From Adversity to Empowerment in the Healing Journey - 190

Navigating the murky waters of what it truly means to heal, this episode is a deep dive into the complexities of our psychological makeup, inspired by a candid conversation with my friend who's not only well-informed but also unafraid to challenge popular notions. Grappling with PTSD myself, I've come to see the scars and struggles not as abnormalities but as integral threads in the fabric of human existence. We unravel the tangled narrative that often places growth and healing in a box, marked 'abnormal', and instead paint a picture that honors the natural ups and downs of life. Join us as we probe the concept of 'healing' and how it intersects with intelligence, strength, and the human spirit, expanding the conversation beyond the confines of conventional wisdom.

Then, we tackle the insidious nature of the victim mindset, inspired by the indomitable spirit of Viktor Frankl, and my own journey from combat zones to inner battles. We reflect on the tightrope walk between embracing a diagnosis and being consumed by it, underscoring the potential for acceptance and self-empowerment to break free from its grasp. The episode is further enriched by the insights gained from my coaching clients' breakthroughs and my wife's valiant dance with an incurable ailment. We highlight the power of choice, the role of support systems, and the relentless quest for betterment, promising listeners a perspective that champions resilience and the pursuit of inner peace.

Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. Okay, it is wonderful to have you back, and this is not you coming back. This is your first time here. Stick around for a while. Hopefully you'll learn something and quite possibly be entertained, despite the fact that my voice is so monotone all the time. Hopefully it's at least soothing, all right. So today the conversation is inspired by a text exchange that I recently had with a friend of mine, and this friend of mine is very, very sharp, very well read and often sees the world in a way that is very unique and certainly different from the way that I tend to naturally view the world, and I think the perspective that he was sharing over text message is something that I valued first off and that I thought, yeah, maybe this is worth sharing. So thank you to him for inspiring this episode, and he does listen to the show. So if I have mischaracterized anything that he was texting about. Well, I'm sure I'll hear about it. So I had recently recommended a book to him and he's in the process of kind of getting started with the coaching journey and finding a coach and wanting to work through some things, and I think that his path is very much like the path that I walked as well, albeit several years ago, I guess over a decade now at this point, and that is that in the beginning kind of thought that well, coaching is for other people. I've gotten my stuff figured out and to the extent that I'm sort of carrying any sort of quote unquote head trash, well, I'm strong enough and smart enough to carry it and eventually figured out, if I haven't already. So basically, thanks, but no thanks. Coaching isn't for me, although I will say that my attitude toward coaching in the beginning was far more aggressive, I guess, and far less PC than what my friend expressed, and I think generally my friend is far more considerate and conscientious than I was several years ago when I was first introduced to this concept of maybe you need some help. So anyway, enough about that.

Speaker 1: 2:58

The book that I had recommended to him started to talk in its introduction about healing and the message that he communicated to me over text and again, you know this isn't so much about being in 100% fidelity to the text message that he sent, but more around this concept that it inspired for today's episode. But his concern that he expressed is that he had some I think he said he had some feelings about the word healing and that it was a little bit triggering due to concerns of pathologizing people. And so clearly we want to take a look at the word pathologize and when we take a look at that word, what we're talking about when we say pathologize, at least within the confines of this episode, pathologize is to view or characterize as medically or psychologically abnormal. And his perspective is that normal human experience of getting stuck in life, carrying quote unquote baggage or quote unquote head trash, is not something that should be labeled as abnormal. Now, for myself, I tend to think of being wounded and then working on healing as normal parts of life. And for those who have listened to the show for a while, you know that I spent what? 16 years working my way through different manifestations of PTSD, from my combat deployments to Iraq, and that as part of that there were times when I was contemplating suicide. Now, luckily, and also with a great deal of work and discipline and support from professionals and friends and family, I've gotten to a place in my life where I feel, knock on wood, I feel pretty confident that I've got that that issue handled and that the notion of being suicidal is is not a concern of mine anymore and doesn't seem to be a concern for my wife and that's probably a good sign, right, because she is definitely a sharp-eyed individual and definitely pays attention to how I'm doing. And so, anyway, point being is I have some personal experience with this notion of pathology.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Now, before I lose the thread here, I think that when we look at pathologizing, especially that definition of, you know, being characterized as abnormal in a surprising way, which actually for individuals who have been hurting for a long time with seemingly inexplicable maladies, whether those maladies are medical or whether they're psychological is irrelevant. But for those individuals who have been suffering for a long time and and sort of laboring under, under pain for a long time, having some sort of label or having been assigned some sort of defined problem set, can actually feel quite uplifting. And it feels uplifting because somebody sees you, somebody says, oh yeah, you have this, it's not just some fictitious element of your imagination, it's not something that is in your head that you're making up. We've seen it. You're not alone and your condition is called X, even if we don't have a solution for it. Just beginning to recognize or or being recognized, I guess is is really the point there.

Speaker 1: 7:24

So for some individuals and I have to say that for myself there was an element that that I really received some comfort when I first started to recognize that the psychoemotional symptoms that I was experiencing was not me just being a pansy. And I mean, hopefully you can appreciate the fact that, having been in the military and having been raised in a certain way, I didn't want to think of myself as just I don't know some, some crybaby. And I think, for a lot of the clients that I have and a lot of the folks that listen to the show, I know that they also have a mindset and an identity. Whether they're male or female or, you know, self-identify as neither of those things, it doesn't matter. They, they are hard individuals and they do not. They don't have a, they don't have a sense of, they do not want to be viewed as again these, these pansies that just sort of make something up.

Speaker 1: 8:26

And so for myself, when I went through that experience and had some of my conditions labeled by professionals, it was actually quite comforting. And you know I've I've gone through different treatment regimes and have been around other combat veterans who, for the first time, were receiving their, their diagnosis, let's say, and were able to recognize oh, wow, yeah, I'm, I'm, I've got this thing happening, I've got this problem and I'm, I'm in this abnormal state I used to be one way, whether it, let's say, it's um, oh, I don't know, balance issues. A lot of the people that have been hit with repeated improvised explosive device detonations or who have received other sort of brain traumas their vestibular system is often screwed up and so their sense of balance is just off, and sometimes it's off by a little and sometimes it's off by a lot. When it's off by a lot, it's a lot more obvious, but when it's off by a little, you can spend a lot of your time wondering is this, am I, am I making this shit up? Is this really happening? And then you get these moments where things you know really go sideways on you. You're like, oh, wow, like I'm, I can't be making that up, but it's subtle enough that you're not sure.

Speaker 1: 9:54

And so the various groups that have been around, that you know, have had these individuals who have experienced these various traumas again very physical, mental, emotional, what have you. There is a strong degree of comfort that comes with being seen, being recognized. Yeah, the problems with pathology there might be several, but I guess the couple that I'm going to talk about tonight is that when you have an expert telling you that you have a condition and you're you're basically having a label slapped on top of you by a professional, by an expert, there's a risk that that sort of expert halo that floats above the expert's head as being all knowing and you know, at least in that field, that can sometimes get the patient stuck in that assignment. And this is where something really tricky can can happen. It doesn't always happen, but it can happen.

Speaker 1: 11:04

And and before anybody gets, you know too, upset with me, I want to make sure that you understand that I'm not trying to make light of anyone facing a condition, whether it has been formally labeled, diagnosed or not, and I have the utmost compassion for anyone experiencing judgment and lack of support, especially from professionals or experts, after having received a diagnosis or or been labeled with a certain condition, right, and in many cases that compassion comes from some of my own experiences and also experiences of having watched my wife, who has also been dealing with some pretty pronounced medical issues these last three years and in some cases, doctors not believing her and I've seen how much that impacts her, and there are various forums in which she, you know, sort of participates to try to gather information about the condition that she has. And other people have also reported experts not believing them and in some ways pathologizing them in, in in a sort of reverse direction, as in oh you're, you know, you're fine, but you're just making this up. And so I really truly do have a connection to the sense of compassion. And so the the next subject here that I'm going to talk about I, I'm, my goal is not to inflame anybody, my goal is not to delittle anyone, and I myself, I guess, did this for a while and managed to find my way out of it, and that is entering victim mindset. So, to clarify, when we look at victim, what are we talking about? Well, one definition that's salient for the conversation is one that is acted on and usually adversely affected by a force or agent. Another meaningful definition, one that is subjected to oppression, hardship or mistreatment. There are a couple others that are probably not as germane to today's conversation, but ultimately there's an element of harm or hardship at the very least, and that you are subjected to it by an outside force.

Speaker 1: 13:59

Now, I don't remember when I did this particular episode, but I don't know a few weeks ago, a few months ago, somewhere in there. I'm trying to see if I can find it real quick, which I cannot. So if I can find it, I will put it in the show notes. But I did an episode on oh there it is, boom, episode 185, so not that long ago the difference between being victimized and being a victim. If you want to deeper dive into victim mindset, I would take a look at that episode.

Speaker 1: 14:31

But essentially, when we are looking at victim mindset and when we are looking at being victimized, one element of differentiation between having been victimized and being a victim as an ongoing is being victimized is a transaction that occurs. Is it physical thing that has happened to you? Now it may potentially be continuing to happen to you because you may be in a situation where somebody or some organization has power over you. You are less powerful than them, or him or her or whatever, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you will adopt a victim mindset or a victim identity. You might be thinking okay, I'm pretty fuzzy on what you're talking about here, sean, and there is actually.

Speaker 1: 15:37

There are several books about victim identity and victim mindset, but one of the ones that's a real classic is Man's Search for Meaning, and I have talked about that ad nauseam on the show. But just to give a quick snapshot in case anybody has not read it or hasn't heard about it, the author was a prisoner in more than one Nazi concentration camp during World War II, and the author, his whole family, was killed by the Nazis and this, victor Frankel, is the author's name. Frankel experienced so much hardship and had so little power in that scenario. He was literally a prisoner of the Nazis. Can you imagine something that is worse than that? I mean, I guess maybe there's always something worse, but I feel like that's pretty top shelf in terms of really shitty, horrible, disempowering kind of situations. And even in that environment he noticed individuals who chose to stay on an inner path, who refused to allow the Nazis to break down their sense of inner self-worth or their sense of respect for one another. So, even in this place, where they were treated so inhumanely by their captors, some of these individuals retained the strength and the vision to ensure that they focused on how they conducted themselves.

Speaker 1: 17:26

And Frankel often talks about how the last of the great human freedoms is the power of choosing how to conduct oneself, and, paraphrasing, but that is the message. And so when we look at victim mindset, we have to recognize that in this larger discussion of being pathologized, of having an expert label you as broken, right or abnormal if we want to be a little bit less inflammatory but to have somebody try to label you, if you're going to sort of succumb to that labeling, you are complicit in that. And again, to remind you, I have the utmost compassion and I walked this path myself. There was a time when I thought about oh gosh, you know just this, like busted combat veteran, I'll never be able to live a normal life, I'll never be able to get married because I'm too edgy, I can't sleep right, I you know my nightmares come every night, and who's going to want to be with me? Yeah, there were times when I had really dark thoughts and thoughts that precluded any sort of happy future, and it was in large part pegged to this pathology. Oh you are this thing, you're this broken thing.

Speaker 1: 19:07

And luckily I actually had one of the neuropsychologists. I never knew that that was the thing that you could be, but apparently it is. And she explained pathology to me and she said that you know, yeah, it can be good for people to recognize that they have a condition and that other people have the condition as well and they're not alone and they're not making it up. But if they get stuck there, they wallow in that label and they make it their identity. That's when real problems arise for that individual, because they no longer work to get better. And that's one of the things that I have been really fortunate in. I have family and friends who have stood by me and who have refused when I wanted to quit and when I wanted to just have my own pity party and when I wanted to just wrap that pathology around myself like a never-ending blanket of misery and limitation. They were unwilling to let me do that and it led to difficult conversations, what we would normally, I think, call fights, arguments, and I'm sure that there were times when they did not feel very appreciated by yours truly, and yet they stuck by me. They would not allow me to just get mired down in the muck of this pathology.

Speaker 1: 21:03

And if we look at the lessons coming out of man search for meaning and what Victor Frankel talks about, where is it that maybe your condition has no cure, maybe there's absolutely no relief? Can you find your way to peace with that? There's another book by Arthur C Brooks and Oprah Winfrey If you don't know who Oprah Winfrey is, then it cannot help you but in either case, the book that he's recently launched is Build the Life you Want, and in that book he talks about how individuals who have had terminal conditions have been able to find genuine happiness, true, authentic happiness, by being able to accept the fact that their condition is terminal, that they will not make it out alive, and that these individuals have used different means and methods by which to come to that equanimity and peace. But if we go back to looking at those definitions of victim, not only is harm one of the common elements, but another one of the common elements is that there's a shift of the power. And so if we combine what Arthur C Brooks talks about with Oprah Winfrey, of course, and we also look at what Victor Frankel is talking about, and there are myriad books out there that deliver the same message, because this is something that has been happening with humans as long as humans have been around, and there are quite a few people have decided to chronicle this interesting and yet inspiring quirk of human capacity for us to be able to actually tap into empowerment, self-empowerment, despite the fact that we are externally disempowered. When you hear it said that way, it is very paradoxical and most likely counterintuitive. But when we allow ourselves to come into a place of acceptance and peace with details or conditions that we cannot, that we legitimately cannot change them, then we actually do take back our own sense of control, not over the environment, the external, but over ourselves.

Speaker 1: 23:53

It's been interesting for me to observe, in the coaching work that I do with clients. It's been interesting for me to observe the ways in which, through coaching, individuals begin to get through that process of peace building inside of themselves and things that used to really irritate them or really scare them no longer do, even though the circumstances are still present, they don't mind anymore. So if you're facing something and you've received this label that you are medically or psychologically or emotionally or physically, whatever, abnormal, if it's helpful for you to be able to have that label and to recognize oh yeah, this is the condition that I have. Awesome. If you're the person who didn't really require that label in order to have some sort of grounding or orientation as to what was going on with you also amazing, cool, no problem.

Speaker 1: 25:16

But in either situation, what I strongly advise is that you pay attention to where it is that the subtle little influences start to creep in that cause you to slow down or cause you to become complacent with the limitations of that condition, and what I implore you to do is to try to continue to stay on the path of trying to make your situation better, if you can. I've been so deeply inspired by my wife these last three years because the condition that she's facing as of yet doesn't seem to have a cure. There are different treatment modalities, that kind of nip at the edges a little bit here and there, make things a little bit better, but there hasn't been anything where it's like yep, we got you sorted out, come over here, do this thing or things and you'll be good as new. And it's been hard for her at times, really hard, and there are times when she does sort of fall into a gray cloud or a dark cloud for a few days. But just as my friends and family did for me, I try to do for her to try to stay encouraging, to try to keep sure, keep sure, make sure that she continues to come back to looking for solutions.

Speaker 1: 27:02

And to her credit right, because she's the one doing this, I'm just on the sidelines cheering her on but to her credit and her strength and her resolve, which are so inspiring, she continues to do research of her own, where she tries to find other individuals like her and to try to gather information about what has helped. And even if it's only 1% better, that is, 1% that she didn't have before. But if your situation really truly is unsolvable and has zero capacity to be 1% better in the external physical world, then can you at the very least come to a place of peace with your own lack of power to change the outer but a near limitless potential to change the inner. So I hope this is helpful for you. I hope that if you do know somebody that is in a fairly intractable situation, that maybe this conversation is something that could help them and, if so, feel free to share it or don't. It's totally up to you and until next time, take care of each other.