The Complexity of Human Behavior: A Conversation about Evil and Morality

A recent conversation with an individual shed light on the complexities of human behavior, particularly when it comes to the concept of evil and morality. The speaker shared their own thoughts and feelings about a specific topic, which led to a deeper exploration of how our brains function and what drives us to make certain choices.

The Importance of Self-Reflection

The individual expressed frustration with themselves, feeling like they had tried everything else right but were still unable to solve the problem at hand. They attributed this to their own feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt, wondering how others could accomplish something that they couldn't. This led to a discussion about how our brains can play tricks on us, making it difficult for us to recognize our own limitations.

The Power of Escapism

The speaker acknowledged the temptation to escape into sex as a way to feel good about themselves and alleviate feelings of worthlessness. However, this can become an addictive process, similar to substance abuse or other vices. This realization highlights the importance of self-awareness and the need to recognize when we are using escapism as a coping mechanism.

The Role of Satan in Our Imagination

The individual mentioned that they often attribute evil actions to satanic influences, wondering how someone like Lori could commit such atrocities. However, this perspective can be misleading, and it's essential to consider the complexities of human nature. The speaker noted that people may say they would never engage in such behavior, but the reality is that we all have our own capacity for destruction.

The Reality of War

A poignant moment in the conversation came when the individual discussed the harsh realities of war and the dehumanization that often occurs during conflict. They emphasized the importance of treating enemies as human beings, rather than reducing them to statistics or stereotypes. This led to a thought-provoking exploration of how we justify violence and harm towards others.

Survival Instincts

The speaker acknowledged that, in extreme situations, people may be capable of doing things they would never consider otherwise. This is rooted in our primal instincts for survival and protection of loved ones. The individual noted that this doesn't excuse or condone violent behavior but rather highlights the complexities of human nature.

A Commitment to Self-Awareness

As the conversation came to a close, it became clear that the individual is committed to self-awareness and understanding their own limitations and biases. They expressed gratitude for the opportunity to discuss these complex topics with others, hoping to provide value and insight to their community. The speaker emphasized their willingness to engage in ongoing conversations, answering questions and exploring difficult topics together.

A Sense of Connection

The conversation ended on a hopeful note, with the individual expressing a desire to connect with others who share similar interests and concerns. They acknowledged that they meet other families who are also grappling with these complex issues, and they look forward to building relationships with like-minded individuals. This sense of connection and community is essential for navigating the complexities of human behavior and finding ways to address them in a constructive manner.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwell welcome in another edition of Silver Lining podcast I'm Adam uh Crosser me is Rex and we do have a guest today that we promised you that we would have so we'll talk to Ben and introduce him here in a second um I do want to give a big shout out to Cammy one of our optimists and Rex and I love all of our optimists everybody's been really kind and great to us um and I got something in the mail today Rex and Camy makes these little figures I don't know if you can see them or not but she was asking what color my eyes were for a reason she actually and I said Hazel and she go what color are Rex's eyes and obviously she knew they were blue but she go are they that blue and I was like yes they're that blue so she made me uh my own personal guy of these little guys and then she got me a pickle ball obsessed thing and then Rex she sent you a letter and then I'm going open it for you even though it's addressed to you um it's the same little it's the same little happened to privacy no privacy with you here you are with your little bald head and then here is Lisa so here we go and you guys can kiss all right good yeah so so you got you have a you have a pres we want to thank Cammy for sending those and making those um we just appreciate anything that you know people do we don't ask for anything obviously Rex and I don't want want to you know have people buy us or send us presents but if you feel like you want to do something like that we're definitely going to appreciate it and I'm going to put mine I know exactly where I'm going to put mine because it's it's me so I'm going to hang it from my mirror on my car on my truck so I can see it swing back and forth as I drive sweet I you know Adam I didn't tell you this I got a Amazon package in the mail there are five cans of gourmet cat food in it no explanation I have no idea who Senator why so well I do see on our Facebook uh group a lot of people love their cats so we have a lot of people who are into cats so maybe you know try it Rex just take a bite and see what you think well maybe some of's got to come visit us and bring their cats with them and they want to have the right food here I just don't know yet surprise surprise surprise well I need more information on that all right let's get to uh Our Guest Ben so Ben is my cousin he's Rex's nephew um and Rex had mentioned that he talked to Ben not too long ago um and Ben uh really impressed what he said to Rex about trauma and healing and counseling and all these things that Rex came back and said I really think that Ben would be a great guest uh and help some of our Optimist as well as us all learning and I'm All About Learning so Ben it's been a minute since we've seen you how are you yeah it's been a long time I'm doing pretty well I'm having a good time out here in South Texas it's getting warm but it's the good temperature right now my boys and I and uh family are playing a little bit of Lacrosse and just doing the counseling thing that I do love it little bit of Lacrosse how much are you and the boys into it bear um it's it's all consuming to be fair we watched uh all the college Lacross all the pro lacrosse we're watching Scout film on other teams we talk about it on the ride home and the there and it's a full family deal Alice is probably the best lacrosse analyst that's never played the game on the planet you and it's you're grateful to have her tell you what you guys are doing right and what you're doing WR absolutely great feedback after the the games and for the boys and everything we we value it so uh and by the way I love the beard I love it it's amazing how long have you had it and how long are you wearing it for um this is this is probably the most contractor beard style that I've had since I was deployed so I I finished going overseas to Afghanistan in 2018 and I shaved it and said I'm not going to wear a beard and when I was coaching lacrosse it was a good thing for the boys they like the combat stories so I grow a beard every year for lacrosse so this came on about four or five months ago and I always tell them they can shave it if we win state so it's like this little game that we play and it just keeps grow all spring tell me I love it let it go we're going to get you a t-shirt that says Let It Go we want to see how long that thing can go um so when Ben was younger I called him Benny Fufu he was my little cousin we had a great relationship years go by in life and everybody knows you know you get married you have kids life goes on and you don't keep in contact as much so um it's great to have you on and be able to talk to you I know that you had a military career I know that you've seen a lot of things um what are you willing to share with people before we get to the trauma and the healing what what kind of things um in the military did you learn did you see or anything like that uh give us any kind of background because I know people are obsessed with Rex in the Air Force too and I'm and I'm an Air Force guy former Air Force guy as well um so the most probably I'll just start with the trauma cuz the most traumatic thing is actually that song that you guys used to sing that goes along with that name Benny fufo all that that started your just keeps going through my head now was thinking you love that and next thing you know you're like this was very traumatic for me as a child yeah I can still hear that song now so thanks for that yes um no it has been a while I did um right after high school go on a mission to Brazil came home tried the college thing got married I was doing all the things I was supposed to be doing and I had a 9 to5 in a cubicle that I just couldn't stand um and I knew that there was something else that I needed to be doing it was my older brother actually who introduced me to the par rescue idea in the beginning um Read All About It did a bunch of research U my wife and I dug into it and we both decided that that's what we were going to do Daniel was uh newborn he wasn't quite one yet when we enlisted and I went through the selection course for um per rescue for special operation in the air force uh I did six years of that active duty got out was a paramedic and an instructor for a little while at an at an army combat medic school and then went right back back to Contracting so then I was in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next 11 years on a 9030 rotation so 90 days gone 30 days at home and uh we traveled through that all the way until Daniel was 18 wow and um I came home and coached his senior year of Lacrosse was our first year really together um for a full year in his entire life and I did um Special Operations attached to um SEAL Teams Green Beret teams unilateral Air Force teams for search and rescue uh downrange I did some weird stuff that PJs aren't supposed weird stuff the military what what is that yeah I got um I learned how to fly uavs and that was odd I wasn'ted supposed to do that then I attached to a special forces team that was collecting intelligence I wasn't supposed to be doing human Intel or flying uavs in the philppines but I did um and just had some really random experiences that culminated in me working in kab doing you know airwing for the embassy counternarcotics and transporting Embassy personnel and things like that um and that again was kind of a weird conglomeration of a bunch of guys who had been active duty in different roles and then came together to be on a team for the Department of State and uh the DEA and stuff like that was it was pretty crazy pretty wild thing been for those of us who have never been to the Middle East or Afghanistan or Iraq or anything like that uh people claim that in in being in Arizona gets hot but what's is it hotter than it is in Arizona summer there I couldn't imagine that it's hotter or is it comparable it's it's definitely hotter it's definitely hotter I'm in so I'm in San Antonio a lot and this is where we live now and in the summertime the heat index will be 115 with you know all this humidity and the temperature will be 105 or 110 in August and it is hotter than that for me in Iraq and Afghanistan in the summertime it's brutal it's why everybody over there is so angry it just doesn't let up it's extremely that causes the anger as the heat I feel funny that people do in Arizona get mad in the summer but they are happy as a lar like in the last three months everybody's been super happy the heat is brutal there and then you know the winter my beard freezes and you know your spit freezes before it gets out of your mouth so you get the extremes out there cold wow so with with the things that you witnessed and the things that you've been through um when it comes to trauma and this is the you know one of the main reasons we want to have you on is disc discuss trauma is that you actually went through a lot of trauma watching the things that you've seen or going through the experiences you've seen yeah and one of the things that I run into to a lot in my professional career now um being a therapist for the guys that are experienceing PTSD substance disorder and all of those things everyone assumes that it all comes from military service and the reality is that 100% of the veterans that I've treated that I've come across and this is my included that there's trauma previous to military experience that's really the index of then the exacerbation of what they experience when they come home and so the majority of these things that we're dealing with postwar are things that we probably should have dealt with before getting into the military so that we could hand what was about to happen that's that's that's pretty that's pretty deep though because people sign up for the military they're going in everybody has how they grew up and they you know some people had a really terrible childhood and they have they have all these issues that they bring into uh the military and then they get trauma that's they're already traumatized maybe never got treated maybe never went to a therapist maybe never got any of that out and then they go and they experience Iraq and and Afghanistan and like the crazy things that you see and that you're they're you're they're asked to do and then they do it so you then you have trauma on trauma um and then when they're coming back that and so and then that's what you come across a lot that it's not just what they've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan but maybe before they left the trauma that they've had in their childhood or or being a teenager or something yeah and it's really interesting to me because when I first when I was first diagnosed with PTSD and MDD major depressive disorder um it was 2009 and I've been struggling with Sy things for a long time before that but the at the time the VA the Department of Veterans Affairs and their Mental Health Services would not discuss anything outside of your military experience so when I first went to get treated for trauma they wouldn't talk about religion they wouldn't talk about child abuse um none of that stuff unless it had directly correlated to the military service they've since changed that of course but I think it was a huge gap in our healthare for a long time because we were dealing with something that was an exacerbation of the trauma but not the root of it and you can work on that all you want and you'll still have similar results to stimulus you'll still have panic attacks or floods of emotion that you can't explain um because these other things in the background are still there wow that's just fascinating Ben tell us a little bit about you've mentioned you're you're doing counseling now tell us about your transition into counseling sure um I was working on myself in order to fix what I had done to my family almost irreparable damage just over the years of all the things that we had been through together um trying to work as a single mom for my wife with three boys essentially while I'm running around the world doing my job you know Limited communication and things had strained our relationship and the stress that we were both experiencing separately was never really grown through together because we didn't have time or space for it we were both trying to handle the world as it was for us with our responsibilities and so I was at home um saying I'm never going to deploy again and I'm going to fix this and we're going to be a connected family and have a good relationship and I'm going to be a you know person that I want to be as opposed to a person that that's surviving and trying to make it every minute just to the next minute and not being present in anything else because all all my energy is going to fight the battle in my own head and I'd seen too many guys protect the people around them by isolating themselves with traumatic experience if we're protectors if we love the people around us and we experience something we can't understand then we separate ourselves from them in order to protect them from what we don't know we're capable of I don't know what I'm going to do I don't know how I'm going to respond to this this is hurting you so I'm going to isolate myself and we think it's helpful when connection is actually the antidote to PTSD we separate ourselves from that opportunity and it gets worse and I didn't want to do that I'd seen too many guys do that we had a problem in my career field we had a problem in Special Operations as a whole and all the services and we hadn't figured it out and I lost a good friend of mine who I employed with um he took his own life and he had a family that he loved and adored and this was a great guy who I had good times with down range and we worked together several times and then I lost another good friend of mine I call these guys Brothers they're obviously my my military Brothers um to an act of war in Syria and a helicopter crash the unfortunate thing about Billy who we lost is that when we came back and we were talking to people friends and family teammates they said something that shocked me and they said that it was a good thing that he died in combat because they're afraid he was going to come home and kill himself and they're afraid for Billy for a long time and I thought that is the wrong way for us to see each other we shouldn't be rooting for that we shouldn't be concerned about that in that way without having a solution and so I was getting ready to go to PA school and do Physical Medicine a lot of guys from my career field do that and I said now I I think that we have enough guys doing that I need to go do the mental medicine part and see what's going on and find a solution to this so I went to counseling school to solve my own problems and to help the guys that we were losing um so I did the Bruce Banner thing is what I tell everybody I was like experimenting on myself with the therapy techniques to try to find what works you know does this tool work does this help me you know can I create this pathway for somebody else to walk on to healing and would you say it's um what's a um when it comes to time because a lot of people talk about time helps people heal but it I I as I ponder that you know it's been like four years you know when all this stuff really hit me this hard trauma of what I was I've been going through um that you know time is I I guess it it's helping me get up and go to work and and do the things that I've Tred to live normal if that's considered healing but every time my mind goes back to the times where you know I found out that Charles was killed and I you know and I was by myself cuz nobody in my family believe me that they were murdered and all that stuff like and then I found out about the kids so all these things like when I think about it they hurt just as bad so I don't know if if that like it's not like where anything is lifted like nothing none of those things when I start thinking about it is lifted But as time goes apparently I'm constantly trying to live my life and and try to do you know go to work and do all those things um and I told Rex this a long time ago I was like I used to be so easygoing and laugh at things and just I just in my mind I felt like I had a great life everything was was great and now I just don't think I'm that same person and so I I wish I could go back to being that same person but I I don't know if that's ever going to happen yeah that's a that's a great way to explain this um I don't agree with the idea that time heals all wounds um time puts you you further from the experience but you can hit yourself in the hand with a hammer until you don't feel it anymore your hand's still broken right and you still can't grab something you're still going to feel pain when you reach out for it and all those kinds of things the reality is that processing that information is what heals you the time allows you to feel like you're further from it but the brain is such a powerful tool the brain is an amazing amazing thing it can take you right back to a place that you haven't seen in decades and you can smell the smells and you can hear the sounds and you can feel the feelings that are there and unless you've processed that information in a healthy way you're living it again that's how powerful your mind is and on the other side of that it's powerful enough to heal you from that same experience that it's putting in front of you so it's an incredible thing but yeah just spending more time away from that experience is not going to give you that part of you back that you feel like isn't natural anymore so because you're consuming that energy with the fight so the healing part comes from processing which um I guess a therapist would have to help you process that but then again you have to trust whatever therapist you're going to to to in your brain if you don't trust that this is going to work you have negative things going in you know I what's the mindset about trying to go to therapy or process or can you process it by yourself or do you need help yeah and those are all great questions there's a lot in there um I'm a little bit of a rogue in the counseling industry uh and the reason I say that is because there's a lot of emphasis as a therapist on your Rel relationship with your client you're talking about trust incredibly important because I'm a combat veteran I can walk into a room and sit down with another combat veteran we can start sharing stories and feelings that they may not be comfortable sharing with anyone else because they don't have to protect me I've seen it I've lived it they understand in the same way that someone who's been addicted to certain things they sit in a room with somebody who's trying to heal from that and there's a trust there because they understand that they know how that person feels and if both people understand that about one another it's really easy here to unload some of these things that we protect that we hide that we um don't want to share with anyone because of embarrassment or other feelings that come up because they're powerful emotions that flood our bodies and we have responses to that that we don't like um the those walls come down when you trust somebody and so that's an important part of a therapeutic relationship where I differ from I think some of the industry is that I don't think that relationship needs to prolong I don't want to develop this codependent experience with a client of mine where they feel like they need to come to me to talk I look at it more like dental work I'm going to fill the cavity because you can't do that yourself I'm going to give you toothpaste maybe a fancy toothbrush teach you a technique to keep your teeth clean and you're not going to come back to me to get me to brush your teeth every week for 10 years you're going to go home and brush your own teeth if you come across something you can't solve on your own come talk to me so I'm really in favor of building that trust for the work that we're going to do together and then we're going to do this work and you're going to live your life and get that hour back a week to do what you want with it you know when you're healing from these things is the reason people don't want to when they're doing the process and you give them the whatever it is that they should be doing every day or every week or whatever it is before if until they have to come back is it that it's too painful for them to brush their own teeth so to speak um so they want keep coming to you to for you to keep making it easier for them to do that or is it is the process of recovering from something like that's going through the trauma is that just a painful thing to go through but it's necessary yeah I think it's important for us to kind of Define trauma a little bit before I can answer that question because that's really important in the question that you're asking so we talk about we talk about trauma a lot and Hollywood puts trauma on you know the shows that we stream in the movie that we watch and it's all blood and guts it's all war and that kind of thing the reality of trauma for me is anything that your brain can't make sense of at the time now that can be anything literally down to this kid called me fat in second grade and I just didn't have the mental development and the understanding and the experience to say well that kid was just stupid or he was angry or he was being an idiot or having his own problems so I internalized that my brain said man that hurts there's something wrong with me and it puts it in this category of I am not and this is the big thing that I feel like exists in our battle for everyone on the planet I am versus I am not I am not the big lie that gets put in there through your experience through external factors other people things people say you know caregivers that are supposed to support you that don't abuse that we experience there's something misunderstood about why that's happening to me and when my brain can't make sense of it in a really intelligent way with analytics and all my experiences knowledge and wisdom it puts it in this protected space that says that hurts I don't want to touch that it overwhelms me I don't know what to do with it so I'm going to keep it here in the limic system where we re-experience things with our five senses you were talking about ear you can smell it right there are things that you experience in Olympic system system that you haven't processed that feel like they're happening to you because they involve all the five senses trauma is that reinforced over time with that I am not message that you couldn't make sense of and then it gets triggered or tripped over because it's packed away and we're trying to avoid it our natural fight ORF flight response gets initiated whenever we trip over those things because our body and brain are working together to help us survive they want to get us out of this problem so in the same way that if a car was coming at me I would dump all these hormones to be able to jump and run that's what your brain's doing it's saying this thing is going to hurt us we need to escape or we need to fight it and so I'm going to dump all these chemicals to spin your body up I'm going to increase your heart rate your blood pressure your breath rate I'm going to shut down your metabolism to divert all your resources to physical running or fighting but this is an emotional threat it's a Memory you can't use that tool to fight that battle so you get spun up your body is flooded with all of these chemicals that are supposed to be there to help you survive something and it's maladapted to a struggle that you're not going to win that way so in the fact that trauma can be any of those things moving through it is the only correction it's not a one forone exchange you don't if you had trauma for 10 years when I was a kid I experienced a lot of abuse um physical emot sexual abuse I've survived all of those things over years of my life but it doesn't take that same number of years to heal from the trauma because now I do have all this knowledge experience and information in my brain that I can use to process this it's a matter of allowing myself to do it so when I'm with someone and talking to them and I develop that relationship of trust I might be able to open open that door that's been a protected space for me and let that information be used by my brain to make sense of it put it in a category let it become long-term memory we pull that I am not into this place called adaptive information processing and your brain takes that information makes sense of oh it really has nothing to do with me I am good enough I do have value it's not that I'm a terrible person it's not that I'm broken it's that something happened to me by someone else's choices that I couldn't understand stand and I've been protecting myself from it all this time with my natural instinct because I was afraid it was going to overwhelm me you mentioned earlier too um about your one of your brothers in in in the military that came home and and took his life and unfortunately we hear a lot of that that happens I don't know what the rate is but I do is it 22 a day this how Rex does this push-ups I think um yeah so with that being said my is don't don't give into I don't know you guys can see this yeah that's awesome War within let me let me read it because some people aren watching the video oh right yeah yeah don't give in to the war within in veteran suicide so with with that being said and I and it's heartbreaking knowing that we have people that that go into the military protect our country um do all the things that are necessary to keep our our our freedom and our safety and then when they come back they get into that mode of what they've been through and all this craziness that happens and you said the brain is like one of those your brain is just way more than what you even think it is I think we use maybe I think 3% or 4% of our 100% capability of our brain somebody said something like that um we had an optimist that we interviewed not too long ago and she talked about she got to the end of the road and she was going to kill herself and she mentioned that she was sitting there you know contemplating on on suicide and taking all these pills and ending it all and then she said she just heard a voice in her head you know telling her not to do it or whatever it is that that happened that at that moment if somebody's watching and there that deep depression and everybody at least people that I know have gone through at least some kind of depression some are way more extreme than others but with when somebody gets to that point Ben and they're they're on the verge of look I I just don't want to live anymore and they get to that where there's no more hope and all that stuff what advice or what what is something that maybe you you could tell them if they ever get to that point that maybe help them and you know not do it yeah that's a really heavy thing and it for me it's a lot about fatigue we get tired of fighting that internal struggle it's exhausting and we don't feel value in life because we can't enjoy the good moments we're always going to have the different emotions that come in life different challenges but when you're constantly fighting to survive you're con we call that being in the red and you're hyper aware and hypervigilant and if you're in the red all the time it wears you out so the majority of people in that state in my mind are exhausted and the with your last effort I would say connect connect with somebody so there's a great um telephone number that they created 988 so 911 is for physical emergencies right if you dial 988 that's for mental emergencies so you can dial that number if you're a veteran you can press one and you can get to veteran centered care and and you can just blow off steam to somebody just communicate connect with another human being um I've talked to some of the people who work there and they love their jobs they love to connect with people and chat with people if you're exhausted and you just can't think of any way to escape that fatigue and that exhaustion use your last ounce of effort and energy to connect with someone if you can't get you know your support network on the phone that's the number to call but reach out to somebody every single person and we have these say um throughout our community and everything like I'd rather be there for your pain than be there for your funeral that's true so somebody's going to answer the phone somebody's going to pick up somebody's going to communicate with you and dissipate that energy and that fatigue so Ben everything you've been talking about really applies to all of us but let's talk just for a second in the since we talked about veterans also and how enormous that challenge is how many veterans have access to a counselor who has had who is a veteran that has had PTSD like you h i I wish it were more um it's hard to answer that question there are a lot of there are a lot of nonprofits that I call Veterans helping veterans um because our care it can't keep up with the volume um it's it's overwhelmed by volume a lot of the people who work in the veterans uh Administration are veterans um not all of them have seen combat and not all of them are therapists you know and so there's a there's a handful I would say in comparison to the number of people who need it and so there's just no way that the volume can be met um the supply and de man just doesn't work out I did work at the VA for a while thinking I'm going to solve this problem from the inside I'll help as many veterans as I can you know these guys and girls are going to come to me and it's going to be great and it is great except for the system is overwhelmed and there's no way that I can see that being fixed to the point that it solves the problem that we're experiencing so a lot of veterans like me are taking to creating their own system to help each other because we realize that the system that's in place is inadequate uh there's just not a lot of access in the way that we need it to be accessed and so there are a lot of organizations a lot of people out there that are trying to help meet that need and that's really important and valuable there's another problem with our community in that we just don't ask for help we feel like we can solve any problem we can fix anything um we've overcome so much we've adapted to so much that we can just do it ourselves and I think you know we we've got to Humble ourselves at the point um that it becomes too much and reach out for help and so that's another issue that we have to figure out a lot of issues there all ocean isn't it problem challenges it really is and I think you know people who are empowered in their passion make a difference and I think that's what you guys are doing and that's why I was so excited to come talk to you about it um because when I talked to you Rex about the community that you guys have created I was really impressed and I know that's helping on a such such a larger scale than I can do you know I'm seeing people an hour at a time and you guys are able to help this larger Community that's also has its ripple effect with others that they're reaching out to and I think it's amazing and so that's a great thing and that is what has to continue in order for us to make these Solutions work well I feel yeah I feel I feel great about the community that organically has just started in and you know I think a lot of people felt like Rex and I we were doing this you know to get information from our you know to write a book and also Rex and I both of us like to talk about things for us to heal or a lot of other members of our family don't go that route or or want to go that route but as you know so um uh but Rex and I feel like just from us talking and doing those 10 episodes that we promised that we were going to do a lot of it was okay hey there's people that you know at least for me a lot of people thought well Adam really hasn't talked to anybody in the media he did that one 2020 uh special just because I I was getting really bad uh text and emails and Facebooks from people that don't know me or know anything about it they just know the story of my family and those were really hard to take and swallow but at the time I was like at some point I have to you know say you know what happened to me what what I experienced so you when uh when that happened and Rex and I started doing this podcast I didn't know what to expect but as we did each episode I felt myself getting a lot of stuff out and also in writing the book I got a lot of stuff out um when I wrote my first book I went through some trauma in radio uh in Sacramento which turned my life upside down and I wrote a book about it so I think for me one of my healing things is writing or talking about it like you said reach out to somebody or but sometimes if you don't have anybody to reach out to or you don't feel comfortable talking to anybody I think sometimes just writing things down uh that you're getting stuff at least you're getting stuff out uh I think that has really helped me and then the community you know you're talking about and the people that listen to the podcast and even people that are on our Facebook group a lot of them mention the same things like we talk about what kind of things can you do that will help you heal and for me a lot of it I talk about is you know music when you listen to like your favorite music it does something different to your soul you're you're you just feel different also you know watching a movie that you attach to like for some reason I get emotional there's certain movies that everybody gets emotional watching Rex talks about you know uh what is it the ban of brothers or private ryot yeah Saving Private ryot every time he watches it he balls and there's there's movies like me like the warrior or um Cinderella Man even Pursuit of Happiness there's there's movies that where there's an underdog and he goes through a lot of trauma and still ends up making things good or work or comes out with a happy ending for some reason those movies are I'm attached to all those and I cry every time I watch them I get the same exact emotions every time I watch them so I'm not sure I think that that helps clear clean clear clean I don't know what it does but um is there something in your with being a therapist is is there's something to that absolutely I you're you're laying it out pretty well I want I want to make sure that I mentioned these couple of things cuz I want to touch on all of them um I want to talk about EMDR a little bit bilateral stimulation and Lexia those are the things that were going through my head when you were talking about this you were essentially processing your feelings that you don't allow yourself to process at other times when you're watching those movies you're listening to that music you're writing that down um at the same time the act of writing is what we call bilateral stimulation while you're following the words on the page that you're putting on the page and then rereading it your eyes are moving back and forth and your arm is moving and this is something that connects both the creative and the analytical side of our brains and helps us take that information into the Adaptive information process so you're actually doing what's n naturally supposed to happen um the lady who came up with indr is called Francine Shapiro and I'll I'll probably butcher some of these things because this is just my own synopsis of it um so please take this with a grain salt look it up online if you want the real information um but what I understand is that she was running in the Foothills and had a lot to look at and what I picture is like the sandz of New Mexico there's all these different things to look at you're running in Hills there's sand and rocks and Cactus and Wildlife and all kinds of things and her eyes were running back and forth all over the place while she was doing this run and she was processing information it was her time to clear her head right what we understand now is that that bilateral stimulation helps our brain move information and take things and use all the knowledge and experience that we have to make sense of it and she wrote a book called getting past your past which is not the technical manual for EMDR but it's more of a case study style review of it and what her clients went through what she went through and explaining it so that you could basically do it yourself and you really can there are clinicians that are trained in this I specialize in it I use it every day this is what helped me on that pathway that I took when I said that I was trying everything on myself there were a lot of things coping skills and techniques that were helpful but not solving the root cause when I went through EMDR it changed the way that my brain works and I was able to have peace I was able to have Clarity of thought I was able to get away from the battle that I've been fighting long enough to make sense of it and it was my own brain making sense to me instead of a counselor telling me what to think or telling me how to process the information my brain was doing it and it's incredibly valuable so you're talking about writing that is essentially 101 EMDR you're doing bilateral simulation you're processing information that's in there that's protected that you feel important and it's the same thing you're doing while you're watching the movie you're putting yourself in that position you're experiencing those emotions that that person is experiencing and you're processing that information that's the thing that we don't do because we think emotion I mean you guys can tell me but I was brought up with don't cry don't be weak you know move on just make it work and the military facilitates that and and we push that right Opera conditioning if you feel emotion on the battlefield you're going to get someone killed and that's great it really does work down range you really do need to focus and drive through those things when you come home that doesn't serve you so well people have a hard time connecting with you your spouse tells you you're a robot those kinds of things happen and we become a lexic so Lexia is the inability to define or experience emotion I can't even explain it there are hundreds of words to describe emotion in our language and then even more in other languages that aren't exactly the same and we'll use three and when we get to the point where we've taken oursel away from feeling that emotion for so long we actually lose the ability to express it and feel it so when it comes in we don't know what to do with it we don't have a definition for that feeling and so we don't have an understanding of how to travel through it and because we spent all our time being tough or getting past those emotions or compartmentalizing It Whatever terminology you want to use you've been training yourself to unlearn how to feel emotion and it is the opposite of what you need in order to get through it that makes sense that makes so much sense of what you just said it's like now I I understand a little bit better how to how to process what other people are talking about when they talk about stuff um so can you just Envision Adam wh's going on all over Optimus Ville oh yeah about everyone listening to us say oh that that's why that's why that's why it just continues light run all over yeah my kind of advice on that is if you if you use three words to describe every emotion you feel you need a feeling wheel and it's a touchy feely counselor therapist tool that's a bunch of feeling words that are colorcoded that describe feelings and they start in the Middle with sad or angry and they Branch out into things like betrayal or Injustice so that you can and really Define the emotion that's coming in if you use frustrated for every emotion that you have that presents as anger or something you don't like go get a feeling wheel and start training yourself how to define emotion so that you can understand what it is and let it be there and live through it I love it well I've learned a ton today it's a a ton it's a lot and I'm gonna have to process what I just heard yeah there's going to be a lot of processing Ben I don't want to let you go until we hear something else you're Lor's cousin and you have some perspective on that I'm fascinated with your therapist background how do you explain the laurian Chad Dynamic and what happened would you mind ex sharing that here yeah sure and I I want to preface this by saying I don't know Chad at all I never spoke to him ever never met him never talked to him um I spent time you know with Lor and my cousins from time to time I loved that house wherever it was um for me mostly in San Antonio and and I felt love there I loved going over there and just feeling accepted and loved every time I went it was a different vibe and I enjoyed it and I don't know anybody who didn't feel that way when they were at your place Adam when we were when we were younger um and even you know growing into adulthood and I go and Lori would cut my hair I went to computer school with Alex and we were going to be n professionals back in the 90s when you know we were going to make all this money right I'm far from that now but I experienced those guys in a different way you know when we were young we were having fun but there was also that element that I could see in them that was in me too where there was this internal struggle going on um for shirt and uh the way that I understand or have explained to my own family uh the questions that they've asked about these things is that there's something really powerful about being able to counter that I am not that's in your head and when you have that and you spend all your time in there fighting it you do things like achieve ments in order to convince yourself that you're good enough or that you have value you go get a certification you go get a degree um for me you go beat the Special Operation selection you know you prove to yourself by achievement that you're that you have value instead of that coming from an internal message or from a message from the people that you care about and when you do that long enough and it doesn't stick you'll reach for anything and so in my mind when I think about you know Lor's struggles and Alex's struggles just as people um I think about them having that that battle and I think about Chad presenting to them this opportunity to feel special unique important valuable something of worth where all that other stuff can go away you know you're part of the 144,000 you you're doing this special thing nobody else can do that nobody else can understand it's really easy for me to see them connect to that and say this is important this is what's going to relieve me from that internal struggle I've been fighting I'll do anything I'll I'll run this course I'll get into it I'll try to do what I can to make this the thing that solves that problem and I really feel like that the battle that was going on I don't know for sure but that's what I connect with that's how I make sense of it and that's what feels right to me that it was just I'll do whatever I can to feel like I'm good enough that's that's and that's exactly what I said that was my feeling my gut feeling and I told Rex this right when all this was going down I said look you know Lori and you know Lori had her all the things that happened to her she married all different guys she you know said Joe molested her kids and you know and all these things that that may have happened to her or that she had a lot of things that I feel like she wanted to do something with her life or be special and Alex had all these things where you know he you know didn't have us any success and by the way Alex could have been the most uh famous person in our family by you know being the best impressionist there ever was he really had talent to do all these great things and he didn't use that and or or Focus himself into doing that so he did a lot of things where he just took all these odd jobs odd jobs odd jobs never you know got really got married for six weeks but never was married or had kids and any of these things and then he battled with the church thing about you know going to church or not going to church and he wanted to have sex with a bunch of girls or whatever it was that he got excommunicated from the church he he had a huge weight on him so for Chad to tell him look come with us you're forgiven because you uh are an angel that came down with Nephi like he put all these things you know and gave them like you just said purpose so then people are like well how could Lori and how could Alex be involved with killing kids that's how if they felt like this is coming from God and they thought Chad was from God that came down that he explained that to them that they were all in on that and that's and I I know it's evil and it's all those things but they're saying how could they and I'm saying this is how they could this is I I think their brain their mindset was focused on just that this isn't me you know justifying the action but explaining how it could come about if I can be absolved of all my sins and stop feeling like a piece of crap you know and start feeling like I have value after all the things I've been through I give me that I'm going to go get that the easy way if it's convincing yeah if it's convincing enough and I really can believe in it if one or two things confirm this for me or I get a good feeling in this place I'm going to chase that because I've tried everything else right I mean Alex he was you're right he's talented and intelligent and when you can just go get a license in this and a certification in that and do this job and be good at that you keep trying to do that and it's not working it's not solving the problem I'm jumping from thing to thing from person to person to make me feel good about myself sex is a great escape from that idea that you're bad and you start feeling pretty good about yourself look this this woman and I just felt pleasure this feels pretty good that can become an addictive process just like alcohol or drugs can to solve that problem to make you feel like you have value or worth and it's an Escape yeah well I appreciate you you being transparent and talking about you know how you feel and what things that you explained and because a lot of it just is the same thing that I the way that I felt that things went by like how could Lori and Alex do this and that was my that was in my mind that was my explanation of how they could do it now I know they were Evil by doing it and they in my mind I you obviously you know I think Satan had a lot to do with it and and all those things but um people ask how could that happen and that's and just to explain that that's how it could happen and Rex brought up something that maybe one of his therapists had said uh or or not his therapist one of his friends had said that you know people say oh how could how could you do something like that because literally in your brain you don't want to ever think that you could do something like that but you could that's the thing where I would never people say I would never do that but right well was it Rex was it something like that I know it's controversial but uh was it something like that yeah yeah people all of us want to know that we couldn't do what Lori did or what Alex did right and they say but you can't yeah exactly I've so I will kind of connect that for for my community hopefully um you know I can talk to a guy in Iraq who's a dad and we can dehumanize people at war in order to do what we need to do but at the end of the day they're humans we're fighting against other guys who are dads a lot of times and if the tally or whoever comes up and says look we're going to come back here and excuse me if this is like way too explicit but this is the reality of things in that environment sometimes we're going to come back here and we're going to rape your wife and your kids in front of you and then we're going to kill them or you can take these guns and put him in your house and anytime one of our guy comes by you give him one or anytime you see the great white devil come by you take a shot at him then we won't do that and more than that we'll even protect you and what's his choice right we we roll into town those guys are there all the time they're living right next to them they know what they're doing they see them every day they're walking the streets with these guys and living life and so if I got a choice to protect my family from horrible things I might be capable of doing some of the things that I say I could never do it's about survival it's about protection it's about if you're starving you know what links are you going to go to to feed your family if they're in trouble what links are you going to go to to protect your family it's real yeah and we are capable of these things and sometimes it's about maybe I haven't been in a position to have to survive and so maybe I can't wrap my head around the choices they were making but I really feel like that's where they were yeah me too well then Adam and I and the whole Community are GNA be unpacking this for some time because you've given us you've given us a whole lot I I'll watch this probably 10 times until I get and get notes out for sure no kidding well you guys hit me up and tell me you know questions that people have and things that they want to know I I want to be as of much help as I can to anybody who's trying to unpack pack these things or figure these things out um I'm happy to you know answer questions and emails and texts and all that kind of stuff love it hey we certainly do that thank you so much yeah that was awesome yeah you guys are doing great things I love what you're doing I I love every minute of this um maybe we'll talk sometime you know like f does yes like our family does you meet other families no other families yeah okay we'll talk soon don't don'twell welcome in another edition of Silver Lining podcast I'm Adam uh Crosser me is Rex and we do have a guest today that we promised you that we would have so we'll talk to Ben and introduce him here in a second um I do want to give a big shout out to Cammy one of our optimists and Rex and I love all of our optimists everybody's been really kind and great to us um and I got something in the mail today Rex and Camy makes these little figures I don't know if you can see them or not but she was asking what color my eyes were for a reason she actually and I said Hazel and she go what color are Rex's eyes and obviously she knew they were blue but she go are they that blue and I was like yes they're that blue so she made me uh my own personal guy of these little guys and then she got me a pickle ball obsessed thing and then Rex she sent you a letter and then I'm going open it for you even though it's addressed to you um it's the same little it's the same little happened to privacy no privacy with you here you are with your little bald head and then here is Lisa so here we go and you guys can kiss all right good yeah so so you got you have a you have a pres we want to thank Cammy for sending those and making those um we just appreciate anything that you know people do we don't ask for anything obviously Rex and I don't want want to you know have people buy us or send us presents but if you feel like you want to do something like that we're definitely going to appreciate it and I'm going to put mine I know exactly where I'm going to put mine because it's it's me so I'm going to hang it from my mirror on my car on my truck so I can see it swing back and forth as I drive sweet I you know Adam I didn't tell you this I got a Amazon package in the mail there are five cans of gourmet cat food in it no explanation I have no idea who Senator why so well I do see on our Facebook uh group a lot of people love their cats so we have a lot of people who are into cats so maybe you know try it Rex just take a bite and see what you think well maybe some of's got to come visit us and bring their cats with them and they want to have the right food here I just don't know yet surprise surprise surprise well I need more information on that all right let's get to uh Our Guest Ben so Ben is my cousin he's Rex's nephew um and Rex had mentioned that he talked to Ben not too long ago um and Ben uh really impressed what he said to Rex about trauma and healing and counseling and all these things that Rex came back and said I really think that Ben would be a great guest uh and help some of our Optimist as well as us all learning and I'm All About Learning so Ben it's been a minute since we've seen you how are you yeah it's been a long time I'm doing pretty well I'm having a good time out here in South Texas it's getting warm but it's the good temperature right now my boys and I and uh family are playing a little bit of Lacrosse and just doing the counseling thing that I do love it little bit of Lacrosse how much are you and the boys into it bear um it's it's all consuming to be fair we watched uh all the college Lacross all the pro lacrosse we're watching Scout film on other teams we talk about it on the ride home and the there and it's a full family deal Alice is probably the best lacrosse analyst that's never played the game on the planet you and it's you're grateful to have her tell you what you guys are doing right and what you're doing WR absolutely great feedback after the the games and for the boys and everything we we value it so uh and by the way I love the beard I love it it's amazing how long have you had it and how long are you wearing it for um this is this is probably the most contractor beard style that I've had since I was deployed so I I finished going overseas to Afghanistan in 2018 and I shaved it and said I'm not going to wear a beard and when I was coaching lacrosse it was a good thing for the boys they like the combat stories so I grow a beard every year for lacrosse so this came on about four or five months ago and I always tell them they can shave it if we win state so it's like this little game that we play and it just keeps grow all spring tell me I love it let it go we're going to get you a t-shirt that says Let It Go we want to see how long that thing can go um so when Ben was younger I called him Benny Fufu he was my little cousin we had a great relationship years go by in life and everybody knows you know you get married you have kids life goes on and you don't keep in contact as much so um it's great to have you on and be able to talk to you I know that you had a military career I know that you've seen a lot of things um what are you willing to share with people before we get to the trauma and the healing what what kind of things um in the military did you learn did you see or anything like that uh give us any kind of background because I know people are obsessed with Rex in the Air Force too and I'm and I'm an Air Force guy former Air Force guy as well um so the most probably I'll just start with the trauma cuz the most traumatic thing is actually that song that you guys used to sing that goes along with that name Benny fufo all that that started your just keeps going through my head now was thinking you love that and next thing you know you're like this was very traumatic for me as a child yeah I can still hear that song now so thanks for that yes um no it has been a while I did um right after high school go on a mission to Brazil came home tried the college thing got married I was doing all the things I was supposed to be doing and I had a 9 to5 in a cubicle that I just couldn't stand um and I knew that there was something else that I needed to be doing it was my older brother actually who introduced me to the par rescue idea in the beginning um Read All About It did a bunch of research U my wife and I dug into it and we both decided that that's what we were going to do Daniel was uh newborn he wasn't quite one yet when we enlisted and I went through the selection course for um per rescue for special operation in the air force uh I did six years of that active duty got out was a paramedic and an instructor for a little while at an at an army combat medic school and then went right back back to Contracting so then I was in Iraq and Afghanistan for the next 11 years on a 9030 rotation so 90 days gone 30 days at home and uh we traveled through that all the way until Daniel was 18 wow and um I came home and coached his senior year of Lacrosse was our first year really together um for a full year in his entire life and I did um Special Operations attached to um SEAL Teams Green Beret teams unilateral Air Force teams for search and rescue uh downrange I did some weird stuff that PJs aren't supposed weird stuff the military what what is that yeah I got um I learned how to fly uavs and that was odd I wasn'ted supposed to do that then I attached to a special forces team that was collecting intelligence I wasn't supposed to be doing human Intel or flying uavs in the philppines but I did um and just had some really random experiences that culminated in me working in kab doing you know airwing for the embassy counternarcotics and transporting Embassy personnel and things like that um and that again was kind of a weird conglomeration of a bunch of guys who had been active duty in different roles and then came together to be on a team for the Department of State and uh the DEA and stuff like that was it was pretty crazy pretty wild thing been for those of us who have never been to the Middle East or Afghanistan or Iraq or anything like that uh people claim that in in being in Arizona gets hot but what's is it hotter than it is in Arizona summer there I couldn't imagine that it's hotter or is it comparable it's it's definitely hotter it's definitely hotter I'm in so I'm in San Antonio a lot and this is where we live now and in the summertime the heat index will be 115 with you know all this humidity and the temperature will be 105 or 110 in August and it is hotter than that for me in Iraq and Afghanistan in the summertime it's brutal it's why everybody over there is so angry it just doesn't let up it's extremely that causes the anger as the heat I feel funny that people do in Arizona get mad in the summer but they are happy as a lar like in the last three months everybody's been super happy the heat is brutal there and then you know the winter my beard freezes and you know your spit freezes before it gets out of your mouth so you get the extremes out there cold wow so with with the things that you witnessed and the things that you've been through um when it comes to trauma and this is the you know one of the main reasons we want to have you on is disc discuss trauma is that you actually went through a lot of trauma watching the things that you've seen or going through the experiences you've seen yeah and one of the things that I run into to a lot in my professional career now um being a therapist for the guys that are experienceing PTSD substance disorder and all of those things everyone assumes that it all comes from military service and the reality is that 100% of the veterans that I've treated that I've come across and this is my included that there's trauma previous to military experience that's really the index of then the exacerbation of what they experience when they come home and so the majority of these things that we're dealing with postwar are things that we probably should have dealt with before getting into the military so that we could hand what was about to happen that's that's that's pretty that's pretty deep though because people sign up for the military they're going in everybody has how they grew up and they you know some people had a really terrible childhood and they have they have all these issues that they bring into uh the military and then they get trauma that's they're already traumatized maybe never got treated maybe never went to a therapist maybe never got any of that out and then they go and they experience Iraq and and Afghanistan and like the crazy things that you see and that you're they're you're they're asked to do and then they do it so you then you have trauma on trauma um and then when they're coming back that and so and then that's what you come across a lot that it's not just what they've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan but maybe before they left the trauma that they've had in their childhood or or being a teenager or something yeah and it's really interesting to me because when I first when I was first diagnosed with PTSD and MDD major depressive disorder um it was 2009 and I've been struggling with Sy things for a long time before that but the at the time the VA the Department of Veterans Affairs and their Mental Health Services would not discuss anything outside of your military experience so when I first went to get treated for trauma they wouldn't talk about religion they wouldn't talk about child abuse um none of that stuff unless it had directly correlated to the military service they've since changed that of course but I think it was a huge gap in our healthare for a long time because we were dealing with something that was an exacerbation of the trauma but not the root of it and you can work on that all you want and you'll still have similar results to stimulus you'll still have panic attacks or floods of emotion that you can't explain um because these other things in the background are still there wow that's just fascinating Ben tell us a little bit about you've mentioned you're you're doing counseling now tell us about your transition into counseling sure um I was working on myself in order to fix what I had done to my family almost irreparable damage just over the years of all the things that we had been through together um trying to work as a single mom for my wife with three boys essentially while I'm running around the world doing my job you know Limited communication and things had strained our relationship and the stress that we were both experiencing separately was never really grown through together because we didn't have time or space for it we were both trying to handle the world as it was for us with our responsibilities and so I was at home um saying I'm never going to deploy again and I'm going to fix this and we're going to be a connected family and have a good relationship and I'm going to be a you know person that I want to be as opposed to a person that that's surviving and trying to make it every minute just to the next minute and not being present in anything else because all all my energy is going to fight the battle in my own head and I'd seen too many guys protect the people around them by isolating themselves with traumatic experience if we're protectors if we love the people around us and we experience something we can't understand then we separate ourselves from them in order to protect them from what we don't know we're capable of I don't know what I'm going to do I don't know how I'm going to respond to this this is hurting you so I'm going to isolate myself and we think it's helpful when connection is actually the antidote to PTSD we separate ourselves from that opportunity and it gets worse and I didn't want to do that I'd seen too many guys do that we had a problem in my career field we had a problem in Special Operations as a whole and all the services and we hadn't figured it out and I lost a good friend of mine who I employed with um he took his own life and he had a family that he loved and adored and this was a great guy who I had good times with down range and we worked together several times and then I lost another good friend of mine I call these guys Brothers they're obviously my my military Brothers um to an act of war in Syria and a helicopter crash the unfortunate thing about Billy who we lost is that when we came back and we were talking to people friends and family teammates they said something that shocked me and they said that it was a good thing that he died in combat because they're afraid he was going to come home and kill himself and they're afraid for Billy for a long time and I thought that is the wrong way for us to see each other we shouldn't be rooting for that we shouldn't be concerned about that in that way without having a solution and so I was getting ready to go to PA school and do Physical Medicine a lot of guys from my career field do that and I said now I I think that we have enough guys doing that I need to go do the mental medicine part and see what's going on and find a solution to this so I went to counseling school to solve my own problems and to help the guys that we were losing um so I did the Bruce Banner thing is what I tell everybody I was like experimenting on myself with the therapy techniques to try to find what works you know does this tool work does this help me you know can I create this pathway for somebody else to walk on to healing and would you say it's um what's a um when it comes to time because a lot of people talk about time helps people heal but it I I as I ponder that you know it's been like four years you know when all this stuff really hit me this hard trauma of what I was I've been going through um that you know time is I I guess it it's helping me get up and go to work and and do the things that I've Tred to live normal if that's considered healing but every time my mind goes back to the times where you know I found out that Charles was killed and I you know and I was by myself cuz nobody in my family believe me that they were murdered and all that stuff like and then I found out about the kids so all these things like when I think about it they hurt just as bad so I don't know if if that like it's not like where anything is lifted like nothing none of those things when I start thinking about it is lifted But as time goes apparently I'm constantly trying to live my life and and try to do you know go to work and do all those things um and I told Rex this a long time ago I was like I used to be so easygoing and laugh at things and just I just in my mind I felt like I had a great life everything was was great and now I just don't think I'm that same person and so I I wish I could go back to being that same person but I I don't know if that's ever going to happen yeah that's a that's a great way to explain this um I don't agree with the idea that time heals all wounds um time puts you you further from the experience but you can hit yourself in the hand with a hammer until you don't feel it anymore your hand's still broken right and you still can't grab something you're still going to feel pain when you reach out for it and all those kinds of things the reality is that processing that information is what heals you the time allows you to feel like you're further from it but the brain is such a powerful tool the brain is an amazing amazing thing it can take you right back to a place that you haven't seen in decades and you can smell the smells and you can hear the sounds and you can feel the feelings that are there and unless you've processed that information in a healthy way you're living it again that's how powerful your mind is and on the other side of that it's powerful enough to heal you from that same experience that it's putting in front of you so it's an incredible thing but yeah just spending more time away from that experience is not going to give you that part of you back that you feel like isn't natural anymore so because you're consuming that energy with the fight so the healing part comes from processing which um I guess a therapist would have to help you process that but then again you have to trust whatever therapist you're going to to to in your brain if you don't trust that this is going to work you have negative things going in you know I what's the mindset about trying to go to therapy or process or can you process it by yourself or do you need help yeah and those are all great questions there's a lot in there um I'm a little bit of a rogue in the counseling industry uh and the reason I say that is because there's a lot of emphasis as a therapist on your Rel relationship with your client you're talking about trust incredibly important because I'm a combat veteran I can walk into a room and sit down with another combat veteran we can start sharing stories and feelings that they may not be comfortable sharing with anyone else because they don't have to protect me I've seen it I've lived it they understand in the same way that someone who's been addicted to certain things they sit in a room with somebody who's trying to heal from that and there's a trust there because they understand that they know how that person feels and if both people understand that about one another it's really easy here to unload some of these things that we protect that we hide that we um don't want to share with anyone because of embarrassment or other feelings that come up because they're powerful emotions that flood our bodies and we have responses to that that we don't like um the those walls come down when you trust somebody and so that's an important part of a therapeutic relationship where I differ from I think some of the industry is that I don't think that relationship needs to prolong I don't want to develop this codependent experience with a client of mine where they feel like they need to come to me to talk I look at it more like dental work I'm going to fill the cavity because you can't do that yourself I'm going to give you toothpaste maybe a fancy toothbrush teach you a technique to keep your teeth clean and you're not going to come back to me to get me to brush your teeth every week for 10 years you're going to go home and brush your own teeth if you come across something you can't solve on your own come talk to me so I'm really in favor of building that trust for the work that we're going to do together and then we're going to do this work and you're going to live your life and get that hour back a week to do what you want with it you know when you're healing from these things is the reason people don't want to when they're doing the process and you give them the whatever it is that they should be doing every day or every week or whatever it is before if until they have to come back is it that it's too painful for them to brush their own teeth so to speak um so they want keep coming to you to for you to keep making it easier for them to do that or is it is the process of recovering from something like that's going through the trauma is that just a painful thing to go through but it's necessary yeah I think it's important for us to kind of Define trauma a little bit before I can answer that question because that's really important in the question that you're asking so we talk about we talk about trauma a lot and Hollywood puts trauma on you know the shows that we stream in the movie that we watch and it's all blood and guts it's all war and that kind of thing the reality of trauma for me is anything that your brain can't make sense of at the time now that can be anything literally down to this kid called me fat in second grade and I just didn't have the mental development and the understanding and the experience to say well that kid was just stupid or he was angry or he was being an idiot or having his own problems so I internalized that my brain said man that hurts there's something wrong with me and it puts it in this category of I am not and this is the big thing that I feel like exists in our battle for everyone on the planet I am versus I am not I am not the big lie that gets put in there through your experience through external factors other people things people say you know caregivers that are supposed to support you that don't abuse that we experience there's something misunderstood about why that's happening to me and when my brain can't make sense of it in a really intelligent way with analytics and all my experiences knowledge and wisdom it puts it in this protected space that says that hurts I don't want to touch that it overwhelms me I don't know what to do with it so I'm going to keep it here in the limic system where we re-experience things with our five senses you were talking about ear you can smell it right there are things that you experience in Olympic system system that you haven't processed that feel like they're happening to you because they involve all the five senses trauma is that reinforced over time with that I am not message that you couldn't make sense of and then it gets triggered or tripped over because it's packed away and we're trying to avoid it our natural fight ORF flight response gets initiated whenever we trip over those things because our body and brain are working together to help us survive they want to get us out of this problem so in the same way that if a car was coming at me I would dump all these hormones to be able to jump and run that's what your brain's doing it's saying this thing is going to hurt us we need to escape or we need to fight it and so I'm going to dump all these chemicals to spin your body up I'm going to increase your heart rate your blood pressure your breath rate I'm going to shut down your metabolism to divert all your resources to physical running or fighting but this is an emotional threat it's a Memory you can't use that tool to fight that battle so you get spun up your body is flooded with all of these chemicals that are supposed to be there to help you survive something and it's maladapted to a struggle that you're not going to win that way so in the fact that trauma can be any of those things moving through it is the only correction it's not a one forone exchange you don't if you had trauma for 10 years when I was a kid I experienced a lot of abuse um physical emot sexual abuse I've survived all of those things over years of my life but it doesn't take that same number of years to heal from the trauma because now I do have all this knowledge experience and information in my brain that I can use to process this it's a matter of allowing myself to do it so when I'm with someone and talking to them and I develop that relationship of trust I might be able to open open that door that's been a protected space for me and let that information be used by my brain to make sense of it put it in a category let it become long-term memory we pull that I am not into this place called adaptive information processing and your brain takes that information makes sense of oh it really has nothing to do with me I am good enough I do have value it's not that I'm a terrible person it's not that I'm broken it's that something happened to me by someone else's choices that I couldn't understand stand and I've been protecting myself from it all this time with my natural instinct because I was afraid it was going to overwhelm me you mentioned earlier too um about your one of your brothers in in in the military that came home and and took his life and unfortunately we hear a lot of that that happens I don't know what the rate is but I do is it 22 a day this how Rex does this push-ups I think um yeah so with that being said my is don't don't give into I don't know you guys can see this yeah that's awesome War within let me let me read it because some people aren watching the video oh right yeah yeah don't give in to the war within in veteran suicide so with with that being said and I and it's heartbreaking knowing that we have people that that go into the military protect our country um do all the things that are necessary to keep our our our freedom and our safety and then when they come back they get into that mode of what they've been through and all this craziness that happens and you said the brain is like one of those your brain is just way more than what you even think it is I think we use maybe I think 3% or 4% of our 100% capability of our brain somebody said something like that um we had an optimist that we interviewed not too long ago and she talked about she got to the end of the road and she was going to kill herself and she mentioned that she was sitting there you know contemplating on on suicide and taking all these pills and ending it all and then she said she just heard a voice in her head you know telling her not to do it or whatever it is that that happened that at that moment if somebody's watching and there that deep depression and everybody at least people that I know have gone through at least some kind of depression some are way more extreme than others but with when somebody gets to that point Ben and they're they're on the verge of look I I just don't want to live anymore and they get to that where there's no more hope and all that stuff what advice or what what is something that maybe you you could tell them if they ever get to that point that maybe help them and you know not do it yeah that's a really heavy thing and it for me it's a lot about fatigue we get tired of fighting that internal struggle it's exhausting and we don't feel value in life because we can't enjoy the good moments we're always going to have the different emotions that come in life different challenges but when you're constantly fighting to survive you're con we call that being in the red and you're hyper aware and hypervigilant and if you're in the red all the time it wears you out so the majority of people in that state in my mind are exhausted and the with your last effort I would say connect connect with somebody so there's a great um telephone number that they created 988 so 911 is for physical emergencies right if you dial 988 that's for mental emergencies so you can dial that number if you're a veteran you can press one and you can get to veteran centered care and and you can just blow off steam to somebody just communicate connect with another human being um I've talked to some of the people who work there and they love their jobs they love to connect with people and chat with people if you're exhausted and you just can't think of any way to escape that fatigue and that exhaustion use your last ounce of effort and energy to connect with someone if you can't get you know your support network on the phone that's the number to call but reach out to somebody every single person and we have these say um throughout our community and everything like I'd rather be there for your pain than be there for your funeral that's true so somebody's going to answer the phone somebody's going to pick up somebody's going to communicate with you and dissipate that energy and that fatigue so Ben everything you've been talking about really applies to all of us but let's talk just for a second in the since we talked about veterans also and how enormous that challenge is how many veterans have access to a counselor who has had who is a veteran that has had PTSD like you h i I wish it were more um it's hard to answer that question there are a lot of there are a lot of nonprofits that I call Veterans helping veterans um because our care it can't keep up with the volume um it's it's overwhelmed by volume a lot of the people who work in the veterans uh Administration are veterans um not all of them have seen combat and not all of them are therapists you know and so there's a there's a handful I would say in comparison to the number of people who need it and so there's just no way that the volume can be met um the supply and de man just doesn't work out I did work at the VA for a while thinking I'm going to solve this problem from the inside I'll help as many veterans as I can you know these guys and girls are going to come to me and it's going to be great and it is great except for the system is overwhelmed and there's no way that I can see that being fixed to the point that it solves the problem that we're experiencing so a lot of veterans like me are taking to creating their own system to help each other because we realize that the system that's in place is inadequate uh there's just not a lot of access in the way that we need it to be accessed and so there are a lot of organizations a lot of people out there that are trying to help meet that need and that's really important and valuable there's another problem with our community in that we just don't ask for help we feel like we can solve any problem we can fix anything um we've overcome so much we've adapted to so much that we can just do it ourselves and I think you know we we've got to Humble ourselves at the point um that it becomes too much and reach out for help and so that's another issue that we have to figure out a lot of issues there all ocean isn't it problem challenges it really is and I think you know people who are empowered in their passion make a difference and I think that's what you guys are doing and that's why I was so excited to come talk to you about it um because when I talked to you Rex about the community that you guys have created I was really impressed and I know that's helping on a such such a larger scale than I can do you know I'm seeing people an hour at a time and you guys are able to help this larger Community that's also has its ripple effect with others that they're reaching out to and I think it's amazing and so that's a great thing and that is what has to continue in order for us to make these Solutions work well I feel yeah I feel I feel great about the community that organically has just started in and you know I think a lot of people felt like Rex and I we were doing this you know to get information from our you know to write a book and also Rex and I both of us like to talk about things for us to heal or a lot of other members of our family don't go that route or or want to go that route but as you know so um uh but Rex and I feel like just from us talking and doing those 10 episodes that we promised that we were going to do a lot of it was okay hey there's people that you know at least for me a lot of people thought well Adam really hasn't talked to anybody in the media he did that one 2020 uh special just because I I was getting really bad uh text and emails and Facebooks from people that don't know me or know anything about it they just know the story of my family and those were really hard to take and swallow but at the time I was like at some point I have to you know say you know what happened to me what what I experienced so you when uh when that happened and Rex and I started doing this podcast I didn't know what to expect but as we did each episode I felt myself getting a lot of stuff out and also in writing the book I got a lot of stuff out um when I wrote my first book I went through some trauma in radio uh in Sacramento which turned my life upside down and I wrote a book about it so I think for me one of my healing things is writing or talking about it like you said reach out to somebody or but sometimes if you don't have anybody to reach out to or you don't feel comfortable talking to anybody I think sometimes just writing things down uh that you're getting stuff at least you're getting stuff out uh I think that has really helped me and then the community you know you're talking about and the people that listen to the podcast and even people that are on our Facebook group a lot of them mention the same things like we talk about what kind of things can you do that will help you heal and for me a lot of it I talk about is you know music when you listen to like your favorite music it does something different to your soul you're you're you just feel different also you know watching a movie that you attach to like for some reason I get emotional there's certain movies that everybody gets emotional watching Rex talks about you know uh what is it the ban of brothers or private ryot yeah Saving Private ryot every time he watches it he balls and there's there's movies like me like the warrior or um Cinderella Man even Pursuit of Happiness there's there's movies that where there's an underdog and he goes through a lot of trauma and still ends up making things good or work or comes out with a happy ending for some reason those movies are I'm attached to all those and I cry every time I watch them I get the same exact emotions every time I watch them so I'm not sure I think that that helps clear clean clear clean I don't know what it does but um is there something in your with being a therapist is is there's something to that absolutely I you're you're laying it out pretty well I want I want to make sure that I mentioned these couple of things cuz I want to touch on all of them um I want to talk about EMDR a little bit bilateral stimulation and Lexia those are the things that were going through my head when you were talking about this you were essentially processing your feelings that you don't allow yourself to process at other times when you're watching those movies you're listening to that music you're writing that down um at the same time the act of writing is what we call bilateral stimulation while you're following the words on the page that you're putting on the page and then rereading it your eyes are moving back and forth and your arm is moving and this is something that connects both the creative and the analytical side of our brains and helps us take that information into the Adaptive information process so you're actually doing what's n naturally supposed to happen um the lady who came up with indr is called Francine Shapiro and I'll I'll probably butcher some of these things because this is just my own synopsis of it um so please take this with a grain salt look it up online if you want the real information um but what I understand is that she was running in the Foothills and had a lot to look at and what I picture is like the sandz of New Mexico there's all these different things to look at you're running in Hills there's sand and rocks and Cactus and Wildlife and all kinds of things and her eyes were running back and forth all over the place while she was doing this run and she was processing information it was her time to clear her head right what we understand now is that that bilateral stimulation helps our brain move information and take things and use all the knowledge and experience that we have to make sense of it and she wrote a book called getting past your past which is not the technical manual for EMDR but it's more of a case study style review of it and what her clients went through what she went through and explaining it so that you could basically do it yourself and you really can there are clinicians that are trained in this I specialize in it I use it every day this is what helped me on that pathway that I took when I said that I was trying everything on myself there were a lot of things coping skills and techniques that were helpful but not solving the root cause when I went through EMDR it changed the way that my brain works and I was able to have peace I was able to have Clarity of thought I was able to get away from the battle that I've been fighting long enough to make sense of it and it was my own brain making sense to me instead of a counselor telling me what to think or telling me how to process the information my brain was doing it and it's incredibly valuable so you're talking about writing that is essentially 101 EMDR you're doing bilateral simulation you're processing information that's in there that's protected that you feel important and it's the same thing you're doing while you're watching the movie you're putting yourself in that position you're experiencing those emotions that that person is experiencing and you're processing that information that's the thing that we don't do because we think emotion I mean you guys can tell me but I was brought up with don't cry don't be weak you know move on just make it work and the military facilitates that and and we push that right Opera conditioning if you feel emotion on the battlefield you're going to get someone killed and that's great it really does work down range you really do need to focus and drive through those things when you come home that doesn't serve you so well people have a hard time connecting with you your spouse tells you you're a robot those kinds of things happen and we become a lexic so Lexia is the inability to define or experience emotion I can't even explain it there are hundreds of words to describe emotion in our language and then even more in other languages that aren't exactly the same and we'll use three and when we get to the point where we've taken oursel away from feeling that emotion for so long we actually lose the ability to express it and feel it so when it comes in we don't know what to do with it we don't have a definition for that feeling and so we don't have an understanding of how to travel through it and because we spent all our time being tough or getting past those emotions or compartmentalizing It Whatever terminology you want to use you've been training yourself to unlearn how to feel emotion and it is the opposite of what you need in order to get through it that makes sense that makes so much sense of what you just said it's like now I I understand a little bit better how to how to process what other people are talking about when they talk about stuff um so can you just Envision Adam wh's going on all over Optimus Ville oh yeah about everyone listening to us say oh that that's why that's why that's why it just continues light run all over yeah my kind of advice on that is if you if you use three words to describe every emotion you feel you need a feeling wheel and it's a touchy feely counselor therapist tool that's a bunch of feeling words that are colorcoded that describe feelings and they start in the Middle with sad or angry and they Branch out into things like betrayal or Injustice so that you can and really Define the emotion that's coming in if you use frustrated for every emotion that you have that presents as anger or something you don't like go get a feeling wheel and start training yourself how to define emotion so that you can understand what it is and let it be there and live through it I love it well I've learned a ton today it's a a ton it's a lot and I'm gonna have to process what I just heard yeah there's going to be a lot of processing Ben I don't want to let you go until we hear something else you're Lor's cousin and you have some perspective on that I'm fascinated with your therapist background how do you explain the laurian Chad Dynamic and what happened would you mind ex sharing that here yeah sure and I I want to preface this by saying I don't know Chad at all I never spoke to him ever never met him never talked to him um I spent time you know with Lor and my cousins from time to time I loved that house wherever it was um for me mostly in San Antonio and and I felt love there I loved going over there and just feeling accepted and loved every time I went it was a different vibe and I enjoyed it and I don't know anybody who didn't feel that way when they were at your place Adam when we were when we were younger um and even you know growing into adulthood and I go and Lori would cut my hair I went to computer school with Alex and we were going to be n professionals back in the 90s when you know we were going to make all this money right I'm far from that now but I experienced those guys in a different way you know when we were young we were having fun but there was also that element that I could see in them that was in me too where there was this internal struggle going on um for shirt and uh the way that I understand or have explained to my own family uh the questions that they've asked about these things is that there's something really powerful about being able to counter that I am not that's in your head and when you have that and you spend all your time in there fighting it you do things like achieve ments in order to convince yourself that you're good enough or that you have value you go get a certification you go get a degree um for me you go beat the Special Operation selection you know you prove to yourself by achievement that you're that you have value instead of that coming from an internal message or from a message from the people that you care about and when you do that long enough and it doesn't stick you'll reach for anything and so in my mind when I think about you know Lor's struggles and Alex's struggles just as people um I think about them having that that battle and I think about Chad presenting to them this opportunity to feel special unique important valuable something of worth where all that other stuff can go away you know you're part of the 144,000 you you're doing this special thing nobody else can do that nobody else can understand it's really easy for me to see them connect to that and say this is important this is what's going to relieve me from that internal struggle I've been fighting I'll do anything I'll I'll run this course I'll get into it I'll try to do what I can to make this the thing that solves that problem and I really feel like that the battle that was going on I don't know for sure but that's what I connect with that's how I make sense of it and that's what feels right to me that it was just I'll do whatever I can to feel like I'm good enough that's that's and that's exactly what I said that was my feeling my gut feeling and I told Rex this right when all this was going down I said look you know Lori and you know Lori had her all the things that happened to her she married all different guys she you know said Joe molested her kids and you know and all these things that that may have happened to her or that she had a lot of things that I feel like she wanted to do something with her life or be special and Alex had all these things where you know he you know didn't have us any success and by the way Alex could have been the most uh famous person in our family by you know being the best impressionist there ever was he really had talent to do all these great things and he didn't use that and or or Focus himself into doing that so he did a lot of things where he just took all these odd jobs odd jobs odd jobs never you know got really got married for six weeks but never was married or had kids and any of these things and then he battled with the church thing about you know going to church or not going to church and he wanted to have sex with a bunch of girls or whatever it was that he got excommunicated from the church he he had a huge weight on him so for Chad to tell him look come with us you're forgiven because you uh are an angel that came down with Nephi like he put all these things you know and gave them like you just said purpose so then people are like well how could Lori and how could Alex be involved with killing kids that's how if they felt like this is coming from God and they thought Chad was from God that came down that he explained that to them that they were all in on that and that's and I I know it's evil and it's all those things but they're saying how could they and I'm saying this is how they could this is I I think their brain their mindset was focused on just that this isn't me you know justifying the action but explaining how it could come about if I can be absolved of all my sins and stop feeling like a piece of crap you know and start feeling like I have value after all the things I've been through I give me that I'm going to go get that the easy way if it's convincing yeah if it's convincing enough and I really can believe in it if one or two things confirm this for me or I get a good feeling in this place I'm going to chase that because I've tried everything else right I mean Alex he was you're right he's talented and intelligent and when you can just go get a license in this and a certification in that and do this job and be good at that you keep trying to do that and it's not working it's not solving the problem I'm jumping from thing to thing from person to person to make me feel good about myself sex is a great escape from that idea that you're bad and you start feeling pretty good about yourself look this this woman and I just felt pleasure this feels pretty good that can become an addictive process just like alcohol or drugs can to solve that problem to make you feel like you have value or worth and it's an Escape yeah well I appreciate you you being transparent and talking about you know how you feel and what things that you explained and because a lot of it just is the same thing that I the way that I felt that things went by like how could Lori and Alex do this and that was my that was in my mind that was my explanation of how they could do it now I know they were Evil by doing it and they in my mind I you obviously you know I think Satan had a lot to do with it and and all those things but um people ask how could that happen and that's and just to explain that that's how it could happen and Rex brought up something that maybe one of his therapists had said uh or or not his therapist one of his friends had said that you know people say oh how could how could you do something like that because literally in your brain you don't want to ever think that you could do something like that but you could that's the thing where I would never people say I would never do that but right well was it Rex was it something like that I know it's controversial but uh was it something like that yeah yeah people all of us want to know that we couldn't do what Lori did or what Alex did right and they say but you can't yeah exactly I've so I will kind of connect that for for my community hopefully um you know I can talk to a guy in Iraq who's a dad and we can dehumanize people at war in order to do what we need to do but at the end of the day they're humans we're fighting against other guys who are dads a lot of times and if the tally or whoever comes up and says look we're going to come back here and excuse me if this is like way too explicit but this is the reality of things in that environment sometimes we're going to come back here and we're going to rape your wife and your kids in front of you and then we're going to kill them or you can take these guns and put him in your house and anytime one of our guy comes by you give him one or anytime you see the great white devil come by you take a shot at him then we won't do that and more than that we'll even protect you and what's his choice right we we roll into town those guys are there all the time they're living right next to them they know what they're doing they see them every day they're walking the streets with these guys and living life and so if I got a choice to protect my family from horrible things I might be capable of doing some of the things that I say I could never do it's about survival it's about protection it's about if you're starving you know what links are you going to go to to feed your family if they're in trouble what links are you going to go to to protect your family it's real yeah and we are capable of these things and sometimes it's about maybe I haven't been in a position to have to survive and so maybe I can't wrap my head around the choices they were making but I really feel like that's where they were yeah me too well then Adam and I and the whole Community are GNA be unpacking this for some time because you've given us you've given us a whole lot I I'll watch this probably 10 times until I get and get notes out for sure no kidding well you guys hit me up and tell me you know questions that people have and things that they want to know I I want to be as of much help as I can to anybody who's trying to unpack pack these things or figure these things out um I'm happy to you know answer questions and emails and texts and all that kind of stuff love it hey we certainly do that thank you so much yeah that was awesome yeah you guys are doing great things I love what you're doing I I love every minute of this um maybe we'll talk sometime you know like f does yes like our family does you meet other families no other families yeah okay we'll talk soon don't don't\n"