It's You. Oh F*ck. It's ME. In Session with a Psychotherapist.
It’s You. Oh F*ck. It’s ME. In Session with a Psychotherapist
This podcast isn’t about self-improvement. It’s about unconscious self-avoidance.
I’m Chad Taylor — psychotherapist and author of It’s You, Oh Fuck, It’s ME. The book sits behind these conversations, not ahead of them. It's the reason this Podcast exists.
These sessions explore relationships, addiction (the obvious ones and the socially acceptable ones), therapy, and the patterns we keep calling “healing” so we don’t actually have to change.
No advice. No tools. No pretending insight equals growth.
Just real conversations — solo episodes, sessions with other therapists, clients, and readers — sitting in the gap between what we understand and how we actually live.
If you want reassurance, this isn’t it. If you want honesty, you’re in the right place.
Mark is a former Marine, husband, father, grandfather, and host of the Speak Your Truth with Mark Ross podcast and Soldier Stories Podcast. He speaks openly about mental health, PTSD, and his own experience of spending years suffering without really understanding what the fuck was happening inside him.
What I liked about this conversation was that it wasn't really about being a Marine. It wasn't even really about PTSD. It became a conversation about what happens when something from our past continues running our life without us understanding that it is there. Mark spoke about nightmares, anxiety, anger, hypervigilance, drinking, suicidal thoughts, and thoughts of hurting other people. For years he was experiencing all of this without having a name for what was happening to him.
That lined up almost perfectly with the statement left by the previous guest. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it'll direct our lives and we'll call it fate. Mark had never heard the quote before, but his response was simple. If you don't change what needs to be changed, you will continue to feed it.
We spoke about how trauma lives beyond our thinking mind. Mark described needing to know where the exits are when he enters a room, struggling in crowds, being hypervigilant, and feeling his body move into survival mode before he has consciously decided anything. I shared my own experience of being surprised at my twenty five year sobriety celebration and how quickly my nervous system reacted to darkness, noise, lights, people, and everything happening at once. It reminded me that we can understand ourselves intellectually and still have something much older happening underneath us.
That became a big part of the conversation. It is not necessarily what we know about ourselves that causes the biggest problems. Sometimes it is everything we don't know. The reaction that happens before the thought. The anger that seems to come from nowhere. The fear we cannot explain. The behaviour we keep repeating while convincing ourselves that everybody else is causing it.
Mark said something that probably captures his story better than anything else. He described himself as the author of his own destruction. Not because what happened to him was his fault, but because eventually he had to recognise what he was doing with what had happened to him.
That distinction matters to me. I speak about it through my own alcoholism as well. I don't believe it is my fault that I'm an alcoholic, but it is absolutely my responsibility to do something about it. The same applies to so much of what we carry. Something can happen to us without our consent and still eventually become our responsibility to deal with.
Pain not transformed will be transmitted.
Mark could continue suffering silently and passing that pain into the lives of the people around him, or he could start looking at what was happening inside himself. He chose to speak. He sought help. He started understanding PTSD and eventually created podcasts where other people could speak about the shit they had been carrying as well.
We also spoke about the idea that healing doesn't mean the work is finished. I compared it to mowing the lawn. You don't mow the fucking thing once and expect it never to grow again. Mark still experiences triggers. I still experience triggers. The work is recognising them, understanding them, and becoming conscious enough that the old version of ourselves doesn't automatically take control.
You can meditate. You can do breathwork. You can go to therapy. You can read every book you can find. But if the moment you are triggered you become completely unconscious and destroy the people around you, there is still work to do.
Mark's life looks very different today. The old Mark, as he describes him, is gone. What I found interesting was that he doesn't speak as though he has beaten PTSD or completed some journey. He speaks about continuing to learn who he is now and continuing to do the work.
Mark can be found on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/6nsErY0GR2KJNSNd2wIhwn
Maybe that is the point.
The statement Mark leaves for the next guest is this:
It's okay to not be okay. Just do something about it.
It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME. In Session with a Psychotherapist Hosted by Chad Taylor. Author of It’s You. Oh Fuck. It’s ME
I'm Chad Taylor, psychotherapist, author of It's You. Oh fuck, it's Me. Today I've got Mark with me. Mark Ross. Mark, who the fuck are you?
SPEAKER_01
I love the title, man. I love that title. Well, I am a former Marine. Uh, I am a podcaster. I am a husband. I am a father. I am a grandfather. Uh I am someone who is passionate about uh having discussions, you know, about mental health, uh improving yourself, bettering yourself. Uh so that's just a little bit about who I am. And I love cigars. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00
I was gonna ask you that. It's great that we give all these things about who we are, and now I've got an image of how your life looks, but who the fuck are you really? You like cigars. What are you doing while you're smoking a cigar? What are you dreaming about? What are you thinking about?
SPEAKER_01
What are you uh well when I'm smoking cigars, I'm usually on my phone looking at YouTube or you know, uh, if I'm in my backyard, honestly, lately I've just been embracing the the weather, embracing the moment, you know, uh where I'm just in the quiet. Right? Um smoking my cigar, enjoying the smoke, and I'm enjoying the quiet. So that that's that's what I've been on, Chad. Just enjoying the moment, uh enjoying where I'm at. Regardless of what's going on in my life, I'm I'm learning to embrace the moment. Really. Which is all we've ever got. Yeah, yeah. And you're right. I mean, that's all we got. Well, you know, and we have to we have to uh make the best of every moment that we have. So whether I get to tell my wife I love her as many times as I can, tell her, or you know, ask her, hey, you know, what can I do for you? Um enjoy my my quiet time, you know, smoking my cigars or uh hanging out with some uh some good people doing the same thing. You know, we're just enjoying each other's company, smoking our cigars, you know, maybe getting a laugh or two in in the mix, but uh I'm just enjoying, you know, I'm enjoying the moment.
SPEAKER_00
And I think it's nice to hear because some people who are reform smokers or they might hear the health impact of a cigar, not realizing that it's almost like a ritual. We've lost a lot of rituals in the world. We're straight into it, aren't we? We've lost a lot of rituals in the world that so it's not about smoking the cigar, it's about taking the time out. I like to hear that when you first said you were on YouTube and I was gonna ask you what you were what you would be watching on YouTube, would it be hockey, would it be gridiron, would it be I don't know, Joe Rogan?
SPEAKER_01
I like I like watching debates, I like listening to jazz music. So uh uh a majority of my time when I'm smoking cigars, I'm listening to music.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
And have you got a favorite song or favorite artist?
SPEAKER_01
No, I don't. Uh I mean, uh, I'm just into the whole flow of of the genre. So uh it it if if it strikes my spirit, then I go with it. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00
That's music, right? I think we've if we're fully into a song and we're singing and we're listening to the beat, and we're it's it's a real it's a state of flow. It's a and I think it's sad for a lot of the newer generation where they only know 20 seconds of a song because it's been a TikTok dance. I see that one daughter, and I'm glad now she's getting older, she's into Nirvana and Blink 182, and all the stuff that I grew up with that now she's actually listening to as a 15-year-old in Born in 2011. It's great for me, incubus and even BGs and things like that. It's I love it to listen to the new stuff, but I think it really is a way of getting back to the present moment, and I think a lot of the world now we're split off from the present moment. So I love hearing hearing that about you.
SPEAKER_01
Appreciate that. Appreciate that. You know, I I prime myself of being uh uh old schooler, you know. I I I I I listen, I don't listen too much to some of the new stuff. I'm more old school, you know, um the old school RB, uh like I said, the with the the jazz. I like the contemporary jazz, uh the RB jazz, you know, mix, what have you. Uh but I mean I I even listen to uh the BGs. Uh I get down with uh, you know, maybe a little uh who am I thinking of? Uh you know, Springsteen or you know, a lot of the yacht rock. Phil Collins. Yeah, that yeah, you know what I'm saying? That that's what I get down with. You know, the the yacht rock and uh and the old school RB. So Earth Wind and Fire, of course, is one of my favorites. So yeah, you know what I'm saying? Is this the old the old stuff?
SPEAKER_00
More botch onto the podcast today.
SPEAKER_01
That's what's up, cool. Yeah. So uh tell me about yourself there uh Chad. Oh, I'm uh what are you into?
SPEAKER_00
What am I into? Right now I'm into my dog who's managed to open the door after I just put him out, making sure that he's not too bad. Giving him a pat here. Both of them are in here under my feet. It's funny, I just came off a podcast, so I'm already a bit warmed up. I I really am into trying to leave the world a better place than when I come into it. I really am trying to see that I feel like I have enough. I really have enough, like I live a pretty good life. Not pretty good, I live a great life, and that's why I do this work, that's why I have these conversations. I've never really understood. You know, that is a classic thing when I look at you and I can imagine you listening to jazz music with a cigar. For me, it's almost like now I'll probably listen to a bit of jazz today, not that I'm into jazz at all, just because I want to understand people for what lights them up, what doesn't light them up. But then on top of that, I'm someone who loves to walk the dogs every day, go to the beach. I love racing cars, I've got a drag car, I love racing cars, I love going fast, I love travel. The reason I love travel is because I love culture, I love seeing, I love food, but I also love seeing the way other people live and to see that the world is such a bigger place than my belief system or where I was born or who I think I am, I suppose. Because we think we are the name we've been given, or the religion that we're under, or the town we were born in, but we're so much more than that. That's true, that's true. There's my dog making some noise down there.
SPEAKER_01
That's cool.
SPEAKER_00
So tell us a bit about what you do, what's your career, or what do you do? You got a business, you got a podcast, tell us about your podcast.
SPEAKER_01
Well, I have a I have two podcasts, actually, Chad. Uh I started my podcast, it's called the Speak Your Truth with Mark Ross podcast. I started that uh November of 2023. Um and a little backstory about that. Uh as I stated earlier, I am a Marine Corps veteran and uh I served four years in the Marines. After I got out, I started to develop uh symptoms of PTSD. Now back I'm gonna uh date myself a little bit, but when I got out back in 1991, uh I started experiencing symptoms in spring of 92. And uh it started off with just uh a dream here, a dream there, you know, and it progressed to having nightmares every day. Sometimes more than one nightmare you know per night. So uh I'm going through that and uh I started to distance myself from people. Uh uh, I started to feel more uh anxious. I noticed that was building uh and you know, I just felt myself falling apart, Chad, and I really didn't understand what was going on, but I resorted to drinking more to as a means to help me cope, you know, just drink my sorrows away because I felt myself falling apart mentally and I didn't have the strength to tell anybody about it. That's one thing about mental health that we have to start doing, Chad, is is that we need to start speaking up on how we feel. If we're not okay, we need to address to our family that we're not okay. And and more importantly, we have to address to ourselves, Chad, that we're not okay. Because so many lives could could have been saved if we would have just taken that extra step of courage and strength to come out and say to our families and say to the world, I'm messed up. I need help. Right? I didn't have the strength to do that back in my 20s and 30s. So I suffered in silence for a long time. Fast forward, you know, going through the suicidal uh tendencies and and emotions, uh homicidal emotions too, because I, you know, I was just walking around like a ticking time bomb and I was ready to just unleash to anybody who I could give it to. Right. So I had thoughts of harming people, I had thoughts of harming myself during all this uh mess that I was dealing with, and not knowing that, not knowing what I was dealing with at all. I had no idea about PSD. Uh back then, I think it was called shell shock. Right. And I didn't believe that I was going through shell shock because I I didn't I wasn't in involved in any wartime scenarios, but I did go through some traumatic episodes while I was in the Marines, uh, boot camp being the most prevalent to my memory. Now let me bring it back. During during my uh employment as a corrections officer, a fellow co-worker of mine came up to me with a brochure and he told me to read it. And this brochure talked about PTSD and enlisted all the symptoms of what PTSD is and you know things of that nature. I I I read it and I said to myself, damn, Chad, I'm going, I've experienced all these issues, all of them, all the listed, you know, symptoms of what PTSD is. So after some uh conversation with my coworker, he convinced me to go to our local VA hospital here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I went and I told uh the social worker that was there everything that she needed to know about me. Uh she's she set me up with a doctor to go talk to and the rest is history. I started this podcast because uh I've witnessed not just through my experiences, but witnessed experiences of through other veterans and other people, Chad, that we're all suffering in silence. We can sit here and talk to a doctor all, you know, but we really can't be candid uh with these doctors and with these social workers because uh we don't have the courage to really let them know uh just how effed up we really are. Uh uh so we give them nibbles, kibbles and bits. You know what I'm saying? And I'm saying this from experience because I did that. I didn't I didn't unleash everything in my bag uh of trauma uh uh to these doctors. Uh so when I finally had the courage to do it, uh it gave me the understanding that something else needs to be done uh regarding mental health and the stigma of mental health. That led me to the creation of my podcast, The Speak Your Truth with Mark Ross Podcast, which I uh I I started back in November of 23. And this year it'll be three years since I started that journey. Last year, uh through the console of another friend of mine, he uh gave me the idea to start another podcast which uh was more uh reserved for veterans. And that's called Soldier Stories Podcast. Now, both my episodes are on YouTube, so if anybody listening would like to take a look at it, please do so. So that's what got me involved uh in the in this uh atmosphere called podcasting, uh going through life experiences, listening to other people share their experiences, and uh learning that uh trauma and mental health is real. And uh if we don't do nothing to help ourselves, Chad, the death toll is gonna just continue to grow. The suicidal rate for veterans is crazy. 22 veterans take their lives every day, Chad.
SPEAKER_00
That's a big number, right? That's a lot when you really think about it. That's almost one an hour. Yeah, and I think it is really something you said then about, and it probably leads into what the last guest left you. Usually, what I do is at the end of each session, I get the guest to leave a question, a statement, something real small for the next guest, and the last guest left. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it'll direct your life and you'll call it fate. It's a Carl Jung quote. And I guess in what you're saying there, I don't know if you've heard that quote or you haven't heard it before. What does that mean to you in the context of what you've just described there? Because I think it it lines up a lot with what you've just said. No, say that quote one more time until you make the unconscious conscious, it'll direct our lives and we'll call it fate.
SPEAKER_01
Boom. So what I just said during my in my story is unless you don't change that, what needs to be changed, you'll continue to feed it. It's not gonna go anywhere until you do something about it. What is present will always be present, Chad. But if you want your present to be different, if you want to change your mindset, you got to do the work.
SPEAKER_00
And I think this leads to those dreams. I think you said a lot of that stuff started happening in your dreams, and I think that right there, Carl Jung talks a lot about dreams and a lot about everything stored in the unconscious. Well, he talks about three things, but we don't need to go into a lesson on that now. But the collective unconscious, some people might call it God or the universal energy, whatever you want to call it, and then the personal unconscious, and then obviously the ego or the conscious. So for you, it's amazing that that stuff started happening in your dreams and things like that, because it's almost like the unconscious is trying to give us a message that things need to change. And I think a lot of us don't pay enough attention to those nightmares or those dreams, or we're always dreaming. There's dreaming going on right now. We've got the sleep dreams, and then we've got the awake dreams where so I haven't kicked my dogs out. I've put them out twice today, and there's a reason why they want to be close to me. I don't know what that is. Maybe it's winter, maybe don't really know. But there's obviously, and I won't bother getting the computer down, but one's on one foot and one's on the other, and they're looking the most uncomfortable spots. But right now they want to be close to me. I don't know what that's about. There's obviously something they're feeling that and where I'm going with this is so much is going on around us at all at all times that is actually penetrating us and storing inside that needs to come out, that needs to be processed. And so that really hit me what you just said before about and shell shock. I've read the book The Body Keeps the Score by Vessel van Kock, and he really talks a lot about the origins of how PDSD became known and and how we started to actually see that it was almost a bodily experience that was stored inside of us and needs to come out. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01
And like I said, if if you don't, if you don't act, it's not that's not going anywhere. You can run from all you want, but trust me, I've tried. I've done it, Chad. I ran instead of dealt with facing my problems and face the dreams. If you do nothing, expect nothing. Right? Definitely I mean pretty to the point. If you if you if you're not gonna do nothing, expect nothing. So you I had to do something because these dreams were killing me. Uh yeah, I I don't know how else to say it, but just to say, I mean, I had to do something because I knew that if I didn't, I wasn't gonna be here.
SPEAKER_00
So And I'm glad you are. I'm glad you are. My life will be richer for I know that scene so sounds so cliche, but I go into every day. The biggest thing that we've got, I think, is interactions with other human, with everything, whether it's the jazz music, whether it's the feeling of the smoke going down your lungs if you breathe it in or into your mouth, the feeling of the dogs. There's a part of me that's like, I better kick the dogs out because they're gonna make noise, and then there's another part of me that's like, why do I need to abandon them from wanting to be close to me purely because it's gonna inconvenience maybe one little bit of noise in a podcast? So I think what you're saying there is like we're trying to, we're almost trying to control a world that's not meant to be controlled, and that whole basis of war, like to me is it's a crazy concept. In 2026, the amount of fucking money that we need to spend on armies and defence forces and wars, like I won't go too far down that path right now, but fuck that's unconsciousness in itself, right? The amount of people around the world being damaged from war, even just from the whole idea of training for war and being around that um being around that environment. Fuck, it's it's wild to think in 2026 when apparently we can go to the moon and me and you can speak to each other right now, right? Well, we're on opposite sides of the world. I'm coming to you from the future. It's Wednesday morning here and it's Tuesday night over there, so technically I'm coming to you from the future, right? But we're simultaneously, we're somehow having a conversation thousands of kilometers apart. We've got all this technology and all this awareness, and we're fucking killing each other and ruining lives and ruining people's lives, and not just for every person that suicides or for every person that's unwell. There's many statistics. Oh, it's 15 people that suffer, it's 30. It's can be a whole community sometimes if somebody suicides or somebody homicides, or these are big topics that I think we don't talk about enough. And that's why I generally ask people a bit when they come on my podcast, just what what's some topics or what landed from my book? Because it's right in line with this that it's you. Oh fuck, it's me. Like it's you. It's me.
SPEAKER_01
No, it it's me. It's me. I was the author of my destruction. Yeah. Until I realized that I was. So I had to make some changes when I realized that.
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, you're right. Yeah, and something I say a lot, like I'm an alcoholic, I'm a recovering alcoholic. If I'm an alcoholic, I've got two choices. I can burn my life to the ground and everyone else is around me. Or I can accept that I've got an allergy to alcohol, which again, that's what I subscribe to. That a true alcoholic has an allergy to alcohol, and it actually the signals of the body once we start drinking are telling us we need more. So what where I'm going with that is it's not my fault that I'm an alcoholic, but I think it's my responsibility that I do something about it. And I love to hear with you, it's not your fault that you've got PDSD at all. You didn't bring this on, you didn't create it, you didn't cause it. We can do two things. We can be a victim to it and ruin everyone else's life around us. And that's what the unconsciousness inside of us loves to do, right? We love to be a victim. Like that's just human nature. It's almost like become a fucking personality or identity now. Like I am a victim. Everybody else is a narcissist, and unfortunately, I just attract them. Statistically, 3% of the population are narcissistic, but 97% of people on social media believe they've been married to one. Right, right. And I think a bit like what I'm saying with you, you are, I love to see people taking what's happened to them and transforming it. There's that saying, pain not transformed will be transmitted. So there's two things here, right? You've you've taken in this energy of PDSD, which for anyone out there, I'm sure they do know, post-traumatic stress disorder, or there's CPTSD, which is complex post-traumatic stress disorder. And they're all labels, and we don't like labels. A lot of people don't like labels, but I think if we don't label something, we don't know what to do with it. Like if I like soft drink and I go to the soft drink fridge at the supermarket or the corner store and I like Coca-Cola, if it doesn't have a label on it, I might buy fucking Pepsi Max, or which I don't really like. So labels, I think, rather than labels becoming identities, I think it's a good a label can be like with me, like an out-I'm an alcoholic. Okay, that's a label. What does that mean? Does it mean that I live in a park with a brown paper bag and I'm homeless? Yeah, that can be it. And I think that's why a lot of people don't get help. Because it's I'm not that bad. I've got this image that an alcoholic, like for you, when you use the word shell shock or PDSD or whatever, I could have imagine you're in the supermarket and someone drops something and you jump to the ground and put your hands over your head. Your response to PDSD might be a completely different scenario. Someone might drop something and you might turn around and punch them because your your your activation is not freeze or flight, your activation might be fight.
SPEAKER_01
Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah. And when I was really in, when I was really going through it, Chad, I struggled uh a great deal being in in crowds. I still do have moments where my anxiety shoots up when I'm in certain crowds. But uh and I'm I'm always hyper-vigilant. I gotta see where everything is. You know, I gotta see where the exit door is, you know. I I gotta see where the where other doors are, I gotta see the windows. I you know, I uh I'm I'm in survival mode. Right. When when I'm out in public and I I need to I need to be uh in a position where I can see everybody so that if shit go left, I know where I I know how I can get out of here. Right. My instincts kicking in, you know. So I I've experienced that. Uh I can't I can't I can't stand behind a door unless it's open. If it's closed, I I can't I can't stand behind that door. My anxiety goes through the roof. You know, um unless I'm at home, then maybe you know, because I'm I'm I'm at home. But if anywhere else, no, I I have problems with that. So um yeah. There's just certain things that uh trigger me and crowds trigger me. That's for sure. It gets me it gets my anxiety going and I get angry when I'm around a lot of people. So yeah, I I I try to stay away from that because I don't want to turn green and grow muscles and start tearing shit up. So I just uh I just stare, I just steer clear of it, you know.
SPEAKER_00
And I can completely understand why. And I think speaking out about it, I think at least gives people around us an understanding of what the fuck's going on, that you're not just this aggressive man who likes beating people up or likes reacting in public. I think a lot of people think it's a choice. And when we don't speak up, because we we don't understand, and that's why when that quote came about unconsciousness directing our lives, if we don't know what we're reacting, like the majority of my work lies in understanding the problem, and that does come out of a lot of the alcoholics anonymous philosophy. That I would say that three-quarters of the alcoholic of the AA program in the book is dedicated to the first three steps, which is really understanding the problem. Because if we don't understand the problem, if we understand the problem fully, the action and the solution to help make change come pretty easy. But I think it's finding it's working out the problem because the mind tells us that we don't have these things because it doesn't even understand what it is. So I work on a model of problem solution action, but the problem is always the same. I know this sounds horrific, but the problem is always that we've been through some kind of trauma or some experience that is stored in us, in our in the way we see the world, in the way we believe, in the way that we experience life. And if people don't believe me on that, think about even if it's something really good that's happened to you, think about an ex-girlfriend or an ex-boyfriend that you really loved when you were younger that was really good to you, or even if it's your current partner, think about a car they drove. And then if that car drove past now and I might not have seen one of those cars for 20 years, when that car drives past me, if it's the same colour and it's the same car, I will almost think about automatically think about my ex-girlfriend of 20 years ago. Even though we I haven't seen her for probably 18 or nine or 17 years, I will think about her, and I think that's what we don't talk about enough in the world. But for you with PDSD or for me, I'd I think my PDSD is pretty healed now. I definitely had PDSD from childhood, and it wasn't that I got beaten to a pulp. It was the level of fear in my home from having an unpredictable person in the home full of alcohol, the the level of unpredictability was always my nervous system was always on guard. And that still, even though I've done all this work, and I'm not so much, I wouldn't say I'm scared at all, but when certain things happen, my nervous system just goes into override. I turned 25 years sober earlier this year, and my partner put together a surprise party for me, right? Like the proper fucking surprise party, which for me, I don't really do surprises. Like I'm thinking for you, it'd be like getting you to a surprise party, right? I don't really, I think, and I love her, and she'd probably listen to this, right? And I love her to death, and it wasn't intentional. I think we love people how we want to be loved. So anyway, so I turn up to this party and everyone was there, there was 50 odd people there in this hall, and I thought we were going out for dinner, and then we're in a a friend of ours a ride chair service, and when I get in the car, she's like, Oh look, can you just help me pick up a heater on the way to dinner? I need to pick up a heater from this guy. He said, Yeah, no worries. So we pull up there and I walk up to the hall. And as I open, they say, Oh, the guy's in the hall, apparently, like with the heater, and so I open the door, and then the lights come on and the fucking horns start and the stamping feet. And I just my dog's barking, see? He just reacted to that. My dog's barking to that. Really? Yeah, so I did that, right? And I just my partner said, like, because I just automatically grabbed her and just retreated from this door in the dark because the noise and the light, and I couldn't see the people because the door was sort of facing a hallway and they were over here to the left. And I just grabbed her and she sort of had to grab me and force me back in there in a way, and my nervous system was so fucking and afterwards, she said, I haven't really ever seen anyone so fearful as you in that moment, and I'm so sorry. And none of it was intentional, and I didn't take it as an intentional um, she didn't try and traumatize me, but that showed me how much work there still is to be done. We've had a conversation since because she felt bad, and I didn't want her to feel bad because the intention was so good. It wasn't bad. It wasn't like she was going, oh yeah, I'm gonna fucking traumatise Chad. And it seemed such a small thing, but for me it was dark, it was rainy, it was all this overwhelm of senses, which is what PDST is, right? The sound, the noise, the horns, the light, the energy of it. It was just so overwhelming. Like I just when I stamped my feet doing it then, and my dog started reacting over here and barking because he thought something was wrong. He just can't even see me now, he's out there. Well, that's the thing is what I want to say right now is that a lot of people are dealing with this shit in public and we don't even know. And we don't know it. Yes. We don't know it. And I think that's where my work lies around understanding it's you, oh fuck, it's me. Like you're the problem. Well, hang on a minute, we're all the fucking problem. We're all the problem here. We've all got a level of trauma. We've probably all got a and I'm not taking away from having proper PDSD, right? But I'm saying we've all got a level of, you know, to a degree, we've all got a level of PDSD, but somebody else's thermometer might be at a 10, and someone like you might be at a 90, right? So it doesn't mean that I'm trying to take away from because a lot of people get upset sometimes with the way I speak because they say you're almost you're minimizing, you're minimizing people that have got, but we've all got it. Like it again, that comes back to that thing, it's you, oh fuck, it's me. It's the opposite. It's me, oh fuck, it's you. You don't understand what it's like for me. Well, yeah, I think most people understand a level of a level of PDSD, right? A level of it. But my dog then, he's never been beaten, he's never been attacked by a bigger dog. Nothing really has ever happened to him. But if like if the table gets bent or something like that, or even when you're getting his dog bubble out, if it hits the table and ri he's he's on guard all the time, and there's no real reason why that is happening in him, it's just an instinctual nature.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And you said something too that really uh that resonated with me. We all uh have experienced some form of trauma, be it little or a lot. And it doesn't matter if it's a little trauma or a lot of trauma, it's still trauma. Right? You may have experienced a a a moment in your life where uh it may have took you for a jolt, uh a little jolt, you know what I mean? Nothing earth-shattering, but uh it it it took you a few steps back and you got yourself together. But you have people like myself and others who have been through repeated uh repeatedly and repeatedly uh going through stuff, experiencing stuff, and it uh messed your mind up to a point where you see life different. That's what I'm talking about. You know what I mean? So it's like yeah, it's me. It's not you, fuck it, it's me. You know, I'm the problem. And I I had to I had to admit to myself that yeah, I was a problem because not only was I uh hurting myself, I was hurting other people that were in my life. You know what I'm saying? And I guess that's what I didn't see what I was what I was doing until uh I was mature enough and strong enough to take a step back and look at myself and see that I was uh again, like I said earlier, I was the author of my destruction. I did that. You know what I'm saying? My my behavior towards the people that I hurt made them react how they reacted. Right? I was the catalyst, I was the problem, but I had to recognize that one, I was the problem, and two, I had to recognize that I had to do something about it. So I took my ass to the VA, uh learned what PTSD was and how it affected me and affected others, and uh do the work to change.
SPEAKER_00
So I love to hear that, and I'm sure there's a lot of people out there, unfortunately, and for anyone listening to this who has suffered PDSD or resonates with what we're saying, because I keep this pretty short, this podcast, understanding that there can be healing from this so that we don't leave with so people don't there's hope, right? Like, is your life different now after speaking out and getting help? Does your life look different to what it looked like before?
SPEAKER_01
No, my life is a whole lot different from when it from um from before I took this journey. Um the way I look at the world, the way I look at myself. Um I'm glad that I went to that doctor. I'm glad that I I was uh strong enough to uh learn who I am. The new me. You know, the old Mark is gone. He's not coming back, you know what I'm saying? This is this is who I am. I have to learn who he is, and uh I I have to shape and mold this person to be the best version of himself. So it goes back to what I said earlier about doing the work. I had to do the work, and the work is still not done. The work will never be done.
SPEAKER_00
A bit like mowing your lawn, doing yard work or mowing the lawn, right? You can do it this week, and if you're in the middle of summer and it's rained, needs to fucking be mowed again. This is what people forget with this sort of work. And the last question I'll probably ask, because my podcast is very varied. I don't have set questions each person. I want to ask, do you see many people come onto your podcast that are still really trapped in it and they can't they can't get out of that? Do you get many people that come onto your podcast and you feel for them because they're so trapped in that the the PDSD still has them, they don't have it.
SPEAKER_01
Sure, sure. In the beginning, I've interviewed people who were still going through. Um I've interviewed uh men, women, veterans who uh were uh actively going through it. Yeah. Yeah. And uh the thing with uh mental health, Chad, is is that like I I loved how you how you uh uh analogize the uh mowing of the lawn. Just because the m the lawn looks nice for two or three days doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be done anymore. Just because we feel good today doesn't guarantee we're gonna feel good tomorrow. We still have to do the work, we still have to mow the lawn. And when I mean mow the lawn, I mean we have to do the work internally and externally. So there is no magic button to press. It's doing the work and recognizing uh when you feel uh a certain type of way. Uh-huh. If you're feeling like, okay, I'm not feeling too too positive right now, let me go smoke a cigar or something, you know what I mean, just to get my mind back on track. Let me go to the park and and do some laps. You know, you gotta you have to do uh what's necessary to help keep your mind uh stable. And uh that's something that will never go away.
unknown
Uh uh.
SPEAKER_01
Unfortunately, you can take your medications, you know what I'm saying? You can uh do your breath work, uh meditate, whatever you gotta do, but you can't let that up because once you let that up, you're gonna be off kilter. You're gonna have to mow your lawn again because the lawn's gonna grow.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and we can meditate all we want, and we can do breath work and we can do all these things, but if we can't learn how to regulate ourselves when we're fucking triggered, all of that stuff means jack shit. If if you could meditate, and if you go to the supermarket and someone drops a bottle, a glass bottle of milk and it smashes, and you turn around and punch them in the face because you've automatically reacted from the version of Mark or the old version of Chad, because it's just a response. And I think there's so many people out there acting on unconscious and subconscious triggers and not even fucking knowing what's going on. So I think that's what that's what the basis of my work lies around that it's not what we know about ourselves that is the problem, it's what we don't know about ourselves that's a problem, right? It's what it's what we don't know about underneath there that's the problem, right? And I think so. I do try and keep this pretty short. And for anyone out there that's heard what Mark said, it'd be great to jump on there and listen because I think even if you don't think you're a Marine or you don't like cigars or jazz, right? If you have an open mind, I'm gonna jump on your podcast and have a listen. I am gonna come on there as well as a guest, but I want to listen because I don't know what I can learn from these men or women that have gone through this stuff, even though I'm not I don't live in America, I don't smoke cigars because I'm an asthmatic. I haven't been in the military, but I do relate to those things that you're talking about right there. So I want you to leave one line, one question, statement, anything, something short that I can hit the next guest with.
SPEAKER_01
There's something I I always say at the end of my podcast. I say it's okay to not be okay. Just do something about it.
SPEAKER_00
I love that. It's okay to not be okay, just do something about it, and we'll leave it there.
