June 23, 2025 • 27 mins
This is the most vulnerable we’ve ever been on the podcast.In this episode of Fatherhood Unscripted, it’s just Alec and DJ—no guests, no filters—sharing the mental health struggles we’ve kept hidden for years. We’re opening up about our personal experiences with depression, suicidal thoughts, and the silent battles we fought as men and as fathers.🎯 Why are we sharing this?Because too many men are suffering in silence.Because fatherhood isn’t just beautiful—it can also be brutally hard.And because if our stories can help even one dad realize he’s not alone, it’s worth it.We talk about:✅ Hitting rock bottom as new dads✅ The pressures men face to be strong, providers, and emotionally silent✅ How childhood trauma and father wounds carry into adulthood✅ The unexpected moments that saved us—like our kids, our spouses, and our faith✅ Why therapy, community, and vulnerability are not weaknesses✅ How to break generational cycles and finally healIf you’re a dad, a husband, a man struggling with your mental health—this is for you. We’re not licensed therapists, but we’re in the fight with you. This episode is a raw look at what happens when fatherhood and depression collide… and how hope can still rise in the middle of it all.👥 Join the MovementWe created a free community for faith-driven fathers called Rooted in Brotherhood—where real men talk about real things like fatherhood, mental health, faith, and legacy.👉 Click the link below to join. Don’t do this alone.https://www.facebook.com/groups/282732511309028/🙌 We believe in you. We love you. And more importantly—God loves you. There’s nothing you can do about it.📲 Like, comment, subscribe, and share this with a dad who needs to hear it. You never know the battle someone is silently fighting.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey guys, before we jump in today's episode, we just want to
give you a quick heads up. This conversation is a heavier
than most and in honor of Men's Mental Health Month, we're
opening up about our personal experiences with depression,
suicidal thoughts, and the moments that nearly took us out.
We're not therapists, we're justtwo dads who have walked through
the dark and still learning to talk about it.
If you're in a tough place, please know this, you are not
(00:22):
alone. This episode is about real pain,
real healing, and real reasons we're still here.
We're sharing our stories not for pity, but for the dad, the
man, or the person out there whomight need to hear it.
If that's you, we're glad you'rehere.
Let's jump into it. What's going on, everybody?
It is DJ and Alec, another solo episode for you.
(00:48):
I know it's weird. You don't have a guest on.
It's just us. And if you want to click out of
here because it's just us and you don't want to hear us, no,
go ahead. But we would think that you'd
come back time and time again tosee us.
So yeah. Yeah.
(01:08):
Were you? Me and DJ were kind of talking
about like, all right, what do we want to do in this episode?
Last episode, you guys got the resources and we kind of gave
you the keys and the tools to help when you're down, help when
you're in tough spot, just things you can use to talk and
get out of your own head. Essentially this episode, we're
(01:30):
kind of going to get a vulnerable little bit.
We've talked about this stuff onthis episode on the podcast.
I think it's been a while since we've actually gone deep into
it, but because it is men's mental health month and because
this is our final solo episode of the month, we were we decided
that we're just going to kind ofgive.
I guess people would say it's our testimony a little bit, but
(01:53):
it's it's our, it's our since it's not weird, but it's our
suicide stories. It's just you guys know our kind
of our background. We both went through really dark
spots in our lives. And I don't think we've just
spelled out the entire story andjust come out and just made a
whole episode on our why and ourreasoning behind things.
Do you don't know if you want togo first?
(02:15):
You want me to go first? We can kind of just get into
things. Yeah, so for me, a really dark
points in life came when life should be full of joy.
And I guess like, that's one thing to note, like depression
(02:37):
doesn't favor situations. So you can get into this mode.
Like I should be joyful right now.
I should. Don't be hard on yourself.
Depression isn't saying I'll wait until joy shouldn't be
present. Oh, a lot of times depression is
in moments where joy should be present.
(02:59):
And you're going to feel this disconnect like, wait, why?
Why am I not like present? Why am I not joyful?
And so for me, it was when Nate was born.
And all of you guys know that later, probably a year after he
was born, I got my diagnosis of ADHD and that helped a ton.
(03:24):
What happened to that point? I had been going through life
shoving things down. I was taught at a very early
age, especially by my mom, that's this is how we deal with
things. When dad yells, when dad throws
things and breaks things, we just shove it down.
I remember my mom would scratch her arms until they bled.
(03:47):
Pushing stuff down, inflicting pain onto yourself.
Yeah. So what did I do?
Well, when things got tough and dark and I shoved things down, I
there have been quite a few times that I would hit the wall
as hard as I could to where my fists and my hands were hurting.
(04:11):
I would hit my head multiple times.
This is how I learned how to deal with things.
And so by the point Nate was born, I bet if I say that when
you have your first child or when you have your first and
second child, whatever. When you have children, it's
either you exit from their life and don't deal with the crap or
(04:36):
which a lot of good dads do, they want to be present so you
have to deal with the crap. It brings everything to a head
and I didn't know what was goingoff my brain.
I especially I I got sensory overload.
Nate was crying. Life was a little bit more
(04:57):
stressful. We have a kid we have to provide
for. This is also during COVID.
So like the world was all kinds of different.
Nobody knew what was going to happen the next day or happened
the next month. And so we just, yeah, it was
just a bunch of uncertainty and all of that.
(05:20):
I remember getting to a point where like, I just decided that
I didn't want to live anymore. Just decided that people would
be better off without me. That like my own child doesn't
deserve that. I yell and I explode and I, you
(05:42):
know, have a brain that feels like it's jacked up and I just
feel like I'm just going to do more damage than good.
And yeah, I thought about multiple ways.
I thought about the one way of, you know, is it carbon monoxide
poisoning? I that was probably the easiest
(06:03):
accessible way of doing things. I thought about that quite a
bit. You know, it did cross my mind
to, I mean, firearms are something that is one of the
most common ways that people kill themselves And I, you know,
they're accessible and, you know, anybody can buy them.
(06:25):
So it went through my head, but I remember kind of what kind of
pulled me out is I was really thinking about it one night,
like really wanting to do it. I just remember Nate had to be 6
months old, seven months old maybe.
(06:46):
And I just remember he kept wanting me.
Like, I don't know, like you're spiritual, You're not spiritual
for me. I am spiritual.
And I felt like God was saying in that moment, like he was
using Nate to say stay. He was using Nate to say like,
your child actually wants you. And like today, Nate and I,
(07:12):
today is June 14th. We're recording a couple
episodes. Anyways, today Nate is super
excited to go on a date with me.And I think about times where I
wanted to and these are the times that I would miss and
anytime that I got to the bottomand, you know, I have like,
(07:35):
again, depression isn't it can be a lifelong thing, guys.
It's there may be times where everything is good.
Then there's times where it justcomes flooding back and you feel
like, you know, you need to reach out and you feel like
you're in dark places again. But every time I've ever gotten
close to being in dark places again, I just think about the
(07:56):
times I'm going to mess with my kids.
Like I won't be here and I won'tget to spend time with them and
I won't get to see them graduateor I won't get to see the big
milestones in their life or be at the sporting events if they
play sports or, you know, be at their dancing recitals or just
everything that I'm going to miss because I'm not here.
And like these moments like whenNate is saying that he wants to
(08:18):
go on, like he's excited to go on a date with me today or when
I took Rylan to Chick-fil-A, they had a daddy daughter date
night there and they gave us a rose and did a Polaroid picture.
Like she was super excited to goon a date with me and then super
excited after the fact. Like she talks about it.
We actually took her on a date. I took on a date to Burger King.
(08:42):
I had to get some ice cream playon the play place in there.
And she every time we drive by that Burger King, she's like
daddy. That's why we went on a date,
like super excited. So yeah, these are the moments
that pulled me out of the darkness.
These are the moments. And this is this is my story.
This is a part of me. You know, I used to be ashamed
(09:05):
of talking about these things. I used to be like, I wouldn't
tell anybody that I would hit a wall or hit my head or
physically harm myself because like, I didn't know how to deal
with these emotions that were coming up and the only way to
shove them down was to hurt myself, you know, 'cause
physical pain. So the emotional pain would go
(09:26):
away. Little did I know that emotional
pain never goes away. It's just always there, you
know, and we'll come flooding back at random moments.
And we kind of talked about an episode that's coming out in
July. We kind of talked about it with
our guest, you know, when these things come up, like we thought
(09:48):
we, you know, maybe we thought you dealt with them, and they
just come flooding back and theyaffect those around you.
And so, yeah, here's my story. Take it for what you will.
Hopefully it's hope that you canmake it through.
It doesn't last forever, but I need to do a lot of work on
(10:11):
myself. And it's an uphill battle, but
not an impossible battle. So yeah.
It's a sucky battle, definitely it's a sucky battle because it's
a hard thing to go through. All right, my turn.
I guess I'm going to make everyone cry, I guess.
(10:33):
I mean, I was perfect. I was the the the ideal society
guy just had a perfect. No, you guys know my back story.
I grew up with my stepdad. My real dad wasn't there.
And because of that, you know, it's like I I think I feel a
lot. It's like, well, why do I still
feel like I was alone even though my stepdad was there?
(10:55):
But it's like, you want that. You want your real dad to want
you, you know? And so growing up with that on
my shoulder and then becoming a dad and not really knowing what
I was getting into, we moved to California when our my daughter
was one and my son had just turned 3.
(11:17):
And so from going around in Vegas where we had DJ and
Jasmine, we had parent, we had grandparents, we had family and
we had to help to them being alone in California, not knowing
anybody, people being hours away.
So we didn't help. It wasn't going to come anytime
soon. It started me on this path of
defeat. I guess that's the best word I
(11:39):
can think of. And you just feel tired.
And then we're moving here, you know, I went through a few
different jobs and trying to like figure out where I fit and
what would be good and like, should I work days or nights
because my wife worked days. And then I found a job.
I found, I won't talk about it because I'm, I'm legally not OK
to, I found a job I really liked.
(12:00):
It was in a tech industry, really, really cool job, really,
really cool guys to work with. And I honestly, I, I've been
working myself up to where I was.
I was a manager in the company and I was we're killing it.
And literally on Friday, I was talking to Karina and my wife
about how I was probably the happiest I've been in my life.
(12:23):
We were financially OK. We had a nice place.
We saw a nice place. I shouldn't say that we had our
kids were both going to daycare like stupid expensive daycare
guys like I'll, I'll toot my ownhorn a little bit.
Like they were in like a really nice place.
We were good, really, really, really good.
Worked our butts off to get where we were in life.
(12:43):
And then on Monday, no warning, the company shut down.
They're like, oh, come get your stuff close up everything We're
we're selling all the stuff the company and Bruce got and some
from going every day, seeing allthese dudes that I loved hanging
out with like you get along withyou just kind of build that
brotherhood. Shout out to Rudy Brotherhouse.
We're building it and then beingat home 24/7 by myself for the
(13:09):
most part. And you get in your own head.
And when the Bible talks about how the enemy attacks when
you're alone, that's exactly what happened.
Because every thought like, whatdo I do?
What do I do is like, OK, well, I'm just going to get a new job
and I'll just be fine, y'all? It's been 4 years, three years
and I still don't have a job. Why?
Because economy sucks. We don't talk about the other
(13:31):
book. And so because of the feeling of
not being wanted from companies,which brought back all the crap
from not being wanted from my dad, I started to get into this
mental space where I was just like, shoot, like I'm bringing
nothing to the table financially.
I thought this is the issue is Ithought I was not bringing
(13:53):
anything to the table when it came to parenting, which I was.
We'll get him that minute. And you start spiraling and
spiraling and you just when you're home by yourself and you
just every possibility comes your head.
And so I was like, well, if I'm not doing anything to help
anybody and no one wants me around, I'll just kind of not be
(14:14):
here anymore. And so I had thought about, you
know, I, I'm the, I'm the chef in my house.
And so I've got a lot of knives.I was like, it could have been
real easy to slip while I'm cooking.
It could have been really easy to disappear while no one's
home, you know, like the same thing DJ said, like I got a
garage downstairs. It could have been real easy and
(14:35):
it and it sucks to like go back and think about it like I had
thought about writing a suicide note to my wife.
And you know, the most mess partmessed up part about it is like
from the time me and my wife started dating to even now, I
wrote her one a couple days ago.We write love letters to each
other. Not I mean, I don't think
anybody knows this about us because it's just our thing.
(14:56):
But I'll write her name and there's a certain way I write
her name on the top of it foldedup.
I write something cute in the note, like, Can you imagine
waking up in the morning? This is my wife's perspective
thinking you're getting a love letter and it's your husband
telling you like, hey, sorry, I'm I'm going to kill myself.
Like that's messed up. Like you take something so
(15:16):
innocent and you just destroy it.
Like, and so I like, I sat in myroom, I cried.
I was like, I can't do this to her.
So you kind of push through and like DJ said, depression.
It doesn't stop. Like I go through like last
week, I was having a hard week and it's like I feel like even
our podcast is killing it right now.
(15:37):
Like I feel like we're doing nothing and I feel like we're
just like nothing's happening. And so I just, I didn't want to
ruin that for her. So that kind of kept me going.
And then I was I was at a breaking point.
I broke down to her. I was like, listen, if we didn't
have kids, if I didn't have you,I would not be her.
Like I would be, I'd be gone. I would have killed myself a
while ago. I just feel useless and I just
(15:59):
feel like garbage, like there's no one wants me.
And so she just talked to me. She's like, you know, we do want
you and stuff. And then she had to, we could
always move by and I just got kind of got worse.
And she's like, Alec, listen, you don't have to talk to me
about it, but I need you to get help.
And so that day, like it was a rough day.
And then I went and picked my daughter from the school and
(16:20):
I've talked about this a little bit, but we're walking from the
school and just out of nowhere, like my, she was five at the
time. It's like, I want a new dad.
I was like, what? She's like, yeah, you're not a
you're not a good dad. Like, you know, kids are
brutally honest. And it sucked.
Like, it just broke me. I was like, OK, well, this is
(16:41):
the the lowest. I thought I was low a couple
weeks ago. And I was like, oh, I'm just
going to do it. And now I just get beaten,
beaten, beaten. And so that day was the day I
kind of was like, screw it. I'm done, not done life wise.
I'm like, I can't do this anymore.
Like I had to figure out my life.
(17:01):
And I think like a month or two later is when we started the
podcast, we started getting things out and talking through
the issue guys is no one wants to talk about things.
And if you want to take anythingfrom my story, it's talk to
people because I started going to counseling and getting out,
started talking DJ about things.And just if you don't have a
friend like me, DJ have known each other for our whole lives.
(17:22):
We know when something's wrong with each other.
You don't have that. Reach out to someone like I'd
use Betterhelp and it's it's, it's there to resources.
People want to talk to you to help you talk to us like we want
to help you out. We're not, we're not telling you
our stories for pity because we don't want it.
We're telling you our stories because we want to use what
(17:45):
we've learned coming out of our trauma, coming out of our crap
to maybe help you come out of yours because it's hard when
you're in those places. You don't see the light at the
end of the tunnel. Well, you don't see the, the,
the good stuff of the tunnel. I should say light at the end of
the tunnel because yeah, you don't see the, the, the future.
(18:10):
You just see. Well, I just got to.
It's never going to stop. And that's the hardest thing to
do is get out of that mindset and change it to go, OK, how do
I fix this? I like DJ said, depression
doesn't favor the situation because you can go through
amazing day, like you'd be having a birthday or you could
(18:30):
be having the best day of your life and be in the worst season
of your life. So I just, I say that just to
help you guys, just if you feel any of that, if you feel like
you're going through any of thatsituation of that of me and DJ
have gone through, just talk to people.
Guys like we, when we say we love you, like it doesn't, it's
(18:52):
not just like, oh, love you. Like we genuinely want to help
you and we genuinely love you because we want to see you
succeed and be the man your wifeand the husband or the dad your
kids need. Like we want to see you at your
full potential. Like you guys, it's June and
we've sent it a lot. 40% of men deal with depression and
(19:18):
suicidal thoughts. Men or I think it's the same
it's like 40 to 60% higher of killing themselves than women
because women they talk about everything.
Y'all like if that's something we can take from them with, just
talk about it. We're so in our own heads about
things and we so like society has beaten us to a point where
(19:40):
it's like you can't talk about anything.
You just have to hold everythingin.
You have to be tough. You have to be a man, which I
think it's more manly. And it shows how mature and
tough you are by actually talking about things because
that is way harder than just holding it in.
(20:00):
And so like, you know, talk about it.
That's that's been, that's the best thing I say is just get it
out. Yeah.
Yep, I, to reiterate what Alec is saying, communication, I
here's what I do. I dare you right now to
communicate to somebody how you're feeling and what's going
(20:23):
on inside. And I bet like I can put some
money down on this, that when you talk to somebody, part of
that burden, you'll feel be lifted almost like you feel like
for the first time in a very long time, you could take it a
breath. Like it doesn't feel like it's
so heavy and it doesn't feel like it's so weighed down.
(20:44):
Like you feel like you're you'repopping up a little bit.
Like I can breathe. My lungs are open.
And I'm telling you, once you get just a tidbit of that
feeling. You're like.
I see why they say communicate. I see why they say talk to
somebody and get this. We literally started talking to
(21:05):
each other about this. Then we started having guests on
our podcast and we start talkingto them about this.
I'm telling you, everybody, likeall these men that we've had on,
they have gone through similar struggles and we started to
realize. Oh.
It's not just us, we're not broken, it's just life.
(21:28):
Life hits you and especially when up until this point, I
think our generation is really our generation of the
generations after us are really pushing mental health and really
want to get to a healthy spot. All areas physically, mentally,
emotionally, spiritually, like you talk about it, we we want to
(21:50):
get really healthy and we're starting to do what's right for
our children versus our parents.They just kept rolling with what
they were taught and then their parents before them were just
rolling with what they are taught.
And then, you know, that cycle, that generational curse or
generational cycle, however you want to look at it, just keeps
(22:12):
on going. But now that we have kids, we're
like, we don't want the same thing for them.
We don't want the same crap thatwe had to deal with.
So everything comes up, life happens, It's time to deal with
it. It's time to rise up and become
the version of yourself that youdeserve.
The version of yourself that your kids deserve, the version
(22:34):
of yourself that your spouse deserves.
And you know once you've createdthis nuclear family like this is
what is most important. Forget about hurting your
parents feelings because you were hurt by them and you don't
want to tell them that you were hurt by them.
If that affects your relationship with them, there's
(22:56):
something wrong with them. There's something that they
haven't dealt with, but don't let it affect you.
You get it out. You say, Mom, Dad, this is how I
felt. I, I talk about this all the
time. I told my dad you made me feel
unsafe when I was a kid. If that affected our
relationship, so be it. But that was the truth.
And guess what? Your your healing that's giving
(23:17):
you giving yourself healing too,so.
Give yourself permission to healby, you know, I just tell the
truth because now your responsibility and we, the
episodes coming out in July, we talked about this.
Your responsibility now is to your spouse and to your kids
like that is. And part of that is getting the
(23:39):
healing that you need. So yeah, we're here for you.
We we talked about a little bit with Tanner from the new
therapy. He's talked about tools, having
a tool belt where men, we want to fix things, right?
So use the resources we've provided, use the resources from
everywhere else, fix things likewe want to fix those
(24:00):
generational curses that are fans that are parents.
And listen, this is nothing against our parents because they
didn't know. We didn't know.
It's just we lived in a time in society where people are
speaking out about things now. And why wouldn't you want to
take advantage of that? Fix your life, fix your family,
fix your relationships. It's hard and it's going to take
(24:22):
a little bit of time, but it's worth it 100%. 100% guys, we, we
love you truly. We if you're listening for this
for the first time, this is the podcast.
She's someone to con upon and like, maybe you've had these
thoughts, whatever. And you're like, they don't
really know me. They can't love me.
I am telling you there has not been a person I may not like
(24:45):
people like there's times where I don't like them all right, but
I genuinely care and love about love people.
And even if I met you for the first time, I would tell you,
you know, I love you. You know, we had a pastor on and
this is a pastor that Alec and Igrew up with.
And he always said this and he got it from a pastor, but he
(25:08):
said, I love you, God loves you and there's nothing you can do
about it. And if something rings so true
in both our lives, is that very saying that saying, probably I
can speak for myself and Alec will probably agree if this is
for him. But from that pastor, that line
alone impacted me the most. Like somebody actually cares,
(25:32):
loves me, God loves me. And there's nothing that I can
do to ever change that. And that's how we live our
lives. We we want, we want this.
Why we build this community because we love you guys.
We feel like like we know God loves you and like literally
nothing you can do about it. So take that.
There is somebody who cares about you.
(25:53):
There is somebody who wants to see you live and stay another
day, stay another year, 1520, thirty years.
You know, we want, we want you to continue living and not
succumb to the dark thoughts you're having because those are
temporary. We'll help you get to the place
(26:14):
where you can. You know, we're not therapist or
anything. We, we're building a community
where we can stand side by side with you in the thick of the
battle and fight some of the demons with you and get you to
the point where you can get to atherapist and they can take you
the distance that you need to goto get healthy.
But. Yeah, awesome.
Well, we hope this helped you guys.
(26:37):
Like I said, it's not a sob story.
We don't want pity. We just want to show you guys
that like we all go through things that might be a little
different, but for the most part, we all go through a lot of
the same stuff. So I did you said we love you
guys and we hope you're going tolock notice.
If you guys aren't already following, please follow
subscribe all the things. Share with people that you know
(27:00):
need to hear this. Yeah.
And we'll see you guys in the next episode later.
Hey guys, before we jump in today's episode, we just want to
give you a quick heads up. This conversation is a heavier
than most and in honor of Men's Mental Health Month, we're
opening up about our personal experiences with depression,
suicidal thoughts, and the moments that nearly took us out.
We're not therapists, we're justtwo dads who have walked through
the dark and still learning to talk about it.
If you're in a tough place, please know this, you are not
(00:22):
alone. This episode is about real pain,
real healing, and real reasons we're still here.
We're sharing our stories not for pity, but for the dad, the
man, or the person out there whomight need to hear it.
If that's you, we're glad you'rehere.
Let's jump into it. What's going on, everybody?
It is DJ and Alec, another solo episode for you.
(00:48):
I know it's weird. You don't have a guest on.
It's just us. And if you want to click out of
here because it's just us and you don't want to hear us, no,
go ahead. But we would think that you'd
come back time and time again tosee us.
So yeah. Yeah.
(01:08):
Were you? Me and DJ were kind of talking
about like, all right, what do we want to do in this episode?
Last episode, you guys got the resources and we kind of gave
you the keys and the tools to help when you're down, help when
you're in tough spot, just things you can use to talk and
get out of your own head. Essentially this episode, we're
(01:30):
kind of going to get a vulnerable little bit.
We've talked about this stuff onthis episode on the podcast.
I think it's been a while since we've actually gone deep into
it, but because it is men's mental health month and because
this is our final solo episode of the month, we were we decided
that we're just going to kind ofgive.
I guess people would say it's our testimony a little bit, but
(01:53):
it's it's our, it's our since it's not weird, but it's our
suicide stories. It's just you guys know our kind
of our background. We both went through really dark
spots in our lives. And I don't think we've just
spelled out the entire story andjust come out and just made a
whole episode on our why and ourreasoning behind things.
Do you don't know if you want togo first?
(02:15):
You want me to go first? We can kind of just get into
things. Yeah, so for me, a really dark
points in life came when life should be full of joy.
And I guess like, that's one thing to note, like depression
(02:37):
doesn't favor situations. So you can get into this mode.
Like I should be joyful right now.
I should. Don't be hard on yourself.
Depression isn't saying I'll wait until joy shouldn't be
present. Oh, a lot of times depression is
in moments where joy should be present.
(02:59):
And you're going to feel this disconnect like, wait, why?
Why am I not like present? Why am I not joyful?
And so for me, it was when Nate was born.
And all of you guys know that later, probably a year after he
was born, I got my diagnosis of ADHD and that helped a ton.
(03:24):
What happened to that point? I had been going through life
shoving things down. I was taught at a very early
age, especially by my mom, that's this is how we deal with
things. When dad yells, when dad throws
things and breaks things, we just shove it down.
I remember my mom would scratch her arms until they bled.
(03:47):
Pushing stuff down, inflicting pain onto yourself.
Yeah. So what did I do?
Well, when things got tough and dark and I shoved things down, I
there have been quite a few times that I would hit the wall
as hard as I could to where my fists and my hands were hurting.
(04:11):
I would hit my head multiple times.
This is how I learned how to deal with things.
And so by the point Nate was born, I bet if I say that when
you have your first child or when you have your first and
second child, whatever. When you have children, it's
either you exit from their life and don't deal with the crap or
(04:36):
which a lot of good dads do, they want to be present so you
have to deal with the crap. It brings everything to a head
and I didn't know what was goingoff my brain.
I especially I I got sensory overload.
Nate was crying. Life was a little bit more
(04:57):
stressful. We have a kid we have to provide
for. This is also during COVID.
So like the world was all kinds of different.
Nobody knew what was going to happen the next day or happened
the next month. And so we just, yeah, it was
just a bunch of uncertainty and all of that.
(05:20):
I remember getting to a point where like, I just decided that
I didn't want to live anymore. Just decided that people would
be better off without me. That like my own child doesn't
deserve that. I yell and I explode and I, you
(05:42):
know, have a brain that feels like it's jacked up and I just
feel like I'm just going to do more damage than good.
And yeah, I thought about multiple ways.
I thought about the one way of, you know, is it carbon monoxide
poisoning? I that was probably the easiest
(06:03):
accessible way of doing things. I thought about that quite a
bit. You know, it did cross my mind
to, I mean, firearms are something that is one of the
most common ways that people kill themselves And I, you know,
they're accessible and, you know, anybody can buy them.
(06:25):
So it went through my head, but I remember kind of what kind of
pulled me out is I was really thinking about it one night,
like really wanting to do it. I just remember Nate had to be 6
months old, seven months old maybe.
(06:46):
And I just remember he kept wanting me.
Like, I don't know, like you're spiritual, You're not spiritual
for me. I am spiritual.
And I felt like God was saying in that moment, like he was
using Nate to say stay. He was using Nate to say like,
your child actually wants you. And like today, Nate and I,
(07:12):
today is June 14th. We're recording a couple
episodes. Anyways, today Nate is super
excited to go on a date with me.And I think about times where I
wanted to and these are the times that I would miss and
anytime that I got to the bottomand, you know, I have like,
(07:35):
again, depression isn't it can be a lifelong thing, guys.
It's there may be times where everything is good.
Then there's times where it justcomes flooding back and you feel
like, you know, you need to reach out and you feel like
you're in dark places again. But every time I've ever gotten
close to being in dark places again, I just think about the
(07:56):
times I'm going to mess with my kids.
Like I won't be here and I won'tget to spend time with them and
I won't get to see them graduateor I won't get to see the big
milestones in their life or be at the sporting events if they
play sports or, you know, be at their dancing recitals or just
everything that I'm going to miss because I'm not here.
And like these moments like whenNate is saying that he wants to
(08:18):
go on, like he's excited to go on a date with me today or when
I took Rylan to Chick-fil-A, they had a daddy daughter date
night there and they gave us a rose and did a Polaroid picture.
Like she was super excited to goon a date with me and then super
excited after the fact. Like she talks about it.
We actually took her on a date. I took on a date to Burger King.
(08:42):
I had to get some ice cream playon the play place in there.
And she every time we drive by that Burger King, she's like
daddy. That's why we went on a date,
like super excited. So yeah, these are the moments
that pulled me out of the darkness.
These are the moments. And this is this is my story.
This is a part of me. You know, I used to be ashamed
(09:05):
of talking about these things. I used to be like, I wouldn't
tell anybody that I would hit a wall or hit my head or
physically harm myself because like, I didn't know how to deal
with these emotions that were coming up and the only way to
shove them down was to hurt myself, you know, 'cause
physical pain. So the emotional pain would go
(09:26):
away. Little did I know that emotional
pain never goes away. It's just always there, you
know, and we'll come flooding back at random moments.
And we kind of talked about an episode that's coming out in
July. We kind of talked about it with
our guest, you know, when these things come up, like we thought
(09:48):
we, you know, maybe we thought you dealt with them, and they
just come flooding back and theyaffect those around you.
And so, yeah, here's my story. Take it for what you will.
Hopefully it's hope that you canmake it through.
It doesn't last forever, but I need to do a lot of work on
(10:11):
myself. And it's an uphill battle, but
not an impossible battle. So yeah.
It's a sucky battle, definitely it's a sucky battle because it's
a hard thing to go through. All right, my turn.
I guess I'm going to make everyone cry, I guess.
(10:33):
I mean, I was perfect. I was the the the ideal society
guy just had a perfect. No, you guys know my back story.
I grew up with my stepdad. My real dad wasn't there.
And because of that, you know, it's like I I think I feel a
lot. It's like, well, why do I still
feel like I was alone even though my stepdad was there?
(10:55):
But it's like, you want that. You want your real dad to want
you, you know? And so growing up with that on
my shoulder and then becoming a dad and not really knowing what
I was getting into, we moved to California when our my daughter
was one and my son had just turned 3.
(11:17):
And so from going around in Vegas where we had DJ and
Jasmine, we had parent, we had grandparents, we had family and
we had to help to them being alone in California, not knowing
anybody, people being hours away.
So we didn't help. It wasn't going to come anytime
soon. It started me on this path of
defeat. I guess that's the best word I
(11:39):
can think of. And you just feel tired.
And then we're moving here, you know, I went through a few
different jobs and trying to like figure out where I fit and
what would be good and like, should I work days or nights
because my wife worked days. And then I found a job.
I found, I won't talk about it because I'm, I'm legally not OK
to, I found a job I really liked.
(12:00):
It was in a tech industry, really, really cool job, really,
really cool guys to work with. And I honestly, I, I've been
working myself up to where I was.
I was a manager in the company and I was we're killing it.
And literally on Friday, I was talking to Karina and my wife
about how I was probably the happiest I've been in my life.
(12:23):
We were financially OK. We had a nice place.
We saw a nice place. I shouldn't say that we had our
kids were both going to daycare like stupid expensive daycare
guys like I'll, I'll toot my ownhorn a little bit.
Like they were in like a really nice place.
We were good, really, really, really good.
Worked our butts off to get where we were in life.
(12:43):
And then on Monday, no warning, the company shut down.
They're like, oh, come get your stuff close up everything We're
we're selling all the stuff the company and Bruce got and some
from going every day, seeing allthese dudes that I loved hanging
out with like you get along withyou just kind of build that
brotherhood. Shout out to Rudy Brotherhouse.
We're building it and then beingat home 24/7 by myself for the
(13:09):
most part. And you get in your own head.
And when the Bible talks about how the enemy attacks when
you're alone, that's exactly what happened.
Because every thought like, whatdo I do?
What do I do is like, OK, well, I'm just going to get a new job
and I'll just be fine, y'all? It's been 4 years, three years
and I still don't have a job. Why?
Because economy sucks. We don't talk about the other
(13:31):
book. And so because of the feeling of
not being wanted from companies,which brought back all the crap
from not being wanted from my dad, I started to get into this
mental space where I was just like, shoot, like I'm bringing
nothing to the table financially.
I thought this is the issue is Ithought I was not bringing
(13:53):
anything to the table when it came to parenting, which I was.
We'll get him that minute. And you start spiraling and
spiraling and you just when you're home by yourself and you
just every possibility comes your head.
And so I was like, well, if I'm not doing anything to help
anybody and no one wants me around, I'll just kind of not be
(14:14):
here anymore. And so I had thought about, you
know, I, I'm the, I'm the chef in my house.
And so I've got a lot of knives.I was like, it could have been
real easy to slip while I'm cooking.
It could have been really easy to disappear while no one's
home, you know, like the same thing DJ said, like I got a
garage downstairs. It could have been real easy and
(14:35):
it and it sucks to like go back and think about it like I had
thought about writing a suicide note to my wife.
And you know, the most mess partmessed up part about it is like
from the time me and my wife started dating to even now, I
wrote her one a couple days ago.We write love letters to each
other. Not I mean, I don't think
anybody knows this about us because it's just our thing.
(14:56):
But I'll write her name and there's a certain way I write
her name on the top of it foldedup.
I write something cute in the note, like, Can you imagine
waking up in the morning? This is my wife's perspective
thinking you're getting a love letter and it's your husband
telling you like, hey, sorry, I'm I'm going to kill myself.
Like that's messed up. Like you take something so
(15:16):
innocent and you just destroy it.
Like, and so I like, I sat in myroom, I cried.
I was like, I can't do this to her.
So you kind of push through and like DJ said, depression.
It doesn't stop. Like I go through like last
week, I was having a hard week and it's like I feel like even
our podcast is killing it right now.
(15:37):
Like I feel like we're doing nothing and I feel like we're
just like nothing's happening. And so I just, I didn't want to
ruin that for her. So that kind of kept me going.
And then I was I was at a breaking point.
I broke down to her. I was like, listen, if we didn't
have kids, if I didn't have you,I would not be her.
Like I would be, I'd be gone. I would have killed myself a
while ago. I just feel useless and I just
(15:59):
feel like garbage, like there's no one wants me.
And so she just talked to me. She's like, you know, we do want
you and stuff. And then she had to, we could
always move by and I just got kind of got worse.
And she's like, Alec, listen, you don't have to talk to me
about it, but I need you to get help.
And so that day, like it was a rough day.
And then I went and picked my daughter from the school and
(16:20):
I've talked about this a little bit, but we're walking from the
school and just out of nowhere, like my, she was five at the
time. It's like, I want a new dad.
I was like, what? She's like, yeah, you're not a
you're not a good dad. Like, you know, kids are
brutally honest. And it sucked.
Like, it just broke me. I was like, OK, well, this is
(16:41):
the the lowest. I thought I was low a couple
weeks ago. And I was like, oh, I'm just
going to do it. And now I just get beaten,
beaten, beaten. And so that day was the day I
kind of was like, screw it. I'm done, not done life wise.
I'm like, I can't do this anymore.
Like I had to figure out my life.
(17:01):
And I think like a month or two later is when we started the
podcast, we started getting things out and talking through
the issue guys is no one wants to talk about things.
And if you want to take anythingfrom my story, it's talk to
people because I started going to counseling and getting out,
started talking DJ about things.And just if you don't have a
friend like me, DJ have known each other for our whole lives.
(17:22):
We know when something's wrong with each other.
You don't have that. Reach out to someone like I'd
use Betterhelp and it's it's, it's there to resources.
People want to talk to you to help you talk to us like we want
to help you out. We're not, we're not telling you
our stories for pity because we don't want it.
We're telling you our stories because we want to use what
(17:45):
we've learned coming out of our trauma, coming out of our crap
to maybe help you come out of yours because it's hard when
you're in those places. You don't see the light at the
end of the tunnel. Well, you don't see the, the,
the good stuff of the tunnel. I should say light at the end of
the tunnel because yeah, you don't see the, the, the future.
(18:10):
You just see. Well, I just got to.
It's never going to stop. And that's the hardest thing to
do is get out of that mindset and change it to go, OK, how do
I fix this? I like DJ said, depression
doesn't favor the situation because you can go through
amazing day, like you'd be having a birthday or you could
(18:30):
be having the best day of your life and be in the worst season
of your life. So I just, I say that just to
help you guys, just if you feel any of that, if you feel like
you're going through any of thatsituation of that of me and DJ
have gone through, just talk to people.
Guys like we, when we say we love you, like it doesn't, it's
(18:52):
not just like, oh, love you. Like we genuinely want to help
you and we genuinely love you because we want to see you
succeed and be the man your wifeand the husband or the dad your
kids need. Like we want to see you at your
full potential. Like you guys, it's June and
we've sent it a lot. 40% of men deal with depression and
(19:18):
suicidal thoughts. Men or I think it's the same
it's like 40 to 60% higher of killing themselves than women
because women they talk about everything.
Y'all like if that's something we can take from them with, just
talk about it. We're so in our own heads about
things and we so like society has beaten us to a point where
(19:40):
it's like you can't talk about anything.
You just have to hold everythingin.
You have to be tough. You have to be a man, which I
think it's more manly. And it shows how mature and
tough you are by actually talking about things because
that is way harder than just holding it in.
(20:00):
And so like, you know, talk about it.
That's that's been, that's the best thing I say is just get it
out. Yeah.
Yep, I, to reiterate what Alec is saying, communication, I
here's what I do. I dare you right now to
communicate to somebody how you're feeling and what's going
(20:23):
on inside. And I bet like I can put some
money down on this, that when you talk to somebody, part of
that burden, you'll feel be lifted almost like you feel like
for the first time in a very long time, you could take it a
breath. Like it doesn't feel like it's
so heavy and it doesn't feel like it's so weighed down.
(20:44):
Like you feel like you're you'repopping up a little bit.
Like I can breathe. My lungs are open.
And I'm telling you, once you get just a tidbit of that
feeling. You're like.
I see why they say communicate. I see why they say talk to
somebody and get this. We literally started talking to
(21:05):
each other about this. Then we started having guests on
our podcast and we start talkingto them about this.
I'm telling you, everybody, likeall these men that we've had on,
they have gone through similar struggles and we started to
realize. Oh.
It's not just us, we're not broken, it's just life.
(21:28):
Life hits you and especially when up until this point, I
think our generation is really our generation of the
generations after us are really pushing mental health and really
want to get to a healthy spot. All areas physically, mentally,
emotionally, spiritually, like you talk about it, we we want to
(21:50):
get really healthy and we're starting to do what's right for
our children versus our parents.They just kept rolling with what
they were taught and then their parents before them were just
rolling with what they are taught.
And then, you know, that cycle, that generational curse or
generational cycle, however you want to look at it, just keeps
(22:12):
on going. But now that we have kids, we're
like, we don't want the same thing for them.
We don't want the same crap thatwe had to deal with.
So everything comes up, life happens, It's time to deal with
it. It's time to rise up and become
the version of yourself that youdeserve.
The version of yourself that your kids deserve, the version
(22:34):
of yourself that your spouse deserves.
And you know once you've createdthis nuclear family like this is
what is most important. Forget about hurting your
parents feelings because you were hurt by them and you don't
want to tell them that you were hurt by them.
If that affects your relationship with them, there's
(22:56):
something wrong with them. There's something that they
haven't dealt with, but don't let it affect you.
You get it out. You say, Mom, Dad, this is how I
felt. I, I talk about this all the
time. I told my dad you made me feel
unsafe when I was a kid. If that affected our
relationship, so be it. But that was the truth.
And guess what? Your your healing that's giving
(23:17):
you giving yourself healing too,so.
Give yourself permission to healby, you know, I just tell the
truth because now your responsibility and we, the
episodes coming out in July, we talked about this.
Your responsibility now is to your spouse and to your kids
like that is. And part of that is getting the
(23:39):
healing that you need. So yeah, we're here for you.
We we talked about a little bit with Tanner from the new
therapy. He's talked about tools, having
a tool belt where men, we want to fix things, right?
So use the resources we've provided, use the resources from
everywhere else, fix things likewe want to fix those
(24:00):
generational curses that are fans that are parents.
And listen, this is nothing against our parents because they
didn't know. We didn't know.
It's just we lived in a time in society where people are
speaking out about things now. And why wouldn't you want to
take advantage of that? Fix your life, fix your family,
fix your relationships. It's hard and it's going to take
(24:22):
a little bit of time, but it's worth it 100%. 100% guys, we, we
love you truly. We if you're listening for this
for the first time, this is the podcast.
She's someone to con upon and like, maybe you've had these
thoughts, whatever. And you're like, they don't
really know me. They can't love me.
I am telling you there has not been a person I may not like
(24:45):
people like there's times where I don't like them all right, but
I genuinely care and love about love people.
And even if I met you for the first time, I would tell you,
you know, I love you. You know, we had a pastor on and
this is a pastor that Alec and Igrew up with.
And he always said this and he got it from a pastor, but he
(25:08):
said, I love you, God loves you and there's nothing you can do
about it. And if something rings so true
in both our lives, is that very saying that saying, probably I
can speak for myself and Alec will probably agree if this is
for him. But from that pastor, that line
alone impacted me the most. Like somebody actually cares,
(25:32):
loves me, God loves me. And there's nothing that I can
do to ever change that. And that's how we live our
lives. We we want, we want this.
Why we build this community because we love you guys.
We feel like like we know God loves you and like literally
nothing you can do about it. So take that.
There is somebody who cares about you.
(25:53):
There is somebody who wants to see you live and stay another
day, stay another year, 1520, thirty years.
You know, we want, we want you to continue living and not
succumb to the dark thoughts you're having because those are
temporary. We'll help you get to the place
(26:14):
where you can. You know, we're not therapist or
anything. We, we're building a community
where we can stand side by side with you in the thick of the
battle and fight some of the demons with you and get you to
the point where you can get to atherapist and they can take you
the distance that you need to goto get healthy.
But. Yeah, awesome.
Well, we hope this helped you guys.
(26:37):
Like I said, it's not a sob story.
We don't want pity. We just want to show you guys
that like we all go through things that might be a little
different, but for the most part, we all go through a lot of
the same stuff. So I did you said we love you
guys and we hope you're going tolock notice.
If you guys aren't already following, please follow
subscribe all the things. Share with people that you know
(27:00):
need to hear this. Yeah.
And we'll see you guys in the next episode later.
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