Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Big Raise Garage grind.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I want to bring awareness and my voice to something
that's meaningful and purposeful, more than just who's the best
football player, who's the best football team? The intersection between life,
football and mental health. When you need help and you
ask for help, you're operating from a position of power.
When you need help and you don't ask for help,
that's the weakness. Now here's your host, Seahawks legend Ray Roberts.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
What Up, What Up? What Up? Fam?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to a Big Raise Garage Brian Mental Health Edition
presented by the Mindful Therapy Group. I'm your hosts, Big Ray,
and it is great to be back on the mic today.
It is I'm not sure Whenness may air. I don't
think it's on the air before Thanksgiving, but it is
a few days before Thanksgiving, and so to everyone out there,
I want to say, have a great, happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy
(00:51):
your family and your friends and the food and all
the festivities that come with the The Seahawks will be playing
on Thanksgiving Day versus the San Francisco forty nine ers,
so let's say a few prayers.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
And thanks and gratefulness for them.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
In the last episode, I talked a little bit on
how the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's can trigger emotions, feelings,
and unresolved issues that can have a negative impact on
your mental health, and I suggested that you be proactive
(01:30):
and how you approach this time of the year, finding
a therapist to talk to, or a good friend to
talk to, or your pastor to talk to, or someone
that you can that you can talk through some of
these things with, so that if you know you're going
into a situation where you're going to be triggered, you
can kind of come up with a plan, and if
you are already triggered, you can have someone that you
(01:53):
can talk to. And so it's really good to kind
of at this time of the year to take inventory
of where you are with your mental health, and where
you are in your relationships, and where you are with
your work, and where you are just in your daily life,
because the whole year catches up to us at the
end and sometimes it just brings on all types of
(02:17):
emotions and things that we start to question ourselves about
and it can put us in a in a negative headspace.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
And one of.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
The situations I can remember is when I lived in
Virginia and I was working at the University of Virginia
as a life skills director for the football team. And
I grew up in Ashville, North Carolina, which is maybe
four or five hour drive, and so I have three
older sisters and the one word that I can use
(02:47):
to sum them up with is drama. And so they
wanted me to come home for Thanksgiving. And so I
was like, okay, like, I'll go home for Thanksgiving. I'm
gonna go see my family, go see my nieces and
nephews and all my brands and things. But in the
back of my head, this whole the drama that my
brand family brings was just always there. And so I
was like, man, like, I'm not really sure if I
(03:07):
want to go. And so I went and talked to
my pastor about it, and I said, hey, Pastor Washington, like,
I'm about to go home. I want to be there
for Thanksgiving. I want to enjoy my family and all
these things. But man, the drama that they bring, I
just don't know if I'm up for that. And I
was on my way. I was driving to North Carolina.
I had pulled over to this on the side of
the road and that and called my pastor, and so
(03:33):
he gave me two strategies that were or three that
were very very simple. Pastor Washington's very simple dude, But
he gave me something that I could use as as
a resource as a tool as I was there. And
one he said, you know, put a time limit on
how long you're going to spend.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
You know, I have three sisters, so I had to
go to each house.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
So put a time limit on how long you're going
to stay at each house so that you kind of
minimize the chances of the drama happening or did you've
been a part of the drama. And then the second
thing he said was to show up not feeling like
I have to fix everything. And that was probably the
most important thing that he told me because I'm the
(04:14):
youngest in my family, but I'm the most accomplished in
my family, and then they always look to me to fix.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Things or solve the problem or you.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Know, whatever it is. And that's a big burden to
carry a lot of times. And so when I get
into that situation, I fall right into that role.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
But it's very draining.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And so he was like, don't feel like you have
to fix everybody, like if they're having problems, you can
shake your head, nod your head, and keep it moving
and let their problems be their problems.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
And then the third thing.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
He said is to remember why you're there, and that
is to spend time and enjoy your sisters. And so
just being able to take those three little strategies with
me when I went home allowed me and gave me
the space to enter to engage my sisters and my
family and have a great time because it was around
(05:04):
the holidays and a lot of stuff came up, and
you know, both my parents had passed at that point,
So even thinking about those types of things coming up,
and then, like I said, my sisters live well. Middle
my youngest sisters is cool, but my two oldest sisters live.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Very drama filled lives.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
And so it doesn't have to be a sophisticated plan,
and it doesn't have to be a super involved plan.
It doesn't have to, but it has to be something
that kind of gives you something to kind of fall
back on, so that when you feel those moments coming up,
when you feel that pressure you feel, are you starting
to feel like you're getting a little anxious or stressed
(05:45):
or whatever, have something that you can fall back on.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
And the reason I like this.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Idea is, I don't know if you guys remembered, but
when we talked to Doug Baldwin, and it was the
first time I thought about it this way, even though
I had done it, But is that he was proactive
in his approach to his mental health when he retired
from the NFL, because he was so used to being
in the locker room where you express yourself physically and
a lot of times raising your voice and its loud.
(06:12):
It's machoism and muscles and people banging into each other
and fighting and all this other kind of stuff. But
he was going home to a house full of women,
and he knew that he couldn't take this same type
of approach to raising his daughters and been around his
wife more So, he did some work beforehand to kind
(06:33):
of reseet his think and reset his way of doing
things and solving problems and thinking it through so that
he wasn't bringing that type of stuff home with him.
And so I was like, man, that's pretty interesting because
a lot of times people addressed their mental health from
a reactionary place. So you've experienced some type of trauma
or you've experienced some type of adverse situation, and then
(06:55):
from that you're trying to manage your mental health. But
Doug did it in in a way that he got
out in front of it. And and I think that
that was even though I had done that before, I'd
never specifically called it out, and and he specifically called
it out. So that's what I'm doing, uh, right here
right now, is calling out for you to be intentional
(07:15):
about how you're approaching the holidays, because then you know,
even with all the other stuff that's the the family.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Time, the the the.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Memories that you'll have, the looking back at old pictures,
you know, there's family that that will or will not
be there this year that was there last year, or
what have you. And then you throw on top of
that like some you know, some people get their drink on,
you know, and alcohol takes us to a whole other
place or what other other type of substance that you're
using to kind of alter your your mood. Uh, And
(07:45):
so then it can those things in stockpow and it
can become it can become a problem. So you can
you can you have to prepare in a way that
you can recognize when those things are happening and then
have a plan for how to do that and UH.
And if you if you are looking for someone to
speak to UH and you don't have that friend or
(08:06):
the pastor or the aunt or the uncle, or the
brother or the sister or the parent or what what
have you? Our sponsor our title sponsor for for this podcast.
The Mindful Therapy Group does a great job of matching
you with with folks that can kind of respond and
and and have the conversation the way that you need
(08:27):
to have it so that you can find healing and
you can find them at.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
The Mindful Therapy Group UH dot com. And so.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
During the holiday season it can be it can be
tough and on you emotionally mentally, and sometimes we find
ourselves kind of lost in the fog and and you're
not sure you know who are what to celebrate because
the UH, the stories that we're telling ourselves in this
(08:59):
fog can sometimes not be true. Right, So we we
sometimes get into our feelings or we've been triggered, and
we start telling ourselves a story, and in our minds,
the story feels really real and everything we say about
it feels really true. And so you're in this kind
of a fog place. And then if you look at
(09:19):
psychology and mental health and therapy, that's a concept for
that called cognitive distortions. So basically, you're giving yourself information
that is not the full, the full, all out information.
And so when we do that, it doesn't allow us
(09:42):
to enjoy the moment, It doesn't allow us to be present,
it doesn't allow us to take things as they are,
it doesn't allow us to engage the facts of the matter,
and so sometimes you know, this fog can take you
to weird places. When I was in therapy after the
impact up in Michigan, that was probably my main issue
(10:04):
was this cognitive distortion thing. When I got divorced, it
was probably the most impactful thing in my life because
I had always prided myself on being the best husband
and the best father and all these kinds of things,
and then here I am with my family broken apart,
and so I could never I'd never really got over that,
and so that's how I always saw myself through that
(10:24):
fog as this dude who.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Failed his marriage, failed as kids.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
And and had just become like a loser. And everything
I did like up up until my divorce, there was
nothing you could tell me I couldn't do. Like I
came from really nothing. I came from really poor family.
You know, my mom and dad probably made ten thousand
dollars combined. You know, we had, you know, six or
seven people in a six hundred square foot house, like
(10:50):
no hot water, all this stuff. And so I overcame
a whole lot of stuff to get to where I
to where I got to, and then it seemed like
it all came crashing down when I got divorced. And
from that pointing on, it was really hard for me
to find my way to find my confidence because of
the story I was telling myself. And so it is
important then to find the facts of what's going on
(11:13):
in your life. And it's important that you that you
start to challenge some of these thoughts that you have.
Like I used to go to places where, you know,
I would look at myself and I'm just like man,
like here I'm alone, nobody, nobody loves me. My kids,
you know, don't don't love me, don't want to engage me.
(11:34):
I'm unlovable, Like I haven't accomplished anything. Like all these
types of things kind of came into my space, and
that can happen as you're kind of winding the year down.
As just as you're starting to wind the year down
and all the holidays, man, I'm sweating like crazy. All
the holidays are kind of stacking up against you. You
can start to go to these places where you start
(11:55):
to tell you the story, like even if you look
back over the year, like, man, like what have I
done this year? And you start looking at it from
a negative perspective, like I didn't get this thing done.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
I said I was gonna do that.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I need to lose weight. So then we have all
the New Year's resolutions that happened and all that kind
of stuff, because those are responses to usually what we
feel like we didn't do the year before. And so
you're trying to get back on track with these New
Year's resolutions, and those always tend to set us up
for failure. And so as you're starting to walk yourself
to this fog, you have to find a way to
(12:27):
walk yourself out of the fog and out of the darkness.
And that's what I needed to do for myself. I
found myself in the darkness and in the fog so
much that I was curled up on my couch crying.
Like every single day I work for Special Olympics. I
have zoom calls every day, and between every zoom call,
(12:48):
if I had ten minutes, fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, an hour,
two hours, it didn't matter. I would just hang the
phone up, get on my couch, curl up in the
ball and that's where I was until the next call,
and I came and put my happy face on and
did the whole thing. But the story I was telling
myself is that I was just kind of worthless, and
I like, what is it that I was bringing to
the world. And I didn't feel like I was bringing
(13:08):
anything of value because I was telling myself this story
of my failure. And So when you get to to
the end of the year, like I said, and you're
around all this family and it's bringing up all these
memories and uh, and you're starting to think about what
you did or didn't do throughout the year, what you
need to do, and what you want to do the
next the upcoming year. Man, it can sometimes get you
(13:30):
into a place where you're just kind of lost in it,
where you're just where you're just in uh, where you're
just in the dark and you're trying to find find
your way out, and when you're in the dark, nothing
really makes sense. It doesn't matter what people say to you.
How many when I was at in the ATI program
in Michigan and I would talk about myself this way, Uh,
there were five other dudes that were looking back at
(13:51):
me going like, dude, like, what are you talking about?
Like that is not what we see. That is not
the reality of who you are. But it was reality
because there's a whole phrase as a as a person think,
you know, that's who they are. And so that's that's
how I was thinking of myself as that person, as
this person had just kind of failed at a lot
of different things. Even though I had accomplished a lot
(14:11):
of things up in my life, that one moment in time,
uh kind of put it to the place where I.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Felt like where I felt like I had failed.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
And uh, even like coming into this podcast today thinking
about the holidays. One reason I kind of keep the
Holidays is just another day is so that I don't
fall into the trap of like using the Holidays as
a marker for what I did or didn't do, or
what I need to do or didn't or I have
to do or who I disappointed or didn't didn't disappoint.
(14:40):
So I really tried to just treat it as just
another day so that I can approach it like just
another day. It doesn't mean I don't go to the
dinners or I don't buy gifts for my kids and
all that kind of stuff, But for me, it just becomes, uh,
it just becomes another another day having to trying to
deal with how to how to rewrite the story that
(15:00):
I'm telling myself. I think this is a good time
to share this. And this is when I was at
the ATI program in Manchester, Michigan's a program that it's
called After the Impact, is sponsored by the NFL, and
you're there for at least two weeks, but they tried
to extend you to thirty days. I was there for
thirty two days, and it was It didn't just change
(15:24):
my life, it probably saved my life. But while I
was there, I realized that this idea around cognitive distortionship,
around this a lot that I was telling myself was
where my biggest stumbling block was. And so I had
to figure out what could I do, What action could
I take that could walk me out of the darkness
and out of this fog and put me in a
(15:45):
place where I could really embrace the facts of the matter.
And so a lot of times on the show we
talk about like the different types of therapy where it's
talk therapy or how you receive therapy, if you know,
like kJ talked about how if he's in therapy when
he talks, he needs to have someone give him something back,
(16:06):
like they need to give him something to do, some
type of tool or resource or whatever. And then for me,
sometimes I just need to say it out loud. I
don't need anyone to say anything back. I just need
to say this is what I'm dealing with, and I
can say it out loud, and when I say it
out loud, it kind of takes the power away from it.
But I just need someone to be engaged with me
and listen to it. So in order for me to
(16:26):
rewrite this story that I was telling myself and to
rewire my brain around how I was thinking about myself
and been that we're close to Thanksgiving the holidays. You
can call this list whatever you want to call it.
It can be your thankfulness list, it can be your
blessings list, it can be your self affirmation list. It
can be the list whatever you want to call it.
(16:48):
But this is what I did every single day for
about thirty days. So well, maybe it's maybe twenty six
days because I didn't start it the first day. I
was there for the majority of the days while I
was there for me to rewrite the story that I
was telling myself. I did this particular action twice a
(17:09):
day and then sometimes throughout the day, and that was
I would start writing a list of I would as
soon as my feet would hit the ground in the morning,
I'd grab my pen and I grab my piece of
paper and I would just start writing a list. And
so what are the things I would put on the list?
So I would put stuff on there like I am
a great father, I'm a good friend, I'm a great friend,
(17:30):
I'm great at my job, I'm a good brother. I
love my kids and they love me. And then I
would have a list of the people I know who
love me and care about me. And so I'd had
people on there like my ex wife Beth, my sons,
my sons Reagan, Slat and Price, my sisters Benita, Sue
and Teresa, my niece Zanita, and my nephews Dominicue, Marcus
(17:52):
my dudes from the Seahouse Broadcast team, NASA and Michael
Bumpus and Robert Turbin and Marcus Trufon and Paul Morian,
Dave Woman, and then I put down some things I've accomplished.
I graduated from high school. In college, I have a
degree from the University of Virginia, to have a master's
degree from the University of Washington. I was an all
(18:12):
everything offensive lineman at the University of Virginia. I would
play it in the NFL for ten years. I would
list all the good that I've done, and then I
would just make this list. I had a legal pattern
paper and I would rewrite it at least twice a day.
I had to take put the I couldn't just think
(18:33):
about it. I didn't want to just reread what I wrote.
I hand wrote it out every single time, so as
soon as my feet hit the ground in the morning,
that was the first thing I did before I did
breakfast or anything. And then at night, before I went
to sleep, I would do it the exact same thing,
because there may have been something during the day that
kind of needed to be on the list, and I
would instead of just adding it to the list I did.
In the morning, I'd rewrite the whole entire list, and
(18:54):
so and then throughout the day, if there was other
things I needed, you know, I'd chatted down. But at
least twice ad I was making this list. And like
I said, you can call the list whatever you want,
but what it does is it starts to separate the
myth and the distortion from what the facts are. And
so I struggled with this idea that, uh, that I
was alone in the world, and that I was that
(19:16):
I was not choosing solitude, which is a positive thing,
but I was being lonely, like like I could be
in a room full of people and feel like there
was no one there but me. I felt like I
had failed the world because my marriage failed, and so
there was nothing I could see in my life where
I would be like, man, this is this is what
I've accomplished, even though I had accomplished all these things.
(19:38):
And so I needed to remind myself a visual reminder.
Maybe you can do it some other way, but I
needed a visual reminder that this is this is the
core of who you are, This is the man that
you are. Here are the themes that you have accomplished.
Here are the people that love you. Hear the people
that you love. Here are the people that care about you.
Like so you're not in the world alone. Like you
(19:59):
may not to get to see these people you know
all the time when you want to see them. But
I know for sure during the football season, I'm going
to see the broadcast team. Dudes, I want to see
him every single week, And so I'm not alone in that.
I know that my son has to drive past my
house to get to school every morning and he stops
by on his way home, so I know I'm going
(20:19):
to get to see him. I needed to be more
intentional on you know, I have kids that are you know,
eighteen and above, so they have lives too, and so
I couldn't just expect them to just jump into my
life all the time. So I had to get a
little bit more intentional on how I scheduled time with them,
because they wanted to spend the time with me. But
I just needed to get on their calendar. And it
sucks that, like, I'm your dad and I did all
(20:40):
these great things for you, and I have to get
on your calendar. But you got a calendar and it's
full and I need to get on it. And so
I needed to take responsibility for that and just be
a little bit more intentional about that. And so then
it started to bring down these lies that I was
telling myself, and then I can fill it back up
with the facts. Even in the things that didn't go well,
(21:00):
there's a there's a chance to go back and look
at that and separate the facts from from what the
fiction is so that you can process that properly. Uh,
there was this might be a little bit too much information,
but uh, my oldest sister dated this dude in high
school and I absolutely hated this guy, Like, uh, there
are so many times I just wanted to strangle him out.
I'm not even gonna lie, like, he just treated my
(21:22):
sister poorly and I didn't like it. And so when
when I was in therapy and and I was talking
about the divorce thing, they said, well, how do you feel?
And I said, I don't want to say the dude's name,
but I said I feel like that dude and they're like, well,
who is that dude? And I was like, that was
my sister's boyfriend that I didn't like, and this is
(21:43):
what he did and he was you know, I thought he's.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
A loser and blah blah blah, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
And so that's how I see myself and they were
just like man like that is really harsh. And so
by able being able to write this list and look
at this list every day and rewire my thoughts around
who I am, what I've done, who I love, who
loves me, who's in my life, who's not in my life,
I was able to take the facts of the situation
(22:07):
to then start rewriting the story. And then when I
started doing that, man, it's amazing how it opened up
the door for my healing. Because before I can heal,
I needed to process that piece and I was stuck there.
I was stuck in the dark. I was stuck in
the fog. I was stuck in the hold on the ground.
And because that's the only I was just beating myself
(22:28):
up that way. And so in order for me to heal,
I needed to kind of clear space for the healing.
And by writing this list and separating fact from fiction,
I was able to create that space, that space that
I needed. And so what I'm saying to you is
that there's a lot of a lot that goes into healing.
(22:50):
So there's therapy, there's medication that you can take. There's
you know, exercise and all those types of things, eating
right and all that stuff. There are actions that you
have to take. There are some people that I run
across and go like, oh, man, like I've been going
to therapy and taking the medication and nothing's changed.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I'm like, but what are you doing outside of that? Like,
what other.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Actions are you taking that is helping to promote your
healing or giving you space to hell, it's not a
thing that you kind of go talk to the therapists
and when you walk out the room, all of a sudden,
the day is going to be brighter. A lot of
times when you walk out the room, like you're feeling
probably a little bit worse than how you felt when
you walk in, because you got to entertain some really
tough stuff. You have to have some tough conversations, and
(23:32):
then all of a sudden your hours up and then
you're like, what I got to leave now? And so
you have to find actions that you can take that
will give you the space that you need and give
you the information that you need and rewire your brain
and rewire your thoughts and give you new data to
work from so that you can then create the space
and create the space for the healing. And like I said,
(23:54):
if you're looking for someone to do that with, the
for Therapy Group is a great place to do that with.
They're the title sponsor of the podcast, and the Mindful
Therapy Group is based in the Pacific Northwest. It's a
diverse group of qualified mental health providers offering both in
person and virtual care, whether it's talk therapy or medication management.
(24:17):
You can book your first visit within one week. Visit
Mindful Therapygroup dot com to start your journey to better
mental health today.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
And like I've.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Tried to say this on most of the most recent podcasts, man,
this is a great organization to reach out to because
they have a roster of maybe a thousand.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Therapists.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
And in these days, a lot of the therapy therapists
are getting over or so booked that you can't even
find someone to get to. But with a thousand therapists
on their roster, they have an opportunity to find someone.
And then the other piece that they do is this
idea around matching, Like they you have a like an
of you processes you go through as you're coming into
(25:03):
the into the program, and then they find enough information
to start trying to find the best therapists to match
you with. Having said that, just be aware that a
lot of times it may take you one or two
therapists to go through before you find the person that
you connect with and UH, and the connection is.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Important UH in therapy.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
If the connection isn't there, then there's nothing wrong with saying, hey,
this is not working, you know, can I can I
try someone else? The Mindful Therapy Group is great at
matching matching you up that way. So if he needs
a little help and you want to be proactive or
you're trying to respond to how you've been triggered, visit
the Mindful Therapygroup dot com and let them help you out.
(25:42):
I was gonna talk a little bit today about this
idea around UH perfection, but I didn't didn't have enough
time to wrap my brain around what the what the
point is I wanted to make about it uh to
I didn't know if I had the point really clear.
So I also try to do with the podcast is
be current with stuff. So last week the last episode,
(26:02):
we talked about Caleb Williams and his crying in the
stands and everyone's response to that, and so and just
tried it got me kind of fired up. If you
guys saw or listened to it, got really locked into it.
So what I want to share with you guys today
is that November, which was brought to my attention, is
(26:24):
also a men's mental health month. And so having said that,
the last episode, I shared a little bit of information,
but there's probably and this was old, maybe like one
or two years old data, but at that point it
was saying it over six million men per year suffer
from depression. That's a lot of lot of dudes. And
(26:48):
I will tell you that the majority of those dudes
are probably suffering in silence because of how our society
views mental health and what it means to be a man,
and the lack of support and encouragement that we have
for men to seek mental health. And then of the
things that men tend to suffer with the most, you
(27:09):
have depression, anxiety, and stress. Also this idea around bipolar
being diagnosed with bipolar being bipolar and the onset of
that is. But for men, it's between the ages of
sixteen and twenty five. So that is when bipolar tends
(27:30):
to show up. That diagnosis tend to show up for men.
So just be aware of the men in your life.
Listen to the words they're saying, watch the actions that
they're doing, and then show them some kindness and some
care to kind of help walk them to we talked
about with Doug and Cliff their wives walk them to therapy.
(27:51):
So if you're able to have a man in your
life where there's a young dude, a middle aged dude,
older dude, whatever it is, and you see these types
of symptoms of them kind of isolating, being irritable, like
those types of things, like, just check in with them
and just see how they're doing and then give them
the space to feel what they're feeling. Uh. And then
(28:11):
if you if you feel like there needs to be
some more existence assistants and you know, maybe welcome to
therapy or you know, like we talked oneed the episode
about being a guardrail friend, like the like the guardrails
on when you're go bowling. It keeps you from falling
in the gutter and kind of so you're not actually
doing the work, but you're kind of keeping them moving forward.
So a be a guardrail friend that way. But this
(28:35):
last week I was out of friends. I'd never been
to one of these before, didn't know what they were,
you know, didn't know what it was all about. But
it's called Friendsgiving, and I'm like, okay, like Thanksgiving us
next week, why are we doing Friendsgiving this week. I
just don't don't understand the concept of it. But uh,
but all these friends came together and we had food.
(28:56):
It was just like Thanksgiving, you know, we had all
the same food and everything, and we went around the
table and everyone had to say what they were thankful for, like,
you know, have a few minutes to talk about it.
And the one guy that was there, who who he
owns the house were at he said. He started his
comments by saying, at home, my wife and kids think
(29:20):
I'm a tough guy, but I'm not. At work, my
colleagues think I'm this tough guy, but I'm not. And
then he's proceeded to talk about how much he loved
his kids and how much he loved like where they
were in their lives and the type of people that
they've become and the things that they that he and
his wife have tried to instill in them. That you
(29:42):
can see in them, like their work ethic and their
care for other people and their kindness like for you know,
and he's like tearing up the whole time, sharing all
this stuff. And then he starts talking about how much
he loves his wife and what she means in his life,
and how they've been able to be partners and not
being parents and not just being parents and and husband
and wife, but in the work that they do, and
(30:02):
then how they you know, approach the community and all
these types of things, and and so at the end
of the when he was done, uh, you know, everyone's no,
there's no dry eyes in the room. And so you
know me, I'm always like trying to lift the dude
up and make them feel better. And I was like, hey, George, like,
I just want to tell you man, like, you know,
(30:23):
society defines toughness a certain way for men, like and
there is a certain amount of toughness, you got it,
physical toughness, you know, if you want to call it
mental toughness, I call it mental flexibility. But if you
but there is space for that in your life. But
everything that you just did was also toughness. To be
able to in front of a group of people, to
(30:44):
be vulnerable, to say out loud to the people in
your life how much you love them, what you see
in them, how much you care about them, to be
proud of the life that they're living, To be able
to cry and and in front of people. It takes courage,
It takes it takes uh strength to do that, and
(31:05):
it takes toughness to do that. That is that is
not easy to do. It's not easy to drop your
guard like that in front of people. When you're like
the head of the household, or you're the captain of
the team, or you're the CEO of the company.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Or whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
If whatever role that you you're that you're playing in
your in your tough dude uh physical self, man, those
things are not Those things are hard to do. And
so the fact that you can get yourself to that
place and then be able to verbalize it and share
it in a way that people can really receive it
and internalize it and know that you're speaking from your heart,
(31:39):
that's toughness, man. Like you don't you don't have to
let the world's definition of toughness be your definition of toughness.
You don't have to adhere to it because I don't
like I wear my emotions on my sleeve. Like my
kids have seen me as angry as I've been, and
they've seen me as sad as I've been, and they've
seen me all in between. Because you know, like I'm
a very spiritual dude, and God designed our bodies to
(32:02):
have certain reactions, and we have those, and I want
my body to have all every reaction he designed it
to have. And so for if someone wants to challenge
my toughness, if they want to challenge my physical toughness, like, okay,
we can do that. Like you know, I did that
for a long time for a living. But toughness has
also been able to take off all of this armor
(32:26):
that the world.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Expects us to have on.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Is it to be able to take all of that
off and share who you are, share your person, share
your heart, share your passions, share your vulnerabilities, share your mistakes,
share your wins, share your failures, share your challenges.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
All of that stuff is toughness.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
And don't let anybody tell you any different, because the
fact that when you start to put on the world's
armor of what toughness is, that is the first indication
that you're going to have some type of mental health issue.
I promise you you're gonna either have the stress because
you're an anxiety because you're trying to you're trying to
match what the world is saying you should be. You're
(33:06):
trying to be that person and maybe you're not that person.
And uh, and you start and you start to kind
of impact the relationships around you in a way that
you probably don't want because you're trying to do it
the way the world tells you to do it, and
and like it's it's just it's just different.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Like I remember one time as I separated.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
From my wife, I was over at her house coming
down the stairs and I could hear my kids talking
and they were like, man, like, Dad, it's just like
always honest, like I can't do anything. We like he
you know, can't do this, We can't do that, Like
we never get to try anything. And so I was like, man,
that is not the relationship I want to have with
my kids. That's not what I want them to have.
(33:48):
But that's what I had signed up for. I had
signed up for my wife, who at the time, who
was non confrontational, like she was like the good cop
and I had signed up to be the bad cop,
and and you know, like I have to come in,
you know, guns are blazing and yelling and screaming and
do this and do that and get the room clean
and by blah.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
And it's like that's not even who I was. Like,
if you're around me enough, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
That's not my mentality, that's not my character, that's not
my personality. That's not who I am. But that's who
I signed up to be. Because there's no books that
tell you how to be a parent. You know at
the time, like you don't take classes on how to
be a parent, but you look and see what the
world is saying what it means to be the dad
and the family, and what it means to be the
wife and the family. You can fall into those traditional
roles and then sometimes falling into those roles, you fall
(34:32):
out of who you are. And in that situation, I
fell out of who I was. And so I sat
down with my kids and I was like, all right,
like I'm going to define what it means to be dad.
I'm going to define what it means to be If
I have to be the guy that drops the hammer
and the family, I can drop the hammer hard, I
can drop it soft. That don't have to drop it
at all. And so we started having these meetings where
(34:54):
I would meet with my kids and I would say, hey, like,
floors open, let's just talk about whatever there is to
talk about. What do I need to do better? Be
better at all these different kinds of things. And so
they were like, hey, Dad, like, when we do good stuff,
like you kind of you know, pat us on the
back and you keep it moving.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
This out a whole lot of engagement there.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
But when we don't do as well, like man like,
the hammer comes down hard, and I'm like, okay, well,
what would you like for me to do? Okay, this
is what we like for you do do Dad? Like
when this happens, and they gave me this whole game plan,
I'm like, all right, I'm gonna work on that. And
the cool thing about that is that it wasn't me
letting my kids run to you know, run the show.
(35:34):
It was me being in partnership with my kids. It
was me being in collaboration with my kids. It was
me giving them space to have an opinion. Doesn't mean
that their opinion character room all the time, but they
had the space to do that. And that's the type
of parent that I want to be. That's the type
of person I am. I want to hear what other
people think. I want to I don't. I want to
know what they you know, what they think about a situation,
(35:55):
what their perspective is, or what their opinion is. Doesn't
mean I have to agree with it, but I want
to hear it. And so it created a different relationship
with my kids because I had redefined what it meant
to be the dad. I redefined what it meant to
be mean to be a tough dad. So sometimes the
kids would do stuff that I didn't like. I wouldn't
say a word about it because I knew it was
eating them up. And so I just wait until they
(36:16):
felt comfortable enough to come to me and say, hey,
I know Mom probably told you this, but this is
what happened. And so then in some and then so
in those moments, I could choose to be a little
bit tougher, or I could choose to show some you know,
a little bit more kindness and and and just give
them a little bit more space. And then sometimes we
just have a conversation and I'd go like, well, you
tell me where the flaw is and you're thinking and
(36:37):
how you got to that decision and then we and
then that way they learned to kind of.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Process their own stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
So, long story short, this idea around toughness, uh, and
what it means to be tough and what the world
says that it means to be a man, and what
the world says that it means to be a dad
and all these traditional roles that have been carved out
for us that we just kind of fall into without
challenging them. Like I'm telling you, you can challenge that,
because toughness to me means all of those things. Like
(37:04):
you can be physically tough where you have to physically
fight through push through things. You can be mentally tough
if you want to call it that, where you got
to just absorb some things and be able to process
with it and deal with it and move on. But
then also, toughness has been vulnerable, It's been it's been
open to hearing other opinions, has been open to being
(37:24):
told whether you're doing it doing good job or bad
job or whatever it is, is being open to sharing
with the people around you how much you love them
in a very public place like that's toughness too.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
There's nothing soft about that.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
This this idea around uh, this this contrast between toughness
and being sold, it's just to me, and I don't
know if it's just because I'm just more engaged in
this type of conversation what it just seems like it's
just getting crazy, you know, Like even in the last
conversation we had the last episode, we talked about Katt
Williams crying in the stands with his mom after the game,
(38:00):
and somehow people said, look, because of that, he can't
be a leader, even though everything he's done up until
that point has demonstrated leadership, even though everything he's done
up until that point has has demonstrated physical toughness and
mental toughness. Even though that everything he's done up to
that point, he's put everything about himself.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Into what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
And in this one moment of about a minute and
thirty seconds on camera that came for a lot of people,
that came crashing down. And to me, that's just a
bunch of nonsense, or like my grandmother will say, that's
a bunch of malarkey, and not because I just don't
I just don't buy into that. I don't buy into it.
And if you buy into it, and if you want
to have a conversation about it, I'm always open to
(38:41):
having having conversations about it.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
But at the end of the day, there are things
that you can do that allow you to be.
Speaker 2 (38:53):
Proactive around the holidays, and not just holidays, but just
in general, but especially during the holidays, to be proactive
in how you go about preparing yourself to handle the
emotional high stress, high anxiety UH situations you're going into.
And then also to help you look at the year
(39:13):
that has gone by and look forward to the year
that is coming up with more clarity, more truth, more honesty,
and more reality and and less through this lens of
of of the of the distortions that we're telling ourselves.
And then the other part is defining for yourself this
(39:36):
idea around UH toughness or these these roles that we
tend to fall into because our culture says that's what
it's supposed to be, and and no one's challenging the
culture that way. But but you should be able to
challenge those things, and you should be able to as
a man.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
That is November Mental Health a month for men as
a man you can challenge that you can you can
be the person that you want to be, live the
way that you want to live, and not have to
fall into the traps of some of this other stuff.
And so this has been actually episode number ten, which
to me is probably some type of you know, celebratory number.
(40:17):
And so I just want to say to the people
that have been listening and tune it in, thank you.
Thank you for allowing me to have the space to
share my story and to share this thing that is
passionate to me. Thank you for giving me the high
fives when I see out in public and at the
games and having conversations around it. I hope that it
is sparking conversations in your life and giving you some
(40:41):
resources and strategies to find to get help, find help
stay healthy and do the whole thing. We will have
I don't think this is dropping in the next few days,
so it's probably gonna drop next week sometime. But like
I said, we're trying to be on a schedule of
doing this every other week. We're gonna have UH Farmer
(41:02):
and current UH Seahawks that we're gonna interview. You can
find us on seahawks dot com. You can find us
on YouTube dot com Slash Seahawks. You can find us
on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all the other podcast platforms. And
like we always say around here, uh it's okay to
not be okay. If you need help, reach out to
(41:25):
your medical medical provider for guidance. And when you need
help and you ask for help, you're operating from a
position of power. Have a great holiday season and peace
and amount