My Mom Saved Me At That Funeral | Episode 479

My Mom Saved Me At That Funeral | Episode 479

A funeral can be a strange kind of trigger, even when you think you’re prepared. I share what it felt like to walk into a service with my anxiety running high, why grief-heavy spaces are hard for me, and one simple choice that made it more manageable: I didn’t go alone. If you deal with stress, panic, or emotional overload, this conversation offers something practical and human, not polished advice from a distance.

That day also brought me back into a church I hadn’t been inside for about 20 years, and it forced a comparison between who I was then and who I’m fighting to become now. I talk about a powerful moment from therapy and a question that reframed the whole experience: can it help to actually see how far you’ve come? We get into self-judgment, shame, and the way old environments can pull up old identities, especially when you’ve lived through addiction patterns, trauma, or seasons of feeling lost.

From there, I connect the personal story to the bigger mission behind Voices for Voices. We’re building a mental health and recovery community grounded in storytelling, books, and upcoming audio, and I explain why sharing the show can be just as meaningful as a donation. I also open up about where some of my confidence cracks started, including sports pressure, baseball tryouts, setbacks after surgery, and how binge drinking became tied to acceptance.

If you need a reminder that you’re unique, you matter, and quitting isn’t your only option, press play. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who needs support today.

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*Voices for Voices is a 501c3 nonprofit charity. All donations are 100% tax deductible.

Chapter Markers

0:00 Welcome And How To Support

3:05 Funeral Anxiety And Stress

5:20 Bring Someone With You

6:55 Returning To A Church After Years

9:15 Therapy Perspective On Progress

11:35 Why Voices For Voices Exists

14:10 Donations Books And The Big Goal

17:15 You Are Unique Do Not Quit

20:10 Self Judgment And Sports Pressure

22:35 Tryouts Politics And Lost Confidence

26:45 Surgery Setbacks And Anxiety Roots

28:55 College Identity And Binge Drinking

31:05 Mortality Health Fears And Anger

33:55 Lucy In The Background And Closing

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Transcript

Welcome And How To Support

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes 0:02

Hi everyone, it's Justin here, Voices for Voices. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. Whether you're watching, listening here in the United States or across the world, we welcome one and all to our show. We have over 470 in our show catalog. So be sure to check those out. And if you can give us the big thumbs up, follow, subscribe, share, all those great things that are free to do, would greatly help us uh reach more people as well as follow our social media accounts. We're all over. So definitely follow, definitely reach out to maybe 25, 50, 100 of your contacts, connections, uh, and your phone and let them know about the voices for voices, TV show, and podcast. Uh, it's just uh an amazing feat that we have uh reached here as far as the number of shows, uh, as far as the uh community we have built and continue to build, uh, the people that we're helping, that we're reaching, and we have this great big gigantic goal to help at least three billion with a B help and help and help and reach three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond. And again, thank you for joining us. Uh, we're sending uh love and support your way, whether you're a believer or not. We're praying for each and every one of you every single day. Uh, thank you again for being with us. It is a uh much welcome, much needed day with blue skies, around 70 degrees uh here in the area. And uh hope the weather is good, great, where you may be. So again, if you can uh download other podcasts on it, you can download the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast as well. So download them all. Don't miss a thing. Stay with Voices for Voices. We're so grateful. Uh I uh I went to a funeral yesterday or an earlier show, uh, shared pretty pretty much uh the the detail, you know, as somebody with uh um well actually I didn't I don't know that I shared everything about my mental health as it related to the funeral. So let me try to we try to do that. Uh I don't I don't know who is comfortable when there are there's death when people are uh passing away from the earth on their way to heaven. Uh but I am definitely not one of those people. And I have anxiety, I have stress, doesn't matter if I know the person or I don't, uh is uh it's hard. Um it's hard to it's hard to see, hard to hard to be around people who have had a loss of a loved one. Again, whether I know them personally, if I've known them close or not, it's it's still hard. So the anxiety and distress level definitely goes up for me, and and it and it went up yesterday uh pretty high. And I guess I would I would recommend that if you're like me, or you're not like me, to go to if you're going to a service, a funeral service, a visitation, see if you can go with somebody. I think that's helpful. I I went with my mom. Uh and so it was helpful in that that regard that she was there um with me. Uh so definitely from uh and I'm not laughing because it's fun, it's not funny at all. I really needed to have another another person there with with me. Just I just don't handle those situations, and as you will have watched or listened, or and listen, uh I'll I cover so much more in depth of of the day. Uh there also was something that uh I didn't cover. And and so this this particular church, uh, while very close to my mom and dad's house, drove have driven by probably hundreds of times since what I'm talking about now. Uh yeah, we have we have friends, we have family, we have colleagues, we have loved ones, and and I just realized that it had been like, I don't know, twenty yeah. Probably twenty years uh since I'd been there, like inside, inside the actual church. I was doing them I was trying to do the the math inside my head. So that was the face of me doing the mental math, trying to do the mental math in my head. So about 20 years ago was the last time I was in there. Uh and under much different circumstances, much different. Yeah. Much different circumstances, much different for a lot of ways. Uh I still in my you know binge drinking days. Uh I you know, relationship-wise, I wasn't always the best at. And so that that's what I that's what I remember about just the actual being inside, like physically walking inside, or if you have a wheelchair, a walker, or a cane, or however, however, you you're able to be mobile. And I just realized that after my last um the last therapy session, and and and what my therapist said was, and I hadn't I hadn't thought about it this way. I'm glad she brought it up. And she said, well, but is it helpful to see how far you've come from from then, from that point, or those points that uh in your in your past. And I had to pause in my mind because I although you know that narcissistic mindset for a lot of my life, it's really I started my journey kind of back to life in 2017. And we're doing great things here at Voices for Voices. We're helping so many people, so many people. People that I'm I hope I can meet every single one of you. I really do. Now, in the event that I can't, which is probably most likely, because a lot of people, I I I don't know who you are, and how we've helped and impacted. Because not only are people watching and listening, if we look at like a story, you know, that'd be like writing first person about ourselves, and then third person would be with somebody else. So we know there's a ton, and we're so even more grateful to those of you who have and are and will share our show, our organization. We're a charity. We try to carry on as a business like a business, and we and we do. So we carry on like a like a business, because we are we're a charity, and so we do take donations, but the best form of donation is helping, is reaching out to others for us to be a helping hand when uh if when and if possible, and if you're able to, we are a charity in 501c3, nonprofit, we do accept donations, any amount, and I mean any amount that is donated, that is used to purchase our books in more and more and more ways to come. All that all those are 100% federally tax deductible here in the United States. If you live outside the United States, you just want to check with uh your tax preparer of how that that goes for you specifically. And so when I look at you know how far I've come, it's it's pretty far. And some of you you're like, yeah, you're here you go again. This narcissist trying to be all about yourself. And this in this particular point, I'm not. It's just looking at kind of two points at time. One point in time I was I had these particular character traits and fast forward to today, and I have these character traits. Some are better. Well, actually a lot are a lot are better. Others still work on. I mean, I'm talking about the whole person here. Or outside of talking about one specific area. Talking about me as a complete person. And so when I say thank you, I mean it. Thank you for for everything. For everybody, for every dollar, every cent, every book that's purchased. Voices for voices, publishing. Voices for voices audio coming soon. And so when I look at these entities, yeah, I mean, they're they're great to talk about. But at the core, just like at the core of Voices for Voices, I'm only around to help people. I've I've come to that conclusion. The main reason God's kept me around, again, I'm a believer, you don't have to be to join us. One of the only reasons I'm I'm I'm still on earth given so many opportunities to live when God could have taken me from earth. And I made it e I made it easy on him too, with some of the decisions I've made. And so I just wanna I wanna help. I want to help through story and camaraderie through books, through audio, maybe records, said publishing, others. If somebody hasn't told you in a while, or a long while, you're special, you're unique, you are loved. There's no one in the world like you. Nobody in the world has the same skills as you The easy thing to do is to give up. There really is. I've been there. I've been there so many times I've lost count. That's the easy thing to do is to give up. Giving up is easy. It's like when you shrug your shoulders, like eh. That seems too hard to do. Somebody else can do it. Somebody else already is doing it. So how would I do it differently? You all have to trust me when I say this. What it may look, what may look like what you want to do and are doing or making strides to do may look similar to what others, another person, other people, other organizations. Once you get started, once you get started, once you get started, and you've totally bought in, and I'm not talking about money in this particular case, when you totally bought into yourself, and we've limited the judging of ourselves that we're doing. I mean, I'm I'm a king or a prince or I'm something that has judged myself from the very beginning. And the judging really judging really began? I think you know growing up I was as I mentioned I've shared sports was so much in my life. It's so much. It was so much. And then once I started not to make the team that I wanted to, that I thought I should, and other things, I began to doubt myself. Like in American baseball, somebody hits a pop fly, it's in the sky, it's coming right to me. I have my glove ready. I'm ready for it to come down and catch in my glove. And I drop it. And I couldn't remember the last time I dropped a a fly ball. And then it happened again. I was so disappointed in myself. I didn't know where that came from. I think a good amount of it came from the anxiety and the stress of not. Being where I should be being on which team I felt I should be. See, I'd made all-star teams. I was number one pitcher, good hitter for years growing up, and then once high school came, all that changed. The politics of it. Such bullshit, man. And this is what I this is something I'm sharing. I may have shared before, but it's worth sharing now. So during tryouts, right? So you do different things. So right in baseball. Throw the ball, you catch the ball. You try to put the bat on the ball. Hit it as far as you can, as hard as you can. And so we were going through tryouts. Right? Who's gonna make what team? And there was this star, you know, this this freshman made varsity in all the other sports that he played that year. So naturally they make varsity, right? And baseball. And during tryouts, I was brought in to pitch. It's kind of like batting practice, but it's still testing, you know, how how well you you're doing. And on three pitches in baseball, you get one strike, two strikes. You get three strikes when you're batting, you're out. So then the next person comes up to bat. Unless it's a tryout, and then the next person comes up, and then the next person, and then you're just you know switching so everybody gets a chance, so the coaches can watch and see, and so I struck the prodigy out, didn't hit any walls off me, didn't hit any, and I get relegated to so that's pick that's pitching, that's strictly pitching, and people make teams strictly on playing one position, and so I felt that I was good enough to be on an upper team, which would have been varsity because here's here's this prodigy, and I just struck him out. Well, that didn't matter, decisions were already made at that point, it didn't matter, I struck him out, and so when I look back and go, and if somebody says, you know, look how far you've come from one point in time, I look at that and go that might very well be one of the times that I look at where my so my self-esteem started to take a dive because I try I was like, I gotta fix something, something's gotta be wrong with me. The people are seeing that I'm not seeing, and then I decided to go get checked out by an orthopedic doctor, my throwing shoulder, my left arm on my left side and left handed, ended up getting minor surgery, and then after that, nothing was ever the same. Dropped fly balls, wasn't just wasn't playing up to up to speed. Like I thought that surgery was gonna help, and that was gonna solve all the problems. Like I really did, it didn't, and so that's one of the areas where I look back and go, man, yeah. Maybe that's when when some of that anxiety started to really dig in deep. And so when it got to the point where I was at the end of my high school days, I went through a short stint at one school and then ended up at another college after briefly looking at the military because I didn't have an identity, I didn't know who I was, and then when I get to this the second school, when I end up graduating from college, and I meet people and I uh you know, I was strike up relationships and that I just kind of continued on that. Um I used alcohol, binge drinking was just what you did, but I felt that's just what you do in college, university. Those are about the times where I was thinking, I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna make it till I'm 40. Like what what can I do? I my professional sports dreams were dashed. And there's already so few people to make it to professionals, but some so my professional sports were dashed, and so I just looked other ways for acceptance. And one of those ways was in a certain certain way that tied to the church where the funeral was at yesterday. And so I'm not gonna get into any additional details about that and who and all that. I I don't wanna go there. One of the few one of the few places that I'm not comfortable sharing publicly because our show gets beams all across the world. So you are loved, you are cared for, people do love you, you are important. You are here on earth for a reason, and you know what? Probably more than one reason, probably multiple reasons to be a light to others, to be a light to ourselves, to show ourselves that yeah, we've made it, made it this far. None of us know the day or the hour. So let's all just let's just all as you know one humanity join together and say we don't know the day, the time we're gonna be taken. We don't there's so many deadly diseases, there's so many, you know, heart disease, all kind of cancers, all kind, all kinds of just wicked diseases. And then we go and we do the COVID shot. That's for another show, another time. I've had it on other shows, but it just disgusts me. D-I-S-G-U-S-T-S. It disgusts me. Those aren't vaccines, they're shots, they're killing people too soon. Not giving people enough time for treatment. That's all I have to say about that. I don't know if you've heard behind me on my shoulder. Let's see, is that shoulder? Yeah. No, over here. Uh, Lucy's on my shoulder. She's uh just snoozing away. So you might hear, like it's somebody else there. Uh that breathing, that's that's Lucy taking a snooze. So thank you for joining us. Give us a big thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, follow us on social media, reach out to 25, 50, 100, 200, your closest confidants, connections, and your phone. Share the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast with them. We'd love to have them in our community to continue our growth in our community that is to help others dealing with mental health challenges, trauma, recovery, trauma, this so many, so many things that we're all growing, we're all we're all trying to get better, do the best we can, and I hope that voices for voices is one of those avenues that has helped you, maybe at some point in time, and if it has, we'd ask you to please share. So let's celebrate the voices of everybody in the world, they deserve to be shared, and let's be a voice for ourselves, ourselves and those that may need it as well. So, thank you so much, and we'll see you on another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. Help us reach that three billion. Bye. We'll see you next time.