9 - Overcoming Depression, Despair, and Defeat

“You don’t have to be okay all the time—but don’t give up.” - Joe Wanner

When It All Feels Like Too Much

I’ve had more than one moment in life where everything felt like too much. The pressure, the rejection, the pain—it piled up. And there were times where I really thought about ending it. I didn’t see a way forward. The weight of it all was just that heavy.

The first time I felt that low was at 17. I had just gotten cut from basketball, was struggling at home, and felt completely alone. I walked out along the road thinking, “Would anyone even notice if I was gone?” Then, out of nowhere, I got a text from a friend saying she loved me and so many others did too. That message pulled me back. Literally saved my life.

It Doesn’t Just Go Away

It happened again in college. Family losses, breakups, financial stress—it all hit hard. I kept performing, kept showing up, but inside I was numb. I didn’t even process it until years later when I finally sat down with a therapist. What kept me going? One or two people who reminded me I wasn’t alone.

Keep Showing Up

I’m not a therapist. I can’t give clinical advice. But I’ve been through it. And I’m still here. If you’re struggling, don’t stay silent. Talk to someone. Take the next small step. Just getting through today is enough. And sometimes, that’s all you need to do.

If the information in these episodes have helped you in your business journey, please subscribe to the show and leave an honest review.

Chapters
07:36 Navigating Life's Challenges and Relationships
12:25 Finding Hope in Isolation and Struggles
17:02 Transforming Pain into Purpose

Make a Cold connection with exercise physiologist, sales coach, and much more @JoeWannerOfficial on Instagram

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:31

You ever have those feelings where you just feel so suffocated by life and everything going on around you that it just leads to just massive sadness, depression. You just have so much despair. Feel defeated. You just don't know how you're gonna make it to the next day. Welcome to another episode of Built for the Cold Podcast. Too cold for the average Joe, just right for me and the listeners of this show, where we teach you how to take some of the coldest experiences you'll have in your life and how to not let it define you. And even though you may feel victim at a certain time, it doesn't mean you have to claim victim. It doesn't mean whoa is me. Or should I say, oh, Joe is me in my case, right? And I want to share with you today different times in my life, and I don't know why I chose black of all things, not to be in another somber mood of like, oh, like look at all the stuff that happened. Sometimes I think black is pretty cool, actually. But however, that aside, right, things that happened to me that cause so much of these feelings, right? These are the D's that sometimes can get us so deep in our own thought that we wonder if, like, is life even worth it? There's been multiple times where not only did I attempt, but I also can heavily considered taking my own life. I'm so grateful I'm here. I'm so grateful I didn't let the devil fully take me off the deep end to the point I just thought my life wasn't worth it. But there were some very, very hard times. You've heard a lot of podcasts up till now about different things I've gone through from like, you know, diagnosis and disease to death all over the place, massive financial debt and struggle. Right? There's a couple more to share as this season comes to a close. But I want you to know that if you've experienced any of these things, and if you feel like you want just someone to talk to to help you sort out like what to do, I am no counselor, I'm no expert, I'm no therapist. All I can share is the experience that I've gone through and how I overcame it. And I did not blame the G-O-D in the process of experiencing all these D's. Because when I was in high school, I felt like I had very limited resources, obviously, financially. I had very fairly strict Catholic parents. Like I grew up the oldest of six, so I know just kind of traditionally in a lot of these families, the oldest gets the brunt of everything. And I felt it. I felt it at different moments in time. I'll give a couple different moments in time, but it was just like I remember I was 17 years old with my high school youth group, and we were gonna go see The Dark Knight when it came out. So that ages myself a little bit. That's you know, I was in high school at that time. And my parents wouldn't let me go see it. Even though I was with the Catholic youth group, they wouldn't let me go see the dark night. I remember getting in a massive fight with my dad. I was like, this is BS. Like, I don't understand you looking at your Catholic bishop ratings or whatever, how it's a dark movie. Of course, it's a dark night. It's Batman. Get over it. I didn't go see it. And I remember that story like it's yesterday. Or I remember like there were there were girls that I dated in high school that they were so intimidated by my parents, they actually broke it off with me. There was one time, and this is not to embarrass my family, not to embarrass my dad. I I know with good intention, he just he was doing what he thought was right at the time. But I remember we went to go see Kung Fu Panda at movie theater, and I had I think I was a sophomore with my girlfriend at the time, and my dad threatened, he came with my siblings, and then my brother came and she brought her friends, so it's kind of like a group thing. And my dad said, if you two sit in the back, I'm gonna sit right in between you two. That scared her away. And I just felt so suffocated by it. Like I couldn't just be myself. I wasn't gonna do anything, I wasn't gonna sleep around. That wasn't my intent. I just wanted to like just have some independence. Like, gosh, that's all I wanted. And I couldn't have it. There was another girl, too, that explained like one time to me, it's like, my parents are really intimidated by your parents. I don't think this is really gonna work. I just felt so restricted. To the point, I remember a moment in time at 17 years old, right? This was the first time where I really considered, like, I just might need to take my own life. It's not worth it. No one recognizes what I'm doing, no one even cares. Family doesn't care, siblings don't care, they're doing their own thing. And at this time, one of those girls broke up with me. Only for, I think it was maybe a couple weeks later, just with another guy. So whatever. That happened. I had given my life to basketball, right? All my spare waking hours were toward practicing basketball, studying basketball, but I didn't have the resources. I didn't have the trainers, I didn't have the AAU experience, I didn't have all these reps actually playing game speed, which is very hard to compete with a lot of high-caliber athletes. Remember, our high school, our basketball team, my sophomore junior and senior year won the state championship at the highest level. A few of them played Division I, some played in the NBA. So that was the basketball team I got cut from. And home life just sucked with my parents. It was horrible. Like I literally would avoid home, and I would do every activity at school just to avoid going home. Even just like the the restriction of it. We didn't even have like iPhones back then. I had a flipped cell phone, didn't even have the internet. And they had this rule where once I got home, I had to put this phone that I had on like some stand by the kitchen table, couldn't take it into my room, couldn't take it anywhere just to text my friends. And even just a simple rule like that, I just felt so restricted and limited as a teenager. I'm kind of like, give me some freedom. This sucks. To the point that I blew up one time. I don't feel great about this story at all. I was so angry at my parents, explicit of this, F you, this, all this stuff, just really just unhinged. And I run away from home. And we kind of grew up by kind of a major street, you know, cars go 40, 50 miles an hour. And I'm walking along that road, and I'm just like, you know what? I can't do this anymore. What's the point? I could just jump out from one of these cars right now, and that's it. Actually, I might consider doing that. Fortunately, I have my phone on me and I hear it buzz, and I get this text from one of my best friends from high school, and just randomly out of nowhere, just text me like, hey Joe, I love you, and so many people do, just thanks for who you are. I start bawling. I don't jump out of the car, and I slowly walk home. Then my dad shares his story with how he grew up and everything else, and the tough things he overcame, and how he was just trying to do his best. And we had a moment there, but it was still really tough. I didn't understand a lot of things. And it was so bad at home that part of the reason I went to Marquette, not the full reason, why I went, you know, whatever it was, like a thousand miles across the country, completely away from home, was to finally feel freedom I never had. Right. So that was one of those moments in time that I just I got through it, thankful for the support system I had, even in friends, I didn't realize that cared about me that much in that moment in time. I really still believe to this day that was God telling her to send that text to me. At 19 years old, I shared this already in the death podcast, but between two aunts attempting suicide, one was successful, my grandpa getting cancer. At that time, I was with a girl for about three years. And in that serious relationship, she thought we were going to get married, and I thought so too, until she started making fun of my dreams and the success I wanted to have in business. So I ended up cutting that off. That was a pretty nasty breakup. My best friend, who was uh one of my coaches in the business I was a part of, he died in a motorcycle accident in 24. Again, I already know I shared that story, and obviously all the financial struggles you guys heard of in one of the previous episodes. That was another time where I don't I don't think I wanted to kill myself. But it was hard. It was so hard. I was in a massive depression, massive despair, felt so defeated, you know, who became my girlfriend for for a long time and eventually my wife was there for me. And it was always just that like one relationship, that one friendship that just gave me hope that as long as I went to bed and woke up the next day, it was gonna be okay. And I can't thank T enough for that time because she just helped me through that and was there to hear all my emotions and me processing things. But I also had to perform in school, I had to perform my job, I had to perform in my business. So I actually kind of really didn't deal with a lot of those emotions until I was 27 years old seeking therapy. Right? Even go to 2017. This was after about four and a half years in that business environment, and I didn't have any friends in college. All my friends were like my business peers and coaches because we were just doing everything together. Like on average, just to give you an idea, like I was doing like 30 to 40 business presentations a month outside of school, outside of my internships, outside of everything. And so I had no time for anything else. So I just had constant relationships and they became my friends, right? And so when we split from these business coaches because there was actually some illegal business they were doing that I found out that I wasn't gonna stand for, it turned into lawsuits later on, all this crazy wild stuff I'm not gonna get into right now. But when I felt that coming, and I actually felt it internally and left that environment before all that went down, that split from the business coaches, that was that was tough. Not only were they like abusive and manipulative, which later they actually we chatted and apologized for everything, which that was a lot of healing that was done, but abusive, manipulative turned T against me. That was really hard. That was one of the hardest times I remember ever having where I just I gave everything for four and a half years and not even the financial success of the result. And I just felt so defeated because everyone that made fun of me, everyone that told me it wasn't gonna work, everyone that yada yada yada yada, the list goes on of haters. And I was just like, I can't believe they're right. I didn't believe that. I didn't believe that they were right. I just felt there's something wrong here that I'm still gonna be successful, right? Maybe they were right about the coaches I was with, but they weren't right about me becoming a success because they made it personal. They told me I wasn't gonna be a success, not just my business that I wasn't going to be. And even T's family. I I pray for them to this day, but T's family and just for whatever reason just made up in their head that I was not a great influence for her. Her friends actually decided this too, that when T chose me and just help support my business, even though she wasn't really involved, like she just supported me. She lost her best friends over it in college. They all of a sudden this were thought I was too intense, didn't like me or whatever. So she chose me over her friends. Then she chose me over her family because her family stopped inviting me. I went for like one Christmas and one Thanksgiving, and that was it, and I was never invited back again. They kept inviting her, but I was never welcome. To the point I remember my junior year, because I didn't have anywhere to go for the holidays. Thanksgiving and Christmas, I actually just stayed on campus. Because that year she did decide to go home, spend it with family, but I wasn't invited, even though we were dating. I don't know if you've ever spent like a Christmas holiday by yourself. I don't wish it on anyone. But if you ever have to go through that, just know that God's with you. I didn't blame God. I just I just again going back to the whole theme of this whole thing, I didn't blame the GOD for the D of despair and defeat that I felt. Because I knew I was gonna make it a story one day. And I knew that I was gonna use this as a reason to inspire people to help them understand it doesn't matter what you go through, it matters who you become through it. And during those really tough times, that ended up being not just like not invited to whatever holiday, seven years of no contact or communication with T's family. And it was just us two. For seven years. That made it very hard, right? It made it made very hard on us, right? We weren't on the same page on a lot of different things because of how to deal with family and the stress of friends and all this type of stuff. And even just with like how our business coaches pinned us against each other, it was really hard a lot of the time. We fought a lot of the time. When people wouldn't be able to tell, we seemed happy on the outside, but it was it was very hard. And during that time, because of just our where we were financially struggling, all these different things, right? I had ongoing suicidal thoughts where I would legitimately, I'm just gonna be very real, I tried to suffocate myself and she wouldn't let it happen. And I got so mad at her for not letting me just do it because I just wanted to disappear. I wanted to just like no one accepts me, right? The the business coaches just told me, and this is like all this, and I'm still like, you know, working full-time, doing businesses, all that type of stuff. This is going on in the background. I had to just forget about it and then like perform at work all day. And from 19 to 27, every couple years, I just had these very massive depressive thoughts, despair, is my life worth it? To the point that there was one time that T was so concerned, and I was just, I was crying a bunch and everything else. And I told her, I'm literally gonna kill myself tonight. And she calls the National Suicide Hotline, and I'm there, and I remember sitting there, and she's answering, she's kind of like relaying the questions, even though it's on speaker. I wouldn't even talk to them. But T was with her with me in that moment of time, helping me through that. Even to the point where we got in so many different disagreements and arguments about like her family and how we were going to mend things and everything else, because we're looking at, you know, we're engaged at this point and gonna get married, and her parents still don't know, and her family still doesn't know because so much dysfunction. That's her story, like grew up abusive background, all that type of stuff. I just remember one time I drove off, never do this. I mentioned this in the death podcast, but never drive off somewhere when you're angry. And she jumped in her car and started driving after me because she was afraid I was gonna, I just needed to cool off. But I actually almost flipped my car. I remember going up this up ramp and just like two wheels came off the ground, and like for some reason it was like God just kind of went like, oh, nope, put that back on the ground, you're not gonna die tonight. And at 27 years old, that's when I knew I needed help. And that started my journey of therapy. That started going to multiple counselors just to get all of it out. The the business coaches, the the anger of, you know, just tease family, the financial struggles, the people making fun of me. I would be lying if I said it didn't bother me. I didn't let it define me, but I just I kind of just tossed it aside because I had to perform. I also didn't know all this like all this anger stuff was because I had mood swings because of my sleep apnea at the time, too. I had no idea. That was a recent discovery, but they said how long it could have gone back, and I'm like, wow, that kind of makes sense. So again, 19 to 27, just bouts of extreme depression, despair financially, business-wise, into my early, you know, college adult years. As I mentioned, everything that I was doing in those side businesses for four to five years to literally have no financial success to show for it. Just constantly feeling defeated, just wanting to take my own life. But all I told myself was this. Just make it. I really wrote this down multiple times in a journal. Just make it another day. This two will pass. And what did I do? My biggest regret is I did not feel. I felt it, but I didn't feel it to deal with it. And I also, for a lot of it, I wouldn't say I blame God, but I didn't necessarily seek Him out either. And that's one of the biggest things I feel would have helped me a lot more deal with things inside, right? And different spiritual counselors and therapists helped me to rediscover God, right, through a renewed faith and everything that I started to have once I was baptized in 2020 and everything else, that started to change. But this number three helped me get through everything. Because when I had that lost hope and despair, how can I use this as a story? When I was spending those holidays alone, Thanksgiving alone, because I couldn't afford to go back and T's family wouldn't welcome me. When I spent Christmas, I was literally the only person on campus. I remember, I don't even remember what I did that day. I literally don't remember. I think I went to the gym, I think there was one gym open, and then I came back. I remember walking by myself back to campus. There was not a single person on Marquette's campus for Christmas. And I got to my dorm, or not dorm, but my apartment at that time and just cried, knowing one day I would tell this story because I'm eliminating every single excuse anyone wants to use of why they can't be successful, of why God hates them, of why you know everyone's out to get them. They're not. That's your own mind messing with you, right? Until you realize that, you're never going to find that deeper purpose for your life that's going to awake you to things that you could actually pursue and ways you can actually help people. If you understood how to use your life as a story to eliminate people's excuses, so you can actually live out something that gives you so much energy. You wake up every day excited, excited to help people with purpose and energy that the universe will bless you with. That's my story of overcoming severe depression, despair, and defeat. I hope it helped you, and I'm excited to see you guys on the next one.