Pain Might Not Be Punishment. It Might Be an Invitation with Jason Hamilton

"The pain might not be punishment. It might be an invitation."

Jason Hamilton walked with Christ for sixteen years, led men's ministries, and left a men's retreat on a spiritual high — and on the drive home, out of nowhere, had a panic attack that started an eighteen-month collapse. Sound sensitivity so severe that tearing toilet paper felt like ice picks in his brain. Six months of feeling chased by a grizzly bear, every hour, awake or asleep. Suicidal ideation for the first time in his life. And a Christmas morning in the ER where God felt further away than He'd ever been. Jason sits down with Joshua Wilson to walk through what it cost him to stop engineering a solution and finally let go — and why he now calls the darkest season of his life the greatest spiritual gift he's ever received.

What We Cover:

• Why stepping into full surrender can bring more pressure, not less — and what Ephesians says about who we're actually wrestling
• The panic attack out of nowhere on the drive home from a men's retreat
• A bad reaction to ER medication that Jason describes as the closest thing to hell he's experienced on earth
• Hyperacusis, noxacusis, and six months of physical pain from ordinary sound
• The illusion of control — and why discipline, logic, and willpower could not fix this
• Christmas morning in the emergency room, and a son who asked his dad to pray
• The intervention, and the moment Jason heard: trust Me, and do whatever the next person tells you to do
• The psychiatrist's first words on the phone, and the confirmation Jason didn't expect
• Rebuilding neural pathways through sound exposure therapy, one degree of volume at a time
• Why surrender is the courageous move, and control is the counterfeit one

About the show: Upside-Down Kings is a publication of One Iron Network. Learn more at oneironnetwork.com.

Transcript

Why This Show Exists: The Word of Our Testimony

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, what's up, everybody? Upside down Kings. Uh, the meaning, purpose, everything we do here is to glorify God. Uh, there's a verse in Revelations, I think 12, that says, They shall defeat the enemy by the blood of Jesus. That's the work that he did for us, and the word of our testimony. So as I come across dudes who uh I know and uh have cool testimonies, I want to bring them on. And not just like, hey, I became a Christian when I was, you know, 12 years old, baptized, and you know, Jesus rescued me from whatever a 12-year-old suffers through. No, it's like like what did you struggle with today? What did you struggle with recently? And then let's walk through some of that. Um, this show will not be marketed and pushed and all that. This is for the hidden, this is for the people who need it. So send it to maybe one dude if you if they need to hear a testimony or if they need some hope. Um, in Christ. That's it. Jason, uh, met you at a Zoe men's retreat, and uh became buds because we were in a council together, a leadership

Meeting Jason: Wrestlers, Zoe, and the Warrior Council

SPEAKER_00 1:00

group together. We're both former wrestlers. I guess once wrestler, always wrestler. Um, and man, I'm just honored to be your friend and to walk with you uh through life together, man. So uh upside down king, man, that's what you are.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Thanks, Josh. Really appreciate that. Um I kind of went dark on you there for a little bit. Uh, you know, it was it was quite a journey. I think when we talk about this upside down king concept, we you know, when we when we feel like we're

Faith Doesn't Mean Easy: The Spiritual Battle

SPEAKER_01 1:30

walking in faith, and or even when we first come to faith, we feel like everything's gonna be easy. Right. But um we still live in a broken world and there's constantly gonna be trials. And I would say that, you know, when when the enemy sees uh an opportunity um to try to take someone out that that that that he fears, um, you know, he he'll do that. And I think a lot of men who step into faith um and full surrender start to experience some of that additional pressure, right? Not just because you become more aware of your shortcomings, but also just because um we live in a spiritual battle. And, you know, as Ephesians says, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, uh, spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. And so I think we can't underestimate who we are in that spiritual battle and what our worth is, right? Because um we're often attacked the most when uh when the enemy sees what type of value and change we can bring to the world, which is completely inverse to this walk, which I love that love that concept.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yeah. So uh we we left a a retreat, um, and kind of like everyone was on, you know, Cloud9, man. We're finding healing, we found our identity in Christ, we got our names written on, you know, yeah,

The Drive Home and the Panic Attack Out of Nowhere

SPEAKER_00 3:00

little things. I don't want to get very too many secrets, you know, but like uh on the way home, man, something happened to you and uh walk us through your recent struggle, man, because yeah, you went dark on me and it it was uh scary for a minute.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah, I mean, uh to just set context, I've been, you know, walking with Christ since 2008. I, you know, I've helped with youth ministry. I've started men's ministries um with you and the guys from Zoe. We were looking at the Warrior Council and and really planning some big things. I was looking at starting another men's ministry and kicking that off at our church uh that I was going to. And yeah, we just had a great week and it was in August of 2024. Um, you know, we went fishing with that dam they had opened up. It was a beautiful setting, lots of fun climbing rocks, doing all the you know, crazy fun stuff that that guys need to get out and do. And yeah, we were on our way home. I was with my buddy Matt uh Higgins, and um I all of a sudden out of nowhere, I had a panic attack, which was literally out of nowhere. Like I was not like stressed, I wasn't worried, I wasn't scared. Um, I thought I was dying. And that it might sound small, like, hey, you know, panic attacks happen to people every day, but this was like I feel a full-fledged just spiritual attack on my soul. I thought I was literally preparing to not see my children and my wife again because I thought I was having a heart attack. Like I was fading

The ER, the Medication, and the Closest Thing to Hell

SPEAKER_01 4:30

in and out. It was pretty wild. Um, and then from there I just start having head pressure, right? I started uh every day I would wake up and I would just have this, you know, tension headache. And it was just from the panic attack and all of that. I just, you know, I said, I said to my wife, I said, you know, I don't know what's going on, but there's something going on with my head. I'm gonna go to the ER and have them scan my brain, you know, you know, and it was it was all about like trying to figure out, trying to, you know, pinpoint what was going on. And um went to the ER, sat there, the doctor came in, he's like, hey, yeah, let's uh let's go ahead and do a CT scan. And you know, while you're waiting, I'm gonna give you some of this medicine that we get for migraines. It's really helpful. And I'm thinking, great, maybe that's what this is. It's a migraine, and that'll solve all the problems. He gave me some medicine, man. I had a horrid reaction to it. Um, immediately, my whole body started burning. I felt like I couldn't sit still. Um, I felt like I wanted to crawl out of my skin. All emotional goodness was gone. Um, it's the closest I think on earth that I could experience what hell's like, just because every good emotion, everything that's good was completely gone from my whole chemical brain spiritual process, whatever that medicine did. And it put me into another full-fledged panic attack. So within two weeks, I had two really bad panic

Sound Becomes Pain: Hyperacusis and Noxacusis

SPEAKER_01 6:00

attacks. Uh, one was medicine induced, and um it just sent my life through a complete tailspin. Um because that emotional aspect of it's PTSD, man. When you when you experience that that that that feeling, which I can't describe, of having no good emotions, it is really scary. It's apathy, right? It's it's the first time I've ever had suicidal ideation. Like I've never thought ever. I've always judged suicide. I've always judged some of these mental health problems, like, hey, why can't you just get it together? Or how could somebody jump off of a bridge when they have three kids at home that that need them? Right. It did that never made sense to me until that moment. So it was really dark and it only got worse. I wish I could say it got better, but um it got worse over time. I started to experience sound sensitivity. You know, I couldn't, we tried to go out to dinner as a family, and I had to run out of the restaurant because I felt like physical pain from sound. Um, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. And so that continued to spiral completely out of control. And my fear of medicine, right? Was I I had this fear of medicine because of what happened to me at the ER. So I was refusing to take anything that might help. Um, I was refusing to believe that it was a mental health problem. Um, and I just continued to try to walk my own way, which was to try to control and try to figure out, right? Try to engineer a solution to this problem. And so, you know, the the sound sensitivity got so bad, they actually call it hyperacusis. Um, there's a there's a worse version called noxicusis, which I ended up getting, which is physical burning sensations from sound in your ears. It got so bad that literally tearing toilet paper felt like somebody like my brain was being stabbed with ice picks.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

So you went a few months without wiping.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

No, but seriously, I mean um I had to be.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

So the sound of toilet paper, the sound of toilet paper, the sound of it, yeah, drove you to physical pain. Yes. So man, one of the ways I cope with uh and I walk through my own pain is I joke, right? It's a way to kind of like break my own like my own um awkward feeling or the own, like I don't know, man. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but when I hang with dudes, like um I do it with

Where Are You, God? Six Months in the Dark

SPEAKER_00 9:00

full love. And if it was if that was insensitive to anybody out there, my bad. I love you. I have a good relationship with Jason and and I love him too. But um, you know, what was your conversations? Uh back to that, back to my after my apology. Uh back to the, you know, like what was your conversations with God like? Because you and I were like kind of like on cloud nine, dude. We were like, our identity with Christ was sound like we were ready to war. Like, I guess we were ready to war. But what was what were your conversations with Christ, with your wife, with your kids? What did that look like?

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Yeah, it's really interesting. Um, because you know, obviously I was having a what to hell moment with God. Like, what is going on? And it's really hard to describe, but I almost felt like, where are you? Um, it was almost like I couldn't feel his presence anymore. It's like he withdrew his presence, and I felt like he wasn't there. It was really, really difficult. However, I continued, and there was a specific verse I continued to just recite in my head over and over again. I believe it's in Philippians, but it's I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I would re I would just say that over and over again because normal life became impossible. I couldn't leave the house, couldn't ride in cars, I couldn't talk. Talking my own voice was causing it, felt like my ears were going to explode just from the sound of my own voice. And so I couldn't reach out, I couldn't definitely couldn't talk on the phone. I couldn't reach out for help. Um, it just like every little sound felt like my nervous system was on fire. I felt like for for six about six months straight, 24-7. My emotional aspect felt like I was being chased by a grizzly bear, right? And the physical aspect felt like someone was jabbing me in the ears with ice picks 24-7 non-stop.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Six months, yes, that was six months. All right. Did you hear like so you're you're holding on to a verse, right? Yep. Well, yeah, that was the verse, man. What was going on with you and your wife, your job, your kids? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

I um I had to tap I had to step away from work. I had a great manager, thank the Lord. Um, I didn't lose my job. I I was looking at maybe going on a leave of absence, but um my work and my manager at the time, God had just provided in that aspect. And now looking back, I can see all that. Um, my manager was basically like, hey, just just get right, you know what I mean? Do what you gotta do. Because I was trying to go to meetings and like plug in my ears while I was talking and turning my volume all the way down just so I could get through a meeting. And I literally would have a panic attack every meeting I tried to go to. It was completely wild. Um, but honestly, I know this sounds crazy. Uh that that season of my life became the greatest spiritual gift of my life, right? And that's where we start that that's where we start to take the turn, right? Because um I got to a point where Jill, the pastor at our church, my friends, they all got

Christmas Morning in the ER

SPEAKER_01 12:30

together because I was refusing help. I was refusing to go anywhere. Jill is your wife, right? Yeah, Jillian is my wife. Yep. All right, yep. Um, and they they basically had an intervention and they were like, because I was trying cold plunging and trying to exercise, and even that became impossible. Um, from August to like December, Christmas morning, I remember just being having that same feeling I had in the hospital, right? Where I just felt dead. And it was Christmas morning. I felt like Jesus was not never further away than I had ever experienced in my life. Um Christmas morning. My son passed out Christmas morning. I had to go to the ER with my son with all those sounds, with this sound sensitivity. I'm literally sitting in the ER with my son on Christmas morning, unable to talk. My son reaches over to me and grabs my hand. He says, Daddy, I'm scared. Will you pray with me? And I'm like, dude, God, you have something has to change. Like, I am falling apart. My life is coming to an end. I'm inventing ways to not live anymore. Like, how do I not live but not commit suicide? God, I can't do this anymore. That was the darkest moment was Christmas morning in that hospital. And but also a good reminder that God was still there. Like in my son, he was saying, God, I'm stared. Will you pray with me? Now he passed out because he got a compound bow and he was pull for Christmas and he was pulling on it, and I hadn't adjusted it yet. But they basically hadn't like a his, you know, he he passed out from over-exerting himself. But with everything else going on, we didn't know what the heck was going on. But, anyways, um, you know, but this it was the moment where God rescued me. Um, you know, roll we went to, I ended up wearing earplugs and earmuffs

The Intervention and the End of the Rope

SPEAKER_01 14:30

so we could travel to go see family uh at a cabin in Tennessee. You know, I'd go for walks and I'd tell my parents and my brother and sister, I'd be like, man, hopefully I just get eaten by a grizzly bear so this can all end. Um, and that really scared them. So they got they got all together. My mom flew out here. Uh Jill, you know, got with the pastor, my friends, they all showed up and they were basically like, hey, you're gonna you're gonna do something different, or we're gonna like medically get, you know, a form to like take you somewhere because you're at danger of yourself. Cause I was I literally getting out of bed in the morning was like running a marathon. Like literally just putting my foot on the floor to live was like literally running a marathon just to stand up in the morning. It became so dark. Um, but really what was happening was I've always had this prayer, right? God, when everything is against me, will I will I give up on you? Like if the knife is to my throat and they say deny Christ, you know, would I would I actually deny Christ or not? And um, and I sort of had this moment where like maybe this is a trial that I'm going through to really walk through that, right? And and would I really do I trust God? Right? Do I fully trust God with every aspect of

Letting Go: Trust Me and Do What the Next Person Says

SPEAKER_01 16:00

my life? Right? Do I or do I still have this illusion of control? Do I still have this illusion that the world puts on us that we can control our next breath even? And so um there was a moment, probably in the February time frame of 2025, after the um the intervention, I said, okay, God, I'm I give up. I give. Like he's got I'm in a rear-naked choke. I'm about to pass out, right? You can, you know, some of those guys just go to sleep. Some of them tap. Like he's like, hey man, you can go to sleep or you can tap. I'm not letting go. Yeah, you get to let go. And so sorry about that. Um, so being on that the end of that rope, right, where you have to make a decision. Am I gonna am I gonna try to grunt through this and hold on to this rope or am I gonna let go and trust God? Um, and so even through all the things that I had been through and all of the the message of the heart, right? When you're in it, it's hard to see it, right? But with that intervention was a huge turning point. Um, you know, C.S. Lewis, I love what he, you know, I love C.S. Lewis. He says God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but he shouts in our pain, right? And what was really interesting was, you know, I felt like God wasn't there, right? Where are you? But then it's kind of like this. I had this moment where he's like, hey man, I've been here. Like, you gotta let go. You gotta trust me. And I said, Okay, God, this is it. I'm letting go. I'm gonna do what I heard from God was trust me and do whatever the next person tells you to do. Full surrender. Right? Um, because this was a battle for my life. Life is a battle. We, you, us, we have an enemy. You can't fight it alone. And I got to the point where I couldn't fight it at all, right? Michael Thompson writes in Zoe, right? Every man is asking three questions. Do I have what it takes? Am I loved? And is there a battle worth fighting? Right. And then lying there in my house, like, yeah, unable to function. Those were brutally real questions. And so when I let go, um, I went to my wife because I was in this loop, fear, panic, pain, repeat, right? There's an anxiety, pain cycle you can fall into. You can also, I mean, there's so much in the neurological aspect of this where the physical and the spiritual realm intersect. And maybe that's another time for another podcast, but um, I went deep into that about how the mind can create pain and mind and body syndrome or what they call TMS. Um, those are all very interesting concepts about how the spiritual and the physical realms intersect and how neuropathways get built, right? You know, agreements and

The Psychiatrist, the Therapist, and Rebuilding the Brain

SPEAKER_01 19:30

vows, right? An agreement and a vow is a neuropathway, right? It's a life experience that's built something and our expectations to avoid experiencing pain. So I went to my wife and I said, Jill, what do you want me to do? She said, I want you to call a psychiatrist and a therapist right now and make appointments. I said, Okay. So I called a therapist, called a psychiatrist. I get on the phone with the therapist or the psychiatrist. I can't remember one which one at this. It was, I think it was the psychiatrist. You wouldn't believe the first words that came out of his mouth. He said, Jason, you're just gonna have to trust me. And so it was in that moment getting that confirmation of trust, right? And I said, Okay, I'm gonna do whatever you tell me to do, right? I've never been a proponent of medication. Um, you know, there's a lot of research out there that is against certain antidepressants and those types of things, but man, I think God created doctors, he created medicine, and everything can be used for evil or good. And um, you know, my brain was beyond my ability to basically try to overcome it myself within my own control. So I couldn't fix it, not with discipline. Like the world says, as long as you're disciplined enough, right? Not with logic, not with my own strength, not with my own willpower, right? Courage and brute strength was not going to get me through this. What was gonna get me through this was full surrender. And so that is the type of courageousness that is inverse to what the world says. The world says, courageousness is I can do everything myself. I'm a man and I can overcome. Just get up, right? Stop being a wimp. I think when we start to talk about Christ and Jesus and how he just flipped everything on its head, is that courageousness is really letting go of that false sense of security or that false sense of control that we think that we really have. Jason, that's yeah, man. And um so you know, Psalms 23, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, like that's the kind of the things that were running through my hind in my mind at this point. I will fear no evil, for you are with me, right? You you're not gonna you're not gonna leave me or forsake me. Um, and and he didn't. Uh I literally went. Through um retraining my brain to to to to uh identify sound as safe. I through my therapy, I had I I did uh sound exposure, listening to um classical music on the lowest level for as long as I could. It was kind of like lifting weights. You know, you go until you start, it starts to burn so much, and then you're like, okay, I don't want to injure myself. So I did that, and every week

The Gift: When Faith Stopped Being a Theory

SPEAKER_01 22:30

I turned it up and up and up. And today I'm at the point where it really is a resurrecting power of Jesus that I experienced no physical symptoms. I um I do everything that I didn't think I would ever be able to do again, which was like go out on my boat and go fishing without earplugs. I don't ever wear earplugs, even on planes, when the plane's taken off, it's it's ridiculous how loud that is when you have sensitivity. The noises that you don't think of, right? Um, but this moment of surrender for me was when faith really stopped becoming a theory. Right? It's like when you you're able to experience it, it it really can change you. And that's the gift that I received through all of this that I'm talking about is it no longer became this theory, but when I was able to let go in full surrender and trust and see God work and see him say, Here I am, I've been here all along, to speak through these people that he said to just go to and ask what I should do. It's amazing. It changed my life. Uh, because in that moment he became my lifeline for real, for real. And um it has brought me so much peace about everything, about tomorrow, right? About my job, about my relationships, about my children. Um, you know, come to find out from life trauma as a young man. Um I've had PTSD my whole life. I've had which created uh obsessive compulsive disorder. On top of that, I had uh ADHD, which again, I don't like to put labels to these things, but they're they're really a symptom of a of trauma. Um some things you're born with, right? Um again, every anything can be used for good or evil, used it for you or against you. And because those things were undealt with, right? Because they were, I'll even say unmedicated, I it just built up.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Right. I'm 40 years, I'll I was 40 years old. I just turned 40, by the way, when all this happened. I'll be 42 this year. Um, and my my body and my brain just said, if I can't anymore, I can't do it anymore. You can't shove, you can't stuff this anymore, right? And um, it's gotta be dealt with. And it really was it takes me back to uh uh a Zoe encounter at um in the mountains in Colorado, and I'm sitting on this bench and I'm like, God, what do I need to do? Like, how do I draw closer to you? And and in that moment, trust came up, right? And I drew this picture of this bench because it's hanging from these rafters, and there's a safety line, right? And it looks like the main bolt's about to fall out, and it's like I had this vision of like, hey, if this bench falls, that safety line's gonna catch it. And that's Jesus, right? You know, we can try to hold ourselves up, prop ourselves up every day, but man, I just have so much compassion for men that are trying to grunt through it on their own. And um, I would just encourage you to let go that he is faithful and he will show up. It might not be instantly, but it'll be unmistakably. You know what I mean? Like I was not healed overnight. I mean, this was a process of months of retraining my brain because we do live in a broken spiritual, uh, physical world. And I had to rebuild neuropathways that got created in all this the enemy was using against me. And so um again, I'll quote Michael when he said, a man doesn't become who he a man doesn't become who he was meant to be until he has been broken and rebuilt by God. And so until I think, and and these have been cycles through my life, right? I mean, 20 years ago I woke up in a jail cell, didn't know how I got there, and I thought that was the lowest part of my life. Um, that's when I came to Christ. But later, these uh this other trial was more so much more than that. It was

Pain as Invitation, Not Punishment

SPEAKER_01 27:00

it was full surrender, right? Fully letting go. And, you know, if I I believe if God is gonna step you into a larger mission, sometimes we might have to go through the swamp, through the muck, right, to get there just because, you know, do you really trust me? Right, is the question. And I'm not saying everybody's story has to be that way, but I'm Josh, I'm a knucklehead. Like, you know, I have to be beat down a little bit before I'm like, oh, okay, I I get it now. This is what you want me to do. Like, because it's very easy to just try to take my own way, do my own thing. Um, so yeah, if you're here and you're listening to this and it feels like your life's falling apart, um it, you know, the pain might not be punishment. It might be an invitation, right? It might be an invitation, an invitation to surrender. Not, you know, like what the world says, surrender looks like giving up and being a wimp, but courageously relinquishing control over to the designer, the creator, and the author, right? Who has our best interest in mind, um, who wants us to have a whole and fulfilled life. Um, and so that's where that can be that line where God can can can can to begin rescuing you when you feel like everything's stacked against you. Um, that's where you can fully experience. And, you know, he may already, he may already be or has always been searching for you, right? Watching you, encouraging you. Look back on your life and look at the areas where maybe you shouldn't have survived or you shouldn't have come out of certain situations, right? You know, maybe he's been equipping you and training. Maybe this is a training process, but you can rely on him wholly and fully. Um, and it's far more beautiful once you experience it than reading about it. Uh, you know, Corey Timboom, who's an author that wrote writes, you know, a Christian author during the Holocaust, talks about this concept of chocolate chip cookies. Like, you know, I love chocolate chip cookies, right? You can study, understand the recipe, which is all important, right? We can have all this theology and we need that, but until you actually get the taste and experience the chocolate chip cookies, it's really hard

Jason Prays Us Out

SPEAKER_01 29:30

to understand the importance of that recipe and what it is really like to experience it. And so, yeah, man, I know I'm talking a lot, but just want to pause.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

No, man. Grateful for you, grateful for your friendship. So thankful that you're uh man, you're on the other side of the valley of the shadow of death, bro. Like that's scary. Uh, do this, man. Uh pray us out and pray for the dudes in the audience.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Yep, Father God, Jesus, Yahweh, we we thank you, God. We thank you for your son, Jesus, what he did, what he came to do, what he conquered, that he still lives, that he still breathes, God, that he's here with us, God, that we can fully trust him. There are men listening to this right now that feel like they have nothing left, right? That they've they've played all of their cards, God, um, but Jesus is here as that trump card, God, that they can play. Um, and we just have to have the courage to do it, the courage to surrender, uh, the courage to relinquish control like the Israelites with manna in the desert, God, every day. Like we wake up, don't collect any more than what we need, um, and he'll provide the next day. And so just stepping and walking in that faith, God, of fully and relying on him for every breath, staying in spiritually through prayer and time alone, God, um, so we can hear your voice. And we just pray that over the men, uh, we pray that over our our lives, our families, God. Uh, we come against any shadow of darkness or any spiritual forces that would try to disrupt or to confuse or to lie or to whisper partial truths uh or confuse um these men, God, because they are mighty in the name of Jesus. And we just pray that they would take up that honor uh that you are bestowing on them today, and they would walk in faith, God. Thank you for this time, thank you for the honor to share. We pray all this in the mighty and glorious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen. Amen.