#9 Sept 11th 2001 - 1st Responder, 19 years of PTSD GONE & Dan shares Exactly How he does it!

What if the memory stays… but the panic response doesn’t?

In this episode of Old Ranger New Dad, I sit down with Dan Jarvis, who breaks down a powerful approach to trauma healing that’s helping veterans and first responders reclaim their lives. We talk about a 9/11 first responder who lived with Severe PTSD for 19 years—until meeting Dan and learning how the brain can process and “re-file” traumatic memories so they no longer trigger a fight-or-flight reaction.

This isn’t hype. It isn’t mystical. It’s a practical conversation about how the brain (much of which science still can't quite explain) stores trauma, 

why the body keeps sounding the alarm, 

and what it can look like to move from constant triggers to real peace. 

In this episode:

• Why trauma can feel “present” even decades later
• How memory reprocessing works (in plain English)
• What “invisible wounds” can look like in real life
• Why hope is not naïve — it’s necessary
• Who this approach may help (and what realistic expectations look like)

If you’re carrying unseen burdens—or love someone who is—this one is worth your time.

Disclaimer: This episode is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. If you’re in crisis or considering self-harm, call/text 988 in the U.S. or contact local emergency services.

Transcript

0:36

Welcome Dan and Johnny back. So this episode is going to be a very special episode. Johnny talked about being Sept 11, 2001 first responder and the things that he went through, without being very traumatic. I immediately knew I needed to have Dan on and for him to share the story and tell us what it was that you experienced you went through as you were being healed. Dan, a good buddy of mine, as I mentioned on the podcast previously, he stayed in this room before. This is what I turned into my podcast room. So, you came over and stayed because the company that I worked for Quiet Professionals LLC, LLC here in Tampa, Florida, retired Delta Force Sergeant's Major started that company and I was working as a recruiter and then I took over marketing. So now I'm doing all the marketing and I ended up seeing something on the news this very unbelievable story about veterans being healed by some new method and, and there wasn't enough detail in it because it's the news, right? And they just do sound bites. And then all of a sudden who is on the screen? my old roommate from the 75th Ranger Regiment. And I'm like, what? he's talking on the news about how he's sitting there just having a normal day. And all of a sudden, his heart's racing and he just can't breathe. And he's having an anxiety attack. but didn't know that at the time. He ends up going through this process. It's one of the processes that was showcased when I went to a movie premiere by Michael Gier. And I'm going to put the links for that. the name of his documentary, wounded heroes. So that documentary movie, Dan was featured on that and he actually kind of talks through, what he does a little bit. And then that's where I met Dan. So all that to say, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to these two guys, walk us through for the veterans that are out there suffering that, you know, hear way too many things that are quick fixes. online and on the news. But again, this is a literal person who's sitting here right in front of you that you just listened to a full podcast, Johnny, and his life has changed by Dan and the process you guys went through. You guys go ahead. So a little shout out to Michael Gier I just realized Michael Gier's a reason I met both you guys. he's a connector. So I met Michael Gier several years ago when he was doing the Wounded Heroes documentary and I had just started my first nonprofit and I was just wanting to help people. anybody who's walked in our boots understands what stress is, what, trauma is. What anxiety is, what depression is, what self-medication looks like, what making stupid decisions looks like, because we do it pretty regularly. my backstory, I had a pretty rough deployment to Afghanistan in 2011, 2012, I had a couple IED blasts, some traumatic brain injuries. Four of my soldiers got medevacked out of country. One of my kids (his Soldiers) was killed. And we ended up with about eight Purple Hearts in my squad alone. Right. Just one squad. It's an infantry unit. mean, we're not, we're not Rangers. We're not special forces. We're just a regular line infantry unit. were a striker brigade. And at the end of my deployment, my, got the Red Cross notice and that's when I'd lost my mom. And so that's really the catalyzing of that for me that kind of turned my world on, on its head. when I stepped on a pressure plate in July of 2011, sleep was a non-existent for me. Every time I would close my eyes. I'd hear that explosion, right? And the first few times it happened, I'm like, I'm putting my battle rattle on. like, what's going on? And then I realized, sh*t, nobody else is, even responding. So I realized after about the third time that there's something off, and it was just an overactive nervous system, right? Whenever I would close my eyes to sleep, I'd hear the explosion from back in July. It's the same sound over and over, And then when I got back after my mom's funeral, I'm still not sleeping and we're talking from July to February, March. So literally I'm a zombie and I did combat operations that way. And I find myself at a classic story I'm self-medicating with alcohol. I can sleep now. I realized I just needed a drink every night just to go to sleep. And things started getting worse for me at that point. Right. And I'm like trying to figure out why am I having these issues? Why am I having night sweats? Why am I having night terrors? I'm the non-commissioned officer. used to be a drill sergeant. I was a police officer. This isn't supposed to be me. Right. Because the mindset is we tell ourselves it's weakness. And the reality is it's just an overactive amygdala. when I get out, I went back into law enforcement, which odd thing happened. I felt normal again. I didn't feel the stress. I didn't feel the anxiety. because my brain was operating the way it was hardwired to, and that's fight or flight. It wasn't until I left law enforcement after 3 years that I realized it was all back and it came back with a vengeance. I went to the VA and I'm doing therapy and here's medications, fill your prescriptions. I'm not looking for drugs. I'm looking for solutions. And the VA wasn't providing it, right? So I... I fell through the cracks at the VA. And when I say cracks, they're more like chasms, right? There's over a million of us with a PTS that's in the VA system at any given time. And for me, I felt like the VA just kind of really abandoned me and left me hanging with no solutions, right? To the point where like they're canceling appointments. I can't get in for four weeks after the first cancellation. They cancel another one. I can't get in for eight weeks. And this is exposure therapy, which is talk therapy. It's a cognitive behavioral therapy. And I literally at that point, I'm like, I'm done with the VA. That was 2017. I'll give you one guess as to how many times they've called to check on me. Zero, right? They've never said, Hey, Dan, where are you at? Right. And so I ended up meeting a gentleman by the name of Scott Mann. I don't know if you guys are familiar. Scott is a retired lieutenant colonel, green beret. My ex-wife had brought him into the sheriff's office to do some leadership training. And it was through Scott that I started my first nonprofit. He really kind of helped me. He coached me for about a year on how to craft my story, how to tell my story. And then through Scott, I also met some other people and that's how I met Michael Gier And I went through a couple of processes by the time Michael Gier had... put his video out, right? So he, asked me to be interviewed. I went through a process called A.R.T.(Accelerated Resolution Therapy). And the therapist or the psychologist I work with, Doc Diego, was a really good psychologist. And I now know why that was effective for me. It helped me to reprocess survivor guilt. You know, and it's, in the framing of the question he asked me, and we do a lot of reframing. I already activated this trigger. And then he asked me, did you place the IED on that route? I'm like, no, did you pick the route? No, we were supposed to stop and walk in. And then I realized, why am I feeling the burden of that moment? Right. Was it my fault? Right. But I didn't know that I had always assumed that I was a reason Doug Kordo was killed. Right. That's what I had believed. And those are the emotional attachments I had. six months after that, I was invited to go to a public training of something called the RTM protocol. a Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories. So when I interviewed with Michael Gier, I'm like, hey, you should talk to these guys as well. Because for me, that was my biggest paradigm shift. And some massive shifts had happened. And I'm like, why is this not available to all of us out there? Right. And then since being on this journey, I realized why. One, it's a disruptor. right. ART is a disruptor. RTM is a disruptor. What we're doing with the trauma resiliency protocol is a massive disruptor because RTM is effective as it is, is an 89 line protocol. It takes about an hour and half to go through for a single event. Because we're armed, I'm army and we're military. I've got the protocol down, dialed down to a nine line protocol. We've to make everything nine lines, right? So let's fast forward a little bit. I meet Michael Gier. I do the interview with him and then we met at. uh, video showing at, think it was at a local, was that at a church or, yeah, it was at one of the local churches. That's where we first met, you know, and there's always skepticism, right. And there should be, We should absolutely be skeptical of new things, right. the way I see it now, veterans were a cash cow. We're a cash cow to a lot of people. And, and I'll go into a little bit of some of the issues that I've run into with the professional world, but so we meet, was a good interaction. And next thing I know you invited us to have a table at a movie premiere that, uh, Quiet Professionals LLC that Andy Wilson had kind of helped fund. something And then obviously, su**ide is, most of us, it's with a firearm, right? on a true story of somebody that he actually knew in Delta. as soon as I found out we were going to do a movie premiere, I was like, wait, could we invite other people to come to this and like showcase uh opportunities for other veterans? And that's immediately I thought of you guys and several other people that I met there at that Wounded Heros showing And so that ended up being the game changer. Make sure and talk about that lady that you helped there because that changed everything for us. Yeah. So when we were there, we had a booth set up and this lady came up and she started talking about my dog, Mays. I have a service dog and she broke down, like literally just fell apart. And I went in to watch the film. The other guy that I was with did the process with her and she was like night and day difference in that hour movie or that however long that movie was. And I'll never forget you guys got to meet Andy. You guys got to meet Andy. Right. So next thing I know, we walk up, we meet Andy. It was funny. And she goes, you got to talk to these guys. They fixed my PTSD in an hour. And of course, Andy's like, you know, he's retired Delta Sergeant's Major, right? he's like, oh, in an hour, that's, that's pretty interesting. So we, exchanged cards and we're like, we're never going to hear from this guy. And the next thing you know, he invites us to come have coffee with him at Quiet Professionals LLC. And then we ended up signing a contract and we worked with a whole bunch of the staff. We worked with probably, I don't know, maybe 40 staff members over a period of time. So the proof's in the pudding, right? So when I met Johnny, M is kind of a miracle worker. When we wanted to do the second documentary, when I wanted to do one for our own organization, I had already had a relationship with Michael Gier and I said, hey, Michael Gier, what are your thoughts about doing another documentary on Sept 11, 2001? And he's like, that'd be great. I said, well, I want to call it "Healing the heros of 9 /11, the way forward". And he's like, awesome. Well, when do you need it by? I said, it'd be great if we could have it by the 20th anniversary on September 11th of 2021. And I'll never forget. Michael Gier goes, you do realize this July 9th, right? And I'm like, what, is that a problem? Next thing you know, talk to the board. We get it funded. And we're making plans to go up to New York City. And that's where Johnny and I met. And it's funny, one of the other guys with me was a Marine. And I'm like, hey, Johnny, would you rather have, who do you want to work with? You want to work with a Marine or an Army guy? And Johnny's like, I'm missing a beat. I'll take a Marine cook over an Army Ranger any day of the week. And I'll laugh. I'm dying. story, true story. It's true. And here's another funny thing about Johnny's when I met him. We were told not to have any like logos on our shirts, like any Nike logos, whatever. I look at this dude's socks and he's got like Star Wars Boba Fett on his socks. I was like, this is an interesting dude. I like this guy, but yeah. Yeah. I was like, he's a typical Marine. So he ended up working with Joe and you could just see the profound shift in him. You know, because one of the things that we were going to do is go back to the memorial and we're going to do some filming there. And Johnny's like, I've not been back there since Sept 11, 2001 and good luck getting me there. Yeah, no, I flat out told Michael Gier I'm like, I don't care what they do. I'm not showing up. And the next morning I woke up, put on my clothes, got in my car and you can see on the movie I was there. Yeah. Just to kind of go into detail why that is, why we avoid places, you know, there's something called a trigger. We all know what a trigger is, right? The nervous system activates the vagus nerve, dumps chemicals and cortisol, adrenaline into your system. And then all of a sudden you're doing everything you can to avoid that. Right? So when you have those triggers, there's a reason he didn't want to go back to ground zero. Right? There's a reason he didn't want to eat pork. He talked about that in the film. Right. Because it sparks an emotional response. And what it's doing is it's activating the exact identical emotions he felt at the moment of the event. So think of an IED blast, right? And next thing you know, you're home and on trash day, you're swerving to miss a trash can and you don't know why. It's because in Iraq, well, that's where they put a lot of the IEDs was in trash piles. And your limbic system just takes over. It's called a limbic hijack. Once that emotion activates, your brain goes into self-preservation mode. All So those triggers become active and then emotionally you're all over the place. I always kind of tell the metaphor and so you two Marines settled down on this one. This has got nothing to do with you guys. Our emotions are like a box of crayons, right? me. Guys, we're an eight pack of crayons. We know what our emotions are. We're comfortable with them. Ladies have a 16 pack of crayons. We're like, what the heck is all that other stuff? And then trauma is a 64 pack of crayons. It's all of the emotions hitting the system at the same time, good, bad, and indifferent. And we don't know what fuchsia looks like. That's the overwhelming feeling you get when you're dealing with a trauma response. And then sometimes... You know, we might trigger 20 times a day, depending upon how high your symptoms are. So what you really have to do is target the root of the trigger, find out where it started, and then do the protocol, the nine line process, and remove the emotional attachment to the memory. What that does is it allows the brain to reprocess and it's called memory reconsolidation. So your brain's a filing cabinet, Your amygdala, that's your fight, flight or freeze mechanism. That's your thumb drive. That's easy access, nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, overwhelming emotions. The goal is to move those emotions into the hard drive and move the memories into your long-term storage. So you're basically having to refile the memories so that when you shut the triggers down, you no longer have that emotional connection. Right? So. that's part of the key, you're not erasing it from their memory. It's not like you're, yeah, it's not like the little flash in men in black to where they just don't ever remember it anymore. It's there. It just doesn't have the immediate emotional trigger. And when you say that again, for me, cause I'm a former Marine. So it takes me a minute to really visualize what you're describing there because I don't work on a brain every day. when something goes to poke me in the eye, I automatically blink and my head moves back and I try to swap whatever that is, whether it's a fly or a finger or a rubber band that's flying at me. Right. And so that's not a, that's not something I've decided to do. My body has done that for me. Law enforcement. I ended up walking into an ambush. There was a guy, Aryan Brotherhood just got out of prison. He knows he's about to go back because he just had a gun to her head and 911 they hang up the phone. So I rush in by myself like an idiot. Also like a Marine. And as soon as my face breaks the plane of the door, I see him sitting on the couch. The music is blasting I couldn't hear what he was doing and that he's sitting here waiting on me I go through the door and as my face sees the gun and sees him there, ambushing me, I'm not saving some girl now. This is He's just trying to kill me. My body immediately threw me back out of the door and I ran back to cover before I could even think. So when you're describing that, that's what I'm understanding that you're saying that it's the things that your body is, your brain is turning on whether or not you want it to. Right. Because like you just said, you're driving and you see trash and you know, there's no IED(Improvised Explosive Device) in the trash can that your neighbor just put out. but your body immediately you're starting to get tense and sweat and you're remembering that. Is that what you're describing? Am I getting it right? the limbic hijack, that self-preservation. The amygdala's whole purpose is to propagate the species, survival, right? Food, procreation, fight or flight. That's what the amygdala is responsible for. So an example is in 2007, I'm sergeant of the guard. we're leaving in place with one of the 10th Mountain groups and I'm hearing in the distance a thump. And I go on the radio, did anybody hear that? Next thing you know, 122 millimeter artillery round exploded on top of a HESCO and literally knocked me unconscious, very briefly. Five years later, I'm in Afghanistan and I heard the exact same sound in the distance. It was our first indirect attack. And we're doing a leadership meeting with a platoon leader, platoon sergeant, squad leaders. And I heard it and I immediately said, we're about to take contact. That's all I said. was literally like thump, we're about to take contact because that limbic activation happened. That information was stored so that I could survive in the future. And the other guys that hadn't deployed looked at me like I was nuts. Right. And then within 12 seconds, rounds landed and we took our first casualties about 20 meters from where we were holding our meeting. Right. That's what the amygdala is supposed to do. The problem is we then come home, we're safe. The brain doesn't understand whether it's safe or not. It's just going to remind you, hey, red alert. Think of it as a red alert, the spidey senses standing up on the back of your neck. Let's look at it from a civilian perspective. Maybe a woman was sexually assaulted by a person who was wearing like Drakkar cologne. And it was 20 years ago. Next thing you know, they're standing in a grocery line and they smelled your car clone and the brain goes, he's back. Save yourself, protect yourself. That's what the amygdala does. Problem is we're actually safe. We're not in danger The body just doesn't know that. So you have to disconnect the emotional pathway. The men in black light flash, that's called memory extinction. You can't do that with adults. It's not possible. Right. so when it, when you activate uh a triggered emotion, it becomes malleable. It's like plastic. could mold it and all you're doing is changing context of the memory that you didn't have. Right. Like the content or the context of me thinking it was my fault. We lost a cord. I didn't have in the moment that context because all that visceral emotion got connected to the memory. I just assumed that I was responsible for it. And it really, if you want to get even deeper, your unconscious brain cannot process negatives. And what I mean by that is both you guys don't think of a pink elephant. And what did you think of? Right? You went, you went right. Exactly. right to a pink elephant, but here's the thing. What do we tell ourselves when we're dealing with depression and anger and PTS? Don't be so angry. Don't be so sad. Don't be so fearful. And all we're doing is telling our brain, be sad, be angry, fearful. And then we activate those emotional triggers and we get in that negative feedback loop. You've got to break the cycle at the root where the injury started. That's what you attack. And it changes your entire pattern of behavior. So how, just walk us through, like, how do you actually do that? That's the gap here where with Johnny specifically, you guys, we now know what the situation was. We know what the issue was, but how did you get to the root with him specifically? Well, I mean, it's kind of easy. It's easy. We're doing a film on Sept 11, 2001. That was traumatic for the entire country and everybody watched it on TV live over and watched all the replays and seeing people jump and all of that emotional connection that viscerally had affected a lot of people. Millions, I would say millions of people are probably still struggling and don't realize it when it comes to Sept 11, 2001. So all you got to do is you got to get him to activate the trigger without talking about it. We don't let people discuss their trauma. I don't need to hear your story for you to heal. I need you to feel the trigger so that I can guide you through the process. And what you're doing is you're using a visual disassociation exercise. There might be some kinesthetic, some feelings, there might be some sounds. And what you're doing is you're manipulating that because every time you remember a traumatic event, You're remembering the last time you activated the memory. So something in there may change. It's kind of like how two people can be raised in the same house by the same parents and have two totally different viewpoints of what childhood was like. One person had emotional connections and every time those emotions activated, that memory changed over time. Right? So like with Johnny, all we had to do is get him to go back to the moment that he literally felt those visceral emotions for the first time. And then you're doing a visual dissociation process. There's a couple of different ways to do the work. There's one where you're actually like making a picture before Sept 11, 2001. Maybe it's the moment he got on the boat to cross the harbor. That's a safe moment. Nobody knew anything was going on. Create that image in your mind and that's your start point. And then maybe it was two years later that he felt like he was not in danger. And you're making a picture. of that as well. And then all you're doing is draining color, removing sound, removing the feelings, putting distance between you and that memory. And then maybe even putting a picture up, that first one up on a TV set. Or you can go away from that second image and disassociate from that second image. And there's a faith component to it as well. You know, I love the Jesus protocol because when you bring your faith into it, it allows you to make some powerful discoveries inside of that memory that you had no idea that was even there. And then the language patterns that we use are also called presuppositional language patterns. So when I want to make a statement to you, what would you teach yourself in that moment that if you could learn it, all those emotions would fall away easily and effortlessly. That's not for Johnny's conscious brain. That's for Johnny's unconscious brain because that unconscious brain is listening. Okay, where's the instructions? here's the instructions. Okay, there it is. Hit the rewind part to it. What'll happen is you'll come back through the new learnings and it's like the aha moment. So like, Seth, have you ever gotten super angry at somebody and you realize you were wrong and all that anger goes, dissipates? Same concept. You're able to go back to an old memory and change the context of the memory that allows the brain to make sense of it in that moment. And then it releases the emotional pathways. Right here, if you would, I think this would be the perfect opportunity. You tell the story of the World War II tail gunner. If you can share that one, that is what blew my mind and made me finally get it yeah, Mel is a, he was a waste gunner on a B 17 and I'm talking, he's like 99 years old and he had gone through, I believe it was the RTM protocol on the trauma and resolved the traumatic trigger. And when I met him and I heard his story I'm like holy cow. my friend, Jay Garstecky, I said, Jay, you have got to capture this guy's story. Jay does a show on discovery called operation healing heroes. And I'm like, you've got to get this guy's story because it's unbelievable. His last combat mission was flying over Normandy on D-Day. Right. So imagine what this guy is witnessing they're being shot at. the young people that are watching, if you've ever heard of the movie or seen the opening of Saving Private Ryan, that's what this guy's witnessing from the plane above. Carnage. private Ryan's probably a PG 13 version of what actually happened. So his best friend, Oscar was in a B 17 to his flank and got shot down. So he literally watched his friend circle into the ocean. Right. That's his buddy. Oscar was the guy that he would have to go into the bars and pull out of the bars. Cause he keeps getting into fights. Right. Think of the old classic world war two guys. And I was after listening to a story and you can actually hear a story on Discovery Channel. I'm driving him back to his place in Orlando and he looks at me and he goes, do you ever think it's really gone? I'm like, what are you talking about? No. He goes PTSD. said, what are you feeling? He said, I felt guilty every day of step foot on US soil because so many didn't come home. I'm like, whoa. I said, Mel, that's survivor guilt. That's an 800 pound gorilla as equal. to PTSD. And I understood that part because I had experienced the survivor gift, but I knew, I already knew how I was going to help him reprocess that. So we have a rate the intensity zero to 10. He's like, it's a 10. You can visceral to see he's getting emotional. So I had to disassociate him. And for him, I put him on Oscar's airplane. I said, you're on Oscar's airplane, you're getting shot down, you're spinning around. And every once in while you get a clip of him surviving on the plane that you were on. And I said, what do you want for his life? And he goes, well, I'd want him to have a long life, be a productive citizen. You don't hear that anymore. And I want him to have a great family and just be happy. said, but Mel, do you want him to feel the burden of your death and the death of everybody else for the rest of his natural life? And he's like, oh, heavens no, I would never want that. And that's all I said. The reframe was, so what makes you think he's expecting less from you? And he stopped, his eyes got really big. You literally watch those emotions dissipate. And he looks at me and goes, I have never thought of that. He didn't have that context. So when I put him back into the memory, he couldn't feel the guilt anymore. Now think about that. This guy for 70 plus years has been battling. He battled PTSD. He didn't have the PTSD, but he had still tons of survivor guilt. You know, like I said, he went through RTM and it's a great process, but it's only for trauma. And what we've developed is not just trauma, it's for emotions, negative emotions like anger, rage, survivor guilt, shame, hurt, whatever the feeling is. Which one? Oh yeah. yeah. That one, it was weird. I thought it was like the smallest thing. And once I ran frustration, it was like my whole life changed. It was crazy. Yeah, Johnny, tell us what it was like for you hearing that there's this guy who has this process and it's healing people. Like what was your initial thoughts when you heard about Dan and his process? Okay, so I'll frame it real quick as fast as I can. Michael Gier calls me up, he knows I'm a 911 first responder. A good friend of mine, David, he's a retired police detective, was on the Police Unity tour and couldn't do the show, so he called me. And at first I said no, I was like, not gonna do this, I don't know why. Within 15 seconds after I hung up, I called him back and I was like, if it can help somebody, I'll give it a shot, Mike. I had no idea about Dan or what they did. I just knew he was making a movie and trying to help people, you know, Sept 11, 2001 first responders. So I kind of show up blind, I'm just trying to help Mike out. Right. So I figured I'll bite the bullet and I'll do it. And I can I'll never forget it. explains first day you're going to, we're going to sit you down. We're going you're going to tell your story. The second day you're to meet with these guys and they're going to do this thing with you. And the third day we're going to go to nine 11 ground zero and we're going to film you. I'll tell you exactly what I told told him. I looked him dead in the eyes. and said, I don't give a fack what these guys. over here wearing these shirts are going to do tomorrow. I'm not going back to ground zero. I'll do this interview today, but I'm not going back to ground zero. but I go in like Dan said, he's like, are on a Marine or Army or Marine? was like Marine Cook over Army Ranger any day. I have my, know, the whole, you know, Dan told that part of the story. And then he runs me through it. And it was like, Just like Dan said, like if I had to describe it, I can't, you I don't understand the psychological, part of it. it put the proper emotions on the proper shelf of my brain. And I can tell you one thing immediately that I noticed when I left the building after I did it, on my way back to my car, I was about three blocks away from where we filmed. didn't... I didn't pop the corners. know how you step back so you can see the corner before you go past it? And I always did that for years and years and years. I wasn't checking behind the two-park car as it looks suspicious. I just walked to my car and I remember going home because I called Dan and I call Dan the Yoda mind trick, you know, and in like the podcast that you interviewed me on when I talked about Sept 11, 2001, I still get emotional about it. It was an emotional day, but I can now, after I talk about it, even thinking about it, get emotional. I can still, after we get off of this, have another business meeting, be present for it. I can go upstairs with my kids and be present as a father. And like you said, the triggers. Smell was a big one for me, only because I think anybody, now there's probably millions of people alive today that were in Manhattan or in Brooklyn and New York City area that got a whiff of that smell. The further away you got, the more smell like dust and like burning metal. But when you're up close and personal, you could smell the burning bodies. But everybody that was in the city will tell you they smelled a smell, right? and ironically enough that night I went in everybody knows my story. You will have known my story if they listen to other podcasts I went in later around dinner time, And, uh, it was Quiet, except for at ground zero, like walking downtown Manhattan, getting through the rubble and the dust was knee deep. And it was just silent. And New York City is NEVER silent. And there are still pieces of paper like drifting down partially on fire from the sky, like leaves falling off the trees. Really surreal. it's like an onion. Because I did call Dan, probably two months after the film. And I was like, hey, you you fixed this. Can you fix this? And then probably four months later, I called Dan, hey, Dan, you fixed this and this. Can you fix this? And then Dan, healing the hero decided to do a study to prove this scientifically. And I volunteered to do it because I still had a lot more in my onion that I needed to peel off. And this is a great opportunity for Dan to talk about the study and how they're using science to really prove that this works. Blown away by it myself. like Dan said, I look at it more of like a library, right? Instead of holding the book and not letting go of the book, like you're holding 15 books and you're trying to walk around the library, you're bumping into walls. You're putting the books on the shelves as you walk by. And the next thing you know, hey, I can read any book I want. That's the way I would describe it, as somebody that's gone through it. I understand what you said about Pying the corners and checking, right. And being a little bit more aware than your, your average, even your average veteran, what other things were you dealing with? Like, obviously you didn't want to eat pork and you didn't want to go to ground zero. Those are both fairly easy to stay away from. What else was it that on your day-to-day life was kind of a burden that you were having to deal with after this? my wife used to put a Chinese wall of pillows in between us at night. because I would have like these crazy dreams where I thought I was fighting for my life. I've destroyed more pillows, night tables than you could imagine. Then this is the first time I did TRP. I have not had a dream like that since I can remember when I bought this we moved into the suburbs. I think it was like the third night I'm not gonna say any names because I don't want to get any trouble. It was like three in the morning I'm in my boxers. I got my K bar and a flashlight and I'm checking my property and my driver, my neighbor drives up obviously drunk from the bar and he gets out of his car kind of stumbling and he's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, are you driving drunk? And he's like, good night. And he goes to bed, right? now I look back on it and like, What kind of crazy dudes in his socks and boxers with a K bar and a flashlight at three in the morning in the suburbs of New Jersey? There's nothing to be worried about. Why am I waking up at three o'clock in the morning, grabbing my K bar and my flashlight to make sure my family's safe? I haven't done that. So those are two, I mean, there's probably plenty more, but those are two I think that veterans could probably really relate to. I'm sure almost any veteran has woken up and been like, I need to do a perimeter check, make sure my house is safe, or especially veterans with kids. You know, that was two of the big ones. And with the pork, it was really more of the smell of the pork cooking than eating the pork. I want to make that clear as the smell. I would just be an empty shell of a person. had no emotion whatsoever. I would just. You know, I was there, but I wasn't there. That makes sense. it does. And thank you for sharing that. think one of the common things that everybody that's going to listen to this has already heard is lack of sleep. I think that is, is, is the one thing. three. That's why three in the morning waking up in the middle of the night with a torn pillow and your nightstand on the other side of the room, I maybe was getting two and a half hours of sleep for, if I was lucky at night for literally 19 years until I met Dan, know. Dan was doing the same thing, right? Dan was self-medicating to try to sleep. And again, just, just walking through life as a zombie, trying to, trying to function on a daily basis with only part of your brain functioning, because you start killing brain cells once you've gone through so much of lack of sleep. I know from ranger school where you literally don't sleep for days and days and days and days and days and not eating and just trying to tie a knot, which I've done 10,000 times previously. And you have to get tested on to even continue through the course. That's one of the hardest parts was just tying a knot. Even though it's a very simple task, it's one of the things that gets guys because your cognitive ability, you can get up and run, you can carry heavy things, you can shoot when everybody else is shooting. It only takes one person with their brain functioning to know when to. start firing and the, you know, the enemies walked into the ambush. You just continue on like everybody else. I think that's the part that most people, whenever they hear of veterans that are struggling and you always hear of the self medication, it almost always goes back to this lack of sleep. And it's this drain on your energy and your ability to work out, to be present, which is right. The most important part, which is why the marriages are falling apart. You want to be there. And this is what I've heard a million times over, and I'm going to continue to share that is every veteran that I know loves their family to death and wants to be there for them, but they mentally cannot. It is, it is the equivalent of not sleeping for three days and then sitting down to take the SAT. You're not going to pass. Doesn't matter how smart you are. You are not functioning. You're not firing on all cylinders. There's no way you're going to win this race. Yeah, sleep quality is the most important part of healing when it comes to trauma. Your body has got to, your brain has got to get into what's called REM sleep. That's rapid eye movement. That's where the brain was designed to move emotions and memories apart and refile them. Literally that's what's happening. It's like a filing cabinet. So I talk to groups of vets all the time and I'll ask them the question and there'll be maybe there's 50, 75, 100 people in there. Who in this room has said something to the person they love and care about the most? And then 10 seconds later, we're like, my God, I can't believe I just said that. Everybody's hands go up. What happens in the, in the amygdala hijack or the limbic hijack. As you shut off access to your prefrontal cortex. Right? So you're not sleeping and now you're triggered and you shut down your logic brain. And that's also where your empathy centers are stored. So if you don't, you basically no longer have the ability to have empathy with anybody that's in front of you when you're in a totally enraged state. or in a totally triggered state, that function of your brain is gone. That's what we see getting a lot of cops into trouble with videos and they get triggered and then all they're like, my God, I can't believe that guy just did that. Give me five minutes, we'll fix it, right? But that's just the way that the brain functions. You lose that access. And the really cool part, I'll go a little bit into the research component to what we're doing. I've... I mean, I've officially become a nerd. probably know more about the human brain than any self-respecting infantryman should, but it's fascinating to me, right? I can't get enough of it, right? eating as many crayons as I can, but I still can't catch up to you. I met Dr. David Hagedorn. was the CEO of a company called Evoke Neuroscience. He kind of heard about what we were doing and he got it. He understood it. He's an Army veteran. He was a medic before the first Gulf War. And one of the board members of the other organization was Dr. Phil Bequiv, was a doctor of psychology. Basically connected with him and had a long conversation. And next thing you know, I'm talking to Dr. Hagedorn. And I'm like, well, I'm getting ready to fly to Maryland because we had a police officer up there. was a female cop who was in a pretty bad spot. I tried to do the work with her remotely, but she was, she had no interest in doing it over a zoom. So I'm like, okay, fine. I'll just, I'll fly up there. We'll do it in person. Right. It's like a, like a QRF, right? We go up there. I told Dave I was going up there and he goes, I'll meet you there. I'm like, what? This guy lives in Jacksonville, North Carolina, right outside of Camp Lejeune. It was a Friday. He was all shut my office early and I'm going to head up there. So he literally drove six hours, got up to Maryland. The next day we met, I met this female police officer for the first time, built some rapport. It shows emotional in a bad spot. So Dave hooks up the EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraph, does the brain scan, Puts on the cap, does everything, gets everything set. So what it's doing is it's measuring the electrical output with, I think it's a 28 channel EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraph). qualitative electroencephalograph. I had no idea what this technology was, but I asked Phil, said, I'd really like to know what's going on in the brain. And on next thing I know, know, Dr. Hagedorn is showing up with an EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraph doing a brain scan. Her scores were maxed, totally maxed, depression and PTS. And the brain scan showed the activation of the amygdala. There's a part of the exercise where you close your eyes for five minutes. The moment you do that on the test, you lose situational awareness and your body goes into an involuntary fight or flight response. So it's measuring the electrical frequencies of that part of the brain and you can see it. Right. And then it also measures your heart rate variability, which is the autonomic response, the fight or flight response of your heart. When he looked at her, he's like, young lady, this is the worst brain scan I've ever seen. And he goes, and I work with MARSOC active duty guys, Marine Special Operations guys, Out of Lejeune And he said, looking at your scores, it's identical to the brain scan. the level of validation in her heart was like, I've been trying to tell everybody that, right? Nobody believes her. They call the invisible wounds. We're like, suck it up, right? That's the, that's our generation. Suck it up, buttercup, take a knee & drink water, here's some ibuprofen, whatever, walk it off. I did a session with her and then the next day we came back, I did another session with her and then Dave. put her right back on the EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraph. And when he finally sent us the report, he's like, this is profound. He said, you're doing in 24 hours what it would take six months for an EMDR master practitioner to do. EMDR is the eye movement desensitization reprocessing. And he goes, and most practitioners won't get that level of success. And then he goes, you're not even a therapist. Right? So it kind of, that was like his first, like, how is this guy doing this? But. He's a neuroscience guy. Science should evaluate, new processes, right? That's how we advance as a society. So eventually we ended up getting the EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraph )and we ended up getting one at the Healing the Hero and got with Arizona State University. So they're going to publish, we'll probably have about a hundred people where we have brain scans pre and post. Now all the brain scans are different. Right. And I want people to understand emotional dysregulation is not always PTSD related. Right. About a half million of us have had blast injuries. Not to mention car crashes, playing football, boxing, frontal lobe injuries can cause emotional dysregulation. There's a lot of things out there. Diet can be a big component to that too. We actually have one brain scan of uh a former cop and he was a combat Marine infantry guy. He went on a carnivore diet, just eating the animal fats and meats, proteins. And in 30 days, his PTS symptoms dropped in half. And I'm like, you know, we got to do another brain scan. And then I got with Dave, said, Dave, I'm kind of geeking out right now. I saw the brain healing from his diet. Dave's like, well, he's probably gluten insensitive, which a lot of people have gluten insensitivity and don't even know it. causes neural inflammation, inflammation of the brain, which causes emotional ups and downs. So you got three pathways of stress into the human body. Physical pain, chronic pain can cause your body to go into fight or flight response. Chemicals, food, drugs, alcohol can cause your body to go into a fight or flight response. And then the other component is emotions. So really what we're doing is we're addressing one third of that problem. There's still a whole body approach that people need to look at. You need to look at diet. You need to look at gut health. You need to look at, you know, are you in chronic pain all the time? These are things that you can do to make changes to help yourself emotionally long-term and get your cortisol down. So anyways, we go into doing the studies and I'm going to share one story. I'll share two. One is an army combat veteran. He was in Iraq in 2005. His scores were extremely high. PTSD, depression, anxiety. There's a global score, which is a subjective unit of scoring on that test, which is basically how efficient is the brain functioning? His global score in a state of fight or flight was about 33 % efficiency. So he was in lizard brain all the time. So two thirds of his brain he had no access to. And unfortunately his wife was preparing to divorce him and says, if you don't do this, I'm done. I'm out. I can't take this anymore. Right. So I do one session with him and this guy. I mean, he dealt with a moral injury of combat, got into a firefight and ended up taking the life of a five-year-old boy, right? Plus he had his own five-year-old at home. So you can imagine, you know, we're human beings, right? We don't want to ever experience that kind of thing. And I think seeing kids suffer was probably the worst for him. It was the worst for me in war. And then we did, one of our coaches did two more sessions with him. Tammy does his follow up scores. He was zero, zero, zero. He had no more symptoms of PTSD, no more symptoms of depression, no more symptoms of anxiety. So I'm curious to see the brain scan and I get there and his wife is right there and she looks at me and she goes, I don't know what you did, but that is not the same human being. And we're like, yeah, awesome. That's the way it's supposed to be. So do a second brain scan. All the stuff in the back turned green and cleared up. No more, no more lizard brain. Score zeroed out, his heart rate variability even changed. And his global score, which is the efficiency went to 93%. So he goes from 31 to 93%, right? Different human being. He's got his whole world back. Him and his wife reconciled, they stay together, they're still together. I had another police officer and... we're kind of going over it quickly. one question of course, are we a hundred percent sure that this lasts forever or is this like a short-term thing? How do we know that these things are like you just said, like this guy specifically is, is good and he's still, you know, with his wife and still not in the lizard brain, but Are you guys still staying in touch with these people afterwards after doing the brain scans? What does that look like? Just so that everybody understands that. It really depends because we've done sessions with people years ago that we're still in touch with that are doing great. The literature, the research science piece of it says once the memories reconsolidate, once it leaves that amygdala, that fight or flight response, they don't go back together. They're in different filing cabinets. Doesn't mean you can't be traumatized by something different. You can always experience a new event and have to go through the process again. But once... That event with a five-year-old has it been now reprocessed. He no longer feels those emotions. He doesn't have to go back and shut that off because it's in a different component to his brain. It's literally been refiled. So yes, that's a great question. But even if it just made one day better or three months better, it's worth that little reprieve. But so far it's permanent. And the science shows that once the memories reconsolidate, it's permanent. has to be somebody good. Good Johnny. I've gone through and I've worked with Dan for years now, I can tell you he's 100 % right. Like I didn't have to redo Sept 11, 2001, right? The onion that I was talking about was once I once I once they fixed Sept 11, 2001 for me, I realized I had other childhood traumas and other traumas. And that's why I would call him back and be like, hey, Dan, can you work on this? And then I would go through things in life and I call Dan and be like, dude, this just happened. Can you talk? Can you spare an hour? And it's all it really takes. Sometimes with Dan, now me and him got it to the point. Sometimes I'll call him, he'll say three lines. And since I've done it so many times, I'm like, boom, done, good. So it's like Dan said, you're an onion, you can peel those layers off, but. Unlike an onion, we're human, so layers can add back on. Well, let me give a metaphor. Metaphors are a powerful way of teaching. Think of a tarp on a grass, right? If you put a tarp on the grass, the grass under it dies, right? That tarp represents Sept 11, 2001. That's the big trauma. When you pull that tarp away, that trauma is gone and the sunlight hits the grass. What's usually the first thing that pops up? Weeds. The underlying emotions then become the next layer and emotions. Emotions are ready to process when they present themselves. Otherwise, we compartmentalize it. We box it up. We put it away. We don't want to deal with it. But what happens is when you start healing the trauma and all of a sudden, where did that one come from? Well, it was hiding under the, it was hiding under Sept 11, 2001, right? Or it was hiding under getting your, your butt beat as a kid repeatedly. It was hiding somewhere. And when you pull that tarp off, the sunlight hits it and the brain says, Hey, What about me? And that next layer gets to go. And that's why whatever we do the work, we start from birth to present day. We look for all past trauma. I look for everything I can find. Right. And then once all the trauma is gone, then I'm looking for anger, sadness, fear, guilt, shame, hurt, survivor guilt, rejection, resentment, abandonment, you know, whatever the negative emotional connection is. Cause if you can feel it, your brain can heal it. Right. The second story I want to tell on the study, he was a police officer, young guy. He's still only 28 years old. And I actually ran into his dad at my church, right? Cause I started a small group at a church dealing with trauma. And I told him the whole point of the group is to get kicked out. Right? So I run into his dad, his dad was in the academy with me in 1995. And he was like, Holy crap. His dad retired out as a deputy chief and he came into our, my first small group and I ran everybody together in the group and he was like, he slept like 11 hours and he's like, I thought I was good. Right. I had no idea. And then he felt amazing. And he says, my son needs this. Right. I said, well, invite him to come in. And next thing you know, I meet with his son, ask him if he wants to be in the study because he's a cop. need cops. Do his brain scan. His scores were very high. His global scores were fairly good. He was probably about 81, 82%. But he's still missing 20 % of his brain horsepower. And his heart rate variability was off. because he was in fight or flight a lot. you're at stop. That's what causes like heart attacks and strokes. And I do with him only two, I think I did two sessions. He was done in two sessions. He was a cop for three years. So I go back and I do a second scan. His global score had gone from like 81 to a hundred percent. All of the back of the brain, the amygdala activation cleared up. Heart rate variability went right back to normal. And his dad was talking to me, goes, yeah, my son was talking to me. He says he thinks he can go back to being a cop again. And he, and then of course, his dad being a deputy chief goes, I don't want him to be a cop. Right. But here's the thing is that guy quit the job because of PTS. Cause what ended up happening is he almost got beat to death. Right. He got beat so bad. He couldn't even pull his gun out because if he did, they would have been able to use it against him. So he just took a pounding until backup got there. You know, And that's some of the stuff that our first responders have to deal with. But now he's healthy. He's normal, has no emotional dysregulation. He could talk about those events. He still remembers everything about it, but it has given him the opportunity to let those pathways go. And the scientific term is called neuroplasticity. Once you detach the emotional pathways and you create a new pathway and then you start sleeping, those new pathways lock in. I envision like the old 1970s operators where they're hooking and unplugging. All they're doing is plugging those pathways into the appropriate spots, the appropriate slot on that operator phone. Yeah, that's a great one. Whenever I first talked with you about this and you said, you know, let's start looking at you and your life and you know, some of the things that you've been through. And my first traumatic event that I could remember was I was terrified of the dark as a kid, but I wasn't terrified of the dark because of the unknown as much as I was sick on Halloween one night. And I mean, like violently throwing up, like I had the flu really bad. And so everybody in the family went to go trick or treating, which was my like the favorite day of the whole year, because my family was dirt, dirt poor. So Christmas was like, you get a little toy from, from a garage sale. It wasn't a big deal for Christmas for me. So going out and getting candy and getting more candy. And so the worst possible thing is I'm violently sick. And then my cousin uncle, long story, my cousin, who's my uncle because my grandparents adopted him, his mother committed suicide. He is now watching me. He's a terrible person. I don't know that as a kid. I'm just here stuck with my uncle and we're watching scary movies and he's what he wants to watch scary movies. And so we watch Children on the Corn. And then he gets the bright idea. Hey, here's a Mason jar. I want to go fishing in the morning. You're the idiot. That is the reason why I'm having to stay here. So you go outside into the cornfield by yourself in the dark, violently sick and fill up this entire Mason jar with grasshoppers. Um, and you can't come in until, until that's full. And so that's what he does. He literally shoves me outside and I have to go get grasshoppers. It's October 31st in Oklahoma. It's, in the 30s. temperature wise, it's, you know, just above freezing. I didn't really ever think of that as being like one of the big ones, it's the Jessica Lynch and, seeing the bodies, you know, being dug up next to me and the, smells and it's It's a lot of the other things as a cop, right? And walking into an ambush. It's the things that I think are going to be the problem. But then when you go back and start tracing it, like you said, to the root, and then you recontextualize that now, whenever I tell that story, I instantly think of myself standing next to me and, giving me this, this feeling of, you know, not being scared in that cornfield anymore. Whereas before. Anytime I would start telling that story, my my throat would start right getting very, very tense and I'm starting to get choked up just trying to talk about it. And it's I'm not scared of the dark. We own the night. We're literally, running around in the dark 4 combat tours. So that was for me the very first time that I experienced what you're talking about. I think that's the thing continuing to build all the science back. cases, as well as people who can tell the story to where this gets enough traction that enough people believe it on a broad scale The question I have for you that the audience is definitely going to be wondering is, how'd you learn this? Where'd you just decided to pick this up one day and how did you learn this, this method? So my why, like 'Why' I do things is I'm always looking for a better way and I want to share it. Everything I've ever done, I try to improve and I'll try to improve and try to improve. So these techniques aren't new. Right. There's a body of work called neuro-linguistic programming, NLP. Dr. John Grindr, Dr. Richard Bandler. Grindr was actually a Green Beret. was a captain in special forces, a linguist. And Bandler, goofy dude, was more of a computer programmer. So what they did in the brain is a computer. So they kind of came together and they were trying to figure out why some people were so good at what they do. Right. For example, Virginia Satir was a legend in family therapy. Why is she so good? Why does she have such good results? She didn't know. She just did get the good results. So what they did is it started off modeling excellence. What they did is they modeled Virginia Satir and they followed her for probably seven, eight months. detailed everything, every client interaction, and came up with a body of work called the meta model. The meta model, she has the ability of digging down to the deepest root when it comes to conversing. So like if Johnny were to say, well, I can never do that, a meta model statement would be, well, when did you decide that? And what does that do? All of a sudden it's like, holy crap, you see like a glitch in the matrix. When did I decide that? Right? Because it's a belief or somebody will say something like, well, everybody knows. And then the meta model will be like, everybody, like all people know this. I didn't know this. And then you're like, crap. But she also learned to take, some people are visual. Like they see things they learn by seeing some people are kinesthetic. They're feelers. They feel things. Some are auditory. Some are audio digital, which are more like you're super analytical people. And she found a way to get. husband and a wife to communicate on the same wavelength because a wife might be like, don't you hear what I'm saying? No, I don't see anything of what you're saying. You're different. You're communicating differently. So they took her, they took Fritz Perls, which was Gestalt therapy, where they realized they'd known for over hundred years that emotions establish on a timeline. he was also, Gestalt was like the string of pearls. You pull one out and the rest just kind of fall away. So Pulling Sept 11, 2001 out of Johnny may have pulled out three or four or five other events that he didn't even know were there. That's just the way it is. didn't even tell anybody that I was a 911 first responder. Very few people knew. Even close friends and family for 19 years, I had no idea that I went back that night. Like only a handful of people until I met them. So anyways, Milton Erickson was a psychiatrist and he was really big on hypnotherapy. So Ericksonian language patterns are not necessarily hypnotic. They're hypnotic in nature, but it's not hypnosis. Or the language patterns like the presuppositional. For an example, well, Johnny said, well, I don't remember when that happened. And Milton Erickson would say, well, I know you don't, but if you did, when was it? The next thing you know, you're coming up with an answer. because you're going right past the critical faculty because it's chunking other ways, going really high. So this body of work, NLP, is probably the greatest advancement in psychology in the last hundred years. Nobody knows about it. Right. So when I went through the ART, RTM, and all of these are NLP based techniques. The work we do, what we found is, and we kind of learned this from the RTM guys, when the trigger's active, it's malleable. So then we're like, well, shoot, if it's malleable with trauma, Is it malleable with anger? And that's when we realized, you you can make changes on any emotional state, specifically the way we do it, because we're adding new context to every that kind of gives you the aha moment. So when I first met Dr. Burke and I went through the RTM, I'm like, why is this not available to everybody? Right? Why are my brothers, you know, in arms, not having access to this? So we started Basically fundraising to train therapists to do what they do. And then COVID hits, money dries up. And then we started talking to the therapists that were trained and we paid to train. And they weren't using it. They took the free training and then they defaulted back to their original, whatever they learned, what they felt comfortable with. So when COVID hits, we decided, you know, I'm going to, I want to build my own program. I'm going to develop my own process. And originally the TRP started off at about a 38 line script versus the 89 lines of RTM. We just took that middle part of what they were doing. And then we changed it even further because he's an older guy and everything was based on the movie theater. Well, nobody goes to movie theaters anymore. Why not use a laptop? How about an iPad? What about a television? And now we've evolved it down to a nine line where we don't even use devices. We don't need to, we could disassociate without seeing a picture. And then we started capturing data, collecting data. And then it's like, it's been refined to the point now where it's like, you know, we've tightened the shot group. The shot group is as tight as it's going to be able to get. So that's kind of where it came from. And for me, it's like, I'm just trying to, I'm tired of losing buddies, right? uh You know, the unit I went to Afghanistan with, had, lost two in combat. And we've lost seven to suicide upon returning. then, so we thought that the mental health world was going to be our biggest allies and advocates. And what we found out is it's just the opposite because they're living a paradigm that is based on a box. They're inside the box. They don't ever go outside of the box. And we are so far outside of the box because one, we're not clinical. Two, it's non-narrative. It's not like talk therapy. And three, we don't charge a fee for services. So the goal for us is we just took the profit out, right? You know, and I can't even tell you how many people I've worked with since 2020. It's in the thousands. And we've trained therapists that are forward thinking that are the early adopters and they're all blown away by the simplicity of it, the success of it. But we're still dealing with a paradigm of who are you? You don't have the right initials. What are you doing? Right. I, two days ago, I had a conversation with, uh, I won't mention the agency, a sheriff's office, whom I'm connected with, by the way, I know the sheriff and she just took over the wellness position and we were talking to, it was going on great. And then she asked me, well, how long is your training? And I'm like, it's two days in person or over zoom. And then they got to do four hours of pre-training before they get there, which gets the academics out of the way. She was offended. She literally got angry and was offended. She goes, well, what about my eight years of academia? and you know, the old drill sergeant in me would have said, did you just put your college credentials ahead of the men and women dying? But understand she's in a paradigm. She was trained and conditioned and programmed, but that's been the basic model is there's a lot of resistance because we do it so quickly. It's the one it's not profitable and two. We are just knuckle-draggers. We're cops. We're firefighters. We're Marines. We're sailors. We're army vets. know, yeah, it does. that's for us. Again, I'm just going to share with you from outsider's perspective. When I see this, from the outside, of course we've, we've seen all these other cons come through and fade away so many times. And whenever you come in and say, no, I can really help you. And it only takes 45 minutes. I was there that night. I literally invited you guys. I had no idea that lady was going to show up to the movie. theater. And when I get to work the next, right, because that was a Friday, I get to work (Monday Morning), And then Andy is like, Hey, just so you know, we're going to be bringing these people in because I've known that lady for decades. And he knew her so well. And he knew how much she was suffering that when you guys helped her, and literally just in the time of that movie, right, 90 minutes, whatever it was, the movie was 115 grains, by the way, I looked it up. 115, 115 grains. And it's ironically about a guy who's a police officer, combat veteran, SWAT officer who goes in to a house to save a little girl who dad has a gun to her head and is threatened to kill her. And then they end up shooting the dad and rescuing the girl in his brain. He's like, yeah, we, the girl was already dead. What, what are you guys talking about? And everyone's like, what are you talking about? She's alive. What are you talking about? And he's like, no, I clearly remember. And he recorded his memory of what happened and his memory is 100 % solid and he'll fight you for it. She died. I saw her dead body laying there. What are you guys talking about? And his brain had somehow remembered it backwards. And so they're like guns out of your holster. You got to go talk to the shrink. And this, this was, so it was a perfect timing for them for this to have happened because It's really like you just described. It's the hard part. The mountain that you guys have to climb is that it can't be this simple. It can't be this easy. And that's why I needed to share this with you and as many more people, right. As it takes, I want to always have this continuous running dialogue with you and as things are going on with you, but it's just one person after another that you're healing, that you're helping. And when we use the word healing, I think this is where most combat veterans get offended because I've had guys that had heard of you and said, you know, I don't know anybody who's been through it, but if you're telling me that you're healing PTSD, I have a problem. If you're telling me that you're helping PTSD, I don't have a problem. But when you tell me that you're literally getting rid of PTSD or you're healing this person, then I have to say, you know, and that's where they're like BS. That's just. It's impossible. that was me when I first sat in the back of a room during the RTM training, because they invited me to New Mexico. And I'm like, all right, you're telling me you can fix everything in this short period of time. Right. And I'll never forget, I'll tip my hat to the lead trainer, Alan. was a Canadian. He was a pilot in the Canadian military. And I'm like, you know, Alan, you guys are making some bold claims. I had experienced ART, so I had let some emotions go, but it was just. a single event, right? Not all the other garbage. So I was like, I'm curious. And I'm like, look, dude, if I'm going to recommend anybody to go through this, I want to feel it. want to experience it. And he's like, yeah, you want to do it today? I'm like, yeah, let's get it done. He goes, how about in 15 minutes when we come off break, maybe in the cop at that point, I'm like, I'm about to show everybody this guy's an idiot. So I go up in the front of this room with 25 mental health Professionals LLC and That that there's a narrative part of that where you tell the event until you trigger and then they pull you out of that. So I'm like, I got super emotional, super quick, which I didn't like because I didn't really know anybody in the room and it was very awkward. And then they, I don't know, guy goes, Hey, what color is your Dodge truck? And I'm like, Dodge, who would never drive a Dodge truck? I'm a Ford guy. Cause we talked about trucks. got to have a Ford Raptor. And next thing I know, I'm not, I'm no longer in the memory and I'm out of the emotions. And I'm like, well, that was weird. you did that. And then we set the process up. It was probably 45 minutes to an hour. And by the time I got through everything, it was, right, now tell me the story again. And I'm telling the story and I'm like, I'm waiting for the shoe to drop. This is before I'd ever experienced that. This was, this was trauma, not like guilt. This was like a amygdala firing in all cylinders, right? And I get through this whole story and I stop. I had just told the whole story from start to finish and I looked at him and back to Johnny Sox. I looked at him and I'm like, what kind of Jedi stuff is this? Half the group is laughing. Half of them are in tears because they just watched a war memory go from a 10 to a one or a zero. And then I slept that night and it was unbelievable amount of sleep. And that's the next day when I came back in, like, why isn't this available? And then you realize the paradigm is set for... medication and it's set for therapy and insurance billing insurance. The system doesn't want to fix it. And that's what, you know, I keep having these guests on that, that we keep finding the exact same issue, which is just follow the money trail and you'll see why this isn't available. Just follow the money trail. Yeah. Yep. The system doesn't want a solution. They want a broken system so they can keep the revolving door of money going around and around. Well, let's go one step further. I don't know if this will get blocked or anything, but let's look at COVID, right? Let's take COVID-19. I'm going through the stores. How do they move the entire population? They disrupted the supply chain of toilet paper. And through everybody in a scarcity mindset, everybody's hoarding toilet paper. Now everybody's afraid. And I'm looking at the empty shelf and I'm like, toilet paper? I said, I'm infantry. Everything's toilet paper. What are you guys doing, right? Yeah, I was looking for rice. You might know I can eat rice and just drink water and I have to cook it and it'll fill my stomach, you know? But you know, Johnny and Seth, the reality is when it comes to our brothers and sisters, it's up to us because nobody else is coming. it's true. mean, like the reason why I brought up I never people didn't know is because I couldn't talk about Sept 11, 2001. I literally could not physically. My wife is a survivor. She lived three blocks away. We were together this whole time. We didn't even talk about it together, you know, ever, ever at all. Like it didn't went on on September 11th for 19 years living together. We didn't say a word the whole day until we met Dan. Well, the funny thing, the funny thing about, yeah, the funny thing about you, Johnny, I'll never forget about three months after we did the work, you called me up. goes, dude, I don't know what you did, but I've eaten more pork than the whole state of Alabama since, since 9 11. I got probably two packs of bacon upstairs right now. Yeah, yeah. Triggers gone. And I just say this guys, this stuff is so easy. We got Marines doing it. Yeah. I mean that, that seals the deal right there. Yeah. All right, brothers. Hey, listen, I don't want this to drag on. think we have, you know, and we're not going to, because any person who's listened this far, if you've made it to the end of the podcast, then your interest has peaked. I'm going to let your work and body of evidence do with it, what they will. And either they're going to believe it or not. And it may take just like for me, it may take meeting somebody who has been healed before you actually even give it, the time of day. And I get that this is still going to be a podcast out there. And from now on, I can always reference back and go, you can just listen to, to somebody who actually went through this and you can listen to Dan describe exactly how it works, but you're not, you're still not going to experience it until you've actually sat. and gone through it and you think it's too good to be true. when you are tired of staring at your endless bottle of pills that the VA is continuing to send you and you're done going back to the same group and retelling and reliving the trauma over and over and barely getting through it and choked up and living a miserable life with lack of sleep and your brain not functioning properly. Give it a try. Because the worst thing that could happen is you could try something that didn't work for you. And you're now you feel like what, like that's the worst case scenario is you feel like you're the exception. Cause these guys are promising the moon. Well, again, like you said, for every person, that's going to be different. And it may not be just a simple, you know, sit down 15 minutes later, you're fixed. There may be more roots that you haven't even got to string of pearls. You might be on the outside of the string of pearls instead of going to the route. And I think that's the hardest part. I'm still working on some of that right now, mentally that I, I haven't even figured out. I was on the urban valor podcast out in uh LA and I, he just asked me about a very simple question. I start thinking about my son who's two years old and about how I went through all of my time in the military. Never taken a drink of alcohol, never saying a curse word and ha and obviously no drugs. And it, I've never even thought about what toll that's taken being ostracized, being left out dudes, hating my guts just because, in Iraq, right before the invasion, I literally got smoked by my superiors while they're asking me Bible questions, I've never told that. before and I'm not using that as a way to, shame these people because I get that they were just thinking it was funny. But for me that had a profound impact that I've never even thought of or even known that I need to deal with. but I literally got so choked up. couldn't even start talking in it. He gave me a minute and it still wouldn't come back. My throat just was swollen shut. I'm just like, can't talk. So Seth, let me ask you a question. How intense does that feel when you tell that story? If you were put a number to... So 0 to 10, how intense is it? All right. I want you to drift away from that memory. So drift away from that moment like a drone, like a drone up in the sky. This is the hardest part There's not a moment. It's like there's that moment. I'm telling you where I'm being smoked, but that's not it. It's the root of. the last time, the last memory of that? I want you to go back and forth between all those moments. I want you to dip your toe in each one. Feel it. This is what I'm telling you. I'm, I'm right now, I'm still a Marine. So my brain, I don't know. I don't know what weight that this has been on my shoulders. It's it's here's the thing, Seth. It's a it's an emotion that started somewhere. Right. Go above that time you got smoked. Because we're going to we're going to add the information to every memory in your past. So float up above like that time you're getting smoked So you're going higher into the sky and get far enough away. You don't feel that emotion. All right. I want you to turn around and put it behind you. And as you do that, you're looking right into the eyes of Jesus. He's right there with you. It's the safest place in the universe. And I want you to ask Him, Lord, what do I need to learn from these moments that if I could learn, I could let all the emotions go easily and effortlessly? And what does He tell you? He's telling me that he's right there with me and that he doesn't, I don't need to fear because he's right there. Good. Anything else? It's not something I did wrong. I'm getting smoked because they just think it's funny to provoke me. And that's what's actually happening here. All right. In a moment, Jesus is going to take you back inside that memory and you're going to rewind rapidly all the way to birth. He'll be holding you the day you're born. Let me know when you're ready. Go back into the moment. Let know when you're back to birth with Jesus. Okay, I'm back. any time that happened, anything similar to that childhood, all through your military in a present day, you're going to pause before each moment. Now, your unconscious brain is a lot faster than your conscious brain. Just let it do what it's going to do. Jesus is going to tell you at each one of those moments, I am with you, fear not, I'm right here. You did nothing wrong. He's going to tell you, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Quickly, easily, and effortlessly let those emotions fall away. And just come back when you're ready. I will never leave you nor forsake you. You've done nothing wrong. Fear not. as many as I can think of. Okay? What was the happiest day of your life? sun being born. Go back, see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt in the moment of his birth. Let me know when you feel the good emotions. You feel it? I do. I want you to invite Jesus to come hang out with you there. Let him magnify it a thousand times. Just a glimpse of the other side. and just sit there and enjoy that experience. How does that feel? I don't know. How does the feeling of the birth of your son feel? back to not being able to talk. Okay. Do you feel the positive feelings? I do, but what's in the way is my... a lot of other emotions. Okay, what other emotions? just how much I've gone through to finally get to this moment. Right? Let ask you a question. You ever burned your hand on a flame as a kid? It's hot, right? Do you need to feel the pain of the flame or just know that it's hot every time you see it? I'm a marine so sometimes I need to feel it. yeah, I can just know. All right, emotions are the same way. What we should do is go back above that event again in Iraq before you go when you got smoked. Float up above it in a moment. We're going to rewind back through it to birth again. Let me know when you're ready. All right, go back into the moment. Let me know when you're back to birth. You and Jesus are going to move forward again at all those emotions that got in the way of that moment. Jesus is going to tell you everything you need to hear that will allow you to let those emotions go. He's always in the details. We just don't see it sometimes. It's not your fault. I'll never leave you. Fear not. from the other guy. God didn't give you a spirit of fear but one of power love and a sound mind. allow all those other emotions to go where they belong. and then just come back to the present when you're ready. Okay, go back to the birth of your son and just experience those good emotions again. And just sit there. Sit there until I tell you otherwise. How's that feel? All right. What's your phone number backwards the whole thing? Uhhh... 9894898318 pretty good. Go back into that memory when they were smoking you in Iraq. You feel the old emotions anymore? Are they gone now? They're gone. Good. Probably need to do is you and I need to do like a full on start to finish multiple sessions and go after everything. Cause we've only done bits and pieces, right? The same thing with Johnny was bits and pieces. Once you go down the whole timeline, like three to four sessions, done. And you'll feel a hundred pounds. How do you feel right now? Tired? I feel tired, kind of heavy, but not heavy. Just like after a cry, right? We feel the emotions, but they're out. is called a biological grief response. I mean, you've been holding that in for a very, very long time. And what that allowed you to do is reprocess the memory and then allowed the grief dump to happen. You ever read the book, The Body Keeps Score by Dr. Bessel Van der Koek? literally on my list of things to read. You'll see clearly why it's important for people to heal trauma is because we store that stuff at a cellular level, which is why you have the grief dump when you let it go, because the body's purging it. It stores in the cells of our bodies, which is why we have disease. It's why we have cancer, autoimmune issues, strokes, heart attacks, know, pick your, diabetes. You know, that's basically what the body does. It's out of ease. It's in dis-ease. That's what dis-ease is. Yeah. So one of the things that we should have talked about, and I totally forgot on the whole traumatic brain injury part, neural feedback will correct damage from a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). So Dr. Hagedorn did my brain scan, because I was still having emotional ups and downs. I was still trying to figure out what's going on. And Dave came in and did my scan and he looked at me and goes, based on what I'm seeing, you're probably experiencing these types of symptoms. And he listed like five or six different things. And I'm like, have you had a camera in my house for the last two decades because he hit every single button and I'm like, so I'm not broken. I'm just injured. He was, yeah. How do I fix it? gets neurofeedback. So I ended up, doing the neurofeedback. It's called "Get Versus" it was actually in the company that he owned. just sold and it's a take home device. It's a five channel EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraph. You play video games on your phone and you get, you get feedback based on the game. And it's ridiculous. When I first played, I'm like, what is this going to do? This is 1980s Atari stuff. And I'm like, Dave, seriously, guy. And he's like, trust me to do it. We know what we're doing. And I went back for another brain scan. Probably 85 % of the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) cleared up in that seven month window. what's the positive feedback that you're getting? So I understand. games, you play the game and whenever you do something correct, it gives you an audible feedback. Like something happens and then the brain goes, I want more of that. And then it'll also give you a signal when you're in the optimal part of your brain. And then the brain goes, I want that. I want that. I want that. I want that. And then over time, what it's doing is it's rewiring the brain. Because think of your brain as an antenna. Is it in tune or is it out of tune with static? If it's traumatic brain injury stuff, it's out of tune with a lot of static. If it's PTSD, it's out of tune with a lot of static. If it's anxiety, it's out of tune with a lot of static. So you got to retune that, that antenna and rewire the brain to do things that are different. And it's simple. It's like. like is me playing Call of Duty and killing a bunch of people and getting positive feedback would do the same thing. What's. you had the brain connected to the EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraph, because what it's doing is it's measuring the electrical, because it's connecting the device, the game and your brain, because it's electricity. And then as you're playing and getting the specific feedback, in other words, the game is getting you to do things that causes the brain to rewire it. And the next thing you know, you're good. I don't know. If you have a, do you have a rating for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI or PTS with a VA? Okay. Well, let's say if you did, um, the Semper Fi and America's fund, if you have a 70 % rating, they'll actually give you the equipment. I bought the equipment. paid like $1,300 bucks and then did a $30 app. It was worth every penny of it. Matter of fact, I have it with one of my soldiers now that I'm done with it. So I sent it to one of my, one of my wounded warriors and he's doing it. But, but yeah, it's a whole different element. hold every element to it because that's a lot of people. That's the other part of the suicide problem. Right. Right. I definitely need to get with you, for a few sessions. the reason I think that this all kind of came out, on the Urban Valor podcast, he sitting back in the room. The, the lights are out in the room, except for one key light. That's very dim and it's on you and you got three cameras. at different angles, but they're all right. They're offset. They're not at different angles like you'd used to see. And that's what I thought, but no, they're all just ones here, ones here, ones here. And he just asked you a question and you just go. And for some reason in that setting, obviously, as you could tell, I never sit still or, you know, meditate or do anything that revolves around quietness or just being calm. I was just. in this state where I started talking and I'm opening up about all these things And then for some reason just came out like, actually, I need to point out that when I told you that I didn't drink or didn't curse, that sounds unbelievable because that's, that's impossible. No, there's no way you could do that. But I did anyways. And so now what? But nobody ever takes the second to actually think. of what that would look like for you to go through the Marine Corps, Army special operations, specifically the Ranger Regiment, police officer, like private contractor during the attacks on Baghdad. Like everybody is in those are functioning alcoholics, barely no sleep. All of them have PTS, severe PTS, if not severe PTSD. And so I just there for the moment. I needed to drive this point home because you don't understand what it's like to not be accepted and for people to not like you and to hate you. Like they literally, I went to Iraq and came back, got in my car and start driving down the road and my engine blew up because they drained all the oil out of it. Like that's the range of regiment though. Like, what do you expect? Like you're the Christian, you're the super Christian who doesn't curse in the ranger regiment, bro. Like they want you gone and they want to make sure that you understand that. And my, my supervisor, the one that smoked me, he wanted me gone. And he thought by smoking me, asking me Bible questions and no matter what I said was it was going to be wrong. And yeah, hazing me for way longer than anybody else got hazed. And for much longer than any of the infantry guys got hazed, they just tried to destroy me morally. And all it did was make me tuck that away deeper and deeper. And it built up this anger. And that's what I thrive on. That's why I can go to the gym six days a week and I can work relentlessly I was telling my wife yesterday, I, I work out to love songs from the 1970s and 80s, because that's what my mom would play. That's what I grew up on. That reminded me that I was alone. That reminded me that no girl was ever going to date me that wasn't going to cheat on me. Like that's what I grew up to is just being completely alone and, you know, just no hope. And so that's what stayed in my brain. I don't know that that's healthy or not healthy, but that's me. That's what I deal with. the thing is, know, one of the things Johnny talked about was being present and emotions remove us from the people that we need to be close to. We isolate. That's a guy thing. And, you know, I do say this, hurting people hurt people. Right. And all those alcoholics, those guys struggling with PTS, they're hurting and they're just hurting everybody in their path. Right. And the other problem is if you don't heal trauma, This is one of the that Dr. Hagedor says, PTS is a slow burn brain injury. There's a reason a lot of these Vietnam vets are developing Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and dementia. It's because that power output of the brain is too high and their brain's not able to function, which is why that was one of the things that used to scare me because they always said the TBIs can cause PTSD or can cause dementia, can cause Parkinson's, Alzheimer's. know, and when Dave did my scan, He was like, your brain's putting out too much power. And I'm like being a smart aleck. Oh yeah, I could have told you that. Ha ha ha. goes, no, that's, no, that's bad. I was like, well, what do you mean? He goes, well, that's put you at high risk for dementia and that scared the crap out of me. And then as soon he said that, I'm like, well, what do I have to do? And then he told me what to do. And now I sleep. I don't have problems. I have a much shorter fuse. I track my sleep with my aura ring. And you know, like last night I got an hour and a half of REM sleep, which is good, right? Sometimes I'll get two hours of REM sleep. If you get anything north of an hour, it's good. I was getting with all my Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) stuff, maybe 15 minutes of REM and five minutes of deep sleep. Deep sleep heals the brain physically, REM sleep heals the brain emotionally. Now I'll do an hour of deep, hour and a half to two hours of REM every night. So what I do is get, we should get together and I should do your brain scan and see what you got going on. That would be helpful. And I know my wife, I know my wife would appreciate that. Um, you know, we have, my wife is 17 weeks right now. She'll, well, Friday she'll be 18 weeks with our second son. So it's, it's definitely been, um, and this isn't something that I've talked about publicly, but, um, we lost, uh, a baby, a miscarriage with the embryo. had two perfect embryos. When I say perfect, mean, on every scale that they possibly genetically, physically, they check them every way possible. said these two are literally perfect. And when we were deciding which one to start with first, one was a boy, one was a girl. She wanted the girl first because it would soften me because I'm high, strong and a little aggressive. I said, no, I want a boy first. This world is rough. I need, I need an older brother to take care of their siblings. And we ended up going with a little boy. Archer is his name first run, right? Everything went perfect. Then the second one we put in the little girl, and this is an automatic again, we just tried perfect embryo we went straight through And then now we put in the little girl and miscarriage. so that, that was rough, but that, that made me question not, it didn't question my faith. It didn't question that we should keep going. It's just like, I didn't even really, I, I don't know if it's, I'm trying to put all of my faith in God and I'm not even worrying about it. Or it's also, you know, being a little too cocky about it and not realizing how difficult uh IVF is and being able to have, you know, healthy children is, but regardless, the second child now, our second boy doesn't have a name. because we had a name already picked out for the little girl and she didn't make it. So we're not going with a boy's name until it gets much, much, much closer. And that doesn't sound healthy to me, but that's what I'm going to go with because it seems the most logical and that's just where I am.