Welcome to Mindshift Power podcast, a show for teenagers and the adults who work with them, where we have raw and honest conversations. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the mind shifter. And welcome everyone. Today, we have with us Terry Tucker. He is from Colorado.
He is the founder of Motivational Check LLC. He is an international motivational speaker, an awesome one at that, and, an author. Now he was also once upon a time, he was a SWAT negotiator for the Cincinnati Police Department. Now this is part two of mental suicide. In part one, I talked about what mental suicide is and and some other details about it.
But in part two, we're gonna talk about what if you're that person around the person who is on that mental ledge? How can you help? Well, Terry's here to talk about his experience as a SWOT negotiator and how that relates to how we can help others who are themselves on a mental ledge. Thank you for coming today, Terry. How are you?
I am great, Fatima. Thanks for having me back on. It's good to see you again. Yes. And we say back on.
And for those listening, we recorded an episode with him already, but it's you're not gonna hear it till, like, next month because I'm I'm launching this one first. Alright. Now let's dive right in. How often have you dealt with people on a ledge or or, having a mental crisis of sorts? I mean, as a police officer, you you're usually not dealing with people that are having a great day.
So, I mean, through my tenure law enforcement career, but more specifically, I was a SWAT negotiator for four and a half years. And we used to always say that if you were talking to me under those circumstances and your house or apartment was surrounded by the police, you were probably having the worst day of your life up to this point. So I I can't tell you how many hundreds, maybe maybe even thousands over my entire law enforcement career of people that were were having some type of a crisis at that point in time. Right. So so my point is that you have a lot of experience, and that's why I have you here today.
So tell us about the tactics that you use to talk someone off of their mental ledge. Yeah. I mean, let's start with with how we communicate with each other, not just as as a negotiator or but how we communicate, how you and I communicate, how we communicate with our kids or our peers or our friends or whatever that is. And I remember when I started as a negotiator, they gave us a formula, and that formula was seven thirty eight fifty five. So the way we communicate a message to someone else, 7% of it are the words that we use.
And think about how much we agonize over, am I saying the right thing? That's only 7% of how you communicate that message. 38% of how you communicate that message is the tone of voice that you use with that message. Are you is your voice real high? Are you talking real high?
Or or are you calm and relaxed? So 38% of it is how is how is the tone of voice you use with that message. And then 55%, more than half of how you communicate that message is your body language and your facial expressions. So if you and I are talking, and for example, I've got my arms crossed, that's a closed body language position. What I'm not saying anything negative, but I'm expressing that I really don't care what you say.
What you say is not important because I'm closed off to it. So think about that just in terms of how you communicate because we all communicate using that formula. So when you are on, when when someone is having a mental crisis and you show up, you're making sure that your communication is clear. And what I say to that is when we have someone around us who is on a mental edge, and I'm not talking about you're you're not sure they're on a mental edge. I mean, you really you know them, so you know they're on a mental edge.
You know that they're on the edge of something. How we communicate to them matters. What's what's the other thing? It it it does matter. And one of the things we used, we called it tactical empathy.
I think you can get rid of the word tactical and just say empathy, which is help me to understand where you're coming from or what's going on here. Again, the the the important word there is understand. Not necessarily agree. If I was negotiating with somebody that we knew just murdered three people, I wasn't going to necessarily agree with them, but I wanted to understand where they were coming from. I wanted to hear their side of the story.
Because if you're if you're empathetic to another person, that creates rapport, that creates trust. And then that trust leads to you having some type of influence over that person because they believe, and we do. We we care about that individual, and then that influence will allow you to hopefully help them change their behavior. And one of the things we used to do is we would ask how and what questions. We would stay away from why questions because why questions sound accusatory.
Well, Terry, why did you do that? Oh, wait a minute. Is is he is he didn't think I did some. Did I do something wrong? In his eyes, do I look different?
As opposed to, well, Terry, what got us to this point? I can get the same information asking a softer, less intrusive type of question. So think about how and what questions, and let me end with this. If anybody listening to us thinks that somebody out there, a friend, a colleague, somebody at their church, whatever, is thinking of hurting themselves or committing suicide, ask. Ask them if they are.
And we used to get this all the time. Well, if I ask them, I'm putting the suggestion in their mind. No. You're not. You are absolutely not doing that.
What you're doing is opening the door for them. I mean, if somebody's given away their stuff, if they're talking about killing themselves, if they're saying goodbye to people, that's a pretty good clue that they might be willing that there might be going to hurt themselves. Ask them. Flat out ask them. We used to ask them.
We would say, hey, Bob. Are you thinking of killing yourself? And if the answer was no, you would get back something like, no, you idiot. I'm not thinking about killing myself. Okay.
Good. But if the answer was yes, then you just open the door for Bob to say, oh my god. Somebody cares. Somebody sees what's going on here. Somebody sees me as a human being, and you may have just opened the door to let them now vent what's what's going on in their life.
And that's what we wanted them to do, burn off a lot of that energy by venting about what's going on. And you just said a whole lot that is so true. And, again, I I want people to understand how to apply this to people that aren't necessarily physically trying to off themselves, but they're mentally getting ready to just just die, just give up, just mental suicide. If you see someone that just like Terry was saying, if you see someone who's on the edge mentally, and you really can't see that with everyone unless you know them. So and and, again, I'm only talking to those of you who wanna help the people around you that you know.
You know well enough to recognize that they're on a mental ledge. What I'm hearing Terry say is try understanding instead of being judgmental. Instead of looking at them like, why are you thinking that? That's stupid. Like, even if you don't say those words, but your attitude does, your face does, your, you know, your physical expression does, that that's the the statement they're going to take.
And you may push them over the edge because of the way you're communicating or just not even trying trying to understand. And, again, even if they're totally wrong, still try to listen. It doesn't mean that you agree with them. It means that you're listening and you're being an outlet for them because when people are on a mental edge, 99.9% of the time, they're not saying that out loud that way to anyone. You're you're absolutely right.
And and I think one of the best things you just said there, you know, if if you're talking to somebody and you've got that facial expression, what do we just talk about? 55% of how we communicate is our body language and our facial expression. Yeah. You're not saying anything negative, but your face to say, I think you're stupid. I think you shouldn't be doing this.
I think you shouldn't be thinking this way. So just don't be judgmental. The other thing is one of the biggest tools you have is your voice. If you are calm, if you are curious using your curious voice, that was one of the biggest things we were taught as negotiators is to be curious about what the person said. And the other thing is, and I'm guilty of this a lot in my life, I wanna solve the problem.
Get away from that. You don't want to solve their problem. You can't solve their problem. What you want them to do is vent. What you want them to do is get it off their chest.
And by asking those how and what questions, that does two things. It allows them to talk and it also engages them, and they don't even realize this. It engages them to help you and help themselves get out of their situation. So don't try to oh, they say something, and then you gotta say something. What we used to do was called parodying or mirroring where we would say the last two or three words that they said or the most important two or three words that they said, and we would say it in a in a curious kind of way.
Oh, really, Bob? You think x y z? And then we would go silent because we don't like as human beings, we don't like the silence between us, but that silence gets the person to start talking again, gets them to start engaging again. So don't don't think it's about you. It's not about you.
It's about helping them. So be ask those two or three words and then go silent for at least five seconds. Five seconds is a long time. Say it and then then be quiet. I promise you they'll start talking again.
I am so glad I had you on here. What you just I the biggest thing that stuck out for me and maybe it's because of my own personal experience of everything you that you just said was you don't have to be the solution. For me and the type of person I am, I care very deeply about people, and I want everyone in the world to be happy and heal. But I had to learn. The younger version of me needed to understand what you just said because I thought that I had to have all the answers and felt bad if I didn't.
I felt like I must be a loser. I must not be doing things right because I didn't solve the problem, and they still feel that way. And the truth is that's not your job. And just listening is a part of the solution. The solution solutions are like a cake recipe.
It's never just one ingredient. And listening to that person who's on that mental edge is a part of the solution. You do not have to rebut everything. When I was younger, I used to do that because I thought I was doing the right thing. And I'm mentioning that because I know it's not just me.
There are other junior Fatima's out there who are doing the same thing with, well, with good intentions. Like, I had good intentions, but it's the wrong thing to do. And I had to learn what you're saying. And, again, we're talking to the people who wanna help those who are on a mental edge. We have to make sure that we are doing more listening than talking.
That's absolutely right. And by asking those how and what questions, you can't come up with a solution. You may have the solution for the person, but until they figure out what the solution is, until the right time hits them right between the eyes, it's like, oh, that's the thing I should have done. You could say it a million times, but if they're not ready to hear it, then it's not gonna do you any good. Asking them those how and what questions, like I said, engages them to come up with the solutions in their own mind.
You're not giving them the solution. You're helping them come up with the solution by using those how and what questions. And that's so key. That is so god. What you're saying is so important.
There's so many people out there and, you know, doing this episode because I know there are people who want to help those around them and they just don't know what to do. And this episode's for you. So we're giving you some some tips that you can some principles that you can lay down and try to help them. And I will say it's not that you don't ever want to give advice in the moment, but let that be secondary and only if you see that there's an opening and they're willing to listen. The way I put it is you don't throw seeds on a sidewalk if you want something to grow.
If you see that they're not ready to receive the seeds that you want to sow into them, wait until the ground is ready. They might be cement right now. For whatever reason, there's a lot of reasons why they they might be cement, and there's some might have some very legitimate reasons for feeling the way they do. But you have to make sure that the person is ready. You don't you know, if you wanna grow an apple tree, I'm not gonna put an apple seed on the sidewalk and wait for it to grow.
You know, I'm gonna put it in the ground in the right soil. And when we give advice, we have to make sure that we're paying attention to the soil we're putting it in. Where is this person right now? Listen to the words they're saying. What are they telling you?
Are they telling you I'm offing myself no matter what you say? Are they telling you I don't really wanna off myself. I just don't know what else to do, but I'm hurting so bad. I don't know what else to do. Are they saying, I just can't take this stress anymore.
I just wanna go. Because sometimes that's the way people are feeling and that's what they're saying. And, again, they don't have to physically be trying to off themselves. When you see people that are constantly cutting themselves, which is still a really big issue in America, a lot of this applies to them. Not everyone, but often.
Take the time to listen and pay attention to what they're saying. Don't just slough off what they're saying because it's stupid. And maybe what they're saying is jacked up and messed up and crazy. But even if it is, that's where they are. That's where they are.
It's what they believe right now. So that's what you got to work with. You you don't have to work you're not gonna be able to work with where they should be because they're not there. Yeah. It's not coming up with the right solution.
It's coming up with the right solution at the right time. So much of anything in life is timing. So, you know, telling them what to do if they're not ready to hear it isn't gonna get them to make a change. So in a nutshell, how do we you said this to me before the recording, and I you worded it so perfectly. How do we talk people off of a mental ledge?
So I always this is, I think, a good analogy because we all did this when we were young. We would go to the park or our friend's backyard and play on the the teeter totter or the seesaw. And what what we used to describe what we did is when we first started negotiating with somebody, their emotional brain was way up in the air, and their rational brain was weighed out on the ground. And over the course of time and asking those open ended questions and mirroring or parroting what they were saying, you would hopefully get that teeter totter to where it was at equilibrium. And then again, over more time asking more questions, doing more listening, being more curious, you would hopefully get them to the point where their rational brain was way up in the air and their emotional brain was way down on the ground.
And that's the time when we were negotiating that we would talk about putting the gun down, coming out, and things like that, Solution based things. You're not gonna develop you're not gonna have solutions when somebody's yelling and screaming. They're not open to solutions like we just talked about. You're not you're not gonna be effective there. You have to get to the point where their rational brain is up in the air because we all make better decisions with our rational brain than we do with our emotional brain.
Absolutely. That is a % true and not just on the subject we're talking about, but all throughout life. All throughout life. Well, Terry, I've really enjoyed having you on. This has been awesome.
For those of you who are listening, I strongly advise you to, go to his website, which is in the show notes. Follow him. He is a serial guesser. He's been on a bajillion podcast and shows and and speaking engagements. But the reason I suggest, that you follow him isn't because of the volume of guessing that he's done, but the quality of what he has to say.
This man, you've only heard a teeny, teeny, tiny, teeny, tiny piece of a nugget of what he's got to say. He's got a lot of wisdom and, just I've even gained things from conversation with him. So I suggest that you do follow him, and you you'll just be better off in your life if you wanna be. So, again, Terry, thank you for for coming today. I really appreciate you taking the time and using your expertise to to explain, what a lot of people need to hear right now.
Well, Fatima, thanks for having me on. I enjoyed talking with you again. And now for a mind shifting moment. If today's message was for you, part one, about either getting ready to or already having committed mental suicide, I want you to know that there really is help for you. If you're looking for someone to see if there's someone near you professionally who can help you, go to FatimaBay.com, and go to the menu.
Go to the other help page, and there's a free resource there for you to find someone near you. And if you are one of the people who we're talking to in the second half, who are around someone who's given up hope. You're around someone who looks like they're on a mental ledge. Hopefully, you heard the key thing is to just listen without judgment. Be there.
That in and of itself will not solve every problem, but it'll it'll lead to solving the problem because they first have to trust you. I hope that this message has been enlightening and fruitful for everyone in one way or another. The key thing is to remember there is hope. There really is. Thank you for listening to mind shift power podcast.
Please like and subscribe to my YouTube channel at the mind shifter. If you have any comments, topic suggestions, or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit FatimaBay.com/podcast. Remember, there's power in shifting your thinking. Tune in for next week.
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