January 18, 2023 • 39 mins
Welcome to Unbreakable! A mental health podcast hosted by Fox NFL Insider Jay Glazer. On today's episode, former NFL star and longtime advocate of mental health Brandon Marshall sits down with Jay for a paramount discussion. This is a chat you do not want to miss!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glazer, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glazer. Welcome in, everybody to Unbreakable, a
mental health podcast with Jay Glazer. I'm Jay Glazer, and
I've had a lot of friends in this business that
(00:23):
you know, we get friends through football, friends through fighting,
but also become friends to mental health. We had Terry
Bratshaw on a couple of weeks ago, and he's somebody
that really was able to open up early and show
me it's okay for me to talk about it. But
somebody else here who led the way as well, and
kind of I would say he was ahead of his time.
Played for thirteen years, the NFL six time Pro bowler,
(00:43):
twenty one catches in a game. A good friend of mine,
Brandon Marshall, welcome him in and b marsh before we
were all talking about this, this is like you first
came out and talked about what you were going through.
What two thousand eleven two, that's right, Uh, two thousand eleven,
Brouh came out and you know, told the world, you
know what I was going through, what I was dealing with,
(01:05):
spent three months at McClain Hospital, and it just totally
transformed my life and opened up the world. Tell everybody
what you said, you because I tell everybody I live
in something called the Grandmane is depression, anxiety, a d D, bipolar.
What did you come out and tell? Yeah? So I
was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The best way to
describe that is an emotional disorder. Right, Like you know
(01:27):
you cover sports, fights, the games, right, you see that emotion,
that raw emotion. Well, that's good for ball, but it's
not great for life. It's not great for business, is
not great for relationships. In between the lines good, in
between the whistles good, but you gotta have a switch.
I didn't have the skills and tools to be able
to self regulate walking to a bar, then walking too
(01:48):
even a meeting room coach say the wrown thing, per
say the wrown thing. I may just fly at the mouth, right,
and then now you find yourself in the bigger situation.
So I didn't have the skills and tools to be
able to self regular like ship happens me and you
were vote on the zoom call. Justin's on his zoom
call on the back and you know we're it's all valid.
Where where we feel like, damn, this person totally disrespected us,
(02:10):
and now do we have the skills to be able
to go from a hundred back down to baseline with
your zero? I didn't have that. So I had to
take dialect behavior therapy, self assessment, mentalization therapy, calling the
behavior therapy one, the one with the great Dr Gunderson.
But before we even figured out what program I need
to put together, I had to do a clinical evalue. No,
(02:31):
first I had to I had to want to help,
right right right, listen, there was five years. Those first
five years you covered me, it was like random marshals again,
random marshal again. I didn't. I thought it was everybody
else's volt. I thought it was Josh McDaniel's fault. I
thought it was this person's fold, that person's folk. And
it wasn't until I looked at myself in the marr
(02:52):
said no, how do I contribute to This? Is when
things totally changed and I wanted to help. And then
that first the first thing I did was a clinic
cool evaluation. Right, That's where we came up with the
diagnosis of borderline personality disorder bp D and then also
a neurological evaluation. Sometimes people got things go on their
head that it's chemical or they may not even be
(03:14):
capable of changing. So I did that, and then I
spent three months man um in then out outpatient program,
and I did it every single day, Monday through Friday,
nine to five. That became my campus, you know, all
of the clinical books and patient books became my playbook.
And it was the year to lock out, so it
had the opportunity, uh to just take off the whole offseason.
I moved my whole team up the trainers, chef, everybody
(03:36):
up there, and I just went all in. And that's
a whole other conversation because you know, I was making
ten million dollars at the time, all right, and it
was costing me almost fifty dollars a month to get
the help I needed, pay for the treatment, have my
my support team up there to stay on task for
business in the football season. And the average person can't
(03:57):
afford that. They can't even afford that a day off, right,
no doubt. And that's so hard, that's it's so hard
to to navigate. But I think you you just hit
on the head of the first thing is wanting help,
and same for me, like I'm paranoid with with my depression, anxiety,
my grade. So I always think it's somebody else or man,
somebody else says that has it out for me, or
somebody else has something against me, or the universes against me,
(04:19):
and it's not true. So you gotta want the help.
But again, I'm talking about it now. What I want
to do by writing my book Unbreakable is to give
mental health words. We talk about it, but not enough
people give it words. I want to give it words
that we could have these conversations. But back then there
were no words. There was no conversation. What gave you
the courage to be one of the first to come
(04:39):
out and talk about it? Because that would have been scared? Bro,
this is a question that people ask me, and I'm
sure to ask you all kind of getting really emotional.
I wish you like fucking goose bumps tears in my
eyes right now, man, because you know, even you say unbreakable,
you wanted to put words to it. I wanted to
put a face to it. So in two thousand and eleven,
I said it's time for us put faces on it now. Bro.
(05:04):
But but here's the thing that and this is why
I got goose bumps, And I'm gonna answer your question, bro.
That was one of the hardest things we probably both
did to the world, you know, standing up and saying like,
hey diagnosed with depression anxiety, right, PTSD, borderline personality disorder,
all of that stuff. I didn't think twice about it
when I saw at McClain hospital BA I walked in
(05:25):
that first day. I was so broken, man, I didn't know.
I didn't even know I was hurt, and I was
so broken. And then a month and a half and
halfway through my my world totally transformed. Everything click for
me and I went from one person to another person.
I couldn't believe that I was experiencing this, and right
in that moment, I wanted everybody else to experience this
(05:45):
because I knew, you know, under twenty million Americans give
or take a few, that there was probably like a
hundred million Americans also living with this but not getting
the help they need or couldn't even afford it. So
that's for me, it was very selfless. I said, funk,
I gotta go talk about this. I want to share
my story. Not even knowing not even thinking about the
stigma around it. Not thinking about teams may devalue me
(06:08):
because now I'm saying I have the minute capacity. Right,
So I'm answering your question because you probably you you're
probably not same situations like, man, this is powerful ship
and I just want to help people. He didn't think
about it the same thing for me, which to me,
when I hear people like you your stories, you know,
and there's others out there, it's like those are warriors,
(06:30):
those are champions, because there's a lot of people that's
that's done, that's dealt with things, but never stood up
and shared their story because they were too afraid. Right.
The reason why I love this topic right here is
because you know, it's harder to find what that is.
Like you tell me, I don't know. You tell me
what was it for you? Like for me, I didn't
even think about. One of the things that helps me
(06:53):
and I write about this a lot, I talked about
a lot. One of the things that helps me through
my grade to see some blue is being of service.
So people say to me all the time, major show
brave for talking about this, and I go, now, it's
not brave, Like this is me being of service, right,
this is me given words. So I kind of got
excited also, but also for me, it was therapeutic for
me to finally come out and and explain to the
(07:14):
masses and but more so do my friends. Man, this
is why I act like this right And and I
wrote a line in my book. It's a hard line
to write, but I said, being friends with Jay Glazer's
heart because of what my mental health illnesses and issues.
And I don't I shouldn't say. I don't. I like,
I don't want to call them illnesses. I like to
call them things we've overcome. But um, I wanted to
(07:37):
almost take the cap off to show my friends who
stuck by wing you all these years and seeing the
outbursts and seeing the stuff I've done at night and man,
after a night of taking too much Viking and drinking
too much to get through that fucking gray and having
all sorts of issues and fucking letting my hands loose
when I should not be doing ship like that? Um?
Or why I snap on people? Or why all of
(07:57):
a sudden I call someone and think, man, why are
you against me? And why is this happening? Or why
is this guy falling like people do I was crazy,
and that's a badge of honor in football and fighting,
but they didn't know what kind of pain I was
in it. This allowed me to show them what kind
of pain I was in, almost like a thank you
for sticking by me. I'm getting choked up talking about it,
but it's almost like a thank you to you for
sticking buy me. For as difficult as this makes us, right,
(08:22):
it's powerful, man, because when I knew I needed help,
I was actually on the field training with money my
dear buddies, Mike Sims Walker's playing for the Jaguars, and
the whole workout we were just arguing yellow. Now, this
is a guy that was my roommate in college at
the University of Central Florida. So it's like my brother brother. Okay,
we've been through everything together. So we both make it
(08:42):
to the NFL, got the world at our fingertips, and
now we find ourselves in this off season session down
in Sunday, South Florida, and we're going through the freaking
ladder drills in the whole time. Bro, He's like, I
don't know who you are. I don't know who you are.
You're different, you change, you different, you change and I'm
looking at him like he crazy, Like are you talking
about And it wasn't until a couple of months later
(09:02):
where I finally realized that I was suffering. Didn't even
know I was suffering, that was changing even though I
was changing. So for you to say like it was,
I thank you to your friends that can buy you,
Like now I'm sitting down with those same friends of
mine that was there from day one. And I say
it all the time. I was such a terrible friend, right,
Like I didn't know. I didn't even know how to
(09:23):
be a friend. You know, I didn't even know what
I was dealing with, and and and I couldn't give
you guys any advice how to help me. I wasn't
even expressing myself to you guys. That's a big thing, bro.
And I know why you're getting choked up, man, because um,
it's so relational. When you go through certain things, a
lot of times it's taking out on the people that
are the closest to you. You know, it could be white,
(09:44):
it could be children, it could be your best friend,
could be your mom and dad, your brothers and sisters,
and it's painful. It's like, man, I fucking love this people,
these people, it's the shame, and it gives us shame.
And that's that's where a lot of people go through,
all to the shame that we feel after it's man,
just as dark as the Grande Am I allowed to curse? Yes,
you're here talking to her no longer as you know me?
(10:07):
You got to you know you, you play both sides all.
I don't know if this I don't know if the
Unbreakable podcast is all that. I don't change. Man, you
know me, you're talking I don't curse on that red
light shot and foxing them on Sunday. I love it. No,
(10:30):
this is good man. I appreciate you so much man,
creating this space. You're a pioneer in this space. It's
kind of cool, Jay, Uh, seeing all the athletes, entertainers,
prominent men and women, even influencers now use their platforms
and talk about anxiety and the pressure. I guess I
got a question for you. When did you notice that change? Right?
Because when you and I were talking about these things
(10:51):
you're talking about, uh, putting words to it, be putting
faces to it. You know, it was still really taboo.
Now it seems like it's a badge of honor. Now
it's staying. It seems like it's training, you know, for
people to stand up and say, oh no, I deal
with anxiety or depressed it right, I feel really good
about doing it. When did you see that shift? I
didn't tell anyone that I had panic attacks anxiety attacks
(11:12):
every time I've ever been on TV, even scripted ship
like Ballers, which you know, again, for me, is kind
of weird that that would happen because I'm great in chaos,
I sucking calm al right, so I'm granted cage, I'm
grant on TV. I'm I'm fine. But man, something happened
to me in two thousand and five where it happened
and it became an habitual every single time I've ever
(11:33):
been on TV for the first segment. It's just it's weird.
So a couple of things. One, when I described it
and told everybody what it feels like to have an
anxiety attack. I can't tell you how many people in
the TV world said, oh, my god, that's what it is. Oh,
thank you, I've had the same thing. Thank you, And
all these people like I used to think I was
having a heart attack instead of a panic attack because
(11:54):
we didn't know what only in two thousand five what
the fucking anxiety attack was, and we talked about it
back that So for years I just had a suffering silence.
But ever since I've talked about it publicly, and I
started doing mental health checkups on my on my Instagram,
social media now here, on this podcast, and then writing
the book and doing these interviews. There's not a week
(12:14):
there goes past. I'm gonna try and keep it together
here too, where somebody doesn't say thank you, you saved
my life by talking about this. And then I have
grandmothers now saying you've given me the words for the
first time in eighty years to talk about this to
my family. I didn't know what to say. So here's
the coolest one, though, the coolest one. We had a
(12:35):
guest on this podcast a couple of weeks ago named
Keith Madden. Keith was on the way to Hilton Head,
South Carolina, to kill himself and he took a wrong
turn and ended up at a target, and my book
was sitting right there, and he was planning doing on
the third day that he was in hilton Head, so
he picked up some supplies and and and including my
book and he read Unbreakable, and he said he read
(12:58):
almost all of it in dates you. By the morning
of day three, there's no longer any reason for me
to kill myself. And I packed up one home and
he has since about a bunch of books, and I've
sent a bunch of three books too, and handing them
out to people. But he's now telling his story openly.
And I got a message from him yesterday, yesterday in tears.
(13:20):
Then a woman, a stranger walked up to and said,
excuse me you, Keith Madden said, yes, I am. She said,
oh my god, thank you. You see in my life. Wow,
Oh my god, dude. So that's someone And I tell
people all the time, like, man, we gotta stick around
because you never know what lies around next Tuesday. Where
a man on next Tuesday, something great will happen for you.
(13:42):
And Tuesday for me was I finally got my first job.
But you never know. And if he had completed that
his his what he set out to do, that woman
wouldn't be alive right now. And that's why we gotta
stick around. That for me, like Mark B. Marsh, I'm
now getting these every week and that that is making
this We want to talk about even more and the world.
(14:04):
That's life's work, bro. And that's life's work right there.
And and the coolest thing about it is that that
just showed the power of telling your story. So you
tell your story, but you don't you don't even know
how many others you are touching. Right, So Keith, he
hears your story, reads your story whom and now he
(14:27):
starts to share his story. And now this this lady
is here today, and now she's going to open up
and tell her story, right, and she's going to impact
people in the same way. Right. And that's why, Bro.
In two thousand eleven, when I stood there and it
was in Dolphins camp and everyone's like, all right, what
the where is? Where's Brandon? Ben? After? You're gonna responding?
(14:50):
And I and I just stood up and I said, listen,
the last three months I've been at McClain Hospital, I
was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. You know, it really
touched me. I've learned a lot, and it's actually my
life's work. I want to walk the halls of Congress.
I want to put faces to it. I want to
have these conversations at the dinner table and the schools
and in in in corporate America, it's time to do
(15:13):
that right. And when I when I, when I, when
I walked off that podium, Jay, I had a teammate
pulled me to the side, right and you know this teammate,
very powerful person, awesome athletes pull me to the side,
whispers in my ear, Bro, I live with bipolar disorder.
(15:33):
Thank you for telling your story. Jay. I thought it
was cool, but I was also piste off and said,
because here I am standing in front of the whole world,
but they live stream this, like I never had a
live stream press conference practice. It was on all NFL network,
it was on ESPN, it was everywhere. And so I
just told the world, definitely the sports world, what I
(15:56):
was dealing with and what I want to do moving forward.
And I was bold. I was strong. That's why I'm
saying courage. That's why when I got goose, folks, when
you talked about it earlier, as far as like what
made you, you know, stand up and tell your stories? Like, Bro,
I don't know. You know what I'm saying. They got
something in our DNA right, because it's it's scary. And
I understand why it's scary because of the stigma around
(16:17):
it and how people perceive or how people treat you after.
But so boom, I'm talking to him. I'm like, I
just told the world this and no one was around us,
and he had to whisper in my ear because he
wanted to make sure he protected that and nobody heard it.
And I was like, this is why we need to
continue to tell stories, and this is why you know,
it's important for us to do this because people are
(16:40):
scared to open up. But I get it. Yeah, and
we're in the majority, and our job is to show
people that we're in the majority. I think people, especially nowadays,
were how much social media funs with everybody and what
COVID did to everybody having a social isolated I think
we're in the majority of those who were going through
if not depression, anxiety or oath or something. It's just
(17:01):
it's different. Our brains are different nowadays. How much we're
sitting there and looking down on our phones and it's
just taking up our brain waves. Our brands are working differently,
and we're comparing ourselves to everybody else is filtered fraction
of a second of their Facebook post or Instagram post,
and it's fucking not real. It's too much, too much
stress and pressure. I want to ask you this because
(17:21):
I just gave you my moment for me this week
that was like wow, and you you can't get gaming
one also right here, but give me like one of
the coolest moments that happened for you since you've come out,
because here's the thing to look at by want people
here to understand this. Also, Brand and I've been friends
for a long time. We sat there on the rams
(17:45):
field this year in training camp. We didn't talk football,
that is all we talked about, and we were so
excited to talk about this and share with each other.
And I think that when people open up now about this,
it makes their relationships so much stronger. Right, It makes
our bonds, It makes our conversation and so much deeper
and in a relationship just so much stronger. You know why.
The reason why is because when you sit there with depression,
(18:08):
or you sit there in anxiety, by polar disorder, substance abuse,
all of that stuff, you almost feel like it's just you.
And then what happens when you lean in and you say, yo,
I'm actually depressed or I'm dealing with this or I'm
learning about this. You know what they say, me too,
me too, right, like that whole like that me too
(18:29):
is so powerful. But it's it's for so many other
communities and in our community. That's why I gave those numbers.
Three million Americans and for everyone it touches five to six.
If you do the math, that's almost a hundred million
Americans living with something. So it's powerful, bron So you know, yeah,
I know where you were going. Yeah, give me a
(18:50):
story that for you, that something somebody said to you.
You're like, holy shit, I just wow. I can't believe
I changed someone's life like this. Right, So we launch
a nonprofit and uh, we launched a nonprofit. Uh that
year two thousand and eleven. So we start doing some
work project three, project through seventy five, but we morphed
(19:10):
into the House of badly More for profit UM create
our own revenue to get back to the community in
a different way. We can talk about that another time,
but um, so we launched a nonprofit and our work
is is really built around prevention and intervene in early right.
And so we go around teaching signs and symptoms. Two
thousand and five, Like you said, we didn't know what
(19:31):
a panic attack, was right. A lot of times it
presents itself as a heart attack, so people think they're dying.
So boom, what what is that? Okay, let's identify and
then once we identify, what do we do, right, how
do we help someone through a panic attack. So our
nonprofit goes around teaching this globally. Okay, all of this stuff.
(19:53):
So we go out to Seattle and we're sitting down
with the school district out there and you know, we
go through this training with just administration, teachers, support staff,
all of that, and some parents, and we talked about,
you know, suicide, like if you if you, if you
know that a kid is suicidal, you know, here's the
(20:14):
steps that you need to take after. Right, But it
first starts with this asking somebody, are you suicidal? Are
you contemplating suicide? We're we're scared this use that word.
So anyways, our our team, you know, teachers implement our program.
Everybody goes off to their worlds. Teacher goes in class.
(20:36):
At the end of his class, he just asked his kids,
he's anyone suicidal, please talk to me. Everybody leaves. One
kid stays back, right, kids says yes, I'm actually suicidal.
And then so here's here's part of the program, and
you learned. Okay, now with the dude, now you're in it,
what do I do now? And and and the teacher
(20:57):
asked he did what he's supposed to do, said, well,
how are you going to do it? How do you
plan on doing it? The kid opens up his book
bag and it's a book baked field to fill with pills.
So then sits down with the kids, calls and the
support and the help. This kid is still here to
this day. So that's one of those power right. And
(21:18):
then there's so many others man, where like you. It's
anywhere I go, everywhere I travel, you know, people are
talking about two things down mental health and my podcast
that is it, and they're literally breaking down the tears.
I remember being in Vegas at a big fight and
the family from Chicago walks up to my wife and
now and it's like two in the morning. We had
some drinks and we're like, who the hell is this
(21:39):
walking up to us. It's kind of awkward, like tearing up,
and it's this family, probably white family, probably like fifty
years old, fifty five years of age. They're like, you
saved my daughter's life, and it's like and I'm like,
oh my, you know so thankful and all that. It's like, no, no,
you need to understand that you you saved my daughter's life.
She went on YouTube and Google border around personality just
(22:01):
sort of she was suicidal, She's about to take her life.
She saw your message and she's still here to this day.
So there's a thousand of those right until to your point.
And it's so powerful. Man. It's every week. Man, it's
just great, and it's just you know, it's amazing that
the thing that we feared the most and that hurt
us the most, it is now giving us the most joy.
(22:21):
The last line of my book was for years, I
felt like I was cursed with depression anxiety. Now, for
the first time ever, I feel like God blessed me
with depression anxiety because like that book, like you just said,
you tell your story, but we're putting things in the
world that's gonna forever be and it's always gonna touch someone.
So this podcast video, the audio of the book, you
(22:44):
put it out there and you never know because people
out there searching this stuff. And then it's people that
you never look at. I shake their hands and it's
blessing them. So I feel that too. It's definitely a
blessing man. And we're still probably ten years away from
where the league actually asked me recently because I want
to talk to the Seahawks and Vikings both about mental health.
(23:04):
In the preseason, I did also the whole USFL for
the league itself, right, but the lead office said to me, hey,
where else can we help? And I said, you probably
still ten years away. You know, you've gotta make this
just like you know, mental health like physical health, where
you have so many trainers for the physical health, you're
gonna need the same amount of therapist there for the
mental health and make it more proactive than reactive. And
you probably still ten years away because people talking about
(23:27):
this now, like I can't tell you how many people
say they'll they'll talk to me about what I have,
and then finally months later ago okay, me too, like
you said, right, but they're not saying it right there.
They're saying it all these months later. They're finally having
the cart. So I think we're probably five ten years
away from being normalized the same way. And I look
at therapists like coaches, right, I don't look at it.
(23:49):
I try and take away that stigma. So then I
gotta they need to be trained up. Yes, they do.
They need to be trained up. And we also need
to realize, hey, if you're gonna work out like, you
don't only catch passes when you have drops, right, You
don't only work on speed training when you think you're
slowing down. You do it all the time. We need
to start doing the mental part of that same proactive approach.
(24:11):
J I had the opportunity to um and I say
this humbly, but I had an opportunity, you know, the
first player to speak to present to the owners at
the owners meeting, Right, So I did that? Remember that? Yeah? Yeah?
And so when I stepped in, I said, you know, look,
I'm doing some cool things on the field, but I
want my legacy to be that we change the way
(24:32):
we approach mental health as a league. Two things need
to happen. Here are the two things. Number one should
be mandated that every club has a mental health practitioner
on staff. Okay, that wasn't That wasn't the case back
then two thousand and fift two, sixteen. Okay, we end
up getting that done, meaning the league as a whole.
(24:53):
The second thing, J is to what you said. I
looked at them, and I said, I envisioned a day.
Envision the world where you walk into the into the
weight room and I have my strength and conditioning coach
right here, and then right next to his office is
the sports psychologists, mental practitioner, the team whatever right there.
(25:14):
Because now it's on the same level. If you walk
into most organizations, what you're find is the strength and
conditioning The training room in the weight room is right
outside the locker room on the first floor. Then if
you go up to the second or third floor, next
to the janitor's off Yeah, next to like you know
what I mean, the marketing department that has four or
(25:35):
five cubicles, but people don't go that way. That's where
you're gonna find the mental health practitioner. No, you need
to have it on equal plane field and then needs
to be right there. So when I walk in, you
don't know if I'm if I'm working on my mind
my brain, uh, if I'm working on my body, it's
all the same, right. So to your point, that's what
we need to do. What I used to do when
(25:57):
I was playing for the Chicago Bears and then the Jets.
You know that. So Chicago. I went from Denver Broncos
to the Miami Dolphins for two and then to the
Chicago Bears for three, and then the Jets and the
Giants for another three and then I had a cup
of tea somewhere else and that was it. But those
six years or six years bro, where Chicago Bears, you
know where I did uh my one on ones with
(26:19):
Gail or our team doctor, and the every two so
everybody else, I said, I'm not going up there. I'm
doing it right here because they needed to see this. Yeah.
I don't care what I'm going through, but they need
to see that it's okay to do this. But if
they don't see me doing this, then they're not gonna
think it's okay. When I played for the Jets, I
would do it every single week in the cafeteria. So
(26:41):
now everybody from players to marketing team, to janitors, to
support staff to grounds crew, they would see me talking
to you Dr Sweets. Right, it's the same, bro, beautiful.
I love that, man. I love you know. Trum McVan
and I were talking about it, he goes, man, how
many things? How many? How many of my players you're
in contest, said no, no, no, no, that's not the
(27:02):
question you need to ask yourself. Let's be marshmall. You
just said, how many of your scouts, your secretaries, people
who work in your lunch room, your groundskeepers. It's everybody
that's you. If you're gonna be a team, it's gonna
be it's gonna be everybody here. And it's so much
more than just that locker room. And then also, let's
say beautiful that another thirty seconds, bro. Also, it's it's
(27:24):
being proactive to not everyone has to have a diagnosis
for their life to be living hell. You don't have
to have anxiety depression or have borderline personality dislready bipolar
disorder for your life to be a living hell. You
don't have to. So these things that we were talking about,
all of these skills and tools that we picked up
through therapy is also important for the at home dad,
(27:46):
the at home mom, the weekend warrior, for the entrepreneur,
for the doctor to nurse, the clinician. Life can be hard,
so you need to be proactive when it comes to
training your mind and developing your brain. Okay, eight, So
if we keep saying that life and sport is eight
percent mental, then why are we spending so much more
(28:07):
time and more resources on the physical change it invest
in tis like you're saying, too, it's got to be
proactive because it's so reactive nowadays. Normally a mental health
professionals getting somebody after the sky has already falling, and
that's too late, right, So exactly to your point, get
out ahead of it and not just when you have
the gray of anxiety depression. Were all they're going through
(28:28):
something meditation, yoga, work. But I want to shift gears
down because youve got something exciting that you've launched, your
House of Athletes. Plus Phillison, tell me all about it. Yeah,
so you talked about my nonprofit project three seventy five,
And I'll be honest, Jay, you know, I think I
would like to consider myself a winner, and I want
(28:48):
to I want to win big. I never won a
Super Bowl, but I feel like my super Bowls want
to come in the mental health space. I want to
help bridge the gap in the mental health community. So
what I say all that to say, I was so
tired of going out there and only raising a couple
of dollars, putting the year's worth in this event and
only bringing in you know, a hundred two hundred dollars. Now,
(29:09):
that is big for a lot of people, but for me,
when I look at the impact that our platforms can
have and the amount of resources needed for other people,
a hundred thousand was just not enough for me. So
I shipped gears to a for profit House of Athlete.
And what House of Athlete is It's basically Project through
seventy five because when I was on the campus of
mcclainen Hospital, I truly believe I had the reaction I
(29:32):
had in my life was totally transformed because I leaned
it to everything. It's not just therapy, talk therapy and
the group therapy. It's also how are you moving if
you're training? It's also you know, are you meditating? It's
also are you recovering? So are you getting you know, five, six, seven,
eight or nine hours of sleep? What is it? My
nine body spirit? It's all of it, man. So I
(29:55):
took my thirteen years experience of having like the best
coaches and best gurus around me and put into House
of Athlete, which started as a breaking mortar facility for
like unbreakable where we have you know, the who's who
in there. But we have pro athletes, youth athletes, we
have everyone there. But now, how do we scale what
(30:16):
we're doing at Unbreakable? How do we scale what we're
doing that house of athletes? So I took all of
that work that you and not have been doing, and
the things that we're talking about now shows up a
little bit differently for me because it's two different brands.
But I put it into this app. So like on Wednesdays,
as an athlete in the off season, typically it's a
recovery day for us to train Monday, Tuesday, then Wednesday
we recover, were jump in the pool, Thursday, Friday, were
(30:38):
training and we get some cool stuff on the weekends, right,
So on this app on Wednesdays, we have our mental practitioners.
You can't even train and our facilities or even our app,
you can't even train on the app or in our facility.
We have mental practitioners, we have meditations, we have brute
therapy going on, right because if it's that important, So
we totally feel like we're disrupting how we're approaching this
(31:01):
whole boutique fitness world. And it's really to get more
people to adopt the things that were we're providing from
a mental health standpoint. So if athletes are the healthiest
people on the planet, my goal is to get more
people to adopt their lifestyle. What does that mean? Tom
Brady's forty five and look how he's He's been doing divorce,
He's going through all this stuff, so many things that
(31:22):
we don't even know about, and he's still able to
perform at a high level. You got Serena Williams, She's performed,
she was performing at a high level. You know, you've
got the Lebron James. Do we think that they don't
deal with the things that we all deal with? Two?
So how are they able to perform at a high level?
Is because of the routine around them. How they're taking
care of their mind, how they're taking care of the
(31:43):
body and their spirit. So that's what this is. This man,
It's like, here's what the athletes are doing, and here
it is for you. I just want people to get results.
So how do we got do we do we sign
up at the app store? Did you go to the the
app store House of Athletes plus? You gotta spell out
plus p l U S. So how House of Athletes
plus in the app store, so then take me through
(32:03):
the look. It gives your workout, but also it helps
you like on thost recovery days, it helps you with
that recovery for the body, of recovery for the mind.
So it's simple, it gives it seems like it gives
you a blueprint. Right, it's that's what it is. It's
simple for me. It's there's a lot of things out
there's a lot of trends and a lot of fans,
and I'm looking at the Tom Brady's of the world,
(32:24):
the Russell Wilson's of the world, Uh, the Lebron James
of the word. I'm looking at what are they doing
to perform at a high level? That's what we all want.
So just taking how athletes approach all of that stuff,
how you recover, how you train, how you sleep, and
putting into one space, right, this is what athletes are doing.
Because there's a lot of training, a lot of fans
out there. So that's what the app is. It's it's
(32:45):
the fundamentals of health. There's a lot of things that
we could be doing from from prescription drugs to drugs
to um you know, different forms of medicine. Like just
there's so many hospitals out there. But what about the fundamentals?
What about just understanding that if you're dehydrated, that performance
decreases and it can mess mess you up mentally. Your
(33:08):
brain literally just detached from your skull when you're dehydrated.
So there's a lot optimizing people. Yeah, this is optimistic,
because that's the thing. There's difference between training and training
for optimization, for optimization, but it's simple stuff like hydrate.
A lot of people are walking walking around fatigue and
the mental fog because they're dehydrated, but they're not. We're
(33:28):
not having that conversation. What about what about what about
all these people that saying, oh team, no sleep and
it's grind season, they're only getting three four hours. That's
where your body is recovering and do what it needs
to do to prepare yourself for the next day. Just fundamentals.
That's what the athletes do, is just leaning to the fundamentals.
And who better learn from them? Guy like you who's
(33:50):
been through it many ways. I love it, man, I
love what you're doing. I love you Before I let
you go and ask all my guest this, give me
your own breakable moment, give me the moment that, man,
you went through the deepest, darkest can It could have
broke broken you, but it didn't, and you came through
the other side of that time a much stronger as
a result. M man, there's so many. The first one
(34:10):
was in college and I grew up as a superstar
right like on this pedestal. And then there was three
years where I didn't think I was gonna make it
to the NFL and hit my my, you know, my goals,
And I never forget laying in the tub in the
ice path day before the game, body just feeling like crap,
mind feeling like crap, and I was just crying, crying
(34:32):
my eyes out. Anyways, I end up doing is jumping
out of that tub, going to the tattoo parlor and
getting two stars on my side. Once that's born, once
says died. And that was my way of like coming
out of that moment where it's like I may be
in some ship right now and that's where I want
to be, but I knew I was born and staring.
I'm a diet star. So before every play, every moment
(34:54):
on the field, you see me tapping my sides and
then doing this, and that was me going back to
that moment, like, don't forget who you are and why
you're here. There was another moment in two thousand eleven
before I went to McClean hospital, when when my buddy
right where Mike sims Walker and I were fighting on
the field and he basically, I don't know who you are.
I know who you are, right, And so in that
moment of going to McClean hospital, I was there for
(35:16):
three months, man, I was sitting there with people who
had blood seeping through their arms because they were self harming.
There was a young lady named Sasha we called Sasha Bear.
She was fifteen years old. She was in a three
East program. She completed suicide. Like I was in some
real stuff. Man. I was on campus where people was
literally walking around talking to themselves and you say hello,
they won't even respond back. You weren't even They're dealing
(35:38):
with psychosis and so many different things. And that moment
like I could have my life could have went totally left,
or could have totally totally right. And then the last
moment is right now like I'm and probably one of
the toughest moments I could ever be in, right, maybe
even tougher than where I was right building this company
Entrepreneurship eighty nine and employees. Uh, you know, I invested
(36:02):
all the money building apps and building this stuff. Bro
When I tell you I'm dealing with some stuff, I'm
dealing with some stuff. But now I have the resources
and skills to be able to cope with the apps
and flows of it. So it's tough. I cried two
nights ago. I cried two nights ago because I found
that there's someone that in my circle from a team standpoint,
(36:22):
I gotta let go, and it's breaking my heart and
I gotta let this person go because there's so many
other implications to that and so like I've probably cried
over the last three years, probably six times built in
this company. Bro Um, I can't give it all to
you because because I'm saving it for my book. I
got it, but you just gotta trust me. You gotta
(36:44):
trust me. And so like now I'm able to deal
with it and still perform at a high level because
I'm taking care of myself. You know, Listen, I started
Unbreakable and then I started a nonprofit called m VP
Emerging Vesting Players the same year. And having to startups
seven years ago and being the boss. Man, it sucks.
It's lonely, and I'm not used to being hated and
(37:05):
people hate the boss a lot of times. And I
wasn't able to handle that. I was not able to
deal with that mental health. I couldn't be the common
enemy with my mental health issues. And now it's still
a big struggle for me. So I understand what you're
going through. Man. You just gotta appreciate what you've done, okay,
and appreciate the toil of the client. Don't worry about, man,
(37:25):
where you're gonna end up. Just say, man, I'm proud
of myself what I'm doing today. Dude. I love you, man,
I appreciate you joining me. Man, this is great. Always
love to see it. And by the way, for people
don't know, Brandon play wide receiver, but he's not. He's
a defensive van who somehow got got slided over at receiver.
I don't know who funk that one up, man, But
(37:46):
you're not a receiver. I mean ask you this question,
who wins in the octagon right now? Me or you? Oh? Me,
absolutely a million percent? Because you know what, once I
start kicking those fucking legs out of yours, you give
be like, oh no, no no, no no, what, I just sign
up for this ship. I sign up for this, you
know hey now, and the other part two is you
app you're more athletic than me, you're stronger than me,
(38:08):
you're bigger than me. But then I will just keep
coming and coming and coming and coming and take all
you got you go. I just sign up for this ship.
I signed up for this motherfucker to go down. I
didn't like that, man, No, so you and you know what.
Here's the thing too, I tell my guys to I
always tell people I don't give a funk if I
win or lose. I just want to do to cross
me to go. That's fucking sucked. That was the worst
(38:30):
thing going against So if I take the ego out
of it, the one of the loss, right, I just
want you to have the worst afternoon you've ever had.
That's all I care about. That's powerful. That's a lot
to that. A lot of athletes can take from that.
But that's a whole another pod. That's a whole other podcast.
We'll do it, we'll do separately bad when you have
me on yours, I'll talk about that. Let's do it,
all right, The marsh I love you, dude. I appreciate
(38:51):
you so much. Love man folks again. I want you
to all go and download House of Athletes plus, spell
out the plus when you go to the app store,
and uh, if you haven't already bought Unbreakable How I
turned my depression anxiety into motivation and you can't too.
It is on sell right now. And I appreciate being
March and everybody else walk on this walk together.
This is Unbreakable with Jay Glazer, a mental health podcast
helping you out of the gray and into the blue.
Now here's Jay Glazer. Welcome in, everybody to Unbreakable, a
mental health podcast with Jay Glazer. I'm Jay Glazer, and
I've had a lot of friends in this business that
(00:23):
you know, we get friends through football, friends through fighting,
but also become friends to mental health. We had Terry
Bratshaw on a couple of weeks ago, and he's somebody
that really was able to open up early and show
me it's okay for me to talk about it. But
somebody else here who led the way as well, and
kind of I would say he was ahead of his time.
Played for thirteen years, the NFL six time Pro bowler,
(00:43):
twenty one catches in a game. A good friend of mine,
Brandon Marshall, welcome him in and b marsh before we
were all talking about this, this is like you first
came out and talked about what you were going through.
What two thousand eleven two, that's right, Uh, two thousand eleven,
Brouh came out and you know, told the world, you
know what I was going through, what I was dealing with,
(01:05):
spent three months at McClain Hospital, and it just totally
transformed my life and opened up the world. Tell everybody
what you said, you because I tell everybody I live
in something called the Grandmane is depression, anxiety, a d D, bipolar.
What did you come out and tell? Yeah? So I
was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. The best way to
describe that is an emotional disorder. Right, Like you know
(01:27):
you cover sports, fights, the games, right, you see that emotion,
that raw emotion. Well, that's good for ball, but it's
not great for life. It's not great for business, is
not great for relationships. In between the lines good, in
between the whistles good, but you gotta have a switch.
I didn't have the skills and tools to be able
to self regulate walking to a bar, then walking too
(01:48):
even a meeting room coach say the wrown thing, per
say the wrown thing. I may just fly at the mouth, right,
and then now you find yourself in the bigger situation.
So I didn't have the skills and tools to be
able to self regular like ship happens me and you
were vote on the zoom call. Justin's on his zoom
call on the back and you know we're it's all valid.
Where where we feel like, damn, this person totally disrespected us,
(02:10):
and now do we have the skills to be able
to go from a hundred back down to baseline with
your zero? I didn't have that. So I had to
take dialect behavior therapy, self assessment, mentalization therapy, calling the
behavior therapy one, the one with the great Dr Gunderson.
But before we even figured out what program I need
to put together, I had to do a clinical evalue. No,
(02:31):
first I had to I had to want to help,
right right right, listen, there was five years. Those first
five years you covered me, it was like random marshals again,
random marshal again. I didn't. I thought it was everybody
else's volt. I thought it was Josh McDaniel's fault. I
thought it was this person's fold, that person's folk. And
it wasn't until I looked at myself in the marr
(02:52):
said no, how do I contribute to This? Is when
things totally changed and I wanted to help. And then
that first the first thing I did was a clinic
cool evaluation. Right, That's where we came up with the
diagnosis of borderline personality disorder bp D and then also
a neurological evaluation. Sometimes people got things go on their
head that it's chemical or they may not even be
(03:14):
capable of changing. So I did that, and then I
spent three months man um in then out outpatient program,
and I did it every single day, Monday through Friday,
nine to five. That became my campus, you know, all
of the clinical books and patient books became my playbook.
And it was the year to lock out, so it
had the opportunity, uh to just take off the whole offseason.
I moved my whole team up the trainers, chef, everybody
(03:36):
up there, and I just went all in. And that's
a whole other conversation because you know, I was making
ten million dollars at the time, all right, and it
was costing me almost fifty dollars a month to get
the help I needed, pay for the treatment, have my
my support team up there to stay on task for
business in the football season. And the average person can't
(03:57):
afford that. They can't even afford that a day off, right,
no doubt. And that's so hard, that's it's so hard
to to navigate. But I think you you just hit
on the head of the first thing is wanting help,
and same for me, like I'm paranoid with with my depression, anxiety,
my grade. So I always think it's somebody else or man,
somebody else says that has it out for me, or
somebody else has something against me, or the universes against me,
(04:19):
and it's not true. So you gotta want the help.
But again, I'm talking about it now. What I want
to do by writing my book Unbreakable is to give
mental health words. We talk about it, but not enough
people give it words. I want to give it words
that we could have these conversations. But back then there
were no words. There was no conversation. What gave you
the courage to be one of the first to come
(04:39):
out and talk about it? Because that would have been scared? Bro,
this is a question that people ask me, and I'm
sure to ask you all kind of getting really emotional.
I wish you like fucking goose bumps tears in my
eyes right now, man, because you know, even you say unbreakable,
you wanted to put words to it. I wanted to
put a face to it. So in two thousand and eleven,
I said it's time for us put faces on it now. Bro.
(05:04):
But but here's the thing that and this is why
I got goose bumps, And I'm gonna answer your question, bro.
That was one of the hardest things we probably both
did to the world, you know, standing up and saying like,
hey diagnosed with depression anxiety, right, PTSD, borderline personality disorder,
all of that stuff. I didn't think twice about it
when I saw at McClain hospital BA I walked in
(05:25):
that first day. I was so broken, man, I didn't know.
I didn't even know I was hurt, and I was
so broken. And then a month and a half and
halfway through my my world totally transformed. Everything click for
me and I went from one person to another person.
I couldn't believe that I was experiencing this, and right
in that moment, I wanted everybody else to experience this
(05:45):
because I knew, you know, under twenty million Americans give
or take a few, that there was probably like a
hundred million Americans also living with this but not getting
the help they need or couldn't even afford it. So
that's for me, it was very selfless. I said, funk,
I gotta go talk about this. I want to share
my story. Not even knowing not even thinking about the
stigma around it. Not thinking about teams may devalue me
(06:08):
because now I'm saying I have the minute capacity. Right,
So I'm answering your question because you probably you you're
probably not same situations like, man, this is powerful ship
and I just want to help people. He didn't think
about it the same thing for me, which to me,
when I hear people like you your stories, you know,
and there's others out there, it's like those are warriors,
(06:30):
those are champions, because there's a lot of people that's
that's done, that's dealt with things, but never stood up
and shared their story because they were too afraid. Right.
The reason why I love this topic right here is
because you know, it's harder to find what that is.
Like you tell me, I don't know. You tell me
what was it for you? Like for me, I didn't
even think about. One of the things that helps me
(06:53):
and I write about this a lot, I talked about
a lot. One of the things that helps me through
my grade to see some blue is being of service.
So people say to me all the time, major show
brave for talking about this, and I go, now, it's
not brave, Like this is me being of service, right,
this is me given words. So I kind of got
excited also, but also for me, it was therapeutic for
me to finally come out and and explain to the
(07:14):
masses and but more so do my friends. Man, this
is why I act like this right And and I
wrote a line in my book. It's a hard line
to write, but I said, being friends with Jay Glazer's
heart because of what my mental health illnesses and issues.
And I don't I shouldn't say. I don't. I like,
I don't want to call them illnesses. I like to
call them things we've overcome. But um, I wanted to
(07:37):
almost take the cap off to show my friends who
stuck by wing you all these years and seeing the
outbursts and seeing the stuff I've done at night and man,
after a night of taking too much Viking and drinking
too much to get through that fucking gray and having
all sorts of issues and fucking letting my hands loose
when I should not be doing ship like that? Um?
Or why I snap on people? Or why all of
(07:57):
a sudden I call someone and think, man, why are
you against me? And why is this happening? Or why
is this guy falling like people do I was crazy,
and that's a badge of honor in football and fighting,
but they didn't know what kind of pain I was
in it. This allowed me to show them what kind
of pain I was in, almost like a thank you
for sticking by me. I'm getting choked up talking about it,
but it's almost like a thank you to you for
sticking buy me. For as difficult as this makes us, right,
(08:22):
it's powerful, man, because when I knew I needed help,
I was actually on the field training with money my
dear buddies, Mike Sims Walker's playing for the Jaguars, and
the whole workout we were just arguing yellow. Now, this
is a guy that was my roommate in college at
the University of Central Florida. So it's like my brother brother. Okay,
we've been through everything together. So we both make it
(08:42):
to the NFL, got the world at our fingertips, and
now we find ourselves in this off season session down
in Sunday, South Florida, and we're going through the freaking
ladder drills in the whole time. Bro, He's like, I
don't know who you are. I don't know who you are.
You're different, you change, you different, you change and I'm
looking at him like he crazy, Like are you talking
about And it wasn't until a couple of months later
(09:02):
where I finally realized that I was suffering. Didn't even
know I was suffering, that was changing even though I
was changing. So for you to say like it was,
I thank you to your friends that can buy you,
Like now I'm sitting down with those same friends of
mine that was there from day one. And I say
it all the time. I was such a terrible friend, right,
Like I didn't know. I didn't even know how to
(09:23):
be a friend. You know, I didn't even know what
I was dealing with, and and and I couldn't give
you guys any advice how to help me. I wasn't
even expressing myself to you guys. That's a big thing, bro.
And I know why you're getting choked up, man, because um,
it's so relational. When you go through certain things, a
lot of times it's taking out on the people that
are the closest to you. You know, it could be white,
(09:44):
it could be children, it could be your best friend,
could be your mom and dad, your brothers and sisters,
and it's painful. It's like, man, I fucking love this people,
these people, it's the shame, and it gives us shame.
And that's that's where a lot of people go through,
all to the shame that we feel after it's man,
just as dark as the Grande Am I allowed to curse? Yes,
you're here talking to her no longer as you know me?
(10:07):
You got to you know you, you play both sides all.
I don't know if this I don't know if the
Unbreakable podcast is all that. I don't change. Man, you
know me, you're talking I don't curse on that red
light shot and foxing them on Sunday. I love it. No,
(10:30):
this is good man. I appreciate you so much man,
creating this space. You're a pioneer in this space. It's
kind of cool, Jay, Uh, seeing all the athletes, entertainers,
prominent men and women, even influencers now use their platforms
and talk about anxiety and the pressure. I guess I
got a question for you. When did you notice that change? Right?
Because when you and I were talking about these things
(10:51):
you're talking about, uh, putting words to it, be putting
faces to it. You know, it was still really taboo.
Now it seems like it's a badge of honor. Now
it's staying. It seems like it's training, you know, for
people to stand up and say, oh no, I deal
with anxiety or depressed it right, I feel really good
about doing it. When did you see that shift? I
didn't tell anyone that I had panic attacks anxiety attacks
(11:12):
every time I've ever been on TV, even scripted ship
like Ballers, which you know, again, for me, is kind
of weird that that would happen because I'm great in chaos,
I sucking calm al right, so I'm granted cage, I'm
grant on TV. I'm I'm fine. But man, something happened
to me in two thousand and five where it happened
and it became an habitual every single time I've ever
(11:33):
been on TV for the first segment. It's just it's weird.
So a couple of things. One, when I described it
and told everybody what it feels like to have an
anxiety attack. I can't tell you how many people in
the TV world said, oh, my god, that's what it is. Oh,
thank you, I've had the same thing. Thank you, And
all these people like I used to think I was
having a heart attack instead of a panic attack because
(11:54):
we didn't know what only in two thousand five what
the fucking anxiety attack was, and we talked about it
back that So for years I just had a suffering silence.
But ever since I've talked about it publicly, and I
started doing mental health checkups on my on my Instagram,
social media now here, on this podcast, and then writing
the book and doing these interviews. There's not a week
(12:14):
there goes past. I'm gonna try and keep it together
here too, where somebody doesn't say thank you, you saved
my life by talking about this. And then I have
grandmothers now saying you've given me the words for the
first time in eighty years to talk about this to
my family. I didn't know what to say. So here's
the coolest one, though, the coolest one. We had a
(12:35):
guest on this podcast a couple of weeks ago named
Keith Madden. Keith was on the way to Hilton Head,
South Carolina, to kill himself and he took a wrong
turn and ended up at a target, and my book
was sitting right there, and he was planning doing on
the third day that he was in hilton Head, so
he picked up some supplies and and and including my
book and he read Unbreakable, and he said he read
(12:58):
almost all of it in dates you. By the morning
of day three, there's no longer any reason for me
to kill myself. And I packed up one home and
he has since about a bunch of books, and I've
sent a bunch of three books too, and handing them
out to people. But he's now telling his story openly.
And I got a message from him yesterday, yesterday in tears.
(13:20):
Then a woman, a stranger walked up to and said,
excuse me you, Keith Madden said, yes, I am. She said,
oh my god, thank you. You see in my life. Wow,
Oh my god, dude. So that's someone And I tell
people all the time, like, man, we gotta stick around
because you never know what lies around next Tuesday. Where
a man on next Tuesday, something great will happen for you.
(13:42):
And Tuesday for me was I finally got my first job.
But you never know. And if he had completed that
his his what he set out to do, that woman
wouldn't be alive right now. And that's why we gotta
stick around. That for me, like Mark B. Marsh, I'm
now getting these every week and that that is making
this We want to talk about even more and the world.
(14:04):
That's life's work, bro. And that's life's work right there.
And and the coolest thing about it is that that
just showed the power of telling your story. So you
tell your story, but you don't you don't even know
how many others you are touching. Right, So Keith, he
hears your story, reads your story whom and now he
(14:27):
starts to share his story. And now this this lady
is here today, and now she's going to open up
and tell her story, right, and she's going to impact
people in the same way. Right. And that's why, Bro.
In two thousand eleven, when I stood there and it
was in Dolphins camp and everyone's like, all right, what
the where is? Where's Brandon? Ben? After? You're gonna responding?
(14:50):
And I and I just stood up and I said, listen,
the last three months I've been at McClain Hospital, I
was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. You know, it really
touched me. I've learned a lot, and it's actually my
life's work. I want to walk the halls of Congress.
I want to put faces to it. I want to
have these conversations at the dinner table and the schools
and in in in corporate America, it's time to do
(15:13):
that right. And when I when I, when I, when
I walked off that podium, Jay, I had a teammate
pulled me to the side, right and you know this teammate,
very powerful person, awesome athletes pull me to the side,
whispers in my ear, Bro, I live with bipolar disorder.
(15:33):
Thank you for telling your story. Jay. I thought it
was cool, but I was also piste off and said,
because here I am standing in front of the whole world,
but they live stream this, like I never had a
live stream press conference practice. It was on all NFL network,
it was on ESPN, it was everywhere. And so I
just told the world, definitely the sports world, what I
(15:56):
was dealing with and what I want to do moving forward.
And I was bold. I was strong. That's why I'm
saying courage. That's why when I got goose, folks, when
you talked about it earlier, as far as like what
made you, you know, stand up and tell your stories? Like, Bro,
I don't know. You know what I'm saying. They got
something in our DNA right, because it's it's scary. And
I understand why it's scary because of the stigma around
(16:17):
it and how people perceive or how people treat you after.
But so boom, I'm talking to him. I'm like, I
just told the world this and no one was around us,
and he had to whisper in my ear because he
wanted to make sure he protected that and nobody heard it.
And I was like, this is why we need to
continue to tell stories, and this is why you know,
it's important for us to do this because people are
(16:40):
scared to open up. But I get it. Yeah, and
we're in the majority, and our job is to show
people that we're in the majority. I think people, especially nowadays,
were how much social media funs with everybody and what
COVID did to everybody having a social isolated I think
we're in the majority of those who were going through
if not depression, anxiety or oath or something. It's just
(17:01):
it's different. Our brains are different nowadays. How much we're
sitting there and looking down on our phones and it's
just taking up our brain waves. Our brands are working differently,
and we're comparing ourselves to everybody else is filtered fraction
of a second of their Facebook post or Instagram post,
and it's fucking not real. It's too much, too much
stress and pressure. I want to ask you this because
(17:21):
I just gave you my moment for me this week
that was like wow, and you you can't get gaming
one also right here, but give me like one of
the coolest moments that happened for you since you've come out,
because here's the thing to look at by want people
here to understand this. Also, Brand and I've been friends
for a long time. We sat there on the rams
(17:45):
field this year in training camp. We didn't talk football,
that is all we talked about, and we were so
excited to talk about this and share with each other.
And I think that when people open up now about this,
it makes their relationships so much stronger. Right, It makes
our bonds, It makes our conversation and so much deeper
and in a relationship just so much stronger. You know why.
The reason why is because when you sit there with depression,
(18:08):
or you sit there in anxiety, by polar disorder, substance abuse,
all of that stuff, you almost feel like it's just you.
And then what happens when you lean in and you say, yo,
I'm actually depressed or I'm dealing with this or I'm
learning about this. You know what they say, me too,
me too, right, like that whole like that me too
(18:29):
is so powerful. But it's it's for so many other
communities and in our community. That's why I gave those numbers.
Three million Americans and for everyone it touches five to six.
If you do the math, that's almost a hundred million
Americans living with something. So it's powerful, bron So you know, yeah,
I know where you were going. Yeah, give me a
(18:50):
story that for you, that something somebody said to you.
You're like, holy shit, I just wow. I can't believe
I changed someone's life like this. Right, So we launch
a nonprofit and uh, we launched a nonprofit. Uh that
year two thousand and eleven. So we start doing some
work project three, project through seventy five, but we morphed
(19:10):
into the House of badly More for profit UM create
our own revenue to get back to the community in
a different way. We can talk about that another time,
but um, so we launched a nonprofit and our work
is is really built around prevention and intervene in early right.
And so we go around teaching signs and symptoms. Two
thousand and five, Like you said, we didn't know what
(19:31):
a panic attack, was right. A lot of times it
presents itself as a heart attack, so people think they're dying.
So boom, what what is that? Okay, let's identify and
then once we identify, what do we do, right, how
do we help someone through a panic attack. So our
nonprofit goes around teaching this globally. Okay, all of this stuff.
(19:53):
So we go out to Seattle and we're sitting down
with the school district out there and you know, we
go through this training with just administration, teachers, support staff,
all of that, and some parents, and we talked about,
you know, suicide, like if you if you, if you
know that a kid is suicidal, you know, here's the
(20:14):
steps that you need to take after. Right, But it
first starts with this asking somebody, are you suicidal? Are
you contemplating suicide? We're we're scared this use that word.
So anyways, our our team, you know, teachers implement our program.
Everybody goes off to their worlds. Teacher goes in class.
(20:36):
At the end of his class, he just asked his kids,
he's anyone suicidal, please talk to me. Everybody leaves. One
kid stays back, right, kids says yes, I'm actually suicidal.
And then so here's here's part of the program, and
you learned. Okay, now with the dude, now you're in it,
what do I do now? And and and the teacher
(20:57):
asked he did what he's supposed to do, said, well,
how are you going to do it? How do you
plan on doing it? The kid opens up his book
bag and it's a book baked field to fill with pills.
So then sits down with the kids, calls and the
support and the help. This kid is still here to
this day. So that's one of those power right. And
(21:18):
then there's so many others man, where like you. It's
anywhere I go, everywhere I travel, you know, people are
talking about two things down mental health and my podcast
that is it, and they're literally breaking down the tears.
I remember being in Vegas at a big fight and
the family from Chicago walks up to my wife and
now and it's like two in the morning. We had
some drinks and we're like, who the hell is this
(21:39):
walking up to us. It's kind of awkward, like tearing up,
and it's this family, probably white family, probably like fifty
years old, fifty five years of age. They're like, you
saved my daughter's life, and it's like and I'm like,
oh my, you know so thankful and all that. It's like, no, no,
you need to understand that you you saved my daughter's life.
She went on YouTube and Google border around personality just
(22:01):
sort of she was suicidal, She's about to take her life.
She saw your message and she's still here to this day.
So there's a thousand of those right until to your point.
And it's so powerful. Man. It's every week. Man, it's
just great, and it's just you know, it's amazing that
the thing that we feared the most and that hurt
us the most, it is now giving us the most joy.
(22:21):
The last line of my book was for years, I
felt like I was cursed with depression anxiety. Now, for
the first time ever, I feel like God blessed me
with depression anxiety because like that book, like you just said,
you tell your story, but we're putting things in the
world that's gonna forever be and it's always gonna touch someone.
So this podcast video, the audio of the book, you
(22:44):
put it out there and you never know because people
out there searching this stuff. And then it's people that
you never look at. I shake their hands and it's
blessing them. So I feel that too. It's definitely a
blessing man. And we're still probably ten years away from
where the league actually asked me recently because I want
to talk to the Seahawks and Vikings both about mental health.
(23:04):
In the preseason, I did also the whole USFL for
the league itself, right, but the lead office said to me, hey,
where else can we help? And I said, you probably
still ten years away. You know, you've gotta make this
just like you know, mental health like physical health, where
you have so many trainers for the physical health, you're
gonna need the same amount of therapist there for the
mental health and make it more proactive than reactive. And
you probably still ten years away because people talking about
(23:27):
this now, like I can't tell you how many people
say they'll they'll talk to me about what I have,
and then finally months later ago okay, me too, like
you said, right, but they're not saying it right there.
They're saying it all these months later. They're finally having
the cart. So I think we're probably five ten years
away from being normalized the same way. And I look
at therapists like coaches, right, I don't look at it.
(23:49):
I try and take away that stigma. So then I
gotta they need to be trained up. Yes, they do.
They need to be trained up. And we also need
to realize, hey, if you're gonna work out like, you
don't only catch passes when you have drops, right, You
don't only work on speed training when you think you're
slowing down. You do it all the time. We need
to start doing the mental part of that same proactive approach.
(24:11):
J I had the opportunity to um and I say
this humbly, but I had an opportunity, you know, the
first player to speak to present to the owners at
the owners meeting, Right, So I did that? Remember that? Yeah? Yeah?
And so when I stepped in, I said, you know, look,
I'm doing some cool things on the field, but I
want my legacy to be that we change the way
(24:32):
we approach mental health as a league. Two things need
to happen. Here are the two things. Number one should
be mandated that every club has a mental health practitioner
on staff. Okay, that wasn't That wasn't the case back
then two thousand and fift two, sixteen. Okay, we end
up getting that done, meaning the league as a whole.
(24:53):
The second thing, J is to what you said. I
looked at them, and I said, I envisioned a day.
Envision the world where you walk into the into the
weight room and I have my strength and conditioning coach
right here, and then right next to his office is
the sports psychologists, mental practitioner, the team whatever right there.
(25:14):
Because now it's on the same level. If you walk
into most organizations, what you're find is the strength and
conditioning The training room in the weight room is right
outside the locker room on the first floor. Then if
you go up to the second or third floor, next
to the janitor's off Yeah, next to like you know
what I mean, the marketing department that has four or
(25:35):
five cubicles, but people don't go that way. That's where
you're gonna find the mental health practitioner. No, you need
to have it on equal plane field and then needs
to be right there. So when I walk in, you
don't know if I'm if I'm working on my mind
my brain, uh, if I'm working on my body, it's
all the same, right. So to your point, that's what
we need to do. What I used to do when
(25:57):
I was playing for the Chicago Bears and then the Jets.
You know that. So Chicago. I went from Denver Broncos
to the Miami Dolphins for two and then to the
Chicago Bears for three, and then the Jets and the
Giants for another three and then I had a cup
of tea somewhere else and that was it. But those
six years or six years bro, where Chicago Bears, you
know where I did uh my one on ones with
(26:19):
Gail or our team doctor, and the every two so
everybody else, I said, I'm not going up there. I'm
doing it right here because they needed to see this. Yeah.
I don't care what I'm going through, but they need
to see that it's okay to do this. But if
they don't see me doing this, then they're not gonna
think it's okay. When I played for the Jets, I
would do it every single week in the cafeteria. So
(26:41):
now everybody from players to marketing team, to janitors, to
support staff to grounds crew, they would see me talking
to you Dr Sweets. Right, it's the same, bro, beautiful.
I love that, man. I love you know. Trum McVan
and I were talking about it, he goes, man, how
many things? How many? How many of my players you're
in contest, said no, no, no, no, that's not the
(27:02):
question you need to ask yourself. Let's be marshmall. You
just said, how many of your scouts, your secretaries, people
who work in your lunch room, your groundskeepers. It's everybody
that's you. If you're gonna be a team, it's gonna
be it's gonna be everybody here. And it's so much
more than just that locker room. And then also, let's
say beautiful that another thirty seconds, bro. Also, it's it's
(27:24):
being proactive to not everyone has to have a diagnosis
for their life to be living hell. You don't have
to have anxiety depression or have borderline personality dislready bipolar
disorder for your life to be a living hell. You
don't have to. So these things that we were talking about,
all of these skills and tools that we picked up
through therapy is also important for the at home dad,
(27:46):
the at home mom, the weekend warrior, for the entrepreneur,
for the doctor to nurse, the clinician. Life can be hard,
so you need to be proactive when it comes to
training your mind and developing your brain. Okay, eight, So
if we keep saying that life and sport is eight
percent mental, then why are we spending so much more
(28:07):
time and more resources on the physical change it invest
in tis like you're saying, too, it's got to be
proactive because it's so reactive nowadays. Normally a mental health
professionals getting somebody after the sky has already falling, and
that's too late, right, So exactly to your point, get
out ahead of it and not just when you have
the gray of anxiety depression. Were all they're going through
(28:28):
something meditation, yoga, work. But I want to shift gears
down because youve got something exciting that you've launched, your
House of Athletes. Plus Phillison, tell me all about it. Yeah,
so you talked about my nonprofit project three seventy five,
And I'll be honest, Jay, you know, I think I
would like to consider myself a winner, and I want
(28:48):
to I want to win big. I never won a
Super Bowl, but I feel like my super Bowls want
to come in the mental health space. I want to
help bridge the gap in the mental health community. So
what I say all that to say, I was so
tired of going out there and only raising a couple
of dollars, putting the year's worth in this event and
only bringing in you know, a hundred two hundred dollars. Now,
(29:09):
that is big for a lot of people, but for me,
when I look at the impact that our platforms can
have and the amount of resources needed for other people,
a hundred thousand was just not enough for me. So
I shipped gears to a for profit House of Athlete.
And what House of Athlete is It's basically Project through
seventy five because when I was on the campus of
mcclainen Hospital, I truly believe I had the reaction I
(29:32):
had in my life was totally transformed because I leaned
it to everything. It's not just therapy, talk therapy and
the group therapy. It's also how are you moving if
you're training? It's also you know, are you meditating? It's
also are you recovering? So are you getting you know, five, six, seven,
eight or nine hours of sleep? What is it? My
nine body spirit? It's all of it, man. So I
(29:55):
took my thirteen years experience of having like the best
coaches and best gurus around me and put into House
of Athlete, which started as a breaking mortar facility for
like unbreakable where we have you know, the who's who
in there. But we have pro athletes, youth athletes, we
have everyone there. But now, how do we scale what
(30:16):
we're doing at Unbreakable? How do we scale what we're
doing that house of athletes? So I took all of
that work that you and not have been doing, and
the things that we're talking about now shows up a
little bit differently for me because it's two different brands.
But I put it into this app. So like on Wednesdays,
as an athlete in the off season, typically it's a
recovery day for us to train Monday, Tuesday, then Wednesday
we recover, were jump in the pool, Thursday, Friday, were
(30:38):
training and we get some cool stuff on the weekends, right,
So on this app on Wednesdays, we have our mental practitioners.
You can't even train and our facilities or even our app,
you can't even train on the app or in our facility.
We have mental practitioners, we have meditations, we have brute
therapy going on, right because if it's that important, So
we totally feel like we're disrupting how we're approaching this
(31:01):
whole boutique fitness world. And it's really to get more
people to adopt the things that were we're providing from
a mental health standpoint. So if athletes are the healthiest
people on the planet, my goal is to get more
people to adopt their lifestyle. What does that mean? Tom
Brady's forty five and look how he's He's been doing divorce,
He's going through all this stuff, so many things that
(31:22):
we don't even know about, and he's still able to
perform at a high level. You got Serena Williams, She's performed,
she was performing at a high level. You know, you've
got the Lebron James. Do we think that they don't
deal with the things that we all deal with? Two?
So how are they able to perform at a high level?
Is because of the routine around them. How they're taking
care of their mind, how they're taking care of the
(31:43):
body and their spirit. So that's what this is. This man,
It's like, here's what the athletes are doing, and here
it is for you. I just want people to get results.
So how do we got do we do we sign
up at the app store? Did you go to the the
app store House of Athletes plus? You gotta spell out
plus p l U S. So how House of Athletes
plus in the app store, so then take me through
(32:03):
the look. It gives your workout, but also it helps
you like on thost recovery days, it helps you with
that recovery for the body, of recovery for the mind.
So it's simple, it gives it seems like it gives
you a blueprint. Right, it's that's what it is. It's
simple for me. It's there's a lot of things out
there's a lot of trends and a lot of fans,
and I'm looking at the Tom Brady's of the world,
(32:24):
the Russell Wilson's of the world, Uh, the Lebron James
of the word. I'm looking at what are they doing
to perform at a high level? That's what we all want.
So just taking how athletes approach all of that stuff,
how you recover, how you train, how you sleep, and
putting into one space, right, this is what athletes are doing.
Because there's a lot of training, a lot of fans
out there. So that's what the app is. It's it's
(32:45):
the fundamentals of health. There's a lot of things that
we could be doing from from prescription drugs to drugs
to um you know, different forms of medicine. Like just
there's so many hospitals out there. But what about the fundamentals?
What about just understanding that if you're dehydrated, that performance
decreases and it can mess mess you up mentally. Your
(33:08):
brain literally just detached from your skull when you're dehydrated.
So there's a lot optimizing people. Yeah, this is optimistic,
because that's the thing. There's difference between training and training
for optimization, for optimization, but it's simple stuff like hydrate.
A lot of people are walking walking around fatigue and
the mental fog because they're dehydrated, but they're not. We're
(33:28):
not having that conversation. What about what about what about
all these people that saying, oh team, no sleep and
it's grind season, they're only getting three four hours. That's
where your body is recovering and do what it needs
to do to prepare yourself for the next day. Just fundamentals.
That's what the athletes do, is just leaning to the fundamentals.
And who better learn from them? Guy like you who's
(33:50):
been through it many ways. I love it, man, I
love what you're doing. I love you Before I let
you go and ask all my guest this, give me
your own breakable moment, give me the moment that, man,
you went through the deepest, darkest can It could have
broke broken you, but it didn't, and you came through
the other side of that time a much stronger as
a result. M man, there's so many. The first one
(34:10):
was in college and I grew up as a superstar
right like on this pedestal. And then there was three
years where I didn't think I was gonna make it
to the NFL and hit my my, you know, my goals,
And I never forget laying in the tub in the
ice path day before the game, body just feeling like crap,
mind feeling like crap, and I was just crying, crying
(34:32):
my eyes out. Anyways, I end up doing is jumping
out of that tub, going to the tattoo parlor and
getting two stars on my side. Once that's born, once
says died. And that was my way of like coming
out of that moment where it's like I may be
in some ship right now and that's where I want
to be, but I knew I was born and staring.
I'm a diet star. So before every play, every moment
(34:54):
on the field, you see me tapping my sides and
then doing this, and that was me going back to
that moment, like, don't forget who you are and why
you're here. There was another moment in two thousand eleven
before I went to McClean hospital, when when my buddy
right where Mike sims Walker and I were fighting on
the field and he basically, I don't know who you are.
I know who you are, right, And so in that
moment of going to McClean hospital, I was there for
(35:16):
three months, man, I was sitting there with people who
had blood seeping through their arms because they were self harming.
There was a young lady named Sasha we called Sasha Bear.
She was fifteen years old. She was in a three
East program. She completed suicide. Like I was in some
real stuff. Man. I was on campus where people was
literally walking around talking to themselves and you say hello,
they won't even respond back. You weren't even They're dealing
(35:38):
with psychosis and so many different things. And that moment
like I could have my life could have went totally left,
or could have totally totally right. And then the last
moment is right now like I'm and probably one of
the toughest moments I could ever be in, right, maybe
even tougher than where I was right building this company
Entrepreneurship eighty nine and employees. Uh, you know, I invested
(36:02):
all the money building apps and building this stuff. Bro
When I tell you I'm dealing with some stuff, I'm
dealing with some stuff. But now I have the resources
and skills to be able to cope with the apps
and flows of it. So it's tough. I cried two
nights ago. I cried two nights ago because I found
that there's someone that in my circle from a team standpoint,
(36:22):
I gotta let go, and it's breaking my heart and
I gotta let this person go because there's so many
other implications to that and so like I've probably cried
over the last three years, probably six times built in
this company. Bro Um, I can't give it all to
you because because I'm saving it for my book. I
got it, but you just gotta trust me. You gotta
(36:44):
trust me. And so like now I'm able to deal
with it and still perform at a high level because
I'm taking care of myself. You know, Listen, I started
Unbreakable and then I started a nonprofit called m VP
Emerging Vesting Players the same year. And having to startups
seven years ago and being the boss. Man, it sucks.
It's lonely, and I'm not used to being hated and
(37:05):
people hate the boss a lot of times. And I
wasn't able to handle that. I was not able to
deal with that mental health. I couldn't be the common
enemy with my mental health issues. And now it's still
a big struggle for me. So I understand what you're
going through. Man. You just gotta appreciate what you've done, okay,
and appreciate the toil of the client. Don't worry about, man,
(37:25):
where you're gonna end up. Just say, man, I'm proud
of myself what I'm doing today. Dude. I love you, man,
I appreciate you joining me. Man, this is great. Always
love to see it. And by the way, for people
don't know, Brandon play wide receiver, but he's not. He's
a defensive van who somehow got got slided over at receiver.
I don't know who funk that one up, man, But
(37:46):
you're not a receiver. I mean ask you this question,
who wins in the octagon right now? Me or you? Oh? Me,
absolutely a million percent? Because you know what, once I
start kicking those fucking legs out of yours, you give
be like, oh no, no no, no no, what, I just sign
up for this ship. I sign up for this, you
know hey now, and the other part two is you
app you're more athletic than me, you're stronger than me,
(38:08):
you're bigger than me. But then I will just keep
coming and coming and coming and coming and take all
you got you go. I just sign up for this ship.
I signed up for this motherfucker to go down. I
didn't like that, man, No, so you and you know what.
Here's the thing too, I tell my guys to I
always tell people I don't give a funk if I
win or lose. I just want to do to cross
me to go. That's fucking sucked. That was the worst
(38:30):
thing going against So if I take the ego out
of it, the one of the loss, right, I just
want you to have the worst afternoon you've ever had.
That's all I care about. That's powerful. That's a lot
to that. A lot of athletes can take from that.
But that's a whole another pod. That's a whole other podcast.
We'll do it, we'll do separately bad when you have
me on yours, I'll talk about that. Let's do it,
all right, The marsh I love you, dude. I appreciate
(38:51):
you so much. Love man folks again. I want you
to all go and download House of Athletes plus, spell
out the plus when you go to the app store,
and uh, if you haven't already bought Unbreakable How I
turned my depression anxiety into motivation and you can't too.
It is on sell right now. And I appreciate being
March and everybody else walk on this walk together.
Hosts And Creators
Brady Quinn
LaVar Arrington
Jonas Knox
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