August 18, 2025 • 67 mins
Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman brings decades of expertise to this powerful conversation about the psychology of violence, trauma response, and the vital role corrections professionals play in society.
Drawing from his groundbreaking research that shaped books like "On Combat" and "On Killing," Grossman frames correctional officers as society's essential "sheepdogs" – those who willingly face danger so others don't have to. "They are truly God's agent to do good in this world," he reflects, highlighting how corrections work balances public safety with offering second chances at redemption.
The discussion delves deep into practical tools for managing the unique psychological challenges of corrections work. From techniques to prevent PTSD (like controlled breathing exercises and using water as an emotional "reset button") to cognitive behavioral strategies for managing stress reactions, Grossman offers actionable insights born from his extensive research. He emphasizes the importance of self-control: "Nobody ever respects our temper tantrum; they respect our calm."
Most surprising is Grossman's compelling research on sleep deprivation, revealing how inadequate sleep dramatically increases risks for PTSD, depression, and suicide – crucial information for those working overtime and irregular shifts. His practical sleep hygiene recommendations aren't merely for comfort but potentially life-saving interventions for professionals regularly exposed to trauma.
Throughout the conversation runs a thread of purpose and meaning. "Sometimes the greatest love is not to sacrifice your life but to live a life of sacrifice," Grossman notes, validating the profound impact of daily corrections work that often goes unrecognized by society. Whether preventing crime, facilitating rehabilitation, or protecting communities, corrections professionals provide an essential service worthy of recognition and support.
Ready to better understand the psychological impacts of your work and discover practical tools for resilience? This episode offers both validation and actionable strategies for those who serve as society's silent protectors.
The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Performance During Continuous Combat Operations
Website: Grossman on Truth
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lt-col-dave-grossman-55a3304/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(01:04):
Hello and welcome back to thePrison Officer Podcast.
My name is Mike Cantrell,today's guest.
I'm sure most of you alreadyrecognize.
I am super excited.
When I started this podcast Inever thought I'd get the chance
to talk to Lieutenant ColonelDave Grossman.
He has written some books thathave been very motivational and
(01:25):
inspirational in my life and inmy job and of course many of you
know he wrote On Combat, onKilling, on.
Hunting is another one.
I'm a big avid hunter andfisherman.
So he's written many otherbooks and I'm sure we'll get
into some of those, but I'mexcited to have him on the
(01:45):
podcast.
He studies violence and mostpeople don't understand violence
, do they, sir?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
No, they don't, Michael.
And you know it's funny youmention hunting.
We just throw it right outfront.
You know those who hunt theyhave killed and they're in tune
with the cycle of life andthey're in tune with the taking
of life.
And it's funny when I talkcorrections I've had the honor
(02:17):
to do a lot of work oncorrections, especially fairly
recently.
We talk about the fact that andlaw enforcement.
You know, just to give a lawenforcement example, similar in
corrections, that you knowthere's a lot of cops in our
department that they walk into abar and people want to push
them, people want to test them.
So there's a fair number ofcops that people don't want to
(02:41):
push them, they don't want totest them and when you cut right
down to it, they're hunters,they're predators.
And I talk about the book onhunting and this has real
application that you can'tunderstand who we are without
understanding hunting.
And throughout the history ofour species we've been hunters.
(03:03):
Throughout the history of ourspecies we've been hunters.
If you take the existence ofour species and cram, it call it
24 hours, up until the last sixminutes, all we did was hunt.
Yeah, we were always in themiddle of the food chain.
There were things that huntedus and things that we hunted.
But it's no fun to be hunted.
We don't want to be hunted, wewant to be the hunter.
(03:24):
And so the decision in life isyou know I've got a couple of
dogs here that this is Charlie.
He's my hearing dog.
My ears are shot out andCharlie, he's sitting there
laughing the whole time.
We're just fine.
He's never killed anything buta tennis ball, you know.
But he's a predator and hemakes no bones about it.
That's why we love cats anddogs.
(03:45):
They're hunters.
And so I just tell you it's notabout hunting although hunting
is the best way to exercise thatmindset it's about making the
decision in life that I am thehunter and not the hunted, that
I am in control of my life, andthat's funny.
(04:07):
You've mentioned that.
It's a funny thing to beginwith, but I've had an awful lot
of worker corrections and youknow I'd like to establish a few
things up front.
You talk about facing violence,and they do that.
Right, and it's funny.
People come up to buy a book,you know, and I ask them you
know who are you with, what doyou do?
And I usually ask him how doyou like it.
(04:30):
It really astounds me how manycorrections you know prison, you
know jail Say I love what I do.
And I ask them why?
And one lieutenant told me shesaid I've been able to convince
(04:50):
an awful lot of people that onebad decision doesn't have to
define your life.
Another correction sergeant hetold me.
He said you know, nobody on theplanet does a better job of
giving people a second chance atlife.
You know, we talk about therecidivism rate.
(05:12):
You know the ones that go backand re-offend, of course, but we
don't talk about the vast, vastmajority who do not re-offend,
but the vast vast majority whotruly are corrected.
You know the term penitentiarycomes from the word penitent, to
be remorseful, to be sorrowful,you know, and they might not
(05:33):
necessarily be remorseful, butthey've learned a lesson in life
.
And then there are the onesthat say you know, we look in
the eyes of scary people everyday and you know the world is a
better place because they'rebehind bars.
We look in the eyes of scarypeople every day and you know
the world is a better placebecause they're behind bars.
(05:54):
Right, and there's value in that.
There is, there's great valuein that.
And just knowing, hey, you know, my children don't have to face
this guy.
You know however bad they are.
There's value in number one,knowing that we're giving them
another chance, but number two,saying, yeah, this is not a nice
person, right, and the world'sa better place because my spouse
(06:16):
doesn't have to face thisperson.
My children don't have to facethis person because they're in
here.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Absolutely.
Yeah, it took me a while in myown career.
It took me a little while to,because in corrections, you know
we don't get the pat on theback that maybe law enforcement
does or some other you knowpositions out there.
And it took me a while tofigure out how I was a public
servant.
I came from a family of publicservants.
I grew up with cops andfirefighters and highway
(06:43):
patrolmen and these were thepeople my family hung around and
so I thought I was walking intopublic service.
But you know, a few years intomy career I'm arguing with that
and I'm looking as I'm drivinghome when I looked out across
the city and I thought, you know, my job does matter.
If I wasn't there there wouldbe crime, people would be being,
(07:04):
you know, treated bad, stolenfrom, robbed, murdered, all that
stuff.
So I had to learn to look thereand not for the pat on the back
, because you don't usually getit in our job and that's a shame
.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
It should be better respected.
So we have to do that ourselves.
I'll give you an angle on this.
You know there's a faithperspective, everything, and it
really can be critical.
One of the things you know Itell all my first responders you
see a lot of bad things everyday and you can't help but ask
the question.
(07:36):
It's really not about faith,it's an existential question.
Every human being asks how coulda loving God allow these
terrible things to happen?
And the answer is really,really important.
And the answer is that yourloving God would not make you
his puppet.
A loving God would let peoplemake their own decisions.
(07:57):
You know, have you ever heardif you truly love something, let
it go.
If it comes back, it's reallyyours.
That's how much God loves us.
He loves us enough to let usmake our own decision.
That means a lot of people makereally bad decisions and a lot
of really bad things happen.
When we say God, why don't youdo something?
He said I did, I sent you.
You are his agent.
(08:18):
You are truly God's agent to dogood in this world, to give
people a second chance, to carrypeople off the streets.
You're truly a public servant,and I talk in my presentations
about the opposite of evil.
What's the opposite of evil?
The opposite of evil is love.
Evil's absence of love just asdarkness's absence of light.
(08:40):
And Jesus said greater love isno one than this that they lay
down their life for theirfriends.
But listen, here's the key.
There are many ways to lay downyour life.
There are many ways to lay downyour life, and sometimes the
greatest love is not tosacrifice your life but to live
(09:01):
a life of sacrifice.
And that's what corrections is.
Nobody's in this job to getstinking, filthy American Dream
rich.
Nobody's in this job to be afamous celebrity, at least not
legally.
When you chose this profession,you really chose.
To a certain degree, you chosea life of sacrifice, and we must
believe your sacrifice for anoble and worthy purpose.
(09:22):
And so we began by talking aboutfacing violence and how most
people are not wired to do that.
But when you face that, you sayI faced that violence today, so
my children didn't have to.
And again, sometimes thegreatest love is not to
sacrifice your life but to livea life of sacrifice.
(09:43):
And for all those that are outthere walking that path, it is a
sheepdog path.
They are sheepdogs.
They are protecting the flock,they are keeping the wolf at
arm's distance and giving peoplea second chance at life.
It is a noble and virtuousendeavor.
They are truly public servantsbeing of service, sure, and
(10:06):
without them it would be chaosand despair.
Sure.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Corrections is very much like the sheepdog analogy
because if you'll look out therein the field, when the
sheepdog's doing his job, rarelydo the sheep even know what the
sheepdog's doing.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Oh, I see Corrections , is that?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
way they're standing in the wall.
They're doing the job 24-7, 365.
Even know what the sheep dog'sdoing and corrections is that
way they're standing in the wall.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
They're doing the job 24-7, 365, but the sheep don't
want to know.
Yes, and that's okay.
You know, sometimes thegreatest love is not to
sacrifice your life but to livea life of sacrifice and quiet
service.
You know, we talk about thesilent professional.
The quiet professional, thesilent service.
Just go out there and do thatjob every day, knowing that the
world's a better place becauseof it.
(10:53):
You're not selling widgets tohousewives, you know you're not
flipping burgers at McDonald's.
Somebody's got to do those jobs.
Those jobs are important.
But if nobody did what you did,if nobody was in corrections,
what would happen?
What would happen?
What would we have?
Chaos and despair.
(11:13):
Yeah, and you know we couldlock them all up and never see
daylight, but then we'd nevergive them that chance for a
second chance at life.
Sure, and you know there mightbe some cheap, effective way to
do it, and sometimes there'svalue in that.
But the truth is that if we'regoing to give them that second
(11:33):
chance at life, if we're goingto give them that chance to see
that one bad decision didn'thave to define their life, then
we've got to give that extraeffort.
And nobody on the planet does abetter job than you're doing in
this business right now.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Excellent.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
I appreciate your recognitionof that, you know.
I would like to ask a couple ofquestions of you because I'm
interested.
What got you interested in thisfield of study?
Because I don't think this issomething that's you know on the
course lecture series when yougo to college, you know.
(12:11):
What was it that got youstarted?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well, you know, when I was growing up, my dad started
as a cop and then he got a jobthat ended up moving a lot.
Every 18 months we would moveand there was always a lot of
bullies.
You know, every time you movedthere was somebody that was
going to test you and I just Ihated bullies and I fought a lot
.
My dad taught me to fight and Ijust grew up with this deep
(12:37):
hatred of bullies.
But I grew up fighting a lot.
As soon as the martial arts wasavailable, I mean the first
little dojo in our little town,I was in Pine Bluffs, wyoming,
and a guy had kind of a kind ofa feeder school, an external
dojo from Cheyenne, and and Istarted going.
I was in junior high, I wantedto be in the martial arts to
confront bullies and I, you know, and the bullies knew to leave
(13:00):
me alone, but I, I would.
I would get in front of him andsay, leave him alone.
He said what's got to do withyou?
I said you're being a bully,you don't need to do this, leave
him alone or you've got toanswer to me.
And so I always had this callto confront the wolf, to
confront the bad guy and I endedup enlisting in 1974 in the
(13:25):
82nd Airborne Division and wehad Vietnam veterans all around
us and we wanted to know whatcombat was going to be like.
You know.
I'd gotten on an awful lot offistfights over the years and
soldiers, you know we'd get inscraps, but what's going to be
like in combat and they wouldn'tsay it was this taboo topic?
(13:46):
I realize now it's like askingabout sex, very intimate
personal process.
I mean, think about hunters.
You know, as a hunter, you knowwhen you fire your rifle you
don't hear the shot and the earsdon't know.
Now, every hunter I've everasked, ever asked, said yeah,
but nobody has ever sat aroundthe camp for it.
(14:06):
You know, I didn't hear theshot, my, nobody talks about
that, they live in their ownlittle silo.
Well, combat's like that, to tothe third power, full of full of
experiences that nobody reallytalks about slow motion, time,
auditory exclusion,re-experience in the event.
Uh, you know, what we've cometo learn and we need to talk
about is go further along whatbecomes PTSD and how to prevent
(14:30):
it from happening.
But nobody ever talked aboutthat.
And we would ask about it andnobody would talk.
And then you know, fast forward, captain Grossman, army Ranger
en route to be a West Pointpsych professor doing my
graduate work on this subject,and I would ask people and they
would tell me.
It's like you know, if somebodysay how's the sex life, how
(14:52):
many times you get it on, whatdo you?
You wouldn't tell them.
But at Masters and Johnson andsome scholarly study came in,
you might tell them.
Tell them the truth.
And so that became my firstbook on killing Right and I
thought what was at the heart ofcombat was the act of killing
and a lot of the people.
I interviewed, world War II vetsand Vietnam vets by the
(15:13):
hundreds.
But what I had trouble wrappingmy mind around is they were
18-year-old kids, drafted offthe street when this happened.
Yeah, and I got this mature,dignified man in front of me and
I can't wrap my mind around it.
It took me a long time torealize that for an 18-year-old
kid, you know, a few shortmonths after he, you know,
(15:34):
ambushed some guy done him noharm, that can be hard.
For a mature individual who'sprepared themselves for a
lifetime, for a matureindividual who's using deadly
force to protect others, it'sjust not that big a deal.
And so my research evolved intomy second book on combat, which
is really the more importantbook, and I'll tell you you
(15:54):
mentioned it, michael, and Ithink we can recommend it.
During the pandemic it became abig bestseller in the medical
community for the stress ofbeing in the medical community
in a pandemic.
And then it's been translated ina lot of languages and it was
translated in Ukrainian and inJanuary of 2024, it won a
(16:15):
Ukrainian Book of the Year award.
And in May and June of 2024,they brought me out there to
train their troops.
So I was 67 years old at thetime 67 years old to spend my
summer vacation in the war zonetraining their troops.
But they really embraced thatbook.
It's really cool.
You've got a copy of On Combatbehind you.
(16:35):
I've got one behind me.
The cover changed at one point,but it's still the same basic
book, a little updated, and thewhole sheep, the wolf and the
sheepdog thing came out of that.
It really built from that.
And then we did the sheepdogkids book and it's really
important about being theprotector, being the one that
protects the flock and makingthat decision to protect the
(16:58):
flock.
And that's what the peoplelistening to this podcast are.
They are the sheepdogs, theyare the ones protecting the
flock.
You know they go home everynight and they see gentle,
decent people all around themwho are able to go on about
their lives because you do thathard, dirty, difficult job every
day.
Yeah, and that's the sheepdog.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
That's great.
That's the evolution of myresearch, you know, and where it
evolved to that understandingof slow motion, time, tunnel
vision, memory gaps, memorydistortions, the crazy things
that happen in a life and deathevent that don't happen anywhere
else except in hunting to acertain degree.
And so it all evolved.
(17:42):
I've got 16 books out there.
We talked about the faith sideof the house.
It really for those.
I wrote the book on spiritualcombat.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And it really what I talked about about.
You know, why does God allowthese terrible things to happen?
Is to take that whole thing astep further.
If you're a person of faith, ifyou think there might be a life
after this life, then it'sinfinitely more important than
what happens in this world.
(18:11):
In the end everybody's going todie physically.
In the end, every nation fallsover my dead body.
In the end our son will die andlife on this earth will go away
, but eternity continues.
So wrap your mind around that.
A few more years on this earth,a little less suffering on this
(18:32):
earth, is nothing, nothing,nothing compared to one life in
eternity.
So I tell people, if you're aperson of faith, don't let the
things of this world pull youdown.
Take a deep breath and kind oftake that big picture and
there's value.
I think it's really hard tosustain this.
I know you had a podcastpreviously looking at you know,
kind of prison versus faith andit can be really hard to sustain
(18:56):
yourself without that.
And there's value in that.
And again, I think my book onspiritual combat we wrote who
wrote the book BulletproofMarriage, which became a—.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Highest divorce rate of about any profession.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Corrections.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I was at a conference and this book we wrote this
90-day devotional, you know, 15minutes a day sheepdog and
spouse Would anybody really dothat?
So it became a Christian BookAward final.
We got like 700 five-starreviews on Amazon Sheepdog and
Spouse Would anybody really dothat?
So it became a Christian BookAward finalist.
We got like 700 five-starreviews on Amazon.
A couple came up to me.
It was so cool.
They came up to me in aconference I was in just
(19:35):
recently.
They said we were 12 days awayfrom divorce when we started
going through this.
That's got to feel good andthat's pretty cool.
And you can look at the reviewson Amazon and see how people
did all 90 days and then did itagain and so you can leverage
your faith and your relationshipand make it a mutual endeavor.
(19:59):
And so I've got 16 bookspublished now and plinking away
at some others.
But it's been a good ride andit all started with wanting to
confront bullies, wanting toprotect people and then being in
the military and wanting toknow what real combat would be
like and people not saying andthen I wrote the book.
(20:22):
Nobody's ever done a book likethis before.
You know it's makes it so cooland people like you who've been
able to embrace the book.
It's just terribly rewarding.
And I'll be 69 years old nextyear or next month.
Next month be 69.
And it's my prayer to do thisfor another 20 years.
I just want to stay in thisfight as long as I can and just
(20:44):
try to empower my sheepdogs tothe best of my ability, to stay
in the fight and to keep doingthis worthy endeavor.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
You were one of the first people to actually talk
about it and I don't know, I'msure thousands of people have
told you, but it was socomforting to have somebody talk
about the stuff you talkedabout non-combat, you know,
because in prison and that's myfield you see so much violence.
I've seen violence that mostpeople can't even imagine.
(21:16):
Human on human not necessarilyI haven't killed anybody myself,
but the violence I've beenaround day after day would
stagger most people and nobodytalks about it.
Like you said, said it's kindof this quiet thing, so you were
the first one to kind of givevoice to some of that.
Yeah, question, I've got.
Um, you talked about psd there.
Ptsd for a minute.
(21:37):
Corrections is a littledifferent, you know, than some
other other PTSD.
A lot of those are onetraumatic event, you know,
either having to kill somebodyor being there during a
traumatic event With corrections.
It's lots of these smallertraumatic events, sometimes for
weeks, sometimes for years.
Do you see a difference in theway that manifests itself in the
(22:03):
individual?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Well, first let's talk about the commonality In
general PTSD.
You have a traumatic event andthen you re-experience the event
.
So during an event, sympatheticnervous system kicks in.
That's fight or flightmechanism.
Your heart is pounding and yourbody, and it's very powerful.
(22:28):
And what happens is a neuralnetwork is established.
I talk about, you know, a kidtouches a hot stove and you're
five years old.
How many times did you have totouch a hot stove?
Just one time, just one time.
And that neural network wasestablished.
Don't ever touch that stoveagain.
I call it the puppy inside themidbrain, the autonomic nervous
(22:50):
system.
Fight or flight, feed and breed, that's all he does.
And that puppy inside blows ahole through the screen door,
pees in your lap and says don'tever touch that stove again.
And it works.
So in corrections, you have atraumatic event, but then you do
it again and again, and again.
And if you don't separate thememory from the emotions, you're
(23:16):
just reinforcing thatrelationship.
So I'll give you an exampleArkansas State Trooper, first
gunfight bad guy's down, he'salive.
Happy end of the story.
So a week later he and his wifeare sitting in the bleachers
watching their daughter at aswim meet.
A starter's gun goes off whenhe doesn't expect it.
(23:37):
Boom, he said.
My heart's pounding, gaspingfor air, drenched with sweat.
His wife thought he was havinga heart attack.
He didn't know what washappening.
Now, this is important.
This is not PTSD.
Re-experiencing the event,having that sympathetic nervous
system kick off again, is normal.
(23:58):
It's a survival mechanism.
Right?
You know, the lion roared andyou jumped, jumped out of the
way and that saved your life.
And from that time on in time,a lion roars, boom, you know,
you kick in.
So these are survivalmechanisms, but we got to bring
them under control.
We got to separate the memoryfrom the emotions.
(24:18):
So the kind of tools we have toseparate the memory from the
emotion.
Let's say that you were.
You know cops had a gunfight ona particular street and they
drive down that street and theyre-experience the event.
It triggers the memory.
A corrections officer wasattacked in this particular cell
block and he walks in that cellblock and his heart starts
(24:41):
going up and he'sre-experiencing the event.
The sympathetic nervous arekicking off.
This is not PTSD, it's normal.
How you deal with it willdecide whether or not it becomes
PTSD, and what you got to do isseparate the memory from the
emotions.
Now we're talking on combat.
We're talking on combat, aboutthe breathing exercise.
(25:03):
You can always just hop andbreathe.
You know I've got collectionsof case studies and emails that
people have sent me, organizedby subject, and of all the
subjects, the breathing is byfar the largest folder.
To just stop and breathe,breathe in four, hold four out
(25:24):
four, hold four, and you trulyare.
So what we got there, themidbrain is fight or flight,
feed and breathe, and it's theautonomic nervous system, things
that aren't under consciouscontrol, and your breathing,
your breathing, is not underconscious control.
If you had a conscious controlof your breathing when you sleep
, you'd die, right, right, butyou take a deep breath right now
.
Breathing when you sleep, you'ddie right, right, right, but
(25:45):
you take a deep breath right now, breathe in.
What did you just do?
You pulled your breathing fromunconscious to conscious control
, right.
And when you reach out and grabconscious control of the
breathing, the whole autonomicnervous system comes with it.
It pulls you from fight orflight to rest and digest.
Right system comes with it.
(26:06):
It pulls you from fight orflight to rest and digest.
The most powerful tool we found.
What I tell a lot of people isto walk with a bottle of water
in your hand.
You got that bottle of water inyour hand and you begin to
re-experience that event.
It is so powerful to stop thebig swig of water from getting
control.
Now the therapy for PTSD remover.
(26:31):
I'm separating the memory fromthe emotion.
I was interviewing World War IIvets and Vietnam vets by the
hundreds and if they becameemotional, if they began to
re-experience the event, I'dmake them stop and breathe.
Today we put a bottle of waterin front of them, make them stop
and take a big swig of water.
So a friend of mine is atherapist for a major federal
(26:55):
agency and if one of their guysin a deadly force incident, they
fly her in and she debriefsthem and she would have them
talk about the incident andevery time they start to become
emotional right, that you beganshe'd make them stop and breathe
.
Today she puts a bottle ofwater in front of them, right.
And every time they start tobecome emotional she makes them
(27:15):
stop and take a puts a bottle ofwater in front of them and
every time they start to becomeemotional she makes them stop
and take a big swig of water.
And she told me she said Dave.
She said six years of college,14 years of practice and that
stupid bottle of water is doingmore good than anything I've
ever done.
So I want to give you that lifehack.
But there's another way.
Now what we're talking about toa certain degree is sympathetic
(27:38):
nervous system fight or flightand the essence of resiliency
and resiliency are people who donot get PTSD.
The essence of resiliency isreally manifested in Viktor
Frankl, a guy in a Nazi deathcamp who did not get PTSD.
(27:58):
He walked out of a Nazi deathcamp, a human skeleton, enduring
unthinkable evil, and he said Irealized the only thing in the
universe those Nazi bastardscouldn't control is how I choose
to respond.
The only thing in the universeyou can control, the only thing
(28:19):
is yourself and how you chooseto respond.
And so you don't lose yourtemper.
You give it away.
Now, that's easy to say, butwhat you do is learn to control
it.
So we've got a lot of peoplesmarties and you got your little
(28:40):
smartie there, a cop told me.
He said you know what?
Somebody give me the finger, Iget a smartie.
The only problem is you'renever happy with just one of
those little things, see.
So he said.
So I want another smartie, butI can't have one unless
somebody's ugly to me right.
So I drive around waving andsmiling at people.
Somebody gives me a finger.
Ah, I get another Smartie.
(29:02):
And what I just described to youis actual cognitive behavior
therapy, cbt, cognitive behaviortherapy.
Through your actions and yourthoughts, you rewire the way you
process what happens.
They gave you the finger,they're trying to offend you,
they're trying to harm you,they're trying to hurt you and
(29:22):
for you it means, oh, I get apiece of candy and you actually
rewire the way they talk aboutit.
I talk about people having abag of M&Ms and popping an M&M
in your mouth and you chew that.
And you chew that and youswallow that and it pulls you
from fight or flight to rest anddigest you.
And I remember Kojak with alollipop, and what he was doing
(29:47):
with that lollipop was he wasactually having that cognitive
behavior therapy in which he'dcrunch on that thing kind of
regain control.
And so I tell people thatre-experience.
In the event, you know, you do acell entry and all of a sudden
your heart is pounding becausethe last time this terrible
(30:07):
thing happened.
But now you do that cell entryand you use your breathing, or
you take that big swig of water,or you know, immediately
afterwards you just pop that, uh, that smarty in your mouth.
Or you know that tootsie rolls.
And when I used to recommendtootsie rolls and cops of san
dave, I was eating way too manytootsie rolls so I switched to
(30:30):
smarties.
It's my little chill pill.
But just remember, you don'tlose your temper, you give it
away.
It's the only thing in theuniverse you can control.
And so controlling thatphysiological arousal and really
it's what makes us human.
You know we got fight or flight, feed and breed.
And one of the first things welearn is not to crap ourselves.
(30:53):
That's hard.
You ever potty train a kid orhouse train a dog.
That's hard.
But we learn not to crapourselves and we've got to learn
to control our temper.
And if you lose your temper, Itell people you know there's
never a good time to crapyourself and there's never a
good time to lose your temper.
And it's easy to say it ain'tthat easy to do.
(31:14):
And there's never a good timeto lose your temper.
And it's easy to say it ain'tthat easy to do.
You know, I was not as good afather as I could have been.
The kids turned out okay inspite of me, but I was a better
grandfather, you know.
I asked how many of y'all gotkids?
How many of y'all ever lookedat your kids?
How many of y'all looked atyour parents with your kids and
said are you the same ones thatraised me?
(31:35):
Absolutely.
I said well, they're not, doyou understand?
They're 20 years old.
It's called maturity and youwant to get it as fast as you
can.
It's called self-control.
So we talk about the laconicSpartan, the stoic Roman, the
inscrutable samurai, the stiffupper lip Brit and the day we
talk about the quietprofessional.
(31:55):
Those are all different waysand the same thing self-control.
It's classic Stoicism.
It's completely compatible withChristianity.
We've all heard the serenityprayer.
Right, you know God, grant methe strength to do the things I
can't, to let go of the things Ican't, and the wisdom to tell
the difference right.
(32:15):
And that's what we're talkingabout is, just do the things you
can and let go of everythingelse.
The only thing the universe cancontrol is yourself.
So when you begin tore-experience that event, then
you take the tools available toseparate the memory from the
emotion.
Now, this is a critical part ofthe equation we're really really
good at treating PTSD.
(32:36):
We get better all the time,right.
And how can we help otherpeople if we can't help
ourselves?
It's okay to say I'm not okayand it's okay to get help Right
and know that the help will help, to expect the help to help and
come out the other end stronger.
You know, we look at the WorldWar II veterans, the greatest
(32:58):
generation.
Nietzsche said what doesn't killus only makes us stronger,
right, nietzsche stole that fromthe Bible 2000 years before
Nietzsche.
Romans chapter 5, the Biblesays we glory in tribulation For
tribulation.
Work of patience, patience,experience, experience, hope and
hope make it not a shame.
The idea of being stronger fromthe bad things in life is not a
(33:20):
new idea.
So you see, these bad thingshappen to you and the puppy
inside panics and you go downthat cell block, you make that
cell entry and the puppy pumpsback up.
You've got to get that puppyunder control.
And the swig of water, thebreathing, you know, the Smarty,
(33:40):
the M&Ms, those are alldifferent tools to pull you from
fight or flight, to risk andnot test.
But if you can't do it yourself, the docs got a whole bag full
of tricks.
One of the good tricks the docsgot.
You need to know about becauseit sounds crazy called EMDR eye
movement, desensitization,reprocessing and what you do is
you follow a visual stimuluswhile you talk about what
(34:01):
happened and the puppy.
Is a simple mechanism, you canonly do one thing at a time.
And while you're following thatvisual stimulus, the puppy's in
the front yard chasing a balland for the first time you can
talk about it.
You can think about it withoutthe puppy peeing in your lap,
and oftentimes just one or twosessions of EMDR will completely
(34:26):
separate the memory from theemotions and send you down the
path, not just healing what'scalled post-traumatic growth.
We've all heard aboutpost-traumatic stress and if it
gets bad enough it'spost-traumatic stress disorder.
But you come out the other endwith post-traumatic growth.
Our corrections officers, ourcops, our military veterans we
(34:49):
know they're strong people.
We know they're stronger forthe experience.
The World War II generation,the greatest generation they
were living examples ofpost-traumatic growth.
Oh, absolutely yeah, go intocorrections, go into those bad
situations, know them.
They will make me stronger,seeking post-traumatic growth,
(35:09):
and I think that's really animportant thing to talk about.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Sure, absolutely.
That's really important thingto talk about.
Sure, absolutely.
You know one of the and thetechniques that you were talking
about there.
One of the problems they havein corrections is hypervigilance
.
You know you're walking arounda thousand inmates here at this
level all day long and then youwalk home to a three-year-old
who does not understand it, andit seems like a couple of those
techniques might be a good wayto decompress Absolutely might
(35:33):
be a good way to decompress,absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Take that moment.
You know, if you can control itwith these inmates, then how
much more so can you control itwith your children?
Right?
I wish somebody had told methat, as a young father, as a
young sergeant, I wish somebodyhad told me that, yeah, you know
, my dad lost his temper and Ilost my temper.
I thought that's what peopledid, but I realized nobody ever
(35:57):
respects our temper, tantrum,respect our calm.
And what do our children needfrom us?
And it's not easy, you know wefail.
God forgives us, forgiveyourself and move on.
We fail, but we try to do abetter job the next time.
And really our family is anopportunity to get a little bit
better at that.
I, just two days ago, my wifeand I just had our 50th wedding
(36:21):
anniversary.
Congratulations, thank you.
And I still lose my tempersometimes.
It's just a little thing.
You know, it's just a littleword, it's not screaming,
shouting, but it's just a littlething.
But I recognize it and I keeptrying to be a better person.
It's really here.
I am 68 years old, 69 in amonth.
It's really satisfying to say Iam a better person than I was
(36:43):
five years ago.
And we can keep doing that.
We can keep being better people, wiser and with better
self-control and betterself-discipline, and that's the
path of life.
You know, the opposite of evilis love, and what God calls us
to do is to love.
Jesus said a new commandment Igive you to love others as I
(37:05):
have loved you.
That's our goal, that's whatGod wants to love others as I
have loved you.
And remember, sometimes thegreatest love is not to
sacrifice your life, but to livea life of sacrifice.
So those magnificent sheepdogs,those men and women in
corrections, they are a livingexample of sacrifice for others.
(37:25):
They're not doing it for youknow, society is a better place
because of what they do everyday, and you've got to believe
that, yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, absolutely, and we got to teach them.
You know, one of the ways thatI got through my career was to
become a trainer.
I turned my focus to helpingthe others and getting them
through it with my experienceand my stuff.
You know we talked aboutviolence.
How do we prepare that youngcorrectional officer for the
(38:00):
first time he's going or she'sgoing to experience violence at
a level like that?
You know, I know the militaryhas this very rigid.
You know they put you throughbasic training.
You're ready for it.
I don't see that in lawenforcement and corrections.
We don't do that at the samelevel.
What's some of the stuff wecould do there?
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Well, the truth is that the military doesn't do a
very good job at all.
Okay, the only thing is whenthe drill sergeant gets your
face and shouts at you.
You know some of the.
In law enforcement, the verybest things we do are the force
on force engagements.
You know ammunition and that'sreally it's.
You know like firefighters haveto face Robert E Howie fire.
(38:40):
We face Robert E Howie bullets,right?
I think one of the best ways toprepare is the martial arts.
I think it's a very good way to.
You know, I grew up in themartial arts.
I love the martial arts.
I think it is the very best way.
It martial arts.
(39:00):
I love the martial arts.
I think it is the very best way.
It's a great thing you can dowith your family.
It's a great stress reliever,it's a great self-discipline and
it teaches you to confrontviolence and to deal with
violence as necessary.
But let's lay a foundation,something I really want to talk
about.
Sure, one thing we know is thisIf your body is already under
stress and then you face astressful event, they amplify
(39:23):
each other.
So if you're malnourished, likethe POWs or the Holocaust
survivors, then the malnutrition, combined with what their
captors did to them, thosestressors amplify each other.
Or if you're injured or ill,that's why the elderly can be so
vulnerable.
The physical infirmity of theelderly body combined with the
traumatic event, these thingsamplify it.
(39:45):
And if you are sleep deprivedyou're far more likely.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Most correctionalists are sleep deprived.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And that's what I want to talk about.
This is the one thing.
Remember.
What's the one thing we can'tcontrol Is ourselves and sleep
and getting sleep and allowingourselves to sleep.
And under stress there's thingsthat attract us.
We want to.
You know, we escape intowatching movies, you know, or we
(40:15):
play video games and the truthis it's terribly
counterproductive.
Throughout human history, whensoldiers weren't fighting, they
went to sleep and they alwaysgot enough sleep and they needed
a lot of sleep.
Under stress, your bodyactually needs more sleep and
they clean their weapons, theydo what needed to be done and
they'd sleep.
And then we invented thingslike video games and TV shows.
(40:40):
So I trained a brigade of the101st Airborne Division punching
out to Iraq.
So many of my units going backand forth have been able to
train through all these years ofwar and the brigade command
sergeant major.
I talked about sleep and sleepmanagement and sleep hygiene.
(41:01):
We'll cover some of that.
He said I was command sergeantmajor for a battalion deployed.
Now that's an element rightbelow brigade right?
So he's promoted to brigade nowand he's deploying again.
He said our battalion was in abarracks environment at night
and combat patrols during theday.
He said, told my troops itslides out at 2200.
(41:23):
He said if I catch you up after10 o'clock playing video games,
I will take your video games,he said.
A week later I had a closetoverflowing with video games.
He said these are good soldierswho wouldn't disobey an order,
but they cannot not play thosedamn games.
(41:45):
They want to give an illusionof control, to give an illusion
of progress, and there's nothingwrong with that, unless they
get in the way of your sleep.
So here's the key thing tounderstand about sleep
deprivation being sleep deprivedputs your body under enormous
stress and if something badhappens, let me show you a study
(42:06):
here.
It's a really important studythat I really.
But if you're sleep deprived,you're five times more likely to
get PTSD, nine times morelikely to have major depressive
disorder and six times morelikely to have a suicidal
ideation.
Wow, now this is not a causalrelationship.
(42:27):
It's not even a correlationalrelationship.
It's a toxic, interactiverelationship.
How do we get a handle ondepression?
It's hard, or suicide, how doyou?
But we can get a handle onsleep, and if you get sleep
under control, all this otherstuff comes with it.
So what we've got to understandwe live in a world in which
(42:49):
there's all these desirablethings to do.
Uh, so I was in Ukraine trainingtheir troops, right?
Sure, I do two or threepresentations a day, right?
My book had been selected theUkrainian Book of the Year Award
there and I only had like atranslation in only about an
hour.
I've got a son who just retiredafter nine combat tours.
(43:12):
I got a grandson deployed rightnow who just retired after nine
combat tours.
I got a grandson deployed rightnow and I thought what if it
was my son?
What if my grandson and I hadone hour to give them the best I
had?
Now, half of it was talkingabout what happens in a
traumatic event slow motion,time, tunnel vision, auditory
exclusion, how they're normal,how you experience it all the
(43:34):
stuff we just talked about.
But the other half was talkingabout sleep management and sleep
hygiene and how critical it isto make sure people get sleep
and so crazy things happen.
Now, these were usually smallergroups, you know, you get more
than 50 people, it becomes atarget.
So you know, we're just kind ofa little ways back, you know,
(43:56):
50 miles back from the war zone,you know, and there'd be you
know, 40 people there, most ofthem officers, right, and one.
You know there'd be captains,majors, colonels, and one
captain stood up and probably acompany commander.
He said well, the Russians, younever know if the Russians are
going to bomb us.
(44:16):
And he can't sleep.
Now, that's not true.
World War I, world War II,soldiers learn to sleep through
anything.
You can sleep through anythingyou can learn to.
But he said you can't sleep, soI just play video games.
You never know when they'regoing to throw up, I just play
video games.
You never know when they'regoing to throw it.
I just played video games.
Friends are looking like dude,why are you sharing this?
(44:38):
But it was like this cry forhelp and the rooms are so
seductive.
Another guy, a young captain,probably company commander, said
I have terrible nightmares.
I have terrible nightmares, soI don't want to sleep, so I
watch movies.
So I watch movies.
And his, so I watch movies.
It's not making it better.
You know that You're notimproving the situation.
(45:02):
Why are you telling us?
It's like this cry for help butthese, these, the, the video
games, the movies, the socialmedia they give an illusion of
control.
So here's the foundationalpoint being sleep deprived is
just like being drunk Every way.
At 24 hours without sleep,you're impaired judgment, just
(45:25):
like blowing 0.10 blood alcohollevel above legally drunk.
And the link between sleepdeprivation and mental illness
is huge.
24 hours without sleep and youare mentally ill.
Yeah 36 hours without sleep.
I've been there 36 hours withoutsleep and you are paranoid,
(45:47):
you're irrational, you'reaggressive.
On the third day without sleepyou are psychotic.
Any graduate of Army RangerSchool will say about
hallucinations on the third daywithout sleep.
You are psychotic.
Any graduate of Army RangerSchool will hear about
hallucinations on the third daywithout sleep.
You will flat-seed.
So sleep deprivation is a hugefactor in mental illness.
You literally are drunk.
You're mentally ill when you'resleep deprived and your family
(46:10):
has to deal with that and yourjob has to deal with that.
And if somebody showed up towork drunk, you'd kick his ass.
If he shows up to worksleep-deprived because he played
freaking games all night long,you need his ass kicked.
You know and I present tocorrections you know a couple
hundred.
Or cops you know, or I'llpresent to a military unit.
I tell them that.
(46:30):
Or cops, you know, or I'llpresent to a military unit.
I tell them that.
You know, if you show up at themorning formation drunk, they
kick your ass.
You know, show up at themorning formation, sleep
deprived because you playedgames all night long.
You didn't ask care.
And a lot of them said dude,you're looking at me like a deer
in the headlights right now.
I just said dude, you'retalking straight to me and
that's okay, you didn't know,but now you know, you know doing
(46:53):
.
Well, I'm right, you can't keepdoing business this way, you
can't keep doing that, and youknow I'm right as you love your
family, as you love your health,as you love your job.
Now, here's the key, now, thehuge link between sleep
deprivation and suicide.
In the end we lose morecorrections and cops to suicide
(47:13):
than every other line of dutydeath put together.
And here's the thing Right nowit is physically impossible for
you to take your life.
The drive to self-preservationis too great.
You know, if you were on a tallbuilding and I tried to shove
you over the building, you'dfight for your life.
The drive to self-preservationis so powerful you cannot take
(47:35):
your life.
But when you're drunk, alcoholinhibits the drive to
self-preservation.
Suddenly suicide becomespossible.
So alcohol is always this keycomponent in suicide.
You take all these otherproblems, you, you add alcohol
(47:58):
and suddenly you take apermanent solution to a
temporary problem and you takeyour life.
But sleep deprivation is exactlythe same.
And you only drunk for a briefwindow, but you're still
deprived for.
For it goes on and on and on,and you know, and, and you'll
sober up in a couple hours viasleep deprived you just, unless
you get some rest, you just getworse and worse.
So not only do it.
I tell people, do some onlineresearch, just do an online
(48:20):
research.
Sleep deprivation, mentalillness, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Sleep deprivation, suicide,boom, boom, boom, boom.
Study after study, one of thebest studies, says not only is
sleep deprivation a key factorin suicide.
It's the most remediable factor.
But we can't do anything aboutyour relationships, your
finances.
But we get some sleep right.
(48:41):
Stinking now, yeah.
And so sleep deprivation is keyfactor in traffic deaths,
another major killer of people.
Sleep deprivation createschronic pain, sure, and the
opiate epidemic.
The opiate epidemic.
Why opiates?
Fentanyl's an opiate.
Fentanyl alone kills 40,000 to80,000 Americans a year.
We lose more people Most years.
(49:06):
We lose more people to fentanylin one year than we lost in the
entire Vietnam War.
And opiates are crazy.
Why opiates?
Because we got chronic pain.
But also, when you're sleepdeprived, those opiates have a
double whammy.
They are satisfying somethingyour body deeply, deeply needs.
(49:27):
The thing to understand is sleepis a biological blind spot.
We need four things to survivewe need air, we need water.
We need food to survive.
We need air, we need water, weneed food and we need sleep.
You will die from lack of sleepfaster than you will die from
lack of food.
You will die from lack of sleep.
You need sleep more than youneed food, absolutely.
(49:47):
Your body knows how to make youget air, water and food.
Try going without air or foodor water.
Your body will take over, butyour body doesn't know how to
make you get enough sleep.
It's just by, like there'snothing tough, there's nothing
macho, right Without sleep.
Any 10-year-old girl in aslumber party can do it.
The professional thing to do isto manage your sleep and, by the
(50:09):
way, sleep deprivation is a keyfactor in obesity and heart
disease and it's a key factor inAlzheimer's.
That should scare the hell outof all of us People.
I'll sleep when I'm dead.
You have a decade ofAlzheimer's, you idiot.
Alzheimer's and dementia sleepdeprivation is a major factor.
Now here's the thing why don'twe know about the link between
(50:32):
sleep deprivation andAlzheimer's?
Why don't we have publicservice announcements about the
link between sleep deprivationand Alzheimer's?
Why don't we have publicservice announcements about the
link between sleep deprivationand suicide?
Because the TV will never havea commercial that says turn off
the TV, right.
The video game will never sayyou played this game for 36
hours, can I shut you down now?
The games are designed to makeit impossible to turn off.
(50:54):
Social media will never sayyou've been on social media for
the last 48 hours or shuttingyou down.
They will never do that.
Your time is their money and soall they want to do is steal
your sleep.
They don't care that they'rekilling people.
The head of Netflix said theircompetitor is sleep.
The corporate policy at Netflixis to steal your sleep.
(51:16):
They don't care that they'rekilling people.
So listen, this is a majorfactor with our kids.
Worldwide, suicides of childrenhave exploded, every nation,
every demographic group.
Here's parenting 101 for the21st century.
When you send your kid to bedat night, take their cell phone
away from them.
No laptop, no cell phone, no TV.
(51:38):
Take it out of the room andsleep.
We should be scared sick.
I lost a little brother tosuicide.
I lost two nephews to suicide.
I cannot tell you how harmfulthat is to a family.
It's just no action, nobehavior.
It's worse than having somebodytake their own life, because
being murdered is not as harmfulto the family as suicide is for
(52:01):
them to choose to take theirown life.
And so a cop came up to me.
He said I told the group.
I said you know twinators 10,11, 12-year-old, twin-age girl's
suicide rate has tripled injust the last decade.
A cop came up.
He said I had one of thoseteenagers.
He said she was a good girl, shewas an, a student.
(52:22):
She said, dad, it'sembarrassing, you don't have to
take my cell phone every night.
Family policy, good policy,cell phone, a charging board, a
bed.
You don't have to take my phoneevery night, you can trust me,
I, I'm going to take my phoneevery night, you can trust me.
I said, okay, I trust you, keepyour cell phone.
He said a little while later shetook her life.
He said my little girl took herlife and we never knew the hell
she was living in until welooked at the text messages on
(52:46):
her cell phone.
Wow, night after night I'veseen such relentless, vicious
bullying.
He said they were tag-teamingher.
They were taking shifts allnight long, night after night.
He said I immediatelyunderstood my little girl's
bullied to death what I didn'tunderstand until now.
She was sleep-deprived,tormented and bullied to death
(53:08):
in front of my eyes and I let ithappen.
He said I can't ignore thattext message in the middle of
the night.
How can we expect our kids to?
And suicide is a major killer ofteenagers.
The major killer of teenagersis traffic deaths and sleep
deprivation and traffic deathsis huge.
Another major major killer ofour kids is drug overdoses.
(53:31):
Of all three suicide, trafficdeaths, drug overdoses the major
causal factor is sleepdeprivation.
So let's talk about sleephygiene real fast.
Okay, you know I sent mygrandson off to college.
Now what's the three thingsmost likely to kill my grandson?
(53:52):
Suicide, drug overdoses andtraffic deaths.
It's all there.
What's the greatest gift I'dgive my grandson?
A good night's sleep?
He's heard my class, he's heardmy stuff.
But here's the thing I tell mycops I do a school safety
seminar.
I had an East Texas schoolsafety conference.
I told them, you know we'regoing to talk about keeping your
(54:14):
school safe from violence.
I bet you had, unfortunatelyyou probably had some suicides,
had some traffic deaths, hadsome drug overdoses.
Bet you had a problem withmental illness and about obesity
.
You know you say, well, whatcan we do about the suicide?
(54:34):
Sleep?
What can we do about trafficdeaths?
Sleep, what can we do about themental illness?
Sleep.
I said you want to walk outthat door and save a kid's life?
Educate them about sleephygiene.
So here's what they need toknow.
Three things the amount of sleepthey need for their age and for
adults we need seven hours ofsleep minimum.
(54:56):
You cannot get by.
There's a great chart frommilitary research and that unit
that's getting by on four hoursof sleep and very quickly
they're destroyed.
Human beings after 20 days.
The ones with five hours ofsleep are right behind and the
ones with six hours of sleep arenot.
It isn't until you get sevenhours of sleep every night that
(55:17):
you can sustain yourself, andall these military units
nobody's.
Oh, I got by on four hours ofsleep and 20 days later I'm just
fine.
Nobody, nobody, nobody was ableto get by on four hours of
sleep and 20 days later be justfine.
So we've got to get a minimumof seven hours of sleep.
As adults, I shoot for nine.
(55:38):
That's kind of my personal goal.
If I get less than that, I tryto make up for it a little bit.
Anything beyond nine or tenstarts to become a little
counterproductive.
If you catch up on sleep, it'snot so bad, but on a steady
basis.
9 is really the most that weshould shoot for, but the amount
of sleep that they need forkids, depending on the age, they
need more than that.
(55:58):
Number two cut off caffeineshortly after lunch.
We're in the middle of acaffeine epidemic.
We've got a global epidemic ofsleep deprivation and a global
epidemic of caffeine abuse.
We have quantity and quality ofcaffeine like there's never
been before.
You could pound down cup aftercup of hot, you know strong
(56:22):
black coffee and not have thesame amount of caffeine.
You get some of these energydrinks, oh, absolutely.
Here's the thing.
The half-life of caffeine inyour body is five hours.
Now, sleep is precious.
Sleep is so precious.
Guard your sleep, protect yoursleep.
And caffeine is the enemy ofgood sleep.
So the caffeine you took at 5pm is still at half strength
(56:46):
when you go to bed at 10 pm andit's making you have bad quality
sleep.
That causes chronic pain andthat's where the Alzheimer's and
dementia comes from.
So, cut off caffeine.
Teach the kids shortly afterlunch shut down caffeine.
You really need to do it.
If you need to stay awake,smack yourself, do anything, but
please, during that block oftime about seven hours before
(57:08):
you go into bed, just shut itdown.
No caffeine.
And then here's the key onesleep in the dark.
We're designed to sleep intotal darkness, our species
throughout history, for untoldhundreds of thousands of years.
It got dark.
It got dark, there was no light, and that's why the body
(57:30):
doesn't have to make us sleep.
It happened.
Naturally it got dark.
It had nothing to do with alittle sex, a little talk, and
you roll over and you went tosleep.
And then we admitted theelectric light bulb and the
television and the video came.
So here's the key Teach thekids to sleep in the dark.
And one of the best toolsanybody out there, anybody
listening is this sleep mask.
This particular mask isAmazon's number one bestseller.
(57:53):
Last I looked, I'm like 85,000five-star reviews for a stinking
mask.
Wow.
And if you do just one thingfrom this podcast, one
life-saving thing, you may notget one more minute of sleep.
But you and I know that nomatter how bad your curtains are
, if you're working night shift,you're going to sleep during
(58:15):
the day.
But if you're, how good yourblackout curtains are, if you
can tell it's daylight outside,that's way too much light.
I'm a huge science geek and amajor study in the sleep lab.
Right.
Totally dark room, sleep lab.
Bathroom light is on and thedoor is shut.
The light coming under thecrack of the bathroom door is
(58:35):
enough light to stop your bodyfrom producing the melatonin
that you need Now.
Melatonin is the hormone thatmakes us sleep.
Melatonin is created in totaldarkness, and so make the room
as dark as you can and combineit with a sleep mask.
You may not get one more minuteof sleep.
You get quality sleep.
It'll rock your world.
It's just the easiest possiblelife hack.
(58:56):
You walk out that door andchange your world and change
your life.
To sleep in the dark andcombine it with a sleep mask and
it'll rock your world.
So my grandson goes off tocollege.
I gave him three differentkinds of sleep masks.
I said find the one you likeand use it.
I called my grandson, I calledhey, buddy, how's college going?
Doing great, grandpa, are yougetting enough sleep?
(59:18):
Critical question yes, sir, areyou using your sleep mask?
Yes, sir, as a matter of fact,it got kind of grody.
I went online and orderedanother one and boom, that's how
I sell success, you know.
So the kid wrapped up two yearsof college, enlisted, is now
deployed, doing great things.
Congratulations, yeah, thanks.
(59:39):
Those college years, they'redangerous.
We're losing kids, we're losingpeople.
For all you corrections, peopleout there again.
If you're sleep-deprived, don'tcop a pity party here, but if
you're sleep-deprived and thebest stuff comes down, you're
stacking the deck againstyourself.
Teach yourself of the long game.
We need four-quarter players.
(01:00:00):
We need seasoned players.
Your whole family.
Nurture an environment of sleep.
Create an environment where wetrack our sleep there's great
value in the fitness trackerswhere we track our sleep A
nurture environment where wetrack our sleep and we monitor
our sleep.
There's a big movement now, asocial movement on sleep maxing,
(01:00:21):
finding all the different waysto get better quality sleep and
maximizing your sleep, and itstarts with a fitness tracker
and all of your corrections.
People out there doing thisdifficult, difficult job.
If you're sleep deprived, don'tcop a pity party.
We can handle anything, but westack the deck against ourselves
(01:00:43):
and this is one place where wecan make a huge difference right
now to turn the tide.
Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
That's good advice.
And if you don't think aboutyourself, think about the staff
you're working with.
You know, if you're not 100%,that's who you're there to
protect.
That day.
Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Yeah, what would you think of the staff guy who shows
up to work drunk?
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
That's you, absolutely that's you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Absolutely.
That's you.
What a great point.
Do it for your comrades, do itfor the men and women who count
on you every day.
Sure, do it for your family,who count on you coming home
healthy and stable at the end ofthe day.
So these are things that we canwalk out the door and do right
now to change our life and torock our world and to move
(01:01:25):
ourselves towards a better worldand better place.
Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
That is so on point, you know, for today's
correctional officer Recruitment, retention overtime.
You know.
That is so on point for what alot of them are facing right now
.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Maybe so, yeah, we've got hard times in front of us,
like you said.
Recruiting is down, retentionis down, although we're kind of
turning the tide in recentmonths.
You know, I'll give you somegood news.
I think all of our sheepdogsshould appreciate this.
Okay, 2021 was the all-timerecord number of cops murdered
(01:02:02):
in the line of duty.
Yeah, 2023 was the all-timerecord number of cops shot in
the line of duty.
2023 was the all-time recordnumber of cops shot in the line
of duty.
But starting in 25, you know,and it's about somebody who
backs the blue at the highestlevel, regardless of your
politics, just recognize thatthere's been this major shift in
(01:02:25):
attitude and this is all fromthe Officer Down Memorial
website.
But of the first five months of2025, two months tied.
One was a three-way tie and onewas like a four-way tie, but
two months tied the least numberof cops murdered in the land of
duty and we're includingcorrections in that and two
(01:02:46):
months set a new record lownumber murdered in the line of
duty.
That's great.
We've seen recruiting hasexploded.
The FBI, the Border Patrol, hasseen an explosion of recruiting
.
Albuquerque, new Mexico, wasunder consent decree.
The consent decree was liftedand they had a surge of
(01:03:09):
recruiting like they'd neverseen before.
I just have hope.
These have been hard years.
These have been hard times whenour sheepdogs were under attack
and the wolf was empowered.
They were taught that thecriminal is the good guy and the
cop was the bad guy, and thisis one of the most harmful
possible narratives.
(01:03:29):
Well, we've come out of thosedark days and there's hope for
the future and there's hope forour nation.
But in the meanwhile, we needour sheepdogs to just protect
the flock and believe in whothey are.
Remember sometimes, thegreatest love is not to
sacrifice your life, but to livea life of sacrifice, to do that
dirty, dangerous job, becauseyou know, if nobody did it, our
(01:03:52):
civilization would be doomed.
True.
Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Absolutely true.
Thank you so much, colonel.
Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Thank you for coming on here, and let me tell you and
all your corrections out there.
They're coming on here and letme tell you and all your
corrections out there.
Thank you for being there doingthat job for us every day.
Like you said, the sheep don'tcare what the sheepdog is doing.
Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
They're not even remotely interested.
Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
The sheepdog is doing the job out there and it's a
necessary, essential job andthank you and all the
magnificent men and women wholisten to this podcast for going
out there and doing that jobfor us every day.
Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
I appreciate that.
I will put in the show notes.
If anybody wants information onhow to contact Lieutenant
Colonel Dave Grossman or hisbooks, I'll have all that stuff
in there.
If I can find that study, Iwould love.
To that sleep study I'd love toadd that link also.
Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
I'll send you a copy of it right now.
Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
You have a great day.
God bless you.
Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
All right, stay safe.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Hey, before we go, I'd like to take a minute to
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That's omnirtlscom or you canclick on today's show notes to
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Thanks for listening and let'sbe safe out there.
Hello and welcome back to the Prison Officer
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Before we get to our topic today, I just want to take a minute
to thank one of our sponsors.
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Pepperball is the safer optionfirst.
(01:04):
Hello and welcome back to thePrison Officer Podcast.
My name is Mike Cantrell,today's guest.
I'm sure most of you alreadyrecognize.
I am super excited.
When I started this podcast Inever thought I'd get the chance
to talk to Lieutenant ColonelDave Grossman.
He has written some books thathave been very motivational and
(01:25):
inspirational in my life and inmy job and of course many of you
know he wrote On Combat, onKilling, on.
Hunting is another one.
I'm a big avid hunter andfisherman.
So he's written many otherbooks and I'm sure we'll get
into some of those, but I'mexcited to have him on the
(01:45):
podcast.
He studies violence and mostpeople don't understand violence
, do they, sir?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
No, they don't, Michael.
And you know it's funny youmention hunting.
We just throw it right outfront.
You know those who hunt theyhave killed and they're in tune
with the cycle of life andthey're in tune with the taking
of life.
And it's funny when I talkcorrections I've had the honor
(02:17):
to do a lot of work oncorrections, especially fairly
recently.
We talk about the fact that andlaw enforcement.
You know, just to give a lawenforcement example, similar in
corrections, that you knowthere's a lot of cops in our
department that they walk into abar and people want to push
them, people want to test them.
So there's a fair number ofcops that people don't want to
(02:41):
push them, they don't want totest them and when you cut right
down to it, they're hunters,they're predators.
And I talk about the book onhunting and this has real
application that you can'tunderstand who we are without
understanding hunting.
And throughout the history ofour species we've been hunters.
(03:03):
Throughout the history of ourspecies we've been hunters.
If you take the existence ofour species and cram, it call it
24 hours, up until the last sixminutes, all we did was hunt.
Yeah, we were always in themiddle of the food chain.
There were things that huntedus and things that we hunted.
But it's no fun to be hunted.
We don't want to be hunted, wewant to be the hunter.
(03:24):
And so the decision in life isyou know I've got a couple of
dogs here that this is Charlie.
He's my hearing dog.
My ears are shot out andCharlie, he's sitting there
laughing the whole time.
We're just fine.
He's never killed anything buta tennis ball, you know.
But he's a predator and hemakes no bones about it.
That's why we love cats anddogs.
(03:45):
They're hunters.
And so I just tell you it's notabout hunting although hunting
is the best way to exercise thatmindset it's about making the
decision in life that I am thehunter and not the hunted, that
I am in control of my life, andthat's funny.
(04:07):
You've mentioned that.
It's a funny thing to beginwith, but I've had an awful lot
of worker corrections and youknow I'd like to establish a few
things up front.
You talk about facing violence,and they do that.
Right, and it's funny.
People come up to buy a book,you know, and I ask them you
know who are you with, what doyou do?
And I usually ask him how doyou like it.
(04:30):
It really astounds me how manycorrections you know prison, you
know jail Say I love what I do.
And I ask them why?
And one lieutenant told me shesaid I've been able to convince
(04:50):
an awful lot of people that onebad decision doesn't have to
define your life.
Another correction sergeant hetold me.
He said you know, nobody on theplanet does a better job of
giving people a second chance atlife.
You know, we talk about therecidivism rate.
(05:12):
You know the ones that go backand re-offend, of course, but we
don't talk about the vast, vastmajority who do not re-offend,
but the vast vast majority whotruly are corrected.
You know the term penitentiarycomes from the word penitent, to
be remorseful, to be sorrowful,you know, and they might not
(05:33):
necessarily be remorseful, butthey've learned a lesson in life
.
And then there are the onesthat say you know, we look in
the eyes of scary people everyday and you know the world is a
better place because they'rebehind bars.
We look in the eyes of scarypeople every day and you know
the world is a better placebecause they're behind bars.
(05:54):
Right, and there's value in that.
There is, there's great valuein that.
And just knowing, hey, you know, my children don't have to face
this guy.
You know however bad they are.
There's value in number one,knowing that we're giving them
another chance, but number two,saying, yeah, this is not a nice
person, right, and the world'sa better place because my spouse
(06:16):
doesn't have to face thisperson.
My children don't have to facethis person because they're in
here.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Absolutely.
Yeah, it took me a while in myown career.
It took me a little while to,because in corrections, you know
we don't get the pat on theback that maybe law enforcement
does or some other you knowpositions out there.
And it took me a while tofigure out how I was a public
servant.
I came from a family of publicservants.
I grew up with cops andfirefighters and highway
(06:43):
patrolmen and these were thepeople my family hung around and
so I thought I was walking intopublic service.
But you know, a few years intomy career I'm arguing with that
and I'm looking as I'm drivinghome when I looked out across
the city and I thought, you know, my job does matter.
If I wasn't there there wouldbe crime, people would be being,
(07:04):
you know, treated bad, stolenfrom, robbed, murdered, all that
stuff.
So I had to learn to look thereand not for the pat on the back
, because you don't usually getit in our job and that's a shame
.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
It should be better respected.
So we have to do that ourselves.
I'll give you an angle on this.
You know there's a faithperspective, everything, and it
really can be critical.
One of the things you know Itell all my first responders you
see a lot of bad things everyday and you can't help but ask
the question.
(07:36):
It's really not about faith,it's an existential question.
Every human being asks how coulda loving God allow these
terrible things to happen?
And the answer is really,really important.
And the answer is that yourloving God would not make you
his puppet.
A loving God would let peoplemake their own decisions.
(07:57):
You know, have you ever heardif you truly love something, let
it go.
If it comes back, it's reallyyours.
That's how much God loves us.
He loves us enough to let usmake our own decision.
That means a lot of people makereally bad decisions and a lot
of really bad things happen.
When we say God, why don't youdo something?
He said I did, I sent you.
You are his agent.
(08:18):
You are truly God's agent to dogood in this world, to give
people a second chance, to carrypeople off the streets.
You're truly a public servant,and I talk in my presentations
about the opposite of evil.
What's the opposite of evil?
The opposite of evil is love.
Evil's absence of love just asdarkness's absence of light.
(08:40):
And Jesus said greater love isno one than this that they lay
down their life for theirfriends.
But listen, here's the key.
There are many ways to lay downyour life.
There are many ways to lay downyour life, and sometimes the
greatest love is not tosacrifice your life but to live
(09:01):
a life of sacrifice.
And that's what corrections is.
Nobody's in this job to getstinking, filthy American Dream
rich.
Nobody's in this job to be afamous celebrity, at least not
legally.
When you chose this profession,you really chose.
To a certain degree, you chosea life of sacrifice, and we must
believe your sacrifice for anoble and worthy purpose.
(09:22):
And so we began by talking aboutfacing violence and how most
people are not wired to do that.
But when you face that, you sayI faced that violence today, so
my children didn't have to.
And again, sometimes thegreatest love is not to
sacrifice your life but to livea life of sacrifice.
(09:43):
And for all those that are outthere walking that path, it is a
sheepdog path.
They are sheepdogs.
They are protecting the flock,they are keeping the wolf at
arm's distance and giving peoplea second chance at life.
It is a noble and virtuousendeavor.
They are truly public servantsbeing of service, sure, and
(10:06):
without them it would be chaosand despair.
Sure.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Corrections is very much like the sheepdog analogy
because if you'll look out therein the field, when the
sheepdog's doing his job, rarelydo the sheep even know what the
sheepdog's doing.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Oh, I see Corrections , is that?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
way they're standing in the wall.
They're doing the job 24-7, 365.
Even know what the sheep dog'sdoing and corrections is that
way they're standing in the wall.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
They're doing the job 24-7, 365, but the sheep don't
want to know.
Yes, and that's okay.
You know, sometimes thegreatest love is not to
sacrifice your life but to livea life of sacrifice and quiet
service.
You know, we talk about thesilent professional.
The quiet professional, thesilent service.
Just go out there and do thatjob every day, knowing that the
world's a better place becauseof it.
(10:53):
You're not selling widgets tohousewives, you know you're not
flipping burgers at McDonald's.
Somebody's got to do those jobs.
Those jobs are important.
But if nobody did what you did,if nobody was in corrections,
what would happen?
What would happen?
What would we have?
Chaos and despair.
(11:13):
Yeah, and you know we couldlock them all up and never see
daylight, but then we'd nevergive them that chance for a
second chance at life.
Sure, and you know there mightbe some cheap, effective way to
do it, and sometimes there'svalue in that.
But the truth is that if we'regoing to give them that second
(11:33):
chance at life, if we're goingto give them that chance to see
that one bad decision didn'thave to define their life, then
we've got to give that extraeffort.
And nobody on the planet does abetter job than you're doing in
this business right now.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Excellent.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
I appreciate your recognitionof that, you know.
I would like to ask a couple ofquestions of you because I'm
interested.
What got you interested in thisfield of study?
Because I don't think this issomething that's you know on the
course lecture series when yougo to college, you know.
(12:11):
What was it that got youstarted?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well, you know, when I was growing up, my dad started
as a cop and then he got a jobthat ended up moving a lot.
Every 18 months we would moveand there was always a lot of
bullies.
You know, every time you movedthere was somebody that was
going to test you and I just Ihated bullies and I fought a lot
.
My dad taught me to fight and Ijust grew up with this deep
(12:37):
hatred of bullies.
But I grew up fighting a lot.
As soon as the martial arts wasavailable, I mean the first
little dojo in our little town,I was in Pine Bluffs, wyoming,
and a guy had kind of a kind ofa feeder school, an external
dojo from Cheyenne, and and Istarted going.
I was in junior high, I wantedto be in the martial arts to
confront bullies and I, you know, and the bullies knew to leave
(13:00):
me alone, but I, I would.
I would get in front of him andsay, leave him alone.
He said what's got to do withyou?
I said you're being a bully,you don't need to do this, leave
him alone or you've got toanswer to me.
And so I always had this callto confront the wolf, to
confront the bad guy and I endedup enlisting in 1974 in the
(13:25):
82nd Airborne Division and wehad Vietnam veterans all around
us and we wanted to know whatcombat was going to be like.
You know.
I'd gotten on an awful lot offistfights over the years and
soldiers, you know we'd get inscraps, but what's going to be
like in combat and they wouldn'tsay it was this taboo topic?
(13:46):
I realize now it's like askingabout sex, very intimate
personal process.
I mean, think about hunters.
You know, as a hunter, you knowwhen you fire your rifle you
don't hear the shot and the earsdon't know.
Now, every hunter I've everasked, ever asked, said yeah,
but nobody has ever sat aroundthe camp for it.
(14:06):
You know, I didn't hear theshot, my, nobody talks about
that, they live in their ownlittle silo.
Well, combat's like that, to tothe third power, full of full of
experiences that nobody reallytalks about slow motion, time,
auditory exclusion,re-experience in the event.
Uh, you know, what we've cometo learn and we need to talk
about is go further along whatbecomes PTSD and how to prevent
(14:30):
it from happening.
But nobody ever talked aboutthat.
And we would ask about it andnobody would talk.
And then you know, fast forward, captain Grossman, army Ranger
en route to be a West Pointpsych professor doing my
graduate work on this subject,and I would ask people and they
would tell me.
It's like you know, if somebodysay how's the sex life, how
(14:52):
many times you get it on, whatdo you?
You wouldn't tell them.
But at Masters and Johnson andsome scholarly study came in,
you might tell them.
Tell them the truth.
And so that became my firstbook on killing Right and I
thought what was at the heart ofcombat was the act of killing
and a lot of the people.
I interviewed, world War II vetsand Vietnam vets by the
(15:13):
hundreds.
But what I had trouble wrappingmy mind around is they were
18-year-old kids, drafted offthe street when this happened.
Yeah, and I got this mature,dignified man in front of me and
I can't wrap my mind around it.
It took me a long time torealize that for an 18-year-old
kid, you know, a few shortmonths after he, you know,
(15:34):
ambushed some guy done him noharm, that can be hard.
For a mature individual who'sprepared themselves for a
lifetime, for a matureindividual who's using deadly
force to protect others, it'sjust not that big a deal.
And so my research evolved intomy second book on combat, which
is really the more importantbook, and I'll tell you you
(15:54):
mentioned it, michael, and Ithink we can recommend it.
During the pandemic it became abig bestseller in the medical
community for the stress ofbeing in the medical community
in a pandemic.
And then it's been translated ina lot of languages and it was
translated in Ukrainian and inJanuary of 2024, it won a
(16:15):
Ukrainian Book of the Year award.
And in May and June of 2024,they brought me out there to
train their troops.
So I was 67 years old at thetime 67 years old to spend my
summer vacation in the war zonetraining their troops.
But they really embraced thatbook.
It's really cool.
You've got a copy of On Combatbehind you.
(16:35):
I've got one behind me.
The cover changed at one point,but it's still the same basic
book, a little updated, and thewhole sheep, the wolf and the
sheepdog thing came out of that.
It really built from that.
And then we did the sheepdogkids book and it's really
important about being theprotector, being the one that
protects the flock and makingthat decision to protect the
(16:58):
flock.
And that's what the peoplelistening to this podcast are.
They are the sheepdogs, theyare the ones protecting the
flock.
You know they go home everynight and they see gentle,
decent people all around themwho are able to go on about
their lives because you do thathard, dirty, difficult job every
day.
Yeah, and that's the sheepdog.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
That's great.
That's the evolution of myresearch, you know, and where it
evolved to that understandingof slow motion, time, tunnel
vision, memory gaps, memorydistortions, the crazy things
that happen in a life and deathevent that don't happen anywhere
else except in hunting to acertain degree.
And so it all evolved.
(17:42):
I've got 16 books out there.
We talked about the faith sideof the house.
It really for those.
I wrote the book on spiritualcombat.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And it really what I talked about about.
You know, why does God allowthese terrible things to happen?
Is to take that whole thing astep further.
If you're a person of faith, ifyou think there might be a life
after this life, then it'sinfinitely more important than
what happens in this world.
(18:11):
In the end everybody's going todie physically.
In the end, every nation fallsover my dead body.
In the end our son will die andlife on this earth will go away
, but eternity continues.
So wrap your mind around that.
A few more years on this earth,a little less suffering on this
(18:32):
earth, is nothing, nothing,nothing compared to one life in
eternity.
So I tell people, if you're aperson of faith, don't let the
things of this world pull youdown.
Take a deep breath and kind oftake that big picture and
there's value.
I think it's really hard tosustain this.
I know you had a podcastpreviously looking at you know,
kind of prison versus faith andit can be really hard to sustain
(18:56):
yourself without that.
And there's value in that.
And again, I think my book onspiritual combat we wrote who
wrote the book BulletproofMarriage, which became a—.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Highest divorce rate of about any profession.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Corrections.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I was at a conference and this book we wrote this
90-day devotional, you know, 15minutes a day sheepdog and
spouse Would anybody really dothat?
So it became a Christian BookAward final.
We got like 700 five-starreviews on Amazon Sheepdog and
Spouse Would anybody really dothat?
So it became a Christian BookAward finalist.
We got like 700 five-starreviews on Amazon.
A couple came up to me.
It was so cool.
They came up to me in aconference I was in just
(19:35):
recently.
They said we were 12 days awayfrom divorce when we started
going through this.
That's got to feel good andthat's pretty cool.
And you can look at the reviewson Amazon and see how people
did all 90 days and then did itagain and so you can leverage
your faith and your relationshipand make it a mutual endeavor.
(19:59):
And so I've got 16 bookspublished now and plinking away
at some others.
But it's been a good ride andit all started with wanting to
confront bullies, wanting toprotect people and then being in
the military and wanting toknow what real combat would be
like and people not saying andthen I wrote the book.
(20:22):
Nobody's ever done a book likethis before.
You know it's makes it so cooland people like you who've been
able to embrace the book.
It's just terribly rewarding.
And I'll be 69 years old nextyear or next month.
Next month be 69.
And it's my prayer to do thisfor another 20 years.
I just want to stay in thisfight as long as I can and just
(20:44):
try to empower my sheepdogs tothe best of my ability, to stay
in the fight and to keep doingthis worthy endeavor.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
You were one of the first people to actually talk
about it and I don't know, I'msure thousands of people have
told you, but it was socomforting to have somebody talk
about the stuff you talkedabout non-combat, you know,
because in prison and that's myfield you see so much violence.
I've seen violence that mostpeople can't even imagine.
(21:16):
Human on human not necessarilyI haven't killed anybody myself,
but the violence I've beenaround day after day would
stagger most people and nobodytalks about it.
Like you said, said it's kindof this quiet thing, so you were
the first one to kind of givevoice to some of that.
Yeah, question, I've got.
Um, you talked about psd there.
Ptsd for a minute.
(21:37):
Corrections is a littledifferent, you know, than some
other other PTSD.
A lot of those are onetraumatic event, you know,
either having to kill somebodyor being there during a
traumatic event With corrections.
It's lots of these smallertraumatic events, sometimes for
weeks, sometimes for years.
Do you see a difference in theway that manifests itself in the
(22:03):
individual?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Well, first let's talk about the commonality In
general PTSD.
You have a traumatic event andthen you re-experience the event
.
So during an event, sympatheticnervous system kicks in.
That's fight or flightmechanism.
Your heart is pounding and yourbody, and it's very powerful.
(22:28):
And what happens is a neuralnetwork is established.
I talk about, you know, a kidtouches a hot stove and you're
five years old.
How many times did you have totouch a hot stove?
Just one time, just one time.
And that neural network wasestablished.
Don't ever touch that stoveagain.
I call it the puppy inside themidbrain, the autonomic nervous
(22:50):
system.
Fight or flight, feed and breed, that's all he does.
And that puppy inside blows ahole through the screen door,
pees in your lap and says don'tever touch that stove again.
And it works.
So in corrections, you have atraumatic event, but then you do
it again and again, and again.
And if you don't separate thememory from the emotions, you're
(23:16):
just reinforcing thatrelationship.
So I'll give you an exampleArkansas State Trooper, first
gunfight bad guy's down, he'salive.
Happy end of the story.
So a week later he and his wifeare sitting in the bleachers
watching their daughter at aswim meet.
A starter's gun goes off whenhe doesn't expect it.
(23:37):
Boom, he said.
My heart's pounding, gaspingfor air, drenched with sweat.
His wife thought he was havinga heart attack.
He didn't know what washappening.
Now, this is important.
This is not PTSD.
Re-experiencing the event,having that sympathetic nervous
system kick off again, is normal.
(23:58):
It's a survival mechanism.
Right?
You know, the lion roared andyou jumped, jumped out of the
way and that saved your life.
And from that time on in time,a lion roars, boom, you know,
you kick in.
So these are survivalmechanisms, but we got to bring
them under control.
We got to separate the memoryfrom the emotions.
(24:18):
So the kind of tools we have toseparate the memory from the
emotion.
Let's say that you were.
You know cops had a gunfight ona particular street and they
drive down that street and theyre-experience the event.
It triggers the memory.
A corrections officer wasattacked in this particular cell
block and he walks in that cellblock and his heart starts
(24:41):
going up and he'sre-experiencing the event.
The sympathetic nervous arekicking off.
This is not PTSD, it's normal.
How you deal with it willdecide whether or not it becomes
PTSD, and what you got to do isseparate the memory from the
emotions.
Now we're talking on combat.
We're talking on combat, aboutthe breathing exercise.
(25:03):
You can always just hop andbreathe.
You know I've got collectionsof case studies and emails that
people have sent me, organizedby subject, and of all the
subjects, the breathing is byfar the largest folder.
To just stop and breathe,breathe in four, hold four out
(25:24):
four, hold four, and you trulyare.
So what we got there, themidbrain is fight or flight,
feed and breathe, and it's theautonomic nervous system, things
that aren't under consciouscontrol, and your breathing,
your breathing, is not underconscious control.
If you had a conscious controlof your breathing when you sleep
, you'd die, right, right, butyou take a deep breath right now
.
Breathing when you sleep, you'ddie right, right, right, but
(25:45):
you take a deep breath right now, breathe in.
What did you just do?
You pulled your breathing fromunconscious to conscious control
, right.
And when you reach out and grabconscious control of the
breathing, the whole autonomicnervous system comes with it.
It pulls you from fight orflight to rest and digest.
Right system comes with it.
(26:06):
It pulls you from fight orflight to rest and digest.
The most powerful tool we found.
What I tell a lot of people isto walk with a bottle of water
in your hand.
You got that bottle of water inyour hand and you begin to
re-experience that event.
It is so powerful to stop thebig swig of water from getting
control.
Now the therapy for PTSD remover.
(26:31):
I'm separating the memory fromthe emotion.
I was interviewing World War IIvets and Vietnam vets by the
hundreds and if they becameemotional, if they began to
re-experience the event, I'dmake them stop and breathe.
Today we put a bottle of waterin front of them, make them stop
and take a big swig of water.
So a friend of mine is atherapist for a major federal
(26:55):
agency and if one of their guysin a deadly force incident, they
fly her in and she debriefsthem and she would have them
talk about the incident andevery time they start to become
emotional right, that you beganshe'd make them stop and breathe
.
Today she puts a bottle ofwater in front of them, right.
And every time they start tobecome emotional she makes them
(27:15):
stop and take a puts a bottle ofwater in front of them and
every time they start to becomeemotional she makes them stop
and take a big swig of water.
And she told me she said Dave.
She said six years of college,14 years of practice and that
stupid bottle of water is doingmore good than anything I've
ever done.
So I want to give you that lifehack.
But there's another way.
Now what we're talking about toa certain degree is sympathetic
(27:38):
nervous system fight or flightand the essence of resiliency
and resiliency are people who donot get PTSD.
The essence of resiliency isreally manifested in Viktor
Frankl, a guy in a Nazi deathcamp who did not get PTSD.
(27:58):
He walked out of a Nazi deathcamp, a human skeleton, enduring
unthinkable evil, and he said Irealized the only thing in the
universe those Nazi bastardscouldn't control is how I choose
to respond.
The only thing in the universeyou can control, the only thing
(28:19):
is yourself and how you chooseto respond.
And so you don't lose yourtemper.
You give it away.
Now, that's easy to say, butwhat you do is learn to control
it.
So we've got a lot of peoplesmarties and you got your little
(28:40):
smartie there, a cop told me.
He said you know what?
Somebody give me the finger, Iget a smartie.
The only problem is you'renever happy with just one of
those little things, see.
So he said.
So I want another smartie, butI can't have one unless
somebody's ugly to me right.
So I drive around waving andsmiling at people.
Somebody gives me a finger.
Ah, I get another Smartie.
(29:02):
And what I just described to youis actual cognitive behavior
therapy, cbt, cognitive behaviortherapy.
Through your actions and yourthoughts, you rewire the way you
process what happens.
They gave you the finger,they're trying to offend you,
they're trying to harm you,they're trying to hurt you and
(29:22):
for you it means, oh, I get apiece of candy and you actually
rewire the way they talk aboutit.
I talk about people having abag of M&Ms and popping an M&M
in your mouth and you chew that.
And you chew that and youswallow that and it pulls you
from fight or flight to rest anddigest you.
And I remember Kojak with alollipop, and what he was doing
(29:47):
with that lollipop was he wasactually having that cognitive
behavior therapy in which he'dcrunch on that thing kind of
regain control.
And so I tell people thatre-experience.
In the event, you know, you do acell entry and all of a sudden
your heart is pounding becausethe last time this terrible
(30:07):
thing happened.
But now you do that cell entryand you use your breathing, or
you take that big swig of water,or you know, immediately
afterwards you just pop that, uh, that smarty in your mouth.
Or you know that tootsie rolls.
And when I used to recommendtootsie rolls and cops of san
dave, I was eating way too manytootsie rolls so I switched to
(30:30):
smarties.
It's my little chill pill.
But just remember, you don'tlose your temper, you give it
away.
It's the only thing in theuniverse you can control.
And so controlling thatphysiological arousal and really
it's what makes us human.
You know we got fight or flight, feed and breed.
And one of the first things welearn is not to crap ourselves.
(30:53):
That's hard.
You ever potty train a kid orhouse train a dog.
That's hard.
But we learn not to crapourselves and we've got to learn
to control our temper.
And if you lose your temper, Itell people you know there's
never a good time to crapyourself and there's never a
good time to lose your temper.
And it's easy to say it ain'tthat easy to do.
(31:14):
And there's never a good timeto lose your temper.
And it's easy to say it ain'tthat easy to do.
You know, I was not as good afather as I could have been.
The kids turned out okay inspite of me, but I was a better
grandfather, you know.
I asked how many of y'all gotkids?
How many of y'all ever lookedat your kids?
How many of y'all looked atyour parents with your kids and
said are you the same ones thatraised me?
(31:35):
Absolutely.
I said well, they're not, doyou understand?
They're 20 years old.
It's called maturity and youwant to get it as fast as you
can.
It's called self-control.
So we talk about the laconicSpartan, the stoic Roman, the
inscrutable samurai, the stiffupper lip Brit and the day we
talk about the quietprofessional.
(31:55):
Those are all different waysand the same thing self-control.
It's classic Stoicism.
It's completely compatible withChristianity.
We've all heard the serenityprayer.
Right, you know God, grant methe strength to do the things I
can't, to let go of the things Ican't, and the wisdom to tell
the difference right.
(32:15):
And that's what we're talkingabout is, just do the things you
can and let go of everythingelse.
The only thing the universe cancontrol is yourself.
So when you begin tore-experience that event, then
you take the tools available toseparate the memory from the
emotion.
Now, this is a critical part ofthe equation we're really really
good at treating PTSD.
(32:36):
We get better all the time,right.
And how can we help otherpeople if we can't help
ourselves?
It's okay to say I'm not okayand it's okay to get help Right
and know that the help will help, to expect the help to help and
come out the other end stronger.
You know, we look at the WorldWar II veterans, the greatest
(32:58):
generation.
Nietzsche said what doesn't killus only makes us stronger,
right, nietzsche stole that fromthe Bible 2000 years before
Nietzsche.
Romans chapter 5, the Biblesays we glory in tribulation For
tribulation.
Work of patience, patience,experience, experience, hope and
hope make it not a shame.
The idea of being stronger fromthe bad things in life is not a
(33:20):
new idea.
So you see, these bad thingshappen to you and the puppy
inside panics and you go downthat cell block, you make that
cell entry and the puppy pumpsback up.
You've got to get that puppyunder control.
And the swig of water, thebreathing, you know, the Smarty,
(33:40):
the M&Ms, those are alldifferent tools to pull you from
fight or flight, to risk andnot test.
But if you can't do it yourself, the docs got a whole bag full
of tricks.
One of the good tricks the docsgot.
You need to know about becauseit sounds crazy called EMDR eye
movement, desensitization,reprocessing and what you do is
you follow a visual stimuluswhile you talk about what
(34:01):
happened and the puppy.
Is a simple mechanism, you canonly do one thing at a time.
And while you're following thatvisual stimulus, the puppy's in
the front yard chasing a balland for the first time you can
talk about it.
You can think about it withoutthe puppy peeing in your lap,
and oftentimes just one or twosessions of EMDR will completely
(34:26):
separate the memory from theemotions and send you down the
path, not just healing what'scalled post-traumatic growth.
We've all heard aboutpost-traumatic stress and if it
gets bad enough it'spost-traumatic stress disorder.
But you come out the other endwith post-traumatic growth.
Our corrections officers, ourcops, our military veterans we
(34:49):
know they're strong people.
We know they're stronger forthe experience.
The World War II generation,the greatest generation they
were living examples ofpost-traumatic growth.
Oh, absolutely yeah, go intocorrections, go into those bad
situations, know them.
They will make me stronger,seeking post-traumatic growth,
(35:09):
and I think that's really animportant thing to talk about.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Sure, absolutely.
That's really important thingto talk about.
Sure, absolutely.
You know one of the and thetechniques that you were talking
about there.
One of the problems they havein corrections is hypervigilance
.
You know you're walking arounda thousand inmates here at this
level all day long and then youwalk home to a three-year-old
who does not understand it, andit seems like a couple of those
techniques might be a good wayto decompress Absolutely might
(35:33):
be a good way to decompress,absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Take that moment.
You know, if you can control itwith these inmates, then how
much more so can you control itwith your children?
Right?
I wish somebody had told methat, as a young father, as a
young sergeant, I wish somebodyhad told me that, yeah, you know
, my dad lost his temper and Ilost my temper.
I thought that's what peopledid, but I realized nobody ever
(35:57):
respects our temper, tantrum,respect our calm.
And what do our children needfrom us?
And it's not easy, you know wefail.
God forgives us, forgiveyourself and move on.
We fail, but we try to do abetter job the next time.
And really our family is anopportunity to get a little bit
better at that.
I, just two days ago, my wifeand I just had our 50th wedding
(36:21):
anniversary.
Congratulations, thank you.
And I still lose my tempersometimes.
It's just a little thing.
You know, it's just a littleword, it's not screaming,
shouting, but it's just a littlething.
But I recognize it and I keeptrying to be a better person.
It's really here.
I am 68 years old, 69 in amonth.
It's really satisfying to say Iam a better person than I was
(36:43):
five years ago.
And we can keep doing that.
We can keep being better people, wiser and with better
self-control and betterself-discipline, and that's the
path of life.
You know, the opposite of evilis love, and what God calls us
to do is to love.
Jesus said a new commandment Igive you to love others as I
(37:05):
have loved you.
That's our goal, that's whatGod wants to love others as I
have loved you.
And remember, sometimes thegreatest love is not to
sacrifice your life, but to livea life of sacrifice.
So those magnificent sheepdogs,those men and women in
corrections, they are a livingexample of sacrifice for others.
(37:25):
They're not doing it for youknow, society is a better place
because of what they do everyday, and you've got to believe
that, yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, absolutely, and we got to teach them.
You know, one of the ways thatI got through my career was to
become a trainer.
I turned my focus to helpingthe others and getting them
through it with my experienceand my stuff.
You know we talked aboutviolence.
How do we prepare that youngcorrectional officer for the
(38:00):
first time he's going or she'sgoing to experience violence at
a level like that?
You know, I know the militaryhas this very rigid.
You know they put you throughbasic training.
You're ready for it.
I don't see that in lawenforcement and corrections.
We don't do that at the samelevel.
What's some of the stuff wecould do there?
Speaker 2 (38:19):
Well, the truth is that the military doesn't do a
very good job at all.
Okay, the only thing is whenthe drill sergeant gets your
face and shouts at you.
You know some of the.
In law enforcement, the verybest things we do are the force
on force engagements.
You know ammunition and that'sreally it's.
You know like firefighters haveto face Robert E Howie fire.
(38:40):
We face Robert E Howie bullets,right?
I think one of the best ways toprepare is the martial arts.
I think it's a very good way to.
You know, I grew up in themartial arts.
I love the martial arts.
I think it is the very best way.
It martial arts.
(39:00):
I love the martial arts.
I think it is the very best way.
It's a great thing you can dowith your family.
It's a great stress reliever,it's a great self-discipline and
it teaches you to confrontviolence and to deal with
violence as necessary.
But let's lay a foundation,something I really want to talk
about.
Sure, one thing we know is thisIf your body is already under
stress and then you face astressful event, they amplify
(39:23):
each other.
So if you're malnourished, likethe POWs or the Holocaust
survivors, then the malnutrition, combined with what their
captors did to them, thosestressors amplify each other.
Or if you're injured or ill,that's why the elderly can be so
vulnerable.
The physical infirmity of theelderly body combined with the
traumatic event, these thingsamplify it.
(39:45):
And if you are sleep deprivedyou're far more likely.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Most correctionalists are sleep deprived.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And that's what I want to talk about.
This is the one thing.
Remember.
What's the one thing we can'tcontrol Is ourselves and sleep
and getting sleep and allowingourselves to sleep.
And under stress there's thingsthat attract us.
We want to.
You know, we escape intowatching movies, you know, or we
(40:15):
play video games and the truthis it's terribly
counterproductive.
Throughout human history, whensoldiers weren't fighting, they
went to sleep and they alwaysgot enough sleep and they needed
a lot of sleep.
Under stress, your bodyactually needs more sleep and
they clean their weapons, theydo what needed to be done and
they'd sleep.
And then we invented thingslike video games and TV shows.
(40:40):
So I trained a brigade of the101st Airborne Division punching
out to Iraq.
So many of my units going backand forth have been able to
train through all these years ofwar and the brigade command
sergeant major.
I talked about sleep and sleepmanagement and sleep hygiene.
(41:01):
We'll cover some of that.
He said I was command sergeantmajor for a battalion deployed.
Now that's an element rightbelow brigade right?
So he's promoted to brigade nowand he's deploying again.
He said our battalion was in abarracks environment at night
and combat patrols during theday.
He said, told my troops itslides out at 2200.
(41:23):
He said if I catch you up after10 o'clock playing video games,
I will take your video games,he said.
A week later I had a closetoverflowing with video games.
He said these are good soldierswho wouldn't disobey an order,
but they cannot not play thosedamn games.
(41:45):
They want to give an illusionof control, to give an illusion
of progress, and there's nothingwrong with that, unless they
get in the way of your sleep.
So here's the key thing tounderstand about sleep
deprivation being sleep deprivedputs your body under enormous
stress and if something badhappens, let me show you a study
(42:06):
here.
It's a really important studythat I really.
But if you're sleep deprived,you're five times more likely to
get PTSD, nine times morelikely to have major depressive
disorder and six times morelikely to have a suicidal
ideation.
Wow, now this is not a causalrelationship.
(42:27):
It's not even a correlationalrelationship.
It's a toxic, interactiverelationship.
How do we get a handle ondepression?
It's hard, or suicide, how doyou?
But we can get a handle onsleep, and if you get sleep
under control, all this otherstuff comes with it.
So what we've got to understandwe live in a world in which
(42:49):
there's all these desirablethings to do.
Uh, so I was in Ukraine trainingtheir troops, right?
Sure, I do two or threepresentations a day, right?
My book had been selected theUkrainian Book of the Year Award
there and I only had like atranslation in only about an
hour.
I've got a son who just retiredafter nine combat tours.
(43:12):
I got a grandson deployed rightnow who just retired after nine
combat tours.
I got a grandson deployed rightnow and I thought what if it
was my son?
What if my grandson and I hadone hour to give them the best I
had?
Now, half of it was talkingabout what happens in a
traumatic event slow motion,time, tunnel vision, auditory
exclusion, how they're normal,how you experience it all the
(43:34):
stuff we just talked about.
But the other half was talkingabout sleep management and sleep
hygiene and how critical it isto make sure people get sleep
and so crazy things happen.
Now, these were usually smallergroups, you know, you get more
than 50 people, it becomes atarget.
So you know, we're just kind ofa little ways back, you know,
(43:56):
50 miles back from the war zone,you know, and there'd be you
know, 40 people there, most ofthem officers, right, and one.
You know there'd be captains,majors, colonels, and one
captain stood up and probably acompany commander.
He said well, the Russians, younever know if the Russians are
going to bomb us.
(44:16):
And he can't sleep.
Now, that's not true.
World War I, world War II,soldiers learn to sleep through
anything.
You can sleep through anythingyou can learn to.
But he said you can't sleep, soI just play video games.
You never know when they'regoing to throw up, I just play
video games.
You never know when they'regoing to throw it.
I just played video games.
Friends are looking like dude,why are you sharing this?
(44:38):
But it was like this cry forhelp and the rooms are so
seductive.
Another guy, a young captain,probably company commander, said
I have terrible nightmares.
I have terrible nightmares, soI don't want to sleep, so I
watch movies.
So I watch movies.
And his, so I watch movies.
It's not making it better.
You know that You're notimproving the situation.
(45:02):
Why are you telling us?
It's like this cry for help butthese, these, the, the video
games, the movies, the socialmedia they give an illusion of
control.
So here's the foundationalpoint being sleep deprived is
just like being drunk Every way.
At 24 hours without sleep,you're impaired judgment, just
(45:25):
like blowing 0.10 blood alcohollevel above legally drunk.
And the link between sleepdeprivation and mental illness
is huge.
24 hours without sleep and youare mentally ill.
Yeah 36 hours without sleep.
I've been there 36 hours withoutsleep and you are paranoid,
(45:47):
you're irrational, you'reaggressive.
On the third day without sleepyou are psychotic.
Any graduate of Army RangerSchool will say about
hallucinations on the third daywithout sleep.
You are psychotic.
Any graduate of Army RangerSchool will hear about
hallucinations on the third daywithout sleep.
You will flat-seed.
So sleep deprivation is a hugefactor in mental illness.
You literally are drunk.
You're mentally ill when you'resleep deprived and your family
(46:10):
has to deal with that and yourjob has to deal with that.
And if somebody showed up towork drunk, you'd kick his ass.
If he shows up to worksleep-deprived because he played
freaking games all night long,you need his ass kicked.
You know and I present tocorrections you know a couple
hundred.
Or cops you know, or I'llpresent to a military unit.
I tell them that.
(46:30):
Or cops, you know, or I'llpresent to a military unit.
I tell them that.
You know, if you show up at themorning formation drunk, they
kick your ass.
You know, show up at themorning formation, sleep
deprived because you playedgames all night long.
You didn't ask care.
And a lot of them said dude,you're looking at me like a deer
in the headlights right now.
I just said dude, you'retalking straight to me and
that's okay, you didn't know,but now you know, you know doing
(46:53):
.
Well, I'm right, you can't keepdoing business this way, you
can't keep doing that, and youknow I'm right as you love your
family, as you love your health,as you love your job.
Now, here's the key, now, thehuge link between sleep
deprivation and suicide.
In the end we lose morecorrections and cops to suicide
(47:13):
than every other line of dutydeath put together.
And here's the thing Right nowit is physically impossible for
you to take your life.
The drive to self-preservationis too great.
You know, if you were on a tallbuilding and I tried to shove
you over the building, you'dfight for your life.
The drive to self-preservationis so powerful you cannot take
(47:35):
your life.
But when you're drunk, alcoholinhibits the drive to
self-preservation.
Suddenly suicide becomespossible.
So alcohol is always this keycomponent in suicide.
You take all these otherproblems, you, you add alcohol
(47:58):
and suddenly you take apermanent solution to a
temporary problem and you takeyour life.
But sleep deprivation is exactlythe same.
And you only drunk for a briefwindow, but you're still
deprived for.
For it goes on and on and on,and you know, and, and you'll
sober up in a couple hours viasleep deprived you just, unless
you get some rest, you just getworse and worse.
So not only do it.
I tell people, do some onlineresearch, just do an online
(48:20):
research.
Sleep deprivation, mentalillness, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Sleep deprivation, suicide,boom, boom, boom, boom.
Study after study, one of thebest studies, says not only is
sleep deprivation a key factorin suicide.
It's the most remediable factor.
But we can't do anything aboutyour relationships, your
finances.
But we get some sleep right.
(48:41):
Stinking now, yeah.
And so sleep deprivation is keyfactor in traffic deaths,
another major killer of people.
Sleep deprivation createschronic pain, sure, and the
opiate epidemic.
The opiate epidemic.
Why opiates?
Fentanyl's an opiate.
Fentanyl alone kills 40,000 to80,000 Americans a year.
We lose more people Most years.
(49:06):
We lose more people to fentanylin one year than we lost in the
entire Vietnam War.
And opiates are crazy.
Why opiates?
Because we got chronic pain.
But also, when you're sleepdeprived, those opiates have a
double whammy.
They are satisfying somethingyour body deeply, deeply needs.
(49:27):
The thing to understand is sleepis a biological blind spot.
We need four things to survivewe need air, we need water.
We need food to survive.
We need air, we need water, weneed food and we need sleep.
You will die from lack of sleepfaster than you will die from
lack of food.
You will die from lack of sleep.
You need sleep more than youneed food, absolutely.
(49:47):
Your body knows how to make youget air, water and food.
Try going without air or foodor water.
Your body will take over, butyour body doesn't know how to
make you get enough sleep.
It's just by, like there'snothing tough, there's nothing
macho, right Without sleep.
Any 10-year-old girl in aslumber party can do it.
The professional thing to do isto manage your sleep and, by the
(50:09):
way, sleep deprivation is a keyfactor in obesity and heart
disease and it's a key factor inAlzheimer's.
That should scare the hell outof all of us People.
I'll sleep when I'm dead.
You have a decade ofAlzheimer's, you idiot.
Alzheimer's and dementia sleepdeprivation is a major factor.
Now here's the thing why don'twe know about the link between
(50:32):
sleep deprivation andAlzheimer's?
Why don't we have publicservice announcements about the
link between sleep deprivationand Alzheimer's?
Why don't we have publicservice announcements about the
link between sleep deprivationand suicide?
Because the TV will never havea commercial that says turn off
the TV, right.
The video game will never sayyou played this game for 36
hours, can I shut you down now?
The games are designed to makeit impossible to turn off.
(50:54):
Social media will never sayyou've been on social media for
the last 48 hours or shuttingyou down.
They will never do that.
Your time is their money and soall they want to do is steal
your sleep.
They don't care that they'rekilling people.
The head of Netflix said theircompetitor is sleep.
The corporate policy at Netflixis to steal your sleep.
(51:16):
They don't care that they'rekilling people.
So listen, this is a majorfactor with our kids.
Worldwide, suicides of childrenhave exploded, every nation,
every demographic group.
Here's parenting 101 for the21st century.
When you send your kid to bedat night, take their cell phone
away from them.
No laptop, no cell phone, no TV.
(51:38):
Take it out of the room andsleep.
We should be scared sick.
I lost a little brother tosuicide.
I lost two nephews to suicide.
I cannot tell you how harmfulthat is to a family.
It's just no action, nobehavior.
It's worse than having somebodytake their own life, because
being murdered is not as harmfulto the family as suicide is for
(52:01):
them to choose to take theirown life.
And so a cop came up to me.
He said I told the group.
I said you know twinators 10,11, 12-year-old, twin-age girl's
suicide rate has tripled injust the last decade.
A cop came up.
He said I had one of thoseteenagers.
He said she was a good girl, shewas an, a student.
(52:22):
She said, dad, it'sembarrassing, you don't have to
take my cell phone every night.
Family policy, good policy,cell phone, a charging board, a
bed.
You don't have to take my phoneevery night, you can trust me,
I, I'm going to take my phoneevery night, you can trust me.
I said, okay, I trust you, keepyour cell phone.
He said a little while later shetook her life.
He said my little girl took herlife and we never knew the hell
she was living in until welooked at the text messages on
(52:46):
her cell phone.
Wow, night after night I'veseen such relentless, vicious
bullying.
He said they were tag-teamingher.
They were taking shifts allnight long, night after night.
He said I immediatelyunderstood my little girl's
bullied to death what I didn'tunderstand until now.
She was sleep-deprived,tormented and bullied to death
(53:08):
in front of my eyes and I let ithappen.
He said I can't ignore thattext message in the middle of
the night.
How can we expect our kids to?
And suicide is a major killer ofteenagers.
The major killer of teenagersis traffic deaths and sleep
deprivation and traffic deathsis huge.
Another major major killer ofour kids is drug overdoses.
(53:31):
Of all three suicide, trafficdeaths, drug overdoses the major
causal factor is sleepdeprivation.
So let's talk about sleephygiene real fast.
Okay, you know I sent mygrandson off to college.
Now what's the three thingsmost likely to kill my grandson?
(53:52):
Suicide, drug overdoses andtraffic deaths.
It's all there.
What's the greatest gift I'dgive my grandson?
A good night's sleep?
He's heard my class, he's heardmy stuff.
But here's the thing I tell mycops I do a school safety
seminar.
I had an East Texas schoolsafety conference.
I told them, you know we'regoing to talk about keeping your
(54:14):
school safe from violence.
I bet you had, unfortunatelyyou probably had some suicides,
had some traffic deaths, hadsome drug overdoses.
Bet you had a problem withmental illness and about obesity
.
You know you say, well, whatcan we do about the suicide?
(54:34):
Sleep?
What can we do about trafficdeaths?
Sleep, what can we do about themental illness?
Sleep.
I said you want to walk outthat door and save a kid's life?
Educate them about sleephygiene.
So here's what they need toknow.
Three things the amount of sleepthey need for their age and for
adults we need seven hours ofsleep minimum.
(54:56):
You cannot get by.
There's a great chart frommilitary research and that unit
that's getting by on four hoursof sleep and very quickly
they're destroyed.
Human beings after 20 days.
The ones with five hours ofsleep are right behind and the
ones with six hours of sleep arenot.
It isn't until you get sevenhours of sleep every night that
(55:17):
you can sustain yourself, andall these military units
nobody's.
Oh, I got by on four hours ofsleep and 20 days later I'm just
fine.
Nobody, nobody, nobody was ableto get by on four hours of
sleep and 20 days later be justfine.
So we've got to get a minimumof seven hours of sleep.
As adults, I shoot for nine.
(55:38):
That's kind of my personal goal.
If I get less than that, I tryto make up for it a little bit.
Anything beyond nine or tenstarts to become a little
counterproductive.
If you catch up on sleep, it'snot so bad, but on a steady
basis.
9 is really the most that weshould shoot for, but the amount
of sleep that they need forkids, depending on the age, they
need more than that.
(55:58):
Number two cut off caffeineshortly after lunch.
We're in the middle of acaffeine epidemic.
We've got a global epidemic ofsleep deprivation and a global
epidemic of caffeine abuse.
We have quantity and quality ofcaffeine like there's never
been before.
You could pound down cup aftercup of hot, you know strong
(56:22):
black coffee and not have thesame amount of caffeine.
You get some of these energydrinks, oh, absolutely.
Here's the thing.
The half-life of caffeine inyour body is five hours.
Now, sleep is precious.
Sleep is so precious.
Guard your sleep, protect yoursleep.
And caffeine is the enemy ofgood sleep.
So the caffeine you took at 5pm is still at half strength
(56:46):
when you go to bed at 10 pm andit's making you have bad quality
sleep.
That causes chronic pain andthat's where the Alzheimer's and
dementia comes from.
So, cut off caffeine.
Teach the kids shortly afterlunch shut down caffeine.
You really need to do it.
If you need to stay awake,smack yourself, do anything, but
please, during that block oftime about seven hours before
(57:08):
you go into bed, just shut itdown.
No caffeine.
And then here's the key onesleep in the dark.
We're designed to sleep intotal darkness, our species
throughout history, for untoldhundreds of thousands of years.
It got dark.
It got dark, there was no light, and that's why the body
(57:30):
doesn't have to make us sleep.
It happened.
Naturally it got dark.
It had nothing to do with alittle sex, a little talk, and
you roll over and you went tosleep.
And then we admitted theelectric light bulb and the
television and the video came.
So here's the key Teach thekids to sleep in the dark.
And one of the best toolsanybody out there, anybody
listening is this sleep mask.
This particular mask isAmazon's number one bestseller.
(57:53):
Last I looked, I'm like 85,000five-star reviews for a stinking
mask.
Wow.
And if you do just one thingfrom this podcast, one
life-saving thing, you may notget one more minute of sleep.
But you and I know that nomatter how bad your curtains are
, if you're working night shift,you're going to sleep during
(58:15):
the day.
But if you're, how good yourblackout curtains are, if you
can tell it's daylight outside,that's way too much light.
I'm a huge science geek and amajor study in the sleep lab.
Right.
Totally dark room, sleep lab.
Bathroom light is on and thedoor is shut.
The light coming under thecrack of the bathroom door is
(58:35):
enough light to stop your bodyfrom producing the melatonin
that you need Now.
Melatonin is the hormone thatmakes us sleep.
Melatonin is created in totaldarkness, and so make the room
as dark as you can and combineit with a sleep mask.
You may not get one more minuteof sleep.
You get quality sleep.
It'll rock your world.
It's just the easiest possiblelife hack.
(58:56):
You walk out that door andchange your world and change
your life.
To sleep in the dark andcombine it with a sleep mask and
it'll rock your world.
So my grandson goes off tocollege.
I gave him three differentkinds of sleep masks.
I said find the one you likeand use it.
I called my grandson, I calledhey, buddy, how's college going?
Doing great, grandpa, are yougetting enough sleep?
(59:18):
Critical question yes, sir, areyou using your sleep mask?
Yes, sir, as a matter of fact,it got kind of grody.
I went online and orderedanother one and boom, that's how
I sell success, you know.
So the kid wrapped up two yearsof college, enlisted, is now
deployed, doing great things.
Congratulations, yeah, thanks.
(59:39):
Those college years, they'redangerous.
We're losing kids, we're losingpeople.
For all you corrections, peopleout there again.
If you're sleep-deprived, don'tcop a pity party here, but if
you're sleep-deprived and thebest stuff comes down, you're
stacking the deck againstyourself.
Teach yourself of the long game.
We need four-quarter players.
(01:00:00):
We need seasoned players.
Your whole family.
Nurture an environment of sleep.
Create an environment where wetrack our sleep there's great
value in the fitness trackerswhere we track our sleep A
nurture environment where wetrack our sleep and we monitor
our sleep.
There's a big movement now, asocial movement on sleep maxing,
(01:00:21):
finding all the different waysto get better quality sleep and
maximizing your sleep, and itstarts with a fitness tracker
and all of your corrections.
People out there doing thisdifficult, difficult job.
If you're sleep deprived, don'tcop a pity party.
We can handle anything, but westack the deck against ourselves
(01:00:43):
and this is one place where wecan make a huge difference right
now to turn the tide.
Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
That's good advice.
And if you don't think aboutyourself, think about the staff
you're working with.
You know, if you're not 100%,that's who you're there to
protect.
That day.
Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Yeah, what would you think of the staff guy who shows
up to work drunk?
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
That's you, absolutely that's you.
Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Absolutely.
That's you.
What a great point.
Do it for your comrades, do itfor the men and women who count
on you every day.
Sure, do it for your family,who count on you coming home
healthy and stable at the end ofthe day.
So these are things that we canwalk out the door and do right
now to change our life and torock our world and to move
(01:01:25):
ourselves towards a better worldand better place.
Speaker 1 (01:01:29):
That is so on point, you know, for today's
correctional officer Recruitment, retention overtime.
You know.
That is so on point for what alot of them are facing right now
.
Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Maybe so, yeah, we've got hard times in front of us,
like you said.
Recruiting is down, retentionis down, although we're kind of
turning the tide in recentmonths.
You know, I'll give you somegood news.
I think all of our sheepdogsshould appreciate this.
Okay, 2021 was the all-timerecord number of cops murdered
(01:02:02):
in the line of duty.
Yeah, 2023 was the all-timerecord number of cops shot in
the line of duty.
2023 was the all-time recordnumber of cops shot in the line
of duty.
But starting in 25, you know,and it's about somebody who
backs the blue at the highestlevel, regardless of your
politics, just recognize thatthere's been this major shift in
(01:02:25):
attitude and this is all fromthe Officer Down Memorial
website.
But of the first five months of2025, two months tied.
One was a three-way tie and onewas like a four-way tie, but
two months tied the least numberof cops murdered in the land of
duty and we're includingcorrections in that and two
(01:02:46):
months set a new record lownumber murdered in the line of
duty.
That's great.
We've seen recruiting hasexploded.
The FBI, the Border Patrol, hasseen an explosion of recruiting
.
Albuquerque, new Mexico, wasunder consent decree.
The consent decree was liftedand they had a surge of
(01:03:09):
recruiting like they'd neverseen before.
I just have hope.
These have been hard years.
These have been hard times whenour sheepdogs were under attack
and the wolf was empowered.
They were taught that thecriminal is the good guy and the
cop was the bad guy, and thisis one of the most harmful
possible narratives.
(01:03:29):
Well, we've come out of thosedark days and there's hope for
the future and there's hope forour nation.
But in the meanwhile, we needour sheepdogs to just protect
the flock and believe in whothey are.
Remember sometimes, thegreatest love is not to
sacrifice your life, but to livea life of sacrifice, to do that
dirty, dangerous job, becauseyou know, if nobody did it, our
(01:03:52):
civilization would be doomed.
True.
Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Absolutely true.
Thank you so much, colonel.
Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Thank you for coming on here, and let me tell you and
all your corrections out there.
They're coming on here and letme tell you and all your
corrections out there.
Thank you for being there doingthat job for us every day.
Like you said, the sheep don'tcare what the sheepdog is doing.
Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
They're not even remotely interested.
Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
The sheepdog is doing the job out there and it's a
necessary, essential job andthank you and all the
magnificent men and women wholisten to this podcast for going
out there and doing that jobfor us every day.
Speaker 1 (01:04:25):
I appreciate that.
I will put in the show notes.
If anybody wants information onhow to contact Lieutenant
Colonel Dave Grossman or hisbooks, I'll have all that stuff
in there.
If I can find that study, Iwould love.
To that sleep study I'd love toadd that link also.
Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
I'll send you a copy of it right now.
Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
You have a great day.
God bless you.
Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
All right, stay safe.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Hey, before we go, I'd like to take a minute to
thank one of our sponsors.
Omni Real-Time Locating Systemis a company I've been working
closely with for years.
I'm proud to be a part of thisinnovative team that's developed
the best real-time locatingsystem on the market today for
your jail or prison locatingsystem on the market today for
your jail or prison.
(01:05:08):
Omni's PREA compliant real-timemonitoring technology is the
very best way to track andrecord your inmates' locations,
their movements, theirinteractions, throughout every
square inch of your correctionalfacility.
Imagine getting an alarm thesecond an escape happens, or an
alert that lets you know when aninmate's heart rate drops below
a set level.
To learn more about Omni, go towwwomnirtlscom.
(01:05:32):
That's omnirtlscom or you canclick on today's show notes to
get in the information guide.
Omni Real-Time Locating Systemis a powerful tool specifically
designed for the moderncorrectional professional.
If you haven't done so, pleasetake a moment to like my podcast
or, better yet, hit thesubscribe button so that you'll
be notified when the nextepisode comes out.
(01:05:53):
Thanks for listening and let'sbe safe out there.
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