing, or
to do the journaling, or to seek support coaching, and
then I want to respond because then your response will
be more productive that way. And then your ability to
control the anxiety and the stress and that you may
be feeling will also help control the anxiety and the
(32:53):
stress that the other personal the situation may be feeling.
So those are to me if you can remember that formula. Uh,
and so I just thought about the trigger part of it,
but I always put the S and then the space
and then the R, so it was stimuli, space, pause,
all those different things that I just gave you and
then respond. And so that's the formula I have a
(33:15):
couple of dudes that that I was in therapy with
that after the Impact program, and one of them is
like the Second Coming of Samuel L. Jackson and all
the really cool movies where he can just go on
these f bomb drop rants, I mean, like forever, and
I just go like, dude, like, you are not doing
yourself any favors or anybody else any favors when you're
(33:37):
when you go to that place. So when I when
he texts me and I can tell he's in that
ramped up place, I just send that formula to him
S space R and I say, man, go go hang
out in the space for a little bit before you
respond to whoever it is you're responding to that way.
So emotional regulation, even though it seems like something that's more.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Impactful for.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Like relationships in your communications with other people, it is
also important with the communication that you're having with yourself
and then the ramifications from some of those interactions you
have with other people of situations when you're super explosive
and then you have to live with regret and then
that causes stress, anxiety, depression, all these different kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
So, being able to control your emotions and have strategies
for it, and like for me.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Sometimes the thing I've become more I want to say
aware of and that I've done more of is when
I know for sure that I'm going to go into
a conversation or I'm going to go into a situation
where there's going to be triggers all over the place,
I prepare myself beforehand, uh.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
And I go.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Sometimes I'm able to go into the situation and be good,
but other sometimes I have to just tell myself when
I get triggered because I know I'm going to get
triggered that, okay, that might when I get triggered, Instead
of responding, go live in the pause and then find
time to do some exercise or journal or do all
those kinds of things. So I do that beforehand. I
(35:14):
already make the decision before I get into it, because
once I get into it and I haven't made those decisions,
I can't guarantee you that any of that stuff I
just told you is going to work. And I can't
say that I've been you know that I bat a
thousand with any of this. I'm just saying to hedge
my bets towards being more successful with it so that
I don't come out of the situation causing harm, emotional
(35:37):
harm to someone else or to myself. I try to
make sure I'm prepared before I go into it. And
so that's what I'm telling you to do is the
same thing. So I know that that was I hope
that there was some a few little resources in there
for you guys to grab onto.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
It was a little bit.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I remember when Twitter first started, I used to do
these things called raise ramps, and uh, that kind of
felt like a ray rant a little bit, uh because
it just kind of just thoughts, just thoughts I had.
But the Mindful Therapy Group, based in the Pacific Northwest,
is a diverse group of qualified mental health professionals or
providers offering both in person and virtual care, whether it's
(36:17):
talk therapy or medication management. You can book your first
visit within one week. Visit Mindful Therapygroup dot com to
start your journey to better mental health today. And I
will say that I've gotten to know the founders of
the mental uh Mindful Therapy Group, Jessica and Derek, And
every now and then I slip up and I call
him Dereka because the the and Uh, it's our little
(36:40):
inside joke. But they are great people and they're doing
great work for people all around the country representing therapists
that are are you know, bringing uh this type of
care to a bunch of different types of communities, and
so I just always want to give them a shout out.
They've been big supporters of mine. You know, Derek and
I have some pretty cool, deep uh conversations. Is you know,
(37:02):
really cool dude to talk to and hang out with.
So shout out to the Mindful Therapy group. This last part,
this this next or second section that I want to
talk about a little bit is more mental health focused
around the things that are just happening, you know, in
our in our culture, in our country right now, with
(37:23):
with some of the conversations that are going on, with
some of the decisions that are being made, some of
the resources and things that are being under attack, and
you know, whether you agree or disagree, like I said,
some of the emotion and stuff around it is pretty intense.
You know, some some people's jobs are being are been threatened.
(37:46):
And I just want to say that it's okay to
not allow the conversation of the day, the topic of
the day the press conference of the day, the news
of the day to be overwhelming. Uh, you're and and
and if it is, you're not alone in that. But
(38:07):
I will say it's okay. Just like we just talked
about being triggered and in the space and then the response,
it's okay to remove yourself from that. It's okay to
not allow yourself to be overwhelmed by it. So it's
okay to take a step back, it's okay to recharge,
it's okay to protect your peace in it, and so
and and in doing that, you know, there's just a
(38:29):
few little i'm gonna call them mental health health tips
that I wanna that I wanna give and I share
this with our team at Special Olympics too, is that
the first thing you have to do is acknowledge and
validate your feelings. So it's okay to feel what you're
feeling and and and no one can tell you that
what you're feeling is not real. What you're feeling is real.
(38:50):
Now you might get more information that then allows you
to go like, okay, well, there was no need for
me to feel that. So, like, the one thing I
try to compare it to is if you're afraid of dark,
and you're in the dark, you can be your feelings
are fear and fright and scared. But if someone in
(39:11):
the room said, hey, like, there's no one in the
room here but me and you, or they turn the
lights on and you get more information that you're safe
than the feeling of fear and all that kind of
stuff kind of goes away. But the initial feeling is real,
and sometimes we run across people that go like, oh,
that's not a feeling, or you shouldn't be feeling that,
or the feelings don't matter, or all those kinds of things,
(39:33):
or it's not real. The feeling is real, and it
doesn't have to be the same feeling that someone else
in that situation feels. It's what you are feeling in
that moment. And then you can then either choose to
yourself beat it more information so that you cannot feel
those things, or you get more information from the actual
situation that it is or isn't what you're thinking. So
(39:57):
always acknowledge and validate the feelings, because I feel like
when you try to resist what you're feeling is when
things just get amplified. And sometimes just even just saying
it out loud almost releases it to the universe and
takes it in and out of your body. I kind
of compare it to when you stub your toe in
the middle of the night and you grab your toe
and you feel like you're trying to hold the pain in,
(40:20):
but it's when you release it that the pain just
moves through your body and it actually goes away faster.
So acknowledge and validate your feelings. And then the second
thing would be focused on what you can control, because
there are some things that are going to happen and
decisions that have been made that are completely out of
your control and frankly, there's nothing you can do about it.
(40:41):
And so you have to control what you can control.
And you can't control every policy or public opinion, and
you don't have to. You don't have to give those
things power in your life because you can't control them.
So focus on the small, meaningful things that you can control,
(41:06):
so you can, you know, look at some of these
things that are happening and say, okay, then if these
are the rules of the game, how can I accomplish
what I want to accomplish using these different rules, Because
you can probably do that. And the one thing I
think about is when I was doing our master's program
over at the University of Washington Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership, we
had Bill Russell come and talk to us, and it
(41:29):
was really interesting because, you know, he was like one
of the first players that were blocking shots, and so
we someone asked him about why did he start blocking shots,
and he said, well, I looked at the rules, and
the rules said I couldn't block the ball on its
downward path to the goal. So what that told me
(41:52):
is that I can block it on this upward path
to the goal. And so then that's what I did.
And then all of a sudden, he kind of normalized
this idea around blocking shots. So he took the rules
that said this is what you cannot do, and he
looked at what the rules told you he could do.
And so even in this climate that we're in right now,
where there's a lot of things going on and changes
(42:14):
and policies and all these different kinds of things, even
the rules that tell you what you can't do are
also telling you what you can do. And a lot
of times in those situations, you can still accomplish the
things that you want to accomplish. Even though the rules
may be saying something else. The other thing, I will
say the number three, So we had to acknowledge and
validate your feelings. Number two was focus on what you
(42:37):
can control, and then number three was protect your energy energy.
So when I say that, and I had to do
this myself, is because I can get super energized in
what I believe, and then I get ignited and then
I can't stop. I get really dogged at it, and
I want to respond to every tweet I see. I
(42:58):
want to respond, and you know, our team knows. NASA
will tell me every now and again, dude, you argue
with someone that has like one follower, So yeah, but
they say something stupid, you know. And so and so
when I'm in those moments, I'm probably operating in my
little dinosaur brain, and I'm also in this space where
I'm not protecting my own energy because I'm just ready
to argue with anybody. And so it's important to then
(43:21):
around in social media the news conversations that you can
set boundaries around that stuff so that you're not just
constantly living in this place of anger or frustration or
stress or anxiety or depression or all the other things
that you can name. Because you're watching the news twenty
(43:41):
four to seven, or you're scrolling through Twitter or Instagram
or whatever it is you facebook, and you're reading what
all your friends are saying, and what their friend's friends
are saying, and what people don't even know are saying,
and it's all impacting your energy and how you show
up first for yourself, and then that impacts your ability
to go from from the trigger or the stimulus to
(44:02):
the pause space because you go right to the response place.
I know because that happens to me. And so it's
important to set boundaries around that stuff. And then also
know that you don't have to engage in every debate.
And if there's one thing I like to do, whether
I agree with what I'm saying or not, is I
like to debate. And you know, I've told these guys,
I'm about to find the actual article one time one
(44:24):
day and show it to them where they interviewed my
dad and they say, what is one thing that we
don't know about Ray? And he said that that kid
will argue with a stop sign, and uh, and I will.
I will convince the stop sign that it says pause,
not stop. You know that's just me and so, but
you have to know that you don't have to engage
every debate. And then I say number four is stay
(44:46):
connected to your allies and your support system. So talk
to colleagues that or people that you know that understand
what the situation is or that can that can that
can talk you through what it is that it's going
on or what it is you're hearing, and then share wins,
find someone to vent and frustrate with, I mean venture
frustrations with, and then remind yourself of the things that
(45:10):
are important to you and why they matter. And so
the vent frustration part is a big one too, because
I have friends that I just call and I just
go like, man, I just need a minute, and then
I just unload whatever it is they it's not about them.
They're just there to be someone that can hear it
and deflect it. And maybe they are one of the
people that set up Bundy and go, you know what
raided today. I can't do that, and so I have
to respect that. But it's important to be able to
(45:32):
just kind of to get it out of your system,
whether you're venting it to another person or just writing
it out. So stay connected to your systems and then
celebrate small wins. And so the small winds on't even
have to be connected to the climate and the culture
that are going on in our world. It can be,
but a small wind can be like, man, you said
you're going to get up and walk two miles a day,
(45:53):
and you got up and you did it. Or you
said you were gonna not drink this month and you
did it. Or you said that you were going to,
you know, call your parents and say hello, and you
did it. Or that you got up out of the bed,
or that you made breakfast or whatever it is. Like,
you can find small wins. And if it's in your work,
you know, you can find small wins into that too.
Like I said, the rules are telling you what you
(46:15):
can't do, but you can find ways to accomplish some
of the things you want. And sometimes that comes in
the small wins. And then the next one that would
be take breaks without guilt. So it's okay to say
I'm pouring from an empty cup. And I've always said
you cannot give what you don't have, and so in
(46:36):
order to get those things, you need to recharge, refresh,
re educate, become more aware, just take the time to
do the things that bring you joy. You know, whether
it's going to you know, going on a walk, taking
a couple of days and going to the coast, if
that's the thing you like to do. I like to
go for hikes, I like to spend time with my kids,
(46:57):
like those types of things like those are the things
that kind of bring me joy. So I can take
a break, and then I will say, I know I
got a little long list here, but there's two more.
One is channel your frustration into anger, I mean into action.
So instead of using frustration as fuel, use it as
fuel and not fire. So keep finding ways to do
(47:20):
the stuff that you want to do, that that is
important to you, that's impactful to the community, that you
think that people need that maybe the rules is telling
you that they don't, But find your creative brain, get
into that space and find other ways to use your
frustration as fuel and not a fire to just burn
down the house.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Because then that doesn't help anybody.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
And then the last one, and this is more connected
to know what we're doing and why we have this podcast,
is if the weight is impacting, if it's impacting your
mental health, then reach out to somebody. There are lots
of people, lots of resources that are available for you
to reach out to someone and get some help, even
(48:01):
if you had to do what I did, where I
had to reach out to my ex wife who reached
out to Sandy Gregory who was a friend of ours
that were from the Seahawks, who knew someone at the
NFL that that kind of got me connected to the
place I needed to go. Do not be afraid to
reach out to trusted friends or trusted person or you know,
go to the Mindful Therapy Group website and contact them
(48:23):
to try to find someone that can help you unload
some of this of what you're what you're feeling, because
you don't have to carry it alone. And then in that,
you know, I did a post I want to say
two or three days ago where it was saying to
check in on your people because sometimes people carry it well.
It looks like they're doing a great job, and those
sometimes are the people that need to help the most,
(48:45):
but people don't take the time to check in on
them because they look like they're doing it well, like
they're handling. I think the image I used was a
guy carrying a big boulder over his head, and it's like, yeah,
it looks like he's doing it well, but doesn't mean
that the burden and the load isn't heavy, and so
those folks need help to so you don't have to
do all that alone. I want to say thank you
(49:06):
guys for let me have these moments and talk about
these things. I can be long winded, and I know
I tell a lot of stories and all that kind
of stuff, and sometimes I'm not the most direct and
concise communicator, but man, this stuff is important to me.
And this episode ending here doesn't mean that this work
for me isn't ending. It just means I'm taking it
(49:26):
to another place doing some other things. You're still going
to be able to find big raise, garage grind, and
we'll make an announcement about when that happens. But like
always want to close with our three things, and one
is it's okay to not be okay. Number two is
if you're having a mental health crisis, reach out to
(49:46):
your medical providers for assistance. And I think we've shared
and we can share on here some of the numbers
you can call for immediate help for hotlines and things.
And then number three is that when you need help
and you ask for help. You're operating from a position
of power, and so I want to again say thank
you for listening to me, giving me the space, let
(50:09):
me have this voice in the space, talking to me
on the sidewalks, in the stadiums, all those kinds of things.
But for this particular episode, in this particular function of
this episode, this is Big Ray. And this has been
Big Ray's garage grind peace and about
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