Hump Day Podcast | Episode 6 – Forgiveness Sucks! – LIVESTREAM STARTS 2 PM EDT

➡ In episode six of the Hump Day Deal with it podcast, the hosts discuss the concept of forgiveness, particularly self-forgiveness. They explore how men often struggle with forgiving themselves due to societal expectations and personal standards. They also discuss how this struggle can be exacerbated by traumatic experiences such as combat or personal loss. The hosts conclude that self-forgiveness is a complex issue that requires understanding and patience to overcome.
➡ The discussion revolves around societal expectations of men and their emotional processing. It suggests that men are often conditioned to suppress their emotions, which can lead to internal conflict and self-punishment. The conversation also explores the idea that traditional therapy methods may not be as effective for men, as they process emotions differently than women. Lastly, it highlights the importance of understanding and addressing these issues to promote emotional health and well-being.
➡ The text discusses the importance of stopping negative thinking to improve mental health. It suggests that recognizing and stopping negative thoughts can be more effective than just trying to think positively. The discussion also touches on the difficulty of self-forgiveness, the impact of guilt, and the struggle with PTSD. It emphasizes the need to accept and be comfortable with one’s current reality, rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.
➡ The text discusses the difference between guilt and shame, and the importance of understanding and dealing with these emotions. It emphasizes the need for safe spaces where individuals can share their experiences and feelings without fear of judgment or exposure. The text also highlights the potential dangers of social media, comparing it to nuclear power that can either destroy or benefit society. Lastly, it talks about the ongoing process of self-forgiveness and the challenges it presents, suggesting that it’s not a one-time act but a continuous journey.
➡ The text discusses the concept of forgiveness, emphasizing that it’s not about reconciliation but about freeing oneself from past burdens. It highlights the importance of self-forgiveness to avoid falling into a victim mentality. The text also mentions the Phoenix Collective, a platform providing tools and resources for people dealing with various forms of loss or trauma. The goal is to foster real conversations and provide support for recovery.
➡ This text discusses the importance of addressing personal issues and making changes for self-improvement. It highlights the work done to help two main groups: men who have experienced sexual abuse and veterans who have witnessed traumatic events. The text also describes the “thousand yard stare,” a term used to describe the distant gaze of those who have experienced severe trauma. The goal is to provide a safe space for these individuals to heal and grow.
➡ The text discusses a new mental health app that offers therapy in a private and accessible way. The app breaks down therapy into daily tasks and short videos, aiming to provide small, achievable goals for users. The creators believe this method condenses what would typically take 18 months of therapy into a six-week program. They are currently seeking feedback and offering free access to certain individuals.

Gentlemen, welcome everybody, to the episode six of the Hump Day Deal with it podcast. I am joined, as I am Every Wednesday, by Dr. John King. Hello. And by Vinnie G. Vinny J. Howdy, folks. Well, Vinny G doesn’t join us every week, but he joins us like 90% of the time, so. But he’s here today. We are blessed. We are blessed to have his presence today. Yeah, we love us some Vinny J, don’t we? Yes, I’m. Let’s say 90% pain in the ass, something like that. But, but we, we always enjoy his input because he’s very wise.

So today we are talking about forgiveness and how forgiveness really, really sucks. John, what would you say give us your kind of. I mean, you’re, You’re. You’re the one that wrote the book, so kind of give us your. Give us your take on. On something so we can kind of, you know, pick this apart. It’s not so much a book as it is duct tape for your soulmate. It was a survival manual. And I remember dealing with the whole issue of forgiveness. And I came to realize that I was either going to spend my life infected or I could just be in afflicted.

So afflicted is something I’m afflicted now. I have a wound, an injury, a hurt. But infected is something that lasts a prolonged length of time, and it. And bitterness poisons your soul. The roots go through your body, destroys every relationship. So my realization was that this infection was destroying everything I love, destroying myself. So I thought, you know what, man? I need to somehow compartmentalize this and acknowledge it that this happened to me, that these things happened to me. And that’s one of the things with. Dealing with trauma, divorce, you know, crazy ex wives that alienate you from your children.

So how do you deal with that? Because as a man, you. You want to take control and do and get hold of this stuff, and you can’t. It’s. You can’t put your hands on it to strangle it or fix it. And so it’s this root cause that goes into you. So when I was trying to cope with these things, I realized I need to just brand them and label them so I could deal with it. And so it was like, I am afflicted by my ex wife. I was afflicted by my parents. I was afflicted by the alienation from my children.

And that way that gave me those labels and labeling gave me the capacity to be able to move beyond it and no longer be infected by it. Does that make sense. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, mate. I wish it was that bloody easy. I know, right, well, you know, speaking of easy, I think, you know, it’s. It’s very easy for men to forgive others, but it’s much harder for them to forgive themselves. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that’s. I think we’d all acknowledge that’s the case.

No, I think it’s because we’re brought up to, you know, handle you. You’re supposed to handle things. You’re supposed to, you know, be the point man, and you can never live up to that. And I think men get caught easily in the rut of having too high of an expectations in themselves. You know, you say yourself, well, yeah, I, I guess I am the best equipped right here right now to deal with this. And you try it anyway. Even though, hey, you, you know your limitations, but you do it anyway and it becomes a source of.

You either surprise yourself or most of the time it never reaches what you’re thinking. And forgiveness to me, I’ll sum it up in one sentence. It’s. Why would, you know, why would you set yourself on fire and keep adding gas to that flame if expecting someone else to burn? Yeah, put it out. That’s great, mate. That’s. I like that. That’s, that’s, that’s solid. You know, I kind of, I looked it up and I got this from. I got this response when I, when I, when I did a search for it. Men are often raised, whether explicitly or subtly, to believe that their worth is tied to performance, that being strong, reliable and in control.

And when they fail, especially in a way that hurts others, it feels like a violation of their core identity. Forgiving others. Forgiving others, that’s external. Forgiving themselves, that feels like betraying the duty to do better. So that very first phrase that you wrote, men are raised to. What was it again? Men are often raised either explicitly or subtly to believe that their worth is tied to performance. So I, I know this might, this might. This may not be a helpful comment, and we have many of those on the Board Day Update podcast, but I, I wonder if that’s part of innately what it is to be a man.

Did you take responsibility? And I, I don’t know if it’s. I don’t know if it’s a pressure thing or a societal thing, but I think it might be a created something the creator put in us intrinsically a responsibility to go forth and subdue the land it’s like, you know, you. To see a man at his worst is to see a man unemployed and to see him without a task at hand. And maybe part of our nature is that we actually just want to get our hands around someone’s throat because of what they did, or to our children or to ourselves or something.

And when we can’t do that, maybe that’s when what you’re talking about kicks in. Ron? Well, again, I’m, I’m not a psychologist, but I do think I have a fairly decent understanding of human behavior on a kind of, on a, on a layman’s, you know, a layman’s understanding anyway. And I do find that it’s, you know, it’s very easy for me to forgive other people. In fact, I sometimes I almost overly forgive, even if they’ve done something that probably others would say, like, oh, my God, how could you forgive that? Do you overly apologize, too? Like, you overly forgive? Do you find yourself overly apologizing sometimes? Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. You. Do you ever, do you ever find that? Yesterday, yeah. And I told my wife, and she goes, why’d you apologize for that? That’s just a thing that happened. I thought, well, I don’t want anyone to be upset. Like, if I’ve done anything to cause someone angst, I. Right. I don’t want that. Interesting. Yeah. And for me, it’s, you know, but I mean, forgiving myself for something that I did 20 years ago is extraordinarily difficult. Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting. So, you know, I understand that. Yeah. If you’ve wronged somebody else, then it’s, you know, knowingly or unknowingly, I think if you unknowingly do it, it’s.

It’s easier to forgive yourself if you’ve knowingly done it. And what I mean, knowingly, I’m not saying, like, you deliberately did it, but in, like, say, the heat of the moment of, of passion or maybe in, at a time of desperation where you did something that violated a code of ethics that, that caused somebody harm that they didn’t know or they didn’t find out about until later, something along, you know, any, anything like that, it’s much harder to forgive yourself for things like that when you, when you knowingly did something. So, But I think in terms of, if you, if you cross that over into men who were in combat, I think, you know, we were talking about it before we went live, and how, let’s say that, you know, somebody gets a chance to, to take some.

They’re in the field and they get a chance to do some R and R and they offer for, for lay people. That’s rest and relaxation, I believe. I wasn’t actually in the field. I was in the Navy. We didn’t really have a chance to do R and R. That was called liberty in the port. But in the army, if you’re out at some forward observation base where you’re out in the middle of BFE and you come back, isn’t that now California? Yeah, pretty much. But if you, if you come back and only to find that your unit has been, went out on patrol and got ambushed and everybody’s gone, you know, you have this horrible sense of guilt and, and regret and, you know, and lack.

You, you can’t forgive yourself because you, for some odd reason probably feel as though had you been there, you could have made a difference, when in reality you probably would have been dead. But isn’t that similar to if I’d been a different man or if I’d known something differently or if I had a second chance at it? You know, it’s all that same sort of rehashing with senseless rehashing trying to, Is it, Do you think it’s because we’re trying to get our head around a grief moment or something so large we just can’t comprehend it and we, and we don’t want to allow ourselves to accept it? Why would we do that? Why do we, why do we do it over our divorces or estrangement for our kids or losing a mate in battle? What a loss of a business? Like, why, why do you think we rehash that stuff all the time? I think sensitive, I think men who are more sensitive by nature, and I think people are more sensitive than they give themselves credit for.

It just becomes a, it becomes a loop running. And I just think a lot of it has to do with not societal expectations because I think they’re pretty screwed up when it comes to the idea of apologies and forgiveness and all that. I mean, I don’t want to hear some politician who screwed around on his wife. You have to apologize to me. Get your act together. You. Yeah. Or get the hell out of there. You know all this stuff about public apologies and apologies in courtrooms, it’s silly because it, it’s never backed by. Yeah, I agree, man.

Well, I, I, I’d like to jump in here because I think that. Save the bacon for someone else. I, I think men, from a social or from a societal standpoint, I think men are programmed to suppress emotion that the showing of emotion is a sign of weakness, like guilt, shame, whatever, And. But, you know, but in reality, you know, we are just. We’re human beings. Whether we’re female or male, we’re human beings. And without the emotional release that should take place to get rid of that burden that you’re holding on to, it basically becomes almost like a punishment that you inflict on yourself daily, constantly, and.

Which makes. Which. It is almost like a loop that you get caught up into that you can’t get out of where you’re constantly berating yourself. But you. And, And. And you can’t. You can’t even find a. Have you ever talked to a friend and the friend just won’t shut up? And you can’t get a word in edgewise that’s kind of like that. But on. But internally, it’s like you’re constantly just. You can’t even get a word in edgewise to forgive yourself. What about the thought that. Okay, so I’m hearing what you’re saying. What about the thought that we’re wired so that in crisis we just don’t process that shit because it’s got to get done.

I’ve got to protect them. I’ve got to provide for them. I’ve got to get up and just go to work for the third job because the mortgage needs to be paid. I don’t want to talk about these emotions because of my inadequacy or the pressure or the government or the time or the. Because I’ve just got to save all my energy for going up and getting it done in a. In a. In a. Any situation. I agree that there comes a time when you’ve got to sit with it and unpack this, but don’t you think part of it’s how we’re wired? I do.

I really do. I do. And you know what? Because it doesn’t. Excuse me. Wrong one thing. It doesn’t respond to the normal, let’s say, self therapy techniques that virtually everything else does. For some reason, that part just doesn’t respond the same way. And I would even put it as some kind of related syndrome to possibly ptsd. It almost feels that way. It’s like that endless memory that won’t stop until you face it. And maybe. Maybe we’re on to something. Question is, how do you get to that point where facing it helps it. Yeah, go on. Sorry.

I’ve got a thought on that for you in a minute, David. Okay, I’m gonna add. Yeah, I’m gonna add something because. Because you know you know, I talked about how, you know, we’ve like society has programmed a program, men to be a certain way. And I, and I think because society has done that, it literally does not, it’s, it doesn’t train men how to deal with or process their emotional conflict that they have inside and then let it go and let it go. But you know, it’s like if you, because if you don’t, it’s, it would be like going to school to learn how to work on a engine.

And they only thing they do is they just send you in there and read a book. But, but going, but then, but then they send you out into the field to say apply all your book learning to, you know, actually physical application. And that is the, that is what I see as the primary difference between knowing and knowledge. Because you can know how to do something, but just because you know how to do it doesn’t mean that you have the knowledge of how to do it. Do you think something might be. Because a lot of our therapy and psychology, etc.

Is aimed towards women and we’re trying to apply the same principles to how men process things, to how women process things. And they just don’t process them the same. Like women talk face to face, men talk shoulder to shoulder. So if I see women getting together at a coffee shop and I’ll unpack that man have a cry and all that sort of stuff. Guys have got to go hunt some pigs or something or sit down, watch a ball game or you know, just sit, sit. Next. Have you ever sat with a guy for like 2 hours doing nothing, staring at grass? And about the last two minutes before he goes know, you say, well, how’s wife and kids? He goes, yeah, not good.

And you’ve, all of a sudden you realize you’ve got this 15 second opportunity to talk to him about it and if you don’t, you never will again. And I, I find that, I find that in my, you know, and I think maybe this is to your point. Ron is being self aware enough to deliberately unpack that with men and pack that with a, a partner, friend, you know, a mate. But I think if some of it is when I was talking to a guy yesterday from Men’s therapy online, just marvelous guy did a podcast with him and he was talking about how in his space it’s, it’s a very masculine space.

And even that was like, okay, well define that for me. What does that mean? Like, because men are varied where poets, warriors, gardeners, writers, painters, chefs, you know, so I think in Societal in their destruction of gender and identity. It sort of all got caught and got confusing when I, I don’t know if it has to be confusing. I agree. I, Yeah, I, Well, I, I think men complicated. And I think what it goes back to is it goes back to that thing that they hold inside of it. If they do, it shows weakness. And I think men are more terrified of showing weakness or vulnerability than they are.

They’re more terrified of showing vulnerability than they are of solving the problem. Why. Why would that be? I’m. Well, again, because I think by. Because it’s, it’s, it’s a societal norm that, you know, that society expects a certain level of performance from you, and if you fail in that, then you are some sort of a failure. So again, I think it’s. And, and I think that’s just. I don’t know if that’s, if that’s a programming thing from, you know, the creator, if that’s just typically how men are wired, or if it’s something like some sort of an external influence on things that have happened to them when they were young, you know, and how they were, how they were reared.

Because I do find that if you look at, and I don’t mean to say this in a disrespectful way, but if you see effeminate men have much easier time to deal with their emotions, whereas emasculated or, you know, emasculated women tend to behave more like men and, and internalize it. So it’s that. Can we put pause there? Because that’s a great point. Yeah. So a feminized man handle it in a. A way that is similar to how women handle it. So this is, so I think this is my dichotomy. Maybe men hand. Maybe we do. I’m not saying we handle it well.

And I’m. I think part of it’s. Our protective mechanism is I have to be strong and I have to be prepared. I don’t know if you’re an adverb. Adversary or not, but maybe there’s just. Maybe just men process it differently and we haven’t yet started to give weight to how we process. Maybe my wife needs to talk about things. I just need to be left alone, sitting in the backyard, having a pipe. And the result might be the same thing, but maybe we think we’re not processing unless we’re doing it this way or maybe, I don’t know.

This is very interesting. I have three ingredients to add to it. Pride, insecurity, and ego. And the need to Escape from times of 4th pride, insecurity and ego, and the need to escape from the facing of it, which again, brings you back into pride and security. Ghost. Sorry, not Vinnie, whoever you are. That’s deep. Boo. Who the hell are you? That’s. Bro. I’m gonna have to sit with that for a minute. Well, you know. Okay, so, you know, by talking about, like, forgiveness and whatnot, you know, you know, if you. But by. By forgiving others, it’s a way of kind of like regaining control of the situation.

But. But if you. If you are trying to forgive yourself, it’s like you’re surrendering control. And that is a very difficult thing. Wow, that’s. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Seed and control. Because it is hard. It is harder for men to do. To have even just a basic trust at times. Right? Even a trust in themselves too. Exactly. Yeah, that. Yeah, absolutely. Ron, you talked earlier about, like, how do we actually stop this? And how do we actually play this down? I heard something, a psychologist, psychologist talking the other day. He asked the question of someone he was in an interview.

He said, what do you think the most important thing is to do is the most important thing to do to. Thanks. Is the most important thing to do. My wife just brought me water. She’s awesome. Most important thing to do to be positive thinking or to stop negative thinking. And the interviewer responded and said, well, it’s to think positively. He said, no, the most impactful thing is to actually stop negative thinking. If you stop the negative. Yeah. It’s like seven times more potent than to just think on positive things. Right, well, because. So let me unpack that a little.

I. Because I. How I see it is that if you’re stopping. If you’re stopping the negative, then you’re stopping the internal conflict of negative versus positive. Whereas if you only. I’m sorry, I think I got that backwards. If you are. If you only are thinking positive, but you’re allowing the negative to come in, then you have this internal conflict that just keeps going back and forth where you’ve got two forces waging war. Internal, you know, in your brain. Whereas if you stop thinking negative, then now you allow the positive thoughts to flourish. Yeah, I mean. I mean, I’m.

And. And again, that’s my naive lobe understanding of. Of psychology. But that’s just, you know, that’s just me thinking logically. Yeah, that comes back to. I think we talked about it last week. The power of five plus or minus two. Yeah, so. So that’s. That’s right. I, I was talking to a neuroscientist and I talked about how to reprogram your mind from thinking negative things. And they said the moment you’re aware of a negative thought is the starting point for you to change it. So we think as men. I’ve got to beat this thing, I’ve got to do this thing.

How do I do this? Oh, here’s a negative thought. I see this negative thought. Oh shit, I’m still seeing this negative thought. I’m being negative, negative. He actually said the moment you see it and recognize it, that’s actually when you’re stopping it. And he said all you simply have to say is, is just stop. And if you keep on telling that negative thing to stop, it eventually will just ultimately fade away and it will be replaced by others. So then you get into this dichotomy. When I, you know, from personal experience, I’m telling myself to stop a lot, but at the same time I’m deliberately focusing on positive things.

So I’m telling myself to stop spending other positive time thinking well about myself, my future, my health, my family, my life, my wife, etc, so I’m telling these things to stop. That’s very act. So I might sit in the morning and read for an hour and that’s positive input stuff. Then spend my day going, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. And it’s like clearing that room in your garden and eventually giving the new stuff to break forth. Does that make sense? Yeah. Oh no, that makes perfect sense. You know, and another thing is I think that when men forgiving, I think men think that forgiving themselves, somehow it makes themselves feel like they’re soft, like they’re, that’s good.

Like a lot of it comes back to security. How secure. Well, you know, it’s like self discipline. What other people think of me is none of my business. And I don’t give a damn unless it’s those close to me or in my life every day, you know, or like, like you guys. Yeah, that matters because I know you would say it in a constructive way to help me out. But as far as the strangers, when you get to that point to where you’re like, I don’t care what you think of me, that’s none of my business actually, until I know you, if I know you right.

Yeah. Then you can be, you start to be more honest with yourself in certain ways. I don’t know, it’s just been my experience. I don’t know. You know, I think, I think holding on to guilt, holding on to guilt is kind of a. It’s one of those things of like, it’s. It’s like a. A self discipline thing. You know, it’s like, I’ve. I’m morally strong. I can get through this. I. I don’t need to reveal this to anybody. And by doing that, what they’re really doing is. There is. Is. And that kind of goes back to what you were talking about of.

Of allowing for, you know, negative thoughts or positive thoughts. But I think the. The. Some of this happens at a subconscious level where we don’t realize it. And I think that’s where the external forgiveness, what that does is that releases the unconscious. Yeah. Everything I’ve read says speaks to that. Yeah, that’s good. And I want to ask you, both of you guys a question. You know, when you’re. You’ve got a task or, you know, a problem or whatever it may be, and you’ve got a group of guys together, there’s always that guy. And I’m sure it’s the same with women.

Actually, I see it more in women than I do in that, unfortunately, they’re always. They’re always the ones that point out like they’re Captain Obvious when it comes to the negative. It’s like, yeah, duh. But that’s why we’re here, to fix the problem. We were looking at everything that can possibly go wrong. The sit here in the corner and point it all out all the time, because that is negative. That’s negative incarnate right there. Well, what about. Yeah, we’ve already covered that. How about solutions? And then we’ll pick apart the solutions afterwards. Don’t start off with the Nancy Negative crap, because you’re the first one I want to see.

Leave the room past. This is Pastor Vinnie here, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. Just deal with it, Vinnie. Okay, I’m sorry. It’s great. I just apologized. You just apologize. Yeah. You need to watch this podcast tomorrow. I will. No, but it’s. I’ll forget what I said. Anyway. What do you do with Negative Nelly, then? In that situation? What do you do with someone who’s, you know, fire hosing your parade other than stfu? Please be polite about it at first. Just do what he. Do it. You know how I deal with it. I said, okay, everybody stop, all right? Tell us how this is going to work to the Nancy Negative in the room.

And usually they dummy up because they’re like, I’m feeding off of you. I’m not actually thinking about the problem. Yeah. Is that how you deal with everything? Okay. We got a problem here ourselves. Yeah, that’s the one that’s got to leave the room first. Well, you know, earlier you mentioned something about ptsd and I just, I, I think it would be, I think the vast majority of the people that are listening to this podcast and would get something out of it are probably suffering some from some form of ptsd, mild or mild or severe. But, you know, as I’ve under, you know, the things that I’ve read about PTSD is, you know, PTSD essentially rewires the brain to, and really the, you know, the, the guilt and kind of the self loathing, they’re not just emotional, they’re actually physiological reactions to like perceived threats and, you know, forgiveness.

What it does is it requires, it requires safety. And ptsd, if you have ptsd, you, your, your brain essentially is making you think that you’re never, ever, ever safe, not even from yourself. Yeah, if you’re in hyper vigilance. Yeah, hyper vigilance. Yeah, that’s good. So, and you know, I mean that, you know, it takes discipline to get over that. But, you know, it’s just you, which you did, it requires a mindset shift to, you know, hey, I look at, I’m not broken, I’m wounded, but I’m not out of the fight. You know, wounds can heal. So we deal with that with, you know, and, and, you know, we, we launched the Phoenix Collective last week and we were dealing with that in our first session with how do you redefine normal? Like, how do you redefine normal in your own life? And I think part of this process of forgiveness is under.

Coming to terms with understanding that your new reality is your reality. It might not include wife, kids, jobs, mates, but you’ve got to get really comfortable with this new place. Because to your point, if you’re not comfortable in this place, you’re not going to inhabit this place. And this is the only place you have. There is no past, there is no tomorrow. There’s now. And if you can’t live with you now, I think this is why a lot of people, the suicide is their option is because they cannot, they will not do the work to live with now.

They can’t go there in and of themselves. I think you’re 100% right on that. Yeah. But another thing, another thing I think that needs to happen is that people need to distinguish between what is guilt and what is shame, because guilt essentially is, hey, I did something wrong, but shame is there’s something wrong with me. And say that, say that again. Say that again. So guilt, guilt is kind of like the, the mental thing of like, hey, I’ve done something wrong because you feel guilty. Like I did something wrong. But shame is that there’s something wrong with me.

I talk about, in deal with it, a stage in my life where I turned the scars of shame into medals of honor. Like the scars of the shame of what I went through as a kid into medals of honor in terms of I survived this, you know, that’s a pretty big achievement. And so that’s, that’s a really interesting reflection, Ron, because if it’s shameful and I’m sitting in judgment over poor mistakes, poor errors, misspeaks, misdeeds, then at some point I’ve got to flop that and say, you know what? Yes, I did. I take responsibility. I’m still here, I’m alive.

I’m going to live forward. I’m going to flop that. And now it becomes resilience and relentlessness. These become things that I can actually go, you know, I survive, man. And I’m going to make it a purpose out of this. I survived. I’m here for a reason. My buddies, I lost my buddies. And I feel grief about that, not guilt about that. And I think that could be an interesting conversation, the difference between grief and guilt. I’m not feeling guilty, I’m feeling grief. And because it’s a little bit like. What was that movie with Tom Hanks? Private Ryan.

Saving Private Ryan. Yeah. I, I did the best I could. I lived the life I could. I lived on behalf of my brothers and I lived a fulfilled, passionate, love filled life on behalf of everybody. Well, kept me alive. I think what you’re talking about is the very end scene when he looked to his spouse or whatever. Yeah. At the graveyard. Yeah, yeah. And. And it was right after the time when I think, because I think Tom Hanks character was constantly talking about earning it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are his last words. To earn this. Yeah, yeah.

And because all but one man on the patrol died for him. Yeah. So we talk about a young guilt trip to lay on a young man since. Yeah. But he wasn’t. That’s great advice. Yeah. You know, you’ve been blessed with a gift. 6 out of 7 or how many there were, didn’t, aren’t going to get to fulfill. So earn it. Well, and you know, guys with ptsd, they often carry, you know, an enormous amount of unspoken guilt, you know, whether it be, whether it be war, abuse, violence, helplessness, betrayal, whatever. And you know, if they speak about it aloud with Other men who are.

Yes. Who understand that. I think that’s what you’re trying to achieve with the Phoenix Collective, is that what that does, is that accelerates the healing, because you actually are talking to guys who are feeling exactly what you’re feeling. And men will feel emotionally safe to feel vulnerable with other men that are all also afraid to feel vulnerable. And so they’ve distorted the concept of safe space. I had one of the most profound safe spaces. The first one I ever had in my life was in Florida with a mate of mine. My life was just a mess, and I was running a church at the time, and this guy took me away for a holiday, told me we went to a timeshare in Florida.

He flew me out there, put me up there, and asked me the questions as to why, what had happened. And for the first time in my life, I felt like I could share my story with someone. And so that’s 15 years ago. 16 years. And that guy, to this day, has never told anybody unless I gave him permission or we’re in a conversation together with a third or fourth party. So for me, that’s a sacred space. I don’t know if I need a safe space, because by my nature, you know, fuck that, but I need a sacred space.

I need. I need another man who will hold my story as my story, and I can come back as a reference point to bounce it off. I. I think that’s what men are needing, is that sense of sacred bond between brothers. Because I really do want to share my heart. I know I can’t go through life on my own, but if I’m just going to tell you and you’re going to put it on fucking Facebook, you. And unfortunately, we live in a society where our memories are very short and sacred is very cheap. You know what? It’s.

It’s interesting that you say that. You know, it’s like. And I know this is like, it’s not the same thing, but it’s basically like when a fight breaks out. I mean, when we were kids and we were in school and a fight broke out, what was the first instinct and first reaction of everybody to go do it was to go and physically separate the two individuals so that you would stop the fight. But today, our modern society, we used to place bets on it where I came from. There’s probably some of that, too. There’s probably some of that, too.

But today, what’s the first instinct? Break out the phone and record it and put it uploaded on the Internet. Yeah, the little bystander observer is not really doing anything Right. So social media is. We’re going to look back on it like, like they did with nuclear. Just breaking the secrets of the atom. Well, where they just rushed to use in anything and everything and blew off as many warheads they wanted in that respect and in other respects in medicine, made claims and basically experimented. They go, they go to the, to the nth degree with it. And I think we’re going to look back on social media.

We’re going to say, wow, we allowed this kind of damage to be done because we didn’t educate ourselves as we were going along. This is not that great. There are people that run to social media when something happens before they run to their own spouse. And it’s an artificial realm. Intimacy too, isn’t. Yeah, yeah, all of it’s artificial. That’s interesting because I feel, you know, you talked about nuclear and you know, when I, when I look at, when I look at social media, I feel that social media is very similar to nuclear from the standpoint that has destroyed certain segments of society.

But at the same time, social media also is one of the most beneficial aspects of society. So from that perspective, nuclear can either destroy a city or it can power a city. Absolutely. And it’s not a, it’s not a safe space to run, though, when you’re talking about something like this. 100%. Absolutely. But another thing. Unless, you know, right. I mean, you know them in real and the tangent in the breathable existence. Right. Another thing about forgiveness, I think is, you know, it’s not one of those things where it’s just a one and done thing. Right.

It’s a. Forgiveness is something that is. That you have to constantly do. You have to constantly forgive yourself as opposed to, oh, I forgive myself moving forward. Yeah. It’s not a Disney redemptive arc, Right. It doesn’t have this, you know, here we go. Well, we’re falling asleep. Well, we’ve got a little bit of a challenge and all of a sudden happy about. It’s like, it’s just ugly. It clears a space so you can clear some stuff to the side, but unless you regrow something, you can cast these devils out, man. But if you don’t put something else in place, they’re going to come back seven times as hard.

And I think, you know, you. It clears a Runway for healing and peace. But it takes a lot of work, man. It’s ugly. I mean, ugly cry, ugly. Ugly rage, ugly having to say sorry and like that. You know, it is a bit of a 12 step program. If you got to do it proper. Yeah. And people don’t necessarily forgive you, right? They go, or they don’t acknowledge it, or they ignore it, or they go, I’m not forgiving you, you bastard. You did this to me. Well, you know, I can only say sorry. You know, like I, I was running on the information I had at the time, which was naive.

Well, and another thing is that, another thing is forgiveness makes you feel like you’ve surrendered. Okay. That’s powerful. You know, if you feel like you, you know, really what you, you know, what you’re looking for is, you’re looking for, call it justice, right? It’s like you’re, you’re, it’s like you’re standing in front of the judge and you’re going to get, you know, it’s either you’re going to get punishment or you’re not going to get punishment. But, but you know something, you know, there’s, there’s going, it’s going to be, it’s a fork in the road is going to happen, right.

And you don’t know which one it’s going to be. But, and the judge in this particular case is either somebody else or it’s internal. And if you’re, if it’s internal, then in certain ways it does feel like you’re surrendering to some, to, to whatever entity that, that wronged you or, you know, is causing you pain. So in, in a sense, it, you know, again, I think I said it earlier, it, it feels like, it’s almost feels like a betrayal. Sure. You know, I, I agree. Because forgiveness and reconciliation aren’t the same thing. Right? Like, you can forgive someone and not be in the relationship anymore.

You can forgive someone without ever hearing that they’re sorry. Well, you can forgive, you know, you’ll never get that. Or you can ask for forgiveness and any humility do that. To Vinnie’s point earlier on, it’s not a matter of pride or ego. Look, I, I, I did something wrong and they can rage on about it and you know, it doesn’t have to be a reunion either. I think it’s a release. I think forgiveness is very much about uncluttering your soul, you know, letting it go for you because you have tomorrow to be concerned about because what’s happened is always past and that no longer exists.

So, you know, we got to walk forward without the baggage of that past. It is, it is, it is for you. It’s for the situation. It’s for the, the best all around to forgive, period. And it has to be. It’s not from the heart. It’s just. It’s just talk and token and that’ll bite you in the butt. And, you know, to carry those burdens around. There’s enough to deal with in life to carry those kind of burdens around a. Of not forgiving. I just always look back to the next. To the last thing Christ ever said.

Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. Right. And I apply that to everyone, no matter who, even the psychopaths on this planet, if they really knew what they were doing, they wouldn’t do it. Obviously they don’t know what they’re doing. And if they do, they intellectually have it. They have no. And I feel bad for them in this respect. They have no emotional connection to that. So it becomes. Then that’s really good, Vinnie. You know, sociopathic endeavor. That’s what their lives become. Wow, that’s a big thought, isn’t it? Well, you know, and self.

When you’re dealing with self forgiveness, you know, you. You feel like you know the whole story and you may not, so you don’t know what other. You don’t know what other people are thinking you. But you know, forgive. Trying to forgive yourself for something that somebody else did to you. You feel like you know the whole story. When you don’t, it’s kind of like. Remember the three sides to every story. No matter who you are. Their side, your side and the right. And the truth. Yeah, you. You remember the, The. The. The very first episode we did when I played that clip from Goodwill Hunting.

Yeah, right click. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. And you know, I think, you know, and I spoke earlier about it impacting women as well, because there’s a lot of. There’s. There’s. There’s a lot of women out there who are, you know, because society has said that men and women are equal. And so women have now begun to put themselves into. Call it harm’s way into places where men have, for the most part, have exclusively gone being a police officer. Okay? So if you’re a police officer and you’re a woman and your partner gets shot and killed, you carry an enormous amount of guilt inside.

And you know that. And that would manifest itself in the identical. Same way that a man would carry that shame or guilt. So women are not immune from this at all. But. But not every. But I don’t want to say that all women are, because to Your point, John? You talked about how women deal face to face and men deal shoulder to shoulder. I, I think there’s a. There, there’s. There’s much more truth to. At. At least from the standpoint of, you know, how kind of like the biological or the psychological makeup of a woman from, From a.

From an inherent standpoint. Right. Or from like a, like an instinctual or, you know, I don’t even know the right way. Just. It’s just how they’re wired. And it’s the only way I can say it. You know, for example, you know, my cat just had kittens. All right? How in the world does a female cat know how to deal with her young? How? You can’t talk to the cat. You don’t know. You know, how do they know how to do it? It’s just they’re born with the understanding of how to deal with it. That is something that is.

It’s like you, you look at it and it’s like, how the hell did they learn that they did. And that brings into the wired component. You mentioned earlier. I think we are wired a certain way, but I think human beings have one thing that the animal kingdom doesn’t quite have, and that’s that we’re able to identify the wiring and then I think rewire that. Wiring. Wiring to a point. Yeah, I agree. You know. Yeah, I think. Well, I agree with that. And I guess, you know, and I wasn’t trying to belabor the point about the cat.

I was just trying to make the point that cats have secret meanings we never see. You know, that’s true. This is true. That’s right. We’re kind of like women. They have. All of a sudden, they know certain things. How do you know that? Oh, don’t worry. Well, you know, hey, I’m not meaning to be. It’s just funny. What? Yeah, no, 100%. Why. Why do we call kitties. Right. So, hey, without, without being. Without being too vulgar. Something unconscious there. But, but, but, but, but. In all seriousness, though, you know, I, you know, the point that I was trying to make, and I think you.

You confirmed that there have been. Is that, you know, human beings are wired, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t rewire with knowledge and understanding and, and more information. And I think the, you know, and what this. A lot of what this does is this puts us. I think if you don’t have the ability to forgive yourself, what that does is that. Is that kind of like throws you back into that victimhood mentality. Yep. Because now it’s like things that happen to you are all external. Yep. And you don’t have any control of that. Yeah. And.

And. And so it’s easier to. It’s easier to blame other people than to blame yourself. Mm. I’ve never seen so much weight move with pointing of a finger is what we’re talking about. Yeah, that’s great. So. Well, we are, you know, we’re kind of. About. About. Or we’re about 10 minutes left here. I wanted to be. Before we kind of finish up here, John, tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing there at the Phoenix Collective, and, you know, how people can help. Because. Because I, you know, you. I know you guys are, you know, struggling to get this off the ground, and.

And you’re pushing forward, you know, regardless of the challenges. Yeah, we’re. We’re not necessarily struggling, Mike. It’s just an ugly pancake. You know, it’s like getting together with some mates and going, okay, who’s going to eat this ugly pancake with me and give me feedback? So really in a beta phase, and that’s okay. Like, I don’t mind mess, you know, especially when new endeavors and what we’re trying to do is pretty much what we’re doing here as a conversation is modeling a place where you can come together and have real conversations around explicit tools to help you recover.

If you’ve been a divorced father, if you’ve gone through bankruptcy, if you’ve gone through, like, a terminal illness, a loss of a business, a loss of a friend, a loss of a partner, a loss, anything that would lead to some sort of traumatic manifestation, then with the Collective, we’ve got the tools and resources to help you on your journey side by side. So that’s. That’s the aim of it really is this whole podcast has really captured the heart of what we’re doing at the Collective. And so if people want to come, if they go and visit PhoenixCollective app, you’ll see that in the URL, in the.

In the. In. In the. On the. On the screen there. If they come and go there, then they’ll book a time with myself and Melissa. We’ll have a talk, we’ll outline the program for it and see if it’s a fit, because it’s really important that it’s a fit both ways. It’s not just an open. This isn’t an open forum. This isn’t a Facebook group. These are some people that want to do the hard work. And so we are selective in who we let in. And we want to invite everyone, but you know, some people just don’t.

If you’re not prepared to deal with your crap, like, don’t waste anybody’s time because you’re going to be uncomfortable in a really positive way. But the aim is to be uncomfortable because you don’t want to be where you are. You know, change is one of those things, you know, when the pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of change. Only at that point will we change. When everything, when nothing is rattling us, nothing is scraping us or, or prodding us, we’re just going to stay where we are. So the idea is to prod the buggery out of each other and become better men.

Well, and I know it’s, you have bills to pay and a lot of the guys that come to you are broken, and broken men generally are not flush with cash. No. Shall I say though, you know, and, and, and a lot, you know, a lot of the people that you help basically can be dissect, I mean, I, I, it can be dissected into two primary groups. A third that, you know, encompasses basically everybody else. But the two primary groups that you help are, are men who have either been sexually abused, as they were, you know, when they were younger.

That can include molestation, trafficking, whatever. But then the other group of men that you help are men that are, you know, veterans of combat or have, you know, whether it be police or, you know, your first responder or, you know, combat veterans that have seen, you know, horrific things. So, and those guys, especially the veterans, man, they come back and I’ve seen it at the va, bro. Oh, I mean, you see some of the most broken men at the VA and the guys give it away 100%. It’s that, you know, and, you know, you know, you talk about the thousand yard Stare and it’s, that’s, that’s real.

The thousand yard stare is a very, very real thing. And for those of you guys who don’t know, Vinnie, tell us what the thousand yard stare is. Well, have you ever seen in a films, some have caught it actually visually very, very accurate where you have the one unit that’s all pumped up and they’re going to the front and they’re all full of, you know, all the piss and vinegar of youth. And they don’t, they’re, they’ve never sat down and contemplated a bullet ripping through your body’s head or, you know, anything like that. They thought about it, but they haven’t dwelled on it.

And then they see these guys coming back who are just empty shells and their eyes are just sunken into their head. Even at that point, I. And yeah, you. It’s like. And you know, it’s. It’s a very. I don’t even know how to describe here. I looked it up. I looked it up and this is. And I think this. This is absolutely 100% accurate. The thousand yard stare is the vacant, unfocused gaze of someone who has seen too much war trauma, death, betrayal, and it’s still there in their mind, even if their body has come home.

It’s common in combat veterans, trauma survivors, first responders, abuse victims, anyone who’s been mentally or emotionally burned alive, but is still breathing. And you see it in their eyes because they’re not there. They’re not with you. They’re somewhere entirely different, and they can’t leave it behind. Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. I mean, after Katrina, one quick, quick anecdote on that. I was walking down a road to get to one of their shelters. Not to go there, but to see if they had certain supplies. And this young lady was walking west and I was walking east, and I could see she was, she was.

She was walking wounded. From minute I could, I could see her, I said, now this girl’s in trouble by herself, middle of nowhere. And all I did was, I stopped and I. I went over to her and I said, would you like to walk this way? I can take you to where you can get something to drink. Not a response. Just looked at me with these, these. Just a blank stare. Oh, God. It was hollow. And it was, it was. You could feel it. So I walked her to the shelter, got her to a medic, police officer, and said, yeah, this girl’s walking wounded.

She’s catatonic, practically, And. And they took her from there, but it was just. Do I approach her? Yes. I’m trained in how to do that from back in the day. I did. It worked. I could have gotten the opposite response. They could have become violent. They could have done any number of things or ran, and then it would have made the situation worse. So it was, it was at the same time dumb luck. But it was okay, I’ll take my chances because she doesn’t need to be out here in this raging heat in that condition. I’m surprised she got this far.

Yeah, exactly. Brought her, Brought her to the shelter, and I said, here’s. Here’s one for you. And stepped aside to where she couldn’t hear and then told the EMT and officer. What? Yeah, where I found her and what she was doing. It’s almost like disassociation. They just, they completely, they disassociate themselves from reality. And, and the stare is, you know, if, if, if you’ve ever seen the thousand yard stare, then you know, you know it when you’ve seen it and you’ve ever had it or. Yeah, exactly. Or if you’ve ever had it. But you know, when you go into the V, like, you know, when I go to the VA and you see guys that have, you know, they just sit there and they’re just like staring off into space.

Like they, you know, they’re just waiting and oftentimes I think what the, what accompanies that is, you know, a feeling of. You mentioned it earlier, I think, Vinnie, when you said abandonment and I. Sometimes men will put themselves into that state of abandonment because they just don’t, because they feel like if they try to talk about it then they’re, then somehow they’re a burden on other people and they, and again, that goes to, with that goes to, hey, I, I, I’m losing control and I’m, I’m not in control of myself and now I’m actually putting this out there on, and I’m putting this on somebody else as opposed to being, being able to have the strength and fortitude to deal with it internally.

You just have to get the point where you want it. Right And. Yeah, exactly. And I think that’s part of it is wanting it and then having a, a forum or a place where you can actually start to heal and unpack it. Because there’s a, there’s a difference. You get to a point. I know on my own journey when I wanted to get whole, there was no resources available for it. And, and nowadays even with men, it’s like they’re in situations where they’re talking to, in a female group or a female therapist and you know, guys just won’t open up in situations like that if there’s not someone there that’s got some sort of way to, to connect with them.

And I think I’ve been really blessed with that. I, I know my story is different, but I went with the veterans that I sit with, the pipe hitters and guys, and you know, like even you guys, my story is different, but I can connect with you because we’re connecting around getting well and we’re connecting around the commonality of, of trauma, not around the commonality of the causes of that trauma. And I think that’s where you can bridge those gaps is okay. Look, we all acknowledge everyone in the room has got some we’re dealing with. So let’s just talk about how to shovel our and turn it into fertilizer.

We don’t underpack and need to underpass unpack where the came from. We’re just up to our eyeballs in it and we sit. We’re sinking. Oh, yeah, I agree with that a thousand percent. And yeah, that’s why I think his Phoenix Collective is a great attempt. And I know it’ll succeed because if it gives a safe place to go to, at least that part of the equation is already handled. You know, you’re going to a safer place to break it down. Yeah. Well, let me, let me tell you why I think doing what you’re doing with the Phoenix Collective and having it be like people where they can remotely call in, because the va and I’m not picking on the VA guys.

Not at all. That’s just my experience. But when the VA essentially is a collection of guys or combat, you know, combat people. Right. And they’ve seen things that you can’t, A lot of those guys have seen things that you can’t even fathom in a million years. And I, I think for them to go into a location where people see them and they’re having to go the, the, you know, and you go into the, you go to the VA and it says the mental health ward. All right, well, that’s like. To walk into those doors and to go into that area and have people see you in that area is a sign of, it’s an internal sign of whether whether real or imagined, you, you perceive that as showing weakness to the world.

Yeah. Whereas if you’re doing it remotely and people have the ability to call in and talk from the privacy of their own home, they are much more willing to unload a lot of that stuff amongst a group because now they’re not putting themselves into a position where they’re publicly vulnerable or guilt ridden. And that’s why we made it an app. And the other thing we’ve taken is like months and months of what would have been therapy and we’ve broken it down into bite sized daily wins. So every day you get a three or four minute video, every day you get a five to six minute task to complete.

And the aim is you do those. It’s incremental. You’ve got to stick within the program, got to be incremental. Then you have a chat about how you go with that. And the idea is to give small wins, which also equals small losses. The old saying, you know, aim small, miss small. So if we’re aim small is we’re going to do this for 10 minutes for six days. And you miss two days, bro, it’s like, you know, get off, get off the call and go and spend 20 minutes and get a, get a win under your belt.

You know, so small wins. And ultimately, by the time you go through the program over six weeks, transformation would start. I personally believe it’s a six month process to be able to say I’ve started to transform. We think that because we believe it actually takes more like 10 years, you start to see transformation in 18 months. But the way we’ve condensed the program and the way we’ve structured it, it’s about the equivalent of 18 months worth of therapy in a six month period. And in this case, it’s six months worth of therapy in a six week period.

That’s really how it works. And so that’s why we’re after this first cadre of people. And I’ll open it up to your viewers, Ron, at your suggestion, if you’ve got people in your program who you would say, I know that guy, I know that girl, they would benefit if you’ll scholarship them in. In other words, if you’ll give me their contact, I’ll reach out and I’ll get them in the program for free. That’ll be on me because I, the, the bet and I’ll, you know, I’m going to do this. I’m going to send you and Vinnie the info.

I’d love to have you on there. I’d love to have you building this app, giving me feedback, giving me honest report as a mate does, because I trust you. Well, I, you know, I was, I, and I was actually going to ask you offline, I’m like, dude, you know, you need to send me the daily stuff so that, so that I can see what it is and it’ll, it’ll actually make me more of a sharper tool here on the podcast and forgive me like ugly pancakes. So. All right, I’ll get my. Together here I am. No, no, no need to apologize, my friend.

No need to apologize. I, that’s not a, that. Yeah, yeah. That was not, that was not an attack. That was actually, that was more of a request from my end. So you just, you just, you just happened to preempt it. So look at us being sensitive and to each other. I know, right? I was, I’ll be honest with you, man. I was fighting back to tears talking about the Saving Private Ryan Story, you know, I mean, I thought you were gonna bring up that clip, and I thought if that bastard brings up that click, it’s like, fuck you partain crying.

I. You know, I don’t. I don’t struggle with showing my emotion, and. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t struggle with forgiving myself, so. No, well, that’s. That’s the thing, bro, ain’t it? I’m not into mental emotional constipation anymore. No, that’s. Gets old. Well, I. I know I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, that tears. The tear ducts actually contain toxins. And when you cry, when you shed tears, what it does is it actually releases toxins that have built up in your system. And that’s one of the reasons why, you know, people say, oh, I had a good cry.

And, you know, I’ll. I’ll end with this. When I was in boot camp in the Navy, I think it was, like, the first week, and I was restless one night, and I got up, I went into the head, and I just sat down in the shower, and I was, you know, with my back against the wall and in kind of like a fetal position, and I just bawled my eyes out. And. Because it was like, what have I done? Where am I? You know, what the hell did I do to myself? And when I got done with that, I went back and I laid down on my rack and I went back to sleep.

I was okay for the rest of the time. Yeah, you’re processing shit, man. Yeah. And that’s okay if you end up being a sobbing mess every day, like someone would have sectioned eight year or whatever the Navy equivalent was. And it’s in life as well. Like, if you. If you’re constantly wallowing. Is the term wallowing in emotion as opposed to processing emotion, then they’re two different things. You can start there, but at some point, you. You’re dealing with new emotions about new things, or you haven’t. You haven’t dealt with anything. And I think they’re a great indicator, and I.

I like that. I like the phrase you used having a good cry, because that’s a. That’s a really powerful term. It is. It really is. And, you know, that is the. That’s the mechanism that God gave us to expel these emotions that have been built up inside of us. And far too often, we don’t cry because we view crying as a sense very, very similar. Crying is very similar to forgiveness. We view it as a sign of weakness so we fight them. We fight the tears back. And, and, and, and that’s not healthy. That’s actually. It actually is more harmful because what you’re doing is you’re.

You’re not taking out the trash, right? You know, who wants to live in a house where you’ve got four weeks worth of trash built up in the kitchen? You got to take the trash out, and that’s good. Taking the trash out is the equivalent of crying. That’s good. Hey, I’ve got a pee off the deck, so can we stop the podcast? Yeah, no, that’s good. I gotta pay like, I’ve been sitting here, mate. Oh, that water your wife’s bringing you, man. Hey, it’s your wife’s fault. It’s your wife’s fault. So. All right, guys. Well, hey, listen, I appreciate.

Appreciate everybody tuning in. You know, I know we’re just going to start this thing and the attendance isn’t really great, but hey, appreciate everybody for tuning in today. Have a fantastic day, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Have a great day, everybody.
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