August 15, 2025 • 47 mins
The journey from trauma to healing isn't linear, especially for those who've served in uniform. In this deeply personal conversation, former law enforcement officer Jake reveals his harrowing battle with PTSD and the innovative path that led to his recovery.
After years of accumulated trauma in policing, Jake found himself trapped in a nightmare of panic attacks, sensory overload, and suicidal thoughts. Despite outward success in his new real estate career, he was silently crumbling behind closed doors—unable to enjoy family moments, startled by everyday sounds, and living in constant fear of losing control. His raw description of holding a gun to his head multiple times reveals the desperate reality many first responders face in silence.
Jake's breakthrough came through an unexpected source: ketamine-assisted therapy. With remarkable candor, he describes how this treatment quieted his hyperactive nervous system, allowing him to process traumatic memories without triggering panic. "I don't care that they're being loud," he recalls thinking about his children after treatment—a simple yet profound shift that signaled hope. The neuroplasticity promoted by ketamine helped rewire trauma responses that had seemed permanently hardwired into his brain.
Now working as a trauma recovery coach, Jake outlines his four-phase approach to healing: building community support, reconnecting with the body, removing external blockages, and creating sustainable recovery plans. His Guardian Rise online community offers free support to first responders walking similar paths. Jake's transformation from suicidal to supportive demonstrates that even the darkest trauma can become purposeful when channeled into helping others.
Ready to break free from trauma's grip? Connect with Jake through his link tree at linktr.ee/jakebelay or join his online community. Remember, as Jake emphasizes, "If you could have done it by now, you would have already done it." Sometimes the bravest act is reaching out for help.
If you or someone you know is in crisis and at risk of self-harm, please call or text 988, the suicide and crisis lifeline.
To contact us directly send an email to Dan@10-42project.org or call 515-350-6274
Visit our website! 10-42project.org
Check us out on social media!
Youtube: @1042project
Facebook: www.facebook.com/1042project
Instagram: 1042_project
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I think we'll just dance for a while.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You can do the dance and I'm not a dancer.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Dance with me, jake.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Shared Voices Podcast.
This is Dan, the director andthe founder of the 1042 Project.
Shared Voices Podcast is apodcast for first responders,
brought to you by firstresponders.
We talk about healing, we talkabout hope, we talk about our
stories and hopes to pointpeople towards healing and show
(00:34):
people a path towards healing.
We bring in our peers and wetalk about real life, jake, and
it's not always pretty.
It's not always pretty, man.
If you guys didn't listen tothe last episode, jake was on
the last episode.
This is a two-part series.
Who knows, maybe it'll be more.
We're going to have Jake on inthe future quite a bit.
He's agreed to come on fromtime to time when we need him
(00:56):
and help co-host with mesometimes.
But on the first part if youguys didn't get a chance
(01:17):
no-transcript Anniversary ofthat is this time of year and
how he moved his law enforcementcareer over to West Des Moines
where he got exposed to moretrauma during 2000s.
I'll let Jake do the talking.
But, jake, thanks for comingback for another episode.
I knew you and I were going tohave a ton to talk about, so I
(01:38):
wanted to do more than one, yeahglad to be here, one of them
with you, but man, yeah soyou're taking us through your
story man, and so you're takingus through your story man, and
so you're still policing back inthe day, you end up going out.
And what year did you go out?
And what year did you end uphanging it up?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
2023, 2023, you're hanging up the day my second son
was born, july 17th 2023 thatenough's, enough's, enough, just
burnout, struggling with PTSD,all of it.
Yeah, yeah.
Didn't realize it at the timebut just knew I was done.
(02:17):
Went on paternity leave.
Never went back.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Like I said, so yeah that last episode kind of wraps
up the how I, how I ended upwhere I was at, but all that
pain, right, all that pain youwent through, you know, and I
know you've only shared you'veonly shared a one percent of
your whole story um, yeah, but alot of pain, but now you're
(02:45):
using that pain for purpose.
So let's see how we transition,how you transition from you
dealing with all this pain andstruggling and I know you're not
perfect today just like I'm not, we're still right it's.
It's evan flow, we're, it's aprocess yeah, um so how did you
get from that what?
How did you go from I don'twant to live, I don't want to be
, don't want to do this stuff tono, I'm going to make sure I'm
(03:07):
here to walk alongside otherfirst responders and help coach
them through their trauma, toget their life and hope back.
What the heck happened.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, good question.
So, leaving law enforcement, Igot a real estate license and I
started selling houses and thatwas a really good choice for me
because I'm self-employed, so Ididn't have a schedule, I didn't
have a boss, and it gave me thefreedom to eventually do what I
needed to do to take care ofmyself.
(03:36):
But it also created a lot offree time and a lot of downtime,
which you don't have as a cop,and so I would find myself just
sitting at home.
You know, I'd get my work donefor real estate relatively quick
, and I'd just be sitting athome and I couldn't, I couldn't
relax.
(03:56):
Uh, I was always on edge, uh, Icouldn't.
I wasn't sleeping at all, um,and I was still having night
terrors and I was still.
You know, it very quicklybecame evident to me that
something was wrong.
I started to get overwhelmed bythe sound of my kids playing and
the sound of my wife doing thedishes, like just sitting in my
(04:18):
living room was so overwhelmingI would have to go upstairs and
hide in my room.
I literally you know, Iremember dozens of times five,
36 o'clock at night should behaving dinner with the family.
I'm upstairs under the coversjust trying to figure out why
everything's so uns, you know,so overstimulating, yep, and uh,
(04:39):
I didn't really know what to do.
I also had a couple of timeswhere we'd we'd be in the car,
whole family in the car, kids inthe backseat screaming, you
know, wife, on me aboutsomething traffic, you know, at
a standstill, and that thatscenario, same thing I I would
have to get out of the car, umand I just knew that that wasn't
right.
(05:00):
So naturally I I wanted to goand get some help.
I went and looked for atherapist.
I had some not so goodexperiences right away.
I ended up, thankfully, findinga therapist I connected with
relatively quickly.
But it was not.
It took a couple months and youknow pretty much.
(05:21):
Day one she said you have ADHDand you should try medication.
And I said I know I have ADHDbut I don't want to take
medication.
But anyway, she had a way ofconvincing me.
So I went and set up apsychiatry appointment.
I got prescribed medicine forADHD and the first day I took it
(05:43):
I went oh, like this is howpeople live.
This is how you're supposed tofeel, like you know, because I,
with ADHD, I've had it all mylife.
I remember being told I had itas a kid and so my, my existence
is this is how I describe it topeople.
I usually have about threestreams of thought going on at
(06:05):
once in my mind and uh, and alsoa song stuck in my head, you
know that's kind of just mybaseline.
It's just a lot of noise and andobviously that can that can
mean it doesn't take muchexternal stimulation to feel
over overstimulated.
But I just never knew, I didn'tknow what.
I didn't know until I took themedication.
(06:25):
And then, and then iteverything kind of quieted down
to one stream of thought at atime and I thought, man, maybe
there's something to thistherapy and psychiatry stuff
that they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Maybe it's not all just you know, I just, I just
had this mentality of it's.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It's not for me, it's for people weaker than me.
I just need to try harder andpush through harder and toughen
up and um, so, yeah, anyways, I,I, that was a, again a kind of
a honeymoon period, but I wasstarting to have panic attacks.
You know, you've called themepisodes.
(07:00):
I call them panic attacks,panic episodes where I would
completely lose control ofmyself and at times I would
become violent and destructivein ways that I would never
choose to do.
I scared my wife, I scared mykids, I scared myself.
I was also.
This led me to a very darkplace, because what happens when
(07:24):
you develop a panic disorderlike that is you can start to
panic about the possibility ofpanicking.
Panicking, yeah, it's like thisnegative feedback loop that
just goes over and over and overagain.
And this is really when thingsgot dark.
I got to a point where I wasvery, very suicidal because I
just couldn't see a way out andI just didn't believe that
(07:45):
anyone could possibly understandwhat I was dealing with and I
thought it was me against theworld and I thought if anybody
found out about it, I'd belocked up in the psych ward or,
you know, people would be forced, you know, trying to push my
wife to leave me.
Like I thought I was going tolose my wife, kids, thought I
was going to lose everything.
I thought, just if someonefound out what's going on with
(08:07):
me, I'm going to lose everything.
And so I tried my hardest tokeep it behind closed doors,
keep a lid on it.
My wife knew and I I mean Iremember even just begging with
her like can we like give me anopportunity to figure this out
before we go and tell everybodyabout it, because I don't know
how they're going to react andjust a real dark place to be.
And I, I, I was very, verysuicidal.
(08:32):
I several times left the housewith the intention of killing
myself.
I several times grabbed one ofmy pistols and held onto it and
looked at it, put it to my heada couple of times, thought about
, thought very long and hardabout doing it.
Just never could do it.
I just never could do it.
I just never could do it, andI'm glad, glad for that.
But I even beat myself up overthat at times.
(08:55):
You know I can't even do thisright, you know really I do.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
I have that thought too seriously yeah and uh.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
One morning in particular, I woke up.
I'm not, I'm not a big drinkerI like I to have some beers.
Don't get me wrong, I likewhiskey and beer, but I'm not a
get drunk all the time andeverything revolves around
liquor kind of guy Right.
But I started relying more andmore on it and I woke up one
night or one morning hungoverand had a gun on my lap and I
(09:26):
had no recollection of what Iwas doing.
I mean, I know what I was doing, but that that just that kind
of jolted me.
But I say all this just topaint the picture of where I was
at mentally.
I didn't.
I was hopeless, I was depressed, I was anxious.
All the time.
I was having panic attacks,night terrors, couldn't sleep,
couldn't sit still, but somehowstill managing to put this
(09:50):
appearance out to the world thateverything was fine.
I actually won well, realtorswin awards for just existing.
So don't act.
I'm not going to act like thisis a cool, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
You got to have something to hang up in your
office.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, I got my you know my 2024 last year.
This was, this was the worstyear.
The whole year was full of allof these symptoms and uh.
But at the same time I I got anaward for for producing six
figures in gross commissionincome in my first full years of
licensed real estate agent.
So I was like putting on thisfacade for the outside world and
(10:26):
then, behind closed doors, onlymy wife and I knew what was
going on and so just got stuckin that that loop, you know, and
I was.
I was wanting to find solutions,I was wanting to find support.
I had the therapist, I had thepsychiatrist, but it just I
couldn't.
I just got stuck.
I didn't know what to do, Icouldn't find a solution and I
(10:48):
got eventually got turned on toa trauma recovery coach of my
own.
Her name is Shannon Myers.
She is well known in this worldof trauma coaching Um, local,
local, iowa, or she's in DesMoines, and but she, she's
nationwide, known nationally inthis, in this world.
Um, and I, I didn't even havevery many appointments with her,
(11:11):
only a handful of appointments.
But what I got?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
out again what's that ?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
say her name again shannon myers, m-y-e-r-s.
Um, what she did for me inthose you know this handful of
appointments that we had was shegave me direction and she gave
me hope that I could recover,and the way she did that was
(11:36):
just telling me what treatmentswork and how to find them and
then what to expect from them.
She also introduced me into theworld of somatic experiencing
or somatic processing, which isall about identifying where in
your body the trauma is comingfrom, because trauma is stored
in the body.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And if you have PTSD or if you struggle with trauma
responses or panic episodes,chances are you have.
You have met, by the time youhave an episode, you have missed
several early warning signs inyour body, and so she gave me
the ability to widen the gapbetween when I felt the trigger
and when I snapped and went offinto these episodes and it just
(12:21):
I.
I just started building on thatmomentum, um, and she didn't.
You know, she didn't fixeverything overnight, and I and
and, and I only talked to her ahandful of times, but she
reignited my drive to live andmy belief that I could get
better.
A couple other things happenedthere.
During a particularly roughnight, my wife called her mom to
(12:44):
come over to the house and Ithought that was it.
I thought that we're gettingdivorced, losing the kids, I'm
just going to be a loser forever.
And I thought her mom's goingto show up and see what's going
on here and and we're done.
But but what happened was theexact opposite.
Her mom showed up, listened tous, listened to me, uh, really
(13:06):
heard me, and and really, reallysupported me and said I wish
you would have told me aboutthis sooner so I could have
helped.
And she offered and really,really supported me and said I
wish you would have told meabout this sooner so I could
have helped.
And she offered you know, ifyou need a different place to
stay, you can come to our house.
If you need help with anythingat all, uh, let us know.
You don't have to.
Basically, you don't have tolive like this, and you don't
have to be alone, and it justblew my mind.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Love like you can't even explain From my
mother-in-law.
Here's all this fear you had.
God steps in and says no, thatfear was all fake In fact.
How about all this love?
They just start loving on you.
Was it weird at first?
Honestly, it's weird.
Some people know for us firstresponders, we don't like praise
.
Sometimes we don't like to beloved on, especially when we
(13:50):
don't like praise.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Sometimes we don't like to be loved on, especially
when we haven't been loved onfor a while.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
That had to be a little weird at first.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
It was very weird.
It was very weird to be thatvulnerable for someone who's not
in my inner inner circle.
Actually, the next day afterthat, because that was kind of a
crisis night.
At the end of the night Idecided I'd go stay in an Airbnb
and then they could stay at thehouse, because it was kind of
(14:16):
this question of like should weleave you all alone together, or
could something bad happen?
And we all kind of agreed thatit'd be better for me to go
somewhere else.
So I went and stayed in anAirbnb and the next day I called
my mother-in-law and herhusband and we talked for like
two and a half three hours onthe phone and I just kind of
told them everything.
(14:37):
told them everything that hadbeen happening.
I mean there were signs.
You know, like to this day I'mmissing doors in my house
because I've destroyed them andI haven't replaced them yet, but
they were, you know, obviouslyscared to hear what was going on
but glad to have been broughtin.
(15:00):
And it I found this sense ofrelief, of letting it go, like
letting it be known and nothaving to hide it anymore.
That also built the momentumand so, as I started to feel
better, I started to just havethis desire to help other people
expedite this process, becauseinitially I didn't know what was
wrong with me.
It took me a long time tofigure out what was wrong with
(15:22):
me, and then I got a diagnosisof ADHD and PTSD and then I
didn't know what to do to getbetter it took a long time to
start getting better.
And it wasn't for a lack of adesire to get better.
I wanted to that whole time.
I just couldn't find acommunity of support, couldn't
find the right treatments on myown.
(15:44):
And I just felt like I was leftwith nothing to do but just
guess and check, trial and error.
So I tried a bunch of differentthings and some of them helped
a little, but really nothing.
Nothing helped a ton until, um,I got introduced to the, to the
world of psychedelics, um,psilocybin, mushrooms, and then
ketamine.
Ketamine is not technicallyclassified as a psychedelic drug
(16:06):
, but it acts similarly, andwhat those drugs did for me
therapeutically was give me acompletely different perspective
on my life and this is one ofthe things that Shannon
advocates for is the use ofpsychedelics in conjunction with
traditional treatments for PTSD.
(16:27):
And it gave me just acompletely different outlook on
my life and it made me realizethat, uh, I'm not separate from
everything else in the world,I'm part of everything else in
the world and I can't do thingsalone.
And also that, like, uh, Idon't need to feel so much shame
(16:47):
and guilt for having a disorder, and it just it continued to
build that hope, and so I did acouple of different psilocybin
trips.
That helped quite a bit.
And then I got connected with aclinic to do ketamine therapy
(17:08):
and I still do ketamine therapyonce a week and ketamine
ketamine therapy once a week.
And ketamine, ketamine was hadthe biggest impact on me of
anything.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, walk us through that, like a lot of people.
For some of our listeners,especially law enforcement,
you're in these terms or EMS isfire Anybody.
You're in these terms likeketamine, mushrooms, right,
things that we were, we weretold when we were a kid or you
know those horrible stuff.
But now psychedelics are beingproven to be very helpful for
PTSD.
I mean very commonly known nowto help.
(17:38):
But for some of you it maythrow you back in your seat a
little bit, but these are actualthings that people.
It's changing people's lives.
I want to give you guys all thedifferent perspectives of ways
to getting help, and one of themis this for some people.
So have an open mind to whathe's saying, because it works.
Um, so walk us through, jake,like why, what made you think to
(18:01):
go down this route of ketaminetrying shrooms?
Basically, because everythingelse failed yeah, I, I had done.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
I had done lots of different types of traditional
therapies that they'll help, butit's a very slow process and I
just had this sense of urgencybecause my wife was going to
leave me if I continued to havepanic episodes that scared her
to death.
She just was going to leave,and in my mind she should, and
(18:31):
rightfully so.
Uh, because these are episodeswhere I can't control myself,
and so how can?
I guarantee I'm not going to dosomething terrible.
Um, and so I had this reallyreal sense of urgency, like I
have to figure this out beforemy family falls apart, and so it
just led to this level ofdesperation that was actually
turned out to be the best giftI've ever been given, that gift
(18:53):
of desperation, and so I did thepsilocybin thing.
I was too.
I didn't have a guide.
I would say, if you're going togo down the road of psilocybin,
have a guide.
I'd be happy to talk to youabout what I know about it.
But because I didn't have aguide, I didn't want to go too
far with it, meaning I didn'twant to take.
(19:15):
I probably really didn't wantto take as big a dose as I
probably should have.
So I was kind of just half in onit.
But I was feeling, I felt some,some solid relief and some
solid shifts.
But it wasn't.
It wasn't like everything wasgood, it just was like another
step in the right direction.
So then I started reading aboutketamine therapy.
Like any cop, I'm like I don'twant to go and get myself doped
(19:40):
up with strangers.
I don't know what they're goingto do to me.
I don't know what.
You know, I like I just was tooparanoid.
I talked myself out of it amillion times and when I say
strangers, I'm talking about aphysician's assistant, a PA, you
know, like a medicalprofessional, and I, in my mind,
I'm like I'm going to get dopedup and they're going to steal
all my stuff and take funnypictures of me or something.
(20:01):
I don't know what I thought wasgoing to happen.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Your car's going to be sitting on blocks in the dry.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, yeah, and so I talked myself out of it so many
times, but then what ended up?
happening is my, my wife andsister are both nurses and they
work in the in the ER downtownUm and uh, they ended up, uh,
connecting with this PA thatworks, that does some work, some
shifts down there too.
Her name is Amanda and she alsoat the time was working at this
(20:29):
clinic, uh, doing ketaminetherapy kind of doing that for
the most part, and then she'dpick up shifts here and there in
the ER and they just happenedto cross paths and happened to
talk about it, and so my wifeconnects me with her in a text
thread and says here Amanda doesget my wife.
At this point it's basicallylike will you do something?
You know she's like here'sAmanda, she does ketamine, you
need to go do.
(20:50):
That is basically the message Igot.
And so I was like okay, I gotsomebody I can trust, personal
connection.
I'll go give it a shot and Iwish I'd have done it sooner.
The experience of doingketamine is very intense.
I say doing ketamine, it soundslike I'm at a party, but when
(21:13):
they give you the medicine, themethod that I've used is called
it's called spravato.
It's a nasally administeredform of ketamine and the process
looks like this you go and youhave a consult and decide if
it's right for you and you wantto try it, and obviously I
decided it was right for me, andso there's the.
It comes in a box with threedifferent containers, three
(21:33):
different nasal spray containers.
You do a shot in each nostril,wait five minutes, another shot
in each nostril, wait fiveminutes, third shot in each
nostril and from there you kindof get I call it.
You kind of get launched intothis place.
Call it, you kind of getlaunched into this place.
(21:54):
You don't completely disconnectfrom reality, but you do
dissociate from your body andyou do kind of have an altered
state of consciousness.
And it call it just.
It just calms your body andyour nervous system in a way
that's hard to describe, andwhat it gave me the ability to
do was, uh, process some ofthese memories, uh, without my
(22:16):
body reacting, because you'restill very conscious and alert.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
My processing sound.
Can you hear that?
Sorry, go ahead can you hearthe buttons I'm pushing?
I can't, I can't.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, all right, sorry, I'm like I'm a child no,
no, no, that that's all right, Idon't know.
Do whatever you need to do.
Make some silence.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
No, I was just making like mystical you were going
into your trip.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, oh yeah, it is a little mystical and what it
gave me the ability to do wasmentally go back to some of
these places, like the officerinvolved shooting incident or
some of I can probably point tonine or ten incidents on duty
that had a really big impact onme.
Yeah, um, and I knew, affectedme strongly and plus all the
(23:00):
little, you know, all the littlehammer incidents like you talk
about, just um, but I can goduring these ketamine sessions.
I can go there in my mind and Ican relive it and I can analyze
it and process it without mybody getting agitated and
working up and I just don't have, just wouldn't have, a reaction
, and so it's like starting tohelp me process some of these
things.
Um, and then the best partabout it is, between sessions,
(23:26):
my body just isn't.
It just isn't reactive.
It's not like it's completelyunreactive.
I I've still had a couple ofpanic episodes since I started
ketamine, but it it it went from, went from daily to I mean, I'm
really the last several monthshas been about maybe one a month
and the severity of it is somuch lower and I have the
(23:49):
ability to like, get myself outof it and so I'm just stuck in
it until I get exhausted.
So that's the best of benefitfor me, leaving the very first
appointment.
You have to have someone dropyou off and pick you up, and so
my wife picked me up.
The boys are in the back seatand we were going straight to
Ankeny, to her mom's house tocelebrate somebody's birthday.
(24:11):
I forget whose birthday it was.
But this is like a scenario forme where it's like, okay, we're
going to be in the car intraffic.
Also, it's hot for some reason.
I haven't figured out why, butbeing hot is a big trigger for
me.
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
You mentioned that yesterday and I wondered.
I was kind of sitting on that.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I haven't put the pieces together on that.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Well, I hope you get there someday.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
But anyway, I'm just painting the picture here.
This is a situation where I'vehad panic multiple times.
I was nervous about getting inthe car with my family and
driving to Ankeny.
That's the state I was in atthis time.
But I get in the car and I'mstill a little loopy and I sit
there and like the boys aregoing crazy in the back seat
already like my kids are justlike me.
(24:56):
They're nuts.
They never stop talking, theynever stop moving and I'm
sitting there.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I'm like I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
like it's the weirdest thing.
I don't.
I don't care.
Like I don't care that they'rebeing loud, like it's not
bothering, and I just thought,well you, the drug's still
active.
Like I'm not going to get myhopes up yet, like I just left,
like of course, like I'm dopedup, like of course I'm not going
to react, but we get up toAnkeny, bumper to bumper, rush
hour traffic and we're juststuck.
(25:23):
And this is another thing thatreally gets me is being stuck in
traffic.
And again I'm like I don't,like I don't care that I'm stuck
in traffic I don't know how todescribe this kept telling my
wife and she's like okay, youknow, all right, whatever, like
who cares.
Like I'm like I'm like mywife's name is reen, like brie,
I don't like the boys are beingloud and I don't care.
(25:44):
We're stuck in traffic and Idon't care.
And she's just like okay, goodand congratulations.
And next thing that happens isI can hear a siren behind us and
I look in the mirror andthere's a fire.
There's a fire truck and anambulance trying to come through
the get their way throughtraffic.
And it was.
It's that kind of I mean,you've you've run an emergency
vehicle yourself too.
(26:05):
It's.
It's one of those situationswhere, like, the cars are
basically just having to slowlypart to go off onto either
shoulder just to make justenough room for the emergency
vehicles to get through andthey're going so slow.
And so I'm like you know,obviously a siren and lights is
a trigger for someone with ptsdrelated to being a cop.
Yeah, and to me, still to thisday, when I hear a siren, it it
(26:28):
stops me, you know it, kind ofstops me and takes my mind there
it doesn't cause the same kindof reaction that it used to.
but I, I was just bracing, likein this front seat, just kind of
like okay, like don't, don'tworry about it, it's going to be
fine.
You know, like trying to prepmyself because this ambulance
it's coming, it's going to goright by us and soon enough it
ends up right next to our car towhere I could reach out and
(26:50):
touch it.
You know, I can reach out thewindow and touch this and the
sirens just going and the lightsare going and same thing.
I'm like I don't care, like Idon't know how to describe this.
I don't like it doesn't botherme, none of this bothered me and
I'm just, yeah, I'm just blownaway by the fact that I went and
did this random drug that Isnorted in my nose and now like,
(27:11):
yeah, yeah, now, now I'm like,I'm like having hope that I'm
not going to get triggered byall these things that have been
triggering me.
And so we get, we get, you know, the, the vehicles get through
and we get through traffic andwe get to the house.
And here's another scenariowhere the like little kids, they
get around their grandparentsand they go to next level, like
(27:32):
they.
You know, there's no rules atgrandma's house, kind of thing,
and so they're going extra crazy.
My in-laws don't believe in airconditioning and so it's hot oh
my gosh Hot in their house.
They hate air conditioning.
And you know, just being aroundthem and just being around all
that stimulation in particular,was difficult, had been
difficult, and it wasn't.
(27:54):
It just wasn't.
Every one of those things thathad been bothering me every
single time didn't bother me atall, and that's when I knew
ketamine was for real.
I have I learned with my traumacoach that my early warning sign
for a trauma activation or apanic response is a knot in my
(28:17):
stomach and it feels like rightbelow the bottom of my rib cage,
in the middle.
It feels like if someone couldsomehow stick their hand in
there and just grab what's everright there and just squeeze it.
It just feels like literallyjust just a big, just a big knot
.
And I didn't have that Likethat.
That was a feeling I had gottenso used to, feeling that I
(28:39):
didn't even know it was abnormal.
And so then when I startedhaving these, these, these
events happen that would causethat I, I was like bracing for
it and it never had would causethat I, I was like bracing for
it and it never had never showedup this day.
You know, I used to have thatknot in my stomach dozens of
times a day.
I just thought it was like partof being a human.
(28:59):
I don't know.
It's kind of like what I talkedabout with the Adderall and
ADHD.
I just thought that's howeverybody felt Right.
But it doesn't.
It just doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen that wayanymore.
And it's ketamine has taken mefrom daily panic episodes, daily
suicidal thoughts and ideationsthat you know coping with
alcohol, coping with whatever Ican.
(29:20):
It's taken me to, uh, maybe ina panic episode once a month.
I don't have any suicidalthoughts or ideations at all.
Every now and then, I mean, II'll always have that first
responder brain of like thatkind of like cynical tendency
where if something dumb happens,it's you know.
Every now and then I'll have afleeting thought of like I could
(29:41):
just, I could just opt out ofthis, you know right, but it's
not real.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It's not like I want to.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
It's like just that fleeting thought praise god man,
that's.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
That's great like it's given me, it's given me
freedom yeah, and some peoplemay not like that I say this,
but I give god the glory forthat.
I mean, god uses people, heuses his creations.
He's using medicine that's hereon earth to help fix people and
again, a lot of people poo pooon it and there's a stigma
attached with it.
(30:09):
But praise god for that beingthere to be able to help you
Absolutely.
And there's psychedelics,there's ketamine, there's
Ibogaine, I think is what it'scalled.
We talked about it the otherday.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I'm not opposed to these, jake, I'm not.
I'm not one of those peoplethat's like no, you have to do
it this way, yeah, so why do youhave to?
So why do you have to keepgoing back then?
So it's more than you.
(30:41):
Don't just go once and thenyou're done.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
There's an acute phase where you do it two or
three times a week and it'sbecause I'm going to butcher the
explanations because I'm not ascientist but ketamine promotes
neuroplasticity, which is just arewiring of the brain, and what
happens in your brain when youhave these trauma responses is
there's a neural pathway thatwill form and it basically makes
(31:04):
it so that there's an automatic, nearly automatic response from
trigger to reaction and theketamine, through whatever
mechanisms that I don't, I can'texplain it, but it promotes
rewiring of those, it changesthose neural pathways and I mean
it can be documented, it can bewitnessed you know, like
(31:25):
scientists I don't know how theydo that but, um, the during the
acute phases is kind of likethe loading phase and it's like
you really want to, basicallyreally just attacking it.
You're exposing the brain tothese, this chemical, these
substances, often so that youcan have these dramatic shifts
quickly, and then it goes into amaintenance phase and you don't
(31:47):
.
It's it's still so new thatthere's not even like a set
protocol, there's not a setnumber of of treatments that you
need to do or should do.
It's just, basically, it'sbased on how a patient feels,
and so I've.
I've shifted from twice a weekto once a week, and I just had
this conversation yesterday withmy provider about how here in
the near future, I probably amgoing to go to every other week.
Okay, and it's just.
(32:08):
I think my understanding isthat early on you're you're in a
crisis point and you reallywant to get your brain to start
functioning better quickly.
so you do a lot of it at once,and then you start to spread it
out so that you can stillcontinue to reap the benefits of
the drug without having to, youknow, go so often and expose
yourself to it so often.
And then, over time, thoseneural pathways in the rewiring
(32:31):
of your brain, it's, it's realand it just gets solidified and
then you don't need thetreatment as much anymore.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, and I'm not a doctor or anything like that,
either I were.
I'm just a dude who knows a fewthings from some experience and
from talking to people, butit's like they used to think
that the brain was, wasbasically concrete, it would
form itself and it would havethese pathways that it would
form and that you couldn'tchange those pathways.
It is what it is.
We've learned withneuroplasticity that that's not
(32:59):
true.
You can actually change thosepathways.
If you walk out to the mailevery day and you walk through
your yard over time, there's atrack where you've seen somebody
, where you've walked all thosetimes.
It's like that in our mindwhere you don't have to keep
walking down that same trail ofthat path, you can actually
teach your brain and your brainwill grow in a new way and I'm
sure I'm messing this all up toowhere you can actually teach
(33:22):
your brain and your brain willgrow in a new way and I'm sure
I'm messing this all up toowhere you can have a new thought
that can take you in adifferent path.
Yeah, that goes with it and thismedicine helps with that.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah, and it does.
It's similar to you, know,psychedelics.
It does expand yourconsciousness a little bit, you
don't.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You don't trip, know you don't hallucinate really
with ketamine, like you do withsome of those other substances.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
So there's no disco ball and you're not spinning in
circles and no, but you, I mean,if you let yourself go with it
and, in particular, if you usean eye mask and kind of block
some of your senses and listento, um, the right kind of music,
I like it, you can, you can gosomewhere in your mind that you
wouldn't go without the drug.
I remember, remember one of oneof the sessions in particular.
(34:03):
Um, like I said I in the lastepisode, I kind of have a
strained relationship with myparents and and my family in
general, and one of thesetreatment sessions it was the
first time I used an eye maskand I found a playlist on
Spotify for ketamine treatmentand it's just music, but it's
(34:23):
just kind of music meant to gowith that experience, I had this
just vivid vision all in mymind.
It's not like I didn't seeanything, like you know it
doesn't change reality that much.
But it was vivid vision of whereI just was kind of lifting.
I was just kind of lifting upoff the face of the earth and
flying around and it was.
(34:44):
It felt like I was flyingaround like in real time to
where, like to where my parentswere.
I knew at the time that theywere, they were on a camping
trip in somewhere like maybe theupper peninsula, michigan or
something like that, the upperpeninsula, michigan or something
like that.
I had this vision of likeseeing where they were and then
like seeing where my sister wasand like going back, almost
(35:05):
going back in time, and seeingwhere my, my grandparents raised
my mom and just it was justkind of this interesting vision
to put it all together and it'skind of gave me the perspective
of like the generational traumathe impacts of different
generations and the impacts ofthe things that have affected my
(35:25):
family and my lineage and mybloodline over time, and it just
gave me this perspective oflike my parents are doing their
best.
I'm two generations.
My grandma grew up in a housewith a dirt floor in rural Iowa.
I'm two generations away from adirt floor.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
So my parents were doing the best with what they,
what they had, and um, so youcan.
You can have experiences likethat, but it's mostly.
It's mostly just about calmingyour nervous system down and and
it stops these ruminatingthoughts like the suicidal
ideation or the depressive cycleor whatever, and there's
(36:04):
something that has something todo with glutamate levels in the
brain.
Uh, I don't know, not ascientist.
You can ask chat, gpt orsomething to explain it better
than me, but yeah it works,that's all I'm saying is it
works and I would highlyrecommend it to anyone dealing
with depression or PTSD.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Great to hear.
I love hearing people'stestimonies of what they've
tried, what works, what worksfor them.
So, and we talked about thisyesterday, but if I want to have
(36:47):
your, your ketamine doctor onsometime, if you don't mind, on
the podcast, because I want tohear some more about it from
it's, it's a her right from her.
Yeah, amanda, yeah.
And then so if people arethinking about and again, jake
doesn't work for a ketamineclinic or anything like that,
but if somebody was wanting tolook into that, there's, that's
something, that's that'savailable here in Iowa the
ketamine treatment yeah, there'sa clinic.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I don't.
I would guess there's more thanjust one clinic, but the one
that I've been going to iscalled Focused Life Clinic in
West Des Moines.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Focused Life Clinic in West Des Moines no-transcript
(37:25):
than one there didn't used tobe any.
I remember a few years ago I wasover in illinois when I first
heard about it and yeah itreally threw me back in my seat,
like what, and then I've done alot of research on it.
Now I'm fine with it.
Um, I'm probably gonna to do itmyself.
I think it'll help.
I'm not opposed to trying itwhatsoever.
(37:45):
You're coaching now.
You're using all that pain forpurpose, man.
We got a lot of firstresponders that are Jake, they
need some coaching.
Man, they just need somebody tothrow their arm around them and
say, hey, it's okay what you'regoing through.
I want to help you get to thenext step.
I want to help you get to thenext step.
I want to help you get yourlife back, your joy back, your
happiness.
Um, how can they get ahold ofyou?
(38:06):
How can you?
How can they get ahold of youand get this process started?
Get, get some.
You have a free likeconsultation, or how's that work
?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Yeah, I do free consultations for coaching.
Uh, I also have a an onlinecommunity I call Guardian Rise.
I sent you earlier.
I don't know if you still haveit.
I have a link tree.
I put it in the chat here.
If you go to my link tree, ifyou're familiar with link tree,
(38:40):
it's easy to find, but it's dotE-E slash Jake Bile.
That has a link to all of mysocial media profiles.
You can contact me on socialmedia.
It also has a link to book afree consultation with me and a
link to join my free communityonline.
So it's a one-stop shop.
You can reach out to me throughany of those methods.
You don't have to book aconsultation.
(39:00):
You could just send me amessage on Instagram or Facebook
or whatever.
However, I uh in the nearfuture we'll have a phone number
available, but I'm I'm workingon.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
He doesn't want to use a cell phone number and I
don't blame him.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, I don't.
I just don't want that to beout there, because I I can't be
everything to everybody all thetime, and so I want to have a
little bit of control of accessto me.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Good for you.
That's what got us in thissituation to begin with.
We did that in our lawenforcement careers.
We had to be it for everybody.
We had to be at everything, doour best.
I mean it was yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, and that's, and that's the thing about coaching
.
You've heard that, everyone'sheard the phrase you can lead a
horse to water, but you can'tmake it drink.
As a coach, I view myself as aguide.
I guide you through your traumaptsd recovery journey.
(39:52):
I introduce you to theresources that I am familiar
with.
I share my own experience anduh, but it's up to you to do the
work.
It's up to you to go and do thethings that I, I, I know work
and uh, I don't know if you wantto get into this now uh, like
my philosophy on on how I coachor not.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, go ahead, we can go.
Let's try to wrap it up in likefour more minutes.
Can you do it there?
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, yeah, so I, I I view the trauma cycle in in as
a four phase cycle survival,numbing, crash, repeat.
That's the cycle we get stuckin with trauma.
It's a cycle I have been stuckin many times.
You were in it.
Anybody who's dealt with trauma, ptsd can relate, I guarantee
it.
And survival means we just livein survival mode.
(40:35):
We do the bare minimum to getby, to function, and that's
excruciating.
And so sooner or later, we'regoing to start numbing.
Whether that's with alcohol anddrugs or scrolling on your phone
, overexercising, overeatingthere's a million ways to numb
out.
And so we start numbing andwhat we do is we fail to address
(40:55):
the root cause of why we evenwant to numb and everything
builds and builds and builds toa crash and it will crash.
Everyone has a crash, whetherit's a panic attack, whether
it's a suicide attempt, everyonehas a crash.
And if you don't address thesestuff, the stuff and typically
what I see is at that crashpoint I see this in myself too
(41:18):
that's the only time in thecycle where you get willing to
do something.
It's a critical period and inmy opinion, that's where I want
to catch somebody, because I'mgoing to say this is what you
need to do.
This will work and they will doit.
But if you miss, that window ofopportunity starts all the way
back over, you go back tosurvival mode, start numbing,
crash, repeats.
That's the cycle that you staystuck in until you choose to
(41:40):
address your trauma.
And so, with coaching, thefirst thing I recommend is
everybody get a therapist.
Get a therapist or apsychiatrist, or both.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Yeah, you're not there to replace them, are you?
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Coaching is not a replacement and I don't do
therapy.
This is not a therapeutic thing, but my coaching philosophy is
also for four phases.
Phase one is building acommunity of support, because
you cannot recover from PTSDalone.
You can't do this in thedarkness.
You need good people around you, you need good professionals
and you need good personalcontacts.
That's why I started theGuardian Rise online community
(42:13):
because it's free to join.
You go right in there.
You got access to dozens ofpeople who understand that.
Build your community online oryou find people in your personal
life that that work for that,that role.
Phase two is reconnecting withyour body.
In nature, trauma is absolutelystored in the body and that's
why that's phase two.
You have to reconnect with yourbody and you have to learn to
(42:34):
tame your nervous system beforeyou can ever really start
thinking through this stuff,because, because otherwise you
think about it, your body reacts, your mind shuts down and
you're in panic.
You have to reconnect with yourbody, and I include nature just
because of how beneficial it is.
We as humans in this day and agethink we are somehow separate
from nature.
But we're not, and there is aton of benefit from getting
(42:55):
outside, touching the ground,feeling the breeze, feeling the
sunlight.
It just centers you, it justdoes, it just works.
Phase three is all aboutidentifying blockages, and when
I say blockages I mean you don'thave enough money or you're
stuck in a toxic relationship oryou are in a job that is
(43:15):
sucking the life out of you,like these.
Are they're blockages thatwould prevent you from healing,
even if you're putting a hundredpercent effort into healing?
Are they're blockages thatwould prevent you from healing
even if you're putting a hundredpercent effort into healing?
They're typically mostly likeexternal blockages.
And then phase four is comingup with a plan for long-term
success and healing.
And the cool thing about thisprocess is, if you do phases one
(43:37):
through three right, there'sreally nothing much more to be
done in phase four.
It it's just keep doing whatyou figured, it out, what you
figured out.
But in my opinion, it helps todocument it, write it all down
and find a way to keep trackingtrack of it so that if you do
get off track, you can go backand say this is what happened.
So that's the approach I take.
Um, I love it.
In order to get out of thatcycle, I think all four of those
(44:00):
phases need to happen.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
And you need a coach.
Guys, you need a coach.
If you could have done it bynow, you would have already done
it, right?
I mean, let's be real, you needa coach and that's okay.
Tiger Woods needed a coach.
They all had coaches.
Reach out.
We had a coach on last weekwith Neil from New York.
We had a coach on now Reach umwith neil from from from new
york.
I'm gonna coach on now.
(44:23):
Reach out to these people, man,they can help yeah, you can
help.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
I can tell you, I was very skeptical of working with
a coach myself and I gotta tellyou, if you look up shannon, uh,
she's not cheap.
Uh, I paid her 185 a sessionout of pocket and I I was very
skeptical, thinking like what'sa coach?
And like there's no, you know,there's no formal credential.
It's cost a lot of money.
Is this?
Could this just be hocus pocus,hoity, toity, you know like, is
(44:49):
this nonsense?
But I got to that point ofdesperation.
I paid for it and I it was the.
It was the best thing that I'veI've done for myself in my
recovery.
Well worth investing in myselfnow so that I can have a life
that I enjoy living again.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Love it, love it, love it.
Send me the link, the tree orwhatever you said you have, and
I'll get that.
When I post it, guys, I'll putit on.
It'll be in the link or it'llbe in the description of the
podcast episode.
You'll be able to find hisinformation, a hold of him, get
(45:28):
a consultation, at least hearhim out.
He'll tell you.
He'll be the first to tell youif he's not a good fit for you?
yeah, and I'll let you know.
He now he doesn't bring oneverybody, he doesn't take in
everybody, um, but if he's not,if he's not a good fit, he could
probably give yourecommendations and maybe
somebody who can but reach out,have the conversation.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
And I think we touched on this earlier.
I don't want anybody to thinklike I have fixed and cured my
PTSD and everything's perfectand there's nothing but rainbows
and butterflies in my life.
It's not.
It's not like that.
Not every day is good.
I still have challenges, but Ihave come a long way from where
I was and I've done it quickly.
(46:06):
A lot of people struggle withthis in a real serious way for
years or decades.
So I found it years for me 20years.
I dealt with it.
I've found what works, I foundit quick and I've got it all in
one place where I can give it toyou.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
I love it and, jake, I'll have you back on again.
Buddy, I'll probably have youon as a regular if you're cool
with it.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I love the conversation and that'll wrap up
this week.
Jake, you've been a blessingbuddy Appreciate it have a good
week and I'll hit the button tosend us off here.
And that wraps up anotherepisode from the 1042 project
shared voices podcast.
Thank you for tuning in and justa reminder we are a 501c3.
(46:51):
If you guys can support us, youcan go to our website.
Or if you know an organizationor a company or your church may
want to get involved insupporting 1042 projects's
mission of equipping, restoringand repurposing our first
responders, please reach out tous at 10-42projectorg.
There is a giving page on there.
We need your help.
(47:11):
We need your support.
If you can't give financially,please be willing to share the
word of our podcast, of ourorganization and the work that
God's doing.
Thank you and have a blessedweek.
I think we'll just dance for a while.
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
You can do the dance and I'm not a dancer.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Dance with me, jake.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Shared Voices Podcast.
This is Dan, the director andthe founder of the 1042 Project.
Shared Voices Podcast is apodcast for first responders,
brought to you by firstresponders.
We talk about healing, we talkabout hope, we talk about our
stories and hopes to pointpeople towards healing and show
(00:34):
people a path towards healing.
We bring in our peers and wetalk about real life, jake, and
it's not always pretty.
It's not always pretty, man.
If you guys didn't listen tothe last episode, jake was on
the last episode.
This is a two-part series.
Who knows, maybe it'll be more.
We're going to have Jake on inthe future quite a bit.
He's agreed to come on fromtime to time when we need him
(00:56):
and help co-host with mesometimes.
But on the first part if youguys didn't get a chance
(01:17):
no-transcript Anniversary ofthat is this time of year and
how he moved his law enforcementcareer over to West Des Moines
where he got exposed to moretrauma during 2000s.
I'll let Jake do the talking.
But, jake, thanks for comingback for another episode.
I knew you and I were going tohave a ton to talk about, so I
(01:38):
wanted to do more than one, yeahglad to be here, one of them
with you, but man, yeah soyou're taking us through your
story man, and so you're takingus through your story man, and
so you're still policing back inthe day, you end up going out.
And what year did you go out?
And what year did you end uphanging it up?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
2023, 2023, you're hanging up the day my second son
was born, july 17th 2023 thatenough's, enough's, enough, just
burnout, struggling with PTSD,all of it.
Yeah, yeah.
Didn't realize it at the timebut just knew I was done.
(02:17):
Went on paternity leave.
Never went back.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Like I said, so yeah that last episode kind of wraps
up the how I, how I ended upwhere I was at, but all that
pain, right, all that pain youwent through, you know, and I
know you've only shared you'veonly shared a one percent of
your whole story um, yeah, but alot of pain, but now you're
(02:45):
using that pain for purpose.
So let's see how we transition,how you transition from you
dealing with all this pain andstruggling and I know you're not
perfect today just like I'm not, we're still right it's.
It's evan flow, we're, it's aprocess yeah, um so how did you
get from that what?
How did you go from I don'twant to live, I don't want to be
, don't want to do this stuff tono, I'm going to make sure I'm
(03:07):
here to walk alongside otherfirst responders and help coach
them through their trauma, toget their life and hope back.
What the heck happened.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, good question.
So, leaving law enforcement, Igot a real estate license and I
started selling houses and thatwas a really good choice for me
because I'm self-employed, so Ididn't have a schedule, I didn't
have a boss, and it gave me thefreedom to eventually do what I
needed to do to take care ofmyself.
(03:36):
But it also created a lot offree time and a lot of downtime,
which you don't have as a cop,and so I would find myself just
sitting at home.
You know, I'd get my work donefor real estate relatively quick
, and I'd just be sitting athome and I couldn't, I couldn't
relax.
(03:56):
Uh, I was always on edge, uh, Icouldn't.
I wasn't sleeping at all, um,and I was still having night
terrors and I was still.
You know, it very quicklybecame evident to me that
something was wrong.
I started to get overwhelmed bythe sound of my kids playing and
the sound of my wife doing thedishes, like just sitting in my
(04:18):
living room was so overwhelmingI would have to go upstairs and
hide in my room.
I literally you know, Iremember dozens of times five,
36 o'clock at night should behaving dinner with the family.
I'm upstairs under the coversjust trying to figure out why
everything's so uns, you know,so overstimulating, yep, and uh,
(04:39):
I didn't really know what to do.
I also had a couple of timeswhere we'd we'd be in the car,
whole family in the car, kids inthe backseat screaming, you
know, wife, on me aboutsomething traffic, you know, at
a standstill, and that thatscenario, same thing I I would
have to get out of the car, umand I just knew that that wasn't
right.
(05:00):
So naturally I I wanted to goand get some help.
I went and looked for atherapist.
I had some not so goodexperiences right away.
I ended up, thankfully, findinga therapist I connected with
relatively quickly.
But it was not.
It took a couple months and youknow pretty much.
(05:21):
Day one she said you have ADHDand you should try medication.
And I said I know I have ADHDbut I don't want to take
medication.
But anyway, she had a way ofconvincing me.
So I went and set up apsychiatry appointment.
I got prescribed medicine forADHD and the first day I took it
(05:43):
I went oh, like this is howpeople live.
This is how you're supposed tofeel, like you know, because I,
with ADHD, I've had it all mylife.
I remember being told I had itas a kid and so my, my existence
is this is how I describe it topeople.
I usually have about threestreams of thought going on at
(06:05):
once in my mind and uh, and alsoa song stuck in my head, you
know that's kind of just mybaseline.
It's just a lot of noise and andobviously that can that can
mean it doesn't take muchexternal stimulation to feel
over overstimulated.
But I just never knew, I didn'tknow what.
I didn't know until I took themedication.
(06:25):
And then, and then iteverything kind of quieted down
to one stream of thought at atime and I thought, man, maybe
there's something to thistherapy and psychiatry stuff
that they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Maybe it's not all just you know, I just, I just
had this mentality of it's.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
It's not for me, it's for people weaker than me.
I just need to try harder andpush through harder and toughen
up and um, so, yeah, anyways, I,I, that was a, again a kind of
a honeymoon period, but I wasstarting to have panic attacks.
You know, you've called themepisodes.
(07:00):
I call them panic attacks,panic episodes where I would
completely lose control ofmyself and at times I would
become violent and destructivein ways that I would never
choose to do.
I scared my wife, I scared mykids, I scared myself.
I was also.
This led me to a very darkplace, because what happens when
(07:24):
you develop a panic disorderlike that is you can start to
panic about the possibility ofpanicking.
Panicking, yeah, it's like thisnegative feedback loop that
just goes over and over and overagain.
And this is really when thingsgot dark.
I got to a point where I wasvery, very suicidal because I
just couldn't see a way out andI just didn't believe that
(07:45):
anyone could possibly understandwhat I was dealing with and I
thought it was me against theworld and I thought if anybody
found out about it, I'd belocked up in the psych ward or,
you know, people would be forced, you know, trying to push my
wife to leave me.
Like I thought I was going tolose my wife, kids, thought I
was going to lose everything.
I thought, just if someonefound out what's going on with
(08:07):
me, I'm going to lose everything.
And so I tried my hardest tokeep it behind closed doors,
keep a lid on it.
My wife knew and I I mean Iremember even just begging with
her like can we like give me anopportunity to figure this out
before we go and tell everybodyabout it, because I don't know
how they're going to react andjust a real dark place to be.
And I, I, I was very, verysuicidal.
(08:32):
I several times left the housewith the intention of killing
myself.
I several times grabbed one ofmy pistols and held onto it and
looked at it, put it to my heada couple of times, thought about
, thought very long and hardabout doing it.
Just never could do it.
I just never could do it.
I just never could do it, andI'm glad, glad for that.
But I even beat myself up overthat at times.
(08:55):
You know I can't even do thisright, you know really I do.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
I have that thought too seriously yeah and uh.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
One morning in particular, I woke up.
I'm not, I'm not a big drinkerI like I to have some beers.
Don't get me wrong, I likewhiskey and beer, but I'm not a
get drunk all the time andeverything revolves around
liquor kind of guy Right.
But I started relying more andmore on it and I woke up one
night or one morning hungoverand had a gun on my lap and I
(09:26):
had no recollection of what Iwas doing.
I mean, I know what I was doing, but that that just that kind
of jolted me.
But I say all this just topaint the picture of where I was
at mentally.
I didn't.
I was hopeless, I was depressed, I was anxious.
All the time.
I was having panic attacks,night terrors, couldn't sleep,
couldn't sit still, but somehowstill managing to put this
(09:50):
appearance out to the world thateverything was fine.
I actually won well, realtorswin awards for just existing.
So don't act.
I'm not going to act like thisis a cool, you know.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
You got to have something to hang up in your
office.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, I got my you know my 2024 last year.
This was, this was the worstyear.
The whole year was full of allof these symptoms and uh.
But at the same time I I got anaward for for producing six
figures in gross commissionincome in my first full years of
licensed real estate agent.
So I was like putting on thisfacade for the outside world and
(10:26):
then, behind closed doors, onlymy wife and I knew what was
going on and so just got stuckin that that loop, you know, and
I was.
I was wanting to find solutions,I was wanting to find support.
I had the therapist, I had thepsychiatrist, but it just I
couldn't.
I just got stuck.
I didn't know what to do, Icouldn't find a solution and I
(10:48):
got eventually got turned on toa trauma recovery coach of my
own.
Her name is Shannon Myers.
She is well known in this worldof trauma coaching Um, local,
local, iowa, or she's in DesMoines, and but she, she's
nationwide, known nationally inthis, in this world.
Um, and I, I didn't even havevery many appointments with her,
(11:11):
only a handful of appointments.
But what I got?
Speaker 1 (11:14):
out again what's that ?
Speaker 2 (11:16):
say her name again shannon myers, m-y-e-r-s.
Um, what she did for me inthose you know this handful of
appointments that we had was shegave me direction and she gave
me hope that I could recover,and the way she did that was
(11:36):
just telling me what treatmentswork and how to find them and
then what to expect from them.
She also introduced me into theworld of somatic experiencing
or somatic processing, which isall about identifying where in
your body the trauma is comingfrom, because trauma is stored
in the body.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And if you have PTSD or if you struggle with trauma
responses or panic episodes,chances are you have.
You have met, by the time youhave an episode, you have missed
several early warning signs inyour body, and so she gave me
the ability to widen the gapbetween when I felt the trigger
and when I snapped and went offinto these episodes and it just
(12:21):
I.
I just started building on thatmomentum, um, and she didn't.
You know, she didn't fixeverything overnight, and I and
and, and I only talked to her ahandful of times, but she
reignited my drive to live andmy belief that I could get
better.
A couple other things happenedthere.
During a particularly roughnight, my wife called her mom to
(12:44):
come over to the house and Ithought that was it.
I thought that we're gettingdivorced, losing the kids, I'm
just going to be a loser forever.
And I thought her mom's goingto show up and see what's going
on here and and we're done.
But but what happened was theexact opposite.
Her mom showed up, listened tous, listened to me, uh, really
(13:06):
heard me, and and really, reallysupported me and said I wish
you would have told me aboutthis sooner so I could have
helped.
And she offered and really,really supported me and said I
wish you would have told meabout this sooner so I could
have helped.
And she offered you know, ifyou need a different place to
stay, you can come to our house.
If you need help with anythingat all, uh, let us know.
You don't have to.
Basically, you don't have tolive like this, and you don't
have to be alone, and it justblew my mind.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Love like you can't even explain From my
mother-in-law.
Here's all this fear you had.
God steps in and says no, thatfear was all fake In fact.
How about all this love?
They just start loving on you.
Was it weird at first?
Honestly, it's weird.
Some people know for us firstresponders, we don't like praise
.
Sometimes we don't like to beloved on, especially when we
(13:50):
don't like praise.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Sometimes we don't like to be loved on, especially
when we haven't been loved onfor a while.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
That had to be a little weird at first.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
It was very weird.
It was very weird to be thatvulnerable for someone who's not
in my inner inner circle.
Actually, the next day afterthat, because that was kind of a
crisis night.
At the end of the night Idecided I'd go stay in an Airbnb
and then they could stay at thehouse, because it was kind of
(14:16):
this question of like should weleave you all alone together, or
could something bad happen?
And we all kind of agreed thatit'd be better for me to go
somewhere else.
So I went and stayed in anAirbnb and the next day I called
my mother-in-law and herhusband and we talked for like
two and a half three hours onthe phone and I just kind of
told them everything.
(14:37):
told them everything that hadbeen happening.
I mean there were signs.
You know, like to this day I'mmissing doors in my house
because I've destroyed them andI haven't replaced them yet, but
they were, you know, obviouslyscared to hear what was going on
but glad to have been broughtin.
(15:00):
And it I found this sense ofrelief, of letting it go, like
letting it be known and nothaving to hide it anymore.
That also built the momentumand so, as I started to feel
better, I started to just havethis desire to help other people
expedite this process, becauseinitially I didn't know what was
wrong with me.
It took me a long time tofigure out what was wrong with
(15:22):
me, and then I got a diagnosisof ADHD and PTSD and then I
didn't know what to do to getbetter it took a long time to
start getting better.
And it wasn't for a lack of adesire to get better.
I wanted to that whole time.
I just couldn't find acommunity of support, couldn't
find the right treatments on myown.
(15:44):
And I just felt like I was leftwith nothing to do but just
guess and check, trial and error.
So I tried a bunch of differentthings and some of them helped
a little, but really nothing.
Nothing helped a ton until, um,I got introduced to the, to the
world of psychedelics, um,psilocybin, mushrooms, and then
ketamine.
Ketamine is not technicallyclassified as a psychedelic drug
(16:06):
, but it acts similarly, andwhat those drugs did for me
therapeutically was give me acompletely different perspective
on my life and this is one ofthe things that Shannon
advocates for is the use ofpsychedelics in conjunction with
traditional treatments for PTSD.
(16:27):
And it gave me just acompletely different outlook on
my life and it made me realizethat, uh, I'm not separate from
everything else in the world,I'm part of everything else in
the world and I can't do thingsalone.
And also that, like, uh, Idon't need to feel so much shame
(16:47):
and guilt for having a disorder, and it just it continued to
build that hope, and so I did acouple of different psilocybin
trips.
That helped quite a bit.
And then I got connected with aclinic to do ketamine therapy
(17:08):
and I still do ketamine therapyonce a week and ketamine
ketamine therapy once a week.
And ketamine, ketamine was hadthe biggest impact on me of
anything.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, walk us through that, like a lot of people.
For some of our listeners,especially law enforcement,
you're in these terms or EMS isfire Anybody.
You're in these terms likeketamine, mushrooms, right,
things that we were, we weretold when we were a kid or you
know those horrible stuff.
But now psychedelics are beingproven to be very helpful for
PTSD.
I mean very commonly known nowto help.
(17:38):
But for some of you it maythrow you back in your seat a
little bit, but these are actualthings that people.
It's changing people's lives.
I want to give you guys all thedifferent perspectives of ways
to getting help, and one of themis this for some people.
So have an open mind to whathe's saying, because it works.
Um, so walk us through, jake,like why, what made you think to
(18:01):
go down this route of ketaminetrying shrooms?
Basically, because everythingelse failed yeah, I, I had done.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
I had done lots of different types of traditional
therapies that they'll help, butit's a very slow process and I
just had this sense of urgencybecause my wife was going to
leave me if I continued to havepanic episodes that scared her
to death.
She just was going to leave,and in my mind she should, and
(18:31):
rightfully so.
Uh, because these are episodeswhere I can't control myself,
and so how can?
I guarantee I'm not going to dosomething terrible.
Um, and so I had this reallyreal sense of urgency, like I
have to figure this out beforemy family falls apart, and so it
just led to this level ofdesperation that was actually
turned out to be the best giftI've ever been given, that gift
(18:53):
of desperation, and so I did thepsilocybin thing.
I was too.
I didn't have a guide.
I would say, if you're going togo down the road of psilocybin,
have a guide.
I'd be happy to talk to youabout what I know about it.
But because I didn't have aguide, I didn't want to go too
far with it, meaning I didn'twant to take.
(19:15):
I probably really didn't wantto take as big a dose as I
probably should have.
So I was kind of just half in onit.
But I was feeling, I felt some,some solid relief and some
solid shifts.
But it wasn't.
It wasn't like everything wasgood, it just was like another
step in the right direction.
So then I started reading aboutketamine therapy.
Like any cop, I'm like I don'twant to go and get myself doped
(19:40):
up with strangers.
I don't know what they're goingto do to me.
I don't know what.
You know, I like I just was tooparanoid.
I talked myself out of it amillion times and when I say
strangers, I'm talking about aphysician's assistant, a PA, you
know, like a medicalprofessional, and I, in my mind,
I'm like I'm going to get dopedup and they're going to steal
all my stuff and take funnypictures of me or something.
(20:01):
I don't know what I thought wasgoing to happen.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Your car's going to be sitting on blocks in the dry.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Yeah, yeah, and so I talked myself out of it so many
times, but then what ended up?
happening is my, my wife andsister are both nurses and they
work in the in the ER downtownUm and uh, they ended up, uh,
connecting with this PA thatworks, that does some work, some
shifts down there too.
Her name is Amanda and she alsoat the time was working at this
(20:29):
clinic, uh, doing ketaminetherapy kind of doing that for
the most part, and then she'dpick up shifts here and there in
the ER and they just happenedto cross paths and happened to
talk about it, and so my wifeconnects me with her in a text
thread and says here Amanda doesget my wife.
At this point it's basicallylike will you do something?
You know she's like here'sAmanda, she does ketamine, you
need to go do.
(20:50):
That is basically the message Igot.
And so I was like okay, I gotsomebody I can trust, personal
connection.
I'll go give it a shot and Iwish I'd have done it sooner.
The experience of doingketamine is very intense.
I say doing ketamine, it soundslike I'm at a party, but when
(21:13):
they give you the medicine, themethod that I've used is called
it's called spravato.
It's a nasally administeredform of ketamine and the process
looks like this you go and youhave a consult and decide if
it's right for you and you wantto try it, and obviously I
decided it was right for me, andso there's the.
It comes in a box with threedifferent containers, three
(21:33):
different nasal spray containers.
You do a shot in each nostril,wait five minutes, another shot
in each nostril, wait fiveminutes, third shot in each
nostril and from there you kindof get I call it.
You kind of get launched intothis place.
Call it, you kind of getlaunched into this place.
(21:54):
You don't completely disconnectfrom reality, but you do
dissociate from your body andyou do kind of have an altered
state of consciousness.
And it call it just.
It just calms your body andyour nervous system in a way
that's hard to describe, andwhat it gave me the ability to
do was, uh, process some ofthese memories, uh, without my
(22:16):
body reacting, because you'restill very conscious and alert.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
My processing sound.
Can you hear that?
Sorry, go ahead can you hearthe buttons I'm pushing?
I can't, I can't.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, all right, sorry, I'm like I'm a child no,
no, no, that that's all right, Idon't know.
Do whatever you need to do.
Make some silence.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
No, I was just making like mystical you were going
into your trip.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah, oh yeah, it is a little mystical and what it
gave me the ability to do wasmentally go back to some of
these places, like the officerinvolved shooting incident or
some of I can probably point tonine or ten incidents on duty
that had a really big impact onme.
Yeah, um, and I knew, affectedme strongly and plus all the
(23:00):
little, you know, all the littlehammer incidents like you talk
about, just um, but I can goduring these ketamine sessions.
I can go there in my mind and Ican relive it and I can analyze
it and process it without mybody getting agitated and
working up and I just don't have, just wouldn't have, a reaction
, and so it's like starting tohelp me process some of these
things.
Um, and then the best partabout it is, between sessions,
(23:26):
my body just isn't.
It just isn't reactive.
It's not like it's completelyunreactive.
I I've still had a couple ofpanic episodes since I started
ketamine, but it it it went from, went from daily to I mean, I'm
really the last several monthshas been about maybe one a month
and the severity of it is somuch lower and I have the
(23:49):
ability to like, get myself outof it and so I'm just stuck in
it until I get exhausted.
So that's the best of benefitfor me, leaving the very first
appointment.
You have to have someone dropyou off and pick you up, and so
my wife picked me up.
The boys are in the back seatand we were going straight to
Ankeny, to her mom's house tocelebrate somebody's birthday.
(24:11):
I forget whose birthday it was.
But this is like a scenario forme where it's like, okay, we're
going to be in the car intraffic.
Also, it's hot for some reason.
I haven't figured out why, butbeing hot is a big trigger for
me.
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
You mentioned that yesterday and I wondered.
I was kind of sitting on that.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I haven't put the pieces together on that.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Well, I hope you get there someday.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
But anyway, I'm just painting the picture here.
This is a situation where I'vehad panic multiple times.
I was nervous about getting inthe car with my family and
driving to Ankeny.
That's the state I was in atthis time.
But I get in the car and I'mstill a little loopy and I sit
there and like the boys aregoing crazy in the back seat
already like my kids are justlike me.
(24:56):
They're nuts.
They never stop talking, theynever stop moving and I'm
sitting there.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
I'm like I don't.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
like it's the weirdest thing.
I don't.
I don't care.
Like I don't care that they'rebeing loud, like it's not
bothering, and I just thought,well you, the drug's still
active.
Like I'm not going to get myhopes up yet, like I just left,
like of course, like I'm dopedup, like of course I'm not going
to react, but we get up toAnkeny, bumper to bumper, rush
hour traffic and we're juststuck.
(25:23):
And this is another thing thatreally gets me is being stuck in
traffic.
And again I'm like I don't,like I don't care that I'm stuck
in traffic I don't know how todescribe this kept telling my
wife and she's like okay, youknow, all right, whatever, like
who cares.
Like I'm like I'm like mywife's name is reen, like brie,
I don't like the boys are beingloud and I don't care.
(25:44):
We're stuck in traffic and Idon't care.
And she's just like okay, goodand congratulations.
And next thing that happens isI can hear a siren behind us and
I look in the mirror andthere's a fire.
There's a fire truck and anambulance trying to come through
the get their way throughtraffic.
And it was.
It's that kind of I mean,you've you've run an emergency
vehicle yourself too.
(26:05):
It's.
It's one of those situationswhere, like, the cars are
basically just having to slowlypart to go off onto either
shoulder just to make justenough room for the emergency
vehicles to get through andthey're going so slow.
And so I'm like you know,obviously a siren and lights is
a trigger for someone with ptsdrelated to being a cop.
Yeah, and to me, still to thisday, when I hear a siren, it it
(26:28):
stops me, you know it, kind ofstops me and takes my mind there
it doesn't cause the same kindof reaction that it used to.
but I, I was just bracing, likein this front seat, just kind of
like okay, like don't, don'tworry about it, it's going to be
fine.
You know, like trying to prepmyself because this ambulance
it's coming, it's going to goright by us and soon enough it
ends up right next to our car towhere I could reach out and
(26:50):
touch it.
You know, I can reach out thewindow and touch this and the
sirens just going and the lightsare going and same thing.
I'm like I don't care, like Idon't know how to describe this.
I don't like it doesn't botherme, none of this bothered me and
I'm just, yeah, I'm just blownaway by the fact that I went and
did this random drug that Isnorted in my nose and now like,
(27:11):
yeah, yeah, now, now I'm like,I'm like having hope that I'm
not going to get triggered byall these things that have been
triggering me.
And so we get, we get, you know, the, the vehicles get through
and we get through traffic andwe get to the house.
And here's another scenariowhere the like little kids, they
get around their grandparentsand they go to next level, like
(27:32):
they.
You know, there's no rules atgrandma's house, kind of thing,
and so they're going extra crazy.
My in-laws don't believe in airconditioning and so it's hot oh
my gosh Hot in their house.
They hate air conditioning.
And you know, just being aroundthem and just being around all
that stimulation in particular,was difficult, had been
difficult, and it wasn't.
(27:54):
It just wasn't.
Every one of those things thathad been bothering me every
single time didn't bother me atall, and that's when I knew
ketamine was for real.
I have I learned with my traumacoach that my early warning sign
for a trauma activation or apanic response is a knot in my
(28:17):
stomach and it feels like rightbelow the bottom of my rib cage,
in the middle.
It feels like if someone couldsomehow stick their hand in
there and just grab what's everright there and just squeeze it.
It just feels like literallyjust just a big, just a big knot
.
And I didn't have that Likethat.
That was a feeling I had gottenso used to, feeling that I
(28:39):
didn't even know it was abnormal.
And so then when I startedhaving these, these, these
events happen that would causethat I, I was like bracing for
it and it never had would causethat I, I was like bracing for
it and it never had never showedup this day.
You know, I used to have thatknot in my stomach dozens of
times a day.
I just thought it was like partof being a human.
(28:59):
I don't know.
It's kind of like what I talkedabout with the Adderall and
ADHD.
I just thought that's howeverybody felt Right.
But it doesn't.
It just doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen that wayanymore.
And it's ketamine has taken mefrom daily panic episodes, daily
suicidal thoughts and ideationsthat you know coping with
alcohol, coping with whatever Ican.
(29:20):
It's taken me to, uh, maybe ina panic episode once a month.
I don't have any suicidalthoughts or ideations at all.
Every now and then, I mean, II'll always have that first
responder brain of like thatkind of like cynical tendency
where if something dumb happens,it's you know.
Every now and then I'll have afleeting thought of like I could
(29:41):
just, I could just opt out ofthis, you know right, but it's
not real.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
It's not like I want to.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
It's like just that fleeting thought praise god man,
that's.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
That's great like it's given me, it's given me
freedom yeah, and some peoplemay not like that I say this,
but I give god the glory forthat.
I mean, god uses people, heuses his creations.
He's using medicine that's hereon earth to help fix people and
again, a lot of people poo pooon it and there's a stigma
attached with it.
(30:09):
But praise god for that beingthere to be able to help you
Absolutely.
And there's psychedelics,there's ketamine, there's
Ibogaine, I think is what it'scalled.
We talked about it the otherday.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I'm not opposed to these, jake, I'm not.
I'm not one of those peoplethat's like no, you have to do
it this way, yeah, so why do youhave to?
So why do you have to keepgoing back then?
So it's more than you.
(30:41):
Don't just go once and thenyou're done.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
There's an acute phase where you do it two or
three times a week and it'sbecause I'm going to butcher the
explanations because I'm not ascientist but ketamine promotes
neuroplasticity, which is just arewiring of the brain, and what
happens in your brain when youhave these trauma responses is
there's a neural pathway thatwill form and it basically makes
(31:04):
it so that there's an automatic, nearly automatic response from
trigger to reaction and theketamine, through whatever
mechanisms that I don't, I can'texplain it, but it promotes
rewiring of those, it changesthose neural pathways and I mean
it can be documented, it can bewitnessed you know, like
(31:25):
scientists I don't know how theydo that but, um, the during the
acute phases is kind of likethe loading phase and it's like
you really want to, basicallyreally just attacking it.
You're exposing the brain tothese, this chemical, these
substances, often so that youcan have these dramatic shifts
quickly, and then it goes into amaintenance phase and you don't
(31:47):
.
It's it's still so new thatthere's not even like a set
protocol, there's not a setnumber of of treatments that you
need to do or should do.
It's just, basically, it'sbased on how a patient feels,
and so I've.
I've shifted from twice a weekto once a week, and I just had
this conversation yesterday withmy provider about how here in
the near future, I probably amgoing to go to every other week.
Okay, and it's just.
(32:08):
I think my understanding isthat early on you're you're in a
crisis point and you reallywant to get your brain to start
functioning better quickly.
so you do a lot of it at once,and then you start to spread it
out so that you can stillcontinue to reap the benefits of
the drug without having to, youknow, go so often and expose
yourself to it so often.
And then, over time, thoseneural pathways in the rewiring
(32:31):
of your brain, it's, it's realand it just gets solidified and
then you don't need thetreatment as much anymore.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, and I'm not a doctor or anything like that,
either I were.
I'm just a dude who knows a fewthings from some experience and
from talking to people, butit's like they used to think
that the brain was, wasbasically concrete, it would
form itself and it would havethese pathways that it would
form and that you couldn'tchange those pathways.
It is what it is.
We've learned withneuroplasticity that that's not
(32:59):
true.
You can actually change thosepathways.
If you walk out to the mailevery day and you walk through
your yard over time, there's atrack where you've seen somebody
, where you've walked all thosetimes.
It's like that in our mindwhere you don't have to keep
walking down that same trail ofthat path, you can actually
teach your brain and your brainwill grow in a new way and I'm
sure I'm messing this all up toowhere you can actually teach
(33:22):
your brain and your brain willgrow in a new way and I'm sure
I'm messing this all up toowhere you can have a new thought
that can take you in adifferent path.
Yeah, that goes with it and thismedicine helps with that.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Yeah, and it does.
It's similar to you, know,psychedelics.
It does expand yourconsciousness a little bit, you
don't.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
You don't trip, know you don't hallucinate really
with ketamine, like you do withsome of those other substances.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
So there's no disco ball and you're not spinning in
circles and no, but you, I mean,if you let yourself go with it
and, in particular, if you usean eye mask and kind of block
some of your senses and listento, um, the right kind of music,
I like it, you can, you can gosomewhere in your mind that you
wouldn't go without the drug.
I remember, remember one of oneof the sessions in particular.
(34:03):
Um, like I said I in the lastepisode, I kind of have a
strained relationship with myparents and and my family in
general, and one of thesetreatment sessions it was the
first time I used an eye maskand I found a playlist on
Spotify for ketamine treatmentand it's just music, but it's
(34:23):
just kind of music meant to gowith that experience, I had this
just vivid vision all in mymind.
It's not like I didn't seeanything, like you know it
doesn't change reality that much.
But it was vivid vision of whereI just was kind of lifting.
I was just kind of lifting upoff the face of the earth and
flying around and it was.
(34:44):
It felt like I was flyingaround like in real time to
where, like to where my parentswere.
I knew at the time that theywere, they were on a camping
trip in somewhere like maybe theupper peninsula, michigan or
something like that, the upperpeninsula, michigan or something
like that.
I had this vision of likeseeing where they were and then
like seeing where my sister wasand like going back, almost
(35:05):
going back in time, and seeingwhere my, my grandparents raised
my mom and just it was justkind of this interesting vision
to put it all together and it'skind of gave me the perspective
of like the generational traumathe impacts of different
generations and the impacts ofthe things that have affected my
(35:25):
family and my lineage and mybloodline over time, and it just
gave me this perspective oflike my parents are doing their
best.
I'm two generations.
My grandma grew up in a housewith a dirt floor in rural Iowa.
I'm two generations away from adirt floor.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
So my parents were doing the best with what they,
what they had, and um, so youcan.
You can have experiences likethat, but it's mostly.
It's mostly just about calmingyour nervous system down and and
it stops these ruminatingthoughts like the suicidal
ideation or the depressive cycleor whatever, and there's
(36:04):
something that has something todo with glutamate levels in the
brain.
Uh, I don't know, not ascientist.
You can ask chat, gpt orsomething to explain it better
than me, but yeah it works,that's all I'm saying is it
works and I would highlyrecommend it to anyone dealing
with depression or PTSD.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Great to hear.
I love hearing people'stestimonies of what they've
tried, what works, what worksfor them.
So, and we talked about thisyesterday, but if I want to have
(36:47):
your, your ketamine doctor onsometime, if you don't mind, on
the podcast, because I want tohear some more about it from
it's, it's a her right from her.
Yeah, amanda, yeah.
And then so if people arethinking about and again, jake
doesn't work for a ketamineclinic or anything like that,
but if somebody was wanting tolook into that, there's, that's
something, that's that'savailable here in Iowa the
ketamine treatment yeah, there'sa clinic.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I don't.
I would guess there's more thanjust one clinic, but the one
that I've been going to iscalled Focused Life Clinic in
West Des Moines.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Focused Life Clinic in West Des Moines no-transcript
(37:25):
than one there didn't used tobe any.
I remember a few years ago I wasover in illinois when I first
heard about it and yeah itreally threw me back in my seat,
like what, and then I've done alot of research on it.
Now I'm fine with it.
Um, I'm probably gonna to do itmyself.
I think it'll help.
I'm not opposed to trying itwhatsoever.
(37:45):
You're coaching now.
You're using all that pain forpurpose, man.
We got a lot of firstresponders that are Jake, they
need some coaching.
Man, they just need somebody tothrow their arm around them and
say, hey, it's okay what you'regoing through.
I want to help you get to thenext step.
I want to help you get to thenext step.
I want to help you get yourlife back, your joy back, your
happiness.
Um, how can they get ahold ofyou?
(38:06):
How can you?
How can they get ahold of youand get this process started?
Get, get some.
You have a free likeconsultation, or how's that work
?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Yeah, I do free consultations for coaching.
Uh, I also have a an onlinecommunity I call Guardian Rise.
I sent you earlier.
I don't know if you still haveit.
I have a link tree.
I put it in the chat here.
If you go to my link tree, ifyou're familiar with link tree,
(38:40):
it's easy to find, but it's dotE-E slash Jake Bile.
That has a link to all of mysocial media profiles.
You can contact me on socialmedia.
It also has a link to book afree consultation with me and a
link to join my free communityonline.
So it's a one-stop shop.
You can reach out to me throughany of those methods.
You don't have to book aconsultation.
(39:00):
You could just send me amessage on Instagram or Facebook
or whatever.
However, I uh in the nearfuture we'll have a phone number
available, but I'm I'm workingon.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
He doesn't want to use a cell phone number and I
don't blame him.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, I don't.
I just don't want that to beout there, because I I can't be
everything to everybody all thetime, and so I want to have a
little bit of control of accessto me.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Good for you.
That's what got us in thissituation to begin with.
We did that in our lawenforcement careers.
We had to be it for everybody.
We had to be at everything, doour best.
I mean it was yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, and that's, and that's the thing about coaching
.
You've heard that, everyone'sheard the phrase you can lead a
horse to water, but you can'tmake it drink.
As a coach, I view myself as aguide.
I guide you through your traumaptsd recovery journey.
(39:52):
I introduce you to theresources that I am familiar
with.
I share my own experience anduh, but it's up to you to do the
work.
It's up to you to go and do thethings that I, I, I know work
and uh, I don't know if you wantto get into this now uh, like
my philosophy on on how I coachor not.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yeah, go ahead, we can go.
Let's try to wrap it up in likefour more minutes.
Can you do it there?
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, yeah, so I, I I view the trauma cycle in in as
a four phase cycle survival,numbing, crash, repeat.
That's the cycle we get stuckin with trauma.
It's a cycle I have been stuckin many times.
You were in it.
Anybody who's dealt with trauma, ptsd can relate, I guarantee
it.
And survival means we just livein survival mode.
(40:35):
We do the bare minimum to getby, to function, and that's
excruciating.
And so sooner or later, we'regoing to start numbing.
Whether that's with alcohol anddrugs or scrolling on your phone
, overexercising, overeatingthere's a million ways to numb
out.
And so we start numbing andwhat we do is we fail to address
(40:55):
the root cause of why we evenwant to numb and everything
builds and builds and builds toa crash and it will crash.
Everyone has a crash, whetherit's a panic attack, whether
it's a suicide attempt, everyonehas a crash.
And if you don't address thesestuff, the stuff and typically
what I see is at that crashpoint I see this in myself too
(41:18):
that's the only time in thecycle where you get willing to
do something.
It's a critical period and inmy opinion, that's where I want
to catch somebody, because I'mgoing to say this is what you
need to do.
This will work and they will doit.
But if you miss, that window ofopportunity starts all the way
back over, you go back tosurvival mode, start numbing,
crash, repeats.
That's the cycle that you staystuck in until you choose to
(41:40):
address your trauma.
And so, with coaching, thefirst thing I recommend is
everybody get a therapist.
Get a therapist or apsychiatrist, or both.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Yeah, you're not there to replace them, are you?
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Coaching is not a replacement and I don't do
therapy.
This is not a therapeutic thing, but my coaching philosophy is
also for four phases.
Phase one is building acommunity of support, because
you cannot recover from PTSDalone.
You can't do this in thedarkness.
You need good people around you, you need good professionals
and you need good personalcontacts.
That's why I started theGuardian Rise online community
(42:13):
because it's free to join.
You go right in there.
You got access to dozens ofpeople who understand that.
Build your community online oryou find people in your personal
life that that work for that,that role.
Phase two is reconnecting withyour body.
In nature, trauma is absolutelystored in the body and that's
why that's phase two.
You have to reconnect with yourbody and you have to learn to
(42:34):
tame your nervous system beforeyou can ever really start
thinking through this stuff,because, because otherwise you
think about it, your body reacts, your mind shuts down and
you're in panic.
You have to reconnect with yourbody, and I include nature just
because of how beneficial it is.
We as humans in this day and agethink we are somehow separate
from nature.
But we're not, and there is aton of benefit from getting
(42:55):
outside, touching the ground,feeling the breeze, feeling the
sunlight.
It just centers you, it justdoes, it just works.
Phase three is all aboutidentifying blockages, and when
I say blockages I mean you don'thave enough money or you're
stuck in a toxic relationship oryou are in a job that is
(43:15):
sucking the life out of you,like these.
Are they're blockages thatwould prevent you from healing,
even if you're putting a hundredpercent effort into healing?
Are they're blockages thatwould prevent you from healing
even if you're putting a hundredpercent effort into healing?
They're typically mostly likeexternal blockages.
And then phase four is comingup with a plan for long-term
success and healing.
And the cool thing about thisprocess is, if you do phases one
(43:37):
through three right, there'sreally nothing much more to be
done in phase four.
It it's just keep doing whatyou figured, it out, what you
figured out.
But in my opinion, it helps todocument it, write it all down
and find a way to keep trackingtrack of it so that if you do
get off track, you can go backand say this is what happened.
So that's the approach I take.
Um, I love it.
In order to get out of thatcycle, I think all four of those
(44:00):
phases need to happen.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
And you need a coach.
Guys, you need a coach.
If you could have done it bynow, you would have already done
it, right?
I mean, let's be real, you needa coach and that's okay.
Tiger Woods needed a coach.
They all had coaches.
Reach out.
We had a coach on last weekwith Neil from New York.
We had a coach on now Reach umwith neil from from from new
york.
I'm gonna coach on now.
(44:23):
Reach out to these people, man,they can help yeah, you can
help.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
I can tell you, I was very skeptical of working with
a coach myself and I gotta tellyou, if you look up shannon, uh,
she's not cheap.
Uh, I paid her 185 a sessionout of pocket and I I was very
skeptical, thinking like what'sa coach?
And like there's no, you know,there's no formal credential.
It's cost a lot of money.
Is this?
Could this just be hocus pocus,hoity, toity, you know like, is
(44:49):
this nonsense?
But I got to that point ofdesperation.
I paid for it and I it was the.
It was the best thing that I'veI've done for myself in my
recovery.
Well worth investing in myselfnow so that I can have a life
that I enjoy living again.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Love it, love it, love it.
Send me the link, the tree orwhatever you said you have, and
I'll get that.
When I post it, guys, I'll putit on.
It'll be in the link or it'llbe in the description of the
podcast episode.
You'll be able to find hisinformation, a hold of him, get
(45:28):
a consultation, at least hearhim out.
He'll tell you.
He'll be the first to tell youif he's not a good fit for you?
yeah, and I'll let you know.
He now he doesn't bring oneverybody, he doesn't take in
everybody, um, but if he's not,if he's not a good fit, he could
probably give yourecommendations and maybe
somebody who can but reach out,have the conversation.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
And I think we touched on this earlier.
I don't want anybody to thinklike I have fixed and cured my
PTSD and everything's perfectand there's nothing but rainbows
and butterflies in my life.
It's not.
It's not like that.
Not every day is good.
I still have challenges, but Ihave come a long way from where
I was and I've done it quickly.
(46:06):
A lot of people struggle withthis in a real serious way for
years or decades.
So I found it years for me 20years.
I dealt with it.
I've found what works, I foundit quick and I've got it all in
one place where I can give it toyou.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
I love it and, jake, I'll have you back on again.
Buddy, I'll probably have youon as a regular if you're cool
with it.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I love the conversation and that'll wrap up
this week.
Jake, you've been a blessingbuddy Appreciate it have a good
week and I'll hit the button tosend us off here.
And that wraps up anotherepisode from the 1042 project
shared voices podcast.
Thank you for tuning in and justa reminder we are a 501c3.
(46:51):
If you guys can support us, youcan go to our website.
Or if you know an organizationor a company or your church may
want to get involved insupporting 1042 projects's
mission of equipping, restoringand repurposing our first
responders, please reach out tous at 10-42projectorg.
There is a giving page on there.
We need your help.
(47:11):
We need your support.
If you can't give financially,please be willing to share the
word of our podcast, of ourorganization and the work that
God's doing.
Thank you and have a blessedweek.
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